>>38364
I like both, though I've only come to enjoy Udon as I grow older. For Ramen, of the four base varieties my preference is Shio > Shoyu > Tonkotsu/Miso. Just like you, I generally prefer a lighter broth. I think in terms of broth the general difference is not just in the thickness of the broth but the base of it. Udon broths are generally made of only dashi whereas Ramen incorporates chicken/pork bone broth. Ramen might in most cases just edge it simply due to the sheer variety it comes in but if I really had to choose then I'd probably go with Udon at the moment.

If you sleep on your chest, does that mean you wake down?

What's the deal with this part of catbox.moe's terms of service?
>You may not use our website and Services to store, use, download, upload, share, access, transmit, or otherwise make available, data in violation of any law in any country
>any law in any country
I almost feel like making a steam account just to be a smart ass and ask the owner if North Korea counts.

>>38381
Standard cover-your-ass disclaimer. If you're operating a file-sharing site, better safe than sorry. Besides, given that anything can be trivially encrypted anyway those warnings are basically useless.

>>38367
It's always WAKE UP. You don't go lower to stand up to get out of bed, right?

These days you'll often be told that everything is political. The corollary is communities and services with which you interact must not only condone such topics but encourage them. However, I've been thinking: The truthfulness of this proposition is irrelevant; Convincing others of your political views is pointless--especially online--as people are not looking for their positions to be changed. Thus the result that occurs is a community or service swamped in tedious arguments, shitposts, and animus. No political change occurs; Nothing has been gained.
Tangentially, if you're an admin or moderator, never give those that believe in political innateness any ground because you'll never get it back.

P.S. I don't think my thought is all that controversial (or original), so I don't expect anything heated. But if that's wrong, then please move this to /tat/.

>>38387
>I don't think my thought is all that controversial (or original)
It's not.

>>38387
Things can be unpolitical. Until someone decides the neutrality doesn't benefit their cause and starts acting as if everything is politics, starts expanding into areas previously unclaimed. From that point on everything is indeed political. If you act like you're staying out of it it doesn't mean you're really outside of the fight. Politics and other people's lives have influence over you. You can be or pretend to be unaware of it but the powers struggling against one another don't care. An area uncontested is an area lost, a mind not allied is an enemy in the making. For every neutral there comes a time when some actor takes an action the neutral is no longer able to ignore, but by then it may be far too late to react. Everything is a battleground and if you're not winning you're losing. It's a zero sum game in which the passive participants are getting their asses kicked every day by default. Things won't calm down and be like they used to, this cat is never going back in the bag.

>>38399
>Things won't calm down and be like they used to, this cat is never going back in the bag.
People were saying this kind of crap to themselves for hundreds of years, and they'll be doing that for hundreds more. Current predicaments really don't warrant going out of your way to obsess over.

>>38400
I'm glad there are still people on the internet who can take it easy.

I know vtubers are just annoying fad, but I feel like it is more annoying than most dumb trends that come before it...

>>38402
Sadly I don't think it's just a fad... Streaming and Youtubing in general has been huge for a while and this is just a natural spin-off from that. I only hope that it stays in it's own domain and does not spread to much into Otaku culture.

>>38403
Eh, VTubers - in the Hololive sense, which is the most popular - are just another offshoot of idol culture. The pursuit of, say, picking well-known anime voice actresses has been a thing for ages now; this isn't anything new. I think these factors alone signify they are part of otaku culture and probably here to stay for a while.

One thing that bothers me is the way we use the leap days. Every normal year moves 1 day but leap years move 2, so the determination of a day by it's date is unnecessarily complicated. If we just make it so that the leap day was the same day as the day before everything would be great. Naming the day by a date would be very easy, and help a lot.

>>38480
Like a 48 hour day?

>>38482
Yes, if the leap day was Monday the following day would also be Monday. If is Sunday, then it's double Sunday.

The schooling system doesn't really train you to think, it trains you to take tests. Just look at how people struggle with questions that are open ended, a word problem, or god forbid, having to write a paper on a subject. It's far more difficult because you have to show you have a real understanding of the material rather than just good test taking skills. I realize for practical reasons that's kind of the best we can do. Requiring paper after paper to be written would take a lot of effort on the part of teachers. It'd get expensive fast.

