virusrex comments

I think that "eugenic point of view" in the 1948 law was substantially different from the previous law.

The text I quyote comes from the 1948 law, it is difficult to be more clear about the eugenic basis of the law, the purpose was to "improve the race" and the well being of the people just a useful excuse.

I'm not in any way defending the 1948 law. It was terrible. But I think the main issue was that women could be sterilized without their knowledge or permission.

According to the law o 1948 women could be sterilized without their knowledge or permission, sometimes even without their families' as well, as long as a doctor justified the measure they could be forced to be sterilized.

Yes, they discovered how corrupt scientists made up results and conclusions to vilify fats to protect their sugar industry. And later, animal fats were similarly vilified to promote seed oils and margarine.

There is no such thing happening with breads, the same as with every other food product where the content of sugar increased this is something directly promoted by the food industry without any kind of hidden conspiracy, people are easily convinced to consume more sugar, more fat, more salt, this is why is so difficult to keep a healthy diet on population level, the part that requires effort is to avoid them.

People are increasingly realizing that meat and animal fats are healthy, and many of the products that have for decades been promoted as "healthy" alternatives are anything but healthy...

Reducing animal products is still the healthiest choice, grifters still try to mislead people to ignore the dangers of cholesterol and high meat diets but the consensus of science is clear and much more balanced diets are better for the health of the people.

So, who decides what's healthy?

People that study the effect on the health of populations.

Because anything, and I mean anything, can become unhealthy if in excess.

Which has no relevance to consider something healthy, if that were the case nothing could be called this way since the most innocuous or positive things (clean water, excercise, etc.) could be damaging when in excess.

I really do not understand this weird crusade against fast foods, it feels extremely elitist and condescending, specially for people who eat fast food because of the economics of it.

If something can be demonstrated as damaging for the health when is consumed as most people would do there is nothing elitist or condescending with recognizing this fact, what would be condescending would be to hide that something should be avoided because you feel bad that people consume it because of economics.

Bakers used to use a lot of fats for flavor in breads, but after fats became evil in the eyes of the health police, bakers started to replace fats with sugars.

This makes no sense, even if people wanted to replace animal fats the obvious replacement are plant derived fats, not sugars. This would not offer significant advantages but neither higher risks. The problem is simply people getting used to sweeter things, for cereals for example the trend to loading them with sugar is the same even if they were never loaded with fats in the first place.

Nothing wrong with eating beef and cheese, assuming it's of decent quality.

Quality is not a guaranteed of lack of health damage from any food, and conversely every food can be consumed as long as in in a healthy quantity. People can enjoy long and healthy lives eating bread, fries and even soda, just not as a main source of nutrition, which also applies to cheese and meat.

Yet again, all of this pointless pedantry has made you miss the point. See, I'm not interested in twisting myself into pretzel logic to defend indefensible behavior - whether it's a business transaction or a "spontaneous romantic encounter,"

When your whole point completely depended on it being prostitution then it is defeated the moment you recognize this was completely false and no prostitution was involved in any way in the scandal, that is why you feel that you need to twist yourself into a pretzel logic trying to defend a claim that has no basis in reality. A much more rational position would be to immediately recognize the mistake instead of insisting in something imaginary. No word games you accused someone of prostitution until it became clear this was not the case.

The kites are quite simple and generate more power than conventional sails. Have already been used and still in ongoing development.

According to reports they are not really that simple and they were projected to reduce only a fraction of the fuel being used, that would put them at a huge disadvantage compared with sails.

For example news from last year (and it is nowhere near to be available)

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/30/travel/airseas-giant-kites-ships-slash-carbon-emissions-scn-climate-spc/index.html

It is reported to need complicated mechanisms to deploy and retrieve the kite, and reduces emissions by a maximum of 20%, in this article it is described that sails provide 70% of the energy used.

Right, because clearly, a bloke sneaking off to pay for "services" is just a wholesome act of civic engagement, not an affair with a price tag?

Are you confused about what is being discussed in the article? there was no "pay for services" involved, that is a product of your imagination and therefore completely unrelated to this.

You're kidding yourself if you're actually pretending that stamping BUSINESS TRANSACTION on infidelity somehow makes it noble

You are making two mistakes here, one is to make up some business transaction that did not happened the other is to make up that anybody said this is noble in any way, what I wrote (and my comment is there for you to read again) is that you are mistaken about it, which is still true. You are making up things about the affair that are not reported anywhere, this is as valid as saying the partner in the affair was a foreign man of 80 years old.

If the LDP suspended its members for extramarital affairs, would any be left to serve?

