tiredofsametab

Dear democratic party: as a voter in a state that went from purple to more red, I was still voting for you in every election and outside of the blue cities. Was. I would rather vote for a pile of dogshit than your party again.

Your statements do not support your initial arguments.

You’ve conveniently just ignored everything I responded to about grandparents and women being forced out of their careers as a rule.

Further, you state It's a culture of hating kids. and that is just not true.

You are seeing some shitty people and extrapolating that out to “this society hates kids” which is 100% not the case. That is what I take issue with.

I could go on at length about things Japan could do better for families and, in my decade here, there has been great improvement. There is still room to go. That does not mean that Japanese people hate children and do not want them. It does not mean that this is a Japan-only problem yet your argument is that Japan hates kids.

As a long term resident, perhaps the problem isn’t that there isn’t these problems. It’s that you don’t see it.

So you want to tourist-splain to me as someone who lives here and has for a decade? I have family, friends, and coworkers with young kids. I do hear their complaints. I do see their struggles. Again, what you are describing, that Japan has some systemic and cultural child-hating complex, is not at all supported by your argument. It is also laughable to me that you would think you have a better handle on Japan as a whole as a tourist who goes to a few cities. You want to know what you’re also not seeing? You’re not seeing the programs in place. You’re not seeing the variety of things that have been and are being done. You’re literally just making stuff up and saying that all of Japan (the grandparents, for example) is some way.

Everything in your “fun fact” is not fact. I actually said “what the fuck” when I read it. I’ve been in Japan for a decade, both Tokyo and rural.

Where also are these magical stroller-only elevators? Certain people are supposed to have priority (and, yes, some assholes ignore this which is not a problem unique to Japan), and there are also people who don 'look disabled" but need help (I can be one of them sometimes as my left leg and ankle are as much metal as anything else, though you wouldn’t know by looking at me).

Japan has problems and had places.to.improve but your post is just wild wild to me as a long-term resident.

I wouldn’t, personally. Just read around on basic etiquette, don’t litter, etc. If you’re planning on going to Kyoto, it’s been a zoo for years now and the people there always hate it (but also some ridiculous part of their economy is tourism as they found out during corona when the money dried up). Oh, and a lot of smaller places are still cash only so carry cash.

I always encourage people to consider places other than just Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, especially these days where technology helps any language barrier.

In exit polls from the last election foreigner problems (which lumps tourists in with residents) was still only like 3rd. And for the foreigner issues, overtourism and people buying property and pricing out locals are big issues (and sometimes running (often illegal) guesthouses).

I think a/c is mostly (entirely?) a north-american naming convention. It’s been “aircon” in the other places I’ve lived in traveled.

How do y’all have so many sock problems?! O.o

I don’t use a smartphone enough to worry about it. If I am using my phone, most of the time it’s either Anki, Google Maps, or, like you mention, banking/government stuff.

Texting via SMS (or whatever it is these days) isn’t really a thing in Japan, either, which makes things more difficult especially as I despise talking on the phone. If, for example, I’m at the supermarket and wife remembers something she needs, getting that message is good

I was redhat/mandrake of which neither worked well on my PC, Gentoo, Ubuntu, and mint (playing with distros like LoaF at various points).

I got started on Linux at home from the valley of despair on early-2000s Gentoo. It wasn’t that bad, but I did have a lot more time on my hands being too poor to go out most of the time.

I just put mint on a laptop yesterday; got no time for it anymore

Yup! It’s dumb. Bonus one: one could get sued by posting on social media a pic/vid that shows someone cheating and they get caught. It’s profoundly stupid

In Japan, a person can get sued for leaving an honest, negative review. One has to be careful with wording to avoid that completely (i.e. making sure that it’s clearly stated that the content is a personal opinion (as opposed to an accusation, I guess?)). Some people still do write them and some get scary take-down notices (which may or may not be real or enforceable). As far as I know, someone could leave a low rating on like a star-based system or whatever and be fine, but I am not a lawyer.

My wife and I are almost 10 years apart. We met right before her 30th birthday, I was also once the younger partner when I was 20 and my then-gf was 34. That failed for a number of reasons, but I don’t think age was one of them. With legal, consenting adults, whatever works for you is fine, I think.

My company thankfully still employs simultaneous interpreters for meetings and has one translator on staff. I think, at least in part, because of how bad translation tools can be from EN <> JA.

I’ve been in Japan a decade and you couldn’t pay me enough to live in the US. I have great work-life balance at my main job which is fully remote.

I see dead people (because movies and such exist). In person, though, you’re right unless you’ve got a time machine hiding somewhere.

The US largely voted for what is happening and would vote for more of it harder and worse. A new admin does not change what a large chunk of the population feels. There are systemic issues that would take generations to solve, if it is even solvable in any peaceful way.

They may want to keep that infrastructure for quick post-war activation and use for their own purposes. That should be cheaper and faster than having to rebuild a whole thing.

Both BYD and Tesla have announced humanoid robots for around $10k starting next year.

I can’t speak to BYD, but Tesla has claimed all kinds of things that never materialize or are not what they claimed to be.

That aside, I don’t think most people have $10k laying around. Most couldn’t even afford a $1k expense (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saving-money-emergency-expenses-2025/), so I don’t think we’ll be seeing any widespread adoption at that price in the near future (which is what I took your comment to mean, but maybe that’s not what you meant).

For clarity, I’m not someone who’s just anti-AI, I’m just someone who thinks it’s way over-hyped, is being shoved in places it doesn’t need to be (especially in a half-baked state), is an environmental disaster, and has many other problems.

Computer vision to track inventory and expiration of food in a refrigerator could be useful for busy households

I don’t think this is a problem in a lot of the world. Commercial kitchens already have rules and inventory management systems. The only thing I could think of where it might be useful is looking for mold on things, but I suspect most people are using containers into which something couldn’t clearly see.

A dishwasher could cut its cycle short if it sees that dishes are clean, saving water and energy.

Maybe? It would still need to learn all the dishes the person has and what clean and nonclean versions are. That training and calling the model has its own environmental impacts and I don’t know that implementing it would save energy over the life of the appliance due to the extra costs in energy to train and call it.

My washer has settings for heavier and lighter washes based on what’s going in (as does my clothes washer)

In addition, robots are home appliances that require AI

They do not.

Robotic vacuum cleaners learn their surroundings and navigate using machine learning

This could all be done with sensors and rules and, in fact, was. Unless we’re being super loose with what “machine learning” means here. We’ve been teaching robots to semi-autonomously navigate courses and return for ages.

We’re also likely to see humanoid robots(or similarly flexible platforms) becoming household appliances in the near future.

That’s so gross to me personally that I don’t want to think about it. Both from a security as well as environmental perspective. I also disagree that it’s close, at least for how I think you’re using “close” here.