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Japan's 'revolutionary' Emperor Akihito to abdicate, leaving imposing legacy for his son

When Emperor Akihito abdicates Tuesday, he will become the first Japanese monarch to do so in more than two centuries.

Akihito, 85, will step down after more than 30 years on the Chrysanthemum Throne.

His reign has seen Japan continue its post-war modernization and win a bid to host the Olympic Games in 2020, but has also been marked by lows such as the economic crash of the 1990s and severe natural disasters.

He is widely revered for bringing the imperial family closer to the people, and has also won respect for his efforts to heal the nation’s post-World War II wounds. In a sign of Akihito's popularity, a record crowd packed into the grounds around the Imperial Palace in early January for his final New Year's public appearance.

This imposing legacy, combined with shifts in the nation’s politics and rising regional tensions, leave Akihito’s eldest son, Crown Prince Naruhito, facing numerous challenges after he assumes the symbolic role May 1, experts say.

Knives found at Japan prince's desk days before abdication

Police in Japan have launched an investigation after two knives were found near the school desk of Emperor Akihito's 12-year-old grandson, local media report.

The knives were discovered on Friday in a classroom at a junior high school attended by Prince Hisahito.

Police are probing CCTV footage of a man trespassing on the school grounds.

Prince Hisahito is set to become second in line to the throne after Emperor Akihito's abdication next week.

Police believe the unidentified man caught on camera, who was dressed in blue and wearing a helmet, posed as a construction worker to access the building at Ochanomizu University.

Prince Hisahito and his classmates were in another part of the school when the knives are believed to have been planted.

Security ahead of coronation stepped up after knives found in Japanese prince's classroom

The two kitchen knives, which had been taped to either end of a stick and whose blades were reportedly painted pink, were discovered balanced between Hisahito's desk and his neighbor's, Japan's Asahi Shimbun reported. Nothing indicating a motive, or a claim of responsibility was left with the contraption.

Each desk has the name of its occupant written on it, making the prince's desk easily identifiable, the newspaper said.

A knife for both the prince and his neighbor. Is it symbolic, or were they meant to fight each other to the death with them? I'm sensing good anime potential in this. Or pay-per-view blood sport with kidnapped constitutional monarchs/offspring and other elites. #CringeWorthy

1968, or so they claim, Otis Redding did 'Sittin' on the dock of the bay'. I missed the anniversary, and just stumbled over the tribute.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ca5QoXSe18

Great song, of course. But only after I sat on the docks of dozens of ports did I truly appreciate it. Like seafood, the song goes best with the smell of brine, and the smell of life in all stages of development and decay in your nostrils.

But, TBH, I didn't arrive directly on that tribute page. First, I landed on this page, produced by playingforchange https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es3Vsfzdr14 The title of the video page is 'Sittin' on the dock of the bay | Playing for change | song around the world

Catchy title, ehhh? I almost closed it, but the initial image of an old black dude sitting in the street intriqued me. Go ahead, give it a listen. The images from around the US and the world are a treat, as are the various sounds of the artists.

I won't list any more videos - I just give you the link to https://playingforchange.com/ and you can explore all you like.

I wonder though . . . Playing for Change makes me think of our MDC. Wonder if he ever went out to Westport, and played Otis? https://parks.state.wa.us/284/Westport-Light
Maybe - even city boys sometimes wander out to the lonely places. It's a great place to take your offspring, and let them get their feet wet, while you embellish some sea stories for them. (Unfortunately, when I had my son there, the upper levels of the lighthouse were closed. But we did get to see a lens really close up!)

After listening to several offerings, by several artists, you may want to listen to the "original", that we all listened to when I was starting junior high school. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyPKRcBTsFQ

Rest in peace, Otis. And, rest in peace, Michael David.

Apologies to anti-Youtubers - that's where I landed today. Enjoy!

I have noticed that whenever I mention no-JS browsing, someone tends to turn up (uninvited), and argue, for example, no-JS doesn't matter, or that screen-reader users *always* have JS enabled, or that fallback is nice to have, but there is no time for it, and so on.

Some websites have snarky messages that no-JS users see instead of a basic version of the app. Others make you jump through hoops of clicking an extra button or waiting for an extra redirect, as if to say, we really don't want you to do it this way; we hope you've got a really good reason for disabling JS, because we don't like it.

