FTA:
>"Japan has changed its strategy in combating the contagion, seeking to slow its spread and minimize the number of deaths."
In my personal opinion living and working here, this society is very slow to change and things that could greatly assist in slowing the spread, such as adopting a Work From Home policy, will only occur once it's too late. Almost no one is allowed to work from home here, even those with office/tech jobs that can completely be done remotely with no issues. In addition, workers are granted an incredibly small amount of days off, and most would rather get onto their very crowded trains and commute into the office even when unwell as opposed to taking one of their limited days off.
All that being said I'm not freaking out about it the way most people here are, but I wish companies would react a bit faster and change their work culture to accommodate the very easy things that could be done so people can limit their interactions with others when something like this is occurring. You can pretty much guarantee that one person with the virus getting onto a sardine can train during their morning commute is going to infect several other people in the process, and no amount of face masks the people here are so fond of will do anything to keep an infection at bay.
Not sure if it's already too late, but I and most of my friends who work in different tech companies here in Tokyo have been working from home since yesterday.
Could be that my (IT) company is an outlier, but we've been told that we should work remote and only come to the office if we absolutely must. And if we do go to work, we are to avoid riding the trains during rush hour. Business trips are all canceled.
Well that's the company I'm employed by, but the company I'm currently deployed at (until today) is an automotive company and they don't seem ready to allow much remote work to take place.
>But part of me feels an obligation to be informed to hold those in power accountable.
I'm curious though, how does the average citizen hold those in power accountable? OK so you vote, but tons of other people vote and are often uninformed about what is going on or are completely apathetic. The recent news about Roger Stone's sentencing to me proves how little power we as average citizens have in actually holding others accountable, especially when those in power have ties to other rich, powerful, and well connected people.
What direction your outrage on that story points is a function of what media you consume. This is of course just the outrage du jour, there’s nothing unique about the Stone story in this regard.
>Maybe supply chains become a bit more distributed, or less centralized.
This is one of the things that I've been wondering about the last few days. I recently read an article discussing how because China is essentially shut down, the supply chain has been disrupted for manufacturers in other countries. So much of manufacturing in other areas of the world depends on components made in china, and when those stop other manufacturers also stop. People get laid off, and it becomes a cascading problem affecting everyone.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese military is using this outbreak as a natural experiment for planning responses to a biological attack if WW3 breaks out. Figure out how well the state can quarantine large parts of the country while ensuring industrial and warfighting supplies can still get through.
Without a doubt, this is going to slow global growth for the next year or so. One of the world's major economies is in hibernation right now. I also think there's a fair amount of distraction going on across the globe that is also silently draining some productivity. Whether this triggers a recession remains to be seen, however.
>North American (NA) schools have bullying, exams, homework, and sleep disruption but our system is still relatively intact.
My impression from living here in Japan for a bit over a year, and having friends with children in the Japanese school system, is that Japanese students have way more pressure put on them. Kids spend way longer each day out of the house; Study sessions before school, stronger peer pressure to assimilate and not stick out, more after school activities, more homework to do in the evenings, school six days a week. Also keep in mind that the middle school you get into will have a huge effect on which high school you get to attend, which has a very strong influence on which college you get into, and thus effect your pipeline into the best companies. The pressure to succeed starts way younger than it does in the US, and not getting into the primary school of choice can ruin your chances for success later on in adult hood.
A couple of anecdotal stories I've seen during my time here; Bullying here seems to be much more pronounced, and given the cultural hesitation to involve yourself in other's affairs, often goes unchecked. I've seen many instances of large groups of 10+ kids ganging up on a single kid on the streets, in full view of adults and even public safety volunteers, and no one will ever step in and tell the kids to stop.
On another occasion I was outside of a combini having a drink, and near by a young girl (maybe 8 years old or so), was crying trying to do her homework. The mother was nearby and when she would write down answers that were wrong, the mother would scream at the child and call her stupid, which would cause the child to cry harder (but still trying to complete her work), and the entire thing just kind of created this negative feedback loop - child would cry harder and probably do worse on the work, which would anger the mother and make the screaming more intense, which caused the crying to become more intense. It was a really depressing and disturbing thing to witness, especially given the young age of the child.