They can do the same as in this case and suspend only the members that have their affairs made public, after all that seems to be the problem. Anything is fine as long as is done discretely.

The alarmingly permissive attitude towards prostitution here creates a convenient moral smokescreen

The affair has absolutely nothing to do with prostitution. If anything, important politicians are the least likely to be affected if there was no prostitution, they could still use their power and influence to have extramarital affairs as usual.

It’s the politics that are important, not his sex life.

The public image is a fundamental part of politics, it can help or hinder his ability to do his job properly.

A few years back there were some news about a company that was developing a complicated propulsion system based on giant kites to save on fuel, I am glad people now recognize that the already well known solution using wind power is less complicated and much more reliable.

I guess one concern would be of the ability of the parent to raise the child properly. I don't think the main issue of the 1948 law was its intention

It completely is, part of the literal objective of the law was "to prevent birth of inferior descendants from the eugenic point of view" and explicitly included patients that could be sterilized against their will even if they had no hereditary problem.

OK, so if it was up to me to either pay over $40,000 per year or choose to not reuse needles, I'd choose the latter

And this still does nothing to solve the global problem, meanwhile companies developing and testing antiviral medications actually help controlling the infection and could save millions of lives.

There is a difference between actual convictions resulting in heavy fines and a scientist/doctor being criticized by pharma-funded "fact-checkers".

When the doctor actively spread disinformation then the criticism is actually the positive part, specially when the doctor keeps causing deaths because of that disinformation even after he is informed of how wrong he is.

Yeah, if the actually deliver safe and effective medical interventions...

When you are unable to refute any of the studies that prove so then the only valid conclusion is that yes, they do.

Yeah, it's my personal preference based on their long history of corruption.

If that were the basis you would have the same opinion about several of the sources you bring, and once again if a company delivers safe and effective medical interventions then that triumphs personal preferences every single time.

Their studies used to demonstrate safety and effectiveness should be taken with a grain of salt.

At least they are much more consistent with the rest of the scientific literature and are infinitely less likely to be retracted than some of the references people have tried to use here.

If it was up to me to either pay over $40,000 per year or use a condom, I'd choose the latter.

Which of course does nothing to solve the very serious global problem with HIV, this is what the experts are fighting against, not one person personal preferences but measures that are effective at population level.

Plus, I really don't trust Gilead, probably just as bad as Pfizer...

Fortunately personal preferences about who anybody trusts are not relevant to safe and effective medical interventions being developed and millions of patients being benefited from it.

There is no way this could have been properly controlled and tested - you could never get ethical approval to do a properly controlled trial on this. It's just about making money.

And yet they did, easily. And no ethics review committee has even hinted at the study being in any way inappropriate.

"A twice-yearly shot could help end AIDS." The word "could" in the headline tells you everything you need to know.

Not really, the body of the article does an excellent job explaining that this is conditional to the treatment being available for everybody in developing countries. "Could" not as a vague expression of possible efficacy but instead recognizing that the desired effect depends on cooperation and putting lives as a bigger priority than profit.

Lol, no it is absolutely not

And yet this is exactly what is happening, no longer stigmatizing the obese as people that are weak but recognizing the many different factors that make a person reach this point.

https://www.kobe-u.ac.jp/en/news/article/2020_11_26_01/

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/health/2022/07/26/america-obesity-rate-not-personal-failing/9479046002/

https://www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/health-and-wellness-articles/can-you-be-overweight-and-healthy

No serious healthcare professional would advocate normalising obesity.

Yes they do, as much as normalizing many other chronic diseases instead of taking the easy (and completely useless) approach of blaming everything on the patient.

Yes you may find some drinking the woke body positiv koolaid, though DYODD.

So can you find any institution of medical science that contradicts the claim that obesity is product of many different factors and that people can still take care of their health even if their weight is above optimal? According to you this would be the rule and not the exception.

Watanabe as "influential" and "inspiring". Is a disaster.

Only if your reduce a person and everything they have done to simply "weight".

There is nothing positive about obesity which she and her management seek to normalize.

She does not advocate for people to become obese, and normalizing obesity as something that is not simply being "weak" is actually what the healthcare professionals that successfully deal with the problem recommend to do, to normalize that people can be overweight and still can take care of their health.

the inability to find a partner that ensues...

Assuming this is a problem for her is not an argument, much less to automatically believe this is an objective every single person in the world should have or else be a failure.

If Watanabe truly wanted to inspire and influence, she would diet and exercise and get herself a hunk.

Fortunately people can have value and be a positive influence without having to adhere to arbitrary standards from nameless people on the internet.

