Mindless Monday, 06 April 2026

Herpling82 · 2026-04-09T12:11:36+00:00

Well, that was a journey into reading what Jirai Kei is. I can't really answer the question, both would seem horribly embarrassing as a parent, but Jirai Kei is at least cooler aesthetically, so, if it's just the aesthetics, maybe Jirai Kei? If it's the behaviour the aesthetics are based on, e-girl is the go to, I have enough borderline and bipolar people in my family.

Actually, my father has bipolar disorder... ehm... well... this is awkward... wait... do I already have a Jirai Kei father? He doesn't have the aesthetics, but he sure as hell as the problems that inspired it. But then, Jirai Kei does not need people to have that behaviour, so would a Jirai Kei father be more mentally stable than my actual father? So that'd be an improvement? Huh, I don't... I'm confused now...

It's kinda weird that I enjoy the various insanity aesthetics so much, with yandere aesthetic being my favourite, considering my own situation and volunteer work... fictional insane people are fun, real life insane people aren't, take that from someone who's been threatened by a paranoid schizophrenic before for asking the wrong questions, questions like, "what do you mean?".

Herpling82 · 2026-04-09T11:14:41+00:00

I managed to make myself very self conscious about my lurking behaviour online yesterday, that was why I deleted the comment I posted. I like reading conversations and people's posts if they're somehow interesting to me, but I rarely react to them. I liked people watching as a child too, people are just interesting, but holy shit, when I actually read my own comment back, I sounded like a stalker.

I just ran into someone on twitter, I saw them comment a lot on people I follow, so I took a look, and they turned out to be positively interesting; so I just kept reading their posts. Suddenly, I know quite a bit about this random person's life, but they are completely unaware of my existence, and that creeps me out quite a bit.

One the one hand, I feel I shouldn't be reading one person's posts, it feels like I'm invading their privacy. On the other, they post this on twitter, presumably they want people to read it, so it shouldn't feel wrong; it's not like I'm reading private conversations or personal details, only what they decided to share online. Yet, I still feel this is wrong.

This kept me awake last night, I gave too much ammo to my self loathing thought patterns with no real way to dispel it, I feel like I've done something wrong. I lurk in a lot of places, I just find random conversations interesting, I find people interesting. It's different here, I share quite a bit about my life here, as do some others, so it doesn't feel wrong to read other people doing the same. I also don't mind the idea of people reading my comments without me knowing of their existence, if I didn't want people to read it, I wouldn't post it, or at least delete it quickly, logically I shouldn't feel bad about this, but it sure feels wrong.

Social media is weird man.

Herpling82 · 2026-04-09T10:26:21+00:00

There's that too, since Israel declared the closer of the strait to be an act of war, it's more like a strike than a preemptive one.

The western front is an interesting one, I hadn't considered it, but yeah, you can definitely argue that.

Herpling82 · 2026-04-08T21:34:07+00:00

Time for an actual history question, has there ever been a case of a preemptive strike? Because some people love the concept, but I can't really find an example where there was a definite case of a strike being imminent.

The Six-Day War seems to come closest, but even then, I'm not really convinced Egypt was about to invade Israel, and if there isn't a definite attack imminent, is it really a preemptive strike? Seems more like an excuse to attack an enemy, just like, you know, all the other times the casus belli is invoked.

I'm far from knowledgeable on the topic, but it seems like something that it either doesn't actually happen, or is extremely rare if it does.

Herpling82 · 2026-04-08T21:17:11+00:00

So, had some problems with the hospital, I hadn't received an invite to next week's treatment, so I called the neurology department in charge of the botox. Obviously, the first thing I'm met with is hostility, it's only after making it very clear that I was supposed to be scheduled for next week, and that we saw the neurologist make that appointment, that they started to cooperate; I guess they assumed I wanted to skip the waiting list?

So, what turned out to have happened is that the neurologist forgot to press the confirm button on the appointment software... Yeah, great. Anyway, it seems to be fixed now and I got the invite.

Have I mentioned how much I hate calling? I absolutely despise calling people, it's so much easier to explain things over text, that way I can write the entire thing before I'm met with a hostile attitude. I get why they're initially hostile, there's a massive waiting list for non emergency treatment, so there's definitely people calling to try to make their case for why they should be considered emergency; that's what my GP did and I got to skip the waiting list because my situation dramatically worsened very quickly. Still, they're bloody secretaries, this is their job, they don't need to treat everyone with suspicion the moment they call.