I know bullying exists in the west (myself being a victim of some pretty intense bullying as a child), and there is strong pressure to do well in high school to get into the best colleges as well, but from what I've seen in Japan it seems to be much more pronounced. At least in the west most times an adult will step in to stop bullying when it's seen, but here it seems no one cares or will do anything to stop it.
> Also keep in mind that the middle school you get into will have a huge effect on which high school you get to attend, which has a very strong influence on which college you get into, and thus effect your pipeline into the best companies.
This is not generally true. For public schools (i.e. ones in the public system, not private) your middle school is determined by where you live. There is no entrance exam until you are going to high school. For the prestigious schools in the private system, there are often entrance exams at every single level, but these are not common schools. Normally, once you get into one of these school you are pretty much set for life (often they even have a university equivalent system, though you have to write a comprehensive exam to get your eventual degree).
As for bullying, I worked in Japanese high school for 5 years. It was a low level school (we once accepted a student who score 0 on their entrance exam -- that's how low level). Bullying happened, but compared to the bullying I personally experienced in my high school in Canada, it was quite rare. In every case of bullying that I observed, the bullies were expelled. It may be that my high school was particularly stringent about bullying, though. Of course you can't catch all cases of bullying and a lot will happen outside of the school grounds.
I'm not sure what's going on with this report and I'm interested to learn more, but especially at elementary level I find it a bit difficult to understand. Most of the things that distinguish western school systems from the Japanese system don't really kick in until middle school. There really isn't a club system in elementary school and children come home around 3 pm. They don't generally go to school on the weekend. I've seen the curriculum and it's not appreciably more difficult than in the west (I once had an idea to learn Japanese by buying up textbooks on every subject for elementary school children and learning everything they did. It was quite fun!) Whatever is going on, I suspect it's not directly related to the school per se.
I will say that in high school, they are somewhat more accepting of absenteeism, at least in low level schools. I had a student who never once showed up before 11:30 in the morning and while he was frequently a cause of concern for the teachers, he was treated pretty carefully. So it is possible that absenteeism is just more accepted. I don't know. I mean if your kid didn't show up for a month at school, I think a social worker would be knocking on the door. In Japan, it would be the home room teacher from the school and they have a lot less options than that social worker. But like I said, I don't know enough to understand what's going on here.
> I've seen the curriculum and it's not appreciably more difficult than in the west
Pressure cooker learning environment does not always leads to more difficult topics. It is more about how much work is there to be done, how much time is spent by it and how they treat you when you fail (either by not doing or by making mistakes).
To large extend, kids actually learn more when they have time to rest/play and are not under pressure. Up to the point of course, playing whole time and no expectations dont lead to high results either.
I guess it depends on if we are talking about enthusiasts or the average consumer? If we are talking about the average consumer I would assume in order of importance; Reliability, vehicle range, charging time, ride quality, available technology, interior quality.
For the average "enthusiasts" seen in the comments section of Car and Driver's facebook page it would be more along the lines of; 0 to 60mph time, nurburgring lap times, 0 to 100mph times, quarter mile times, looks. But for actual enthusiasts who have an interest in Electric Vehicles i would say all the things you mentioned are fairly important. But really, to the average consumer who purchases something like a Camry or Accord, I feel as if reliability/range/technology (by that i mean things like apple car play, lane assist, and other QoL technologies) and value are really what the average person is looking for.
> If we are talking about the average consumer I would assume in order of importance; Reliability, vehicle range, charging time, ride quality, available technology, interior quality.
Any time these topics around weakening privacy or removing encryption comes up, it's nearly always presented with a save the children type of argument. I mean, who doesn't want to protect children from child abuse and predators? The problem however, is that most children that are abused are done so by family members or people already close to them (like maybe their priests), so with that in mind I don't really understand how weakening encryption will help protect children from predators.
It's framed as child protection precisely because it shuts down any debate on the matter. Everyone sees through the terrorists excuse but child exploitation causes such rage in the population they agree to anything the government says will make it stop. Discussion of any news related to this child abuse will pretty much always be full of people advocating for execution, torture and rape for the perpetrators. Encryption is nothing to these folks.
