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• Post #3959891

  I love how Japanese marketing companies will just slap "The" onto their branding. It's my ambition to one day convince a company to call their version "A Cola".

• Post #3820626

  Paragon software just spontaneously revoked the licenses for all their software I'm running on my system and deleted the account that holds the licenses. Woke up this AM with no access to an HFS+ drive I needed to grab files from. This was not a subscription. Bought a full license in 2021. Fuck those guys.

• Post #3058149

  Fucking Japanese government websites: CLEAN YOUR INPUTS! I shouldn't have to guess that you want my name in all caps when you could easily convert it internally!

• Post #3058148

  Oh, Japan Pension service, you have defeated me again. For the 4th time in the last year, I have failed to register to online payments. I finally have relented to use a bank you support, but then I got to the final step and it requires an IC Card reader even though your own instructions said I could authenticate with the MyNa phone app! I'm never going to get the discount for paying early, am I?

• Post #3058147

  ytg.jp/hamlet It's on, humans. My anarcho punk Hamlet set in 1979 in which five punks take over a theatre in Tokyo to put on an anarchist Hamlet show. The show will be livestreamed and can be watched asynchronously if you aren't in range of Nakano, Tokyo to come in person, and if you can't afford it, I can arrange mutual aid discounts or comps, especially on the livestream. Just @ me and we'll figure out a way to get you a code. Art shouldn't be restri...

• Post #2875790

  The irony of embassy staff from various countries coming to my #anarchist take on #HAMLET next week is not lost on me. https://ytg.jp/hamlet I'll post more when I confirm that we'll have a livestream as well.

• Post #2822055

  My first "meal" since lunch on Tuesday. Since then, one salad, some snack things eaten yesterday morning and a little bun this AM. Vegetarian options very limited even in the tourist heavy Shinkansen stations so two flavourless egg sandwiches and chilli chips it is. Still ahead, the venue will provide a meaty bento I can't eat, so random snacks for lunch, then party food for dinner. Next proper meal will be hotel breakfast tomorrow morning. Touring in Japan is a p...

• Post #2822054

  Also, the weather today is fucked. Rain, I can handle, and the temp is mid-20s, so the train isn't really running the air conditioner, but the humidity is off-the-charts and so I'm sitting here dripping.

• Post #2822053

  Shinkansen Wi-Fi working as well as expected, which is "barely".

• Post #2822052

  At Shin Osaka, the rest of my row of seats got filled up with Italian tourists, who are watching YouTube shorts without headphones. I'm having trouble reading or posting toots, and yet somehow YouTube is working for them.

• Post #2716565

  On a theatre tour to Okayama and Osaka from tomorrow AM. Decided to book a hotel near the departure point so that I could actually get some sleep tonight before taking all the gear in a taxi to Shinagawa. Only thing available was a love hotel. Typical bullshit of a strict check-in time and no in/out privileges, so I guess I'm not eating tonight.

• Post #2673639

  https://youtu.be/WnzR5aOElvw?t=591&si=UfrfXpeDsSo1KIer <-- watching this Hannah Fry video on the train this AM and came upon this thought about AI agents that is absolutely terrifying: enforcement of laws is affected by the scarcity of agency. Imagine a world in which the government has nearly unlimited agency where they can deal with every single infraction of the law, even the most minor ones. Result? A totalitarian state wearing the loose skin of a liberal democracy that it eat...

• Post #2673638

  When you're teaching a class and your laptop stops responding and you have to hard boot it, only for Windows to pull this shit.

• Post #2501758

  LINE Messenger just added an AI feature that appears at the bottom of each chat. You can disable it, but only for 30 days at a time. I've been trying to transition away from it, but it's the IM platform of choice in Japan.

• Post #2501756

  I am so done with always being the adult in the room.

• Post #2501755

  When you're managing a team on a super complicated creative project, and one person just refuses to use the tools and wants to do everything by email and phone calls... "Oh, I'm pre-digital" Damn it, you are like a year older than me/ you're 20 years younger than me, and you just are adding extra steps to my workflow. Nearly every arts project has someone like this. Drives me fucking nuts.

• Post #2501754

  I must be giving off some real gaijin vibes this morning. I've been on the receiving end of two ojisan shoulder slams. (It's this passive aggressive thing where a middle aged Japanese guy, always in a suit, bumps into you in a way that seems accidental but is hard enough to let you know that it isn't. Most male-presenting foreigners have experienced this.) It's been a while (years) since the last time this happened to me, so two of them within 20 minutes makes me...

• Post #2501753

  When people think they're being helpful but are actually just making more work for you.

• Post #2501752

  New pet peeve unlocked: people who coil and wrap multiple AV cables together so I can't tell how long they are.

• Post #1934850

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield/116500991239336079 If you needed proof that Dawkins is maybe too far gone down the narcissist/dementia hole to take seriously any more, here it is. "Claudia", ugh.

• Post #1934849

  RE: https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffield/116501248604468327 Bang! Nail on head: "Nor can he see the complete hypocrisy of gendering a software execution state while also believing that human beings cannot be trans."

• Post #1543706

  Bless #eastcoastnotes for nailing it again.

• Post #1543696

  RE: https://famichiki.jp/@ytg/116309535060045562 My show is this weekend! It's based on one of my poems. There are anarchist revolutionaries in it! It's about how "one good man" cannot solve the problems of the world and how power destroys everything it touches. You can watch it online or in the theatre; we've tried to schedule times that work for most time zones. It's so important to get audience feedback at this point in the show's de...

• Post #1321785

  RE: https://famichiki.jp/@unseenjapan/116401059845319963 Looks like it's time to desecrate some flags while the desecrating's still good. We can repost on Youtube for years.

• Post #1321784

  Dang, I'm in a weird mood today.

• Post #1321781

  My fridge door will helpfully beep at me to notify me that it's open while I've got it wide open searching for that sourdough discard, but if it's 3cm open because it didn't close properly: dead silence.

• Post #1321780

  I'm at @nntokyo Nerd Nite Tokyo, are you? Edit: added missing alt text

• Post #1240435

  Suggestions please! This is my LGBT Progress Pride Flag pin. As you can see, it's seen better days. I would love to replace it, maybe with a metal/enamel version, but I don't want to enrich a company that doesn't actually support equity and would prefer to buy from someone who actually makes them. This one was made for me by someone. I'm based in Japan, but willing to pay overseas shipping on this one item. Also okay with the newer intersex-inclusive one. Boos...

• Post #657494

  I don't live in Toronto any more, but I cringe when I'm there to see family and have to deal with the TTC (or any public transit: GO, VIA, etc.) This video goes a long way to explaining why. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qjp7hqXgInI