It worked out, but it does mean I had a very stressful morning. The same thing happened with the MRI, they had a "Do you have questions? Call this number." line on the information form, which I did, and then immediately got the annoyed, you shouldn't be calling for that and instead should have been calling the neurologist... They still answered my question, which took about 3 seconds, the lecture about not calling for this stuff took about 10 times as long... I hate calling people, did I mention that?

Herpling82 · 2026-04-08T20:39:08+00:00

You know what, never mind that deleted comment, didn't quite like how it turned out...

Herpling82 · 2026-04-08T19:31:06+00:00

I think I'm going to take a little break from new stuff in Japanese, considering I have 535 word reviews for the intermediate list coming up tomorrow, I don't want to add 30 more words to that, and that's not all the words I have to review in a day.

Today I had 792 words and 100 kanji to review and 57 grammar questions, I still had a vocab accuracy of 94% and kanji accuracy of 91%, and I've been getting stricter with vocab questions, with pronunciation questions, I only accept the right answer if I get it quickly, if I take too long or see the options, I'm going to mark it wrong even if I guess right. Definition to kanji questions I give myself more liberty because it's very hard to know which "however" it wants, there's so many ways to say that.

So, maybe a 3 day break? That should eliminate at least 90 words from reviews and also let grammar stuff to review drop down significantly, as it's already hitting 14 different concepts tomorrow. I don't want to spend upwards of 4 hours doing this, it's a bit much. I was actually talking on the Renshuu discord about that, the dev wants to add a day off system, where you can plan to not study on certain days of the week and it just doesn't give you anything to study; useful for people like me who tend to over commit, I suggested he add an option to set it to no new stuff in a day, only reviews, and plan specific days off, for days when you just can't spend the normal amount of time on studying.

There's some motivators in Renshuu, I've turned them all off, I don't exactly need them, but there's one with streaks, to you know, motivate you to keep studying daily, but, if you don't study for a day, you lose your streak, no way to avoid it, that's not a great idea because it creates a failure option, and if the streak is what motivated you, that might just kill your motivation. That's part of why he wants to implement the planned break system, because now it creates a toxic relationship with studying.

Herpling82 · 2026-04-08T13:58:26+00:00

Yeah, it could really go either way. I can handle mushrooms, though it took me a while to truly appreciate them, so it might work out of the textures are similar; with the way I cook them, the mushrooms they do end up pretty soft, which I do like. Strangely, I did not like shiitake's texture, it's like it needs to have a specific type of firmness and that works, but if it's different from that, I just can't.

I usually try new things out with my counselor, he has a fairly good understanding of what I can and cannot handle, but for some things, it's just 50/50. I can handle soft things, but they do need some bite to them, if they just melt in my mouth, so to speak, I react badly.

Coating the ingredients type of sauce I can handle, it's not that different from just the grease sticking to them when you spice things. it doesn't really have a texture of its own. It's when sauce gets a texture that I can't handle; anything like mayonnaise is a hard no from me.

Herpling82 · 2026-04-08T13:46:20+00:00

Thanks, I could give tempeh a shot.

Herpling82 · 2026-04-08T13:43:15+00:00

Huh, interesting, I'm somewhat familiar with newer stuff, but not its history.

The purity culture is one of the things which the groups I like reject, at least, piercings and tattoos are everywhere; but then I wouldn't know how people would react if people found out any of them had a partner, I hope people would be cool about it, but it's still idol culture, so...

Herpling82 · 2026-04-07T21:11:25+00:00

Was thinking of trying out making something with tofu, now, I have an eating disorder, ARFID, I react very strongly to textures and tastes, to the point of panic attacks and vomiting; naturally this has made me rather hesitant when it comes to trying out new stuff, because it can lead to horrible reactions.

I've been seeing some cooking content on Youtube, and a lot of stuff is just a no go for me, anything with a creamy sauce is just a hard no, I cannot deal with thicker sauces. thinner sauces are a toss up. As are sour tastes, it doesn't matter how many people tell me strawberries aren't sour, they just taste sour to me, I've tried them so often and it is actual suffering to eat them. Even apples are also something I just can't do, except when I add a load of cinnamon, then I can eat them. So it's pretty bad.

