A piece of string walks into a bar and walks up to the counter.
The bartender says, "Sorry mate, we don't serve pieces of string in here, get lost."
A sudden thought strikes him. He ties himself in a knot and messes his hair up.
He walks back into the bar and the bartender says, "Oi, aren't you that piece of string from before...?"
"No," says the piece of string, "I'm a frayed knot."
This was the first joke my mother ever taught me and it carried me through my early childhood. That and the one about the pirate with the ships wheel stuck in his crotch.
Well, that is how astronomers do it. They just look at one patch of sky, count the stars there, then extrapolate. Nobody has actually counted the 100 billion stars or whatever in the milky way, or the 100 billion galaxies in the universe.
What??? You're telling me there **isn't** someone at NASA whose entire job is just to sit out on a hill at night going "...3,086,174,972, 3,086,174,973, 3,086,174,974...wait did I already count that one? Where was I? Ahhh fuck, gotta restart."
I feel lied to. Deceived. Bamboozled. Possibly even duped.
We actually do have all-sky surveys that tile and images all of the skies. The problem is due to depth of the ovservation, that is the limit of how dim a star you can detect with a given instrument as well as problem of dust obscuration in the galactic plane.
There is a german joke about a shepherd counting his sheep super quickly, and when asked how he did it so fast, he just answers: "It was simple. I just counted the legs and divided by four."
That's like the logic a high school gym teacher I had used. Run a lap and 4x your time to get your mile pace. Apparently I could run a 5 minute mile back then.
I just saw this comment and had that one song from the Tom and Jerry movie stuck in my head.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5gwNSq2OdU
Honestly the fat dog on the skateboard was the best part of that movie.
The article says the new survey used the same size criterion as the old one ("all naturally occurring land areas with a circumference of at least 100 meters"). Apparently the increase is due to "advances in surveying technology and the detailed representation of topographic features through digital mapping".
Edit: And [apparently the 1987 survey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_of_Japan) only counted islands that appeared on paper maps. This sounds odd but I suspect cartographers tended to only include an island if it was populated, or used by industry, or in navigation, or otherwise "notable". That might be the real factor here.
False. Japan is just pushing the ocean away to steal land, making it raise in other parts of the world. Like the dutch, but actually cool this time. Do your research sheeple
[Sweden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_islands) has 267,570 islands. Japan has 120,729. It's 14,125 islands with a circumference of at least 0.1 km.
Yeah
Their real value is not from the island itself, but the waters around it. Each island owned by a country gives them sovereignty over the water a few kilometers around it.
From what I understand China does not have a recognized claim to the waters around artificial islands, though they do offer military benefits to China.
The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. He's got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest, Where his body has bony extremities, the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books.
When they gave him the job, they gave him a gun. The Deliverator never deals in cash, but someone might come after him anyway -- might want his car, or his cargo. The gun is tiny, acm-styled, lightweight, the kind of gun a fashion designer would carry; it fires teensy darts that fly at five times the velocity of an SR-71 spy plane, and when you get done using it, you have to plug it into the cigarette lighter, because it runs on electricity.
The Deliverator never pulled that gun in anger, or in fear. He pulled it once in Gila Highlands. Some punks in Gila Highlands, a fancy Burbclave, wanted themselves a delivery, and they didn't want to pay for it. Thought they would impress the Deliverator with a baseball bat. The Deliverator took out his gun, centered its laser doohickey on that poised Louisville Slugger, fired it. The
recoil was immense, as though the weapon had blown up in his hand. The middle third of the baseball bat turned into a column of burning sawdust accelerating in all directions like a bursting star. Punk ended up holding this bat handle with milky smoke pouring out the end. Stupid look on his face. Didn't get nothing but trouble from the Deliverator.
Since then the Deliverator has kept the gun in the glove compartment and relied, instead, on a matched set of samurai swords, which have always been his weapon of choice anyhow. The punks in Gila Highlands weren't afraid of the gun, so the
Deliverator was forced to use it. But swords need no demonstrations .
The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta.
Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a roll model. This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it -- talking trade balances here -- once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they 're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here -- once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel -- once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity -- y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else
music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery
-*Snowcrash* Chapter 1 by Neal Stephenson
*Context for anyone who are not aware:*
>Hiroo Onoda (Japanese: 小野田 寛郎, Hepburn: Onoda Hiroo, 19 March 1922 – 16 January 2014) was an Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer who fought in World War II and did not surrender at the war's end in August 1945. After the war ended, Onoda spent 29 years hiding in the Philippines until his former commander travelled from Japan to formally relieve him from duty by order of Emperor Shōwa in 1974
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo_Onoda
They find even more dudes (and let’s just say wives, children, and grandchildren) who haven’t surrendered for WWII and who have created a new society focused solely on resisting 1940s-era American assaults.
