News

Monday 2026-08-10

09:00 AM

07:00 AM

Visible Minorities: “Big Garbage Day” and The Purge [SNA Japan]

It’s summertime, and the writing is easy…  This month Debito feels more like writing in the voice of “Dave Aldwinckle of Sapporo” (his persona before “The Debito” took over in the early 2000s), telling a story about life in Japan in general.

SNA (Tokyo) — “Dave! Dave! Get over here! I’ve found it! The Holy Grail of ‘Big Garbage Day!’”

It was Joe ringing Dave’s keitai (mobile phone) first thing in the morning. It wasn’t the first time. It was that regular time of the year in certain parts of Japan that for some foreign residents was better than Christmas: Sodai Gomi no Hi.

That day was quite a celebration during Japan’s Bubble Era of the late 1980s-early 1990s. Anyone could find incredible Sodai Gomi, or “big garbage,” at the local neighborhood Gomi Station. Things like slightly-used stereos, TVs, consumer electronics, kitchen goods, sofas and chairs, wall hangings, light fixtures, even tatami mats. Back then, Japanese had enough disposable income to replace some items every year or so, and they didn’t have the need (or the space) to keep the old. Since there was still a general aversion to buying used goods, there wasn’t much of a market to sell it off. So out on the corner it went. Somehow the government made it disappear, for Sodai Gomi no Hi was basically “The Purge” for unwanted junk.

Nowadays, of course, it’s different. Incomes have decreased, second-hand shops have proliferated, and some governments prefer you haul big junk to a centralized disposal area. So for most dumpster divers, it’s slim pickins. But in some parts of Japan, veterans like Joe prowled on the designated days and occasionally hit the jackpot.

Today was one of those occasions. “—Dave! Are you awake yet? I need a favor.”

“First, Joe, what are you rattling on about?”

“The Holy Grail. An almost-new SONY LCD TV. But it’s too big for me to haul. And it needs cables to plug in to the wall and connect to the internet. I need you to go to Rolf’s and get them for me. I’ll text you what I need. I have to stand guard here so nobody else takes it.”

“Rolf’s. Are you sure he has—”

“Rolf is a dumpster diver like me. Get over there and I’ll get you both a case of beer.”

Ah, Rolf. A longtime professor of something, Rolf had come to Japan in the early 1990s on a Culture Visa to study Martial Arts and eventually befriended a university professor who became his employment sugar daddy. The latter’s far-afield private college wanted the prestige of a real German on the faculty roster. Decades later, Rolf, now a sexagenarian, had learned the song-and-dance of survival in an aging Japan. Thanks to a lot of beer parties and cobwebby faculty meetings, he was fluent enough to appeal to the elderly language of hopeful sloganeering, unrequited need, and general resignation. Now beyond his mandatory retirement age, he had joined the ranks of rural Japanese and their tenuous life on the edges of Japanese society.

Still, all things considered, Rolf had done well. He had acquired an entire exurban house that was itself a bit of a dumpster dive. The previous owner had been a little old widow who died in her bathtub, giving the place bad juju. “Superstitious nonsense,” said Rolf, a proudly rational German, who contentedly bought the place for a song.

Over the years he had converted his widow mansion to his little slice of home-away-from-home, filling his kitchen with bread, beer, and sausage, and converting his compact outside yard from a mausoleum of weeds into a multi-roomed greenhouse. He had jerry-rigged it out of transparent plastic and lashed-together poles from the local laundry-pole vendor, who had also retired and sold his vending truck to Rolf for yet another song. Years of unsold laundry poles were thrown in for free.

Seeing Dave arrive at his abode through the thick plastic exterior, Rolf pulled open his makeshift greenhouse door with a perfunctory greeting and offered a curt, “Moment, please.” He was furrowing his brow over a matter of great urgency. “I am watering the vegetables now. They look too thirsty. Tomatoes and carrots are so expensive in this country. Go say hi to Ingeborg.”

“Hi Dave!” she waved from a separate interior room of sorts. Ingeborg was Rolf’s southern-German partner of convenience who was easily twenty years his junior and just starting to lose her bloom. Today she was braless. After all, it was late summer, and that’s how she had always celebrated the heat—in as few layers as possible. It was her greenhouse, and nobody would tell her what to do in her own space. Nobody did, anyway. Neighbors would call by to say hello, admire the view, and make their silent mental comparisons of how Europeans are so exotic.

“Hi Ingeborg. Whatcha up to?”

“Onions. They’re very good this year!” She had already carefully excavated and laid them out on two used zabuton (a traditional Japanese flat cushion) that gave the appearance of an overloaded domino. “What brings you here today?”

“Oh, I’m here to raid Rolf’s computer cable collection. I remember he’s the type that never throws that stuff away, even if the electronics obsolesce or die. You know where he keeps them?”

She laughed and rolled her eyes. “Oh Rolf, yes, you know him well. He puts them somewhere in a closet all tied up like spaghetti. I can’t help you. I don’t know his system. Wait here with me if it’s not too hot.”

It was, but Dave didn’t mind standing by and enjoying the neighbors’ view either. Ingeborg had come to Japan on a lark during the anime wave around twenty years ago and liked it enough to stay on. But since Japanese men, too, were afraid to approach her, she found it difficult to put down roots. Luckily, she and Rolf had crossed paths through a German community which made it clear he was available. Rolf had been through a couple of Japanese marriages himself, but they soon faded once the Gaijin Groupies realized they had married a person, not a concept.

What brought Rolf and Ingeborg together beyond random circumstance was one important thing in common: loneliness for a common language. He needed someone who didn’t just question or tolerate his rationality day-in, day-out. She needed a man she could talk to without effort or games, but also needed a visa. Rolf had Permanent Residency, and so the dominoes fell into place. They married and stayed on in Japan, lashed together like sturdy laundry poles, supporting and incubating a customizably comfortable lifestyle.

“Enough heat in here for you?” barged in Rolf with a smile. Startled out of his reverie, Dave said, “Yeah, uh, hi Rolf. I’m here on a mission, actually. Joe wants some TV cables from your stash. He’s texted me exactly what he’s looking for.”

“Borrow me your phone,” Rolf said without ado, and went off to fulfill the request. Ingeborg tenuously offered Dave a beer from a cooler, but he begged off. “I have to drive soon, and you know how Japan is zero-tolerance about any alcohol in the bloodstream.”

“Yes, I understand,” laughed Ingeborg. “Can’t help you again. You know we Germans never keep non-alcohol beer in the house. What’s the point of it?”

Rolf soon came by and handed over the cables in a long-bankrupt department store bag. “What for he needs this? Has Joe found more treasure today?”

“He always does. Both of you are collectors of junk, but you know the saying about ‘another man’s treasure,’ yes?”

Rolf scoffed. “Of course I do. English is such an easy language. It’s just German from another mother. Japanese, on the other hand, is a lifetime of learning. At least the verbs come at the end.”

