To Pokimane, pt 16

Side note, why is it that Blogger is 20+ years old and owned by a company worth $3.8 trillion (enough for 336,000 M1 Abrams battle tanks which is 33 times as many as have ever been built, or 108,000 Minuteman ICBMs, each with a W87 warhead with a yield of 475,000 tons of TNT, with a combined destructive power of about half the energy of a 1.5 km asteroid, like 1862 Apollo, hitting the Earth at 15 km/s) and it still puts a non-breaking space in this form for a new post, instead of starting it out completely blank.

I guess I'm treating the number of likes on your Chirp Club account as important again, because I thought I wouldn't say anything until you did something after my previous post, and here I am saying something.

I planned to go to Japan. My friend Hime, whom I met in World of Warcraft (her real name is Anh), even suggested that we go there together, and when I said I couldn't go with her, she asked if there were any souvenirs I wanted her to buy for me. I had sent her two paintings by an Iraqi artist, including one that I had wanted to send to Mei, as well as extra Iraqi currency, which surprised Hime as she had never mentioned to me that she collected foreign currencies.

But for me, the only real reason for me to travel to Japan was language immersion, which is not a very good reason, and this is part of why I never ended up going. I have not seen anything to indicate you have the slightest interest in learning Japanese language, and I was going to say Japanese culture but then I remembered your username. But when you played Cobblemon a few weeks ago, you had forgotten basic mechanics of the Pokemon games like what determines the power of a move.

Being in one place vs being in another place: to me, it isn't that important. Maybe I am just rationalizing as I am too poor to go anywhere, but if poor people can be happy despite being poor, what's wrong with that? (Not saying that I'm happy.)

(Obviously, I am subtly implying that people who think that no one would want to work less, because everyone wants more money than they have except maybe people who give away their money, are stupid.)

Ok like so of course I remember that Sherine knows French, that she grew up in Canada just like you even though Sherine's childhood friend is Yara who is from New York so maybe Sherine lived in New York at some point, and that Sherine once posted a photo of her school textbook which was in French. And of course I remember that Mione, who made a video of her Death Knight soloing the 10-man raid Karazhan in 2008 and then went on to solo a bunch of other raid encounters that impressed people even more (like world first solo of the Lich King), is from Belgium and speaks French.

And France used to be considered the language of diplomacy, such as the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty being in French and English, with no Japanese version even though Japan was allocated more tonnage than France, or the 1901 Boxer Protocol being in Chinese and French even though France provided just 6% of the military strength for the eight-nation alliance.

I almost posted this as it is. But I remembered I was going to say some bad things about Japan. I want to reference a scene but it is from a Japanese drama, which means it would earn a copyright strike if posted on YouTube. From the original drama (2007), Ep 07: opens with the main character playing a game against the office's boss, and deliberately losing in a way that hides the fact that she deliberately lost. Then, in order to save a coworker from being fired, she challenges the boss in his kendou doujou and they fight with wooden swords in front of his young students (ages 5~10), and she once again deliberately loses.

Then I thought that the episode ended with the boss in the office late by himself, and remarking that the female main character was dangerous, but this was a false memory. The situation might have conveyed that he thought something like this, and was disturbed the events that occurred — his hand being forced, by someone who did not seem to mind if no one else realized what had happened — but he did not say anything about her.

Actual dialogue,

789
00:44:20,898 --> 00:44:22,846
[Haken Bentou Business Plan]

790
00:44:22,846 --> 00:44:24,387
Department Manager,

791
00:44:24,387 --> 00:44:29,379
I will improve this business plan and advance it to the final selection.

792
00:44:29,379 --> 00:44:30,679
Me and Satonaka.

793
00:44:30,679 --> 00:44:32,799
He's no good.

794
00:44:32,799 --> 00:44:35,610
He doesn't understand the company.

795
00:44:36,146 --> 00:44:38,603
This business plan...

796
00:44:38,603 --> 00:44:39,795
You do it.

797
00:44:44,469 --> 00:44:46,293
I understand.

I don't remember all the details of the episode after like 16 years, but basically, the section chief whom the boss disfavours is 'nice'. The one who is given more responsibility and power in this scene is a little bit more 'mean'. The overall attitude that the boss has is that a 'nice' person is not a good leader. For example, at the start of the series, the 'nice' character does not challenge the main character when she steals his seat (Ep 01 at 5:49):

Just as, for example, Japan provoked China in the 1930s by invading and fighting against it, not respecting China when it was weak. When leadership and dominance is determined, at least in part, by fighting and being 'mean' (like being dishonest to gain more business share by asserting that a full-time employee did something impressive, rather than a contractor who will soon leave the company), then it's natural for people to think that it's fine to ignore things that don't seem to be their advantage, even if they would help other people. Like a solution that might help everyone in the world by a tiny amount but would take any individual significant effort to verify.

