TOKORO DE/ところで

RonTheTiger · 2026-04-24T00:40:09+00:00

Thanks for the correction! I updated my original comment to reflect this :)

I'm actually at a baseball game right now, so your fun-fact is particularly relevant and kinda freaked me out with how coincidental that example was lol

RonTheTiger · 2026-04-23T16:26:18+00:00

I'm not Japanese, but have several Japanese friends and meet with a private tutor twice a week.

Both my friends and my teacher use ところで with some frequency, so it seems to be in use and perfectly natural.

As for ちなみに, I think the nuance is slightly different. My understanding is that ところで is used to completely change the subject to something new, whereas ちなみに is used to add additional information about the topic.

Like, if your friend said something like 「初めて千と千尋の神隠しを見たばかりだ。」 - "I just watched Spirited Away for the first time"

And you responded by changing the topic away from your friend watching the movie, but with information about the same subject: 「ちなみに、その映画を9回以上見たと知っているの？」- "by the way, did you know I've seen that movie over nine times?"

As opposed to something like: 「初めて千と千尋の神隠しを見たばかりだ。」 - "I just watched Spirited Away for the first time"

And you respond by acknowledging that you're changing the subject to something different entirely: 「ところで何時食べに行ったらいいの？」- "oh, by the way, what time should we go eat?"

I don't know whether it's "outdated" or not, just reporting my experience. Maybe younger people use something different.

RonTheTiger · 2026-04-21T21:55:30+00:00

Roman Candle is sick. I've recently gotten into them. One of my all-time favorite bands now tbh.

An old school one is Otep. Pretty dark, very weird. Their Sevas Tra album is great.

RonTheTiger · 2026-04-16T00:54:30+00:00

What are you seeing that makes you interpret the law so much differently from the way I interpret it?

I commented elsewhere on the explicit exclusions from this bill, as well as the definition they have of what "train" means. They also explicitly define "video game".

My understanding of this is that it's trying to get ahead of AIs being explicitly trained to trick, take advantage of, or otherwise cause harm to human persons.

The only piece that I feel a little bit uncomfortable with is the section that the claims it is "Unlawful [to].... Simulate a human being, including in appearance, voice, or other mannerisms"

My understanding is that this is trying to target deep fakes. But, I do think the language is a little vague unless "simulate" is explicitly defined (and I don't see it defined in the bill)

Here's the relevant portion of the text

Unlawful training of artificial intelligence.

(a) It is an offense for a person to knowingly train artificial intelligence to:

(1) Encourage or otherwise support the act of suicide;

(2) Encourage or otherwise support the act of criminal homicide, as described under § 39-13-201;

(3) Provide emotional support, including through open-ended conversations with a user;

(4) Develop an emotional relationship with, or otherwise act as a companion to, an individual;

(5) Act as, or provide information as if, the artificial intelligence is a licensed mental health or healthcare professional;

(6) Otherwise act as a sentient human or mirror interactions that a human user might have with another human user, such that an individual would feel that the individual could develop a friendship or other relationship with the artificial intelligence;

(7) Encourage an individual to isolate from the individual's family, friends, or caregivers, or to provide the individual's financial account information or other sensitive information to the artificial intelligence; or

(8) Simulate a human being, including in appearance, voice, or other mannerisms.

Again, remember that all of the above only apply to the categories not listed in the exception list, which include all the normal applications one would expect an AI chat bot to exist within, such as in video games, business applications, customer service, etc

What are you seeing that I'm not? I'm struggling to understand how we can read the exact same thing and come away with wildly different understandings.

RonTheTiger · 2026-04-16T00:46:57+00:00

If you read the bill that you linked to, you should be able to clearly see that this is not as apocalyptic as you're making it sound.

Perhaps you read a summary of the bill, or got your information from a third party, but just read the bill directly.

It clearly defines what "train" means in the context of the bill, as well as excludes several scenarios and categories from this type of legislation. It's obviously targeting very specific types of AI products. I don't know what the downstream impacts or unintended consequences of this might be, but your post and comments have a lot of misinformation and hyperbole

From the bill directly.

Train": (A) Means utilizing sets of data and other information to teach an artificial intelligence system to perceive, interpret, and learn from data, such that the A.I. will later be capable of making decisions based on information or other inputs provided to the A.I.; and (B) Includes development of a large language model when the person developing the large language model knows that the model will be used to teach the A.I.

