“A study by German scientists showed that 10 minutes a day of ogling women’s breasts by men was as good at warding off heart disease, high blood pressure and stress as 30 minutes of aerobic exercise.”
— Phony science news that should have been true...A cocktail served in big cups
In the US, asking your waitress for this particular variety of shōchū cocktail might get you arrested… unless it’s the kind of place that also sells lap dances.
It certainly sounds more appealing than the tomato flavor they offer.
(via)
Pantry review: Barilla Ready Pasta
If you’re really desperate, and you don’t have time to boil water, this is kind of like pasta:
Except for the smell, which is the same plastic-y reek as the Uncle Ben’s Ready Rice pouches. Not, I suspect, a coincidence.
Dear Amazon,
Well, at least you can’t be accused of whitewashing your recommendations…
Do you even Internet?
There was a time when I used to feel like I was cheating, somehow, getting paid to do things that were easy and obvious. But I kept running into people who Just Didn’t Think Right. I never developed the common “people who aren’t like me must be stupid” problem, thanks in part to dealing with a lot of secretaries who could do all sorts of things that I couldn’t, but even today, I sometimes get the urge to reach through the Internet, grab someone by the collar, and shout “but it’s right there!”.
For instance, Scandalous Gaijin collects some quite pleasant cosplay photos, but mixed in with the cheesecake recently was a shot of a nicely old-fashioned street in Japan, with kimono-clad women in the foreground and a pagoda in the background, with the comment “Anyone knows the name of this street in kyoto? I need to check it out”. Now, if you don’t read kanji, you might not guess that the second half of the caption “もう一度 八坂の塔” is the name of the place, but when you look at the picture you can clearly read the names of two stores, “Happy Pie” and “Happy Bicycle”, and typing “happy bicycle kyoto” into Google Maps takes you to the exact spot the picture was taken from. (and if you didn’t know it was Kyoto, cut-and-pasting 八坂の塔 into Google will tell you that)
Google Image Search gets overlooked a lot, too; it would be nice if they’d sort the results chronologically, so you don’t have to search through the largest images by hand until you find something close to the original source, but generally it will at least give you some information, and often the full context it was originally posted in. The answer to “who is this goddess and where can I find more pictures of her” is generally pretty easy to find.
Even just plain Google searches seem to elude otherwise intelligent people. Just today, I’ve had two extremely intelligent, skilled co-workers email me detailed error messages and ask how to fix the problem. I paste the error into google, and poof, the answer emerges. At least with these two I know they can figure it out, and they’re just outsourcing their problem-solving to me so they can get back to fixing other broken things, but a lot of times it’s from people who are honestly stumped by something that could be resolved with ten seconds of cut-and-paste.
Now, the people who email me screenshots of detailed error messages, they’re beyond help…
To Infinity And Beyond
In a new photo shoot, popular bikini model Rin Tachibana breaks the lightspeed barrier with Hyper-Oppai. I guess now we know what the H in H-cup stands for.
More evidence here, and in the previous 17 collections linked to it…
Current anime
Note: it is common in Japan to come up with a 4-mora abbreviation for just about any lengthy name, so the ridiculous mouthful Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatte-iru darou ka quickly became DanMachi. But what do you do now that there are two spinoffs? Familia Chronicle could be trimmed to FamiCon, but that one was taken a long, long time ago, and doesn’t reference the main series. Worse, there’s just no good way to abbreviate Sword Oratoria. A bit of web-trolling suggests there’s no consensus forming, so I propose DanFami and DanSora.
DanSora episode 3
As previously discussed, this DanMachi spinoff uses Dream Girl Aiz as the wooden totem pole that more interesting characters dance around. Genki DFC Amazon Tiona and Tsundere Kyonyū Amazon Tione provide most of the fan-service, while Delusional Yuri Elf-mage Lefiya is the protagonist whose inexplicable crush on Aiz drives the action. Not the action she wants, but they’ve basically decided to replay the “I want to get stronger so I can nail the cardboard princess” theme from the original series, this time with a girl.
This episode covers the Mosterphilia event, but since everyone involved is higher-level than Bell, quickly resolves the original problem to focus on a retconned fight against a much more dangerous monster, as more buildup for the new menace (no longer just Something’s Up In The Dungeon, now it’s in town!). Lefiya powers through her pain and fear with dreams of Aiz, and is rewarded with an indirect kiss (squeeee!). Loki is less annoying than in the previous two episodes, as she does more than drunkenly fondle the girls.
Streaming only on Amazon’s new “Anime Strike” channel, which is a mixed bag. Good that I can watch it on a big screen, bad that they don’t bother to tell you when new episodes will be available. You just have to guess the schedule.
Eromanga-sensei episodes 1-4
Best thing going this season. Not without flaws, but while the episodes feel a little rushed, they’re still satisfying. And all the girls are interesting and appealing.
Streaming on Crunchyroll and Anime Strike.
Alice and Zōroku
I’ve just started on this one, and I like it quite a bit. More after I catch up.