To Pokimane, pt 15

My mum is watching The Book Thief (2013). At the start, the main character's baby brother dies on the train, and then they bury him, surrounded by snow and with only a couple other people in attendance.

It made me think of something that I remember. When I was 16 and she was 13, I met Oriana Filiaci online. She lived half a world away, i.e. across the Pacific Ocean. Shortly after (probably a day or two after I met her), her youngest brother died from sticking his finger in an electric socket.

The last time I talked to her, she suggested that we stop talking to each other, and before I agreed to this, I mentioned her younger brother dying. It was, by then, something that had happened seven years earlier. She denied that it had happened.

I hadn't thought of it for a long time before this scene in the movie, but I think it still might affect me, sort of like the suicide of your friend in high school still affects you.

But it also reminded me of when I did something similar to what Oriana's little brother did. I destroyed a key by putting it in an electrical socket. I was probably 3~6 years old. Afterwards, for a long time, I carried the key in my backpack, I think, when I went to school, as a sort of reminder. I remember that, even then, a few years after it had happened, I couldn't remember putting the key in the socket; I only knew that I had done so. I might have also put a metal fork in the electrical socket.

It was always a little bit of a mystery to me, because the key was metal, but the majority of it was gone, and the stub ended in a sort of black or melted bit. Later, like with my dad, I might have had a little bit of experience with aluminum foil being melted or burned in a hot flame, but keys are made of a different type of metal.

There were only a limited number of electrical outlets, I was pretty sure that I knew which one the key had been destroyed in, and yet there was no evidence of it (maybe). Like, if a metal melted, there would be evidence. (The bow of the key had yellow decorations, and it was one of many extra keys that did not fit any locks.) Anyway, the point was that I could have died, although having no memory of it I had no idea how dangerous it might have been, and I kept the key probably because I knew (later on) that I could have died, and so it might have been the first time when I knew that the world was 'broken' ­— that it was not safe, even for a 4-year-old whom people wanted to keep safe. I don't think my family ever knew that I had stuck a metal key in an electrical socket.

To Pokimane, pt 13+1

If I thought a lot of people would see this, I wouldn't post it, because it doesn't concern most people. But the previous posts have, in order, 0, 3, 1, 1, 2, 4, and 0 views.

Pey's broadcast that just ended: Helo happy tbc days :D TBC TBC TBC !social for links

It will automatically expire in 60 days and be deleted.

Her dog died last weekend, three or four days ago. She has no idea why her dog died, and she has eaten very little or nothing in the past few days, other than a shake and maybe an egg. I watched this stream and much of the previous stream and didn't realize she had a Christmas tree until a user asked about it in chat, a few hours into this stream.

I missed from around 5:13:00 to 5:39:00 because I tried to look up a slang term that was mentioned in chat, and ended up opening an article that used up all available memory and froze my browser for a while. So I didn't hear everything she said about her dog dying and not eating much, around 5:24:00.

What I wrote while watching, with no intention of sharing it when I wrote it:

1:27:10 comment about Instagram, banned?
death at 1:29:50
deaths at 1:35:00 used CC?
fight at 1:58:30, kill the totem? sheeped what? and 2:01:20
wipe at 2:17:00
comment Peyton at 2:20:10
grandmother name 2:21:58
tank death at 2:45:00
damage taken at 2:54:00, 2:55:00, 2:56:00, 2:57:05, exploding ghosts?
3:22:00 lack of dampen magic against elementals, what was pally aura
almost died 3:33:05
mage died 3:35:18
comment 3:37:40
death 3:39:40
Avian Warhawk charge, 3k damage?
tank death at 4:09:00, missed it
4:13:50 question Czech, death shortly after
rez warlock 4:28:50
tank death 4:33:50
4:37:30 talking about whom, top tier
4:49:30 Instagram, inaudible with music. Asking personal info to unban?
4:51:40 Twitter?
4:53:20 Pika first in chat at midnight?
5:02:30 don't get _?
5:07:50 tank death
5:09:00 inaudible
5:10:35 inaudible
5:14:00 stream frozen, reloaded to 5:16:00
5:24:30 haven't eaten in 2 days?
5:26:30 wipe? sleep in last few days?
5:29:38 "sorry"?
missed until 5:39:00


11 Feb 2026
if drinks scale with mana pool, might people just use low-level drinks? Is 'intellect slightly decreases cost of spells' a good mechanic? Or a stat that does this, instead of giving more mana? Too much synergy with spirit to be a dedicated stat?

vampiric touch, gain mana equal to 5% of damage, assumes health scales with mana.

arcane intellect seeming useless in groups, not commenting when it falls off

point: when drinks are expensive, it makes sense to drink only when it would use entire drink. If this is every five pulls, then mana stat only really matters 1/5 of the time

point, 'multiple difficulties for content' started in TBC. Easy mode Lich King etc.

a 'reduce mana cost of spells' stat competes or overlaps with spellpower, spirit, and extra mana.

