Carl

Also worth noting that Japan has seen a rise in far-right politics in recent years. Japan has always been extremely conservative, but the recent political push has politicians rumbling about amending their constitution to allow for a standing army. Part of the reason why the US is close military allies with Japan is because Japan’s constitution was rewritten after WW2, to prevent them from having a standing army. They’re only allowed a small self-defense force.

But incidents like this have consistently strained relations, to the point that most Japanese people actively distrust the US service members. The US has historically handled their own criminal charges via the UCMJ, but the American legal system is notably much more lax than the Japanese legal system. Japanese prisons are brutal and sentences tend to be harsh. The courts also have a near 100% conviction rate, so the public assumption is that if you get arrested, you definitely did it. There have been several instances of military members committing crimes outside the base, then essentially fleeing back to the base where they know the Japanese authorities can’t reach them. So even when service members are found guilty, Japanese people still feel like the American got off too easy.

And incidents like this inevitably end up being fuel for the far-right politicians who want to kick out the foreigners and reinstate their own standing army.

Exactly. They know that if they lose, they’re completely and utterly fucked. They’ll all have escape plans and offshore accounts ready to go.

Damn, beat me to it. The Fast & The Furious truck hijacking is one of my “what part of a movie hasn’t aged well” go-to responses. They were stealing shipments full of millions of dollars of ultra high-end, top-of-the-line, super high-tech… DVD players? The same DVD players that are like $5 for an entire pallet on eBay now?

While I agree, Libertarians are a very specific breed of conservative.

No, you don’t understand! The company said we were designing our robots to be able to hold a gun, so that it could use seed cannons to autonomously plant trees! So that it could use squirtguns to fight fires! So that it could play laser tag with children! Why would they lie about something like that?

Grabbing them by the pussy doesn’t mean restricting yourself to adult pussy.

Same vibe as the dudes who make a huge deal about girls turning 18. They’re really just saying “I would definitely go younger if I wasn’t afraid of getting shanked in prison.”

Honestly? Make him do it. Take him up on the offer, and make him be the president who vetoed some of the most popular legislation in history. Don’t stop putting popular bills on his desk. Make it extremely clear that republicans are the reason nothing is getting done. Fucking weaponize their obstructionist BS, instead of simply rolling over and claiming there’s nothing to do about it.

Or just use a standalone device with a hard power switch, that doesn’t tether to your phone. My wife and I have a tiny little ESP32 mesh texting+location devices for when we’re in crowds where the cellular spectrum will be saturated, or where the reception is typically just shit. But they stay off unless we’re actively using them (like when we’re separated in the crowd).

If we go to a weekend festival, we just charge them before we leave and then they easily last all weekend. Because we’re only really using them as temporary beacon system to find our way back to each other.