BillyClark

The primary reason that I’d put forward is that Japanese people place a lot of importance on social hierarchy, to the point that even between twins, it’s important to know which is the older sibling. Because it’s used in everyday conversation and in referring to one another (although not quite as much with twins, I just brought that up for emphasis).

The point is that the Japanese version of these words are used a lot more and have a lot of extra meaning compared to the English phrase “Big Brother”. So, it’s actually a worse fit. Japanese people use enough English loanwords that they probably understand the English phrase, anyways. So, the meaning gets through without the extra unintended baggage from the translation.

It’s one of the many pitfalls of translation. Often, there are words that mean “the same thing”, but they still aren’t the right words because either the extra connotations in the original language or the extra connotations in the target language can throw off the translation.

I think the Japanese translation is fortunate that, in this case, the Japanese language already has so many English loanwords… although I’m not sure whether that was exactly the same case when the book was first translated. It was published in 1948, I think. My recollection is that the English loanword boom started after WW2, so that would be somewhat contemporary.

On second thought, maybe I don’t want tastebuds just inside my asshole.

“-chan” is a diminutive suffix that indicates affection when used. These two factors mean it would never be used in the context of Big Brother.

Even with little knowledge, you should at least come up with alternatives like nii-san, onii-san, onii, nii-sama, etc. Those still wouldn’t work well. I’d think that a lot of people would also think of aniki, which is getting closer. But it’s definitely the best option to just to what they actually did and just use the English “big brother” like a loan word.

Ooh, the headline is slightly misleading. It should say, “A desperate nobody who sees his misguided startup failing starts a self-promotion campaign to try to get money from rich people.”

I have been following British media a bit and unless I am mistaken, this Mandelson chap ran afoul of his Epstein conduct back in September, which was before the DOJ even started releasing the Epstein files as part of the Epstein act, which hadn’t passed at the time. The subsequent release and redactions seem to have exposed even more, but his goose was cooked before that.

Current allegations are that Mandelson handed Epstein extremely sensitive government information. I forget what Brits call it, but we’d say it was classified.

And it currently seems like PM Kier Starmer is probably going to fall with him, since he apparently knew about Mendelson’s continuing association with post-conviction Epstein.

Anyways, that one particularly seems somewhat unrelated to the redaction choices.

There are a lot of vegans and vegetarians who don’t make it their raison d’etre, so I’m sure there have been some who climbed Everest in the past, even if we don’t know about it.

Japan is a shoes-off country, but they often have slippers that they wear indoors. They just change their shoes like Mr. Rogers, but with less singing.

“After seeing you enjoy good food as it was intended, I don’t think I want to continue this. Everyone knows food must only be eaten after you upload pictures of it to Instagram and get a certain number of interactions.”

I have heard that when people are starving they’re more likely to overthrow their government, but looking at North Korea, I’m not sure how true that is, or how true it is anymore.

I have heard that beached marine mammals are often too sick to swim properly and that rather than pushing them back in, it’s better to call wildlife rescue for advice.

It was part of the paperwork requested by the person who arranged my loan and there were no follow up questions.

In that email about Trump blowing Bubba, the actual point was to ask whether Putin had the picture.

And it was asked so casually that it seemed like it was the normal course of things to leak incriminating pictures to the Kremlin.

I once had to “explain the gap in my CV” when applying for a loan. And apparently, “I didn’t feel like working for those 6 months,” wasn’t a good enough explanation. Even though I think literally everybody personally understands the concept.

I ended up saying that I spent the time taking care of my parents, since I did spend some of that time taking care of them.

I think people should rate things consistently, and both of those criteria in the post are fairly subjective. Like, they could both vary based on your mood.

Here’s my 3-star rating system, which is less subjective:

*** I would happily watch this movie again, or I have already enjoyed it multiple times.

** It wasn’t bad, but I don’t see myself watching it again.

* I would refuse to watch this again, or I turned it off because I couldn’t watch it once.

Of course, it’s not perfect. Movies like Dear Zachary would be forced to be 2 stars. But for the most part, since star reviews are to help people decide what to watch, if the criteria is whether or not people would want to watch it a lot, I think the intentions line up with the implementation better.

Exactly. It’s sad, but in America, if you say something to a cop, and the cop, for example, “misremembers” and says that you confessed to a crime, you can be in hot water. If you simply don’t speak to a cop, then it’s more difficult for the cop to “misremember”.

That’s an extreme example, and it’s getting less likely with cops wearing more bodycams, but there’s simply no reason to take the risk of talking to a cop.

I wouldn’t go for this. Even in Victorian times, the catapult was outdated technology.

Now, then, if it were a trebuchet, then you’d really see how far that baby could go.

Oh my, I hope he didn’t get rid of my private collection.

I suspect that most Linux users are former Windows users.

You can tell from the background that this isn’t my attic.

The admins vary by server.