She also made a comment about not really wanting to be reminded that she's single, on Valentine's day. I don't blame you for Pey's dog dying. But it doesn't seem like there's much to counteract the sadness of her dog dying. Over 100 people in chat wished her a happy birthday yesterday, and yet today she still said that she hadn't eaten in a few days.

I thought that saying this, that I feel that people using the idea could have been something that would have made her a little happier, even if her dog still died, was better than saying nothing and possibly implying through my actions, or my silence, that I felt this way. I had intended to look up all the moments that I noted as soon as the stream finished (my computer is too slow to have reviewed those moments in the VOD while also watching the stream), but instead I will wait an arbitrary length of time, since none of the information I would learn is critical. I'll just say two weeks.

I'm trying to find an article and while this isn't it, I'll still link it because I think the author wrote a fair and informative article:

(~05 Dec 2025) https://poprant.indiatimes.com/trending/dating-isnt-worth-it-anymore-pokimane-announces-celibacy-to-dodge-bad-attachments-triggers-controversy-and-a-storm-of-harsh-reactions/articleshow/126595422.html

though I will say that while I was skimming it briefly, my computer froze and it took about 40 seconds after I pressed Ctrl-W before the page finally closed, due to HD swap activity.

Well, apparently I did not bookmark the article, which was on dexerto.com, and not bothering to find it. It quoted probably from a live stream where you mentioned that you had tried lots of things to find a relationship, including hanging out at the grocery store. A little funny and probably a reference to stories where an unexpected encounter takes place at such a location. (For example, in the 'Falling Into Your Smile' Chinese drama that I mentioned I had watched the first episode of, one character first sees another character at the store, although they do not talk.)

After clicking on this because it explained a slang term,

https://afterschool.substack.com/p/mini-mullets-and-and-frame-mogging

I tried to read the article it linked to, (10 Feb 2026) A Stanford Experiment to Pair 5,000 Singles Has Taken Over Campus - WSJ

which was paywalled, but something that sometimes worked in the past was searching for the article, and clicking on the link. (Or if the URL referral was from Chirp Club.) That didn't work at first when I tried it (only when I re-opened the tab after closing it, only expecting to be able to read the first paragraph), but the search also turned up https://incels.is/threads/bluepilled-stemcels-think-an-app-can-solve-inceldom.840729/ which is another perspective on the topic.

That linked to the student-run newspaper, https://stanforddaily.com/2026/01/12/date-drop-returns-following-cease-and-desist/.

I think it's a lot more informative. The title is not as attractive: the WSJ article is not just "X happened", but "X happened and everyone cares about it". But even though the WSJ article is from yesterday, it seems to be disproven by the Stanford Daily article, which is closer to the drama.

“The first few weeks were great since everyone wanted to try it out, but now the only people to be matched with are the weirdos still doing it on Week 11,” he said.

A few days ago I compared something that I don't even remember to the 'death spirals' in insurance groups, and this seems like it might be similar. The posters in the 'incels' forum speculate on bad motives by the service's creator, but if this kind of 'death spiral' is the explanation for the decline in use, then it might just be an emergent effect, which the creator simply did not predict but which other people can learn from. Like, there is https://www.keeper.ai/ which had the calculator you used, and I got several ads for https://tawkify.com/requestcall-v. Date Drop is unusual in that it leads to dates, not just matches, but also because it operates in communities where awareness of the service is high enough for people to discuss it and influence each other's opinions of it.

Maybe 'undesirable' people, the 'weirdos' are the ones using dating services A, B, and C. But people considering using these services are not aware of it, because they don't know whether people they know are using them or not, in order to gauge whether this might be true. But if the reason for this bias in usage for Date Drop is understood, it could help form predictions for how other dating sites or apps are used.

Basically, I read up to that point in the article and thought it might be relevant, and am not trying to form a better understanding or read the rest of the article before I post this.

In the past, Pey's VODs were viewable for subscribers only, so I would not have been able to look these moments up. I learned this was no longer the case yesterday, when I missed something that was said or happened and was able to watch the VOD.

To Pokimane, pt 13

I'm only talking to you, but I just want to say that by the time I finish writing this (currently 09 Feb, 23:45), it will be Pey's birthday (in my time zone).

I thought that Pey's birthday, as 'something happening that marks the passage of time', would make me stop writing things to you. It turns out I'm like the person in the study about electrical shocks, who gave themselves an absurdly large number of electrical shocks for no apparent reason, rather than sit and wait for time to pass.

Some hotels skip floor 13 and I was wondering whether to avoid 13 in the title of this post. In real life I have encountered this only once: the channels, maybe related, that uploaded videos of the dance group 屏東潮州六姐妹, including a performance of Paparazzi by Kan Mi Youn and a performance of 逼逼逼 嗶嗶嗶 by 謝金燕 Jeannie Hsieh. (Both videos should be stretched wider to sample aspect ratio 32/27, but obvs not possible with YouTube player.)

