However, another key distinction listed in the Wikipedia article is that the "Geneva Conventions declare that mercenaries are not recognized as legitimate combatants and do not have to be granted the same legal protections as captured service personnel of the armed forces." So it's an even riskier business.

Been to Louisiana. Can confirm.

I don't think he wasn't praising himself there. I interpreted it as calling himself foolish.

You can call that a majority, but it's far from a vast majority. That's just a little more than half, and about on par with the general population, actually.

I disagree. Apple might not be perfect, but it is better than Google when it comes to ads and tracking. I know my data is encrypted, both on the device and in my cloud. And in the App Store, it tells me exactly what data is being collected by the apps I choose to install.

At least the names of all the bases named after Confederates were changed a few years ago. West Point also renamed things that were named after Lee (which only existed because for the sake of Reconciliation after the war).

Did you see that ludicrous display last night?

Major General Smedley Butler seemed like a fairly respectable guy. He was like the worst choice the Wall Street plotters could've picked. The man had already been denouncing capitalism and Wall Street, so of course he testified to Congress when rich people tried to get him to overthrow democracy.

A neat thing about living in Japan is that there are announcements and signs everywhere telling you to please keep your phone silent and to turn down the volume on your headphones so that noise doesn't leak out either. 'Silent mode' is literally called 'manner mode.'

That is unfortunate. I also installed Linux Mint last year, and although I've had weird little issues here and there, none of them were major, and overall I was able to use it exclusively for the last seven months. One issue I encountered when installing was actually because of Window's fault (during the drive partitioning portion), since I do dual-booting.

Hand sanitizer works great too!

I've heard stuff like that too. To be fair, if the United States were to resolutely defend Taiwan, China might not touch it, though there would still be a possibility, but at the least the US and Taiwan would likely win that war since they just need to keep Taiwan independent, not invade China.

How dare you use logic on my computer logic-related shower thought.

But yeah, I get what you mean. I had that thought at some point after posting. This is why I should probably just keep it in this silly thread and not write any philosophy essays soon.

You're... you're right.

It's like, all part of some yin-yang thing.

I wasn't expecting to see a reference to one of my favorite anime of all time. Thank you for reminding me why it's peak.

I was wondering why the sign said "Karuta Manufacturer," since a certain anime I watched always referred to a specific type of Japanese card game as 'karuta.' But I noticed 'karuta' sounds a lot like 'card,' and sure enough, found out karuta just means 'card' because it's a loanword from Portuguese, carta.

Some years ago, I decided to play all the Half-Life games and expansions available at the time after watching a video game history series on YouTube. I enjoyed them all.

You guys are getting buttons?

My Japanese microwave only has an imprecise knob to turn. It came free with the apartment, so I can't complain too much.

I suppose it prevents people from accidentally doing something like hitting 20:00 instead of 2:00 and starting a fire.

Sure! I'll go with what my friends recommended as well, since I haven't travelled to all of the locations I want to go yet. Tōkyō is of course pretty bustling, and has a lot. Kyōto, Ōsaka, and Nara (i.e. the Kansai region) are all close to one another, so it's a good area to visit and sightsee. Although, it can get incredibly crowded with tourists. Other places people mention they like are Sapporo in Hokkaidō, and maybe Fukuoka in Kyūshū. Also, what the other commenter mentioned is good advice. Feel free to PM me if you have any other questions.