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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • When Japan began interacting with China, Japan did not have a writing system. So Japan had to adopt Chinese characters and shoehorn it into their own language, in order to be able to trade with China and stuff. They later invented their own writing systems. But kanji kind of just continued to hang around. I imagine that part of it is just because kanji was already so ingrained that it became difficult to get rid of. It’s kind of like saying why don’t we fix English to get rid of all the weird letter combinations and make it more phonetic? It’s kind of a big undertaking.

    Kanji is also very economical from a perspective of how compact it is and how quickly it can be read. You can fit a ton of information in a very small space, and you can understand the words at a glance.

    There is a funny thing among Japanese learners. Ask a beginner their thoughts on kanji, and they will often complain about how difficult it is to learn, and how it doesn’t make sense to keep kanji around. Then take someone who has spent several years studying and become fairly proficient, and ask them to read a passage that is entirely in hiragana or katakana. That person will likely complain about how difficult it is to read, because they have to look at each individual character and sound out the words.


  • A lot of people don’t see what their parents had to deal with, because by the time we are old enough to notice those things, they have already had a chance to work their way upward. Not to say that certain things might not have been easier back then, because in some ways it certainly was. But I hear about how my grandparents worked in a factory or joined the military because it was their only option at the time, and then I hear about how my great grandmother had 8 children to take care of as a single parent, and she walked miles to get to work in her factory job. Things have always been difficult depending on circumstances.


  • It varies from person to person and place to place. But generally, I would say that America is a pretty good place, but not perfect and has a lot of room for improvement.

    Yes, healthcare is expensive, but we have some government programs to provide cheaper care for certain groups, like the very poor, the elderly, and veterans.

    Violence varies from place to place, but I feel like I live in a safe area, and I have never seen or heard a gun fired at someone in a public place.

    A lot of the bad laws typically involve disenfranchising certain minority groups. I am lucky enough to not be affected by most of this, and a lot of people are fighting back against it by trying to vote in better politicians.





  • I see the problem as, most people on Lemmy are already signed up to an instance that they are happy with. If the instance offers something to really differentiate itself, such as a focus on certain types of communities, or different types of rules or moderation than most other instances, then it might have a chance at catching on. But otherwise, I feel like it would be very hard to promote an instance if its 95% the same as all the other instances.







  • So there used to be this cartoon called Silverhawks, which was about these dudes who are partially made of metal and they can fly.

    First dream I can remember, I was at the doctor and they wanted to give me a shot in my leg. I was really afraid of needles at the time, but suddenly I became a Silverhawk. The nurse was trying to stick the needle in my thigh, but my thigh was metal, so her plan was foiled.


  • The RIF app was reddit to me. I would typically spend over an hour per day on it.

    I do still check Reddit maybe once a day on my desktop, maybe for about 5 minutes. There are still a few communities on there which don’t have an active alternative here on Lemmy. However, I have deleted all my old posts and comments, and I do not make any new ones.


  • It’s kind of the opposite for me. Like many people said, when you are young, every experience mostly feels new. However, when everything feels new to you, there’s really nothing special about it. For me, I always embraced the familiar. I look back at my memories of family vacations with disappointment, because as everyone else was wanting to go and do fun things, I was complaining about how I would rather be watching TV or playing my gameboy. Now as an adult, I understand how precious our experiences can be. I look out at a mountain and I appreciate the beauty of it. I think about the history that has taken place around it. I think about how other people might have experienced it. I get so much more from it than I ever would have as a child.