How would sterilizing someone with cerebral palsy prevent 'inferior' offspring? It's not a genetic disease! Like WTF!

Eugenics never bothered much with being congruent with evidence or science, anything that would make people "inferior" was excuse enough to sterilize or even kill.

Also known as the strategy of running round like a headless chicken.

and in other context there's nothing wrong...

It should be very easy to understand that context can make something wrong, if your whole point is to ignore context then you are accepting you have no valid point. A man revealing his genitals to a female doctor during a medical consult provides the context that makes that action understandable and correct, but that is not an argument that proves doing it to a girl on a park is also OK.

Crazy, just because a candidate effectively used social media and the Internat and largely bypassed traditional media does not equate to a crime.

But if the candidate paid someone participating in election activities that would be a crime, the blog post would appear to prove this happened, and specially suspicious is that the post was later edited to pretend this was never the case.

The votes in a free and fair election were legal, Gov. Saito won based on merit of his messaging!

Even if that is the case this would not exculpate him from bribery as per election law, which is why the complaint was filed.

The headline says the bear has been killed, but the article only describes it as captured in a trap, which is it?

The increased glut of those not producing is the problem

And your "solution" is to increase the number of those not producing, obviously making things worse, there is even no need for any increase of population you guarantee the problem will worsen anyway.

Wrong. The issue is *there will be 50% fewer jobs**

Because of automation, which you said was something good, because apparently you believe that having less people being productive somehow will make production better and becomes easier to support those that no longer are able to produce, it is clear this makes absolutely no sense.

The projected reduction IS the SOLUTION

Definetely not, you have never argued how this is in any way the solution except for the magical thinking that printing money solves anything.

Once again, the problem is the lack of people producing, so reducing the people even more solves absolutely nothing. It is irrelevant how many jobs there will be or not since there is not enough people to work to sustain the system. You have yet to address this as the problem, continuously ignoring it as if that would solve it when obviously that is not the case.

People are countable. Therefore, it's *fewer people, not "less people".

You're welcome

Once you reduce yourself to "discuss" the wording it becomes clear you already gave up trying to discuss the arguments.

Here, let me try it in crayon for you.

You keep making the same mistake. Your example only makes it more clear how you refuse to address the actual problem and make a completely different scenario that is not happening just to have something to criticize:

The people working those 58 jobs have to pay into the coffers to support the 2 people that aren't working along with the 30 who no longer work. 

And the solution you proposed in your original comment is to have 28 less jobs for the people, which obviously makes everything worse long before there is even less people able to work. How? by magic since you offered absolutely no reasoning for this to happen. If this situation would have taken 10 years in the future to develop you are proposing to accelerate the deficit without ever representing any benefit. Your solution (the "oh so good automation" is the one that doubled the deficit.

For most recent discoveries, there is always the dilemma for the Nobel prize: who to choose? The pioneers who put some theoretical foundation, or the people who actually made that into something useful?  

Unfortunately there is always disparity and bias about the winners, and the bias may affect Japanese scientists disproportionately since (at leas in medical sciences) working in collaboration with many different groups increases the chances of winning the prize, specially for people that work with other Nobel prize winners.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4521825/

Another key finding from the network analysis is that the Laureates are highly likely to be connected to other Laureates, beyond the collaboration of Laureates winning the prize together. 

Japanese scientists tend to work in relatively close circles involving researchers also in Japan, that could explain why they are not as nominated as the productivity would indicate.

Mynumber needs to be a requirement for every foreigner living in Japan

That would apply only if foreigners could get it both at the city office or at the immigration office instead of having to do twice the paperwork and juggling the dates of expiration of either card.

Let's say the person has yearly contracts and immigration refuses to give a residency permit for more than one year each time, currently as long as the contracts never lapses any insurance card linked to the work is also valid the whole time without needing any renovation, but the MN card has to be renovated at least once a year together with the residency card. And if immigration takes longer than usual you get an automatic 3 month extension of your residency card (while in paperwork) but you have to renovate the MN card to get those 3 more months, and when you get the new residency card then you have to go again to the city office to change those extra 3 months you got for the full year of residency.

And the best part is that these renovations of the MN card have to be written in the front of the card for it to be valid, so if the immigration office took their time 2 times in a row that means you have to apply for a new MN card (and wait weeks) the next time you go to renovate it, not because it lapsed but simply because there is no space to write the expiration date.

That means that for anybody on yearly contracts the insurance card that was valid the whole time without doing anything, would instead take 3 to 6 extra visits to the city office (and at least one wait of several weeks) in order to remain valid as a MN card.