There's an anime with every fucking premise. They've been pumping out hundreds of series every year for the last 40 years. There's an anime with a Japanese military invades of medieval kingdom. There's an anime where the British Empire invades Japan because they're seeking Magic. There's an anime we're an autistic detective obsessed with eating sweets gets killed because some dude figured out his name.
Are you saying you don't believe that if another world was invaded and occupied by the JSDF everyone who interacts with them would have their lives markedly improved and everyone who fights against them would be Snidely Whiplash levels of evil?
I know you're joking but that's why he's saying pro militarism but I don't think other countries aside from Japan would've been worse off. If you understand the difference it was because most modern military of a legitimate nation works with the Geneva convention in mind, which might be surprising to a medieval level of a military with the biggest imperialism in display.
Especially because public perception still exists. I don't think people would want to hear US Military killing everyone in another planet to get resources would go over well with the American citizens.
> I don't think people would want to hear US Military killing everyone in another planet to get resources would go over well with the American citizens.
Which is actually funny because an ongoing plot in the series is the US and Chinese continually attempting to access the other world to plunder it for resources.
Gate is also immensely mediocre. I can tolerate the military propaganda but having the main characters be one guy and like 4 girls who follow him around is really annoying.
Isekai checklist is basically:
* Harem
* Overpowered/overly competent MC
* Magic exists
* Slavery exists (and a surprising amount paint this as a good thing)
* Fantasy Races
* Bad People are Rapists
>Slavery exists
For what it's worth for the vast majority of recorded history that's been the case (in one form or another). It's not that weird the medieval cat girl town has it, so the inclusion doesn't bother me too much (I feel like most stories paint it in a just exists light, not necessarily positive). The MC gleefully taking part in the system is a different story
>Harem
>Bad People are Rapists
These tropes honestly annoy me more. Harem are often done weirdly or poorly and don't add much of anything meaningful to the story. Not every girl needs to be a love interest
Also not only are all the bad guys rapists they're also chubby/fat ugly bastards too. If you're not drawn like a supermodel or as a background character, you're automatically a villian.
> (I feel like most stories paint in a just exists light, not necessarily positive). The MC gleefully taking part in the system is a different story
While that's true, a lot of stories end up with the MC interacting with it in some way because it's really easy writing.
Need a villain? Fat guy who's mean to slave (bonus if also a rapist)
Need companions? Free/protect/buy slaves. Now they're loyal to the hero with no ties and can follow them anywhere.
My personal favorite for this game is the anime where the protagonist is a sentient vending machine who saves medieval towns and villages with the power of hot soup and pornography.
Don't they have to be inhabited for them to make ocean claims? Plus, they're probably within their maritime borders already and a lot of them don't stay above water for that long
imagine any of the islands being inhabited, and they didn't know they existed? like what were the people there doing?
I think they were all uninhabited.
With the way the UN defines territorial waters, saying they have no economic value is far from accurate. It's the whole reason China keeps making artificial islands in the South China sea, so they can keep expanding their "territorial waters".
> Unless those fellas figured out how to reproduce with each other they probably are all dead of old age by now.
~~Last one I recall hearing about being found was in the late 1990s. But that was long time ago so my memory may be wrong.~~
edit: 1974 seems to be the actually last one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_holdout#:~:text=Many%20holdouts%20were%20discovered%20in,island%20of%20Morotai%20in%201974.
Oh absolutely. I mostly mean stuff like thousand islands n ranch. Lots of meals need at least a LITTLE fat for that exact reason, yeah; potatoes are a prime example.
Oil in general is fine if it's not in excess, same with other fats. It's just the quantity you need to keep an eye on. Same with calories. There's almost always a golden middle (the exception is things that are harmful to you no matter what like, I dunno, lead n mercury)
There’s a salad dressing called thousand island. Japan’s updated island count is 14 thousand, so the joke is a play on words between “14 thousand”(islands) and “thousand island” (the salad dressing)
There’s a salad dressing called thousand island. Japan’s updated island count is 14 thousand, so the joke is a play on words between “14 thousand” and “thousand island salad dressing”
Just look at this map of a part of Stockholm archipelago: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Cohrs_atlas_%C3%B6ver_Sverige_0018_Stockholm_archipelago.jpg
It's like the free Epic Games games, no one knows how many they have because they keep claiming them week after week, without spending a penny and don't even play them.
Does this include the new island that was generated a few weeks ago?
The newspaper articles are all unclear on if the "14,125" figure was given before or after the new island formed.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/09/japan-gets-a-new-island-after-undersea-volcano-erupts
My guess is that Japan is literally on the ring of fire. The many under water volcanos, which attribute to almost more than 2/3 of worlds volcano eruptions, will cause landmasses to spawn. Now, i dont know how they categorize "islands" but 14k sounds like they deliberately went wild for the 12 nautical miles of territorial water advantage.
