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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • I don’t believe it actually bans “Pikachu” when spelled as 光宙 because ピカチュウ is actually a pretty reasonable reading, although maybe not the #1 most obvious one. Based on a random Japanese article I read about it (link), I really don’t think 光宙/Pikachu will be technically illegal, although all the English articles will say so because it’s click fodder.

    The law bans: things that are not related to the kanji reading at all, things that add unexpected extra stuff on the end of the obvious reading, or things that mean the opposite of what the kanji means.

    I don’t believe any of this applies to Pikachu, and the examples they cite are not really comparable.





    1. Only Yesterday - Probably my favorite movie ever. It’s so authentic and personal and real.
    2. Spirited Away - Really emotional and dramatic and surprisingly NOT overrated at all.
    3. The Wind Rises - Feels very personal while also feeling broad and important.
    4. From Up on Poppy Hill - I love complicated family situations, and I like the aesthetics and music.
    5. The Secret World of Arrietty - The philosophy of the characters in this one is actually really interesting.



  • You say in another comment that this is indicative of a failed American education experiment, and that there’s a generation of illiteracy. I’m not saying that’s wrong, but it’s a much bigger generalization than “Kansas English undergrads” (which is such a specific category, why should I care about data that relates specifically to Kansas English undergrads?).

    But my main gripe is the use of just one text. “People cannot understand this one book (therefore literacy is deficient)” is a much less convincing argument than “people cannot understand these 6 popular books from this time period” or “these 30 randomly selected fiction works” etc.
    Is it well-established that Bleak House is representative of all the works we think about when we consider “literacy” and “illiteracy” as people’s ability to understand texts?









  • The days of the week come from the Sun (Sunday), Moon (Monday), and classic 5 planets (Tuesday = Mars, Wednesday = Mercury, Thursday = Jupiter, Friday = Venus, Saturday = Saturn). This makes more sense in some other languages, for example Spanish: marte / martes, mercurio / miercoles. Saturn = Saturday though is almost obvious.

    So if there were another day in the week, I have no choice but to either:

    • name it Earthday
    • name it after Uranus, the next discovered planet

    This gives us precedent to create up to 10 days per week by including all 8 planets plus sun & moon.