Sneaky Citizen

Oddities and inconsistencies often arise from reading wide & various news reports. Here's one from late Friday afternoon:

Citizen Watch Co. (シチズン時計) accepted the resignation of the President of their subsidiary, Citizen Electronics Co. (シチズン電子社長を解任した), for falsifying product data. It seems both the origin and longevity of key LEDs, switches & sensors were misrepresented for many years so as not to "lose contracts mainly with North American clients."

The report was vague, and no other English-language news (as of now, Saturday morning) is reporting yet about the scandal.

Looking at Japanese-language reports, it becomes clearer: Citizen lied about place-or-origin, claiming domestic Japanese origin for parts made in China.

Nikkan Kogyo Shimbun reports this was at least a seven-year fraud, involving 166 types of products, and 1.3 billion mislabeled parts (約13億3300万個).

This may mean additional import duties & penalties are due to "North American" authorities, and surely they should pay compensation to defrauded consumers.  Further, we wonder how many other manufacturers deceive us everyday?

BAD Corporate Citizen

Ekecheiria - Olympic Truce

Hooray. No politics for me 9-25 February! 
 💕
I'm very happy to honor ἐκεχειρία, the Spirit of truce, armistice & cessation of hostilities - a 3000-year tradition.

Olympic Truce Please

The Olympics entourage of US politico Mike Pence includes the father of Otto Warmbier, the 21-yr old American who received harsh imprisonment for attempting to steal a North Korean political banner.

Pence is being savaged by his South Korean hosts for divisiveness:
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_editorial/831287.html

Does Pence understand the 3000-year old tradition of the Olympic Truce?

The South Korean hosts worked many years to stage a clean & uplifting Olympic Games. The arrogant USA doesn't care.

The USA team at the last Summer Olympics in Rio made several false accusations and caused bad feeling in the host community (four swimmers including Ryan Lochte). Such behavior is horrible & ugly.

The USA is quick to condemn other nations while America offers protection to the global worst scum cheat Lance Armstrong. Five years ago he admitted to long-term doping, and thus theft & fraud. But he's kept hundreds of millions of dollars in ill-gotten wealth, and has yet to serve even one day in jail.

Anyhow, for now, let's celebrate the Olympics!

American Snowflake

Part of the USA has now been taught to taunt many others with the label "Snowflake"

Anyone using that term is an Asshole & coward.

• Who are you afraid to confront?
• Why pretend
• Why be passive-aggressive ?

As a Liberal person, I'll also not mince words:
The American Health Care System is horribly bad.
If you are not very wealthy, they will cruelly extract your money.
Expect to die knowing you're being cheated.

Escape Now - You share responsibility for Your future misery.
Go to a foreign land which has national health insurance.

https://splinternews.com/how-people-die-in-america-1822743566

Feed the Birds, Tuppence a Bag

When Republican Speaker of the House Ryan deleted a highly-criticized tweet, he was able to also kill many well-crafted criticisms.

Ryan's proud to be butt-boy to America's owners.

Ryan's proud we're satisfied to get $1.50 a week.

Setsubun

Late dusk, our landlord showed up at our farmhouse, 32-years ago today in Japan, with a big basket of roast beans. He asked if we'd completed 豆まき (we'd simply tossed a couple of beans at each other). He opened all the doors and windows, and threw big handfuls of beans in every corner as we all bellowed 「鬼は外！福は内！」Very memorable - we were still finding dried beans throughout the year.

National Service

Politicos willing to sacrifice key institutions are dangerous.

Bush/Cheney deliberately tarnished military honors for valor (to diminish rival Kerry). They also oversaw deliberate intelligence leaks (as retribution) that compromised clandestine operations abroad.

Trump/Pence now attack the FBI.

Politicization is our enemy.

Cheating Scum?

Lance Armstrong is at the heart of the most profitable cheating scandal in modern sports. After years of crushing rivals in competition, via media, and in court, he admitted to long-term doping. It seems a fraud of hundreds of millions of dollars. But he's "white" American - five years after his confession, he remains rich, and not been to jail. 

The world marvels at American justice...

Führerprinzip

Jump up, clap for a long time
(purposeful design)   Führerprinzip

So many national figures support Our Leader.
Trust.  Believe.
They Care For All of Us

 

Servile No More!

The US Federal Government & State of Hawai'i have Constitutional obligations to Native Hawaiians to administer our inheritance.

The Public Land Trust includes much of the 1.8 million acres of land taken from Hawaiians, generating major revenues supposed to be for Native Hawaiian beneficiaries. This inheritance has been deliberately neglected & subverted, but business-as-usual is now unsustainable!

Being polite and offering Aloha have proved unsuccessful.

Here's discussion of this issue, and what we're doing to make it right:
https://www.oha.org/plt

Reasserting sovereignty will not be easy

Hawaiian pule (prayers): Nā 'Aumākua & E Hō Mai
http://thoughtsmart.com/pule

Bravo!

