tiredofsametab

For FPTP, we need to get more local and regional elections to move to something like ranked-choice voting and have it go from there. IIRC, some states are trying to ban it "because it's confusing" since they realize it opens up more than the traditional two parties. Voters can vote for other candidates in their primaries as well (many people do not seem to vote in primary elections).

More people also need to be voting, even as powers try to make that more difficult. We also need more young people to run for offices, but I fully understand why they wouldn't want to.

As someone who has studied and speaks multiple languages, the only way to get better at speaking is to do it. For sentence formation and such, talking to yourself or narrating your day can help. For conversations, you basically need conversations.

This advice is also true for reading; to get better at reading, read me (which I think applies most if your native and target languages use different writing systems. I can read and pronounce Finnish, for instance, but won't know what more than two or three words mean. I find it far more difficult reading Japanese even though I speak it well enough to do basically anything I need to in the language).

My vote will be going to the lesser of the two evils but (a) between my state's Gerrymandering and the composition and voting habits of my district it won't matter and (b) until the US electoral system is meaningfully reformed (first-past-the-post, two-party system and how it affects voting in many states, Gerrymandering, lack of ranked choice, outright voter suppression, etc.), the US will continue to slide further right anyway

Plus if electric cars become the norm, the streets will be quiet for the first time since the industrial revolution

Probably not due to concern of both animals and those with impaired vision, but things seem to go back and forth on that front from time to time.

One of my answers was that most fuel is no longer leaded (apparently some prop plane fuel is?)

Computers are also so fast and we can access just about anything at any time. This compared to my childhood in the '80s where my dad was online (BBS and later CompuServe) and I would sometimes play around a bit when things were much slower and more sparse (and generally far more local). Obviously, this didn't work out 100% in humanity's favor, in hindsight.

I have a GoPro sitting next to me and a 4k camera in the form of my handheld computer (smartphone) all of which still kinda feels like the future a bit.

Translation services are also super cool and open up so much more for idea and cultural exchange as well as opening up travel so much more. Likewise with language study online and the preservation of endangered languages.

[. . .]but it appears the company censored the question itself - which specifically related to a Mario cosplayer in Japan accused of sending lewd images to minors[. . .]

Yeah, I'm OK with going after those people

Zelda: Ocarina of Time -- I didn't play it until more than a decade after it came out and had zero nostalgia for it. The camera and controls were super clunky and I just couldn't enjoy it. That's actually true of a lot of N64 stuff for me.

The OP is literally about the images not being flagged as NSFW.

I mean, you're technically the leading expert on you, so that's a start.

Issues around "black hair" (I think is the most common word for it, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong here) are certainly real and depressing.

I still don't think naming a child after a name you happen to like is so problematic (well, unless the name you like is something like 'Hitler' or will otherwise cause trauma and issues for the child). If using another culture's name is a bad kind of cultural appropriation, then either nearly everyone or almost no one is guilty of this (the former because people move and cultures merge and split, the latter being a reductionist take that all human genetics come from basically the same place and/or a "pre-world" language family).

I think cultural appropriation itself is a bit of a weird one. You have people like most Japanese who encourage people to wear kimono and other Japanese styles. I assume that's true in a lot of the world (I just happen to be more familiar with the Japanese side having lived here for about a decade). But is wearing clothing cultural appropriation? Is cosplay? My Japanese friends and wife encourage me to wear yukata and such, but I generally am just my jeans-and-tshirt self.

Speaking of, were all those Japanese around the Meiji restoration wearing suits appropriating Western culture. Is "Western culture" even a unified culture? Cultures have always borrowed, stolen, and shared. I think if something is intentionally done in mockery or some other way, it's not OK. Other than that, I think a lot of people are angry, often on behalf of others who may or may not actually be angry themselves.

Old legends about how the sex of a child is determined. Today, we know it's based on X and Y chromosomes. I assume the superstition morphed to state that "well, orgasm order, position, wind speed over the Sahara determine which sperm is selected" for which we have no peer-reviewed evidence to the best of my knowledge.

That's exactly why they did, although I'd argue something like Durendal (France's "Excalibur") would probably be better.

I mean　チンコ (chinko) is still censored on at least TV, so I think it's a little disingenuous to say it's the word. The actual word is 口蓋垂 ( こうがいすい - kougaisui) whose kanji mean something like mouth, cover, and zig-zaggy thing (specifically a type of Shinto zig-zag paper design, according to my dictionary).