Wired wrote an article about Amazon’s dream of having its AI buy stuff on behalf of customers. I am not going to dignify this inane, anti-competitive idea with my patented full analysis. Instead, I will note that Amazon’s current AI summaries of product reviews, most of which are probably fake anyway, are not ringing endorsements of the company’s prowess in this area.
Author Archives: Nicholas A. Ferrell
Resource on Tajik-Russia Dual Citizenship
Russian law neither provides for the possession of dual citizenship nor recognizes the foreign citizenship of its nationals. (Law on Citizenship art. 6.) Under this law, all individuals are treated as Russian citizens regardless of whether they have citizenship of a foreign country. An exception is made for the citizens of Tajikistan, the only country that has a relevant treaty with Russia. (Treaty Between the Russian Federation and Republic of Tajikistan on Regulating Dual Citizenship Issues, Sept. 7, 1995.) A similar treaty with Turkmenistan was terminated in 2015.
A May 1, 2020 report by Peter Roudik for the Law Library of Congress titled Russia: New Law Eliminates Requirement to Renounce Foreign Citizenship is a useful resource for legal issues involving dual citizens of Tajikistan and Russia. Toward the end of the report, it notes that Russia neither provides for nor prohibits dual citizenship. Instead, it treats Russian citizens as citizens of Russia and no other country. However, “[a]n exception is made for the citizens of Tajikistan, the only country that has a relevant treaty with Russia.” The relevant treaty took effect in 1997. This is a good starting source for establishing that Tajik citizens who are naturalized as Russian citizens do not lose their Tajik citizenship as a result of Russian naturalization. The article also links to the relevant Russian-language treaty.
Archive Today Works on Instagram
I was formatting a new article by my good friend Victor V. Gurbo for The New Leaf Journal. Victor included a link to an Instagram post by a Bob Dylan scholar. The link was significant because Victor quoted the post. I have never had an Instagram account (I do, however, have a Pixelfed account) and do not like linking to closed platforms. Out of curiosity, I tried opening the Instagram link in Mullvad Browser and was able to see the post. I then tried saving the Instagram post using Archive Today. The saving process took a long time, but it resulted in a near-perfect capture. I included the archive link alongside the original Instagram for people like me who do not use Instagram and prefer a capture of the post to trying to navigate to Instagram. One interesting point: The Archive Today image capture of the post is unusable due to an Instagram pop-up. But the page capture looks good.
Ai Ai Gasa in Living for the Day After Tomorrow
I wrote a survey of English-language sources on the ai ai gasa back in February. That survey was inspired by a review of the Teasing Master Takagi-san series-concluding movie. Since writing about ai ai gasa, I have become more aware of the love umbrella’s occasional cameos in TV anime, similarly to how writing about anime hair color made me pay more attention to hair color in new shows. I recently re-watched a 2006 series called Living for the Day After Tomorrow (aka Asatte no Houkou) for the purpose of writing a review, which I published on October 11. I was collecting screenshots for my articles while watching the episodes. Having written about ai ai gasa not too long ago, I could not help but take the following screen capture from near the end of the show.
Ai ai gasa in the sand of the beach! It gets washed away by a wave in the same scene. The names written are not of any characters in the anime. It is an artistic flourish to go along with a story that one character is telling another by the beach.
TikTok vs Traditional Media
According to Eric Lendrum of American Greatness: “A new survey shows that young Americans who frequently use the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok are much more likely to get their news from content creators rather than actual news outlets.” I am long on record as being an early member of the ban TikTok camp, specifically because no other great power in history would allow an adversary to perform live-action social experiments on its youngest citizens. I read this article about young people viewing CCP propaganda as an alternative to “actual news outlets” and thought “yes that is bad, but what is worse is that this is a battle between the resistable force and the movable object.”
Wayback Machine and My New Article Draft
I just published a review of Living for the Day After Tomorrow (a 2006 TV anime also known as Asatte no Hokou) on The New Leaf Journal. I had planned to simultaneously publish an article about how I first watched the show in June 2010 on Time Warner Cable’s Anime Network on Demand. I was able to pin down the exact week I started watching a 2006 anime in 2010 thanks to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Unfortunately, the Internet Archive was targeted by hackers a few days ago with a pro-Hamas hacker group claiming responsibility (responsibility not confirmed, however). While I could have published my finished draft Anime Network on Demand article today (it is not as if I am expecting it to be a big visit-driver), I decided to hold off until the Internet Archive is fully back online.