Rolf then beckoned Dave behind the corner of the house and to his long-abandoned neighboring house. In its driveway was parked the mostly-disused laundry-pole truck. The keys were still in the ignition, and Rolf reached in and tentatively turned the engine over. Success. Good old trustworthy Japanese cars. The windshield wipers came on and etched away accumulated detritus, and Dave smacked the cushions on the front seat to see how grimy this trip would get him. A surfeit of dust coated his hand. He would be driving with the windows down.

Dave then noticed the white megaphone speaker above the driver’s cab—the laundry-pole guy’s way of broadcasting his wares in song and message. “This still work?” asked Dave, picking up the microphone and keying it.

“Yes,” said Rolf. “Maybe you will sell something today. You have plenty of rust and dust in the back.”

“I don’t think that’s in short supply out here,” he laughed back. Dave squeezed into the truck, bidding Rolf and Ingeborg farewell via the loudspeaker as he gingerly backed out and headed for Joe’s.

An hour later, Dave had driven three towns over to Joe’s suburban neighborhood. A few blocks away from his apartment, Joe was soon spotted seated in an outdoor chair by a Gomi Station, warily eyeing curious passersby who actually had more interest in him than the TV.

Ah, Joe. He was also of Rolf’s generation, another educator who came over during the mid-Eighties to teach Eikaiwa (English conversation) and found his way into the university system by dint of a master’s degree in somesuch from an American university, but mainly the birthright of English fluency. A passionate relationship produced a Spousal Visa, keeping him from being too dependent on an employer for his lifestyle. But once Joe got Permanent Residency, he got comfortable enough in Japanese society to address his lothario itch. After all, he surmised, sleeping around in Japan is a national sport, what all his generation of Japanese men did, and once his wife had kids she didn’t much need a husband around anyway. So Joe contented himself with hobbies and womanizing while they drifted apart. Decades later, one fear he was no longer saddled with was his ex-wife’s wrath at him spending all morning at a Gomi Station, capped off by bringing more junk home.

Dave announced his presence from the truck loudspeaker, and Joe came galloping up. “Look at this amazing find!”

It was indeed amazing. Carefully repacked into its original box was a SONY Bravia 9 85-inch Mini LED 4K LCD TV that was barely a year old. It was worth thousands of US dollars. Why it hadn’t been taken back to the store or resold on the used market was a mystery. Perhaps the previous owner had bought it on a whim but suddenly died, and the family was summarily clearing house. Maybe some scions of the political or criminal world had offered it as tribute, so the stank of a bribe got it politely dumped with no questions asked. Or maybe it was a legacy of the twice-annual ochugen/osebo (traditional Japanese seasonal gift-giving customs) eras of yore, when people had more money than sense and gave lavish (but not necessarily wanted) gifts to superiors to maintain relationships and curry future favors. Whatever the reason, this orphaned and perhaps even unused TV was now going downmarket into Joe’s life.

“Thanks for bringing the truck. Give me a hand loading it!” Dave lifted a corner of the box and realized how surprisingly light it all was. This is true of most Japanese consumer electronics, designed light in case it falls on you during an earthquake. Nevertheless, it was expansive and bulky, as is the entire point of a wide-screen TV.

Joe jumped on the back of the truck and slid the box abreast of the truck bay wall. He hadn’t brought bungee cords, so he said he would sit in the back clutching the laundry pole racks and steadying the TV. Dave was to carefully drive the back roads to Joe’s apartment, even if that was going to annoy his GPS that was especially nagging in a Japanese voice. Hopefully they wouldn’t run into any cops, because in no way was having him ride back there legal. But Joe was willing to take the risk for both of them, of course. He was used to being looked at anyway, and he cheerily waved at giggling onlookers and passersby as if this was just the next big caper of the day on Planet Japan for Joe Gaijin.

They reached the final stage of the quest. After schlepping the box up a few flights of stairs to Joe’s bachelor pad, they contorted themselves into propping open the front door, sloughing their shoes in the tight genkan (entryway), and threading the box through the afterthought-passageway that passes for a kitchen in Japan’s 1DK apartments. In his 4.5-jo tatami room, Joe shucked the box, kicked aside his clothes and futon to make space, and plonked the TV down while he looked for one of those rare Japanese room electrical outlets. He performed triage on his long-overloaded extension cord power bar and disconnected his room lamp in the process. No worries. The TV would provide ambient light for now, even if it was only the fuzz of static. He then plugged in the TV cable, powered on, and began side-buttoning his way through the channels.

On came NHK. News desu. The image was overwhelming. The announcer’s face was already bigger than the kitchen sink, and they were sitting but a few feet away. Events in Tokyo were suddenly larger than life.

A supersized Prime Minister Takaichi was making the news for blaming foreigners for eating too much rice, thereby raising prices for the Japanese food supply. Even though, as Dave quietly knew, Takaichi herself had suspended former PM Ishiba’s program to expand rice production for export, which would have expanded the supply and brought prices down for everyone. But Japan’s rice market is not subject to market forces. It is a monopsony, where the government buys up all Japan-produced rice, sets the prices at the highest in the world, and hoards up a huge national stockpile. That stockpile was dwindling as farming families die out and fields lie fallow. But instead of allowing consumer demand to incentivize more rice growing, Takaichi was declaring a shortage and inflating rice prices. This was essentially a ruse to bribe rural areas to vote for her party by pulling levers in ways other political parties couldn’t. The downside was foreigners were once again being used as cover for Japan’s manipulative domestic politics.

Joe was relatively unconcerned about all of this. All he cared about in the moment was that he had succeeded on his mission, even if the huge TV now blocked access to his futon closet. He had an apartment to fill with stuff since he no longer had family, like so many other Japanese of his generation. And like them, he was living a life by his fingernails as his own retirement approached, when most people live the rest of their days off whatever they had accumulated during their working life.

Unfortunately, Joe and Rolf would be the last generation of foreigners that could live like their Japanese neighbors. And here’s where “The Debito” will take back the keyboard from Dave in Sapporo:

Takaichi’s new “coexistence with foreigners” policies will require future long-termers to live “self-sufficiently,” i.e., better than the average Japanese, with higher wages and pension payments, healthy and squeaky-clean lives, no bureaucratic snafus. Even though, according to the Japan Times, 61.5% of Japanese households earn less than the average (as opposed to the median) annual income. So foreigners must do even better than that.

In other words, visa rules are tightening to the point where foreign residents cannot create lives in Japan on their own terms, and are being given less leeway for learning the ropes of a complicated society and language through trial-and-error. Because any deviation from a lifestyle and a timetable set by the mandarins means foreigners get denied longer-term visas. Meanwhile, Permanent Residency is further out of reach than ever.

So foreign residents, your new marching orders are these: Pay more than average into your pensions and taxes, and hope you can hang on long enough to get anything back. But the plan is to make it harder for foreigners to stay and reap the fruits of their investments. Because “Japan First” is for “Japanese Only.” And all that Rolf’s and Joe’s successors have painstakingly accumulated in Japan will likely be lost.

In effect, Japan’s foreign residents are Sodai Gomi personified.

If you want more essays in this relaxed vein, go to Debito.org’s archive at https://www.debito.org/residentspage.html.

Summer Days With the Little Ones [The Status Kuo]

No politics today, just a photo and video set from the past month with the kiddos here in hot summer land in the Hudson Valley.

