A Comparison of Japanese and European Cultures
-1585 by Luis Froís, a Portuguese Jesuit missionary
https://www.thbz.org/e2/tratado_frois.php
Short and interesting.

When Talking About Burakumin, NEVER SAY "BURAKUMIN!"
http://www.hikosaemon.com/2011/11/when-talking-about-burakumin-never-say.html

>>33935
That was fascinating, thank you for sharing!

I'll share "How a White Lie Gave Japan KFC for Christmas"
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-is-japanese-christmas

>>33935
>10.1. We write with 22 letters; they use 48 kana letters and an infinite number of characters in various kinds of letters.
It's like an old version of "there are more kanji than there are stars in outer space"

I found this in tohno-chan's archive. It's very interesting.
The Adventures of Eggplant
https://www.neatorama.com/2011/02/07/the-adventures-of-eggplant/

Post edited on 31st Dec 2019, 2:00pm

>>33935
It's interesting.

>2.34. In Europe, young girls are always very strictly kept in their houses; in Japan, girls go alone wherever they want, for one or several days, and are not answerable to their parents about that.

In the Hagakure, it says that one should keep their daughter at home never allowing them to even visit a temple and never allowing them to interact with men. That seems quite the opposite to this, maybe common people allowed them to do whatever they wanted but the rich didn't or maybe he says to do this but it was not so common.

The Genetics of Sex Differences in Brain and Behavior
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/
>In this paper, we will review sex differences in brain and behavior that are not due to the action of hormones secreted by the gonads—which has been the dominant mechanism associated with such differences—but from what we term `direct genetic effects.' These are effects that arise from the expression of X and Y genes within non-gonadal cells and result in sex differences in the functions of those cells.

>The Japanese translation of "Lord of the Rings" by Teiji Seta and Akiko Tanaka may be regarded as one of the greatest translations in Japan.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190114104641/http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-SanJose/9606/teiji_seta.htm

>>33935
Do you have the full text by any chance?

>>34081
It appears it was a translated excerpt from "Tratado em que se contem muito susinta e abreviadamente algumas contradições e diferenças de custumes antre a gente de Europa e esta provincia de Japão." Even though it should be well out of copyright there don't seem to be any freely available versions. There's a preview on google books of some pages.

>>34081
>>34082
I couldnt find the original BUT an english translation with extra commentary by robin d gill called topsy-turvy 1585 is fully available on ggl books(~700 pages).Search for his name there and you ll find all his books.You can use a small programm like ggl books downloader to download it fully as images or pdf.
The guys site is paraverse dot org and he has quite a few books(most jap related) fully uploaded.The book is really good but a lot of the aphorisms are not quite right-some abt portugal/europe some about japan are quite misleading as they are presented.Happy reading

SAYA NO UTA AND QUEER ANTISOCIALITY IN JAPANESE VISUAL NOVELS
https://www.heta.moe/waifu-paper
I've never seen a more strangled and miserable interpretation.

>>34361
https://anamatilde-sousa.squarespace.com/idle-odalisque
That cover is borderline false advertisement.

>>34361
I'm not reading all that but I saw they cited tv tropes and that's all I needed to know to throw it all out.

>>34363
I didn't know "moral event horizon" came from tv tropes. I never heard of it before this though either. Coming this fall, a whole volume of Mechademia, a peer reviewed "academic" journal, on "Queering" is coming out.

Post edited on 22nd Mar 2020, 7:36am

https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/

Glossary of eroge terms in Japanese
https://www.ima-ero.com/lecture/vocabulary/

Fenn's treasure has finally been found
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/07/forrest-fenn-treasure-rocky-mountains-found

The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa. He was among the first from Japan to visit the US, studied English and introduced Western culture and ideas to Japan, and ultimately helped bring about the transition of Japan from an isolated feudal society into its modern nation-state.

There's a narration of one of the chapters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvPxCuIspWs

B4RN is Rural internet doen right
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/07/the-remote-british-village-that-built-one-of-the-uks-fastest-internet-networks/

https://soranews24.com/2020/09/10/akihabaras-most-popular-anime-girl-mascot-spokescharacter-loses-her-job/

>>35856
Wait, you mean it wasn't di gi charat?

>>33935
This was already answered but here's some other related stuff.

https://b-ok.cc/book/4198719/9acfd8
https://b-ok.cc/book/5402919/6f020f

>>35857
I think there are GAMERS outside of Akihabara.

>>35408
Satellite internet is coming
https://decrypt.co/33080/elon-musk-invites-users-to-test-starlink-space-internet

A while back I found a list of passwords for databases we had access to in my middle school. I thought it would interesting to see what articles they had on anime. Here's a few interesting and amusing choice quotes.

LOST IN A WORLD OF ANIME, SCREAMS AND THE 'JESUS PHONE'- 2007
>Goku may fly over you this weekend, Sanji will offer a tasty dish and one of Naruto's kunais might come zipping through the air. It's a good thing I brought my kids to work because I'm really not sure what all that means. The boys tell me these and other characters from the world of anime will fill downtown starting Friday when Florida's largest anime convention kicks off at the Tampa Convention Center.
>The boys are excited, but me? I'm just waiting for The Flintstones convention. …
>About that iPhone hype. Unless it comes with a direct connection to the man above, I don't think you should call anything the "Jesus phone."