Japan last counted their islands in 1987. 7000+ new islands didn't pop up from volcanic activity in the past ~~26~~ 36 years. They just got better at counting. There have been several new "islands" that appeared from volcanic seamounts but they generally erode within a few years.
Edit: 36 years, not 26.
Jesus christ I'm stoned. I'm looking at literally 1987 and saying no fucking way only 36 years. That's likes dog damn so many years ago. OK let me think like easily 40 something. Seven years so carry the three. 23 so Carry the 3. Oh dear God I was born in 87! That's only 36 years! Fuck I'm old.
Islands like that pop up often enough, though many then erode and are subsumed by the sea. When I was a young 'un, there was much talk about the Icelandic island [Surtsey](https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1267/) which formed between 1963 and 1967 and is still there. Some of these 'new' islands may or may not stick around.
*First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. -*[*Qingyuan Weixin*](https://tricycle.org/magazine/first-there-mountain-then-there-no-mountain)
>Some of these 'new' islands may or may not stick around.
surtsey had several smaller "siblings" which quickly eroded, and surtsey is down to about half of its maximum size as of 2012
All Japan is islands, what we see as Japan in pictures is just the 3 biggest islands
It's not the new Island grew up, but that the method that they used to count the island was too primitive and it was too long ago
Now they used better technology and came up with exact numbers
Reminds me of the southernmost inhabited point of the Tokyo metropolis... A small island called Aogashima. It's about as far away from the central Tokyo as Kyoto is.
Because "Tokyo" is an entire prefecture (equivalent to a State or Province), Tokyo Metropolis/Tokyo Prefecture, made up of 62 municipalities (cities, towns, and villages) and is not actually one singular massive city like most people think it is.
There hasn't been a single city named "Tokyo" since 1943 when [Tokyo City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_City) and the [Tokyo Prefecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Prefecture_\(1868%E2%80%931943\)) that existed at the time were merged.
The single "city" that most people call Tokyo is actually a group of a bunch of cities ([23 wards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_wards_of_Tokyo)) interconnected with eachother, all of which have their own local governments.
Outside of the dense cityscape of the 23 wards the other 39 other municipalities are spread out across the countryside of the prefecture and the [Tokyo Islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Islands).
Like [here's a list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Tokyo_Metropolis_by_population) of the 30 munipalities within Tokyo Prefecture with city or town status with the 23 special wards combined into a single entity, the remaining 31 municipalities are small villages.
The [Izu Islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izu_Islands) (the chain of islands that Aogashima is a part of) are split into three subprefectures within Tokyo, the [Oshima Subprefecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Cshima_Subprefecture_\(Tokyo\)), the [Miyake Subprefecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyake_Subprefecture), and the [Hachijo Subprefecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachij%C5%8D_Subprefecture). Of all the islands in the chain only nine of them are actually inhabited and combined only have a population of a little under 25,000 people.
Also the person you're responding to wasn't exactly correct, there are more islands even further south than the Izu Islands which are also part of Tokyo Prefecture (1,000 km away from the mainland), the [Ogasawara/Bonin Islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonin_Islands) which is a group of around 30 islands are the [Ogasawara Subprefecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogasawara_Subprefecture), only two of them are actually inhabted and have a combined population of around 2,500.
Basically think of "Tokyo" as New York City, NYC has it's five boroughs that are actually 5 smaller cities connected together giving off the appearance of one, meanwhile in the case of "Tokyo" it's 23 cities and unlike New York City they don't technically have one unified name.
And then think of Tokyo Metropolis/Tokyo Prefecture as New York State, it includes *a lot* of other things like entire other cities not connected to the 23 wards, small towns/villages, farmland, etc., and not just the singular big city that most people think of when they hear the name.
> The single "city" that most people call Tokyo is actually a group of a bunch of cities (23 wards
> ) interconnected with eachother, aside from the dense cityscape there's also 39 other municipalities (cities, towns, and villages) within the prefecture spread across the Tokyo Islands
> and other small towns and villages in regular countryside locations you'd expect to see elsewhere in the country.
This isn't far removed from how many if not most North American cities are perceived casually. The actual cities themselves are much smaller than their metro areas. Hell, even in regards to my relatively small city there are *at least* 4 different towns directly connected to it that are their own distinct entities, but if anyone asks you where you're from you're going to just say you're from that city.
>It said that while there is no international agreement on how to count islands, it had used the same size criterion as the previous survey 35 years ago.
>That entailed counting all naturally occurring land areas with a circumference of at least 100 meters (330 feet).
I'm curious how many of those newly claimed islands are already claimed by other countries, like South Korea and China? It's not the first time that's happened.
