Automatic machine translation is just wrong, okay?

Actual product name: “米とぎ棒 ホワイト KT-091”, which breaks down as “rice + polish/grind/sharpen + stick (white, model KT-091)”, but more correctly described as a “rice whisk” (to speed up the process of washing white rice before steaming); at least, that search string turns up several varieties of them on Amazon US.

(the “Akebono Industry” part of the product name doesn’t appear in the original at all, and seems to be hidden information; several items in the “people who looked at this also looked at” list are different models of rice whisk with, sure enough, 曙産業 in the name. My best guess for “pin” is that 棒 is used in the word for “rolling pin”, 麺棒, so it could have crept into their translation tables. No idea where the “clip” came from)

Translating the UI is good, because it’s a finite set of strings with only occasional updates, and can be QA’d. Auto-translating product names is just a mess, because to search, you have to guess what odd word choices it’s going to use. It would never have occurred to me to search for a “rice stick”, if only because that seems more likely to return links to rice paddles (which it does, as well as rice whisks and stick vacuums).

As it turns out, at least one manufacturer of a “rice sharpener” does use スティック (phonetic “stick”) instead of 棒 for their product name, and another uses 米とぎ for their rice strainer, leading to the following auto-translated product name:

Rice Sharpener All-Purpose Bowl, Highly Cooking Allie, German Developed High Quality, 5 in 1 Rice Sharpener, Wash, Relax, Smooth, Drainer, Bowl, Housewives Allied with Great Cooking, Time-saving, Household Work, Great Mass Shopping, Explosive Hit Product, Stainless Steel, 8.9 inches (22.5 cm)

Accompanied by the following descriptive text:

Please note: This product is for sale of S pearls. For that reason, we have attached a sales confirmation seal to the product; Product: This product can be used for rice sharpeners that have been troublesome until noodles can be used to create a variety of cooking chores that include time saving, housework, and light weight. You can also use it for dish drying pasta, kimono, and salads such as noodles.

It goes downhill from there.

Related,

When we were in the kitchen district in Osaka last Spring, I suddenly remembered my research into the name of the item used in the Konpira-fune-fune drinking game we played at the maiko dinner in Kyoto. So I walked into the next restaurant supply shop and asked for a beer hakama. My sister quickly realized what I was up to and got some for herself as well. And it goes like this.

I thought it was interesting that even though they had half a dozen on the shelf, they went in the back and got us fresh ones that were still wrapped up.

Unrelated: Life With A Porch Cat

With the brief heatwave broken, I had every window in the house open yesterday. Porch Cat saw me sitting at the kitchen table, came up to the screen, and loudly ordered lunch. I picked him up, carried him through the house to the front porch, fed him, and went back. Ten minutes later he came back and curled up outside the screen door. He didn’t want food or even cuddles, just some company.

That’s pretty much how I feel this week, too.

Unrelated

Reflowing a mixed-language paragraph in Emacs 26.2 breaks katakana words in the middle and inconsistently removes whitespace separating them from English words. (grumblegrumblegetoffmylawn)

Also unrelated

I really hate it when a UPS just decides to shut itself off and then complain. Fortunately I had a newer higher-capacity unit in the same room that I could move the cable modem, firewall router, and switch to. I had added the second one when I bought the Synology NAS, but hadn’t wanted to take the downtime from migrating the other stuff over, and the old UPS had a reasonably recent battery (which isn’t what failed; it’s like the damn thing just decided to stop drawing power from the perfectly-good circuit).

Safari hates Twitter

Since the lockdowns started, I have an off-and-on issue with loading Twitter pages (for the few people I still follow since I deleted my account). We’re talking minutes before it even displays the text content, and it may never get as far as loading images. Then an hour or two later, it’s lightning fast. I have no Safari extensions loaded at all. Other sites load without a problem while the Twitter tabs are spinning their gears.

Meanwhile, another browser on the same machine will load the exact same page, including all images, in a fraction of a second.

Unrelated to any of the above…

The installation instructions for the TRX Xmount tell you that you need a drill with a 1/4-inch bit for the pilot hole, and a socket wrench to screw the 3/8-inch by 3-inch bolts into a stud. They fail to specify that the bolts require a 17mm metric socket. This is important when you’re going to be up on a ladder applying considerable leverage to secure the damn thing to the wall.

I find it interesting that the Amazon listing for this product completely disappeared recently, with only knock-off products showing up when you search for it. TRX seems to prefer direct sales through their own web site, to the point that the products they officially sell on Amazon and fulfill themselves are not directly comparable to the models sold on their site. Indeed, there isn’t even a comparison page showing the various generations of their product line, to allow you to make an informed purchasing decision.

They have a subscription-based workout app that I wouldn’t pay for after the free year runs out, but if you have the ability to download youtube videos and save them to your phone or tablet, they’ve been posting new ones every day during the lockdowns, including a series of live workouts with some viewer feedback.

So far, I find Niko Algieri and Jay Brockway to be the most reliable and relatable instructors (although someone really should tell Niko to remove the link to his old web site nikoalgieri.com, since he let the domain registration lapse and it’s now redirected to a Chinese lottery site).

What exactly did you add to an animation tool that allows a buffer-overflow error to lead to remote code execution?

I mean, even this month’s critical security holes in Acrobat are less severe than that, and Acrobat’s made PDF nearly the malware vector that Flash was in its prime.

Unrelated…

Pro tip: if your delivery service does not accept cash at this time, update your web site so that customers cannot select it as a payment option.