Local officials opened a swimming pool built right in the lake in Sojourner Truth State Park, and we managed to get there the week before everyone else heard about it. Here’s a shot of that amazing new addition to Kingston, NY!

If you’ve ever played Legend of Zelda (I haven’t but was told this), Ronan apparently looks like a little woodland creature from that video game with a leaf in his hair like this.

And Riley loves riding up top on Ba’s shoulders. My ears are her reins!

We had to clear out of our house and over to an AirBnB while they refinished our old floors (that was a PAIN but we’re back now and they look terrific!) At least the stay gave me a chance to introduce the concept of “hammock” and “swing” to the kids.

Riley recently discovered the joys of bubble wrap…

And loves to pretend to be my answering service.

Ronan loves belly farts…

And even has opinions on who is the greatest Pop Artist of All Time.

Reading to Riley is a joy, especially when there are surprise pop-ups in the book!

And I managed to put this play-set together in the yard (power tools and all!) It was a gift from my friend, known to the kids as “Aunt Jenny.” (Half of their clothes are from her own kids’ early years, so if you ever see them in cute outfits, chances are they are from the amazing Aunt Jenny!)

Riley has picked up on the fact that I have to go out of town for work a lot, so she has started saying that she’s headed to work in the mornings, too. With a work satchel and everything! (But I note, no pants on her way to the office…which sounds like an anxiety dream I still have lol.)

And here is her imitating a crab. Windsor is wary.

It’s an amazing thing to hear your kids develop language and cognitive skills in real time—sometimes quite rapidly! Here’s a story I posted on social media in case you missed it:

* * *

Our nanny Jasmine recounted the following story, after I heard her cracking up uncontrollably in the other room, and warning me my daughter is way beyond a typical one-year old.

Jasmine: (in Mandarin) Riley, why are you lying on the ground? You know I don’t like it when you lie on the rug. There’s dust and dog hair.

Riley: [doesn’t get up]

Jasmine: Okay, if you won’t get up, I’m not going to pay you any attention.

Riley: [doesn’t get up]

Jasmine: I mean it. I’m just going to take care of your brother.

(Jasmine turns her back on Riley, starts changing Ronan’s diaper. Riley gets up, saunters over to Jasmine, looking up at her, head tilted, smiling broadly.)

Riley: [sighs] Jasssssmine. You’re so adorable.

* * *

I just can’t! Hahahaha

I’ll see you back tomorrow with the latest on our trying times. Till then, I recommend we all disconnect, refresh and spend time with loved ones or even QT alone—which is something I get to experience for a glorious two hours on Sundays while the kids are at gym class!

Jay

06:00 AM

Debito’s SNA VM column 77:  “Big Garbage Day and The Purge”, a light, relaxed summer slice-of-life in Japan essay on how long-term lifestyles for NJ Residents are doomed (Aug 9, 2026) [debito.org]

Intro: “Dave!  Dave!  Get over here!  I’ve found it!  The Holy Grail of ‘Big Garbage Day’!” It was Joe ringing Dave’s keitai first thing in the morning.  It wasn’t the first time.  It was that regular time of the year in certain parts of Japan that for some foreign residents was better than Christmas:  Sodai Gomi no Hi. That day was quite a celebration during Japan’s Bubble Era of the late 1980s-early 1990s.  Anyone could find incredible Sodai Gomi, or “big garbage,” at the local neighborhood Gomi Station.  Things like slightly-used stereos, TVs, consumer electronics, kitchen goods, sofas and chairs, wall hangings, light fixtures, even tatami mats.  Back then, Japanese had enough disposable income to replace some items every year or so, and they didn’t have the need (or the space) to keep the old.  Since there was still a general aversion to buying used goods, there wasn’t much of a market to sell it off.   So out on the corner it went.   Somehow the government made it disappear, for Sodai Gomi no Hi was basically “The Purge” for unwanted junk. Nowadays, of course, it’s different.  Incomes have decreased, second-hand shops have proliferated, and some governments prefer you haul big junk to a centralized disposal area.  So for most dumpster divers, it’s slim pickins.  But in some parts of Japan, veterans like Joe prowled on the designated days and occasionally hit the jackpot. Today was one of those occasions.  “—Dave!  Are you awake yet?  I need a favor.” And the quest continues from there....

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt [Techdirt]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Thad with a comment about Capital One’s stated reasons for shutting down Trump accounts:

Would be nice to have some disclosure laws so that if a presidential candidate’s had his bank accounts closed for money laundering, we don’t learn about it years later in a lawsuit.

In second place, it’s MrWilson with a reply on that same post to someone claiming Trump was targeted for political reasons:

“for political reasons” = Trump violating his oath of office, multiple laws, the Constitution, human and civil rights, et al.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with an anonymous comment about the Paramount merger:

Given that Oracle laid off around 25,000 employees (of 162,000) last May just to keep inflating the AI hype, I won’t be surprised if Paramount has already planned layoffs to offset the giant debt of the deal.

Next, it’s Commenter #5759 with a comment about Buc-ee’s shying away from their John Oliver challenge and suing a tiny convenience store instead:

I wonder if John Oliver can convince HBO to fund this store’s legal defense.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous comment about the Trump/Capital One dispute:

A Republican: Tell me how I can be like you.
Trump: You have to start an insurrection, and launder money.
Republican: Why launder money?
Trump: See, nobody cares about the insurrection.

In second place, it’s an anonymous comment about requests to post proof of the claim that there are “numerous videos” of people cutting into the reflecting pool:

He can’t. They go to school in Canada.

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we’ve got an exchange about RFK Jr.’s latest embarrassing display. First, it’s Heart of Dawn with an initial reaction:

If only the worms had finished what they started.

Next, it’s WTF over with a reply:

Unfortunately, the worms died of starvation.

That’s all for this week, folks!

Sunday 2026-08-09

08:00 PM

Kanji of the Day: 器 [Kanji of the Day]

器

✍15

小4

utensil, vessel, receptacle, implement, instrument, ability, container, tool, set

キ

うつわ

武器   (ぶき)   —   weapon
核兵器   (かくへいき)   —   nuclear weapon
機器   (きき)   —   device
容器   (ようき)   —   container
兵器   (へいき)   —   arms
楽器   (がっき)   —   musical instrument
食器   (しょっき)   —   tableware
臓器移植   (ぞうきいしょく)   —   organ transplant
器具   (きぐ)   —   utensil
大量破壊兵器   (たいりょうはかいへいき)   —   weapon of mass destruction

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Kanji of the Day: 錠 [Kanji of the Day]

錠

✍16

中学

lock, fetters, shackles

ジョウ

錠剤   (じょうざい)   —   pill
施錠   (せじょう)   —   locking
手錠   (てじょう)   —   handcuffs
解錠   (かいじょう)   —   unlocking
一錠   (いちじょう)   —   one tablet
開錠   (かいじょう)   —   unlocking
南京錠   (ナンキンじょう)   —   padlock
錠前   (じょうまえ)   —   lock
シリンダー錠   (シリンダーじょう)   —   cylinder lock
錠をかける   (じょうをかける)   —   to fasten a lock

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

07:00 PM

“We’re all being surprised at the same time” [Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect]

Keith Jarrett on improvisation.

