A Few Answers To Questions You Always Wondered About

Why is there a growing number of people voluntarily disappearing in Japan?

No human in this world does anything without a reason. There is always a reason no matter what and in Japan (specifically Tokyo) there is a lot of reasons to just disappear. There is a ton of videos/articles about hikkomori, NEETs, and Jouhatsu which I believe is all related to other in the sense that people become/do these things because of a reason. Im gonna list a few reasons why people become Hikkikomori, NEET, or Jouhatsu:

• 1 Being a salaryman is pure hell in Tokyo. You wake up early in the morning and ride a train thats packed like a sardine can and work from 8am till sometimes 11pm without any paid overtime. While at work because of Japans Senpai & Kouhai work place dynamic if your a kouhai (underling) you get miseshime’d (made an example) and get yelled at in front of all your coworkers at work for a tiny mistake you made. Now think of a time where you were in a situation where it was so uptight/had to act super professional that once you got out that situation you were so exhausted and tired even though you barely did anything. Now times that by x10 and do that for 12-14 hours everyday. There is a “culture” in the Japanese work place that you must follow or you will be ridiculed by your other co workers. Example: When talking to anybody that is your senpai (age or experience) you must always use keigo (very proper way of speaking Japanese). Or when you enter the elevator with a senpai (superior) you must always ask him what floor he wants to go too and press the button for him and once he gets to his floor hold the door open until he leaves. There is books in book stores in Japan JUST for learning how to “properly” work in the Japanese work place. Then once the day is done you take another packed train home and repeat it for 5-6 days every week and the only thing to look forward too is golden week, silver week, and maybe a 1 day weekend every week. So next time you see a picture of a drunken passed out/sleeping salary man on the sidewalk in Tokyo just know that he is literally drinking his stress and shitty life away.

• 2 Being born a women in Japan is like being put on automatic extra hard difficulty in life (like life isnt hard already). Japan is ranked pretty low in the ranking for sexism and theres a reason for that. Unlike America where its iilegal to discriminate based on race, religion, sex, etc etc in Japan you can discriminate down to the blood type! (AB blood type is considered the worst blood type in Japan. look it up its real) So when you put in your resume you need to attach a picture. When companies look through the resumes the organize it by male and female and look through the males first and if there is any open spots left they will look through the women’s resumes. There is even colleges that purposely lower female scores compared to the males (recent news. look it up). Also if you get pregnant in Japan you can say “bye bye” to your career cause you’re straight up fucked. There is an article that interviewed a women who had a high position and took a maternity leave and once she came back she was working for the people that were working under her before her maternity leave. The company even put her in an easier/less work=less paying position because it was assumed that “now that she has a child and was pregnant she wont be able to work/focus on her job” Now this sounds pretty dam bad for Japan so the Japanese government went “hey you big companies out there! we will give literally give you FREE MONEY if you hire a women and put her in a high ranking management role!” Try and guess how many companies took this offer. 1? 3? 10? WRONG it was big circular ZERO. When investigated to why the companies did not put any women in a high ranking position role to literally get free from the government they basically said “If I hired a women in a high ranking of a position other companies that I do business with will look down on me and my company and think that i am not serious about doing business” yikes

• 3 There is a lot of pressure from parents and pressure to do good in school. In Japan towards the end of “middle school” you take a test and that test determines if you can get into your name brand high school that everybody wants to go in. Same thing with “high school” where towards the end of HS you take a super important test which determines if you made it into that brand named college. If you fail your fucked basically. Companies in Japan look mostly at what college you went too. Waseda, Tokyo uni, keio, and sophia are some of the biggest names that if you went to a Japanese person and tell them you graduated from one of those colleges they would say “oooo sugoi!!!” So if you’re academically incapable and fail the test to get into one of those colleges do not be expecting that good of a job.

• 4 You finished college and now you need to look for a job. That means you’re currently doing shushoku katsudou which is again pure hell. You spend months and months and months going to job events getting turned down left and right. Of course if you went to a brand college its pretty smooth sailing but the majority doesn’t just casually get into brand colleges. So that means the majority of people struggle everyday trying to find a career/job suffering rejection left and right. I bet you’re thinking “its like that in America!” but thats where you’re wrong. In America you got a ton of laws in your favor especially the no discrimination law. In Japan since you can discriminate based on anything to everything you better make sure you look your 1000% best in every interview, make sure you suit has no wrinkles, and you better say the correct stuff at the right time at every interview because if they do not like your hair? you’re CUT. Your attitude? CUT. You face? CUT. Nothing is protecting you so you better pray to every/any god that exists that your interviewer likes you and likes what you look like.