Nothing says “safe and comfortable” like exposed screw heads on exercise equipment, perfectly positioned to dig into your skin.

The person who designed this mutant offspring of a medicine ball and a kettlebell was clearly unfamiliar with “rack position”.

Sad thing is, this was sold out on Amazon along with pretty much all other exercise gear, which means a whole lot of people are going to be taping padding over those screws soon to protect their wrists.

How bored am I right now?

“Buying 40-year-old Japanese art books on Amazon” bored:

(they’re excellent books, by the way, with lots of quality photos and well-translated text)

Movie night

Reminded of it by the state of the state of California, I dug through my shelves to find my ancient DVD copy of Zorro: The Gay Blade. My Bluray player (a region-free Sony) needed a serious power-cycling before it would display anything via HDMI, but after a bit of coaxing I was able to watch this charming and quite quotable little film again for the first time in many years.

For some reason, it’s not available on any streaming service, or on Bluray, and of course the DVD has been out of print for many years. You’d think a story about a campy gay man freeing Californians from a tyrannical oppressor would resonate with the pipples.

Q: What is 17x22x48 inches?

A: The box that two of these arrived in yesterday.

They were curled up in a corner like abandoned puppies. The box wasn’t terribly well-sealed, either, so I’m sure the UPS driver looked inside and had a good laugh about the giant box of air he carried up to my porch with one hand.

In other news, Los Angeles Target shoppers are less murder-y than Detroit Dollar General shoppers, but still pretty violent. Governors, if you want people to enforce mask orders, they’d better be on-duty cops. If you don’t have enough of those to go around, don’t criminalize breathing wrong and expect store clerks to risk their lives for you.

By the way, if they’re actually sick, shooting them is sure to spread the virus as it spatters their blood across the walls and floor…

Totally related, Corona-chan has been in Ohio since at least January. (and that site does something really evil, changing the contents of the URL bar as you scroll down, so that I almost posted a link to the story below it, which is bullshit)

Update

The Dayton Daily News story has more details: onset of currently first known case was January 7 in Miami County, and January 13 in Montgomery County, both women in their seventies. Unless they were on a senior cruise together, this suggests it was spreading in the community in late December. In Ohio.

This upends all the hypotheses about “asymptomatic transmission” that have helped justify the massive shutdown of the country. The only support for the claim that you could spread it without symptoms was the now-proven-incorrect belief that it was newly-arrived and spreading only from people with recent foreign travel history, who were contagious without knowing they were sick.

The reality is that people were coughing and sneezing all winter, thinking they just had the flu or a bad cold, while actually spreading the joy of Corona-chan to family, friends, and holiday shoppers.

Seriously, dude, just admit that you’ve never known the touch of a woman.

Update

I hadn’t even noticed that he was (past tense) a New Hampshire state representative, and (likely past tense) a Biden delegate. Apparently he has (or likely had) a long history of failing to sound profound on Twitter…

I’m sorry, but if you live alone, and your apartment kitchen is so small that it doesn’t have a dishwasher, why the hell are you wasting $300 and your precious counter space on this silly thing?

Oh, wait; maybe your kitchen isn’t tiny, it’s just pretentious:

And this is really going to impress that special one-and-only guest that you can have over for dinner:

A later picture reassures the potential customer that it’s small enough (16x16x17 inches) that even women can easily lift it (30 pounds).

To appease wokescolds, Land O Lakes butter is killing off their iconic Indian maiden. A design created by a Native American to celebrate Native Americans, that is quite popular with Native Americans, is now considered offensive by people whose only interactions with Native Americans are gambling, buying cheap cigarettes, and acquiring virtue-signalling jewelry and home decor.

Maybe they should just change the name to Trail O Tears…

The primary reason I preferred it to other brands was that they were the first company I found offering half-Elgin packaging (4-tablespoon sticks, which keep better when you live alone), but that’s become fairly common now. I like Challenge butter, but they use the fatter Western-style 8TB sticks.

The worst part is, it won’t work. You never get rid of the Dane…

Adventures in petty bullshit, Safeway edition

When I left the house on Monday, the rule was that you could bring in your California-mandated reusable shopping bags to avoid the California-mandated 10-cents-or-more fee for paper bags, but you had to bag your groceries yourself. Since I prefer the self-checkout lane, that’s not an issue.

Today, while I waited for my loaf of Semolina Sandwich Bread to rise, I went to the second-closest Safeway for some diet pepsi and wet cat food. I got a cart from the sanitizing team and turned to enter the store.

Sanitizer #1:

(points to girl behind me)

J:

(pulls out earphone) “Sorry, I didn’t hear a word you just said.”

S#2:

“Reusable bags aren’t allowed in the store right now.”

J:

“Then I won’t use it.”

S#2:

“No, you’re not permitted to bring it into the store.”

J:

“And?” (replaces earphone, continues into store)

Honestly, there’s only so much petty bullshit that I’m willing to put up with. What were they going to do, get within six feet of me?

This grocery store magazine display explains a lot about why the publishing industry is in trouble, especially the once-relevant Life magazine. One suspects that the people who assembled the Anne Frank special griped about not getting an important assignment like Lucas or one of the Obamas. Props to Rolling Stone for making Scoldilocks look like a male Neanderthal, though.

Related, I really hate how Cook’s Illustrated and America’s Test Kitchen have turned into a shitty publishing mill, with endless abridged reprints, appliance-specific repackagings of previous recipes, and blatant product placement replacing serious reviews. The web site still has enough good content to be worth a membership, but I just don’t see any reason to buy their dead-tree products any more.