TV Overdose for Kids- 2009
>I still get nostalgic whenever I come across kiddie shows on television.For example, I pine for old good carrot-munching Bugs Bunny and perky Woody Woodpecker. The fast-paced Japanese animated shows called Anime, in my book, are too realistic and mere imitation of violent adult action movies. Some of the casualties of modern animation were characters that my generation grew up with.
>harsh-voice Donald Duck, Tom and Jerry and Mickey Mouse with his merry gang of Minnie Mouse, Pluto and hare-brained Goofy, truly kid stuffs. These wholesome shows of my childhood have now been replaced by Astro Boy, Voltes V, Mazinger Z and other androids battling mechanical monsters out to take over the world.As always, the shows always end up with the hero and the villain trying to annihilate each other in a flurry of lights, colors and grating synthesized sounds. Great for kids, but unfortunately, bad for their education.
>Research shows that exposure to this type of programming increases the risk of aggressive behavior and at the same time, desensitizes children to violence. Studies on links between TV overdose and child development and value formation also reveal that these kinds of shows can muddle children’s understanding of the world and get in the way of their learning what’s right and what’s wrong. All this is according to LimiTV, a United States organization that advocates little-to-no TV viewing for children four-and-under.

Japanese Art, Contemporary- 2004
>The signs of Western childhood play a very prominent role in post–World War II Japanese popular art, which has become increasingly global in its reach. This imagery, which is loosely called anime, takes many forms
>Begun in reaction to the events of World War II, anime have been described as both evidence of Japanese cultural vitality in the face of trauma and an escape from it.
>The salient characteristic of Japanese popular art within the history of childhood is its wholesale adoption of distinctly Western conventions for representing the ideal of innocent childhood–hybridized with traditionally Japanese manga comic drawings and mainstream Western cartoons. Most importantly, the large, round-eyed facial features of the stereotypically innocent child quickly became the standard mode of representing anime heroes and heroines, despite their clear racial difference from Japanese facial features.
>Western artists, moreover, have begun to incorporate anime imagery into their traditions, causing the stereotypes of childhood to reappear where they came from in radically new modes. A group of artists led by the award-winning French conceptual artist Pierre Huyghe, for instance, created a series of works made between 1999 and 2002, collectively titled No Ghost Just a Shell, based on an anime girl character called Annlee. These works addressed a range of distinctly adult concerns. As with other aspects of a post-modern, global culture, the signs of what was once considered inherently natural, in this case innocent childhood, have been detached from their content.

Anime in America: Japan's animated movies have risen from cult status to cultural force in the US. Next up for the moviemakers: winning approval from Mom and Dad- 2003
>An abandoned theme park. Temples, lakes and food fit for gods. It's a cartoon, but a beautiful, stunningly realistic one that leaves the audience hushed at this dinky art house theater in South Florida. Most wait until the last credit leaves the screen. The movie is Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi in Japanese) and it's the latest anime hit in the US. Anime in America is winning more sales and fans than ever before.
>Hard-core anime fans are not surprised by the film's success. They've grown up on TV shows like Voltron and Power Rangers, so the brilliance of Miyazaki and other anime directors is nothing new.
>Japanese anime, a genre once reserved for the TV dens of Star Trek-types and reclusive teenagers, is now super-hip in the States.
>typical anime fans used to be predominately male, techie types, 70-80 percent college educated and between 25 and 30 years old. Today the US audience is 50:50 teenagers (mostly 14- and 15-year-olds) and adults, according to a recent survey at an SPJA expo in New York.typical anime fans used to be predominately male, techie types, 70-80 percent college educated and between 25 and 30 years old. Today the US audience is 50:50 teenagers (mostly 14- and 15-year-olds) and adults, according to a recent survey at an SPJA expo in New York.
>Like other anime fans, Innes has his own Web site, AbsoluteAnime.com, where anime followers post their own bios and profiles. It's for fans to keep track of which character is which, he says.

continued...
>To save paying $100 plus per tape, fans would drive for miles to the paltry number of stores stocking anime. They'd tape it, duplicate it, then send it back. It was Gunbuster's success that triggered a flurry of releases, Tatsugawa says.
>More Americans got excited by anime in 1993, when the Fox Channel Network aired a remake of the Power Rangers, says Innes. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was an instant hit and created an anime frenzy.
>PORN VERSUS PURITAN
>What might hold all this back is pornography and violence. Compared with American cartoons, the miniskirts, bare bottoms and flirtatiousness on some anime can look a bit smutty. Tatsugawa says that part of this might be different cultural values. While Puritan American mothers might balk at boys pulling off girls' shirts on an anime show, Japanese moms might be shocked by Itchy blowing up Scratchy on The Simpsons.
>But the biggest hurdle of all might be the presence of Xrated anime porn. The weird adult anime available in video stores in the US and in Japan is something that companies like Pioneer, Bandai and Viz Communications want nothing to do with. Tatsugawa thinks mainstream companies will react the same way. If you have AOL Time Warner and Disney getting behind anime, the last thing they want is for American mothers to second-guess their anime purchase, Tatsugawa says. "That would crush the industry here." When Japanese manga and anime come to American shores, the content can seem a little raw or risque to American readers. Viz Communications has tweaked the content of manga it handles to suite American tastes; Jason Thompson, editor of the new Enghsh-version of Shonen Jump, offers some examples.
>"We removed a two-page sequence where Misty, the lead female character for Pokemon, was bathing in a hot spring. Where the women's clothing was too revealing, we had to make the swimsuits larger and changed the shape of their bodies so they were less provocative (i.e. less chesty).
>"In Dragon Ball Z, which Viz has been publishing in English since 1998, one of the characters, Gohan, was naked in a scene. You can see his genitals. It's not sexual, but we thought it was inappropriate so we enlarged his stomach a little to cover what was there. This was just one panel."

