HMPA Loompa

All
right, now we got to wait for the cough
to subside. I woke up this morning with
a bit of a cough. And of course, like
everyone who gets a cough, my hope is
that I end up with a grally, sexy voice.
But I think really what’s going to
happen is I’m going to get about 30
minutes in and then my voice is going to
get all squeaky and maybe start coughing
a lot, which I I don’t want that for you
to listen to. So, I’m going to do my
best and power through. I was thinking
of skipping today, but I Well, you get
all the personal updates. My on the
computer basically just died on the
weekend. I had to get rid of the old
operating system and then get in a new
operating system and it was very
stressful and I almost bought a new
computer which might have solved my
problems but also not because most of my
problems are emotional.
Anyways, what you’re here for, what I’m
here for, what everyone’s here for is
the Japanese news.
Japanese man scheduled a tweet.
uh
I’m dead and go would be the translation
of it. Uh this is very memeoriented
uh speech.
The would be his death rattle and then
he said I’m dead and then the go which
is a very Japanese meme. Uh there was uh
a baseball player Rodrigo some Dominigo.
So and he embarrassed himself. So this
is almost like you add this to the end
of words when you’re embarrassed. So
he’s basically saying I died. I’m a
little embarrassed about dying or how I
died. And the fact that I’m dead is also
a little embarrassing in itself. So that
is the tweet. In 2023, this guy was 20
years old and he was diagnosed with a
very rare form of cancer. His profile
said, “I like cute girls. I also have
cancer.” So, he was maintaining a sense
of humor about it, which I think we can
all appreciate how hard that must be to
do. So, there is a very bittersweet tone
to all the jokes he’s making about
having cancer and dying. And he still
likes cute girls because he’s a
20-year-old guy.
He scheduled the tweet every day. So,
basically, if he died, he wouldn’t be
able to reschedule the tweet and then
the tweet would go out. So when it went
out,
all these people noticed, but it started
garnering a massive amount of attention
online. And it turns out it set off a
series of people donating usually with
something like
uh here’s my donation go or my
condolences and go and things like that
in reference to this tweet. And they’re
saying 30 to 40,000 donations came in as
a result of this tweet. So it is tragic
that this young man died at a very early
age unfairly of a very rare cancer. Uh
he maintained a sense of humor about it
but it was inspirational enough to
people on the internet. The other meme
like this is the positive side of meme
culture. Other people got the meme, they
joined in on the meme. They got his
feelings right away and they said, you
know, this guy did this. I could donate
some money. And it set off this massive
donations and people want to say thank
you. And honestly, I wish I could do
something as positive with my life.
Bear attacks have been a massive issue
in Japan. Like way more so than I would
have thought. Like when they started
talking about bears coming down from the
mountains into the towns in northern
Japan, that’s a lot. Uh bears are scary.
I grew up in Canada. We learned how to
defend ourselves from bears in the very
realistic way of don’t get involved with
bears. Uh you when I used to walk my dog
in the forest, I used to have put a bell
on the dog and have a bell on me so the
bear would hear the bell and avoid you.
They’re telling kids when they walk home
from school, get a plastic water bottle
and like scrunch it as you walk. And
this is again, you grow up in different
places. I have a friend who grew up in
Florida and he learned about, you know,
being safe from gators. You run
serpentine because gators are very fast
in a straight line, but they’re very bad
at their turns. So basically they must
have like uh stock engine with uh they
haven’t lowered for the turning ratio. I
should have actually thought about that
joke and gotten some words right before
I started it. But there is the rhyme. If
it’s black, fight back. If it’s brown,
stand your ground. And if it’s white,
say good night. So if it’s black, fight
back. So black bears do what’s called a
false charge. So if you when they come
at you, if you kind of like go like
you’re about to fight them, they’ll
often just turn around and run away
saying like, “Oh man, I thought this was
going to be easy and it’s not easy.” If
they charge you and you run away,
they’re like, “Oh well, this worked
out.” So they’re actually just testing
to see if you’ll fight back. Brown bears
are uh stand your ground. So if it’s
brown, stand your ground. And so you
what you want to do is that’s when you
stand, you make yourself big, you make
lots of noise, and you try to scare away
the bear. Uh, basically the bear isn’t
scared of you, but it’s like, nah, that
thing’s way too much trouble to kill and
eat, so I’m just gonna go find something
easier to kill and eat because bears are
fundamentally lazy. I understand bears.