October 7 and the National Interest
The following quote comes from Jonathan Sacerdoti’s Israel’s triumphant response to 7 October, published in The Spectator on October 7, 2024:
Much of the concern surrounding Israel’s actions in the last year was not genuine, but a veiled excuse to criticise the state for defending itself. Critics lamented that Israel might sacrifice global goodwill in its pursuit of victory, but these criticisms are superficial and often placate those who have long sought to undermine Israel’s legitimacy. The notion that Israel should refrain from defending itself to preserve its reputation overlooks a critical reality: a nation’s first responsibility is its own survival, not global approval.
I could not have said it better myself. The essay, which discusses Israel’s national interest and the importance of deterrence in the specific context of surving in the Middle East (and especially as surving as a Jewish state in the Middle East) is worth reading in full.
The Annoying Anna Aveiro in Narenare: Cheer For You!
Maybe I could get through [Nanare Hananare] on a binge watch, but I doubt I’d like it, so I’m just not going to bother. Also Anna is god awful.
Takafumi of the Pls No Hate blog posted his review of the summer 2024 anime season. I always enjoy Takafumi’s reviews, both because of the good analysis and also because they include many shows I avoid. But one show we both watched and failed to finish was P.A. Works’ Nanare Hananare (localized by Crunchyroll as Narenare: Cheer For You!). Takafumi got through 2 episodes. I managed to make it through six before tapping out (I think I lost here). I had already begun writing an article over the weekend about my sometimes-difficult relationship with anime by studio P.A. Works, and I figured being able to link to a brief note on its most recently completed anime would be a nice addition to that in-progress article.
In his brief analysis of the first two Nanare Hananare episodes, Takafumi opined that “Anna is god awful.” “Anna” refers to Anna Aveiro, a blonde, overly-energetic, Japanese-Brazilian girl who gets the ball in the series rolling (despite not being the principal main protagonist) by roping four other girls into producing content for her online video channel. Despite the fact that Anna is Brazilian, it would be easy to confuse her with many of anime’s blonde Americans. She is hyper-active, very loud, blunt, has no concept of personal space, and has some very interesting English pronunciations for a supposedly native speaker.
I agree with Takafumi that Anna was annoying in the first two episodes. Takafumi also said of the show “Maybe I could get through it on a binge watch, but I doubt I’d like it, so I’m just not going to bother.” From someone who watched six episodes, allow me to opine that not bothering is the safe choice. Anna gets her own character arc in episodes 4-5 about trying to keep a musty local record store that she loves from closing. The show does establish why the record store is important to Anna. Given that she is in high school, one may think that this would be an opportunity for Anna to accept that businesses come and go and to express her gratitude to the store owner who had run his record shop as a labor of love and consistently treated her well. Instead, Anna throws a tantrum, sulks, and generally acts like a 10-year old before summoning foreign celebrities to Japan (with some of the worst anime-English I have heared, bad as in how I would sound trying to pronounce Japanese). The arc was not helped by the fact that everyone, from the other main characters to entirely new characters, indulged Anna all the way through the arc’s improbable positive conclusion. I stuck it out one episode after the arc, but I had lost all hope for the show after Anna and the record store.
As I noted at the top, I have a difficult relationship with studio P.A. Works. It produced what was nearly my 2015 anime of the year (Shirobako) and a few other pieces I like (True Tears and Sakura Quest). But mixed in with those are pleasant mediocrities (Tari Tari), series which underachieved on account of annoying characters (Hanasaku Iroha and The Aquatope on White Sand), underachievers for lack of direction (Angel Beats), trainwrecks that got my hopes up with pretty previews (Glasslip), and at least one anime atrocity (Charlotte). I will describe Nanare Hananare as an inoffensive mess. I could see someone who does not find Anna obnoxious and does not expect too much from Nanare Hananare finding it somewhat pleasant.
(Anna Aveiro aside, I will note that 2024 has been generous to other anime Annas, but that will have to wait for my 2024 year-end review in a few months.)
The Smell of Pokémon Cards
I was reading Hacker News comments about the trademarked scent of Play-Doh. I never thought about the smell of Play-Doh much, butit did occur to me that it has a unique scent. But as is often the case, the HN comments that jumped out to me were not directly about the topic. I quote HN user gambiting:
For me nothing beats the smell of Pokemon cards freshly out of a booster pack. I can recall that smell at a whim even though I haven’t opened any packs in years.
I probably have not opened a booster pack of Pokémon cards in more than 20 years (although I have played the Trading Card Game in other formats). But like user gambiting, I can remember the smell and the feeling of freshly opened Pokémon cards.