Can a Nerd Get the Girl?- 2005 Kay Itoi
>Pity the poor otaku. Obsessive-compulsive recluses, they are the diehard fans of Japan's world-famous subculture hobbies–anime (animated films), manga (cartoons) and videogames. More comfortable in a virtual world than the real one, they are notorious for their lack of social skills and even less fashion sense. The general rule is that otaku can't get dates.
>So why, suddenly, are they hot? Chalk it up to the new "Densha Otoko" phenomenon. Last spring a (supposedly) real-life 22-year-old otaku–whose online pseudonym is Densha Otoko, or Train Man–began posting notes on Internet message boards. He'd met a woman waaay out of his league on the Tokyo train. Because he'd never had a date, he had no clue how to ask her out, where to take her or even how to talk to her. Fellow Netizens posted hundreds of makeover tips. Two months later Densha Otoko had acquired a new wardrobe, given up anime and his thrice-weekly visits to the otaku mecca of Tokyo's Akihabara district, and become a different man. He also got the girl.
>Loser nerds as lovers and business trendsetters, all in one myopic package? To determine whether this improbable combo could possibly be for real, I hit the streets of Akihabara to do some research. This turned out to be difficult. Otaku, it turns out, don't like eye contact, let alone verbal communication. The first five I approached jumped up and ran. The sixth was friendly but insisted he never has trouble getting a girl. The last was incensed. "Why ask me? You think I'm an otaku?"
>Confused, I asked Hiro, a manga connoisseur and self-proclaimed otaku, what he thought. You've got it backward, he explained. "Densha Otoko" is not about an otaku in love. To the contrary, it's a story of a guy who ditches his otakuness for love. And that's why "Densha Otoko" is destined to remain a fad rather than become a trend. Because for hard-core otaku, the very idea is an impossibility. Despite all reports to the contrary, they are convinced that anonymous Densha Otoko is fictional.
>The brutal truth is, otaku are nerds. They still can't get dates. But there is good news. They will continue to buy anime videos and figures. The Japanese economy is grateful.

>>36538
>Voltes V
>Mazinger
What country or year was that? 2009 doesn't seem right. Very strange.

Post edited on 2nd Nov 2020, 9:51am

Manuals are boring... what?
https://warspot.net/233-highlights-for-warspot-from-the-best-angle

Article in Japanese explaining the opposite perception of English and Japanese speakers when the other person interjects during a speaker's sentence, being impolite in English and polite in Japanese.
https://www.rarejob.com/englishlab/column/20170928/

Personally, the English perspective seems lower effort, so I prefer it.

>>37914
I'd observed that in bokke/tsukkomi routines but it's interesting to know that it happens in conversations as well. From what I gathered (admittedly using a combination of gtranslate and the wikipedia pages for Aizuchi), while we do have the same sorts of interjections/echo questions in English as well, English conversations tend to use fewer of them and rely more on non-verbal cues (head nodding, eye contact, etc.). I think I might actually prefer the Japanese style because it actually seems more direct to me; the English perspective seeming to require less effort is a misnomer because you have to compensate for the lack of verbal attentiveness with non-verbal cues. And I hate doing things like maintaing eye contact or just nodding while a person speaks on. In comparison with the JP perspective the other person has an impetus as well to pause his speaking at a natural place, so it's more like playing a game of catch.

Circles

People are PREDICTABLY IRRATIONAL
https://danariely.com/books/predictably-irrational/

The history and decline of Ape language research. Remember all those articles about how gorillas can learn sign language? Well, the truth is they kind of can, but not that well. Also, the most famous example was raised by a crazy bitch.
https://archive.ph/aye11
Some choice quotes
>Nancy Alperin and Kendra Keller alleged that Patterson pressured them to show their nipples to Koko. Patterson apparently thought this was for Koko’s benefit; it was alleged in the lawsuit that Patterson once said, “Koko, you see my nipples all the time. You are probably bored with my nipples. You need to see new nipples. I will turn my back so Kendra can show you her nipples.”
>Safkow, who worked at the Gorilla Foundation several years after the Alperin and Keller suit was settled, said Koko remained intrigued by nipples. “It was just a given that you show your nipples to Koko,” he said. “Koko gets what Koko wants. We would even hold our nipples hostage from her until she took her pills.”
>“We always tried to get her to exercise, but she would never go outside — she just wanted to sit in her little trailer and watch TV or sleep.” The Gorilla Foundation maintains that Koko is not overweight and that at her current weight of 270 pounds she “is, like her mother, a larger frame Gorilla” and within the healthy weight of a captive gorilla. (Wild female gorillas are 150-200 pounds.)
>Over the years, Koko has been photographed playing with her dolls as “practice for motherhood,” and the Gorilla Foundation says that Koko “chose” Ndume through video dating. He has been on long-term loan from the Cincinnati Zoo since 1991. After 23 years, the two have not mated, and former employees report that they spend all their time separated. Koko and Ndume “can only see each other through two sets of bars,”
>Safkow also said he believed Patterson strongly favoured Koko—after all, Koko has been her project for so many years—and would spend time talking and laughing with her in her trailer while Ndume cried. “Patterson does not spend any time with Ndume, except to walk by his window and give him a treat,” he said. “I feel that he’s the real victim.”

>>38613
I wonder how much of Alex the parrot's intelligence is true as well.

>>38613
>Patterson: Nipple rhymes with people, she doesn’t sign people per se, she was trying to do a ‘sounds like…’
IT'S SIGN LANGUAGE IT DOESN'T "SOUND LIKE"

>>38615
Maybe since the way she learned sign language is different from how a deaf person would?? Either way Patterson was full of it.

Post edited on 11th Aug 2021, 11:33pm

https://github.com/acbart/myracketrelationshipiscomplicated.com
Kind of amusing, but not surprising.

>>39237
What place even teaches Racket as the first language? MIT and Berkeley have long since stopped using scheme and use python for introductory course.

>>39239
I think the University of Waterloo does?

Post edited on 15th Feb 2022, 3:14pm

Japanese wikipedia article on the South Park episode Chinpokomon
https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/チンポコモン

https://ja-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/チンポコモン?_x_tr_sl=ja&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

>>39276
For a moment I was surprised to get a match on my search, thinking they had figured out who was producing these insults against the Japanese under the guise of being "Americans"

But alas, it's just from the name of another episode

>>39278
Trey Parker(who wrote that episode) isn't Jewish, and had a Japanese wife at one point. Matt Stone only has one Jewish parent. Yoshihiro Hattori was shot and killed by mid-westerners, who weren't exactly friendly to Japanese people.