The reality is encryption regulation will be a tool for governors to secure their own power. They will abuse the insecurity to spy on political opposition, whistleblowers, journalists, protesters, even their own significant others. Child molesters are actually a low priority target for them, just a convenient enemy for the public to rally against. However, arguing against laws that are said to protect children is political suicide because they just label the opposition as pedophiles and enablers.
Children are the perfect political weapon. Any law can be justified by saying it's to protect children. They aren't even using terrorists as an excuse anymore.
> Everyone sees through the terrorists excuse but child exploitation causes such rage in the population
I agree, but this is what seems so interesting about the Epstein case. In the age of #MeToo, you would think this story would be getting 24x7 media coverage, especially with Prince Andrew's "interesting" interview the other day - a fairly big deal one would think, but I saw no mention of it on the first 3 pages of /r/all. Yet, there seems to be something about the story that severely psychologically disinterests people, and not just the average person, but relatively smart people as well.
That's because there is a deeper agenda than just "protecting children". If you read the Edward Snowden book (permanent record) then you'll note that he talks about what the NSA/CIA is actually doing with their signals intelligence programs. It isn't about national security, it is about espionage on a global scale. They want information on what foreign governments, journalists, domestic organizations (not just terrorist groups as they claim) and corporations are doing. For domestic citizens, they want to know if you are a threat to the United States or violating laws.
The second strong end-to-end encryption is implemented, the whole system simply fails to operate. Instead of having a massive data collection system, you now have to go back to more traditional methods that require much more effort to implement - like hacking a target's computer directly. If that happens then the USA will lose its edge in terms of obtaining critical information and that will be a treat to their global dominance....hence the reason they mention national security. Of course, you can't just come out and say this is the reason so they mask it in "fighting sexual exploitation" etc.
The truth is end-to-end encryption and fighting sexual exploitation are not mutually exclusive. We can have both.
>hence the reason they mention national security. Of course, you can't just come out and say this is the reason so they mask it in "fighting sexual exploitation"
And then all the intelligence employees come on HNews after 5 PM and bitch and moan about how we don't trust their agency's reports about its own conduct and activities...
> Instead of having a massive data collection system, you now have to go back to more traditional methods that require much more effort to implement - like hacking a target's computer directly.
Which is more amenable to accountability. Usually this requires a warrant or approval of some kind.
> If that happens then the USA will lose its edge in terms of obtaining critical information and that will be a treat to their global dominance
How does the US banning encryption help it on the global stage where other countries continue to encrypt their messages?
This sounds like what CIA should be doing, right? It's like saying that military has an agenda to build more aircraft carriers and control all movements in the open waters.
The only thing I wonder about is whether this encryption crisis is just a lazy attempt to preserve the no longer working espionage methods or it's a smart conspiracy of evil people to break the humanity: convince people that there is a child or whatever problem and convince them to build the 24/7 monitoring system. This way people would build a prison for themselves.
I disagree with this article that this is all about their ability to "tell stories", as much as management that's really good at identifying which company to acquire next so they can squeeze every last cent from consumers for whichever IP they are pushing at the time.
Most people I've talked to DON'T believe the star wars series has gotten better from a story telling perspective, as this article proposes. I don't think most people believe live-action remakes of their classic cartoons is quality story-telling. I think they are just really good at reading market trends, have enough money in their coffers to acquire whatever is becoming the next big thing, advertise and push it into becoming a cultural phenomenon, then moving onto whatever is next once they've exhausted that IP.
Edit - and to be clear, I most likely have a very jaded view here. I don't like disney as a company, nor am I a fan of superhero movies, star wars, or a lot of what the company has been pushing for the last decade or so. I respect their ability to make a ton of money, but I don't like a majority of what they create anymore, nor how they treat a majority of their employees.
> I respect their ability to make a ton of money, but I don't like a majority of what they create anymore, nor how they treat a majority of their employees.
That's a really good summation of my views on Disney. It's obvious they know how to build consistently polished stories that will be consistently enjoyable to a wide audience. I respect that.