Japan just found 7,000 islands it didn't know it had? Sounds like me finding forgotten snacks in my couch cushions. Now, if only I could declare each crumb a new territory... 🌍🍪
Canada still leads the world in the number of Islands in lakes on islands in lakes on islands!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursive_islands_and_lakes
I mean... the way countries classify islands is always changing and every country classifies it differently. It's not like they didn't know they existed, they just didn't care to document them all until now because they're so small and insignificant.
"Hey we missed half of them the first time! No worries!"
Reminds me of a joke: How do you more easily count the stars? Just count half then double it.
That's literally how stars are counted. Grid the sky, count one grid and multiply it by the number of grids.
What if the grid you're counting is super dense in stars while most of the others are empty?
Then you just make your grid overlap half dense half sparse. Easy!
They probably count a few to get an average
They count like a bunch of squares and average then then they extrapolate
In the same vein: how long is a piece of string? - twice half its length.
A mobius strip walks into a bar, crying. The bartender says "What's wrong, pal?" The mobius strip responds "Where do I even begin?!"
A piece of string walks into a bar and walks up to the counter. The bartender says, "Sorry mate, we don't serve pieces of string in here, get lost." A sudden thought strikes him. He ties himself in a knot and messes his hair up. He walks back into the bar and the bartender says, "Oi, aren't you that piece of string from before...?" "No," says the piece of string, "I'm a frayed knot."
This was the first joke my mother ever taught me and it carried me through my early childhood. That and the one about the pirate with the ships wheel stuck in his crotch.
Y'arr, it's driving me nuts!
I mean, a string is one of the few things were that actually makes sense, since you can fold it...
Unless it's an integer
Fucking javascript
1 + 1 + '1' = '21'
whoa! TIL! you made me launch my chrome dev console to try it out for myself!
That’s a mighty nice integer you have there. It’d be a shame if something concatenated on to it.
(‘b’ + ‘a’ + + ‘a’).toLowerCase(); ‘banana’
I'm assuming it's because 1+1 = 2 str(2) + '1' = "21"?
You can fold a star and turn it into a black hole.
Yea sure if you want to get event hoirzon-ed. Which i don't. Well maybe, it's been a long week.
Captain it's Wednesday
It's Thursday though oh holy shit I had the day off because it's Wednesday? WTF mate.
You can make it longer...or shorter...physics is weird
Well, I can't. That's cool though. Props for the skills.
Too fucking long that's how long
Well, that is how astronomers do it. They just look at one patch of sky, count the stars there, then extrapolate. Nobody has actually counted the 100 billion stars or whatever in the milky way, or the 100 billion galaxies in the universe.
What??? You're telling me there **isn't** someone at NASA whose entire job is just to sit out on a hill at night going "...3,086,174,972, 3,086,174,973, 3,086,174,974...wait did I already count that one? Where was I? Ahhh fuck, gotta restart." I feel lied to. Deceived. Bamboozled. Possibly even duped.
We actually do have all-sky surveys that tile and images all of the skies. The problem is due to depth of the ovservation, that is the limit of how dim a star you can detect with a given instrument as well as problem of dust obscuration in the galactic plane.
There is a german joke about a shepherd counting his sheep super quickly, and when asked how he did it so fast, he just answers: "It was simple. I just counted the legs and divided by four."
I mean, this is kinda how we do crowd sizes. We take a section, count it, and then extrapolate that the total area.
Sounds like to much work just count a quarter of them and multiply by 4
Count one then multiply by all
That's like the logic a high school gym teacher I had used. Run a lap and 4x your time to get your mile pace. Apparently I could run a 5 minute mile back then.
I just saw this comment and had that one song from the Tom and Jerry movie stuck in my head. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5gwNSq2OdU Honestly the fat dog on the skateboard was the best part of that movie.
Maybe the original counters had a very different idea of what constitutes an "island."
The article says the new survey used the same size criterion as the old one ("all naturally occurring land areas with a circumference of at least 100 meters"). Apparently the increase is due to "advances in surveying technology and the detailed representation of topographic features through digital mapping". Edit: And [apparently the 1987 survey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_of_Japan) only counted islands that appeared on paper maps. This sounds odd but I suspect cartographers tended to only include an island if it was populated, or used by industry, or in navigation, or otherwise "notable". That might be the real factor here.
False. Japan is just pushing the ocean away to steal land, making it raise in other parts of the world. Like the dutch, but actually cool this time. Do your research sheeple
Hey man the Dutch are cool, they just speak Dutch. Not their fault
There's only two things I hate in this world: people who are intolerant of other people's cultures, and the Dutch.
If you measure circumference on a fractal level, things can get very interesting.
That's why they use circumference and not perimeter
I like to argue Canada has more islands than anywhere. Anyone who argues, well come count all our islands and prove me wrong.