I wonder what effect standardized testing has had on interpersonal relations. It makes education available to a lot more people but it effectively crams people full of "facts" and "truths" which are often a lot more nuanced than simply a "correct" answer(s). Putting people through that from youth has to have some sort of effect on society. The other day I was on the crypto reddit and some woman made a post about how DCA had worked out better for her than her husband's strategy of lump sum investing (she used it as a comparison) who initially teased her strategy. Leddit being the shithole it is completely ignored the rest of the post and grilled her for her "toxic relationship" even though they had no clue about the nature of the teasing or what their relationship was like. Some dude wrote three paragraphs about how she needs to leave him in response to a fucking sentence. Teasing and competition is sometimes a sign of a toxic relationship. This will be on the test. Program a monkey with those sort of thoughts and watch it lose it's shit because it's so sure it has all the facts thanks to getting an A on the test when that isn't indicative of actually understanding the situation. Another time some old lady asked me if I had a 3DPD and I responded "Nope". Nothing else, just nope. Her face soured and she started screaming about how "We don't want your fucking money! My daughter makes more money than her husband!". I had never discussed relationships or finances with her. Some men don't date because they get paranoid about gold diggers. I don't date so therefore I must be one of those men. It's most noticeable in the context of relationships but you can see the same thing in politics.

Have any of you had similar thoughts? I'd be interested to see if anyone's laid out the sort of thought process standardized testing might create. I'm vaguely familiar with critiques of scientism but I'm not sure how similar how that'd be. There's certainly something about objectification to it too. I wouldn't go quite so far as to say you should approach every situation as if it's brand new but rather a question of probabilities. I began delving into existentialism recently, these sort of questions have been on my mind.

>>38484
I'm not sure that I would agree with the premise considering that school tests are often more broad than what you give them credit for(at least here they are). Yes in some subjects they are quite simplistic such as in maths and Science but that is the nature of the subject. But for subjects like History, Business and sometimes even in sciences you do need to write papers, in fact often these papers are quite comparable to what you would write in early University and in my country they call year 12 a filtering year because they make students write far more of these papers than they would have before to prepare them for University. But if students were dropping out before year 10 or 11 then they may have not been exposed to this or if they do idiot subjects in year 11 and 12, but then due to the nature of the internet all of these people will be given a voice too I suppose(and they may have the loudest voices).

Plastic book covers are underutilized. Plastic has a somewhat bad reputation, but when you think about it, it's the perfect material for book covers. It's flexible, it's durable, it offers protection, and it's cheap.

I bought the dictionary of Japanese grammar series, and while they're very nice and helpful, their make is pretty flimsy. The covers are just a two pieces of thin paper partially stuck together, one of which is laminated. On top of that is a very thin, plastic book jacket. A fully plastic cover would be perfect here

I was just thinking about how I'd theoretically decorate my house during holidays like Christmas or Halloween. Seems like it'd be pretty fun and I'd like to do something creative while doing so. Then I got to thinking about other holidays and it made me wonder. How much trouble would I get in if I say, oh I dunno, made my house look like it was on fire for April 1st?

>>38487
I don't think you can get in trouble for other people's reactions unless that reaction is the cause of a life or death situation, like causing a driver to crash or a heavy machine operator to injure someone. So long as you're not part of a HOA, I think it would be fine. At worst you get a stern talking to by a first responder, but not hauled off to jail or anything like that.

>>38402
I think it's the live chat aspect. Idol fans were horrible but we always stayed in our little hives, being able to directly interact like that instantly makes it seem more annoying than it is.

I wonder sometimes what someone would think if they could see my pictures folder. If they were totally ignorant, they might assume I'm completely obsessed with women in a general sense. Why else would someone have thousands of pictures of scantily clad women? About 95% of them are drawn, but an ignorant person might not make that distinction. In a way, I am obsessed with women, but I don't usually think of it that way. Most of the time, I think I don't like women for the most part, and yet I spend much of my time looking at and listening to them.

On a larger scale, at face value, it's kind of odd how otaku interests are so often fixated on the female form. Things that have nothing to do with cute girls constantly have cute girls injected into them some way or another. When you take a step back, it is kind of bizarre.

Post edited on 10th Jul 2021, 10:57pm

>>38525
>On a larger scale, at face value, it's kind of odd how otaku interests are so often fixated on the female form. Things that have nothing to do with cute girls constantly have cute girls injected into them some way or another. When you take a step back, it is kind of bizarre.

Most "otaku" into that stuff want nothing more than a relationship or are addicted to sex. Appealing to base instincts sells.

>>38525
Girls are more appealing so it makes sense, even if something has nothing to do with girls using them instead of boys just makes the characters look better. There is no reason not to have them be girls.

>>38527
>instead of boys just makes the characters
Yeah, but characters are also made out of thin air by anthropomorphism like the OS-tans, or white blood cells from Cells at Work. I understand why people do these things. I'm only pointing out the absurdity of it. I feel some disconnect from the "human experience" most people are entrenched in so much they don't even realize there's anything outside of it.