But it's not clear to me that's a goal worth pursuing, or that the artistic value of their movies has gone up because of that. It's good to have some media that's safe and predictable and that is primarily motivated by market trends. But when that's all a company is making, then behind that nice facade lies a deeply cynical way of looking at the world, where creative choices are calculated for broad appeal rather than for their inherent value.
I'm not going to say that's all Disney makes. Just that the percentage of films Disney is making that fall into that category is growing at a rapid clip.
It's a jaded view in the sense that I'm cynical about Disney, but it's really not me trying to crap on popular things. There are a lot of popular things that are really, really good. But I know when a movie actually feels special and honest to me, when I feel like the author genuinely had a good reason to make it, and made it because they loved it. And Disney movies don't feel that way to me. They're glossy, and pretty, and impressive, and they know the right things to say, but they're made of plastic instead of flesh.
I've noticed both Disney and Nick do this. Whatever they produce will always do ok because of their marketing muscle. They target children who are not jaded yet and parents either tolerate it or don't notice.
I suspect most don't notice until their more experienced parents and by that time most parents are done with small children. I have 6 kids so this has become more noticeable to me.
They cartoons and shows my oldest 18 year old watched are totally differnt from the ones my 8 year and my 4 year old watch. They churn through things quickly and market things very slickly.
For example, they produce something for 14 year olds, that most parents think is ok for 12-14 year old kids, but most of those kids aren't really that interested in. Then they drop the marketing into their 8-10 year old programs and boom, it's a hit for them.
These companies, especially Disney, are very insidious and clearly manipulating young minds. We should be disturbed, but I find very little buy in from other adults.
How can you even say that? I’m dumbfounded. Only in this era of complete erosion of antitrust could this statement be made. Standard Oil would have been awed by this cornering of the market.
Well, seeing that you actually put Apple in that list shows a skewed perspective.
As far as getting big or getting crushed - both Blumhouse and Tyler Perry Studios make movies that get wide releases with budgets between $5 and $10 million.
Yes, there will probably be roles for small companies serving smaller demographics, but I meant to point out the weakening position of standalone media companies. The power is in the hands of the owners of the infrastructure, except for Disney who I think has an exceptional ownership of desirable content.
Apple I put on there because they can afford to burn so many dollars, it puts them in league with Comcast and ATT and Disney. The other media companies don't have a rent collecting cash cow to lean on.
The media companies don’t “own” the infrastructure. Anyone who can get the money can buy the equipment, hire the people and make a movie. Tyler Perry Studios and Blumhouse or proof. You don’t even need to put your movie in theaters.
There are plenty of streaming services looking for exclusive content. Barring that, you can sell your movie yourself over the internet or through any of the video on demand services.
You can even probably get Redbox to stock it.
Speaking of Tyler Perry, he started “distributing his content” decades ago by doing stage plays.
People complaining about big media keeping smaller players out is about like people complaining about not being profitable because of a dependence on Amazon Retail or Google ads. If your entire business model is based on being a sharecropper for big media/tech, you’re statistically going to be disappointed.
There are also small religious studios who are able to find an audience.
I wasn’t clear, but I was writing from the perspective of an investor. No one is stopping anyone from making content, but for purposes of investing, I’m claiming that what used to be many media companies available to invest in, are down to a few, and they will need help from a different business line to stay afloat.
They own an astounding chunk of the popular culture. They dominate the list of top-grossing films. There have been times over the past couple years when I couldn't see a movie in my local megaplex that Disney didn't own.
They are apparently also licensing the Nintendo reality-distortion field technology.
I'm a SW fan, have been my entire life. Not one of the fans that go super-deep into lore and nit-picking every aspect of every movie and debating it all (although I do respect that level of fan too, and think they create some interesting discussions/content), but I've watched every movie a few times, read a heap of the books, play all the games, collect the Lego, etc etc.
I think that Disney is doing to SW what they do to everything... they make it appeal to the maximum possible audience for the maximum possible profit. There's no deep desire to create amazing stories, there's no attempts at making something special, they're just the McDonalds of entertainment. The stuff they make is "good". You'll still pay for it, and enjoy it, but you'll always end up feeling like they could've done better. It's all just formulaic mass-produced share-holder stuff now, but it does the job.