These channels skipped the numbers 4 and 14 in titles, instead using ３+１ and １３+１. This is because 'death' and 'four' sound similar in Chinese, as well as in Japanese (which lacks tone to distinguish the words, so they're not just similar, but identical). So I was thinking of doing the same, like "12+1".

I thought what I would do with this post was "make myself seem old", by talking about an old game which mostly has old players. Maybe you haven't read any of these posts, and I'll just be wasting time creating words that don't matter. Or maybe you have read them, and by posting this, I might induce you to post something on Chirp Club that isn't about the idea, which by my self-imposed rule would allow me to talk to other people online and like I might be less bored or something then.

Starting with the clip at 2:13 in this video:

(Embedded video player might be way too small)

Summary of clip: a mage dies and loses probably over 100 hours of progress.

I thought at first that the mage had abnormally low health. But it's around 1470 health, at lvl 45. I think when I deleted my first (non-open beta) WoW character, 21 years ago, I had about the same amount of health, 1300~1500, at lvl 50. It was something to which I paid enough attention to possibly remember now because my low health was getting me killed by rogues who could open from stealth with a high-damage Ambush that could easily do half of my total health. My health was low (other characters could have 3k health at the same level) because I had prioritized spirit, as the best stat for solo PvE.

So I can't say that this mage who died geared in a way that made his death more likely. My first thought had been, "if your health pool is low, you need to take special care not to take damage." It was just poor play as a mage — not unlike your second death in hardcore WoW, except that it is a mystery how someone could still be making these mistakes at lvl 45.

How verbose to be? No frost armor (just like you). Standing in melee range while getting hit by mobs, just like you. I actually had to check for any evidence that they might actually be a warlock, due to complete lack of any mage defensive abilities.

Maybe it was a challenge: "don't use any of these abilities". No Frost Nova, Blink, or Polymorph. None of these are visible on action bars. (Ok, the character's name is Fireonly.) But in that case, it just makes sense to kill mobs before they get to you. The Fireballs that he gets off do ~20% of the mob's health, from maximum range should be able to get off about three fireballs before mob gets to melee range.

The Ignite tick for 229 means that some abilities did ~1145 crit damage, which must have been two spells. Basically, he was in "this is fine" mode; he might have had more urgency about losing the second mob without those crits. He says at 2:40 "We're dead, I threw", because without the add(itional mob) that he aggroed through lack of situational awareness he would have survived.

I have been thinking that what players in Hardcore WoW need is an addon that panics whenever the player gets below 50% health, and tracks the number of times this has happened. Then you treat it like you died; i.e., you try to avoid it at all costs (other than potions), and if it happens you take the time to understand exactly how it happened and how to prevent it in the future. For streamers, this 'external enforcement', with like the screen flashing red and alarms going off, would be a better justification for the streamer reacting to this event than doing it without the addon.

Because this player used, instead, "did I survive" as his measurement of success, with near-death experiences being just an exciting stream moment that entertains viewers, his miscalculation of risk and mistakes in play led to his death.

Note how he doesn't look behind himself from 2:13 to 2:20, and at 2:37 while bandaging he doesn't take the time to look around. At 2:23 he gets dazed though he's stationary for its duration; we don't have in-game sound, but the sound of the mob behind him shooting at him should probably have been audible.

Compare the awareness of an experienced PvP player, like in Gegon - The Last Ovski !

At 3:46, while casting Fireball, he turns the camera to look behind himself. Again at 6:56, although later in the scene he doesn't look around.

I have heard the player who was the best in AoE2 for a long time say that streaming always decreases performance. Checking chat, instead of checking for danger in the game, or just having the awareness that there is an audience. But it's natural that there are times when one just does not have time to read chat. With his restriction of using only fire spells, this streamer should have acted like it was one of those times as soon as a second mob was aggroed, before the clip started.

Tbh it became harder to critique once I finally noticed his character's name, but there's always something to criticize.

I first started watching this compilation on 01 Feb, and had to stop after the second clip, which seems to feature the Thrash ability stacking to give extra attacks at 0:52.

WoW Classic: should dumb mechanics, including unintended ones (bugs), be changed?
Yes
Only if the overall effect is to make the game harder
Only if the overall game difficulty stays about the same
Only if the overall effect is to make the game easier
No

(thrash stacking up on mobs)

It's hard to get people to agree that specific changes to Classic would be good; or rather, I only bother to suggest things if there isn't already a strong consensus that those changes are needed.

If I think of solutions, including ways of changing a conversation to support those solutions, but can't talk about them, it just makes me frustrated, so that's why I stopped watching this video at the time.