Almost Losing My Driving Glasses
Over on The New Leaf Journal, I wrote about (with photos and a GIF) being treated to an unexpected fireworks show on September 14, 2024, while sitting on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade with a friend. We left the Promenade about an hour after the fireworks show. I should say we almost left because just as we were almost in the clear, I realized that I was missing my BLUPOND Knight Vision Driving Glasses, which I reviewed on The New Leaf Journal all the way back in 2021. We retraced our steps and eventually found the glasses on the bench we had seen the fireworks from. All’s well that ends well.
WordPress.com Reader as Social Media
Blogger Chris Lovie-Taylor wrote about using WordPress Reader as his social network. I am only mildly acquainted with WordPress Reader because it is a part of wordpress.com instead of wordpress.org and both this site and The New Leaf Journal are powered by the WordPress software on a VPS. However, I do have a WordPress.com account and a created a single-page personal feed aggregator site (which could use a touch-up), so I have an idea of how WordPress Reader works. As Mr. Lovie-Taylor explains, you can automatically discover and follow WordPress.com site and add any site with an RSS/ATOM feed to your list of follows. I very much like the concept and appreciate that it allows following non-WordPress.com sites (.org sites can appear with the help of the Jetpack plugin but I am not running Jetpack on either of my sites). What I do not like is that it is tethered to WordPress.com. I think there is an idea here, however, for a “social” media site based on following external sites and sharing posts, maybe even with some Hypothes.is functionality.
Houthis and the “Rules-Based International System”
Sometimes good articles have silly headlines. One such example is a September 25, 2024 piece on Long War Journal titled The Houthis have challenged the Rules-Based International System and must be defeated. I agree that the Houthis, an Islamist Iranian proxy currently in control of much of Yemen, must be defeated. But I do not think they must be defeated because they are challenging some abstract rules-based international system. My concerns are more prudential. They should be defeated because they are currently using Iranian missiles to do remarkable damage to international shipping, occasionally firing them at Israel, and have within the last few years hit Saudi Arabian oil facilities. As a general matter, defeating violent Islamist Iranian proxies is a good thing without appealing to end of history speak. Of course, the article itself largely agrees, notwithstanding the vague headline.
Some anime can’t be carried by animation
On August 1, 2024, an interesting Anime News Network headline crossed my RSS feed: Can an Anime be ‘Carried by its Animation’? Late that same day, a headline from the always-excellent Sakugablog hit my feed reader: Gimai Seikatsu: An Eclectic Mix of Avant-Garde and Ordinary to Rise Above Limitations. I am not sure there has ever been so clear a case of one article in my feed set indirectly answering a question raised by another. Better yet – I thought of Gimai Seikatsu, localized by Crunchyroll as Days with My Stepsister, as soon as I saw the Anime News Network headline.
Last month, I wrote an article granting that in some cases, what would otherwise be a totally middling anime can be “carried by its animation.” But there are counter-points where a middling anime cannot be carried by its animation, no matter how impressive said animation may be. I thought of this when I read about the release of a new Blu-Ray box set of Aldnoah.Zero.
(The director of Aldnoah.Zero did direct my 2023 anime of the year, however, so redemption achieved!)
Searching for a Precise Motive
‘Ukraine’s Unwinnable War’ is a window into the strange mind of Ryan Routh.
I came across an article in my feed reader from The Free Press titled I Read the Would-be Trump Assassin’s Book So You Don’t Have To. I could not read much of the article because it is paywalled (it was part of one of my Real Clear feeds). That is all well in good since I do not have to read the book it is about. But one quote from the article excerpt caught my attention:
Although Routh’s precise motive remains unclear, his self-published book—Ukraine’s Unwinnable War: The Fatal Flaw of Democracy, World Abandonment and the Global Citizen—Taiwan, Afghanistan, North Korea and the End of Humanity (2023)—offers some insights into his worldview.
What was the precise motive of a man staking out a golf course to shoot former President Trump? I search and search for an answer, again today I search.
(PS: While I am sure his book must be riveting I submit that I would be more interested in what he was doing on his myriad foreign excursions.)
A Fix-It Spill
I had my corded vacuum in the back right corner of my room. I was pulling it out in order to plug it in so I could vacuum. In the process of pulling the vacuum out, the cord (mostly coiled) got caught on my zz plant and I tipped over the plant, spilling some dirt. The plant is fine now. The spill would have been annoying but for the fact that I could clean the spill with what I created the spill with. Almost as convenient as my recent good typo.