I told myself to learn Japanese even though it is one of the hardest languages to learn coming from English.

[Obligatory complaint about Kanji.]

I managed to get a hold of Genki. In the Kanji section, it says:

Kanji are Chinese characters which were introduced to Japan more than 1500 years ago when the Japanese language did not have a writing system.

This is a statement I took with skepticism since the erasure of history and culture occured throughout the ancient times. But this would mean the Japanese language did not have a writing system prior to 500 CE.

I had found a website that I probably wouldn't be able to find through a search engine in the future. (Very old looking, goes against established academic canon, will probably be out-competed by newer search-optimized websites).

https://www.archaeometry.org/pre-kanji.htm

Regardless, there is no way around Kanji.

日 = "day" or "sun"

I would have never guessed as it looked more like a drawer.

#jp

Trying to rescue civilians in Metal Gear Rising.

It appears any time when PMCs get alerted, they execute their hostage before turning their attention to the player. Today, I found civilians are invulnerable to rocket launchers which solves the hostage problem.

#metalgear

@israel on Twitter shared a link to a "hamas.com" (do not click). The following archive links are for the same statuses.

https://archive.is/https://twitter.com/israel/status/1726937954080170289

https://archive.is/https://nitter.poast.org/israel/status/1726937954080170289

The first contains the community note which warns that hamas.com is a website set up by the Israeli government. The second link shows the context and reply chain leading to the community note.

Users queried the term "hamas.com" on web service Virus Total. The results returned "malicious", "malware", "phishing", and "suspicious" according to the security vendors it sources from.

#israeli-hamas-war

A number of online sellers on Amazon are offering garments bearing the controversial phrase "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," which several Jewish groups see as an antisemitic chant.

The slogan

"From river to sea, Palestine will be free"

has appeared on t-shirt, hats, and other merchandise sold on web stores. In the United States, a trademark has been filed for the phrase on November 17, 2023 (serial number: 98275013).

https://archive.li/https://tsdr.uspto.gov/%23caseNumber=98275013&caseType=SERIAL_NO&searchType=statusSearch

#israeli-hamas-war

I decided to keep track of events since war erupted in the Middle East again (Israel or Palestine).

In 2002, The Guardian had published the full-text of Osama bin Laden's Letter to the American People. This month, the letter had been taken down as the document had circulated on TikTok, a vlogging platform used primarily by Gen Z.

The letter as published by The Guardian can still be accessed through web archives.

https://archive.is/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver

#israeli-hamas-war

#blogroll

antares.neocities.org

[Review] Sakuna of Rice and Ruin

Antares forces a princess of child-like stature to toil in manual labor and sets the language of her complaints to Japanese. (Review of a hybrid farming sim and platformer.)

#warframe #blogroll

antares.neocities.org

Steel Path, Archon Killer Equinox (2-4 Forma)

Antares plays a warframe no one likes, doesn't use the mod Overextended, and takes her to Steel Path, Arbitration, and Archon Hunts. (Builds for Equinox.)

I uploaded a clip of Needy Streamer Overload on to PeerTube.

https://video.hardlimit.com/w/8PwpEeyBxXsKTrRnBPvg5H

The game's intro scene depicts an old PC booting. I didn't think I should use any regular monospace font for the intro, so I found Perfect DOS VGA by Zeh Fernando.

https://zehfernando.com/2015/revisiting-vga-fonts/

TIL there is a lawsuit between Valve Corporation and Leigh Rothschild.

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67569388/valve-corporation-v-rothschild/

One of the patents in question is US 8,856,221, documented a few times as "The 221 Patent".

Whenever I look up something about Leigh Rothschild, a reoccuring theme is patent infringement lawsuits. The EFF even wrote an article about him.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/06/federal-circuit-hits-stupid-patent-owner-fee-award

#misc

This girl wants 1 million followers by the end of one month. Also she's crazy. #blogroll

antares.neocities.org

[Review] Needy Streamer Overload

Antares tries to be a good boyfriend for a chronically online streamer, gives up and ends up bullying her after the first playthrough. (Review of a denpa themed visual novel.)

I recently got a Kullervo warframe. One of the adventures I took him on was a random Grineer mission. During which, I fragged a baby lich and claimed her. So I found Kullervo as a progenitor #warframe yields a fire elemental lich.

I had a harder time than I should finding "Best Ever Image of a Star’s Surface and Atmosphere" by the European Southern Observatory (2017) because of the second-hand sources that clutter the top of search engines.

https://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1726/ (uses cookies)

#misc

I replaced a chunk of text describing what I saw in a #dream with an image.

I had played a Sabotage mission in #warframe where Golden Instinct triggered. The item turned out to be an Ayatan Sculpture locked behind the entrance of Alad V's secret laboratory.

Previously, the doors I had seen had three glyphs. This one involved four.

Dream Journal of June 2023

https://antares.neocities.org/blog/dream-journal-2023-06

#dream #blogroll

I had read "Transmaxxing: the Incel-To-Transwoman Pipeline" by Sanjana Friedman and found the quote:

“4 years ago I was an edgy, right-wing, anti-SJW teen who was borderline MGTOW. Now I’m a gay catgirl dating an anarchist transgirl.”

I've watched these people too long to be mystified by their actions. They, especially teenagers, don't believe in the ideas they adopted beyond thinking it would help them get laid. That's why they easily jump to either sides of extremes.

#misc

I came across a blog post:

https://m-chrzan.xyz/blog/one-author.html

I was reminded of how I wanted my writing to show up under certain keywords in a search engine index.

I learned for the first edits it didn't because I wrote "(keyword)" on the heading but not in the paragraph. Therefore, I added a sentence just to use the keyword in the paragraph.

Then I sat back, re-read what I wrote, and couldn't help but think I made my writing more robotic and less human. Because a human looking at the page would infer the purpose of the section by the heading. The extra sentence in the paragraph was, if I wasn't writing for a machine to add onto an index, unnecessary.

As a side note, I'm aware that some writers entitle themselves authoritatively as "thought leaders", and that corporations anticipate using AI to generate massive amounts of writings.

(Considering the consequences of AI thought leaders.)

#misc

When I first saw a graph on the #fediverse indicating that homosexual or bisexual adolescents more often than heterosexuals were impregnanted or had impregnated someone, I took it as a joke and figured the teenagers confused themselves at some point during puberty.

"Why Are So Many Lesbians Getting Pregnant?" by Glenn Stanton

https://archive.ph/https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2017/04/19022/

Saw a juxtaposition related to #covid19 and ivermectin involving the FDA's statements at two different points in time.

You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it.

Then later "FDA Says Telling People Not to Take Ivermectin for COVID-19 Was Just a Recommendation" by Zachary Streiber (The Epoch Times) .

https://archive.is/https://www.theepochtimes.com/fda-says-telling-people-not-to-take-ivermectin-for-covid-19-was-just-a-recommendation_4873897.html

Regarding ivermectin, I recall there was an Australian researcher at a university that was investigating its potential use in treating COVID-19. With a bit of effort, I re-found she is Dr Kylie Wagstaff of Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute.

https://archive.is/https://www.monash.edu/discovery-institute/news-and-events/news/2021-articles/monash-university-update-on-ivermectin-research

Yesterday, one of the objectives I recovered was Mad Lab. I have no idea what to call this area, but the Access Controller is on the walkways near the bottom of the map (second image).

#warframe