Post edited on 27th Feb 2022, 1:46pm

>>39279
South Park at the time was produced under the supervision of Jewish executive producer Debbie Liebling for the purpose of being televised by Comedy Central, which was run by its Jewish president Doug Herzog and owned by Viacom, the company of Jewish media mogul "Sumner Redstone" (real name: Murray Rothstein).

I've never heard of Yoshihiro Hattori before and don't think he has anything to do with the South Park episode. I guess you simply wanted to bring up some random event from American history that in your mind somehow enables you to portray non-Jewish Americans as being racist against the Japanese.

Anyway, let's either change topics or take this to /tat/.

>>39281
I guess their "supervisor" also told Trey and Matt to make fun of Scientology and Muhammad.
>in your mind somehow enables you to portray non-Jewish Americans as being racist against the Japanese
No less so than Jewish Americans in the 90s.

Stumbled on this in an article about build systems.

https://blog.aurynn.com/2015/12/16-contempt-culture

Choice quote,
>Other self-taught narratives, such as starting with Wordpress-based design backgrounds and moving from more simple themes to more complex themes where PHP knowledge is required, to plugin development is a completely valid narrative, but a path that is predominately for women

Did not know that was "predominately for women".

https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/yggdrasil.html

>>39445
I remember downloading and setting up Zeronet back in the day, but thinking that it was still too early, and deciding to wait a bit and check back. How sad to hear of the current situation. Very disappointing.

>>39320
I didn't see anything about build systems in that? Were you referring to an article that linked to the one you posted?

Because I'd really like an article about build systems (as in make/cmake/gradle/etc.) and why they're all universally garbage. It often ends up being easier to just set CXXFLAGS rather than trying to wrangle cmake into doing whatever you want. There's probably some intrinsic complexity in there from the fact that people's environments aren't all identical, and the distinction between configure and make probably tries to capture this, but everything feels like it's so brittle and held together with duct tape.

>>39510
Gradle is the actual original sin.

Just a wikipedia article, but the concept is neat and it has some explanatory power. Although it does seem to imply people can't improve over time. Though if they did, I guess they'd just be promoted. Then again, a lot of competent people are stuck where they are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

>>39875
I think the dilbert principle is more accurate for the vast majority of businesses. The people who get promoted are usually the bootlickers and the ones who know how to take credit for offloading work onto others. This is especially true in tech: the modus operandi for any high-level manager there is to create some new useless shit that no one wants, wait until it gets launched, take credit for it, then move on to a new position just before shit hits the fan, the project gets abandoned, a reorg happens, and the cycle starts over again.

>>39876
Does the Dilbert principle mention anything about boot licking?

>>39877
In Scott Adam's own words (from the wiki page)

>The Dilbert Principle around the concept that in many cases the least competent, least smart people are promoted, simply because they’re the ones you don't want doing actual work. You want them ordering the doughnuts and yelling at people for not doing their assignments—you know, the easy work. Your heart surgeons and your computer programmers—your smart people—aren't in management.

He's saying that the incompetent are the ones who end up getting promoted, and the reason they get promoted is because they're not busy doing the real work. Or in other words, the people busy doing real work don't have time to do the bootlicking/visibility posturing needed to get promoted. The one part where it's less clear is whether this is an active process or a passive one. The wiki article makes it seem like this is an active process – where these sorts of people are actively selected as a way to "limit the damage" they can do. I don't think that's quite right, because no one goes around actively wanting to promote useless people. To me it's more likely the result of negative self-selection, where only the people who aren't busy doing real things have time to make themselves visible enough to get noticed. Put another way, no one ever got promoted for keeping the lights on, but they do get promoted for pitching that shiny new feature.

>>39878
>To me it's more likely the result of negative self-selection, where only the people who aren't busy doing real things have time to make themselves visible enough to get noticed.
Yeah that sounds about right. Incompetent people tend to stand out more, smart ones keep their heads down. An incompetent will probably try to make up for their incompetence by being 'fun' and friendly, and when trying to get promoted, it doesn't hurt to be well liked.

>>33182
https://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/?m=1

https://www.gq.com/story/mount-everest-chaos-at-the-top-of-the-world

https://nickdrozd.github.io/2021/09/25/spaghetti-code-conjecture-false.html

Very interesting article, demonstrating how busy-beaver TMs exhibit the same kind of emergent structure that cellular automaton do. The CFG representation of the TM is something I had not seem before, but it makes perfect sense in this context and really helps to get an intuition for why busy beaver machines can be so "busy" while having so few states.

I wonder how the CFGs for some of the 5-state and 6-state BB contenders look like. Even in the linked 4-state CFG there is still some structure you can discern of "while (tape == 1)" loops, but the real intuition that's missing is when exactly we break out of these loops to switch state.

Jaroslav Flegr's "frozen plasticity" theory of evolution adds nuance to Darwin's original theory of evolution that we are taught in school.

The core idea of the theory is this:
>The old Darwinian model of evolution [phenotype-based selection] was recently substituted with the selfish gene theory [allele-based selection]. The present book suggests that this mainstream theory is just as erroneous as Darwin's original model and we can soon expect another revolution. It suggests replacing the selfish gene model by a theory called "frozen evolution". The new theory assumes that the vast majority of species encountered in nature are not capable to evolve even when exposed to extremely strong selection [due to the genetic variability that is maintained in equilibrium in part via feedback loops of frequency-dependent selection] and thus only passively wait until changes in their environment accumulate to such a degree that they have no choice but to quietly die out.