Like, I understand the need and the
desire of bears to want to do the
minimum amount of work because that’s
how I’ve lived my entire life. Uh, if
it’s white, say good night because a
polar bear will just kill you for fun.
Uh, they might not, but it’s completely
up to the polar bear. There’s nothing
you can do to stop it is basically the
idea.
So remember that rhyme. But the problem
is these bears are coming down from the
mountains. They’re hungry. In a previous
episode of Ninja News Japan, I actually
talked about something that I didn’t
know. Farmland used to be a barrier. So
it used to be mountains, sort of forest,
farmland, and then cities. But because
young people are abandoning farming as a
trade, they these there’s a lot of empty
farms. There is now no more cushion. So
the bears come down. There’s no farms.
There’s like emptyow fields. So they
just walk into the city. So there’s no
sort of barrier or transition zone to
keep the bears out of the cities. Now
there are not enough beach nuts.
Basically, apparently in Japan, all the
bears are eating nuts. And if there’s
not enough nuts from the trees and
around the area where they live, they
don’t have enough to get, you know, fat
for the winter. So they start coming
into the city. So this is the problem
that the the crop of nuts that they eat
wasn’t enough this year. So they’re
working their way downs in the city.
This is sounds funny until you realize
13 people have died this year in bear
encounters. Like there’s two 300 people
have been injured but there have been 13
deaths. So this is a very serious thing
like people are dying on a regular basis
whereas before like two years ago zero
there would have been zero bear deaths
in that year. The self-defense force has
offered logistical help because legally
the self-defense force is not allowed to
shoot bears. So this was an interesting
thing. It came up maybe last year, the
year before Ishiba, the previous prime
minister when he was a minister, brought
up the issue of whether you could employ
the self-defense force in Japan against
Godzilla. And it’s because you’re
allowed to employ the self-defense force
for an invading army. Uh, but Godzilla
isn’t an invading army. So, there’s a
couple of movies where Godzilla is
controlled by like aliens. That’s an
invading army. You could use the SDF in
that case. But if it’s just a natural
event, you’re not supposed to be able to
use the SDF. So you have to work your
way around that. So in this case,
they’re offering logistical help and
they don’t have weaponry that would
actually kill a bear. Like that all the
weapons they have designed for the
self-defense force in Japan are for
suppressing fire. So I’m sure it could
still kill you, but that’s not actually
the intent of the weapons that they tend
to carry. So you need the hunters to
kill the bears. and they’re trying to
put in this special emergency rule that
police can carry a gun that would allow
them to also kill bears because they
can’t use the SDF to do it. But the SDF
can come in and help lay traps. They can
do logistics. They can do it like lend
their intelligence to the locals while
they take care of it. Which is a very
interesting problem because they’re
doing this properly. It’s not like Trump
in America who’s just like, I’m going to
roll the National Guard into Portland
cuz I want to. In Japan, it actually
makes more sense. We have literally
people dying. We have literally uh
animals that need to be trapped and
relocated or shot and killed in the
worst case scenarios. They still won’t
do it because legally they’re not
supposed to be able to do that. Uh the U
the SDF can be used for defense
operations. So again, invasion from
another country. Uh public security,
which this is kind of public security,
disaster relief, and civil support. So
in this case, they’re actually offering
civil support. Uh GEU, a different
prefecture a little farther south. in
order to deter bears from entering GEU
have now employed drones that will fly
along the border the northern border of
Gefue and they are making dog barking
noises to scare away the bears. So that
is a interesting technological use of uh
to to try to deter them from coming here
which I find very interesting. Uh
they’re trying to stop the bears by
making it seem like there’s dogs around
but the problem is if you live in one of
those areas and a drone’s flying around
