> The fact that there isn't even a proper translation of the word in English, though, just proves that native English speakers aren't as aware of it as Japanese speakers

The article seems to make a pretty big point about this being a foreign concept that is difficult to articulate, but in English linguistics we call it "backchanneling". Obviously it won't be a perfect one-to-one translation but it's the same as what is described in the opening.

Honestly as an American living in Japan, it’s nothing like anything I’ve experienced in the USA. My wife will say “Hai” about as many times as her conversation partner stops for a breath, which felt very unnatural to me in English (she’ll replace it with mhm’s in English and it still feels quite aggressively frequent). Maybe the same idea but the execution is a different level.

I've met a few people in the US who will nod and make some sort of acknowledging sound after every sentence (or more often) you say, so while rare, it's not exactly something I've never come across.

A lot of hai’s is what one end of a polite Japanese conversations sounds like. In my experience Japanese friends speaking casually say it much less, unless one of them happens to be on some extended monologue. From this perspective one reason English speakers use acknowledgement much less is that conversations coded as formal or polite are much rarer.(think how you respond to a desired job offer, chances are you would be very active in frequently expressing positive assent).

It also appears to be similar to Jakobson phatic function (checking if the channel is working).

I don't think it's all about blame, knowing it came from a lab would also pull into question the practice of engineering viruses and the safety and security standards required.

True, it would be helpful in that kind of way. The risks does seam to outweigh the benefits.

That said, the blame game would still be there, and people would pull that card...

If it is possible that viruses of this type could be engineered, then lab safety needs to be upgraded anyway (or GoF research banned, or both) regardless of the origin of this specific virus.

It’s all about blame. Blame is a useful geopolitical tool.

Is the book you're thinking of maybe The Body Keeps the Score?

The article ends with "In the meantime, please rest assured that my home is still standing." So presumably it's all hypothetical.

The first paragraph also says "Imagine…"

I skipped over it the first time around, but that made the rest of the post hit harder. This was pretty well written.

Thank you

Also the very first paragraph is "Imagine...".

I missed both of these, and wondered why an HN commenter said luckily everything is fine..

I don't think that excluding sections from a speed run is a thing; the whole setup for speedrunning means splits and total time passed, not manually adding up splits ignoring some, or pausing timer at any point.

Also, this could open up room for exploitation, such as intentionally failing for a long period of time to make a certain amount of time pass in game to get to some desired state, while not being counted in total time.