When the artist is creating in real time, in conjunction with the witnesses in the room, “performance” goes away.

It’s creation.

Improvisation is a privilege, a chance to create without a guarantee.

      

01:00 PM

07:00 AM

The McIntosh Modernity Index [Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect]

There’s a village in Luxembourg that’s right outside the main metropolis. A farmer often ties up a donkey to the little bridge leading to town.

The juxtaposition of international digital trading and donkeys is a reminder that as fast as the future arrives, the past also sticks around. We can measure the distance not just in years, but in miles. “How many miles is it to the nearest donkey?” is an interesting metric.

There’s probably a version of the donkey in your office or your town.

      

Just for Skeets and Giggles (8.8.26) [The Status Kuo]

Note to readers: Some folks are experiencing issues jumping between email and the video clips in my Saturday funnies. Try viewing the collection on your mobile phone from the Substack app or the website so that you don’t have to scroll back through the email each time!

While I have your attention, I’m looking for three volunteers to upgrade to paid subscriptions—because here’s what attrition looked like this week!

Subscribe now

Please help keep this newsletter free for those who are on fixed income or disability by becoming a supporting member. Now, on to the laughs!

If you want evidence that the rules just aren’t the same for the current White House occupant, look no further than this story, which barely registered with the media and the public.

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Crimes aside, the public is quite unhappy about the on-again/off-again war in Iran keeping gas prices sky-high.

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Borowitz proving again he’s the master of satire:

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The war is going quite badly in part because we (checks notes) are running out of missiles.

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Current national mood:

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Luckily for us, Trump is laser-focused on the war and the economy and not at all suffering from dementia.

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There comes a point in the week when I wonder if there will be enough material, and then Trump goes and does something like… wear a wig.

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“It’s not a wig! That’s just his hair!”

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We have a winner.

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Let the comparisons begin.

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Throwback to 2020…

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Forget nasty women. He’s a nesty man.

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Mrs. Betty Bowers was on a roll.

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It seemed appropriate to take the moment he wigged out the most to add this.

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(Source)

Slow clap for this masterpiece.

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He really does resemble his mother.

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(Source)

Sign of the times in Tennessee—and hopefully of things to come.

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Republicans are trying to rile their base by relitigating the pandemic and coming after Dr. Fauci.

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Do a whole “lab leak” webpage but make it VEEP.

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His sycophants are trying desperately to spin the bad job numbers.

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And those Epstein files keep popping up in the news—and in excellent work like this!

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(Source)

RFK Jr. tried to soften his public image, and Molly Jong-Fast hit back hard.

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Trump is furious at yet another woman hire for not going along with his fantasies.

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Trump hauled Pirro into the White House to berate her for dropping the vandalism case against former Olympian David Hearn for lack of evidence. But it was her big white box that got everyone talking.

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Was it a box o’ wine? She may need it soon…

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Trump is still going on about the Reflecting Pool.

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I think this is the lady who carries his diaper bag?

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The Senate has confirmed, 50-49, Trump’s former personal attorney as AG.

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On the subject of McConnell…

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I really appreciated the level of humor in this.

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We haven’t checked in on Elon Musk in a while, and he— oh. Oh wow.

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(Source)

Or as one person put it,

Fun fact: I used to live at the end of Uranus in San Francisco.

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We conclude our politics this week with a prediction from our maker:

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I’m looking for three new paid subscribers to help sustain this newsletter. If you’re already a supporter, thank you! And if you have been enjoying my work for free for some time but agree that it’s time to put some money in the tip jar, make my day by upgrading!

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My iPad would last around two minutes with my corgi if I did this.

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I wonder if this works on babies, too?

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This was fun to listen to. And a bit terrifying.

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Some cat photobombs are in order!

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One day they’ll figure out who did this.

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(Source)

Sound up for the goat friend!

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(Source)

This happened to us too while we were in Mexico on a tour boat near Cabo!

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This, however, has never happened to us.

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(Source)

Speaking of hitching rides with humans…

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(Source)

“We are from France.” (If you get that reference, you are probably over 50.) So cute!

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(Source)

🎶 I’m always chasing rainbows…! 🎶

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(Source)

Wait for it…

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How many of us can relate?

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Also…

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I learned a new word! And it’s a gem.

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I would start laughing and not stop for some time if I saw this.

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This is the moment he realized he’s a professional comedian.

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Deep breath before watching this.

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(Source)

This is a terrific PSA.

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(Source)

A lot of funny things happened on live TV this week. This guy almost got an FCC fine.

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Over on QVC, the traffic was also a live wreck.

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(Source)

The big moment of the week also came courtesy of QVC. Wigs were apparently the theme everywhere in what is perhaps the greatest oops ever.

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(Source)

It has already garnered tributes.

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(Source)

Damn, drag queens are fast!

This bit posits what her face might have looked like when she said it lol.

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(Source)

From Judge wine in a box to this poem, which popped up on my feed.

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Infinity is very big and very troubling.

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Life of Pi?

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Well played, Mr. Hopkins.

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His laugh is absolutely contagious.

Image.heic

We finish with a couple of dad jokes. Firtht, there’s thith one.

Image.heic

And my new favorite couple, one with the puns and one with the pun appreciation!

Image.heic

Have a great weekend!

Jay

12:00 AM

Pluralistic: Digital sewer socialism (08 Aug 2026) [Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow]

->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->-> Top Sources: None -->

Today's links


The giant head of the Statue of Liberty. Around it are many medieval machines, tended by little medieval rude mechanicals. In the background is a crosshatched architectural drawing of some classical arches and such.

Digital sewer socialism (permalink)

Hardly a day goes by without my getting an email from someone looking for a way to do good with technology. From computer science students thinking about post-grad careers to seasoned coders with decades of experience, there's an army of hackers looking for a way to turn their expertise into public goods.

There's a name for this movement: it's called "Public Interest Technology" and the people who work in it are called "public interest technologists." There've always been techies who understood the link between tech and public wellbeing and who committed themselves to working for the betterment of society, but their numbers swelled as Big Tech companies saturated their markets and switched from growing by making products people like, to locking in their users and then extracting more value from their technological prisoners:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

It was the era when (in the words of Facebook's Jeff Hammerbacher) "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads":

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/06/12/click/

For organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the growing cohort of hackers who wanted to hack for good was great news. Our staff technologist group swelled from a couple of overworked computer scientists helping lawyers and activists with campaigns to a series of increasingly ambitious software projects, from Privacy Badger (a tracking-blocker that every web user needs):

https://privacybadger.org/

To Let's Encrypt and Certbot, projects that forever changed the internet's default state, so that today, nearly all online communications are encrypted and resistant to mass surveillance:

https://certbot.eff.org/

Other opportunities for public interest technologists proliferated. Bruce Schneier created the canonical resource page for Public Interest Technologists, including career opportunities for would-be public interest technologists:

https://public-interest-tech.com/

But the motherlode of public interest technologist opportunities wasn't the nonprofit sector – it was the public sector. It started with the UK's Government Digital Service, a group of public-spirited hackers (many of them ex- of the BBC, where they'd been tempest-tossed by endless internal power-struggles over the role of the internet in public service media) who retooled many of the UK government's most important administrative front-ends. For several glorious years, Britons delighted to the daily marvel of having their routine interactions with their government transformed from clunky, broken web-pages to slick, superbly thought through online processes that had all the polish of Amazon or Google, but without any of the gamesmanship, manipulation or privacy invasions:

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

Despite many attempts at official sabotage by a string of increasingly shambolic UK governments, the GDS still exists, and it still does amazing work, even though it operates today with a fraction of the official support that it enjoyed at its inception. The last time I renewed my UK passport, I was gobsmacked by how easy and sensible the process was. Local authorities have gotten in on the act, too: I renewed my absentee voting registration with Hackney Council last week and it was as simple as scanning a QR code, affirming my details, and clicking "submit."

