All you have to do to get through a hard game is to give yourself the space to adapt and improve. The pushback builds you as a player and makes the payoff so much sweeter, baby. #blog #gaming
Difficulty and Improving
innerspiral.lol
Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan's oldest newspapers, runs a famously anonymous column called Tensei Jingo (天声人語), "Vox Populi Vox Dei." Side-by-side Japanese-English editions of old columns make it excellent advanced reading practice.
Advanced Japanese Reading Practice with Side-by-Side Readers - Unseen Japan
Want Japanese reading practice with newspapers or essays? Here's how to level up your Japanese game with side-by-side readers.
unseen-japan.com
The ignominy and utter disgrace of war-profiteering fossil fuel corps laid out in a First Dog on the Moon cartoon www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
Yung En Chee@yungenchee.bsky.social · yesterdayThe blood-soaked WAR-PROFITEERING is actually even MORE obscene Aramco, BP, Chevron, ENI, Equinor, ExxonMobil, Shell & TotalEnergies made nearly $93 billion🤯 in the Apr-June quarter Off the back of war & heatwaves, drought, fires, & floods caused by entrenched fossil fuel use
Its embarrassing how many grown ass adults live in these fantasies where people work for some nonsense like the artificial cultures oligarchs manufacture over survival.
Bet you didn't know that the Little Morton Salt Girl is an immortal being who existed before there was life on Earth.
I hate this timeline & that I had to write this essay. I hate AI companies & LLMs & the randos who are now using "AI detectors" (also AI!) to smear authors they dislike: on Medium (friend link): juliaserano.medium.com/on-em-dashes... & Substack (no paywall): juliaserano.substack.com/p/on-em-dash...
On em-dashes and “AI detectors”
and the many reasons why I don’t and won’t use LLMs
juliaserano.medium.com
It was so damn depressing to watch every TV writer who was willing and eager to have open, intelligent conversations about their process get hounded off social by a combination of aggressive stans and belligerent wannabes defending the right to be a shithead to creatives
C. Robert Cargill@crobertcargill.bsky.social · yesterdayI keep thinking about the discourse from the other day suggesting writers are gatekeeping writing information for ourselves and I just think back to 2019 when every writer was out there giving away writing advice until one by one each stopped because social media blows and we can't have nice things.
I keep thinking about the discourse from the other day suggesting writers are gatekeeping writing information for ourselves and I just think back to 2019 when every writer was out there giving away writing advice until one by one each stopped because social media blows and we can't have nice things.
A three-minute walk from Akihabara Station sits a bank of vending machines locals call "cursed." They sell canned yakitori with a five-year shelf life, a taped-over jar of what looks like plastic bugs, and a rotary phone priced at one million yen.
I Bought Something from Akihabara's "Cursed" Vending Machines - Unseen Japan
There's still a lot of fun stuff to see and do in Akihabara. Then there are the vending machines selling oden, bugs, and even an old phone.
unseen-japan.com
The biggest technological revolution of our lifetime and it has nothing to do with AI, crypto, metaverse, robots or any of the other massively hyped "tech" the media always talks about instead
Sarah Taber@sarahtaber.bsky.social · 2d agoAbsolutely unbelievable how solar power has taken off worldwide during the Hormuz oil crisis. You don't have to hand it to him, but Trump may have done more to finally kick off a global civilization of effete librul solar users than anyone else in the West
"[Felicity] was also, looking back, such a rich text—a masterclass, really—on the purpose of speculative fiction." @maxinegkaplan.bsky.social on the startling joy of Felicity's genre shift, and how we can't be surprised by TV anymore:
Felicity Took an Unexpected Turn Into Speculative Fiction — And It Was Perfect - Reactor
The final five episodes of the young adult drama went fully and gloriously off the rails
reactormag.com
My theory was always that strict regulation of sports and casino gambling was the load bearing pillar of US equity investment culture
Dare Obasanjo@carnage4life.bsky.social · 3d agoRobinhood now makes more money from prediction markets than it does from stock trades or crypto. This adds weight to my theory that Bitcoin and crypto has crashed due to competition from Polymarket and Kalshi for the online gambler demographic.
when people say "do your own research" they generally mean "do not trust anyone with any relevant training or experience"
Marc Veldhoen@marcveld.bsky.social · 3d agoI'm a full Professor of Immunology and fully vaccinated. I didn't get vaccinated out of obedience, but after decades of studying the immune system and evaluating all evidence. Calling that "lack of critical thinking" is not an argument. It's ideology masked as pretend intellect.
Australia’s eSafety commissioner buried a report (released Friday afternoon) that shows the under 16 social media ban didn’t tangibly reduce teen social media use, and also resulted in parents tuning out of kids usage. We traded our privacy for no reason. theconversation.com/more-than-80...