The third streamer, at 0:58 (names are in video description): it's possible she had never seen seen elite mobs before. "I think I should kill one at a time actually" — many classes, with a typical player's ability, can't even kill a single elite mob. So it suggests she did not put importance on the gold dragon border, which would have made her pay attention to the damage dealt by her Wrath spell as a percentage of the mob's health. Then she didn't know how to avoid getting dazed, didn't consider the use of a healing potion to be serious enough (the whole, 'alarm bells going off if below 50% health' addon thing) and didn't think to use Entangling Roots; and it just goes to show I never played a druid that I didn't immediately think of Travel Form, though she was too low-level to have gotten it yet. I guess she also didn't complete the cast of War Stomp and didn't realize it. And Swiftness Potion instead of healing also might have saved her.

Her mouse movements show where her attention was focused: she was looking for a solution in her action bars, so basically she was focused on finding the ability she wanted to use (Rejuvenation) instead of thinking about what she might do. OODA loop, with "act" taking up much more time than it should have, leaving less time for the other steps. Nature's Grasp is also visible on her bars and honestly, having never played a druid myself, it always sounded like a nice ability and something that should be frequently used. She didn't think to use it in this situation, which suggests she might never have used it after talenting into it.

Just like you never used Polymorph after getting it and might never have used Frost Nova, other than maybe like once, either. *Correction, you did use Frost Nova in the fight where you died.

___

Update 10 Feb 2026, 04:37

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proserpina

Proserpina was imported from southern Italy as part of an official religious strategy, towards the end of the Second Punic War, when antagonism between Rome's lower and upper social classes, crop failures and intermittent famine were thought to be signs of divine wrath, provoked by Roman impiety.

Logical motivation? I thought,

Possibility 1: crop failures and famine do not have a divine explanation. Maybe they will continue, and society will collapse. Better start stealing now.

Possibility 2: they have a divine explanation. Humans acting better can fix these problems, even if the weather may seem on first glance to be outside of human control. Law and order will be preserved.

It sometimes seems that religion is about getting people to believe in consequences for good or bad actions, that matter even after death — "The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn no traveller returns." In this explanation, religion and belief in the gods instead affects confidence in worldly consequences and the enforcement of order by humans.

To Pokimane, pt 12

Video from four years ago, Pokimane gets emotional watching hater clip from 2018

via https://www.youtube.com/@PokimaneToo/posts

Since it's old, there's no reason to think you would want me to watch it or comment about it. But I am. "In a natural environment, there are more ways to fail."

5:39 "Can you imagine I listened to this person and just quit and went back to school here?"

When the speaker said at 3:02, "Remember that winner that was up here saying  that she was in college to be an engineer but dropped out to play video games? Don't do that. She thinks it worked out for her but in six months, she will be trying to get back into that school."

That "don't do that", the recommendation to act a specific way, was not directed at you, but at everyone in the audience who had the option of doing what you did.

You said your channel grew the most from Fortnite. From SullyGnome, Fortnite streamers on Twitch average 8 viewers. Even when a streamer is successful, there are many cases where someone's views drop off by a lot, especially if they switch streaming platforms. One of my favorite streamers at the moment is the AoE2 streamer Hoang, who according to the comments on his videos is an engineer, meaning that streaming is not his primary income. His YouTube channel actually got hacked a few years ago and for months or years, he was not uploading anything and maybe not even playing games at all. The four videos he uploaded in the last 24 hours have less than 1000 views in total, which might be worth a couple USD in ad revenue.

My youngest sister is actually around the same age as you. In 2012, she had stopped going to high school. My oldest sister suggested to me that I call our youngest sister, thinking that I could be a good influence on her due to being male. So I did, and basically suggested to my youngest sister that she look into whether it was possible to take a test so she legally would not be forced to attend high school, and that she should start going to college as soon as possible, because people with a college education get paid more.

This was while I was living outside with no plans to go to college myself.

Acknowledgement that many 'successful' people dropped out of college to pursue their dreams, including founders of some of the largest companies in the world. But overall, it is no surprise to anyone that the average person with a college degree makes significantly more money than the average person without a degree.

A few years later, once I had moved back to live with my family (I still had no income), one of the songs that my youngest sister would play loud enough that I could hear it from my room — such as when she was taking a shower, with the door open so other people could use the bathroom — was Rockabye (feat. Sean Paul & Anne-Marie), by Clean Bandit. Lyrics, "She tells him your life, ain't [going to] be nothing like my life, you're [going to] go and have a good life, I'm [going to] do what I got to do".

The door of my youngest sister's room had a broken frame, which I assumed was from the police breaking in. It seems she either did not take my advice about getting a GED or whatever or it was not legally possible, because my sister was forced to go to a juvenile detention center due to not attending high school. (Another song she would listen to was Dollhouse by Melanie Martinez: "Everyone thinks we're perfect. Please don't let them look through the curtains.")

