Ahmed FASIH @22@octodon.social
I like languages (spoken & programming) and live in the Midwestern US but enjoy all places and cultures. Favorite genre: slice of life. https://fasiha.github.io
‘Both the court and local elites cherished Buddhism for its ability to control the violence of deities, spirits, and demons of all kinds, including the kami. Usually, this entailed building temples next to shrines, where monks dedicated themselves to the conversion of the kami by exposing them to the Buddha's benign teachings. By reciting sutras, and other Buddhist practices, these monks created merit or good karma, which was transferred to the kami.’
Breen & Teeuwen on controlling pesky kami.
Most of the Japanese students take entrance exams given in Japanese and join the university in spring, and learn English as a required subject. Most foreign students apply and interview in English and enter the university in the fall, and learn Japanese as a required subject. First-year students in principle live in campus housing, with a Japanese and non-Japanese student sharing each room — so they can learn each other’s culture and traditions.
Major cultural exchange.
"Wars are started by the old, but the ones who die are young people. The government won't protect the youth. I want you all to understand that well," said 96-year-old former Imperial Japanese Navy sailor Kuniyoshi Takimoto during a lecture at the Shinmachi Campus of Doshisha University here.
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20180524/p2a/00m/0na/019000c
Powerful message. I wonder if his oral history has been recorded by historians. The more personal the microhistory, the more useful and effective it is at conveying the experience.
Yo people with extra money this month and who care about Japanese kanji etymology: give some cash to
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnrenfroe/outlier-kanji-dictionary
I got the early bird discount.
It bothered me enough that I hadn't written a summary ('review') of Tetlock/Gardner's #Superforecasting that I trawled through my notes and came up with this:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2388859547
It's a great book. I learned more from it than probably 90% of things I've read. And the things I learned from it are of the sort that just build on each other, so they'll help me learn more and more, and help me better avoid learning things that aren't true. What more can one ask for?
"In 1970 scientists and administrators of Japan’s Space Development Agency were ready to launch the country’s first satellite. … Shortly before the launch, senior representatives of the agency visited Chichibu Shinto shrine located near Tokyo. Their goal: to petition its deity Myōken (the North Star) that their endeavor might succeed. When the rocket blasted off and placed a satellite in its intended orbit, these same individuals made a return trip to express their gratitude." —J.K. Nelson, 2000
@wim_v12e he has an article specially on JavaScript bullshittery!:
@wim_v12e I'm going to risk inviting ridicule but in my experience, the JavaScript dev/packaging experience is much better than my experience with C++. Even npm packages packages that wrap big C/C++ libraries (SQLite, LevelDB, libsodium) inevitably just plain work.
I think the "problem" with modern JavaScript ecosystem (gulp, webpack, rollup, browserify, babel) is orthogonal to command-line bullshittery, or at least has enough of a different flavor that I think it's qualitatively different.
‘Throughout this entire ordeal where I'm uttering ridiculous epithets like “git pipe fork … ssh curl wget pip,” I keep reassuring my students that this bullshit is not intellectually interesting in any way… it's all just a necessary upfront tax required to enable them to do the actual interesting research. I've engaged in so much command-line bullshittery over the years that I can confidently assert how uninteresting it all is.‘
http://www.pgbovine.net/command-line-bullshittery.htm
Guess why I'm channeling this today 🤬.
My review of Bart Ehrman's *Forged: Writing in the Name of God*, about Biblical authorship:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2394317959
But instead of reading it or the book, read Ole Bjørn Rekdal's article "Academic urban legends", an amazing, hilarious analysis of that long-lived academic urban legend—that we thought spinach had high iron for decades because someone misread a decimal point: this will elucidate Biblical authorship, urban legends, and convergent confusion much more:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0306312714535679
@nolan (In the sense that, something good (modularity, React et al.'s approach to webapps) was evangelized despite having high costs.)
@nolan Does the Unix tradition give a light counter-example to this?
"Dennis Ritchie encouraged modularity by telling all and sundry that function calls were really, really cheap in C. Everybody started writing small functions and modularizing. Years later we found out that function calls were still expensive on the PDP-11, and VAX code was often spending 50% of its time in the CALLS instruction. Dennis had lied to us! But it was too late; we were all hooked." http://www.catb.org/esr/writings/taoup/html/modularitychapter.html
@brook I’m surprised to find myself really digging Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku (Prime) and Hinamatsuri (Crunchyroll), both simulcasting right now, they’re so funny!
I’m also having fun taking a break from love dodecahedrons and crushing shyness and the other prerequisites of shoujo by watching outdoorsy relaxing titles, viz., Amanchu, Laid-back Camp, and finishing that Antarctica show, Place Futher than the Universe which I remember really liking last season.
@brook Thank you, I will check out Nana for sure! It's 2018 and I can't stream a ten year old title from any of three subscriptions, alas, so physical it is.
@brook Now that you mention it 😱 I don't think I ever finished Michiko to Hatchin 😨 because yes it was only on Youtube. Welp, now my evening plans have been made for me, thank you 😛!
Are there any shoujo shows you love?
Mari Okada did series composition for *The Woman Called Fujiko Mine*, which could be my favorite show ever, but is also a rare and perfect foil to these terrible feminine archetypes. There, Fujiko Mine is 'the rival'…
That show was directed by the sublime Sayo Yamamoto, whose *Michiko and Hatchin* also exemplifies this. She also helmed *Yuri!!! On Ice*, which is not only masterful but of course also reached new heights in other ways.
Taking a break from shoujo anime for outdoorsy shows—Amanchu &c—and #AnimeFeminist nails why:
"… hold up a passive, childlike version of femininity as the ideal for girls. They are to be attractive and charming but must not be conscious of their own power. They should seek to be noticed by boys rather than doing the noticing and acting on it. They should appeal to a boy’s ego by needing help, not stroke their own egos by taking charge of their own beauty and charm." 😫👏😖
https://www.animefeminist.com/feature-how-princess-tutu-shatters-the-rival-trope/
Kids do find the most interesting things to point a big lens at. Here's a woodlouse. https://octodon.social/media/mMrdj2uQbiSpNLqpycE
C++. Show more