• 5 The saying “the nail that sticks out gets hammered in” is especially true in Japan. If you do not act and play the part and follow the “cultural rules” of Japan you will get ridiculed. Imagine living in a place where you cannot be your self you just gotta follow the crowd and say what everybody else does. Sounds depressing right? Well it is.

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Why are there fat police officers?

Cop here. I’ll try to answer this as eloquently as a big dumb jackbooted thug possibly can:

First, the why.

• The job is very, very emotionally stressful, for reasons which would surprise most people. Yeah, the child abuse and dead bodies and all that stuff you see on T.V. sucks, but we’re mostly emotionally prepared for that. What we’re not prepared for is dealing with all of that and the baseless hatred of the people who, so often, serve as our sole motivation for doing the job. Just two nights ago I was squirted in the face with breastmilk by a crackhead, and fought for 5 minutes (an eternity if you’ve been in a fight) with an amphetamine junky who was shaking his penis at kids, all within two hours. I go to get a cup of coffee, and three college kids come up and fuss because their taxpayer dollars are paying for me to get coffee. That hurts, especially because most of us do this job because we want to protect people like that. Certainly not for the money.

• The money. It sucks. Some departments are exceptional. Mine puts me just a couple grand above the poverty level. This after a Bachelor’s from a pretty good school. Eating well is expensive.

• Eating well is also hard to do when you work nights. All the healthy places are closed. It takes time to pack a lunch. Earlier this week, I worked 23:00 to 09:00, drive an hour home, slept for 3 hours, drove an hour back for an hour in court, and hour back home, slept for another 2 hours, and went back to work. It’s easier, more cost effective, and sometimes the only option to just run through the drive-thru for some quick calorie-rich food when I’ve finally got a free minute. Also, donuts are freaking delicious and you know it.

• As hard as it is to find time to pack a proper lunch, or sit down for a healthy dinner with the family, it’s doubly hard to find time for a proper workout. A poor or nonexistent exercise regimen increases stress which, guess what, leads to weight gain.

• Drinking. Lots of my brothers and sisters, way too many in my opinion, turn to the bottle to cope. Lots of high-functioning alcoholics. Booze makes you fat.

• Oh yeah, it’s physically stressful too. All that gear is heavy and uncomfortable. Sitting in a bumpy cramped car for 3 hours, only to jump out and sprint 200 yards and fight for your life, that’s hard on you too. Lack of sleep. Insomnia. Anxiety. Injuries happen, and make exercise more difficult. None of that stuff is good for your overall health.

There’s the why. Now here’s the how.

• First of all, not to make excuses, but you have to allow for the fact that most of us are wearing body armor, which, let’s just say, isn’t flattering.

• Also, I think you’ll find that the majority of law enforcement officers are as physically fit, more likely more physically fit, than the average American. There’s these things called stereotypes that we hear about a lot yet, somehow, can never be victims of.

• Most physically fit officers work nights, and work the rough areas, because that’s where fitness is needed most. Less physically fit officers work days, in the good areas. Hence, the average person who might contribute to the mediasphere is less likely to see those physically fit officers working nights in the bad areas.

• I’ve already seen unions mentioned. Good lord, not all law enforcement agencies are unionized. In my state, most aren’t. The closest thing we’ve got is the FOP, and collective bargaining isn’t what it’s all about. For those departments that are unionized, they do quite a lot to keep the administrators from tightening physical fitness standards, or mandating physical fitness tests. And yes, they make it difficult to terminate officers who have become more of a liability than an asset.

• And they are indeed a liability. How can someone be a good police officer and be fat? Well, they can’t. Their more physically fit buddies will have to bail them out every time they get in a fight, or a foot chase. They get lazy, and everyone else has to pick up the slack. They slack off, take shortcuts, and make the rest of us look bad.