>Only a negligible fraction of sexually reproducing species at a given time (the species originated recently, for example, by peripatric speciation) are plastic [capable of responding to significant selection pressure]. Most species behave as elastic in microevolutionary processes and as frozen in macroevolutionary processes. They respond to a minor environmental change by reversible change (accompanied by a decrease in fitness) and to a major environmental change by extinction rather than by evolutionary adaptation.

I can't find this discussed anywhere else on the web despite the fact that the author isn't a random nobody, and the theory isn't really too radically different but just adds nuances to existing theories.

There's an interesting old-school site that's worth browsing around [1] but the best summary of the theory I've found is probably the short original paper itself [2]. It discusses not only how the Darwinian model of evolution differs from the one proposed by Dawkins, but also discusses additional nuances in the process of genotype, phenotype, and allele inheritance that I hadn't considered before but seem obvious in retrospect. That is, this entire process should be thought of more as a dynamical system that attempts to maintain equilibrium of a fixed amount of genetic variability, which can hinder the process of evolution after the initial bottleneck stage. I recommend starting with the "Mechanism of Adaptive Evolution in Sexual Organisms" section when reading the paper and then referring back to previous sections as needed to lookup unfamiliar concepts.

[1] https://www.frozenevolution.com/
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2823622/

>>40503
I remember wondering if this was the case on my own once. If most species are incapable of adapting under very heavy evolutionary pressures. I'd imagine the "lag time" between a species place in their environment and the slow buildup of changes is the primary culprit, everything likes to resist change and that means that the better something can cope in the short term, the worse off it is in the long term. Going beyond just genetic evolution, I would guess the most successful societies will be those that proactively prepare for changes and wipe out threats. Those that wait around watching the old world fade around them will simply become dinosaurs.

>>40540
>>40540
That's a nice succinct way of putting it. Basically when species switch from the plastic stage to the elastic stage they have undergone a phase transition from a near homogeneous genetic makeup to a diverse genetic makeup that "locks them" in evolutionary. The homogeneous genetic makeup is good because the species as a whole can respond quickly to major changes, but it has the downside that it provides little stability (the chance of some event causing mass extinction is high). The diverse makeup is good because it provides stability and short-term adaptability, but this makes it worse-off in the long-term.

>most successful societies will be those that proactively prepare for changes and wipe out threats
It's interesting that humans are probably the first species that has the capability to have an asymmetric influence on the environment – we can "control" the environment more than it controls us. This means that a lot of traditional evolutionary theory might not apply, because those assume the species is a passive victim of environmental circumstance, but in our case we can actually actively prevent or outmaneuver those changes. E.g. if an asteroid were on its way to earth today we'd probably be able to nuke it from orbit or something. I wonder what Flegr would say about this, because this means that despite having a genetic makeup that is "locked" macro-evolutionary, we can nonetheless survive on a very long-timescale even when conditions don't match those we originally evolved in thanks to technology and inguinity.

Maybe it makes us more vulnerable though, as conditions keep changing we may need to rely more and more on technology to bridge the evolutionary gap between past and present. And then we're only one black swan event from having that technology taken away from us.

Making Anime Faces With StyleGAN
https://www.gwern.net/Faces

>>40622
StyleGan is a few generations behind in terms of ml-driven image generation, stable diffusion is the new hotness.

I'm actually surprised diffusion models weren't explored before, the idea is a lot simpler than GANs and VAEs. And they pair well with large language models since you can condition the reverse distribution on a text prior.

Post edited on 4th Oct 2022, 12:13pm

Some neat reading on soviet esp experiments:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/18/superhuman-sport-cold-war-mind-power-men-on-magic-carpets-ed-hawkins-extract
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/dog-telepathy

https://ncatlab.org/nlab/files/BarwickFutureOfHomotopyTheory.pdf

Sites where japs translate 4chan threads into japanese

https://watamotetrans.livedoor.blog/
https://kowakunotsubo.com
https://kaigaichan.net
https://kaigai-antenna.com/

I don't know of anyone who does the reverse, for a brief while there was https://5chx4changate.com/

Post edited on 8th Nov 2022, 12:38pm

>>40822
But why?

>>40823
You mean why they bother translating 4chan threads? I guess they're just curious what other people think? I assume the fact that JP internet is more siloed off from the rest of the western internet probably has something to do with the allure, sort of like peering over a wall.

>>40824
>sort of like peering over a wall
That's a good way of putting it. Thanks for answering. If anything, I feel this might be helpful for moon learners.

Kotarou Takamura's seminal manifesto "Green Sun".
https://arthistoryproject.com/timeline/industrial-revolution/meiji/a-green-sun/

https://arcove.substack.com/p/null-call
Ties together a cohesive narrative for the psychosis experience often described adjacent to shamans, also perhaps famously outlined by ug krishnamurti as the "calamity" he underwent. I also love the paragraph on "shared realities" which is probably related to the "collective unconscious'

Post edited on 12th Jan 2023, 3:03pm

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/does-anyone-like-fruitbaskets
choice quotes
>Mao sent the workers stationed at Qinghua a case of mangoes, which he’d received from Pakistan’s foreign minister
>Mao didn’t like fruit and didn’t want to eat these messy mangoes
>Few [people] had even heard the word [‘mango’], let alone seen one
>The workers decided not to eat them. They stayed up through the night looking at the mangoes, stroking them, and sniffing them
>it began to rot. In response, they carefully peeled the mango and boiled its pulpy flesh in a large pot of water. Afterwards, the factory held a Eucharist-like service where everyone drank a spoonful of the precious elixir
>Gigantic papier-mâché mangoes decorated floats at the National Day Parade and wax replicas enshrined in glass vitrines were distributed as merit awards
>In the middle of the winter, oilfield workers in Daqing were forced into unheated buses in negative-22 degrees Fahrenheit and taken to a local mango exhibition
>Murck recounts a fatal episode in Sichuan Province, where a man was dragged through the streets and executed for comparing mangoes with sweet potatoes.