Post edited on 11th Jul 2021, 9:21am

>>38526
It's not just a sexual instinct, it's easier to portray them as more gentle. You can do that with the male form as well I guess, but then it starts to become more androgynous. There's also a reason why cgdct/sol are a natural pairing, and it's not just because they like to add in sexual undertones. There are SoL with mostly male characters as well, but they don't usually have the same tone in terms of depicting friendships.

>>38525
The same thoughts have occurred to me. If you count up the number of female main characters in the anime I watch and manga I read, they'll outnumber the men by 10x. Not at all the case in the non-otaku fiction I'm into. That's just how it turned out, and I have no strong opinions on how it should have otherwise gone.

>>38529
Anime has taught me self-hate, for masculinity kind of sucks.

If you had 5 billion dollars, how would you spend it? People with that much money are boring as hell and don't do much of anything interesting, but they probably have to be in order to make that much. If I had that money though...

Think about how expensive the stuff you like is, and then think about 5 billion dollars. A 12 episode season of anime costs somewhere around 2 million, so you could make 2500 seasons, about 20 years worth. If there's any kind of tool or program or game you've wanted but doesn't exist, you could easily fund it.

4 people have over 100 billion dollars. If there's about 30 anime per season, that's 120 anime per year. Those people could fund 416 years worth of anime and still be left over with at least 20 billion dollars.

It's insane. Yet how many cool things like that have come from billionaires just out of their own personal interest? Not as a company or investment, just a hobby-centric spending of money that others could benefit from. Practically none. Elon Musk pretends to like anime. Does he really not have enough money to spare to help the production of one? Just one.

Post edited on 12th Jul 2021, 11:15am

>>38539
Spending it on things like art (shows, manga, LN, etc.) seems like the best way to leave a lasting impact. It's something that everyone will benefit from, and seems more directly impactful than the cliché of sending money to help starving 3rd world kids since you can physically manage the money allocation.

Speaking of which, I have a strong suspicion that the Sora no Method OVA was sponsored by some rich guy. I just can't see any other reason why they'd release a full-length ova for a very niche show that never sold well in the first place, and that too completely free on youtube.

>>38539
I've thought about this before. Why don't obscenely rich people fund video games, movies, anime that they personally want to watch?

I think at the end of the day, most extremely rich people are psychopaths or something like that. So they just want to amass more wealth and live in luxury.
If I had billions of dollars, I'd buy Kingdom Hearts from Disney, cut all of the Disney out, and let Tetsuya Nomura have an absolute field day with it.
I'd also probably just live by myself somewhere and get food delivered when I was hungry.

>>38596
That's what a child with money would do. And rich people didn't turn rich by thinking like a cbild.
Still, between the artists, people that made their fortune by having a particular talent independent of the rest of their personality, it could happen. Like if Michael Jackson would have liked anime I'm sure he would have funded something, but he liked to touch children instead, and that's respectable too. Anime is niche anyway. In the past movies have already been funded by rich people, mostly artists. Why they don't fund videogames? Because they are fucking expensive, if you want something huge as your millionaire ego, with triple AAA values, you're gonna need to throw like 100 million. And if you can throw that kind of money like nothing, why do you even need a videogame in the first place?

>>38597
>why do you even need a videogame in the first place
Because they're fun. Not everybody is solely interested in their hobbies as compensation.

>>38598
If videogames can be means of experiencing things you couldn't experience otherwise, having a ridiculous amount of money means you can experience most of it directly.
Not saying that's what videogames are all about, but you can see the logic there.

>>38599
You can't experience final fantasy or chrono trigger or even Mass Effect in real life. The majority of it is actually off the table. Most people also have zero interest in larping.

Post edited on 9th Aug 2021, 12:59pm

I like stories about lone heroes exterminating things. Vampire hunters are the most obvious example. I think "vampire hunting" is a whole genre, or at least a trope. There's just something about a guy wearing funny clothes running around wiping out "evil" that appeals to me.

Too often though this trope is subverted by making the evil things sympathetic and the hero reconsider their ideals. It's like that's more common than the straight forward version. An unwavering hero would be more of a subversion at this point.

If you take a laxative and do your business just before you die, would you still soil yourself after death?

Why is bitch used to describe belligerent women? As far as I know, female dogs aren't particularly aggressive or mean. Using bitch to describe a women originally implied that women was promiscuous, but promiscuity doesn't imply aggression or domineering behavior in women. So where did this connection come from?

Japanese people seem to still use bitch to refer to promiscuous women instead of uptight, cold, aggressive, etc. ones.

>>38690
It likely went something like this:
>Aggressive woman angers man back in the day when promiscuity was badly thought of
>Man wants to say something that'll hurt her the most and therefore implies promiscuity
Repeat ten thousand times and you've got a word in common usage.

