Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
In a scene full of shady Japanese car importers, Florida-based Rivsu Imports was supposed to be one of the good ones. No illegal cars. All legit. And with JDM imports on the rise, they seemed like the perfect shop to invest in. But that was before its owners up and disappeared. Last November, Rivsu, a…
Lonely seniors are shoplifting in search of the community and stability of jail. Every aging society faces distinct challenges. But Japan, with the world’s oldest population (27.3 percent of its citizens are 65 or older, almost twice the share in the U.S.), has been dealing with one it didn’t foresee: senior crime. Complaints and arrests…
2017’s “YouTube Rewind,” the end-of-year advertisement for the biggest trends and hottest creators on the platform, urges people to come together after an awful year. This heartfelt sentiment lasts about thirty seconds before the camera plunges back down to earth, where a rooftop party rages. Here, two blonde men look out at the horizon, squad…
TOKYO — North Korea claimed the entire United States mainland was within reach after “successfully” testing a new kind of intercontinental ballistic missile, which it called the Hwasong-15, and said could carry a “super large heavy warhead.” While Pyongyang is prone to exaggeration, its boast of having all of the United States in range is…
Do you want to play a game? That’s the question posed by a novel piece of ransomware that challenges victims to achieve a high score in a video game instead of demanding cash to unlock files. Yeah. “Minamitsu ‘The Captain’ Murasa encrypted your precious data like documents, musics [sic], pictures, and some kinda project files,” a…
The Wild Boars of Fukushima Six years after the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, the evacuation zone around the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant remains devoid of humans—but the boars have moved in. Reuters reports that after the people left, wild boars living in the nearby hills came down to the towns…
A future in which human workers are replaced by machines is about to become a reality at an insurance firm in Japan, where more than 30 employees are being laid off and replaced with an artificial intelligence system that can calculate payouts to policyholders. Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance believes it will increase productivity by 30%…
But does she know? Dunno! But goodness, I hope she does. Kennedy is the U.S. Ambassador to Japan and, as pointed out on 2ch, earlier this summer at a diplomatic event in Tokyo for American Independence Day, she wore this (photo via akasaka-teran): Just seems like some Uncle Sam type costume, right? Well, let this…
TOKYO — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had hoped to present Russian President Vladimir Putin with a “bridegroom” for Yume, the Akita dog Japanese officials gave the Kremlin leader in 2012. But a Japanese lawmaker said Putin turned down the offer of a companion for Yume, whose name means “Dream.” It may not be the last…
The man pictured below, the one arming himself with a head-missile made from a menu, is sometimes known as “Yukio Uchida.” If you meet him in person and ask for his name, he’ll tell you it’s Mark Kagaya. The one and only. If you ask him how he got to where he is now, he’d…