Pythagora Switch is a children’s educational broadcast on NHK. It’s a strange, surreal program that runs for 5-15 minutes. Pythagora Switch refers to how the segment uses a Rube Goldberg machine or, for my British readers, a Heath Robinson contraption to reveal a segment of the show’s title. Within the run time, the show offers…
Category: Finds and Ramblings
Goodbye, Shika: The Gift of Mourning
A few hours ago, as I write this, my cat Shikamaru died. He had developed FIPV, or Feline Infectious Peritonitis, an incurable and fatal viral infection. Shika was only 4 years old. Losing a pet is a difficult experience, especially when there is nothing you can do. He had contracted the virus at birth, and…
Looking Back on 2021
I spend most of 2021 revisiting older anime. I have articles in the queue where I reexamine them. There wasn’t too many new titles that caught my attention. Of those, most were continuations of series I already enjoy. When I think back on the one-off anime, I don’t remember too many standouts. Horimiya was an…
“Don’t You Feel Lonely?”
Since my girlfriend of 4 years broke up with me over a year ago, people keep asking me if I am lonely. Blunt question! Lately, there seems to be an obsession with loneliness. News reports it as an epidemic. Since the pandemic started, doctors and other officials have fretted over loneliness as a mental health…
The Possible Impact of NFTs
NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, have appeared throughout the news cycle recently. NFTs use blockchain technology similar to Bitcoin to make a certificate of authenticity for a digital item or to make what amounts to a digital trading card. A certificate of authenticity NFT basically states you own an original or serial-numbered copy of a digital…
Looking Back at 2020
It’s time again for my personally indulgent look back on the past year. This is a part of a double post to mark JP’s 10th birthday. Many people describe 2020 as a dumpster fire. It has been a year of self-inflicted wounds, a year that made me realize introverts truly are the minority. Otherwise, the…