Around the world, a generation of public sector technologists duplicated and improved on the UK GDS's work. In Taiwan, a rogue public interest hacker named Audrey Tang led a group of digital guerrillas in creating shadow versions of every Taiwanese government website that scraped and remade the entire digital presence of the Taiwanese state to make public information and services accessible, legible and useful to its people. After the next election, Tang was named Taiwan's first ever Minister of Digital Affairs (today, she is a Taiwanese "Ambassador-At-Large"):

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

In the USA, Jen Pahlka went from running a ragtag "civic hacking" org called Code For America to helping to found the United States Digital Service under Obama, bringing some of that UK GDS spirit to America's dreadful online presence, which had been largely built and maintained by beltway bandits who'd billed handsomely and delivered some of the internet's greatest crimes against usability:

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

But the USDS's legacy is bitter. In 2025, USDS was effectively dismantled and replaced with DOGE, Elon Musk's handpicked team of tech-bro cultists who set out to dismantle as much of the US government as possible, deliberately sabotaging the usability of America's governmental systems to make it harder for the public to access the services they are entitled to and pay for with their taxes.

My own run-in with this was my attempt to get a certificate of citizenship for my daughter when she turned 18: all I could find was an online form that started by requiring me to list the dates and flight numbers for every trip I'd taken to the USA from the time I was born to the day I became a US citizen, a 50+ year period that started with a trip to visit my snowbird grandparents in Florida when I was six months old. The entire support and advice service for the US Customs and Immigration Service has been replaced with a DOGE chatbot that repeatedly emails and texts links to the form, no matter what question you ask, and no matter whether you call, email or use the website's chat interface:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/06/doge-ball/#n-600

Many of the DOGE kids were monsters. The most chilling DOGE story I've heard was the anonymous testimony of NIH officials who begged the DOGE children who were dismantling their work to spare some long-running cancer research projects whose great promise would be vaporized if they were interrupted. The DOGE kids laughed at these entreaties, saying that once Musk had perfected "General AI" we wouldn't need cancer research, because their tame AI god would cure cancer.

But not every DOGE operator was a digital arsonist. Take Dan Berulis, a DOGE staffer who came out of the private sector and later turned whistleblower over the group's activities, who now faces assassination attempts:

https://www.wired.com/story/he-blew-the-whistle-on-doge-then-his-brakes-were-cut/

Berulis joined DOGE to improve America's digital infrastructure, not to dismantle it. When he talks about his motives, he sounds like an early GDS pioneer, one of Audrey Tang's direct-action government data scrapers, or one of the Code For America hackers who followed Pahlka to USDS:

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5355896/doge-nlrb-elon-musk-spacex-security

DOGE was a catastrophe. It left America's government digital presence in far worse shape than it found it, and even the modest savings it claimed to have made from all this destruction turn out to be lies:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/elon-musk-doge-made-big-110000036.html

But as Berulis demonstrates, there is a bipartisan group of skilled, ethical technologists who are desperate to do meaningful public interest work. Their numbers swell every day, as Big Tech continues to curdle – no longer merely sclerotic and enshittifying monopolies, now active participants in Trump's authoritarian dismantling of democracy itself:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/06/america-with-chinese-characteristics/#orphaned-syrian-refugees-need-not-apply

Tech bosses' gleeful mass layoffs mean that tech workers can no longer count on good treatment and stable, high-earning careers; at the same time, tech bosses' betrayal of democracy makes the prospect of working for a tech company far more ethically dubious than mere ad-tech optimizations. The result is a bumper crop of geeks looking for ways to do good with their lives and skills – as all the emails in my inbox asking for advice about this attests.

Enter NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has made "public excellence" the cornerstone of his politics, hiring the most skilled workers he can find and then giving them all the authority and resources they need to fix 100,000 potholes, bring New York's worst landlords to justice, and deliver every day for all the people of New York:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/15/unconscionability/#standalone-authority

Mamdani has just unveiled his Public Interest Technology (PIT) Crews: five "game changing" teams of public interest hackers who will remake NYC's digital services:

https://www.nyc.gov/mayors-office/news/2026/07/transcript–mayor-mamdani-launches–public-interest-technology–

Writing for Wired, Steven "Hackers" Levy paints a portrait of New York's PIT Crews, describing them as "what DOGE should have been":

https://www.wired.com/story/mamdani-assembles-his-nyc-tech-team/

I'll go farther than that: the PIT Crews – and Mamdani's project as a whole – is delivering the entire failed promise of DOGE. Unlike Musk and Trump, Mamdani is actually rooting out fraud and waste. The reason Mamdani can do this – and the reason billionaires can't – is that the fraud and waste that undermines governments at all levels come from the super-rich, with their tax-dodging, their no-bid contracts, their addiction to public subsidies.

Musk owes his riches to federal bailouts and contracts: if he wants to "eliminate government fraud and waste" he should turn over his files to an IRS inspector (if he can find a survivor of the DOGE massacre) and surrender himself for a lengthy prison sentence. For Musk, "government fraud and waste" is a single mom on food stamps who misses a box on a 600-page form because she's exhausted from working three jobs to make rent – not a no-bid contractor trousering billions in public funds for projects that overcharge and underdeliver.

Mamdani's PIT Crews are "small groups of engineers and designers will strive to change the hidebound and confusing nature of current city services by using state-of-art skills to rapidly whip up specialized apps that solve real problems." Mamdani says that they'll "raise expectations on what government can deliver, because we really can deliver."

As Levy describes it, the big difference between the Obama-era USDS and 2026's PIT Crews is "a skeptical, almost adversarial, stance toward Big Tech." NYC's PIT Crews explicitly recruit top-tier hacker talent who want to "make software that doesn't serve advertisers, the military, or the pocketbooks of centibillionaires."