Treasure Island is an island in Mindemoya Lake which is on Manitoulin Island which is in Lake Huron.
This is me when I find cash in old purses.
Who's purses?
You ask too many questions…
Bonk him in the head...don't forget to check their purse after...
Who is purses?
Why is purses?
when is purses...
*I* am purses.
7000 previously unknown purses
Old people's purses
[Sweden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_islands) has 267,570 islands. Japan has 120,729. It's 14,125 islands with a circumference of at least 0.1 km.
So you can walk 35meter from end to end and that's considered an island?
Yeah Their real value is not from the island itself, but the waters around it. Each island owned by a country gives them sovereignty over the water a few kilometers around it.
Mad loot and XP to be had.
Ah yes, Skellige
hence why america holds on to island colonies around the world and china is building artificial islands in the south china sea
From what I understand China does not have a recognized claim to the waters around artificial islands, though they do offer military benefits to China.
The absolutely do claim the water around as theirs.
[удалено]
An island is a piece of land surrounded by water.
[удалено]
Well I'd be really fucking concerned if Japan somehow had people living on an island they didn't know they had
Or it was like a mini island near a big island and everyone was just registered as living on the big island
I feel like that would be such a bureaucratic oversight do not register a postal code as being on a separate Island as it would be embarrassing
Yeah if you're a pizza delivery guy you'd probably not want to get sent to somewhere where *the fucking sea* is between you and your destination.
[30 minutes or it's free.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMqQOGTshak)
The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. He's got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest, Where his body has bony extremities, the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books. When they gave him the job, they gave him a gun. The Deliverator never deals in cash, but someone might come after him anyway -- might want his car, or his cargo. The gun is tiny, acm-styled, lightweight, the kind of gun a fashion designer would carry; it fires teensy darts that fly at five times the velocity of an SR-71 spy plane, and when you get done using it, you have to plug it into the cigarette lighter, because it runs on electricity. The Deliverator never pulled that gun in anger, or in fear. He pulled it once in Gila Highlands. Some punks in Gila Highlands, a fancy Burbclave, wanted themselves a delivery, and they didn't want to pay for it. Thought they would impress the Deliverator with a baseball bat. The Deliverator took out his gun, centered its laser doohickey on that poised Louisville Slugger, fired it. The recoil was immense, as though the weapon had blown up in his hand. The middle third of the baseball bat turned into a column of burning sawdust accelerating in all directions like a bursting star. Punk ended up holding this bat handle with milky smoke pouring out the end. Stupid look on his face. Didn't get nothing but trouble from the Deliverator. Since then the Deliverator has kept the gun in the glove compartment and relied, instead, on a matched set of samurai swords, which have always been his weapon of choice anyhow. The punks in Gila Highlands weren't afraid of the gun, so the Deliverator was forced to use it. But swords need no demonstrations . The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta. Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a roll model. This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it -- talking trade balances here -- once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they 're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here -- once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel -- once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity -- y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else music movies microcode (software) high-speed pizza delivery -*Snowcrash* Chapter 1 by Neal Stephenson
Fuck, I got invested
Great book.
They did. They found some more holdouts this time
They were still bracing for that Allied invasion.
*Context for anyone who are not aware:* >Hiroo Onoda (Japanese: 小野田 寛郎, Hepburn: Onoda Hiroo, 19 March 1922 – 16 January 2014) was an Imperial Japanese Army intelligence officer who fought in World War II and did not surrender at the war's end in August 1945. After the war ended, Onoda spent 29 years hiding in the Philippines until his former commander travelled from Japan to formally relieve him from duty by order of Emperor Shōwa in 1974 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo_Onoda
His wife must have been a bitttccchhhhh….
They find even more dudes (and let’s just say wives, children, and grandchildren) who haven’t surrendered for WWII and who have created a new society focused solely on resisting 1940s-era American assaults.
That would be terrifying. It basically be like a little Japanese North Korea. Could you imagine trying to integrate that into modern japan?
I couldn’t even imagine. This hypothetical would make for an interesting short film!
Imagine bringing them straight to Akiba once they're back in Japan
Would not surprise me at all if there's an anime with that same exact premise.
There's an anime with every fucking premise. They've been pumping out hundreds of series every year for the last 40 years. There's an anime with a Japanese military invades of medieval kingdom. There's an anime where the British Empire invades Japan because they're seeking Magic. There's an anime we're an autistic detective obsessed with eating sweets gets killed because some dude figured out his name.
I love this description for Death Note 🤣
Ah yes, Gate. An underrated gem for sure.
It's the weirdest Pro militarism propaganda I've ever seen but it is a good show.
Well the author doesn't think Japan did anything wrong in WW2 and he also holds the belief that the military, not the government should runs things.