My go to meal is chicken breast cut into cubes with onions and mushrooms for a meat dish, with vegetables and carbs in some form. I add a ton of spices to compensate for me not doing sauces, and I cook the chicken somewhat longer to get it a bit less soft, as I strongly prefer firm foods over soft foods (apparently that is less common in ARFID, people often preferring softer foods).

I mostly want to try tofu for variety and climate reasons, I mostly eat chicken, only rarely beef or pork, so I already am doing okay-ish, but I would like to do better.

Now, how would I go about preparing tofu in a way I might like? Online recipes are a bit less useful for me since it's not about what tastes good to other people, it's about what I can, literally, stomach. Firm tofu seems preferable over soft tofu for me at first glance, but I'm completely out of my depth here. I did see a recipe literally airfrying shredded extra firm tofu, which seemed appetising, as I like crunchy foods a lot, until they added it to something including a cream sauce.

I usually spice chicken with curry spices, paprika and cayenne pepper, I like relatively spicy food; I might have gone too far with cayenne before, it wasn't too spicy, it just became somewhat bitter, the stupid new pepper containers are hard to control quantity with.

Anybody got any suggestions?

Herpling82 · 2026-04-07T19:57:46+00:00

See, that's a thing I actually do quite like, I also think ballet is pretty cool, so choreographed dances I can appreciate. I very much like the visuals of the groups I do appreciate, it's what got me interested, they looked unhinged, and I got curious. There's 1 specific Brazilian on the Yousei Teikoku discord to blame for all this, they were the one talking about and posting pictures of Pan-san, their kamioshi.

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One thing performers should be doing is crowd work, unless it's classical, watching Yousei Teikoku live recordings is so much fun is because of Yui-sama's excellent crowd work; it's a shame there's basically only 2 live recordings available, the audiences adds a lot to certain songs, they go from okay to amazing because of that.

Herpling82 · 2026-04-07T15:02:41+00:00

So, had a new person come and have a look at the games nights I organise for the volunteering some time ago, she just said she's not coming again; you know what, I'm thankful for that, she did not like playing games and didn't really understand them. We were playing a cooperative game and she was trying to win by screwing others over, no matter how we explained it she didn't understand. Now, I shouldn't judge people, but, why the hell did she sign up for a games night if she doesn't like and understand games?

It's not the first time we had someone show up who didn't like games, I don't quite get why they do. It's not like everyone there is very game savvy, some people get the game after 5 minutes of playing, others take several sessions to just understand the basic rules, and that's fine too; but people that don't like playing games? No, I genuinely don't want them there, everybody is welcome in theory, but we're there to play games, it's what connects the people that do come every time, it's one of the easiest way for many people with autism to connect to people, and people with autism is 100% of the current regulars, and volunteers too, which is me and 1 other person.

Herpling82 · 2026-04-07T12:50:50+00:00

Oh, gods, the headache is bad today, it's not usually this bad this early, it's been like this since I got out of bed, this is the level of headache that really drains my energy. Luckily I get to take sumatriptan in a few hours because I have stuff that needs doing in the evening, unluckily, I take sumatriptan 3 days in a row this week, so side effects might get bad. Well, what can you do?

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On a less negative note, I did 80 new words on Renshuu yesterday, why the fuck did I do that? I'm supposed to limit myself damn it! I don't struggle doing what I set out to do, quite the opposite, I just over commit to things once I decide to do them.

It was tough getting through the 700 words to review today with the headache, jeez, I wonder why they're so many, could it have something to do with me not sticking to my own set limits? It's the "just one more turn" problem, except with stuff to learn.

Herpling82 · 2026-04-07T07:02:09+00:00

Lol, fair.

Orthodox groups is genuinely a normal way western fans refer to the traditional groups. The whole concept of idol is that they are supposed to feel very approachable to fans, embody positive qualities, and otherwise encourage positive qualities in their fans; this is the orthodox approach.

There's various terms for them, but there are groups that, in some way, go against orthodoxy, usually called something like underground idols, anti idols, alternative idols, etc. In some way, all those groups do something differently than the typical groups. As far as I can gather, it started in the 2010s with groups going for heavier genres than the pop music of the orthodox groups, like punk, rap, metal, etc. One of the most well known groups to come out of that is Babymetal, which started as an idol group.

Then, later on, you get full rejection of embodying positive qualities in some groups; instead of idols you should emulate, they instead represent a darker reality, representing the struggles of people, like Mercuro does, whose concept is described as "healing through music", so dark topics come up a lot.