The point is that getting a college degree, as she did, was financially the most sensible choice for my youngest sister. (She is sad right now as she is not sure when or if she will have children, and she knew when going to college that it would have been harder if she had a baby.)

I don't know how streamer awards are determined or how often they go to someone who later stops streaming, but what the speaker in this video said was not directed at you and not intended to harm you, but to help other people.

Also, "Oh you think I'm not going to know how to play the next game? Watch me!"

Pokimane dies in WoW Hardcore (again)

Edit 10 Feb 2026, 03:06: fixed link to video, was to a cropped version.

To Pokimane, pt 11

I have not bothered to look up PCOS, which you mentioned in your recent TikTok video. Maybe you won't be able to have children.

Gangnam Style.

So, this is significant because in the clip that was probably from last summer, you selected for males who wanted children. If you can't have children, then you are interested in males who would not be interested in being in a relationship with you.

The most recent book that I read, Death at the Crossroads (which I illegally downloaded, and which I first read when it came out ~28 years ago). The author says at the start,

It occurred to me that in fiction about ancient Japan, the people who lived in that farmhouse were often just stage props to some greater pageantry, such as the fight to become the Shogun. Yet they also had stories to tell, and I decided to tell at least some of them through the vehicle of a mystery trilogy.

 Excerpt, page 18:

Jiro was not handsome, and his family’s plot of land was far from the biggest, so it was astounding that Yuko’s mother had let it be known that her daughter was available. Yuko was one of the prettiest girls in the small village, although at age fifteen she was a bit past the average age when girls got married. The natural assumption was that Yuko’s mother was waiting for an exceptional match for her daughter, perhaps even hoping that the pretty girl would catch the eye of a lord or samurai so she could become a rich man’s concubine.

The other village women considered Yuko far too clever and far too pretty for Jiro, and said so. But Yuko’s mother had seen kindness and a good heart and a hard worker in the young man, and she knew it would be a match where Yuko would not be abused and, most likely, would be in charge. She wanted that, because of all of her eight children, Yuko was the favorite.

Jiro was presented with the proposition of Yuko as a wife by a small delegation of village women showing up at his hut one morning before he went to his rice paddy to work. The bewildered teen, still smarting from the death of his parents, simply accepted the collective wisdom of the elder women of the village and nodded his agreement. Within a few days, there was a small wedding feast, where the people of the village were fed sake, tofu, and some fish. Yuko served the feast and made sure each of the guests went home with a bit of food wrapped in a broad leaf. After cleaning up, Yuko moved into Jiro’s hut, and they were tentatively considered married, pending the birth of their first child.

I scarcely need to point out that even now, many religions say that 'adult activity' before getting married is bad, and yet most people in developed countries have such experience before they get married. So for most people, there is no need for a 'trial period' in a marriage, and weddings are deliberately conducted in a way that gives them significance and makes cancelling the marriage difficult.

Back in June 2012, I linked the song 嘘とダイヤモンド that I once again referenced in my previous post. I also linked the song, 正義粉砕. These songs both imply a degree of dishonesty, but in the first one the singer is a little bit 'selfish', while in the second the singer is 'good', so they sort of complement each other, I think. Anyway, in the second song (noting that many published translations of Japanese lyrics are inaccurate), the line (at 1:26),

この目は、世界を見過ぎて

僅かな希望も捉えられなくなった

These eyes have seen too much of the world

Even a tiny bit of hope no longer remains (literally: became unable to grasp even a tiny bit of hope)

So, there are a lot of people who literally don't think there's anything wrong with them just focusing all of their attention on what will make them happy in the future, like finding a spouse.

I think I referenced the US Declaration of Independence before, which includes,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

If they were really self-evident, there would have been no need to mention them. What makes one person happy may cause harm to other people. There are some people who simply do not realize this. I was going to mention at some point, although I forget exactly what it was in relation to, that games show that many people are simply bad. That the large variation between students in test scores in school is not just from differences in motivation. Test scores often depend on studying, but two people who start a new game, spend the same amount of time playing it, and have the same goal of not dying, will vary in their ability to meet that goal.

In life, one goal that many people (but certainly not all people) have is 'to be seen as ethical, even when the specific behavior that is ethical may be hard to discern, and only a minority of people might correctly judge what it is or reward people who have that behavior'.

And so it is that there are people who might want to have children, but who do not allow whether a particular person can have children to be important to whether they would be in a relationship with that person.

One might point to same-sex relationships as the ultimate proof of this.

Going back to one of my recent posts: the one about when I tried to meet Mei at the library. Did I try to trick Mei? It's certainly true that there was information which I did not make clear. I said in an email that I would be turning off my Internet (I gave the cable modem and maybe one or two wireless routers to the Korean student who had relied on it, who got a little upset at me since it meant she had to go to the school library for Internet), which implied I was leaving my residence, but I was deliberately ambiguous and Mei's later words showed she did not understand I had already permanently left where I had been living.