People vastly underestimate how important encouragement is in systems. Really any kind of system. If you point out a problem with some way of doing things, somebody will always counter by saying "but it is possible to do x in the system, so that's not a valid criticism. It's the users/members fault for not doing x". Or worse, "x isn't worth doing".

It's always bullshit. It's reasonable to expect people to do what the system encourages/makes the easiest to do. It's unreasonable to expect people to do something the system doesn't encourage/makes difficult.

Technology is one of the most obvious examples of this. You could point out every problem with a programming language, but there's always going to be somebody who develops in that language arguing against those issues by pointing out that technically, you can write code that avoids them.

“A poor workman blames his tools.”. If everybody thought like that, people would still be programming in binary. Tools/systems are meant to help you make/do something. You can measure the quality of a tool/system by how much it helps you make/do something you want well. This idea applies to education and infrastructure too. It seems obvious to me, but I get the feeling I'm in the minority. Your character is measured by how well you tolerate mediocrity.

Imagine how shitty it would be to be Japanese, but born in America. You could have been living in your homeland where your ancestors were for thousands of years and the vast majority of people are like you, but instead you had to grow up in the opposite of that. Borderline child abuse I think.

>>38724
You aren't really japanese if you're born in America. Japanese immigrants used to integrate quite fast in other countries so a second generation would barely keep anything from the culture of their parents, including something as basic as the language. That's why it was fucked up for them when they were interned in WW2, they were people who felt 100% american and suddenly their country treated them like foreigners and spies.
But the ones that have it very hard are the nikkei, descendants of japanese immigrants from Brazil, Peru and others who return to Japan and can't integrate for shit, so it shows how the culture is mostly lost after one generation. It's interesting to think there was a time not that long ago when the japanese immigrated massively to south america, my mother used to see many of them in the 40's and 50's in Argentina.

>who return to Japan and can't integrate for shit

I personally know so many people who blows this assumption to smithereens it's even funny.

>>38725
Seems to me looking the part is more than half the battle for those who want to move back.

>>38726
How many of those have only convinced themselves they've integrated but are in fact too dense to realize (or care) otherwise?

>>38724
>Imagine how shitty it would be to be [Ethnicity], but born in America. You could have been living in your homeland where your ancestors were for thousands of years and the vast majority of people are like you, but instead you had to grow up in the opposite of that. Borderline child abuse I think.
Excluding Africans and maybe Chinese, every single group who emigrated to the Americas would be better off living in their homelands.
>>38725
>Japanese immigrants used to integrate quite fast
>But the ones that have it very hard are the nikkei, descendants of japanese immigrants from Brazil, Peru and others who return to Japan and can't integrate for shit, so it shows how the culture is mostly lost after one generation. It's interesting to think there was a time not that long ago when the japanese immigrated massively to south america, my mother used to see many of them in the 40's and 50's in Argentina.
I don't know nor do I have much personal experience dealing with nikkei around here, where I live it's very rare to see Asian people at all, I think I only saw around 4 japanese blooded humans in my life,. The nikkei are all concentrated in the State of SP, and nearby regions, as you distance yourself from there their numbers dwindle. I also don't think that there's anything actually japanese about these people. But from what I heard the Japanese initally did not integrate at all. They read newspapers in japanese only and did not speak portuguese. They mostly lived in a neighboorhood called "Liberdade"(means freedom in portuguese). This place is stylized after the japanese streets so it's like "Japantown". Brazil is actually the place with the highest amount of japanese people living in it outside Japan. I remember going to that place as a kid to buy manga and them returning to the same store years later and the manga stand was EXACTLY like I saw last time, there were the EXACT same volumes I saw.
There was actually a "terrorist" group of japanese brazilians, called Shindou Renmei(臣道連盟) who targeted "soft" japanese who spread the news of Japans defeat after the war. They killed 23 people and wounded a few hundred. I've heard from people who lived in the Liberdade area that even until a few decades ago, there were many japanese who did not speak portuguese and kept it to themselves. Of course most immigrants were like that. The germans as well. Nothing out of the ordinary here.
Regardless of all that, I must agree with your points, I don't see how these people could be integrated back nor do I think they will ever be fully integrated here. Forever unwelcome.

>>38728
They all married locals, have stable jobs, fishing buddies and all that happy shit. At least one is actually really well off financially (judging by the fact he owns something as useless as a fishing boat). Most are in Kumamoto and have lived there for over 20 years.

>>38730
I don't think I'd consider being well off financially as sign of being well integrated in the culture/society, or even having a stable job. You can have those and even a local partner that likes exotic fruits and still stand out like a sore thumb while dealing with casual discrimination. But hey, good on them if they're happy and making it work.

>>38731
You wouldn't but Japan certainly does consider those things to be enough. They are granted Japanese citizenship after all.