making barking noises all night that’s
problematic in itself. So, I don’t know
if it’s honestly the ideal solution, but
it is better. I don’t actually want the
bears to get shot. I would love if they
were trapped and relocated. I think that
is kind of the more humane way to do it
because they don’t want to come into
town and hurt people. They just like are
surprised, the person surprised, the
bear does what a bear does. It attacks
the thing when it’s surprised. One of
the issues that’s come up on the
internet because the internet is a
cesspool is people have been using AI to
make fake bear videos. So, they’ll have
a fake bear walk through a town and then
they’ll say and then they’ll post it
online going like, “There’s a bear in
this city right now.” And that’s
problematic because people in that city
will now panic. Uh there’s people making
baby bear videos where the bear comes up
and is super friendly, basically just
behaving like a dog, and they hug it and
they can pet it and stuff, but that’s
teaching people that it’s safe to
approach bears, which they don’t want to
do. So, the government’s actually going
to crack down on this version of AI. In
the last episode of Ninja News Japan, I
talked about Japan’s laws on deep fakes
and deep fake porn and stuff like that.
They haven’t actually caught up to the
reality of people making it. So, that’s
problematic. But this is a different
problem. This is a public security,
public health, public safety issue.
They’re going to need rules about that.
It turns out there is already a rule
though that if you do something that
encourages risky behavior or panic,
that’s already illegal in Japan and you
may face prosecution.
Uh, what I read this morning just before
I started Ninja News Japan was that
delivery drivers in northern areas of
Japan where there are bears are delaying
deliveries because they don’t want to
take the chance of running into a bear
by accident.
There’s a new drink in Japan called
water
tokosi which is special water,
functional water. The way it was
translated was functional water, but
when I looked it up, it actually just
said special water, which is a very
Japanese way of naming something. I
think it’s just special stuff. Uh, and
what’s special about this water? Well,
it has hoopas. Uh, h ma. And the idea is
for people who sit at their desks all
day, you get this sort of gut. I
actually have a little bit of one even
though I do exercise pretty regularly.
And it says that if a regular intake of
this kind of water with hoopas will I
guess the hompala loompas go into your
stomach. They redistribute the fat. So,
it doesn’t say this was a very
interesting sort of thing that I
noticed. It didn’t say it gets rid of
the fat or helps you process the fat
faster or something like that. It helps
redistribute the fat. So maybe you got a
little gut, but you’re actually thin
everywhere else, which is something that
happens to people. If it redistributes
that fat equally all over your body,
you’re actually going to look way better
overall. So I’m actually doing running
an experiment. So this month, the month
of November, I am drinking one Tokosi
bottle, which is 600 milliliters, 150
yen, every single day. They have done
testing and it says that if you drink
this regularly, now they don’t say what
regularly is. They don’t say how much it
is. So, I’m doing one bottle a day every
day, but it is supposed to redistribute
the fat around your body. Uh, it comes
from
it comes from a brand from rice included
in this water. I think it’s fermented.
And I It’s one of those things like in
Japan, everything comes from a fermented
bean. All the like health benefits
fermented beans. all this like magic
cures. Fermented beans. Like I’m going
bald. I could probably rub fermented
beans on my head and Japanese people
would say that’s going to make your hair
grow back. I don’t believe it. I don’t
think this is really going to do
anything. I made a mistake of I’m
dieting at the same time as I’m drinking
this water. So, I’m not 100% sure. Like
I could lose the fat in my front because
of the water or I could lo fat in the
front because I’m basically being more
careful about my diet. Again, I don’t
know if it’s going to work. Uh, if you
see me at the end of this month and I
look much more spelt or my clothes are
fitting a little better, maybe it’s the
Humpas, maybe the Humpa Lumpas have done
their job.