Their inaugural chief is Lisa Gelobter, a veteran of both tech firms and the USDS, who says that "Without technology, policy is just words written on a piece of paper." The first project on her roster is implementing "Click to Cancel," a policy inaugurated by Lina Khan, Biden's FTC Chief – and then dismantled by Trump. Under Click to Cancel, companies are required to create one-click workflows to cancel subscriptions and memberships, ending the pernicious, incredibly profitable practice of trapping people with impossible-to-halt recurring billings. Today, Khan is running Mamdani's Economic Development Board, and her Click to Cancel rule is back – for New Yorkers, at least:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/22/lina-khan-nyc-economic-development-board

NYC PIT Crew's new Click to Cancel site will be live when the policy takes effect on Oct 1. It's a whistleblower site that will make it easy to report merchants who make it hard to get shut of their online Roach Motels (users check in, but they don't check out). It's estimated the Click to Cancel rule will save New Yorkers $160m in the first year alone – but only if Mamdani can enforce it, which is why this website is so critical.

This focus on meat-and-potatoes service delivery was once dismissed as "sewer socialism," an unserious form of progressive politics with an undue focus on improving people's daily lives at the expense of high-flying political change. Today, Mamdani is at the vanguard of an army of proud sewer socialists, who say that once you deliver for people in their day-to-day existence, they will trust you and back you when you fight for deep, structural changes (and the corollary: if you can't deliver for people in their daily lives, why should they trust you when you claim that you'll make everything better?):

https://prospect.org/2026/04/10/zohran-mamdani-getting-new-york-city-believe-in-government/

3,000 techies applied for 35 jobs with NYC's PIT Crews, and, as Levy writes, many of them are high-flying senior coders who are willing to take a massive pay-cut and forfeit their stock options to do something that's both technically excellent and meaningful to their users' lives.

It's a clear message to other leaders, at every level of government. Many of the most skilled, ambitious people in every field want to make the world a better place. Every city, county and state could use a squadron of PIT Crews, and there's an army of coders who would give anything for the chance to give everything to make a better world.

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago Moscow's pirate music market https://web.archive.org/web/20010912203143/https://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,45908,00.html

#25yrsago Webcomics v trad comics https://web.archive.org/web/20010821073756/https://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/08/09/comics/index.html

#25yrsago Aussie teens are addicted to their phones https://web.archive.org/web/20010818220523/http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/story_5807.asp

#20yrsago Canadian librarians decry “Captain Copyright” https://web.archive.org/web/20060813004140/https://cla.ca/Access_Copyright_CptCopy_let_Final_.pdf

#20yrsago TiVo/Macrovision screw up breaks devices again https://zatznotfunny.com/2006-08/tivo-macrovision-and-the-stealth-broadcast-flag/

#20yrsago Will the Supreme Court strike down the TSA’s secret laws? https://papersplease.org/gilmore/

#20yrsago Robot garage loses software license, strands parkers https://web.archive.org/web/20060809213517/https://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71554-0.html?tw=wn_index_1

#15yrsago Typewriter-part penguin https://web.archive.org/web/20111116020049/http://jemayer.tumblr.com/post/8674700147

#15yrsago Choosing Android because you don’t trust Google https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/aug/09/technology-failure-more-important-than-success

#15yrsago HOWTO sound Canadian https://web.archive.org/web/20110610104919/http://www.oed.com/public/canadianenglish

#15yrsago Lev Grossman’s The Magician King: fantasy sequel, the banality of magic and the magic of banality https://memex.craphound.com/2011/08/09/lev-grossmans-the-magician-king-fantasy-sequel-the-banality-of-magic-and-the-magic-of-banality/

#10yrsago Rosie the Riveter, Ghostbusters edition https://www.deviantart.com/hugohugo/art/We-Can-Bust-It-621803816

#10yrsago Thai telcoms regulator wants tourists to use location-tracking SIMs https://web.archive.org/web/20160812182254/https://www.nationmultimedia.com/breakingnews/Thailand-mulls-location-tracking-tourist-SIM-cards-30292551.html

#10yrsago Mysterious medical research consortium: we should own volunteers’ clinical trial data for 5 years https://www.techdirt.com/2016/08/08/medical-researchers-want-up-to-five-years-exclusivity-clinical-trial-data-derived-volunteers/

#10yrsago Illegal “Warranty Void If Removed” still ubiquitous: they’re on the Xbox One S https://web.archive.org/web/20160809092923/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-xbox-one-s-still-uses-microsofts-illegal-warranty-void-if-removed-sticker

#10yrsago Your medical data: misappropriated by health-tech companies, off-limits to you https://web.archive.org/web/20180806230935/https://www.wired.com/2016/02/our-medical-data-must-become-free/

#10yrsago Return of Dieselgate: 3 more hidden programs found in VW Audi/Porsche firmware https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-emissions-audi-idUSKCN10I0PB/

#10yrsago Timelapse of pills dissolving: “decaying clowns” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rY3X4xafs0

#10yrsago Proof-of-concept ransomware for smart thermostats demoed at Defcon https://web.archive.org/web/20161020083358/https://www.pentestpartners.com/blog/thermostat-ransomware-a-lesson-in-iot-security/

#10yrsago Compounds in human exhalations during movies vary in response to suspense and comedy https://www.nature.com/articles/srep25464

#10yrsago How racist traffic stops criminalize black people, and what to do about it https://www.vox.com/2016/8/5/12364580/police-overcriminalization-net-widening

#10yrsago Chicago cops switched off bodycams and high-fived after shooting unarmed black teen https://web.archive.org/web/20160807194244/http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2016/08/chicago-pd-paul-oneal-video/

#10yrsago DoJ to judges: use Tor to protect your internet connection https://web.archive.org/web/20160807025945/http://motherboard.vice.com/read/department-of-justice-official-tells-hundred-federal-judges-to-use-tor

#5yrsago Expectations management pluralistic.net/2021/08/08/expectations-management-part-v/

#5yrsago When your boss wants an AI camera in your bedroom https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/09/computer-says-no/#disciplinary-tech

#5yrsago The 22 Murders of Madison May https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/09/computer-says-no/#existential-crisis

#1yrago Millionaire on billionaire violence https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/09/elite-disunity/#awoken-giants

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.


A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

Recent appearances (permalink)


A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

Latest books (permalink)


A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

Upcoming books (permalink)

  • "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

  • "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027

  • "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2027

  • "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

  • “Once Is Enemy Action,” a science fiction novel about the origins of modern technofascism. Friday's words: 564 (2916 total).

  • "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

Saturday 2026-08-08

08:00 PM

Dry season? Apps are pouring [F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository]

This Week in F-Droid

TWIF curated on Friday, 07 Aug 2026, Week 32

F-Droid core

F-Droid and F-Droid Basic were updated to 2.0-rc0, you know the deal, changelog is short. If this is news to you and you didn’t update to any 2.0 development builds yet, hello and welcome, so many things have changed, you’ll just have to experience it. Navigate to the F-Droid or Basic app details page, check “Allow beta updates” in the top right three dot menu, and update.

In website news, our mirror sync permission issue should be fixed now. Do ping us if you see any package that refuses to install, after you’ve made sure you got the latest index update, of course.

Community News

FrOSCon 2026 Schedule, Programm App für die FrOSCon, was just added and make sure you install it to easily find our F-Droid contributors booth next week-end. If you already have Giggity installed, you can use it with the official schedule (https://programm.froscon.org/2026/schedule.xml) too.