A paranoid could argue that all the minified, proxied, and redirected JS being served by toilet paper trust model of HTTPS makes it easier to mitm and hide backdoors, while the non-malicious theory could be simply results of rapid uncontrolled growth.

Whatever it is, I commend all the MetaFilters, SoylentNewses, Hacker Newses, and mbasics, for making the effort to give no-JS visitors a first-class experience.

Anita Hill says she wants 'real accountability' from Joe Biden

A woman who accused a Supreme Court nominee of sexual harassment has rebuked White House candidate Joe Biden, who chaired the 1991 hearings.

Anita Hill said Mr Biden must show "real accountability" for his handling of her complaints during Clarence Thomas' confirmation in Congress.

Ms Hill told the New York Times the former vice-president had called her before announcing his presidential bid.

But she said his apology was not enough without "real change".

Joe Biden Declines to Directly Apologize to Anita Hill for His Handling of 1991 Hearing

In his first sit-down interview of his presidential campaign, Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Friday repeatedly declined to directly apologize to Anita Hill for his handling of the 1991 Clarence Thomas hearings, instead delivering a broad statement of remorse for how she was treated during the combative questioning she faced from an all-male Senate committee that he led.

Appearing on ABC’s “The View,” which is heavily watched by women, Mr. Biden was asked by one of its hosts, Joy Behar, about his reluctance in recent months to offer a straightforward apology to Ms. Hill for his own judgment and leadership during the hearings. Ms. Behar suggested that Mr. Biden should say, “I’m sorry for the way I treated you, not for the way you were treated.”

“I’m sorry for the way she got treated,” Mr. Biden responded. “If you go back to what I said, and didn’t say, I don’t think I treated her badly.”

Biden Gives Bumbling Apology as ‘The View’ Confronts Him on Creepy Touching, Anita Hill

Biden was initially greeted by The View hosts with a very warm welcome by the panel and extremely friendly audience. But the tone shifted halfway through the chat when co-host Sunny Hostin brought up recent accusations from multiple women that he invaded their personal space and made them feel “gross.”

“We’re in a different time now,” Hostin asked. “We’re in the #MeToo movement. Are you sorry for what you did? Are you prepared to apologize to those women?”

The former veep replied that “everybody has to be more [aware] of the private space of men and women” before awkwardly asking the all-woman panel if he can hug them, noting that he wasn’t sure what to do when he walked out.

'He gave me permission': Joe Biden jokes about touching complaints

Joe Biden has twice made joking references to complaints from women that his physical behavior made them uncomfortable.

The former vice-president’s comments on Friday came during his first public appearance since the allegations began to surface last week. Taking the stage in Washington at a gathering of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Biden was introduced by the president of the union, Lonnie Stephenson. Biden quipped: “I just want you to know – I had permission to hug Lonnie.”

The crowd, which was mostly male, erupted in laughter. Later, Biden made a similar joke after inviting a group of children onstage and putting his arm round a young boy. “By the way, he gave me permission to touch him,” the former vice-president said, again to laughter. “Everybody knows I like kids more than people,” Biden said.

Lucy Flores isn’t alone. Joe Biden has a long history of touching women inappropriately.

Democrat Lucy Flores was preparing to give one of her final stump speeches in a race for lieutenant governor in Nevada when she felt two hands on her shoulders. She froze. “Why is the vice-president of the United States touching me?” Flores wondered.

Flores recounts her experience with Joe Biden in a first-person essay for New York magazine, describing an incident in 2014 when Biden came up behind her, leaned in, smelled her hair, and kissed the back of her head.

“Biden was the second-most powerful man in the country and, arguably, one of the most powerful men in the world,” Flores wrote. “He was there to promote me as the right person for the lieutenant governor job. Instead, he made me feel uneasy, gross, and confused.”

[...] Flores’s experience isn’t unique. It is no secret in Washington that Biden has touched numerous women inappropriately in public. It’s just never been treated as a serious issue by the mainstream press.

Sleepy Joe or Creepy Joe?

When the vacuum cleaner bag becomes full, attach it to a leaf blower, with a filter so that only the fine dust can be evenly distributed throughout the living space. The larger vacuumed up bits and crumbs will remain in the vacuum bag. If the vacuum bag is mostly empty, it can simply be re-attached to the vacuum cleaner. If the vacuum bag is too full after blowing out all of the fine dust, then its remaining contents can be:
* added to fireplace
* used as pillow stuffing
* added to garden soil
* leaf-blower disbursed into back yard
* mixed with used chewing gum as new form of play doh
* ingredient in cigarettes
* food additive, using a suitably complex ingredient name

Pop Star’s Illicit Kiss Becomes Fodder for Government Ads in Hong Kong

The Hong Kong government does not usually weigh in when the tabloids catch a pop star cheating.

