A “senior China correspondent” that cites Radio Free Asia for anything can probably be safely ignored, especially given her history of articles.

My company just had a web conference for upper management where they talked about how sad workers were that they couldn’t see each other when remote working. They didn’t even try to frame it as a productivity thing, they just wanted to make it sound like an employee well being effort.

Of all the issues raised to me during the pandemic, not once did “I’m sad I can’t see my coworkers” come up.

Yes, the US is purposely starving the world.

Unironically yes. While the US is particularly fond of bombs and drones, another favourite weapon of theirs is starving the countries of people who have the audacity to disagree with them. See: Cuba*, DPRK. As a bonus, they even get to blame the countries they are starving for the lack of food.

Not even only other countries, the US is happy to do it to their own people because the hungry are easier to exploit. The US has an absolute staggering amount of food waste, it is the largest component of most US landfills. They’d sooner throw away food before giving it to the needy. In many cases, they will punish you for giving it to the needy (see the charitable organizations repeatedly fined in Texas for feeding the homeless).

*Incidentally this exact same map can be used for countries voting to end the US sanctions of Cuba.

Japanese permanent resident here.

Epidurals are very rare. They exist but they are not popular at all. Some is the belief that a “natural” birth is better. In some cases it is just availability of an anesthiaologist that is equipped to do one. Some people just don’t even realise it is an option. The only people I know here who have had one were non-Japanese residents.

I don’t think people necessarily look down on a mother who has one, it’s rare enough that nobody would even ask probably, but it’s just not a common procedure.

Technically the work week is the same, not factoring in commutes. Folks who work in Tokyo often live in neighboring cities like Saitama and commute in.

There’s typically a lot of unpaid overtime though. There is the concept of “black companies” that force employees to work up to 100 hours a week. To some degree the government has been trying to crack down on it, and has met with some success, especially with the bigger international. My company is the Japanese branch of a US company, so we are a little better than most, but some of that still happens. I probably work about 45-50 hours a week on the clock on average, plus maybe 2-3 off the clock. I don’t live or work in Tokyo anymore, so my commute is fairly insignificant.

Thankfully the “you have to go out drinking with all of your coworkers after work” thing has mostly fallen by the wayside. Those events still happen, but it is way more acceptable to just…not go.

Source: I have worked in Japan my entire adult life

I stand corrected comrade. I admit I lack the technical expertise on doohickeys, I need to study more.

The fact you guys have The Blaster as an emoji is just

Yamagami has enough fans now he definitely could, they just need to let him out.

I would guess the ideathey were thinking is that if you are feeling trapped and depressed because of your debt, they offer a solution. It might just be more a permanent solution than you expected.

Sidenote, maybe it is different these days/at other schools, but when I was in uni posting over other adverts like this was a big no-no that would get your organization in trouble unless everything you covered was explicitly expired. Granted, we didn’t allow military recruiting at all, especially for foreign governments.

Isn’t there an AI-generated never-ending Seinfeld-clone on twitch already that gets a regular amount of viewers? Not sure if the novelty wore off for people or not yet.