The sweet potato thing really get me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhfAf1teWJI

I suppose picture uploads to a an English site that curates images is not a 100% accurate representation of popularity but it is a fair look at fan engagement.

interesting to see that Mika Hatsune has maintained consistently high uploads ever since she was made.

>>41103
It's kinda sad going from touhou and vn characters, to vtubers and mobile game props.

A critique of Harry Potter
https://files.catbox.moe/nr42aq.pdf
>Harry's killing of Professor Quirrell is treated as if it never happened
>The pain of contact injures him nearly as much as it does Quirrell, but Harry continues to grab at Quirrell's head with his blistering hands until Quirrell is dead and Voldemort is forced to flee.
>because touching Quirrell hurts Harry, Harry passes out before the fight ends
>By knocking Harry out before the fight is finished, the book tries to tap dance around the
fallout from such an action
>Harry is robbed not only of the full credit due him but also of responsibility and guilt

https://taxheaven3000.com/

An anime dating sim where you do taxes.

Post edited on 24th Mar 2023, 2:07pm

>>41282
>where you do taxes
Ancap Aqua does NOT approve

>>41283
Finally a use for my "political ideologies as cute anime girls" folder

Apparently it's a real game too, not just a concept gag. I look forward to the video game reviews of it.

>>41282
Gay, but interesting.

>>41284
Wow, it's been ages since i've seen this picture. Used to see it all the time.

Some beautiful haikus: https://8325.org/haiku/
I wish software were more interesting these days, everything is so bland and anodyne. Nothing has any personality.

>>41285
It's out! Here's a gameplay video I found: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9Hx8Addfik

I wonder if this should be in /vn/ or not... I look forward to the US tax speedrun community forming around this. I'm sure it will also draw in competitive Excel fans.

Post edited on 29th Mar 2023, 11:44am

https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project

A bunch of libertarians took over a New Hampshire town in 2001, which was subsequently invaded by bears.

>>41323
Why didn't they just shoot the bear? Also reminds me of this New Yorker piece back when they actually had substantive content [1]


[1] https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertarian-police-department

>>41325
It was an invasion of bears, not just one.
>a shadowy posse formed and shot more than a dozen bears in their dens. This effort, which was thoroughly illegal, merely put a dent in the population

>>41323
And hopefully they'll take over the entire state.

>>41328
What do you have against New Hampshire?

>>41329
Nothing. I sincerely meant that.

>>41330
Did you miss the part where everything went to shit?

https://nautil.us/the-kekul-problem-236574/

Neat article that compares non-corporate Japanese internet to what we have in the west https://www.bikobatanari.art/posts/2023/east-west-website-culture

I think that article is incomplete though, from what I gathered in addition to "personal pages" and personal blogs (maybe the closest active western equivalent that still somewhat exists today would be livejournal?) there's also textboards. Straddling the line somewhere between corporate/non-corporate is matome/roundup sites, which I still don't quite understand the concept of.

Post edited on 6th Dec 2023, 8:18pm

>>42000
I was bewildered by the word "link-free" when I first came across it, first by the fact that in Japanese it does not mean "without any links" and then by the implication that the norm is for people not to want their public websites to be linked to without permission. There's even a Japanese Wikipedia article for 無断リンク ("Unauthorized link"), an article for which no equivalent appears to exist in any other language.

>I think that article is incomplete though,
What you listed might be outside the intended scope of the article.

>matome/roundup sites, which I still don't quite understand the concept of.
They're frowned upon as a low-effort way to make money by plastering ads and affiliate links on top of stuff copied without permission from elsewhere on the web.

>>42002
>the norm is for people not to want their public websites to be linked to without permission
I can only imagine how different the internet's architecture would be if it were invented in Japan. It makes sense why you wouldn't want a site like tc to be posted all over the place, but when it comes to a personal page, that's bewildering.

edit: after reading the entire article, it makes some sense

Post edited on 7th Dec 2023, 12:44am

>>42003
They are simply more culturally reserved, hence anonymity is the preferred by default even on their biggest online community(2ch/5ch) as opposed to reddit.

i've been reading up on the Toyoko Kids phenomenon. i got curious about it after seeing that it's partially attributed to the rise in popularity of jirai-kei fashion.
https://nutstokyo.net/runaway-teens/
https://www.huckmag.com/article/yusuke-nagata-photographer-documenting-homeless-teeagers-in-tokyo
https://bnnbreaking.com/breaking-news/crime/tokyos-toyoko-kids-a-crisis-lurking-in-kabukichos-neon-lights/
i want to read more about it, i find it genuinely really interesting, but information seems to be kind of limited in english or i just might not looking hard enough and there's some documentation that gets way too moralfaggy for me

>>42059
Is domestic abuse really this prevalent among japanese families? Or at least common enough that many teens would rather live off the streets than at home. I wonder if the era of hikikomori is over, as even if it wasn't mentioned by any of those articles, I asume parents of modern Japan aren't as flexible towards their kids as they used to be. I know I'm an outsider, but it's a bit shocking the contrast between japanese parents in the 90s and 2000s where they would simply ignore the kid and let them live pacefully at home, as opposed to kick them off.

>>42060
As I understand it, not all the youths who congregates there were kicked out of their homes or suffered abuse. Many of them are runaways of their volition and are from outside of Tokyo, there are also orphans. I suppose they are partially drawn by the the idea of a 'community' that had formed and see it as 'hip', even if they didn't suffer from domestic abuse many were probably suffering from loneliness(due to covid) and discord stemming from generational gap with their family. It also becomes a vicious cycle as there are less savory individuals from the underbellies of society who took advantage to perpetuate the situation and as it spread through social media, more youths are drawn in.