Cleveland Indians Major League Baseball franchise at long last is dumping its ridiculous Chief Wahoo logo (link). RESPECT or clash

A Wee Bit of Scotland

Enjoyed a fine Burns Supper at our friend's Östermalm home
w/ poetry, music & all the trimmings.
Lord Be Thanket !

http://thoughtsmart.com/SelkirkGrace.mp3

Dislike Forcefeeding?

I don't like being herded, or forced into disagreeable procedures.

Most people may be more accepting, or insensitive...

In many cases, half the battle is to properly define the problem. Help is often near if you know the correct terminology.

An example:

Using my Electrolux EMS2020 microwave oven to warm or heat items, I'll typically do something else while it operates. When its procedure ends, it stops moving, and a bell softly chirps. Wonderful.

However, if I do not attend to it immediately and the door is unopened, after some seconds a reminder bell chirps.

I hate that reminder.

Unfortunately, I bought my microwave when living in Korea, and the interface is all Hangul. There may be an override to the reminder bell, but I've not found it yet (and because a bypass may exist, I'm perhaps more irritated).

Do you use Windows 10 ?

Microsoft is typically OK in allowing adjustments - and while not always making settings simple or intuitive, they've now had long experience with user angst. Some will remember their talking paperclip, Microsoft's 'Clippy' ...

I've recently been troubled by the Windows lockscreen time. Go away for a minute, and the Windows login screen appears. I don't mind typing my password once or twice a day, but not more often.

I tried unsuccessfully to find an adjustment in Windows settings.

So I searched for adjust time Windows login screen in my favorite search engine, only to find the procedure is hugely & unnecessarily complex. Why? It's rude forcing the world to live with a mandatory & inflexible timeout after one-minute. To what purpose?

1) sometimes, Microsoft, you suck
2) your own Microsoft help page put me in the Registry searching for a setting that did not exist - weird ("ScreenSaveTimeOut string value item). It claimed default timeout is 15 minutes (900 seconds) when in fact it is one minute... 
3) if you are bothered by this Microsoft imposition, here's how to change the timeout:
https://www.howtogeek.com/267893/how-to-change-the-windows-10-lock-screen-timeout/
two-step, complex procedure -- but successful.

Redesign Your Life !

Scottish rain

Two-Headed Dog : Orthrus USA

American Public Servants ?

NO

Creatures of the Swamp

UKCHUCK

Brexit promises, often bollocks, had pie-in-the-sky funds for the NHS.

The better betrayal tag:  ukchuck

Hawai'i's Traitor List

Who took up arms against the Kingdom of Hawai'i and her native people?

The newly-formed Republic of Hawaii Army included 458 officers & soldiers.

We also know who was active in the so-called "Citizen's Guard" because the coup plotters made certain to publish each of the 740 names - to share the burden of guilt. Some of these paramilitary mercenaries were only briefly in Hawaii, but they carried a rifle and kept the locals from gettin' uppity.

Thus 1198 poisonous snakes not to be forgotten.

http://thoughtsmart.com/hawaii/atrocity-america.pdf

Sandcastle Suffering

Sandcastle Day School sounds wholesome, but Principal Turpin is now accused of chaining & torturing the kids. Both he and his wife face charges of child endangerment.

Today the California Department of Education continues to advertise the school (link). But Sandcastle's two administrators are held in jail pending their posting a combined bail of $26 million.

The State of California has almost no functional oversight of such schools (according to CNN - link), but eleven other US states are worse - with no reporting requirements at all.

Child-focused schooling in America greatly suffered from Reagan-era deregulation, through US Sec. of Education neocon Bill Bennett, to multi-billionaire Betsy Prince DeVos (older sister of Blackwater USA's Erik Prince).

America's communities are disintegrating.
No money for skoolin - its all gon 4 guns.
We suffer from Galactic Empire!

Sandcastle Day School Principal David Turpin

Public Use / Official Use ?

Chinese characters are widely used in Japan. But after divergent usage over many hundreds of years (often over a thousand years), meanings became slightly different.

I've become intrigued by the characters 公用

In China, it seems this consistently means "public use"

In Japan however, it's often "Official Use Only - Stay Away!"

Very different, almost opposite meanings...

Of course, Japan's paradise for officialdom, with many cumbersome administrative processes, and an army of paper-pushing bureaucrats (each convinced their own non-productive work is essential).
 

I'm still getting to grips with this difference; further reports as I discover more.

Pissing on Stockholm

Stockholm needs more public toilets.

How to best say this, or illustrate the problem?

It seems substantive change will only come from embarrassing our community leadership.

-- sell adult diapers as cruise ships dock at the quay
-- find older folk who've suffered
-- ask those w/ medical issues for their horror stories
-- distribute each tourist a "piss cup" ... etc ...

Stockholm needs more public toilets.

It's basic humanity.