Rethink: DNS + Firewall + VPN was updated to v0.5.5z which appears to be a bit unstable. Some users got some crashes so maybe avoid updating to this version for now. We’ll disable it in our repo while the developers figure stuff out.

Missed in passed weekly news, Session devs have written about “The Future of Session” and about the “Protocol v2 development”. Looks like this messenger might continue to live on…

Back in July we noticed that 萊姆輸入法 source changed some strings and autoupdate has not picked any updates… for the last 3 years. We are now up to date at 7.4.0 and we’re keeping an eye on logs for any other app that might need extra attention.

We’ve mentioned Snowflake Volunteer at inclusion time, but did you know how this app came into existence out of Orbot’s “Kindness Mode”? The folks at the Tor Project host a post that explains how tools and contributors helped.

Newly Added Apps

37 more apps were newly added
  • AnDraw: Trace images through paper with touch switched off
  • Anti-Vocale: Offline voice-message transcription, fully on-device
  • BinClockWidget: AMOLED-black monochrome binary-clock home-screen widget
  • Block Blast: A minimal, privacy-focused block puzzle game
  • Bote: Split shared group expenses and settle up with minimal transfers
  • BurnPony: Self-destructing encrypted notes. The recipient just opens a link.
  • Couchy Launcher: A fast, private one-screen launcher
  • DeBurrow: A modern Gopher protocol client.
  • FeedTV: TV, radio and RSS news. Supports custom M3U lists.
  • ForgetMeNot: A simple todo app with reminders and Obsidian integration
  • Heart Rate Monitor: Monitor heart rate via BLE devices with real-time display, history, and alerts
  • kiFOSSk: Lightweight FOSS kiosk browser for dashboards. Zero Google services.
  • Knit: Encrypted mesh chat over Wi-Fi Aware & Bluetooth — no internet, no servers.
  • LibreAAC: Private, offline AAC communication using open OBF and OBZ boards
  • MA Astronomy: An AR night sky viewer
  • Mahjong Solitaire: Classic tile-matching puzzles without interruptions, tracking, or ads.
  • MetroMusic: A music player in the Windows Phone 8 idiom, for the music on your phone.
  • Mihrab: Prayer times, adhan reminders, Quran reader and widgets. No trackers.
  • Minesweeper: Configurable offline Minesweeper.
  • Miroji: A fast, simple, private front-camera mirror
  • Neruppu: Offline-first physical security monitoring using device sensors
  • NetToggle: QS tile to force 5G/4G Only or preferred modes using Root or Shizuku
  • Nexus Command Center: One Life Score for finance, fitness, study, work and habits
  • Noir Gym: Log workouts, chase PRs, and grow your Fitness Score with every rep.
  • Nonogram: Picture logic puzzle game with no ads or tracking
  • PaperTerm: An e-ink-friendly SSH terminal
  • pcontacts: Sync Proton Mail contacts into the device system address book.
  • RPG NPC Generator: Generate random D&D-style NPCs for your tabletop RPG sessions.
  • SimpleDay: Minimalist Markdown diary with app lock and your-own-cloud WebDAV sync.
  • Snore Detector: Detects snoring during sleep and records snore events.
  • Tankblick: German fuel prices — data-frugal and without tracking
  • The Universe Decides: Can’t decide? Let the universe choose.
  • Tryst: Private, offline, encrypted tracker for your intimate life.
  • TV Remote: Web remote control for Android TV — no cloud, no account, LAN only
  • Wortmühle: Daily German word puzzle — 9 letters, one pangram, fully offline
  • xlog2: Peer-to-peer amateur-radio field logbook that syncs with the xlog2 desktop
  • Zipline: Manage your self-hosted Zipline V4 instance.

Updated Apps

339 more apps were updated
(expand for the full list)

Thank you for reading this week’s TWIF 🙂

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You are welcome to join the TWIF forum thread. If you have any news from the community, post it there, maybe it will be featured next week 😉

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Kanji of the Day: 志 [Kanji of the Day]

志

✍7

小5

intention, plan, resolve, aspire, motive, hopes, shilling

シ

シリング　こころざ.す　こころざし

志向   (しこう)   —   intention
意志   (いし)   —   will
志願   (しがん)   —   aspiration
志望   (しぼう)   —   wish
志願者   (しがんしゃ)   —   applicant
三国志   (さんごくし)   —   Records of the Three Kingdoms (Chinese historical text)
闘志   (とうし)   —   fighting spirit
有志   (ゆうし)   —   interested person
同志   (どうし)   —   like-mindedness
志望校   (しぼうこう)   —   school of one's (first, second) choice

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Kanji of the Day: 卓 [Kanji of the Day]

卓

✍8

中学

eminent, table, desk, high

タク

食卓   (しょくたく)   —   dining table
卓球   (たっきゅう)   —   table tennis
電卓   (でんたく)   —   calculator (electronic)
卓上   (たくじょう)   —   desktop
卓を囲む   (たくをかこむ)   —   to have a meal together
円卓会議   (えんたくかいぎ)   —   round-table conference
座卓   (ざたく)   —   low table
円卓   (えんたく)   —   round table
卓抜   (たくばつ)   —   excellence
卓越   (たくえつ)   —   preeminence

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

06:00 PM

Japanese Police Arrest NYAA ‘First Uploader,’ But Not by Watching the Swarm [TorrentFreak]

uploadFor many years, NYAA has been heralded as one of the top sources for anime content, serving an audience of millions of users.

The site was launched more than two decades ago and the brand is still going strong today, as it’s traditionally one of the most visited torrent sites.

NYAA’s popularity hasn’t gone unnoticed by rightsholders. The MPA previously targeted the site’s GitHub repo, although that was later restored. Additionally, Japan’s Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA) has been trying to disrupt its activities for many years.

Among other enforcement efforts, CODA teamed up with Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) in a Cross-Border Enforcement Project to identify NYAA uploaders. This effort recently resulted in a high-profile arrest.

Police Arrest NYAA Seeder

Last week, the Cyber Investigation Division of the Kyoto Prefectural Police, working with Fushimi Police Station, arrested a 56-year-old unemployed man from Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture. Kyodo News named the suspect as Masakazu Ono.

CODA announced that the man allegedly was the “first uploader” or initial seeder for the NHK drama ‘Midnight Taxi.’ The series is copyrighted by NHK and WOWOW, both connected to CODA member companies.

According to the police, the man allegedly uploaded roughly a thousand NHK recordings over some five years. He reportedly admitted the offense, noting that he wanted people around the world to see NHK’s work.

As the initial NYAA seeder, the suspect allegedly had a full copy of the file, suggesting that he might be the original source for the leak. CODA notes that the arrest is part of a landmark case.

“CODA regards the arrest of this first uploader as a landmark case in addressing copyright infringement involving torrent sites,” the group announced, noting that more actions may follow.

“While closely monitoring the details of the case as they are revealed through future investigations and criminal proceedings, CODA will continue to work toward the proper protection of copyright and implement effective measures against similar acts of infringement.”

Sankei previously reported that Kyoto police opened the investigation around April 2024, which also suggests that this case isn’t just about tracking an IP-address.

