I’m curious about that too. Nintendo has an official history on their website, and the only mention of Marufuku is as a company created in 1947 to handle distribution. Obviously it dates back to the beginning in some form though.

The English speaking world had a lot of influence on Japan starting when Commodore Perry sailed into Edo harbor in 1853, demanding that they open up to the west. After the imperial restoration in 1868, they got modernization fever, and the US and UK were major industrialization forces. Having a sign in English…

Linguists and philosophers of language are descriptivists, not prescriptivists, so there’s no grammar test! Based on my experience, they hang around in old, poorly maintained buildings on college campuses. (Not enough alumni who can afford to dump millions of dollars to get swanky new buildings named after themselves…

You need to hang out with linguists and philosophers of language more.

The name for Germany in many Slavic languages comes from the protoslavic “němьcь”, which means basically “mute/can’t speak Slavonic”, so I can totally see an even older culture totally dismissing another as “those assholes who can’t even speak the REAL language and just make nonsense noises”.

Late to the party here, but to resurrect a classic AVClub meme: It can be two things!

Trump has a very long history of racism from his first NYT appearance as a slumlord fined for telling potential black tenants that there were no available units and then renting to white tenants to calling for the death penalty for…

My 9 year old 32" TV is 1080p. At the time you could buy 720p or 1080p, but even then it was at least 50/50. In the last year I think I saw maybe one 720p TV at Target. These days the cheap TVs are 1080p (saw a 32" 1080p Samsung at Costco for $189; I paid $699 for mine in 2009 and it’s three times as thick and has…

My in-laws (who say they can’t see what I’m talking about) lost the remote to their TV and just use the all-in-one remote from the cable box, which doesn’t seem to have a button that can access the menu functions of the TV. So I grudgingly tolerate it when we go to visit.

English has a long (at least back to the 1500s) history of singular “they” where the antecedent is unknown or not important. In this case it’s clearly just not giving a fuck enough to check the author’s name. Otherwise, I’m with you. Zack’s Star Trek reviews are what originally made me (hastily; as the username shows)…

Kinjamprove doesn’t work on most mobile browsers though (they don’t support WebExtensions) so this helps people on their phones and tablets at minimum.

An example of a *good* writer starting out in fanfic is 6 time Hugo and 3 time Nebula award winner Lois McMaster Bujold. Her first book (but 4th sold) was “Shards of Honor”, which started out as Star Trek fanfic, with the what became the Barrayarans as Klingons. It’s not a perfect example though, because she never…

I don’t really see MoviesAnywhere leading to Hulu’s demise. a) MoviesAnywhere is for streaming purchased movies, and has no rentals or per month fee to watch the whole catalog, although they could change that. b) while Hulu does have movies, its main thing is TV and its distinguishing feature over Netflix or Amazon is…

Disney has already ended their streaming content agreement with Netflix (as soon as the current one expires). They were talking about creating their own streaming service to move it to, but it seems like what they’re going to do is take over Hulu and make that the only online home for Disney, Fox, Marvel, etc.

Hulu is owned by Disney/ABC, Fox, NBC/Comcast, and TimeWarner (the first three own 30% each, TW owns 10%). Once this goes through, Disney will own 60% and it’s entirely likely that they’ll buy out NBC and TW. They desperately want to compete with Netflix internationally in the streaming market. And I’m more than a…

You’re making the strange assumption that Gene Simmons has any sense of shame or embarrassment.

Isn’t the idea that the Murdochs are selling off (most of) Fox, not truly merging with Disney? I would think they’d be totally out of the C-suite if this goes through based on what I’ve read elsewhere.

I think it’s that Fusion bought the remains of the Gawker empire when they got sued into oblivion.

If you’re curious at all about the Big Finish Doctor Who radio dramas, they’re currently having a sale with 99 older stories on sale for 99 cents or pence (depending on your location) apiece, including the first 50 Main Range Doctor Who stories.

Kim Jong Il claimed to have sunk 11 holes in one on his first ever golf game, so yeah, they’re no strangers to lying about sports scores, even golf scores in particular.

I remember reading an article the day after that which said that the best pros on a good day could shoot a 73 on that course (it has some crazy winds or something, iirc). And that Trump is a notorious golf cheat who takes mulligans like crazy and moves his ball if it’s even mildly inconvenient.