But did I "trick Mei into not agreeing to meet me, in order to benefit Kate"? One thing I said to Mei, regarding her not wanting to meet, was that she just didn't want me to die. I really felt it was possible that if we met, it would lead to me dying. Mei facilitated me implying this with like her references to Drow (a female-dominated society, in which males are weak, and the deity is a spider). I'm pretty sure her display name, Lillium, was a reference to Elfen Lied (which I never saw), and not to Lilium, "a taxonomic genus within the family Liliaceae – true lilies" which is poisonous to cats — her cat being named after me.

So, if Mei and I had met, and then I had died, I think it would have helped Kate. Kate would have thought I was in a relationship, since she would not have had any expectation that I would contact her again if I was alive.

When I asked, "Am I someone who would take an action most likely to lead to someone being happy, even if I died", the person that it seemed my actions would most likely lead to being happy was therefore Kate, not Mei.

And I think this is how it is a lot of the time. Evidence, songs:

Rain Song by Girls Dead Monster,

(Translated) Running into a tree in the park,

I cried like you did.

Forgetting that you were here,

Forgetting the love that we had,

Becoming just like you were (misheard lyrics) Crying in place of you,

I don't want that.

 

Numb by Linkin Park,

And I know I may end up failing, too

But I know you were just like me

With someone disappointed in you

So anyway. Maybe it would be nice if people who wanted children did not end up with people who cannot have children. But that is not even on the list of most important problems, on which climate change apparently ranks so low that it no longer appears on the list.

(The letters) W, T, F. (And also, that video with 8.7m views doesn't appear in search, only some copies with 12k, 32k, and 235 views.)

It's Peyton Chorvat's birthday in two days. I would think that she streams every day, except that my Gmail tab which accumulates Twitch live notifications from her only has 35 new messages and the number does not seem to have been going up. Maybe five years ago, she posted on Chirp Club that she was seeing a doctor for her endometriosis, which just like PCOS can be a cause of infertility. I should note that I don't know if Peyton likes me. If she's streaming, it's probably retail aka mainline WoW, which I think I will find painful to watch.

 

@TEAM_OK 지수 - 꽃 ｜ 남의 팔💪[Someone else's arm - 이소정 sojung, igo gattan da] [SJu9tGkRS-0].webm

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Update 09 Feb 2026, 03:12

From your TikTok video, "There's such a pressure on women. I feel like we're constantly told and conditioned to think that our greatest value is bringing life into this world."

This is what I had wanted to mention some people being bad at games, and specifically bad at PvP, in relation to. If you say, "a lot of females don't like fighting in general, as much as males do", this supports the point. Females are less often the target of physical violence in general, but are just as likely to encounter social conflict in the form of words of criticism. An attitude that fighting (including with words) should be avoided is likely to lead to less time spent fighting, which means lower proficiency at it, and more often losing fights or never trying to fight in the first place. I don't necessarily agree with the message of this video or how people in the comments interpret it, but people think it was a good video: Learned Helplessness

Point: only females can do X.

(Ok, haha, X chromosomes.) Is there a Y that only males can do? Probably not, for any Y that people admit to be important. Females tend to be physically weaker, but this doesn't really matter in the modern world. The rigorous physical fitness standards used in military special forces around the world are not really important for winning wars. I don't think I ever watched the entire movie, and it draws people towards incorrect conclusions (the whole, "the US public likes fights in the Middle East because it's open deserts with nowhere to hide, unlike the jungles of Vietnam where a technological advantage didn't mean as much"), but the film Jarhead: "At the last second before Swofford takes the shot, Major Lincoln interrupts them to call in an air strike. . . . The war ends without Swofford ever firing his rifle. During a monologue, Swofford realizes that all of his training and effort to achieve the elite status as a marine sniper is meaningless in modern warfare."

So, if X is important and only females can do X, how should this affect how people think of females?

Possibility: "females should focus on doing X, even if it means sometimes giving up on other goals."

Possibility: "people should think more highly of females and treat them better, because they can do something that males can't."

The scene in Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) where Sarah Connor sarcastically comments that Dani Ramos is only important because of her womb, as Sarah herself had only been targeted for termination because of her future son.

Basically, do females benefit when the fact that only females can conceive children is brought up in a conversation?

Quote from the BBC comedy Red Dwarf, which I have not attempted to verify as factual:

Lister: I don't know why I'm going through with this. It's just not possible.

Rimmer: Why is it not possible? Male baboons have given birth. They were doing that as far back as the 20th century. Caesarian, naturally.

To Pokimane, pt 10

Poll: "If someone had a belief that was harmful to you, and you could change that belief with a single word, would you do so?"

It ends up being a bad poll. It isn't relevant for most people; it is basically only relevant to the specific belief that someone doesn't know you exist. And, even if I wasn't restricting myself from doing anything and there was a place that I could make polls that would get sufficient engagement, I would not be able to justify creating this poll, due to lacking a motive to do so. I said that I would stop expecting you or trying to get you to share this idea, and I am trying to keep that 'promise'.