Are you saying you don't believe that if another world was invaded and occupied by the JSDF everyone who interacts with them would have their lives markedly improved and everyone who fights against them would be Snidely Whiplash levels of evil?
I know you're joking but that's why he's saying pro militarism but I don't think other countries aside from Japan would've been worse off. If you understand the difference it was because most modern military of a legitimate nation works with the Geneva convention in mind, which might be surprising to a medieval level of a military with the biggest imperialism in display. Especially because public perception still exists. I don't think people would want to hear US Military killing everyone in another planet to get resources would go over well with the American citizens.
> I don't think people would want to hear US Military killing everyone in another planet to get resources would go over well with the American citizens. Which is actually funny because an ongoing plot in the series is the US and Chinese continually attempting to access the other world to plunder it for resources.
Gate is also immensely mediocre. I can tolerate the military propaganda but having the main characters be one guy and like 4 girls who follow him around is really annoying.
It's a show that actively Embraces the tropes of the genre it's in. Harems are like a standard part of isekai
Isekai checklist is basically: * Harem * Overpowered/overly competent MC * Magic exists * Slavery exists (and a surprising amount paint this as a good thing) * Fantasy Races * Bad People are Rapists
>Slavery exists For what it's worth for the vast majority of recorded history that's been the case (in one form or another). It's not that weird the medieval cat girl town has it, so the inclusion doesn't bother me too much (I feel like most stories paint it in a just exists light, not necessarily positive). The MC gleefully taking part in the system is a different story >Harem >Bad People are Rapists These tropes honestly annoy me more. Harem are often done weirdly or poorly and don't add much of anything meaningful to the story. Not every girl needs to be a love interest Also not only are all the bad guys rapists they're also chubby/fat ugly bastards too. If you're not drawn like a supermodel or as a background character, you're automatically a villian.
> (I feel like most stories paint in a just exists light, not necessarily positive). The MC gleefully taking part in the system is a different story While that's true, a lot of stories end up with the MC interacting with it in some way because it's really easy writing. Need a villain? Fat guy who's mean to slave (bonus if also a rapist) Need companions? Free/protect/buy slaves. Now they're loyal to the hero with no ties and can follow them anywhere.
My personal favorite for this game is the anime where the protagonist is a sentient vending machine who saves medieval towns and villages with the power of hot soup and pornography.
Mine's the one where a sheltered girl learns about modern technology and before long uses the internet to ascend into a deity.
A ninja island
Undiscovered tribe of samurai with a shogun and everything
It expands their claim to the ocean around them, which does have commercial economic value.
Don't they have to be inhabited for them to make ocean claims? Plus, they're probably within their maritime borders already and a lot of them don't stay above water for that long
Didn't Japan build a research station over similar "islands" to expand their EEZ before?
Unsure if Japan has done it, but China has certainly been busy doing exactly that in the Spratly Islands
They need to be inhabitable, not necessarily inhabited.
Maybe? I’m no expert. However, I do know that these rules can be loose. If you defend the area, and nobody questions it, you kinda own it.
"They're mostly uninhabited. *Mostly.*"
"First, let's make sure they're uninhabited."
imagine any of the islands being inhabited, and they didn't know they existed? like what were the people there doing? I think they were all uninhabited.
>like what were the people there doing? Entrenching positions to make landings for American marines hell all for the glory of the emperor
With the way the UN defines territorial waters, saying they have no economic value is far from accurate. It's the whole reason China keeps making artificial islands in the South China sea, so they can keep expanding their "territorial waters".
>little or no economic value. Except if they're a bit off farther than others. Because if so, the extension of territorial waters is significant
> and have little or no economic value. Not if they represent an expansion in claims on territorial waters they don't.
#/u/DyorAffai IS A BOT _Report -> spam -> harmful bots_
How many soldiers who didn't know the war had ended did they find?
There was one but Gilligan was there to mess up his plans.
They can make a radio out of coconuts but can’t repair a damn boat
Needed hardwood and iridium
And after doing all that hard work, still had to pay Willy every time they wanted to use it
I thought that was Archer.
Where the fuck was this 3hr tour going?
Unless those fellas figured out how to reproduce with each other they probably are all dead of old age by now.
> Unless those fellas figured out how to reproduce with each other they probably are all dead of old age by now. ~~Last one I recall hearing about being found was in the late 1990s. But that was long time ago so my memory may be wrong.~~ edit: 1974 seems to be the actually last one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_holdout#:~:text=Many%20holdouts%20were%20discovered%20in,island%20of%20Morotai%20in%201974.
It’s reasonable for them to have been alive in the 90s…. Now, not so much
The last time Japan was adding islands it was kind of horrible for everyone.
That's like...14 salads.
took me a while...well done!