Nintendo, the owner of Pokemon, has been
suing Powell World for about 6 months
now. I think it might even be longer
than that. Uh, because Pow World
basically ripped off all the mechanics
of a Pokemon game. So, you want to go,
you collect a monster, use that monster
to fight and do stuff and build it up.
and they decided to make it a little
funnier. They have like depressed ones
and they have ones with weird special
abilities and the evolutions are very
odd. But what Nintendo is suing over is
the actual mechanics of how they capture
the Pokemon, the monsters in Powell
World. And that has been dealt a
significant blow because the Japan
patent office just rejected the monster
capture mechanic as not being original.
Now, there’s lots of games that use
catch this thing, use a capture system,
but they were trying to say this is our
system. We have the patent. We’re the
ones who invented it. Anyone else is
ripping us off. Now, here’s the thing.
If you go back to the beginning of
Pokemon, there were other games doing
the exact same thing, and they actually
copied them. So, nothing in Pokemon to
me is actually original. And that’s not
a terrible thing because obviously
Pokemon did it well. But when you start
suing someone else for ripping off the
thing that you ripped off, I actually am
like, “Hey, maybe you’ve overstepped a
little bit. Maybe you don’t really know
what you’re doing.” Uh, some of the
references to other games that are doing
something similar like the Monster
Capture, they said Monster Hunter, Ark,
Kenti Collection, Pokemon Go. Pokemon Go
is actually made by a different company
than Nintendo. So technically, Pokemon
Go would be guilty of ripping off the
systems that are used in Pokemon, which
is a very interesting problem to have
because if you successfully sue POW
World, you could then actually go after
Pokemon Go and successfully win. But
they’re saying because these are used
systems are used in other games, in
other systems, that it’s not really
original. It’s not your mechanic. Uh,
and that actually means they might not
win their lawsuit.
Super Senti series. Super Sententi
series. Super Sententi series has been
going for 50 years. So I’m 53 right now
as of recording of this podcast, which
means I was three years old when the
first uh Power Rangers is how you would
probably know it show was started in
Japan. And every year they swap out with
new characters, new people, a new team,
a new theme. Like my kid went through
the same process where he like fell in
love with the bug one. I actually really
wish it wasn’t the bug one. They had
bugs and trains and trucks and all these
other things that kids, little primarily
little boys is the target audience, but
things that they like and that gets
integrated into the suit and their
powers and whatnot. But the originals
were just like the real basic five
colors, the fivecolor team and they’re
all different people and they all have
different problems. Uh Jade has just put
in, damn, you’re as old as I was when I
had my first crush, the pink ranger. You
see, here’s the thing.
Being me who I am, I was into the yellow
ranger. And the yellow ranger when they
turned into the Japanese part was a suit
was actually a spelt young man which
gave me very confused feelings when I
was a teen in watching Power Rangers.
But I watched Power Rangers. I was
really too old for it. I just thought it
was really interesting that how they’d
cut a Japanese TV show into the American
actors. But Triny
had a thing for Triny. I had a
girlfriend at the time and she was a
little disturbed by that.
But it’s coming to an end next year
which is actually really sad. Any show
that lasts 50 years is kind of an
institution. Basically, everyone in
Japan has grown up with some version of
Power Rangers in their life, the Super
Senti. The sales of all the extra stuff
is waning, which is showing a lack of
interest in the series. And that’s
probably where they make all their
money. Like the show itself has always
been really cheap. And they actually
kind of never brought it up a level in
quality because
that’s how they made their money. They
made this cheap show and then they sold
all the stuff and all the stuff sold and
that made them all the money they made
to make more shows. That’s how it lasted
50 years. It was a solid plan. People
are buying less and less. The last
series is called number one sentuger
gauer. I don’t know how to say that.
It’s G O Z Yu G- Raziger. They always
choose really weird names. Sometimes
they come from like German or something
else. I’m probably saying this not
butchering it just in English,
butchering it in multiple versions of
the languages. Uh is going to finish
next year. It’s going to be the last
one, but I guess if you’re gonna end
your show, doing it on the 50-year mark
is pretty solid.