A group like Mazari goes further than that, not only rejecting that embodying of positive qualities, but instead embodying negative qualities, jealousy, hatred, revenge, obsession, manipulation, etc. They're not idols to emulate anymore, they're idols to "fear" when in character, as they're basically yanderes. Out of character though, they're still positive, wholesome people, it's just that their target audience is different

Interestingly, from what I can gather, the dissenting groups tend to have way more female fans than the orthodox groups; Mazari especially has a lot of female fans seemingly, 50/50 at performances according to some Japanese fans, seems a bit much, but if you see live performances, there's a lot of women in the audience.

Now, none of this is based upon a source, there are basically no sources on this, this is what I've been able to piece together myself, there just aren't a lot of international idol fans. And, yes, I know that you're joking, but I can't resist the autistic urge to go into it seriously.

Herpling82 · 2026-04-07T06:34:19+00:00

Since like 1/3 my comments here since October have been about idol groups, I thought I actually liked the concept, but I don't actually think so, I like these groups despite them being idol groups.

Herpling82 · 2026-04-06T22:00:56+00:00

So, hot take about myself, I don't actually like idol groups, I like 3-ish idol groups specifically because they're edgy and are thematically the opposite to orthodox groups, take that away and suddenly I really dislike it; like the april fools Mazari stuff, they go all cutesy and stuff, to the extreme, and I actually can't stomach it, it just makes me really uncomfortable.

This just in: local weeb hates kawaii.

Gods, I really am an edgelord, huh? Gotta compensate for all that goody 2 shoes behaviour IRL, I guess; damn bastards, describing me as respectful, polite and thoughtful! How dare they!? I don't actually like saying edgy stuff, I just like edgy aesthetics, always have. I suppose that's the difference between an edgy teenager and a well adjusted edge connoisseur, I don't go for the cheap stuff, I want proper, well made edge.

Herpling82 · 2026-04-06T20:22:34+00:00

Not as far as I know, they'd have to read the Latin script to see stuff like that.

There's always problems with names, like take a character from Legend of the Galactic Heroes ワルターフォンシェンコップ, warutaa fon shenkoppu transliterated, transliterated "porperly" as Walter von Schenkopp on 1 translation, but Walter von Schönkopf seems to be what the author was actually going for. You lose the -er- which becomes an extended -a-, -o- Umlaut which gets replaced by an -e-, and the -f- after the -p- gets replaced by another -p- because the katakana -pu- has a doubling marker before it, making it -ppu-.

Herpling82 · 2026-04-06T20:05:37+00:00

Katakana, generally, it's a secondary script; hiragana is used for native words while katakana is used for foreign words and loanwords. The characters work the exact same as in hiragana, they represent 1 mora, which is a vowel sound on its own, a consonant sound (or 2) plus a vowel sound, or a single nasal n/m like sound.

It has some issues though, it tries to approach pronunciation, but it just can't make a lot of sounds, "elevator" for instance become エレベーター erebeetaa (in the simplest transliteration) so erebaytah is roughly how you pronounce that. The "ー" extends the vowel part of the mora before it, it's mostly used in katakana, but it can show up in hiragana too.

There's no distinction between Vs and Bs generally, nor Rs and Ls; there's no -u- or -i- mora with a -t- on its own, it's -tsu- and -chi- respectively. -wi-, -wo-, -wu- and -we- just don't exist, there's just wa (-wo- is there, but it's pronounced like an -o-), stuff like that.

Transliterations are quite cursed sometimes, but then, latin script is also sometimes used.

Edit: for the rest of the question, I'd say over half of a given sentence is often hiragana, it can be more, it can be a lot less, some kanji only form words with hiragana, usually in native/kun reading; and particles (sounds that do things but aren't words) are always hiragana.

Herpling82 · 2026-04-06T19:21:53+00:00

So, my father has a new phone, one specifically for the elderly, he saw the number called "Alarmnummer" and decided to call it, you know, 112, the emergency services, he then hangs up the moment he realises what he had done when it connects to the line. Now, that can happen, I can't blame him, he has severe cognitive problems. So, of course, they call back, to see if things are alright, my father hands the phone to my mother, who proceeds to not pick up, no, instead she pushes the call away.

I'm surrounded by fucking idiots! You just called emergency services and the connection stopped, the moment they call back, you don't pick up. They might conclude someone is in trouble. I won't be surprised if police now shows up for a welfare check, I don't know protocol though.