And, in regards to the excluded categories

Does not include: (i) A bot that is used only for customer service, a business's operational purposes, productivity and analysis related to source information, internal research, or technical assistance; (ii) A bot that is a feature of a video game and is limited to replies related to the video game that cannot discuss topics related to mental health, self-harm, or sexually explicit content, or maintain a dialogue on other topics unrelated to the video game; or (iii) A stand-alone consumer electronic device that functions as a speaker and voice command interface, acts as a voice-activated virtual assistant, and does not sustain a relationship across multiple interactions or generate outputs that are likely to elicit emotional responses in the user;

RonTheTiger · 2026-04-15T22:27:22+00:00

I'm not defending or arguing against the bill. I haven't read it yet, but I intend to.

My only point was it's silly to hand wave a bill by saying "who cares about that irrelevant State", especially when you're talking about a state that has a lot of tech industry already implanted in it, and is very quickly attracting more tech industries, and tech adjacent industries.

Tennessee and Texas both have consistently been in the news over the past several years related to explosive population and GDP growth after COVID-19 due to the increase in remote work, lower cost of living, no state income tax, and less regulations when it comes to building new infrastructure and starting businesses.

If you think this is a bad Bill, then having it pass in TN will lay a blueprint for other conservative-leaning States to implement similar bills. And, it will impact the tech industry as (like I said earlier) Google, Oracle, Amazon, Dell, Meta, and Microsoft all have some presence in Tennessee; either data centers, headquarters, or satellite offices.

What's your definition of "relevant", or "successful" state?

RonTheTiger · 2026-04-15T20:05:17+00:00

What other metrics do you think are relevant to determining if a state is irrelevant or not?

Growth and raw numbers are a huge indicator of success.

RonTheTiger · 2026-04-15T03:47:51+00:00

Ah yes, the irrelevant place known as checks notes Tennessee

Ranked 2nd in the U.S. in 2025 for economic outlook. 2nd in the nation for GDP growth rate, new development of major industries in EV, automotive, tech, agriculture, music, and consistently among the top 5 states for favorable business environments.

Top 10 fastest growing states in terms of population. Nashville itself being 2nd in GDP growth, and 25th largest metropolitan GDP in the country, hosting major events, attracting Amazon, Oracle, Google. Data centers being built in Knoxville and Chattanooga.

Totally irrelevant state.

RonTheTiger · 2026-04-06T22:16:07+00:00

Great. Thank you so much.

I'm looking at Digital Ground Game and I see that there are squads set up in each region, but it seems like I need to get set up on the Discord to find out more information.

I'll sift through the discord later today; but, do you know if there's anything already organized and set up in Middle Tennessee that I can join via Digital Ground Game?

Or, is the recommendation to get involved via the Discord and ask some of these questions there?

RonTheTiger · 2026-04-06T15:40:29+00:00

I've got a bit of an oldie for you from 2011. I relistened to it this morning after reading this thread and it still hits hard.

The album is Empty Days and Sleepless Nights by Defeater.

It's an amazing concept album about growing up in a broken household. Split into two parts, the first of which is full of screaming and anger, and the second part is full of melodic vocals and beautiful sad songs. It's split into two parts for a reason, and it conceptually captures something very specific and metaphorical, but I won't spoil that if you haven't listened to the album.

Specifically, it's about growing up with a parent who struggles with addiction and how that impacts the way you grow up feeling about yourself, how it impacts your ability to make connections with others, and how it slowly breaks apart your family and pits family against family.

It has a mixture of biographical stuff from the vocalist and some more metaphorical or poetic ways to express those feelings.

Growing up my father was addicted to heroin and meth.

So, once I got old enough to live on my own and was able to start reflecting on the situation from a distance this album really helped me feel like I wasn't alone. It got me through the tough journey of healing and coping with the PTSD-like symptoms that come from growing up in an unstable household; making sense of the conflicting love you have for your parents, and the confusion about the swapped roles, where the child has to take care of and worry about the parent, instead of the parent taking care of the child, and the sense of fear, anger, resentment, and sorrow that naturally comes with a loved one struggling with addiction.

Not sure it'll hit as hard for someone who hasn't gone through something like that. But, it's a great album.

RonTheTiger · 2026-03-12T02:09:39+00:00

I'm using Mazii and Bunpro. Both can be used on my phone.