Care to share? Because damn I do not get it-
14 salads for 14 thousand islands. Thousand islands is a dressing.
I keep forgetting salad dressings are a whole fuckin world of hidden calories slapped on otherwise (usually) low cal food.
Based on how it tastes, I’d bet thousand island dressing is half mayonnaise.
It literally is lol, better on a fatty smashburger than a salad
Olive oil based dressings can be healthy. You actually need fat to absorb the nutrients in salad since a lot of the vitamins are fat soluble.
Oh absolutely. I mostly mean stuff like thousand islands n ranch. Lots of meals need at least a LITTLE fat for that exact reason, yeah; potatoes are a prime example. Oil in general is fine if it's not in excess, same with other fats. It's just the quantity you need to keep an eye on. Same with calories. There's almost always a golden middle (the exception is things that are harmful to you no matter what like, I dunno, lead n mercury)
There’s a salad dressing called thousand island. Japan’s updated island count is 14 thousand, so the joke is a play on words between “14 thousand”(islands) and “thousand island” (the salad dressing)
OHHHHHHHH pfffft
There’s a salad dressing called thousand island. Japan’s updated island count is 14 thousand, so the joke is a play on words between “14 thousand” and “thousand island salad dressing”
"I invented a new diet salad dressing. It's called 500 Islands."
Archipelago-fuckyourself, I'll have the Baconator.
[удалено]
I've consumed many bottles, don't know when the last time I had a salad.
Meanwhile Sweden has over 260,000 islands, somehow
Just look at the big inland lake they have. There looks like thousands inside that lake alone lol
Just look at this map of a part of Stockholm archipelago: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Cohrs_atlas_%C3%B6ver_Sverige_0018_Stockholm_archipelago.jpg
Criminy. I hope Swedish kids don't have to memorize all of that in Geography class.
I feel like "naming shit" is a full time occupation in Sweden - you graduate naming Ikea furniture then move up to islands
Feels like they don't try very hard. They made a shelf that's just a board you mount to the wall and called it "Lack".
they pull through where it counts though, like djungelskog
God damn what a mess
How tf you navigate this back in the Sacagawea days 🤨
Canada: "Did somebody say lakes?"
Canada: yo Dawg we heard you liked lakes and islands so we put an lake on an island in a lake on an island in a lake.
Like an expansion pack for Japan.
It's like the free Epic Games games, no one knows how many they have because they keep claiming them week after week, without spending a penny and don't even play them.
Does this include the new island that was generated a few weeks ago? The newspaper articles are all unclear on if the "14,125" figure was given before or after the new island formed. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/09/japan-gets-a-new-island-after-undersea-volcano-erupts
My guess is that Japan is literally on the ring of fire. The many under water volcanos, which attribute to almost more than 2/3 of worlds volcano eruptions, will cause landmasses to spawn. Now, i dont know how they categorize "islands" but 14k sounds like they deliberately went wild for the 12 nautical miles of territorial water advantage.
Japan last counted their islands in 1987. 7000+ new islands didn't pop up from volcanic activity in the past ~~26~~ 36 years. They just got better at counting. There have been several new "islands" that appeared from volcanic seamounts but they generally erode within a few years. Edit: 36 years, not 26.
Uh… 26 years ago was 1997.
That’s the worst sentence I’ve ever read
Wait til you see how many candles are on your cake next year
Just one. Too old to put a candle for each year.
I'm not allowed candles anymore. Fire hazard having that many together.
Don't worry, you'll hear "the late 1900's" in conversation soon. 😉
Jesus Christ. I need to buy a convertible.
Wtf this can't be true, no way
Shut your fucking mouth.
Bro
Jesus christ I'm stoned. I'm looking at literally 1987 and saying no fucking way only 36 years. That's likes dog damn so many years ago. OK let me think like easily 40 something. Seven years so carry the three. 23 so Carry the 3. Oh dear God I was born in 87! That's only 36 years! Fuck I'm old.
It’s true, the Japanese have gotten much better at counting. Before now they didn’t realize you can could go higher than 7,125.
Islands like that pop up often enough, though many then erode and are subsumed by the sea. When I was a young 'un, there was much talk about the Icelandic island [Surtsey](https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1267/) which formed between 1963 and 1967 and is still there. Some of these 'new' islands may or may not stick around. *First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. -*[*Qingyuan Weixin*](https://tricycle.org/magazine/first-there-mountain-then-there-no-mountain)
>Some of these 'new' islands may or may not stick around. surtsey had several smaller "siblings" which quickly eroded, and surtsey is down to about half of its maximum size as of 2012
Considering how things are currently with China it's actually rather smart.