Hacker Tool Didn’t Touch the Swarm

CODA partially credits the successful enforcement action to an analysis tool developed by the Japan Hacker Association, a cooperating organization in its Cross-Border Enforcement Project.

The mention of this tool triggered immediate speculation in the anime community that it simply logged IP addresses inside a BitTorrent swarm, the same technique copyright holders have used against file-sharers for close to two decades, and that the suspect had failed to use a VPN.

However, CODA says that isn’t what happened.

“The tool does not analyse activity within the BitTorrent swarm itself. Instead, it analyses how data moves through torrent sites, such as index sites and tracker sites,” CODA informed TorrentFreak.

While this answer rules out a simple torrent-logging tool, it raises many new questions. What is this tool tracking exactly, how did it identify the suspect? After all, analysis at the index and tracker layer does not ordinarily produce the address of a broadband subscriber.

CODA notes it is unable to disclose the specific analytical or investigative techniques, as that could negatively impact future investigations and enforcement activities. It stressed that the suspect was ultimately identified through an investigation conducted by the Kyoto Prefectural Police.

Three Leechers Were Caught

While the arrest of the seeder is the lead angle, CODA informs us that it wasn’t the only enforcement action.

“While the primary objective of this case was to identify and apprehend the first uploader, three secondary uploaders (i.e., leechers) were also apprehended as part of the investigation,” CODA said.

The group later clarified that these three were handled by a different police force, in a subsequent action connected to the same site.

Local reports say that three men, in their forties and sixties, were referred to prosecutors on the same charge, rather than arrested. They allegedly downloaded the files, which BitTorrent shares back to other users by default.

That last detail is important, as this suggests that anyone who shared the torrent could have been caught. After all, BitTorrent clients share back by default, including the qBittorrent software the main suspect reportedly used.

CODA made the same point in its public announcement, warning that many torrent clients upload automatically, so simply using them can result in criminal liability under Japanese law. This type of messaging also helps increase the deterrent effect of the enforcement action.

Not Over Yet

CODA declined to say whether it’s also pursuing NYAA’s operators, whether more uploaders have been reported to police, and whether further arrests are expected this year, citing the ongoing investigation.

In April, CODA signed memorandums of understanding with French media regulator ARCOM and the Alliance for Manga and Webtoon, and it also renewed its agreement with the MPA two weeks later. We asked whether these deals cover the sharing of data that identifies individual uploaders, but that question remained unanswered.

CODA pointed to “the confidentiality clause contained in the MOUs” and said it couldn’t disclose the level of intelligence that it shares with other organizations.

For now, NYAA remains online. Based on SimilarWeb data, the site was good for more than 22 million visits last month, with more than a third of these originating from Japan. This means that plenty of potential targets are still out there.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

02:00 PM

Buc-ee’s Shies Away From John Oliver Challenge, Sues Tiny Ohio Convenience Store Instead [Techdirt]

Buc-ee’s trademark bullying ways continue! This company that has long been famous for its enormous gas station and convenience stores practically dripping in Americana is quickly building a national reputation for itself as a petulant trademark bully. It’s lawsuits are typically dumb and usually feature Buc-ee’s claim that it somehow owns every cartoon animal mascot depiction for convenience stores and gas stations, and even cartoon human mascots at times. It’s so bad that it even caught the attention of John Oliver recently, resulting in the show creating its own merchandise that is far more similar to the Buc-ee’s beaver than most of its lawsuit victims and Oliver literally begging them to file a lawsuit over it.

Well, the Buc-ee’s people appear to be cowards. Oliver made it clear that he and HBO have the willingness and legal war chest to do battle with Buc-ee’s. To date the company has not filed any lawsuit against Oliver or HBO. But it did just file another trademark suit against another small local convenience store after having just moved into the market.

Buc-ee’s, which opened its first location in Ohio earlier this year, is suing Beaver’s Mini Mart in Beavercreek for what they allege is trademark infringement. 

In the suit, filed days ago, Buc-ee’s alleges that the Mini Mart’s cartoon beaver mascot is too similar to their own, with its “wide eyes and a smile” that also “uses red as a predominant color,” and could cause confusion. 

The new Buc-ee’s location in Huber Heights, Ohio, is 16 miles from Beaver’s Mini Mart. Beaver’s Mini Mart customers say they have been shopping there for decades, while Buc-ee’s has existed in the Buckeye State only since April.

This is common practice for Buc-ee’s. The company expands into a new market and goes on a trademark suit blitz against anyone using one of these cartoon animal logos, beaver or otherwise. It doesn’t matter how long the victim company has been doing business there. It doesn’t matter how ingrained into the community they are. It doesn’t matter if every local in the area insists that there’s no confusion to be had between the two entities.

In this case, the Beaver’s Mini Mart has been around for decades. The entire community is awash in beaver-y iconography. I’ll let one of our anonymous commenters from our John Oliver post chime in here.

They are now trying to sue a place near where I grew up, the “Beavers MiniMart” convenience store in Beavercreek Ohio, where the local high school, Beavercreek High School, once had Bucky the Beaver as a mascot for their football team, the Battling Beavers, their cheerleaders are called the Beaverettes and there’s pep squad called the Beaver Patrol. There’s concrete statues that are 6-8 feet tall, all over the city. The city loves it’s fuckin’ beavers. Buc-ee’s probably doesn’t know what’s about to happen to them. It wont be pretty.

The signage from Buc-ee’s own lawsuit show just how unalike the branding for the two companies is.

From this, and wielding a trademark Buc-ee’s somehow has on the word “Beaver’s” Buc-ee’s alleges that there will be “confusion among consumers,” that the Mini Mart is trading on Buc-ee’s “goodwill,” and that all of this is causing “irreparable injury” to Buc-ee’s.

Ironically, it appears this very lawsuit is causing a dip in all of that supposed goodwill Buc-ee’s has in this particular community.

“Reading into it more that Buc-ee’s has gone after other companies over this… It just put a bad taste in my mouth because they just seem like such a fun company,” resident Sam Bryan told Nexstar’s WDTN. “To see this, that they’re coming after a small business like this, it upset me like it did a lot of Beavercreek residents.”

The town is named Beavercreek, the branding doesn’t look anything alike, and nobody is going to be confused about any of this. Buc-ee’s knows all of that. But trademark bullies typically just can’t help themselves and this is yet another in a long list of bullshit trademark lawsuits the company has filed.

If Beaver’s Mini Mart fights this, however, it would be an interesting move in its defense to point out that there is no similar lawsuit against John Oliver.

12:00 PM

Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for August 1 [Wikimedia Commons picture of the day feed]

Picture of the day
Ceiling of Sala della Stufa, Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence. The room, created between 1627 and 1641, was originally an open gallery, but it was closed off later in the 17th century and restructured as a “stove” room, a bathroom heated using the same techniques as the Roman baths and intended for private use by the Grand Duke, whose bedroom is believed to be next door. The decoration, specially the frescos and stuccos, commissioned by Grand Duke Ferdinand II de' Medici, are a work of Michelangelo Cinganelli (1558-1635) Matteo Rosselli (1578-1650) and Ottavio Vannini (1585–1643).
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