> there's no attempts at making something special, they're just the McDonalds of entertainment.
They used to be much more experimental as an animation studio but some of those projects didn't do as well. It'd be great if they could alternate between telling "safe" stories and passion projects like Fantasia or even films like Tron but I guess it's hard to pitch something risky when you can get a guaranteed hit by doing it by the numbers. The last movie I think they really took a chance with was Treasure Planet and that movie was pitched over and over for more than a decade before they agreed to make it.
> I think that Disney is doing to SW what they do to everything... they make it appeal to the maximum possible audience for the maximum possible profit. There's no deep desire to create amazing stories, there's no attempts at making something special, they're just the McDonalds of entertainment. The stuff they make is "good". You'll still pay for it, and enjoy it, but you'll always end up feeling like they could've done better.
For Star Wars, at least, that's a pretty solid step up. I paid for Episodes 1-3, but didn't particularly enjoy them. Episodes 7 & 8 at least left me feeling good about what I just watched, and I quite liked Rogue One (I didn't see it in the theater, though).
Rogue one was good, Episode 7 was okayish as a introduction to new arc and characters, Episode 8 was killed by playing it safe - it was such a wasted potential.
We don't talk about Solo. That move does not exist.
> Episode 8 was killed by playing it safe - it was such a wasted potential.
I get that, although I'll be honest—a bit part of what I liked about 8 Ep. 8 was that it killed off all of the dumb hanging threads from Ep. 7. Episodes 4-6 had huge surprises, but they mostly came out of nowhere, not with giant neon signs pointing at them "GEE DON'T YOU WONDER WHO REY'S PARENTS ARE IT'S A HUGE MYSTERY!". Episode 8 just threw all of that out the window and I loved it for that.
The scene i think is the most wasted was the death of Snoke.
There are myriad ways to go forward in interesting directions(Kylo and Rey could go both dark jedi, gray jedi, swap sides(i think that it will come to that) or even go for a 3rd way, or even destroy the concept of jedi itself) yet they basically returned to status quo.
It also felt like it was heavily edited - like there were two drafts, and someone mashed them together.
20 years from now, there'll be people pointing to now as the Disney golden age, saying, "I don't like all the isekai genemod content they're making these days. I just don't get the appeal of giant catgirls learning to live in an alternate dimension. Disney was better when it was all superheroes and Star Wars."
Not sure about that. I remember that in the late '90s - early 2000s people were really hyped up about the animation movies of that era, and rightly so, we're talking about the early Pixar movies, Miyazaki's "Princess Mononoke" and "Spirited Away", Satoshi Kon's "Paranoia Agent" and "Perfect Blue" or about "Cowboy Bebop", people knew that they were contemporary with really, really great animation movies/series. Almost 20 years have passed since then and nothing similar is being done anymore, at least not in the mainstream.
People absolutely talk about great more recent animated movies, like Your Name, Into the Spider-Verse, and Kubo and the Two Strings.
Princes Mononoke is actually my favorite movie, I obviously agree that it's really excellent, but objectively I think Spider-Verse is just as good, even if it doesn't fit my preferences quite as much.
For TV series, Mob Psycho 100 is absolutely top tier, I'd put it against Cowboy Bebop easily. Loved Bebop, but I think MP100 is the better series overall, both for story and animation quality.
This is a combination of rose-tinted glasses, plus things accumulating social value over time. Eminem didn't rap about playing N64 games until long, long past the N64's heydey; it wasn't cool to mention that back in 1998. Pokemon is mainstream with adults now, but it was for real (young) nerds and dorks back when it started. Retro games are currently cool with those who scoffed at them when they were new. This phenomenon is especially prevalent with 'cult hits', like Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines, which has a much more positive reputation now than it did at its own launch.
>Almost 20 years have passed since then and nothing similar is being done anymore, at least not in the mainstream.
Bear in mind that over 20 years, a lot of what was groundbreaking in terms of animation quality has become mainstream, so it's not surprising that people wouldn't be as floored by Toy Story 4 as they were by Toy Story. Anime was a relatively new phenomenon for many in the West back then as well - Cowboy Bebop was one of the "gateway drugs" into anime for a lot of people.
