Notices by Robert Belton (shiawase@mastodon.social)

@mario
I do have sympathy for kids that are going to have their lives disrupted by being pulled out of their school. It's not as if they have any power over anything.
They're also unlikely to be at the truly 'elite' schools either. The rich won't be affected that much, I doubt any school will shut down either.
The nordic idea of no private schools would be better. Of course the rich would just send their kids abroad.

@mario
People will just have to find it elsewhere. (a 1 min search later… )

@mario
It is.
It’s well made for a tv anime series. Interesting shot compositions and background activity.

There’s also a 2013 (?) live action film but I’ve yet to see it. I haven’t read the book either.

@mario

Coincidentally it was announced today that one of the October free streaming films in JFF theatre will be the live action version of 船を編む　ー The Great Passage (2013)

— unfortunately not available to anyone in Japan

[edit reading further and also not available in North America and Europe, which most likely includes the Brexit Isles. I was excited for 5 mins… ]

https://en.jff.jpf.go.jp/

Rewatching 「船を編む」”The Great Passage” anime. It’s about compiling a dictionary. An unlikely topic but engaging. I like the little interludes about dictionaries.

@mario
fwiw when I’m faced with a word like this that I can’t get a handle on, I escalate from the quick and dirty edict based dictionaries to curated dictionaries (mac built in Wisdom and Super Daijirin) and ones with Japanese definitions. Children’s dictionaries being useful because they can be both simple and accurate for most words I’m likely to encounter. Usually with far better example usage examples too.
1/2

@mario
oh, where I usually came across this construction is バカじゃない、or バカじゃないよ
meaning that’s idiotic, or, are you stupid or what? rather than that’s not stupid
or indeed ばかじゃん in a certain tone of voice

@mario
Personally I don’t think that 不思議　has any negative feeling (despite that 不)
Also I think that 不思議じゃないよ expresses assertion rather than negation, along the lines of it’s really wonderful don’t you think, in response to the more milder ね seeking agreement.
I might be wrong of course. and claim no authority.
2/2

@mario @kleinertod @richardmedh
if allocated proportionally (at 1% = 6.5 seats) Reform would be circa 91 seats, Green 44, Labour 215, Con 154, Lib 78,
I think the hope is that under STV the more extreme parties are eliminated in round 1. and some smaller parties have more chance at gaining traction.
None the less the rightward march of politics is depressing.

Only voting reform on the horizon is the expansion of the vote to 16yr olds.

@mario
City Lit?

@mario
Somebody found a suitable word to fit that is no longer in use.
Actually quite clever but I don’t think a native speaker would have chosen it.

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/cates

number 21: Use public transport.
Much of my reading was done when I had a daily commute. I even missed my stop a couple of times.

Oddly I have never liked audio books. I tend not to concentrate with them. And I think I read faster than someone can narrate. (same with lectures that are just reading the slides, or youtube “info” videos) But I can listen to good audio drama or discussion type podcasts.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/apr/25/the-experts-librarians-on-20-easy-enjoyable-ways-to-read-more-brilliant-books

@mario

I suspect you can celebrate kanreki sometime this year. おめでとう〜　

@mario
The new fashion for pirates without a parrot.

apropos to nothing. I’ve seen a man in Nagoya (I think) out for a walk with his cat riding on his shoulders. no pics as I’m never comfortable with street photography of people.

(edit - bloody autocorrect)

@mario
The other question I’d have is what ここ refers to. Tokyo? or some other place known to both the singer and the “you”. Is it a place or a place in time? present Tokyo vs. an older Tokyo.
She seems to be talking to someone non-millennial.

@mario
I could still be missing something. But the negative on 特別 needs to be accounted for. The only positive that I can think of is a sentence ending asking for agreement / conformation ~~じゃない？　Which doesn’t seem to fit.

I always have to parse it back to the barest sentence and work back up. and look for set patterns with negatives and particles.

@mario

I would say … you have no idea how to put into words that here is not so special.
くらい can indicate evaluation and I’d say low evaluation given the preceding negative.

https://djtguide.github.io/grammar/dojg/dojgpages/intermediateくらい.html

@mario

I just watched that on 1.75x speed by mistake. (the speed setting is ‘sticky’ in Invidious)
I like my uptempo cut. 🤣 The original feels too languid now.

@mario
an improvement over the non-working links from chatGPT before. I wonder if the prompt searches normally then summarizes the top links.

Your name is almost a ‘google whack’. So I’d expect an accurate result. I think mine might return a Japanese scholar or an American jurist namesake. at best.

I’m undecided if it’s better or worse than regular search. (I only had the daily 4 wishes to experiment)

@mario
if / when it returns mistakes or falsehoods, I wonder how you go about rescuing your reputation or correcting mistakes.
Does it provide real working links to your online presence or where it got its facts?

I wonder if Bing or ChatGPT can be held for libel. The presentation is more publishing than search result, even if it is automated.