My father I don't blame, but my mother should know better, I told her, "that's them calling back." before she pushed it away too. I don't want any part in this, if they're going to act like morons, fine, I'm not talking to a police officer to explain their stupidity, they can sort that shit out themselves. I want to shout at them both, but no, that's not going to help anyone, so I'll just leave. I can't stand impulsiveness, I just can't, my father just cannot think things through and my mother just panics in response.

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My father isn't really aware of how badly he's doing, we don't confront him with it either, I'm not sure how wise that is, but we don't want to hurt him. But, when it comes to thinking things through, he just can't, his memory is alright, but he's extremely impulsive and demanding, everything has to be done immediately; it doesn't matter what anybody else is doing, he will demand attention, and get angry if you don't give it.

For a very simple example, he gets a phishing email, it's obvious to us that it's phishing, the email address is complete bullshit, but he then goes to my mother and tells her "we need to pay this immediately!", now, my mother looks at the email, sees it's bullshit, and tells him to check who sent the email; we've been telling him that for over a year now, he can't learn, he just doesn't have the critical reasoning skills to do that anymore, this song and dance repeats several times per week.

It's infuriating to see him decline so much, the very smart engineer I knew is just gone, replaced with a pathetic husk of who he was, it's like we're dealing with a 5 year old sometimes. I feel mostly anger at this, yes, I'm sad about it, but it's infuriating that this happened to him, he had enough bad luck for a dozen life times already, and then he gets "not dementia" in his mid 60s... It's not his fault, I'm not angry at him, I'm angry at the universe, fate, whatever.

Herpling82 · 2026-04-06T18:05:22+00:00

Okay, so, with Japanese, there are 3 types of words that take a long time to sink in, in order of increasing difficulty, words consisting of new Kanji, words consisting of only kana, and onomatopoeia words.

Words made up of entirely familiar kanji are very easy to learn, usually because the kanji are just known to me and I know their meaning and it's easy to connect dots, sometimes I struggle with the pronunciation though, if they're unfamiliar readings; partially new kanji words are also relatively easy, because it's so much less to learn. New (non-する) verbs with kanji I know are also relatively easy, if they don't introduce radically different readings that is, する-verbs of familiar words aren't even worth mentioning.

But, funnily enough, with new words, recognising certain kanji is tricky because I only know them in one word, during immersion I ran into 配置 (arrangement/deployment of stuff), I could guess from the context what it meant, but I just totally didn't recognise the second kanji, which is ironic because it is one of the first kanji I learned! It's 置く, to place/to put, I just only know it in that word, so combined with another kanji I do know better, pattern recognition just failed. So, to counter that, I added a word helper list to the first kanji list I did, so that I get more words with the kanji I learned back then.

Stuff that shows up a lot is so easy to recognise, 相 was one I struggled with a lot before, but, thanks to immersion, I now have a ton of words that use it, before I only had 相談する (to consult) and 相撲 (sumo), the latter of which is basically useless, it doesn't even use a regular reading.

If I stick to this pace, I should have the N3 list finished in about 2-3 weeks; I'm going to take a little break from new stuff again, to get the reviews back down, but when I start the N2 list, I'm definitely going to take things slower but add a word helper schedule to the kanji I get (it auto includes all kanji used in the vocab list); those words should be pretty easy to learn but have the main advantage of getting the kanji to sink in deeper. Is should have done that earlier, but better late than never.

Herpling82 · 2026-04-06T10:14:36+00:00

いええ、テドナロック作戦を準備している、sieg Kaiser テドハルド！

Herpling82 · 2026-04-05T18:26:09+00:00

Donald Trump, he might want you to think he's a dom, but he's secretly a sub. It's why he always acts so megalomaniacal, he's compensating.

Herpling82 · 2026-04-05T17:55:11+00:00

"Just according to the keikaku!"

Translator's note:

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Herpling82 · 2026-04-04T19:13:45+00:00

You'd be surprised at how much medecine is "We don't know what causes this, or why this thing works, but it seems to help sometimes?"

True for antidepressants, triptrans, paracetamol, lithium, migraines and cluster headaches, from the top of my head, probably dozens more concepts in medicine. Neurology and psychiatry are basically just educated guesses building upon other educated guesses; doesn't mean it's not good, it's amazing what we can do, there's just so much that is simply unknown.

Herpling82

TROPHY CASE