But this week, after the city was riveted by the scandal of a married singer caught on video kissing an actress, some government agencies were criticized for using it as fodder for jokes in public service announcements.

Government officials expose their own lack of workload.

Original source for this seems to be NPR member station WABE but I found it via antiwar.com.

I'll excerpt a bit but do read the whole thing.

President Donald Trump called former President Jimmy Carter for the first time this weekend.

Just that initial sentence was enough to brighten my day. I'm not a big fan of living Presidents, but Carter is the exception. If anyone can give Trump some good advice it will be Carter - and the fact Trump made the call indicates he just might listen to that advice.

So what kind of advice was given? Let me skip ahead a little.

(Carter) said Trump said he is particularly concerned about how China is “getting ahead of us.”

Carter agreed that’s true.

“And do you know why? I normalized diplomatic relations with China in 1979. Since 1979 do you know how many times China has been at war with anybody? None. And we have stayed at war,” he said.

The U.S., Carter said, has been at war for all but 16 years of its 242-year history. (China and Vietnam actually fought a brief border war in early 1979, weeks after normalization of U.S.-China relations.)

The last two sentence probably got reversed in an editorial mistake, because that reads quite awkwardly as is, but that's how my source has it.

He called the United States “the most warlike nation in the history of the world,” because of a tendency to try to force others to “adopt our American principles.”

And this is where, unfortunately, many of us obey our training, cover our eyes, stuff our fingers in our ears, and start saying something like 'hates America.'

No. This has nothing to do with hating anyone or anything. It has to do with the ability to set aside tribal sentiment and look at things objectively. What are the facts? As laid out above, China has been at peace since right about 1980, and focused single-mindedly on improving their economy, on building their originally pathetic industrial base until they are now the word leader. Over the same period, we've been at war virtually every year, and our military spending, already much larger than that of any other nation (or several put together) just keeps expanding.

We have to be able to acknowledge what that means, or we live in a dream, disconnected from reality, unable to understand the context of events we're therefore unable to respond appropriately.

Carter suggested that instead of war, China has been investing in its own infrastructure, mentioning that China has 18,000 miles of high-speed railroad.

“How many miles of high-speed railroad do we have in this country?”

It's definitely worth the click. Carter knows of what he speaks.

What France Has Money For

A journalist sarcastically asked Philippe Martinez, the leader of a major labor union, whether the flood of donations was evidence of trickle-down economics. “Money doesn’t trickle down for everything,” Mr. Martinez answered, adding that the outburst of generosity from French billionaires only exposed the inequalities that divide the country.

Such gifts aren’t just a private matter; they cost the state, too. For one thing, and certainly in the eyes of some Yellow Vests, these philanthropists are offering only a small fraction of enormous fortunes they have amassed partly by avoiding taxes otherwise needed to fund basic public services. And since their proposed gifts are destined for France’s national heritage, the bulk of them could benefit from major tax exemptions — up to 90 percent if a proposed bill presented this week were to pass.

Notre-Dame’s Safety Planners Underestimated the Risk, With Devastating Results

Unlike at sensitive sites in the United States, the fire alarms in Notre-Dame did not notify fire dispatchers right away. Instead, a guard at the cathedral first had to climb a steep set of stairs to the attic — a trip Mr. Mouton said would take a “fit” person six minutes.

Only after a blaze was discovered could the fire department be notified and deployed. That means even a flawless response had a built-in delay of about 20 minutes — from the moment the alarm sounded until firefighters could arrive and climb to the attic with hundreds of pounds of hoses and equipment to begin battling a fire.

Europe is looking forward to seeing a new influential player in the legal entertainment industry.

A second round of the Ukrainian presidential election will be held on April 21. According to public polls, amazing candidate Volodymyr Zelensky, who does have no experience in politics, economy, social sciences and management, will likely achieve a victory. However, he has a wide range of abilities that would allow him to turn Ukraine into a new European dreamland. These are not the behooved origin or business or political links, but rather the ideas that would allow an explosive growth of the Ukrainian economy.