I'm happy to see that long-form anime analysis is not completely dead in the west. I had a lot of links collected for analysis of Yuyushiki, but most of the blogs I had found had either bitrotted or stopped posting. There's one blog though that still seems quite active though [1], and they even analyzed the show I've been wanting to find more material on (stardust telepath)! There's also another blog I stumbled on, but it's more commentary rather than analysis; still, you might be interested.

I wonder if anyone knows any other good anime-related blogs (which provide non-trivial commentary, or analysis).

[1] https://infinitemirai.wordpress.com/
[2] https://chikorita157.com/

>>42139
https://blog.sakugabooru.com

>>42140
They focus more on behind-the-scenes rather than content analysis though.

I did find one more https://theafictionado.wordpress.com/

Addendum: Apparently the author of that is the same as the author of the "animefeminist" blog(? it seems more like an entire cottage industry). That explains the squeamishness around, egads, fanservice. Well I sort of expected something was up given that only someone with a degree in literature would have journal articles related to metanarratives on hand. Shame, since the piece on Shippo Na [1] was decently neutral. There's surely room for someone to write commentary without having to look at everything through a "feminist" lens.

[1] https://theafictionado.wordpress.com/2022/10/15/tanuki-technology-and-tricksters-in-my-master-has-no-tail

Post edited on 31st Dec 2023, 2:23pm

>>42144
This art style gives it away immediately.

>>33941
I saw a video on this a while ago, really interesting.
Do you know about the other Susunu Denpa Shounen programs? Many of them are even more interesting than this. I could link to youtube videos of these programs but I fear my post would be deleted due to infringing the 3d rule. The other programs I found interesting are:
The cross-continental hitchhike series: Two participants are selected to make a insanely long trip with almost no money only through hitchhiking. They have to find work so they can get money to pay for their own food and lodging (when they are not sleeping in the streets). The participants were not even informed of where they were going or what the challenge was going to be or allowed any time to prepare upon being selected for this challenge. First season is two young friends in their early 20's from Hong Kong to London. Second season is two friends in their late 20's from the southern tip of Chile to north Alaska. Third season had a Chinese who spoke no japanese and a Japanese who only spoke japanese going from South Africa to Norway. The first season had an abridged version that was subtitled in english and is available in youtube. The other two seasons have not been subbed but you can find them on a channel called "do kama".
This is the most interesting program they made I think. There are other interesting shows, but I could not find the actual footage for most of them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susunu!_Denpa_Sh%C5%8Dnen
There's even more shows that are not named in the page.

>>42277
>I could link to youtube videos of these programs but I fear my post would be deleted due to infringing the 3d rule.
That's not a problem if they're clearly labelled. You could also put them in a pastebin type of site and link that.

>>42280
It's gone, all of them. Sad to see the videos being removed, they were so fun. Damn.

>>42281
You've got to save those kind of things. Maybe you'll have better luck looking on niconico.

edit: after only a few minutes of looking, I found this, so it is a potential avenue.
https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm20170106

Post edited on 4th Feb 2024, 9:53pm

>>42283
Try "the silent library"

>>42283
I couldn't find anything there except for a video of some people singing the theme song of the first season. In the program they would get an artist the participants were fond of to make a special encouragement song for them. But these songs are on youtube anyway. I found the dvds for sale, but that's about it.

>>42337
>I found the dvds for sale, but that's about it.
Post the link. Maybe someone will buy and rip them.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/06/car-accident-brain-injury/619227/ reminded me of >>42539.

(Use internet archive to avoid paywall).

Post edited on 18th Apr 2024, 3:30pm

>>42341
I FOUND THEM!!
This is the 1st season. Enjoy!!
3D WARNING
Part 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20220608013636/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_oWxb0PJBo
Part 2:https://web.archive.org/web/20220608022928/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7Iq30oBAfQ

>>42593
I didn't know internet archive actually backed up the contents of youtube videos.

>>42593
Sorry for the ramble but I remember watching the first part of that (and gaki no tsukai in general) like 4 years ago and I stopped because some retard brought too much attention to it on jewtube and I ended up drifting away from japanese comedy for a bit.
>>42594
Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. I've had times where I wanted to search for a YTP I used to watch many years ago, and I've had like a 2/10 chance in finding a working backup on archive.org. Wayback machine is still good to use if you're searching for "lost" media like I was.

I don't like japanese game shows, but Tantei Knight Scoop has really interesting stories and with the Tantei-san being a comedian, it has humorous story telling.

A post from 2005 on how the term goshujin-sama won out over danna-sama in the maid subculture.
https://groups.google.com/g/maid/c/S3uteprx-3Y

Post edited on 27th Oct 2024, 1:57pm

John Carmack on Steve Jobs:

Steve Jobs
My [edit: at-that-time] wife once asked me “Why do you drop what you are doing when Steve Jobs asks you to do something? You don’t do that for anyone else.”

It is worth thinking about.

As a teenage Apple computer fan, Jobs and Wozniak were revered figures for me, and wanting an Apple 2 was a defining characteristic of several years of my childhood. Later on, seeing NeXT at a computer show just as I was selling my first commercial software felt like a vision into the future. (But $10k+, yikes!)
As Id Software grew successful through Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D, the first major personal purchase I made wasn’t a car, but rather a NeXT computer. It turned out to be genuinely valuable for our software development, and we moved the entire company onto NeXT hardware.

We loved our NeXTs, and we wanted to launch Doom with an explicit “Developed on NeXT computers” logo during the startup process, but when we asked, the request was denied.

Some time after launch, when Doom had begun to make its cultural mark, we heard that Steve had changed his mind and would be happy to have NeXT branding on it, but that ship had sailed. I did think it was cool to trade a few emails with Steve Jobs.
Several things over the years made me conclude that, at his core, Steve didn’t think very highly of games, and always wished they weren’t as important to his platforms as they turned out to be. I never took it personally.