Japan's population in 2010: 128,185,275

Japan's population in 2024: 123,753,041

Japan's projected population by 2035: 112–116.6 million

Exactly, you again proved that your point is invalid, the current population in no way makes it less of a burden having less opportunities of work, and the projected reduction IS the problem that you never address and instead only try to demonstrate how one of the solutions will not work. That still means the problem of the unbalanced reduction of population is as serious as always and that making more unemployed people right now do absolutely nothing to alleviate it.

And you were challenged with coming up with a viable solution for 50% of current jobs becoming obsolete within the next 10 to 20 years that doesn't rely on unsustainable population growth.

No I did not, because differently from you that has never been my point. My point has always been that your proposed solution is not realistically beneficial, as clearly as you have been repeatedly unable to support it with the opinion of any expert. It is as valid as saying that printing money will solve any and all problems no matter how many jobs are available or how many people come to the country, magical thinking not based on actual economic realities.

When the population exeeded it's ability to sustain itself on what prey was available on the island, the dingoes began killing themselves...until their number balanced out to a sustainable level that matched the resources on the island.

And having less available "prey" sooner do absolutely nothing to make the situation more tolerable, instead it does the opposite, and one extra decade of problems is added thanks to what you suggest is positive.

The same thing is occurring with the Japanese population

And will come with literally decades of imbalance that will cause immense problems that should be dealt with from now if not before, problems that you invalidly think become better by bringing them now instead of the little remainiing time where the currently active population can still sustain the system.

What''s needed is not a bloated unsustainable population,

Which is what you propose, to somehow maintain an unbalanced population demographics with less people working.

but a focus on agriculture and food sustainability as well as a new economic model that doesn't rely on unsustainable population growth.

None of which involves having more automation to leave population that would be economically active unemployed, which was your original claim.

Smugly mocking people who shop at Walmart reveals your out-of-touch elitism

Who mocks people that shop at walmart?

This may be difficult to understand for some, but what Walmart (the company) does almost universally goes against the best interests of the people that shop there, when you take the side of Walmart you are taking the opposite side of the people that shop and specially that work at Walmart.

Some people do have much better communication skills in these kind of drinking parties, and benefit a lot from having them, for others there is nothing but disadvantages in the situation. It is obvious that members of each groups will try to have everybody doing what is more beneficial to them until a balance is found.

Maybe the difficult part is to get everybody the same opportunities at communicating at work no matter how much social skills anybody may have. People will understandably complain if they are dragged to a drinking party that they don't want to attend, but being left out while the extroverts have extra time to get along with the bosses (and make an appeal to their capacity to climb up inside the company) is not exactly fair either.

When you have to take the side of Walmart in order to defend your position on segregation and discrimination there is very little anybody can say to make it more obvious you are on the wrong side.

Why is this worded to sound like a profession of faith? 

Because the issue is as defined as the germ theory of infection or the role of the heart in the circulation of blood.

Is criticism of the assumptions behind the conclusions of some climate scientists no longer allowed? If so, that is NOT science and it IS dangerous.

What criticism? endlessly repeating debunked claims even immediately after they have been debunked is not criticism. What would you think of someone that says bacteria does not exist because nobody has ever seen any? would that be criticism for you? because that is what is being tried to be used as one for climate change.

The Climate has been changing (Hot-to-cold-to-Hot) since the beginning of time here on Earth. We humans have contributed to the changes, but are NOT the driving force behind it.

For the current crisis definitely humans are the ones originating it, it has been proved beyond any reasonable doubt by scientist that are in consensus of this conclusion. We have been the driving force of climate change.

Isn't it strange that scientists keep changing their climate models that work so well they are beyond reproach?

No, that is the purpose of scientific research in all fields, from astronomy to biochemistry, polishing and improving knowledge to make the conclusions more precise and better continuously.

I'm confused because my favorite oracle keeps telling me that the "science is settled" and there exists something called "100% scientific consensus"

That comes from refusing to learn what is consensus, you like to pretend it means a rock solid conclusion that will never change when in fact it just mean a common conclusion that the current scientific community of the world reach according to the evidence, this consensus improves all the time as well.

It turns out they know nothing.

Not at all, it turns "they" don't know every single thing, but of course they are the ones that know the most about the topic.

Don't worry the little rug rats, ( surely you have children, don't you?)

Santa will make his trip again this year!

What does this have to do with the article, the warnings are clear and should be taken into account by people that are not in denial of the reality of the planet. Pretending everything is well without any basis is not a productive attitude.