All of that being said, there’s thankfully a changing culture in law enforcement which is beginning to recognize the importance of overall health – physically, spiritually, mentally, and emotionally. Big muscles help, sure, but those muscles need feeding, and after standing in the cold rain for 10 hours, they’ll start eating your brain. Overall health is where it’s at. More departments are implementing minimum physical fitness standards for hiring (my state has had minimum initial hiring standards for going on 30 years) and mandating physical fitness tests on a yearly basis. Focus is tending towards seeing the body and mind as a whole, as the most important piece of equipment an officer has. I hope that, in ten years or so, not only will you see a more physically fit law enforcement community, but a happier one, too.

– Revenant10-15 

 

 

Why don’t I find my mom and sisters sexually attractive? 

Westermarck, an anthropologist, proposed that we are evolutionarily “trained” to avoid sexual contact with people we are very close to for the early part of our life (brothers, sisters, parents, etc.).

The idea is that evolution chooses people who show this aversion/disgust towards sex with those they are close to early in life because reproduction between close family members leads to reduced genetic diversity and (eventually) accumulation of bad mutations.

He proposed that this “Westermarck effect” could be proven because even non-related children who grow up together tend to show similar repulsion towards sex with each other (think of a close family friend you’ve known since childhood who you’d never want to have sex with because they’re “like a brother/sister to you”). Vice-versa, siblings separated at birth who meet much later in life might find themselves sexually attracted to each other despite being related (see, news stories about couples who later find out they’re related due to DNA testing, shock horror!).

HOWEVER: There are plenty of flaws in this theory however, and plenty of studies which have come out to oppose its findings. Other studies have found that people are attracted to people with more similar features to their own, which seems to contradict this theory. Long story short, science ain’t super clear, but it’s likely to be a combination of cultural and behavioural factors, tied to evolution.

– galacticsimian 

 

 

Why is testicle pain more painful than pain in say the arm or leg?

Get yourself two toothpicks. On yourself without looking or on someone else without them looking, test to see how

far apart they have to be for you to realise it is two toothpicks and not one when you press them against the skin of your fingertips. Try this again with the skin of your upper arm/thigh etc.

Different parts of your body are better or worse at detecting touch depending on the density of touch neurons, and subsequently a smaller or larger portion of your brain is devoted to processing those signals.

Pain receptors are different from touch receptors but the principle is the same. More pain receptors in an area will mean that you will be able to feel more pain in that area. Hence why there are more pain receptors in places that you need to survive and procreate.

There is strong evolutionary pressure to have lots of pain receptors on your testicles, as trauma to them will screw up your chances of having kids. Therefore, making trauma to your testicles unpleasant makes you more likely to protect them, and makes your genes more likely to survive.

– thebook21 

 

 

What is it about cancer that actually kills you? 

Basically, cancer is out-of-control cell growth. Normally cells are pretty good at regulating their growth, and they stop growing when they’re supposed to (e.g., when your liver is the size it’s supposed to be, it stops creating new liver cells, except as needed to replace the old ones).

Cancer cells have the parts of their DNA that control cell growth damaged, so they just keep growing and growing.

Normally they start out confined to one place, so you just get a big lump of cancer cells, called a tumor. Then some cells start breaking off and spreading throughout the body, and they seed new tumors all over. This is called metastasis, and this is where things get bad. The tumors all over your body just keep growing. Some of then grow inside your organs, or near your organs, and start crushing them. This interferes with the normal function of your organs, and eventually kills you.

 

 

What is The Strawman Fallacy?

A Straw Man is a misrepresentation or complete invention of your opponents argument in order to make dismantling of that argument easier.

A common example is a person who thinks we need tighter border regulation and need to crack down on illegal immigration. The Straw Man argument often brought up against this position is, “So and so is against immigration. Doesn’t he know we were a nation founded on immigrants?”

The Straw Man in this case is that person A is not against immigration, but a specific type, namely illegal immigration. So person B misrepresents his position and creates the lie that person A is opposed to all immigration.

Another example:

Your mom says you can’t have any cookies before dinner because you will spoil your appetite. You complain to your dad that your mom will not let you eat anything because she wants you to starve. This was not your mother’s argument, but your dad hears this and storms into the kitchen wanting to know why she insists on starving you. Your mom tells him that’s not what she said at all, that her position was simply that you could not have any cookies before dinner, and your dad nods sagely at this. Realizing you misrepresented your mother’s claims, your father sentences you to stand in the field to scare off crows while you think about what you’ve done.