More than 80% of kids still using social media despite ban, new eSafety report finds
The report provides more evidence Australia’s world-leading social media ban isn’t going to plan.
theconversation.com
FYI: This is the famous "Dr. Yellow." A maintenance track train so rarely seen it is said good luck upon those whom sees it. Originally 3 Dr.Yellow, but now they are slowly replaced by modern tech on recent trains. This video is the last #Dr.Yellow that will be retired at the end of the month. #JR
It will be worse than this! Most websites will be forced to ask you to send your ID to a third party surveillance service, adding a credit card won't be enough for most. Bluesky asks for your *social security number* if you live in Texas now, due to this shit. Call in, and kill it.
Eromancer@eromancer.bsky.social · 4d agoThis will be the US if the SCREEN Act passes. Call your Senators before August 5 and tell them that you oppose the SCREEN Act, KOSA, and the KIDS Act. Use the official lookup tool at www.senate.gov/senators/sen... to find yours by state.
Conflation of "suspects" and "offenders" by the Police Union spokesperson and also the author of the article, who failed to point out that very important point, are highly disturbing. #Auspol
ABC News Bot (unofficial)@abcnewsbot.bsky.social · 3d agoThe Queensland Police Union says the "discrepancy" between how child and adult offenders' DNA is collected should be "completely removed".
Pauline Hanson flees her own custom-curated presser. With ABC & Guardian banned, & far-right criminal Avi Yemini running interference, still can’t handle questions, even from Sky “Shouldn't all media have access...?"💥 Not even sidekick Avi could save her from total humiliation.
i wanna know which extremely online lawyer made sure to require the post be pinned. genius.
Susie "Nickname In Quotes" Beeca@susiebeeca.bsky.social · 4d agoAh, this warms the cockles of my cold, dead heart. Wait til you see the price a TERF had to pay for lying about a trans woman. "...also be required to publish a court-approved apology that must remain pinned on their social media channels for three months" www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/07/an-a...
“And then he asked me to guess what colour his coffin was going to be..it pulled me up short. On the one hand, this young boy knows and lives his culture with confidence. On the other, he has seen death so often he has his coffin colour picked out” www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08...
In a remote community, a boy asked me a question no child should
In the tiny community of Baniyala, in East Arnhem Land, I sat next to a 13-year-old boy who asked me a question no child should be asking.
abc.net.au
This got me to finally read the entire New Yorker article on the Tates and... yeah. I don't see how what they're doing is any different than what everyone has accused Jeffrey Epstein of doing. Except they're *more public* about admitting to what they're doing AND getting young men to join in.
David Roberts@volts.wtf · 5d agoHowever horrible you think the Tate brothers are, I promise, it's worse than that. It's insane that Dems aren't making a bigger deal of the GOP embracing these grotesque monsters.
"Once you pay the Danegeld, you will never be free of the Dane" is literally thousand-year-old knowledge. There's a famous poem more than a century old reminding folks.
More people need to understand the concept of Danegeld.
Brian Tyler Cohen@briantylercohen.bsky.social · 4d ago"I will never understand why these huge corporations refuse to acknowledge objective reality: paying Trump doesn’t buy you anything. All it does is teach him that you’re willing to pay, and next time, he’ll get you to pay more."
countries like the US, UK, & Australia love to engage in centuries of mythmaking about how wonderful the people are, how desirable the land is, etc. and then lose their fucking minds when people want to immigrate there
Fantastic @alexhannaford.com piece here at @emorwee.bsky.social's Heated - profiling an anti-solar influencer. This is SUCH a common story: a project planned near someone rich, influential, or both and that person gets radicalised against all wind, all solar, all batteries etc
The influencer teaching millions to fear solar
Alexandra Fasulo says she’s protecting farms and wildlife. Her campaign is becoming a blueprint for the fossil fuel right.
heated.world
wow it turns out the immigrant army crushed the army of slaveholding perverts? that’s crazy you’re telling me this for the first time
Alexander Clarkson@aphclarkson.bsky.social · 5d agoAnother datapoint for the fascist radicalisation of institutional pillars of much of the American Right
This is why you dont try to compromise or concede anything to these horrors
JK Rowling centre says Amnesty apology does not solve ‘reputational damage’ — The Independent
Beira’s Place was among organisations labelled ‘anti-rights’ in a briefing document.
apple.news
1. This popped up in my feed in a repost by Alfie Goodrich (Japan resident, @alfie.photography) Here's the video/news report from NHK. news.web.nhk/newsweb/na/n... You'll have to click to see video.
熊本 八代 ベトナム人の若者ら 倒壊住宅から高齢女性を救出 | NHKニュース
【NHK】今回の地震で震度６強を観測し、住宅が倒壊する被害が相次いだ熊本県八代市では、ベトナム人の若者たちが地域の人たちと協力し、倒壊した住宅に閉じ込められた女性を救出しました。 八代市興善寺町では地震発生後
news.web.nhk
Unseen Japan@unseenjapan.com · 5d agoAfter NHK showed Vietnamese residents helping rescue a woman in Yatsushiro after this week's Kumamoto earthquake, far-right nativists in Japan launched a denialist campaign, claiming only Japanese people helped her while the Vietnamese residents "panicked."