I wouldn't assume that work of high quality is no longer being done - I've heard people talk about Your Name as if Makoto Shinkai were the next Hayao Miyazaki for instance - it just doesn't stand out in a crowd the way it once did, now that anime is no longer as niche and people have services like Crunchyroll.
I think it's fair to say that Disney is large enough that it's not only hard to quantify what impact the company itself has on the storytelling that gets done, but it's also hard say how much of the company is doing storytelling at all anymore.
They've still got animated features, some TV cartoons, some live action sitcoms, but also theme parks and resorts, a video game studio, a theatrical group, a cruise line, a radio station (and a line up of recording artists), cable channels, retail chains, a timeshare program, and a publishing company. Storytelling factors in some of those somewhere but Disney has moved way beyond it's storytelling roots.
I can't even say there's a strong central vision driving their films these days like when Walt was still alive and they were primarily an animation studio or even during their renaissance. When they are storytelling, their successes and failures seem to come down to who they hire or what companies/properties they pick up.
I will say that at least on the animation side they seem to stay out of the way of the creative types and give them the freedom to do what they need to. Disney has some terrible business practices, but they do manage to get their hands on some incredibly talented people who have done some really good work over the years.
Ouch. Good point. Even The Last Jedi trainwreck (RT 44% audience score, record $150M drop after first weekend) STILL made the top 20 all-time grossing films (ignoring inflation).
But nerdy stuff is cool, remakes are cool, rebels are cool...it's got fundamentally popular qualities. Put that into a good marketing engine, check the boxes and you've got a money maker.
I think you missed a key section in the article where he talks about how miss-steps with a franchise can build, and that Disney made many miss-steps with Star Wars. He wrote a whole article about it [0], which he claims they:
- rushed the films out
- lacked singular vision to keep them consistent
- subverted audience expectations in a bad way, re Luke Skywalker
- retread too much of the same old ground leading to inability to generate momentum (ie. killing off characters in Rogue One).
> I don't like a majority of what they create anymore, nor how they treat a majority of their employees.
The contrast to this is stark after having watched "Imagineering" on Disney+ the other night. It reminded me about why I was a rabid Disney fan growing up - the values that Walt insisted on and why these days I'm more "meh"; what they have evolved into the longer Walt hasn't been around to keep people grounded on what really matters.
It's pretty sad you can go from a company where employees invested their own money to keep construction of Disneyland going to the exploitative mess of a company that exists today :(
Well, if “most people you talk to” think it isn’t good and all of the new Star Wars movies (except for Solo) have done well, have you thought that your anecdotal survey of people you know may not be relevant?
>I have no doubt that some Americans legitimately dislike DST—not just the change of clocks, but the redistribution of sunlight from morning to afternoon.
I don't really feel like most people complain about the specific time the sun sets, as much as they are complaining about the disruption to their circadian cycle. I dislike the short days during winter, but changing the time the sun sets an hour forward or backward isn't ultimately going to create more hours of sunlight during the day.
What i will say however, after a year of living in a country now that doesn't observe DST, is i greatly appreciate not having a disruption to my sleep cycles in either direction. My dog also appreciate not having the disruption to his daily routine either. I adjusted to just waking up when the sun rises, wanting to go to sleep within a few hours of the sun setting, and when it's cold outside and the days are shorter i find myself wanting to spend more time inside sleeping anyways.
In my personal opinion living and working here, this society is very slow to change and things that could greatly assist in slowing the spread, such as adopting a Work From Home policy, will only occur once it's too late. Almost no one is allowed to work from home here, even those with office/tech jobs that can completely be done remotely with no issues. In addition, workers are granted an incredibly small amount of days off, and most would rather get onto their very crowded trains and commute into the office even when unwell as opposed to taking one of their limited days off.
All that being said I'm not freaking out about it the way most people here are, but I wish companies would react a bit faster and change their work culture to accommodate the very easy things that could be done so people can limit their interactions with others when something like this is occurring. You can pretty much guarantee that one person with the virus getting onto a sardine can train during their morning commute is going to infect several other people in the process, and no amount of face masks the people here are so fond of will do anything to keep an infection at bay.