When NeXT managed to sort of reverse-acquire Apple and Steve was back in charge, I was excited by the possibilities of a resurgent Apple with the virtues of NeXT in a mainstream platform.

I was brought in to talk about the needs of games in general, but I made it my mission to get Apple to adopt OpenGL as their 3D graphics API. I had a lot of arguments with Steve.

Part of his method, at least with me, was to deride contemporary options and dare me to tell him differently. They might be pragmatic, but couldn’t actually be good. “I have Pixar. We will make something [an API] that is actually good.”
It was often frustrating, because he could talk, with complete confidence, about things he was just plain wrong about, like the price of memory for video cards and the amount of system bandwidth exploitable by the AltiVec extensions.
But when I knew what I was talking about, I would stand my ground against anyone.

When Steve did make up his mind, he was decisive about it. Dictates were made, companies were acquired, keynotes were scheduled, and the reality distortion field kicked in, making everything else that was previously considered into obviously terrible ideas.
I consider this one of the biggest indirect impacts on the industry that I have had. OpenGL never seriously threatened D3D on PC, but it was critical at Apple, and that meant that it remained enough of a going concern to be the clear choice when mobile devices started getting GPUs. While long in the tooth now, it was so much better than what we would have gotten if half a dozen SoC vendors rolled their own API back at the dawn of the mobile age.

I wound up doing several keynotes with Steve, and it was always a crazy fire drill with not enough time to do things right, and generally requiring heroic effort from many people to make it happen at all. I tend to think this was also a calculated part of his method.

My first impression of “Keynote Steve” was him berating the poor stage hands over “This Home Depot shit” that was rolling out the display stand with the new Mac, very much not to his satisfaction. His complaints had a valid point, and he improved the quality of the presentation by caring about details, but I wouldn’t have wanted to work for him in that capacity.
One time, my wife, then fiancée, and I were meeting with Steve at Apple, and he wanted me to do a keynote that happened to be scheduled on the same day as our wedding. With a big smile and full of charm, he suggested that we postpone it. We declined, but he kept pressing. Eventually my wife countered with a suggestion that if he really wanted “her” John so much, he should loan John Lassiter to her media company for a day of consulting. Steve went from full charm to ice cold really damn quick. I didn’t do that keynote.

When I was preparing an early technology demo of Doom 3 for a keynote in Japan, I was having a hard time dealing with some of the managers involved that were insisting that I change the demo because “Steve doesn’t like blood.” I knew that Doom 3 wasn’t to his taste, but that wasn’t the point of doing the demo.

I brought it to Steve, with all the relevant people on the thread. He replied to everyone with:
“I trust you John, do whatever you think is great.”

That goes a long way, and nobody said a thing after that.

When my wife and I later started building games for feature phones (DoomRPG! Orcs&Elves!), I advocated repeatedly to Steve that an Apple phone could be really great. Every time there was a rumor that Apple might be working on a phone, I would refine the pitch to him. Once he called me at home on a Sunday (How did he even get my number?) to ask a question, and I enthused at length about the possibilities.

I never got brought into the fold, but I was excited when the iPhone actually did see the light of day. A giant (for the time) true color display with a GPU! We could do some amazing things with this!

Steve first talked about application development for iPhone at the same keynote I was demonstrating the new ID Tech 5 rendering engine on Mac, so I was in the front row. When he started going on about “Web Apps”, I was (reasonably quietly) going “Booo!!!”.
After the public cleared out and the rest of us were gathered in front of the stage, I started urgently going on about how web apps are terrible, and wouldn’t show the true potential of the device. We could do so much more with real native access!
Steve responded with a line he had used before: “Bad apps could bring down cell phone towers.” I hated that line. He could have just said “We aren’t ready”, and that would have been fine.

I was making some guesses, but I argued that the iPhone hardware and OS provided sufficient protection for native apps. I pointed at a nearby engineer and said “Don’t you have an MMU and process isolation on the iPhone now?” He had a wide eyed look of don’t-bring-me-into-this, but I eventually got a “yes” out of him.

I said that OS-X was surely being used for things that were more security critical than a phone, and if Apple couldn’t provide enough security there, they had bigger problems. He came back with a snide “You’re a smart guy John, why don’t you write a new OS?” At the time, my thought was, “Fuck you, Steve.”.

People were backing away from us. If Steve was mad, Apple employees didn’t want him to associate the sight of them with the experience. Afterwards, one of the execs assured me that “Steve appreciates vigorous conversation”.

Still deeply disappointed about it, I made some comments that got picked up by the press. Steve didn’t appreciate that.
The Steve Jobs “hero / shithead” rollercoaster was real, and after riding high for a long time, I was now on the down side. Someone told me that Steve explicitly instructed them to not give me access to the early iPhone SDK when it finally was ready.
I wound up writing several successful iPhone apps on the side (all of which are now gone due to dropping 32 bit support, which saddens me), and I had many strong allies inside Apple, but I was on the outs with Steve.

The last iOS product I worked on was Rage for iOS, which I thought set a new bar for visual richness on mobile, and also supported some brand new features like TV out. I heard that it was well received inside Apple.

I was debriefing the team after the launch when I got a call. I was busy, so I declined it. A few minutes later someone came in and said that Steve was going to call me. Oops.

Everyone had a chuckle about me “hanging up on Steve Jobs”, but that turned out to be my last interaction with him.
As the public story of his failing health progressed, I started several emails to try to say something meaningful and positive to part on, but I never got through them, and I regret it.

I corroborate many of the negative character traits that he was infamous for, but elements of the path that led to where I am today were contingent on the dents he left in the universe.
I showed up for him.

https://doomsdaymachines.net/p/the-meme-ification-of-the-demon-core

https://somethingnerdy.com/unlocking-the-nes-for-former-dawn/