I have said that I thought you weren't aware of this idea and didn't know I exist. I have never explicitly said the opposite: that I thought you were receiving and reading my emails.

On one hand, I think this is entirely defensible: it's a little crazy to think that you read the emails from me. There was a video in which you were warning people about a scam, and people in comments (YouTube or Reddit) were saying that it was unrealistic because the story required that you were reading emails sent to you yourself, instead of someone else filtering them. Almost no one wants to be seen as crazy, including me (I don't want to be seen as crazy). And so I am reluctant to admit to having thoughts that people would think are crazy.

But for this same reason, if those 'crazy' thoughts are in fact true, then you might feel some degree of criticism of me for prioritizing what other people think of me, over truth and transparency.

Of course, this is the thinking that many 'crazy' people (people whom others evaluate to be crazy) experience, including people who might be viewed as stalkers etc. It's dangerous thinking, and this is part of why people should try to be truthful, and expect others to be truthful.

The short on your podcast channel features a snippet of you saying, "it's either like ring husband or it's like, I don't know". This, and you holding up your hand while saying it, might have reminded me that wedding rings and engagement rings serve the practical purpose of letting people know someone's relationship status. I honestly might not have remembered this since before learning about your ring, several months ago.

I think I also remembered a few days ago that I had sent an email to someone, which had mentioned you, which was possibly before you chose to buy yourself a ring.

So, basically, this post is about secrets. As with the poll, if you wanted me to think that you know I exist, you could reply with a single word, or even send a blank email. But in what case might someone answer "no" to the poll? The obvious case is when, despite the belief being harmful to you, it is helpful to someone else, such as the person holding the belief.

It's difficult to see why you might think, if you do know me, that I benefit from this being a secret. But what about other people? Specifically, what about Sherine? I had said to Sherine that I would never admit that I didn't want her to share the idea.

I could have said, instead, that I wanted her to share the idea. My actual words did not convey any information about whether this was true. It's reasonable to say that this was intentional, since I am smart and tend to point out any important mistakes of mine that I notice.

I never said that I wanted her to block me, or to not reply to most of what I said. I'm actually not sure if she ever acknowledged anything I said on Chirp Club, except for the first post on my third account in which (as I had warned her) I sent a message to her crush.

Oh, at some point I was going to mention the song, 【GUMI】嘘とダイヤモンド【オリジナル曲PV付】. Lyrics:

Scared to project my unadorned figure, I apply lies.

('utsusu' being the transitive form of 'utsuru')

But did her not talking to me help me? Points:

- if there is a government conspiracy, it seems very likely to be because of Sherine's actions and the dilemma she created

- I was happy that I did not have a smartphone, because if I did, then I might have felt an obligation to try to talk to her on it using Snapchat or whatever, and she might have sent me illegal images

- if she had talked to me, then I would not have been stuck on the point of "does Sherine care about the idea and has she shared it"

- if Sherine had really tried to get people to use the idea but failed, and no one else like Yoko Ono had then shared the idea, then I would probably have stopped doing anything with it and acted like it will never be used, since Sherine's actions would have created an obligation from me towards her

- I had said to Sherine that I had no intention of dying, and people not sharing the idea has had danger for me, since I remain poor without health care, at risk of getting cancer, etc. So from a survival perspective, it seems fair to say that her not talking to me didn't benefit me

So there is no proof, but I interpret it as being like that song: that Sherine pretended that she had influence because she was afraid of the possibility that she did not. One cannot even say that if this is what she thought, then her actions were for her own or my benefit: Sherine did not immediately know it, but in one of the first of the emails I sent to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and other people at the time, I mentioned Sherine. So there was the possibility that people did not reply to me or do anything because I had mentioned Sherine, implying that she was important, even though at that time she had not replied to me or done anything except (I think) to stop talking and posting things.

Ok, I think by then she had posted photos of herself ... well, based on the 'temp comment.txt' file that I included in an image archive in 2014, I said to her "You're pretty" on 25 May 2013, which was over a month after I first sent her a message. There was the photo or two where she had her nose close to the camera or something so it looked too big, but I'm not sure if she posted that just before I said to her "You're pretty", or a month earlier.

Later in the same song, "Lies and diamond":

What I was holding wasn't a gemstone (宝石) at all, just a pebble (石ころ).

The fact that nothing important has happened in the past 13 years doesn't mean that Sherine made the wrong choice in keeping secrets. It's easy to criticize, and say that another path should have been taken. But, as I said before, I 'protected' Sherine by implying that it could be possible that I didn't want her to immediately share the idea, since that seemed to be what she was doing, even though it might just have been that she didn't see my tweet about Lebanon in time and would have acted differently if she had.