tiredofsametab

Aster is star (asteroids are star-likes!) but I’m not sure what an aste is and I’m certainly not going to kiss one.

As someone who speaks conversational Japanese (well, probably more since I do banking, doctor, etc. on my own, but my grammar is far from perfect), and fluent English, Google’s AI can make some… questionable choices when translating at least. My wife (fluent Japanese speaker who knows a little English) and I decided to play with its translator function when I got a pixel phone and once again a bit latter trying to come up with some English practice for her.

Japanese is definitely a bit more difficult to work with since it’s so context-dependent and has lots of homophones (one reason translating things into Japanese and back can be interesting, particularly in the older days of Google Translate). It’s fine for short, concise, and non-complex sentences, but even certain formal grammar and honorifics can be bad with the AI translation services.

• moved in my early 30s
• had studied Japanese in a couple of classes and then mostly on my own, but I could navigate and order food. My reading was (and still is) fairly bad
• not really. Partly due to age, but I do quite like it here. It would take something huge to make me move again
• no real stories that I can think of. Expect communication issues and accidental hurt feelings due to language/culture issues at first as it’s pretty unavoidable whilst learning.

I can try to answer. I’ve lived in Japan for almost a decade (this is my 10th year).

It’s the verb meaning to be wrong, so, contextually, I think the person made the classic l/r switch mistake, saw the reaction, and asked if what they wrote was incorrect.

Yeah, some is specific to Japan, though there will be similar hurdles anywhere the US has an agreement (and that the target country’s institutions actually follow it, I suppose).

I have a couple of retirement accounts in the US that I contributed to before (I moved overseas in my early 30s) that I basically can’t touch for a number of reasons right now. Just wanted to throw it out there.

Further, not doing so could impact things like voter registration depending upon the state. The whole system of US voting is a mess since it’s all at the state level.

However, since you don’t pay taxes on that money, it can impact which kinds of retirement accounts you can use based in the US, if any. Also, trying to invest as a US citizen outside the US can suck because of all the agreements with US banks. Many Japanese platforms, for instance, won’t touch me because of US reporting requirements. I also can’t functionally use the tax-advantaged retirement accounts here because many amount to what are called PFICs by the IRS which requires paperwork and are taxed punitively more than wiping out any advantage the retirement accounts would have.

You’re also going to have a rough time getting a US investment account if you don’t have one already. Then you have to figure out how to have a US phone number because two-factor auth basically requires it for any bank or anything that will touch you.

There are other “fun” things about being a US citizen living abroad.

I don’t use salt but rather soy sauce and/or fish sauce which is salt + umami. Smoked paprika also adds a nice smokiness if you’re not using any kind of smoked chilis.

Cincy-style chili has cinnamon among other things, so that makes sense. I accidentally grabbed the wrong spice jar and dumped cinnamon directly into my non-Cincy-style chili and it still came out pretty decent.

But don’t worry; well make you buy those legacy games in the shop again because fuck you pay me for the 4th time for a game from the 80s/90s. ~ abe Nintendo, probably

I used chantix back in the day, but it also required me basically not leaving the house for a month to really get there. When and where I quit for the first time (I would later start dating a smoker and relapse, then quit again), smoking was still allowed indoors and I had a huge association with drinking and smoking. Same for certain other places and situations. I basically had to do everything I could to avoid those. It got easier with time.

I think he just walks rather than being shipped.

I disagree, but I’m allergic to grass. However, if you like it, there should be no reason to pretend you don’t.

I didn’t have a car for a few years and the one I had was 2003 (with a slight stint from a similarly-aged car during a couple-month time I had to drive). I now have a car again and I HATE that my heat/air and such are all flat against the panel (not a touch screen, though). I literally can’t adjust anything without looking in my current car. Thankfully, I avoid driving it whenever possible.

LORD vs Lord does hold some distinction in the source material. IIRC LORD is for uses of the divine name whereas the other ones are not. But then you have the whole, El, Elohim, tetragrammaton, god, lord, etc. mess with them probably not historically referring to the same entity to begin with, but that whole book is a mess.

Expected treasure, but safe contained a live panther; would not buy again.

apologies to XKCD

I hate to be a killjoy, but it’ll clearly be a single deposit layer dated to on or after the latest date-able item. The fill will all be the same and its own distinct layer against the rest of the area. If you have a long enough time to keep it open, want to dig more, and have different fills, you might be able to accomplish something, but the different fill materials would likely have no real match in the surrounding still making it obvious.

Mid-40s: it feels fine. It both complicates and un-complicates various things for later in life, but that’s life.

I do like kids, but never wanted my own (at least biologically; I never fully ruled out adoption). We have nieces and nephews we can spoil instead of our own, heh.

Oh, I wasn’t even thinking about places that changed time; I thought it was something just related to winter itself, hence the confusion. Thanks!