tsunagatta

Humanity's entire thing is being the most intelligent in the room (of other animals). You take that away, what are we?

I think there's a lot of historical ties going back a long way that explain this, which I also think are often overlooked when people talk about the western fixation on Japan.

Here's my best stab at an answer: The short story is, the western world has been tied to Japan moreso than most other countries in Asia for centuries, and Japan's position in western culture grew from that foothold more and more as time went on. This meant that for a long time now, Japan has been the most "foreign" place that westerners frequently interact with, making it naturally very interesting to talk about and think about. It's also been a relatively safe, stable, and industrialized place for a long time, meaning that it's an easy way as a westerner to visit and experience somewhere very different without having to actually go that far off the beaten path.

I think you could trace this back even as far as World War 1, where Japan was the a notable power in the allies, having a special relationship with Britain, and thus already having a special position in the European subconscious. Add on to this the close bond between America and Japan after WW2 reconstruction, which was amplified even more in the 80s when Japan became a huge presence in everyday life through its automotive and technology exports, and from there its cultural exports too, to the point where Mario and Pikachu became household names. Japanese cuisine became popular through the Japanese diaspora in America and Britain. And, of course, the position of Japanese media in western culture has continued to grow dramatically since then. So in my mind, what we're seeing now is essentially the continuation of a special relationship between Japan and the west that goes back much longer than people realize.

"Replacement part being rushed with all possible speed."

Interestingly I had the opposite journey, I am a Young so they didn't bother to teach me cursive in school, so in high school when I got into fountain pens I taught myself italic hand so that my handwriting would be more legible and easier to write with it -- but just recently I got tired of the two-stroke 'e' and taught myself Zaner-Bloser instead, lol. I do definitely see the drawbacks you mentioned though, after I started getting more casual with my writing I noticed 'l's and 'e's becoming quickly indistinguishable

AI is not going to give us a star trek utopia, AI is an attempt by the bourgeoise to alienate the average person from the capital that has previously always come free with their human life. AI promises a feudalist future where there is no capital that isn't owned by the ruling class. Its power is not democratized, it is concentrated in the hands of those building the data centers. That is why I'm against the data centers. I feel like all leftists should be.

(For those also missing the context here: the right lean is a consequence of writing straight up/down lines as towards/away from the body when the paper is tilted at an angle conducive to writing right-handed)

Though, I think the author's point still stands here, this could have been done a different way and is largely customary. I am left-handed, for example, and I write up/down lines as parallel to the line of my arm in order to copy the rightward lean, and this also feels perfectly natural -- if right-handed writers had chosen this instead originally, we may have a left-lean on our letters.

I am not the author but I have used that quote before, and no, I mean it literally. I would prefer any words that came from your own brain over the output of a statistical model. I don't mind if it's short, or didn't take much time, or doesn't have much thought put into it, I want it to be yours. The subtle mistakes in how my interlocutor perceives the world and communicates themselves are the entire point.

It's not flip-flopping, they're answering the question that you posed. You claimed that the constraint is arbitrary, they demonstrated how it isn't.

No, they don't. It's fine to be against them in both ways, considering that the platforms themselves can't decide if they're gambling or not.

This is somewhat of a pet peeve for me, I'm getting really tired of both narratives this article discusses online. The internet is flooded with posts either calling Japan a perfect place, or posts that smugly call out the previous type by calling Japan a horrible hellscape. Both of them are making the same mistake: not realizing that Japan is just a place. Even those in the backlash are still falling prey to the same exceptionalism that they're trying to satirize. Every post I see on the topic of Japan makes me lose more hope for the ability of the internet to have a nuanced opinion.

I've never thought it was a reference to that at all, I thought it was a reference to a I-have-no-mouth-but-I-must-scream-scenario.

Ah, now that you mention it, the part at the bottom makes it pretty obvious too:

>Last updated: never

>No further pages. No hidden clauses.

Exactly the sort of cutesy language the LLMs use when they're trying to agree with you. "You got it! Here's a page with simple, easy to understand terms and conditions. No further pages. No hidden clauses. Nothing hidden behind another link."

That is fun, but it doesn’t mean that the model finds it easier or will actually work better that way, that just means that in its training data many people said something like “honestly I find it easiest to just write the svg code directly” in response to similar questions

Bro literally everyone I know has watched at least the Great Pumpkin and Charlie Brown Christmas. People my age regularly make memes based on the football gag. It’s a cultural icon.

As a general rule actually, I’d say that Gen Z is more likely than may be expected to know about culture from before our time - the internet, after all, is a back catalogue of the best hits of humanity. That’s why spotify thinks we all have a listening age of 70.

Isn’t this the opposite of the other one?