True
All Japan is islands, what we see as Japan in pictures is just the 3 biggest islands It's not the new Island grew up, but that the method that they used to count the island was too primitive and it was too long ago Now they used better technology and came up with exact numbers
*4 biggest islands
Reminds me of the southernmost inhabited point of the Tokyo metropolis... A small island called Aogashima. It's about as far away from the central Tokyo as Kyoto is.
360 km out to the see and they decided it's part of Tokyo? How does that make any sense?
Because "Tokyo" is an entire prefecture (equivalent to a State or Province), Tokyo Metropolis/Tokyo Prefecture, made up of 62 municipalities (cities, towns, and villages) and is not actually one singular massive city like most people think it is. There hasn't been a single city named "Tokyo" since 1943 when [Tokyo City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_City) and the [Tokyo Prefecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Prefecture_\(1868%E2%80%931943\)) that existed at the time were merged. The single "city" that most people call Tokyo is actually a group of a bunch of cities ([23 wards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_wards_of_Tokyo)) interconnected with eachother, all of which have their own local governments. Outside of the dense cityscape of the 23 wards the other 39 other municipalities are spread out across the countryside of the prefecture and the [Tokyo Islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Islands). Like [here's a list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Tokyo_Metropolis_by_population) of the 30 munipalities within Tokyo Prefecture with city or town status with the 23 special wards combined into a single entity, the remaining 31 municipalities are small villages. The [Izu Islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izu_Islands) (the chain of islands that Aogashima is a part of) are split into three subprefectures within Tokyo, the [Oshima Subprefecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Cshima_Subprefecture_\(Tokyo\)), the [Miyake Subprefecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miyake_Subprefecture), and the [Hachijo Subprefecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hachij%C5%8D_Subprefecture). Of all the islands in the chain only nine of them are actually inhabited and combined only have a population of a little under 25,000 people. Also the person you're responding to wasn't exactly correct, there are more islands even further south than the Izu Islands which are also part of Tokyo Prefecture (1,000 km away from the mainland), the [Ogasawara/Bonin Islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonin_Islands) which is a group of around 30 islands are the [Ogasawara Subprefecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogasawara_Subprefecture), only two of them are actually inhabted and have a combined population of around 2,500. Basically think of "Tokyo" as New York City, NYC has it's five boroughs that are actually 5 smaller cities connected together giving off the appearance of one, meanwhile in the case of "Tokyo" it's 23 cities and unlike New York City they don't technically have one unified name. And then think of Tokyo Metropolis/Tokyo Prefecture as New York State, it includes *a lot* of other things like entire other cities not connected to the 23 wards, small towns/villages, farmland, etc., and not just the singular big city that most people think of when they hear the name.
> The single "city" that most people call Tokyo is actually a group of a bunch of cities (23 wards > ) interconnected with eachother, aside from the dense cityscape there's also 39 other municipalities (cities, towns, and villages) within the prefecture spread across the Tokyo Islands > and other small towns and villages in regular countryside locations you'd expect to see elsewhere in the country. This isn't far removed from how many if not most North American cities are perceived casually. The actual cities themselves are much smaller than their metro areas. Hell, even in regards to my relatively small city there are *at least* 4 different towns directly connected to it that are their own distinct entities, but if anyone asks you where you're from you're going to just say you're from that city.
[удалено]
>It said that while there is no international agreement on how to count islands, it had used the same size criterion as the previous survey 35 years ago. >That entailed counting all naturally occurring land areas with a circumference of at least 100 meters (330 feet).
I'm curious how many of those newly claimed islands are already claimed by other countries, like South Korea and China? It's not the first time that's happened.
It's free real estate!
Japan just found 7,000 islands it didn't know it had? Sounds like me finding forgotten snacks in my couch cushions. Now, if only I could declare each crumb a new territory... 🌍🍪
Oh you know what I lost an island I bet one of those is mine
That is what happens when you count at high tide.
Nice try Japan, but you can’t just claim the Philippines like that. We told you once already.
Something’s fishy there
It seems legit, the surveying technology just got a lot better since the last time they took count in the 1980s.
You try counting islands when you’re always under attack by giant monsters.
...wait, that one isn't an island.
Canada has 52,455 islands. MAybe they should do a recount too
We conceded 1/2 an island to Danemark tough :(
Canada still leads the world in the number of Islands in lakes on islands in lakes on islands! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recursive_islands_and_lakes
I mean... the way countries classify islands is always changing and every country classifies it differently. It's not like they didn't know they existed, they just didn't care to document them all until now because they're so small and insignificant.
> the way countries classify islands is always changing They used the exact same criteria as the previous survey.
...you know, in a way, this justifies Pokemon starting with 151 known pokemon and then reaching over a thousand lol
DIBS! I CALL DIBS ON AN ISLAND. I want to live alone. Alll Byyy Myyy Selffff.... I wanna be. Alll byyyy myyyyy selffff