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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • When Japan began interacting with China, Japan did not have a writing system. So Japan had to adopt Chinese characters and shoehorn it into their own language, in order to be able to trade with China and stuff. They later invented their own writing systems. But kanji kind of just continued to hang around. I imagine that part of it is just because kanji was already so ingrained that it became difficult to get rid of. It’s kind of like saying why don’t we fix English to get rid of all the weird letter combinations and make it more phonetic? It’s kind of a big undertaking.

    Kanji is also very economical from a perspective of how compact it is and how quickly it can be read. You can fit a ton of information in a very small space, and you can understand the words at a glance.

    There is a funny thing among Japanese learners. Ask a beginner their thoughts on kanji, and they will often complain about how difficult it is to learn, and how it doesn’t make sense to keep kanji around. Then take someone who has spent several years studying and become fairly proficient, and ask them to read a passage that is entirely in hiragana or katakana. That person will likely complain about how difficult it is to read, because they have to look at each individual character and sound out the words.


  • A lot of people don’t see what their parents had to deal with, because by the time we are old enough to notice those things, they have already had a chance to work their way upward. Not to say that certain things might not have been easier back then, because in some ways it certainly was. But I hear about how my grandparents worked in a factory or joined the military because it was their only option at the time, and then I hear about how my great grandmother had 8 children to take care of as a single parent, and she walked miles to get to work in her factory job. Things have always been difficult depending on circumstances.


  • It varies from person to person and place to place. But generally, I would say that America is a pretty good place, but not perfect and has a lot of room for improvement.

    Yes, healthcare is expensive, but we have some government programs to provide cheaper care for certain groups, like the very poor, the elderly, and veterans.

    Violence varies from place to place, but I feel like I live in a safe area, and I have never seen or heard a gun fired at someone in a public place.

    A lot of the bad laws typically involve disenfranchising certain minority groups. I am lucky enough to not be affected by most of this, and a lot of people are fighting back against it by trying to vote in better politicians.






  • Many people have become accustomed to life without ads. I have used adblockers in my browsers for probably the past 20 years. So the experience that you are talking about (just scrolling past them), is an experience that I don’t really know, unless I am suddenly using some other computer that belongs to a friend or something.

    People have also gotten away from ads in their entertainment by subscribing to things like Netflix rather than cable.

    Once you don’t have advertising shoved in your face 24/7, then suddenly being bombarded with it is incredibly offensive.