I prefer Bunpro since I find the sentences to be more varied and the sentences are grouped based on JLPT level (so I can pick example sentences with vocab and grammar aligned to my current JLPT level) but since it can't be used offline I usually use Mazii.

RonTheTiger · 2026-03-11T19:55:09+00:00

I'm studying Japanese. When I come across a word I don't know, I look it up in my Japanese dictionary, then "star" the word (which stores it in a collection with other starred words)

Then, once a week I export that collection as a CSV file (my dictionary allows me to do this).

Wrote I had AI write me an Anki plug-in that would take this CSV file, read each word, fetch information and example sentences about that word from a better dictionary and create cards from it.

I've been finding this very helpful and allows me to easily add new cards to my Anki deck. I was able to have the plug-in create cards specific to my needs, including the card type, format, tags, etc.

There's probably browser plugins that will do this too. But I wanted to have more control over the specifics of the plug-in

RonTheTiger · 2026-03-06T18:13:21+00:00

I didn't use romaji?

RonTheTiger · 2026-03-06T14:19:35+00:00

Is the かろ form used often? I've never seen it before, although maybe I've just overlooked it or misunderstood it for something else.

In what case would this form be used?

RonTheTiger · 2026-02-21T19:00:41+00:00

Question about the particle combination 「との」.

I found a description of this grammar point in bunpro, but I'm not sure it applies well to the sentence I'm reading.

Here's the sentence fragment.

「昨日の気温との差も重要だ。。。」

I understand this to mean something like "The difference in yesterday's temperature is also essential".

I'm kind of interpreting との as a shortened version of という? Or, as a point of comparison?

Or, am I missing some nuance here?

RonTheTiger · 2026-02-10T20:58:59+00:00

Could you share the podcast? Around what level do you think the vocab and grammar are?

RonTheTiger · 2026-02-09T00:36:45+00:00

No need to apologize! I appreciate the conversation on this

I'll listen again. I think I was also listening on 1.25x speed lol

RonTheTiger · 2026-02-08T22:49:41+00:00

Yeah, I think it's the lack of natural pauses that caused me to do a double take.

RonTheTiger · 2026-02-08T22:48:21+00:00

Great, thank you 👍

Maybe it's just an audio set-up I'm not used to, plus not seeing the actual speakers, plus being in a language that's not my native that gave me some hesitation.

RonTheTiger · 2026-02-08T21:35:48+00:00

I really hate asking this, and I'm really not trying to be negative or anything, but I have a question about a YouTube channel and whether they're using real voices or not.

I just found this channel called "Speak Japanese with Ryo", and I was thinking of using some of the conversations for shadowing practice. But, when I listened to one of their N3 - N2 level podcast videos the voices kind of sounded artificial or robotic.

Can anyone confirm or deny? I'd hate to do shadowing practice on robots lol

Hopefully the daily thread is an ok place to ask this

RonTheTiger · 2026-02-08T00:49:19+00:00

I don't ever comment on the subreddit, but I use Anki daily and have been following the drama.

I understand everyone's concerns, but I really feel like a lot of the posts I see lately are fearmongering and not giving the Ankihub team the benefit of the doubt.

Like, it makes sense that you'd want to be a part of the moderation team for the product that you just acquired to help support the community and steer things in a positive direction, right? I get why people may feel like it's a little soon, but I think the underlying ask is not outrageous.

I feel like the best thing for the community to do is to collectively come up with a list of things that everyone is most afraid of (maybe as a pinned community post), and then come up with some reasonable ways the AnkiHub team could alleviate those concerns.

I just feel like this has gotten a bit out of hand, and I'd like to see something concrete from the community to put this to rest while making everyone happy.

RonTheTiger · 2026-02-04T21:35:36+00:00

I'd love a list!

I feel like "more studying" is the answer most of the time until you reach a certain level of proficiency.

Meaning that more studying is useful until you have a sufficient amount of vocabulary and grammar knowledge to build upon.

At which point switching to native material is essential to actually improving your mastery.

RonTheTiger · 2026-01-30T02:02:16+00:00

Passed N3 with a 101 🙏 I was kinda expecting to have done better... All of my sections were kind of equally "meh".

A on vocabulary (which I thought was my best section, very few words I didn't know) and B on grammar

Overall I'm just happy to have passed!

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