Category: Uncategorized

The Cult Running Japan

the bad news is that these clowns won the election

Nippon Kaigi used neto-uyo (cyber right wingers who troll anyone on the internet they feel writes negatively of Japan), intellectuals, politicians, and closet sympathizers in mainstream media to exert considerable influence on policy and public opinion. That included getting the Japanese government to reinstitute the Imperial Calendar, which was banished by the US occupation government. Sugano also credits Nippon Kaigi with politically resurrecting Prime Minister Abe, whose political career was considered dead after his abrupt resignation as prime minister in 2007.

Suburban Pokemon

you can’t have nice things if your chosen place of residence lacks the density.

Pokémon Go doesn’t appear to have taken off in rural Virginia quite the same way it has in every other corner of the universe. There are no hordes of fledgling Pokémon Masters like Ash Ketchum (protagonist of the immortal Pokémon animated series) crowding around street art or monuments, laughing about things like Pidgeys and PokéGyms. Looking at your smartphone screen, there is no map crowded with landmarks and Lure Modules. There is no one around you, and if there was, the map would appear mostly empty—just wide open spaces occasionally disrupted by a lonely equestrian statue that dispenses Poké Balls. Playing Pokémon Go is nearly impossible out in the sticks.

The Lazarus File

In 1986, a young nurse named Sherri Rasmussen was murdered in Los Angeles. Police pinned down no suspects, and the case gradually went cold. It took 23 years—and revolutionary breakthroughs in forensic science—before LAPD detectives could finally assemble the pieces of the puzzle. When they did, they found themselves facing one of the unlikeliest murder suspects in the city’s history. When Lazarus arrived in the interrogation room, Stearns and Jaramillo abandoned the story of a suspect talking about stolen art, and explained that her name had come up in a case involving an ex-boyfriend of hers, John Ruetten. Knowing she was married to someone else, they’d selected a place where they could speak privately, away from gossiping colleagues. Stearns and Jaramillo interviewed Lazarus for more than 1 hour, coming at her in an oblique manner that left it unclear whether they were speaking with her as a possible witness or a criminal suspect. The conversation meandered, but every digression led back, inevitably, to the murder of Sherri Rasmussen. It was only after Jaramillo asked Lazarus if she’d be willing to give them a DNA swab and noted, “It’s possible we may have some DNA at the location,” that she wanted to contact a lawyer. Declaring herself “shocked,” the veteran detective stood and walked out, 68 minutes after she’d sat down. Lazarus got only as far as the jail’s hallway, where she was stopped by other RHD detectives and placed in handcuffs.

Lilium

A start-up company—hosted in a ESA business incubator center released an idea for an egg-shaped 2-seater plane called Lilium that’s currently in the works. With a top speed of 400 kmh and a range of 500 km, the plane can travel between Munich and Berlin in 90 minutes. If the testing succeeds, this will be the world’s first vertical takeoff and landing aircraft for personal use.

and the first flight:

With the first flight now a memory, Lilium will run its aircraft through increasingly complex maneuvers, including the transition between vertical and horizontal flight, runs between cities, in inclement weather, and with a variety of degrees of automation. If all goes well, passengers will experience the flights in trials well ahead of the 2025 target for a fully operational service.

Reindustralize Germany

Germany will likely sleep through the next industrial revolution, and lose, as a result.

German manufacturing is rooted in 19th-century technology. Over decades, industrial companies (including scores of smaller, lesser-known names) have perfected the manufacturing process. German companies generally consider their work to be done once a product leaves the factory. But in the world of Industry 4.0, also called the industrial internet, that’s just the beginning. A matrix of internet-enabled sensors will soon link factories with customers and suppliers to optimize production and service. If German manufacturers don’t embrace the digital shift, they might be quickly overtaken by US and Asian competitors.

2022-11-30: Germany is also culturally completely hopeless, like requiring highly qualified jobs to be in German, which approximately no one speaks.

118m Menschen sprechen Deutsch als Mutter- oder Zweitsprache. 2012 ging man davon aus, dass insgesamt 185m Menschen die deutsche Sprache beherrschen. Davon leben 100m Menschen in Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz. Die restlichen 85m machen 1% der Weltbevölkerung aus. Sie sagen also: „Ich will 99 qualifizierte Kandidaten ablehnen, um den einen einzustellen, der zufällig auch noch Deutsch kann.“ Haben Sie denn 100 Bewerber für diese Position? Dann nur zu.

The Facebook of ecommerce

That kind of scalable automation, though, could also go in completely the opposite direction for some things – away from any kind of decision at all. You put an Amazon Dash on the machine, or perhaps it can measure what you’re used and re-order by itself, and so you in effect subscribe to the product, and once done you’ll probably never bother to change brand. Or, say to Siri or Alexa or Google Assistant ‘Hey, order some more soap powder’ and the same brand is added to your next delivery. (And in both cases your choice of channel is just as now locked in as your choice of soap powder, once you’ve set the default.) Either way, an impulse purchase in one of 2 or 3 retailers you might have stopped in at, based on real-estate portfolio on one hand and eye-level placement and brand equity on the other, shifts to auto-renewal or a natural language parser. Given that P&G and Unilever’s combined ad budget is larger than the global revenue of the recorded music industry, this means that subscription soap powder could be a much bigger deal than subscription music. What will you have to pay to be Google Assistant’s default choice of dishwasher tablets?

Terror Autodeath

Who is the man who dies in every terrorist attack?

To verify this story, FRANCE 24 managed to contact the man pictured in all these photos. We decided not to publish his real name. When speaking to our team, he didn’t deny being caught up in legal proceedings. My photo is everywhere because of someone who started it as a prank after a legal dispute. I never reported the people who did this to me because, in Mexico, nothing ever happens in these kind of cases. Now, my photo has appeared in several stories that were widely shared on Twitter. I contacted several media outlets like the BBC and the New York Times and asked them to delete my photo but they never responded.

Barbie Savior

Barbie Savior Jesus. Adventures. Africa. 2 worlds. 1 love. Babies. Beauty. Not qualified. Called. 20 years young. It’s not about me…but it kind of is. 👶🏿🌍❤️🙋🏼

Many of you have inquired as to where exactly in the great country of Africa I live. It has come to my attention that the country of Africa is actually made up of several countries! The time has come to disclose my location….I live in Nambia! #makeNambiagreatagain #orforthefirsttime #startedfromNambianowimhere #ifyourefromNambiawhyareyouwhite #yeaheveryoneinNambiacanreadSwedish #NambiaisrightnexttoWakanda #whereLupitalives #Lupitaismyneighbor #doesNambiahaveawall? #iblesstherainsdowninNambia #myheartbelongstoNambia #ourcreativepresident #whenyouforgettoreadthebookbeforebookclub #whenyoudontknowjustguess #Trumpwinshideandseek #hestheonlyonewhoknewwhereIwas #theyhavebiggerhandsinNambia #heretogetrich #alsoknownascolonization #Nambiaisthenewfourthworld #icanseeNambiafrommyhut #ittakesaNambianvillage #straightouttaNambia #orangeisthenewNambia”