Heroins is a group of idol groups. So,
that’s already like an inception of idol
groups. So, you have heroins is made up
of smaller bands that probably come
together to be a super band every now
and then, much like our previous store
story Super Senti. Um, run by a company
called Imaginate. Now, Heroins Ken Qus,
I think that’s the name of the band. Uh,
there’s a 17-year-old member who has
been let go because of severe
contractual violations, but they didn’t
give any details. So, they went on
Twitter. They said, “Here we have this
17-year-old girl. Uh, we’re cutting her.
She’s she’s broken her contract.” Now,
they posted just this on Twitter. She’s
not going to be part of our band
anymore. Now, everyone’s trying to
figure out why is she getting fired.
Well, she’s getting fired because she
posted a picture of the snacks she had
when she was going to a movie. Now, in
the clear plastic cup cover of her Coke,
uh, you could see a reflection of a male
figure. And then fans immediately
deduced that that male figure must be
her boyfriend. She was going on a date.
You’re not supposed to go dating when
you’re in one of these idol bands.
You’re not supposed to have a
relationship or a life outside of the
band. You’re supposed to say stay
weirdly available for the fans to live
this fantasy like they could have you in
their life. and that’s all part of the
contract, but it isn’t because it was
made illegal. So, they’re not allowed to
say that anymore, but they are still
able to like find another reason to fire
you. So, they think because she was seen
in public with a boy, but again, the
fans are so creepy, they’re like zooming
in on the reflection of her cup to see
who she’s with, they fired her for that.
That’s the assumption. Now, we don’t
know if that’s actually true, but I’m
betting it’s actually true because once
it came out that she probably has a
boyfriend, 17-year-old girl meets a guy,
she’s going to go on dates with the guy.
I think that’s really normal for
17-year-old kids to do. I have no
problem with it. But I’m not a freaky
freaky idol fan. Freaky freaky idol fans
want to keep this idea that their idol
is pure and waiting for them in some
way, which is how you end up with these
really weird parasocial relationships
between the idols and the fans where
they’re not allowed to have a life
outside of the group. A lot of people
were like, they should have just lied
and said like it was her bodyguard, it
was her manager, it was her brother or
someone else because no one else
actually knows who this guy is. But I
saw the picture of the reflection. It
was really hard to see. So you couldn’t
make out who it was. So they could have
said, “Yeah, she went to a movie with
her brother. She went to a movie with
her manager and then just covered up
that way.” But they do have these rules
and they’re trying to say that these the
government’s saying like you can’t tell
people they’re not allowed to have
relationships anymore. You’re not
allowed to put that in the contract, but
they can still not put it in the
contract. tell them they can’t do it and
then if they do it, fire them, which is
what exactly seems to have happened to
this poor young woman who just wanted to
sing songs and have a life.
So, we have our new prime minister,
Takahuchi, and I am still really torn as
to whether I’m on board or not because
she said a lot of stuff that I disagree
with. She she doesn’t want to maintain
the work life balance that’s already
been established in Japan. She actually
wants to make it worse instead of making
it better, which I am very pro- work
life balance because I think the people
in Japan work unnecessarily long hours.
I don’t think they’re more productive. I
don’t think this is actually the
solution. And it again, baby problem,
all that other stuff goes into it as
well. I’ve said this a million times. I
don’t really want to say it anymore.
When she was on the campaign trail, she
said it she wanted to revise the public
servant renumeration law and cut cabinet
members salaries, including her own. And
one of her first things she’s going to
do is cut her own salary and then cut
the salaries of all the cabinet members
that work for her. And so she’s not your
So there’s lawmakers in Japan and then
there’s cabinet members and they
actually have different renumeration
package packages. Cabinet members often
get a lot of bonuses and extras because
you know they travel and they do extra
stuff. She’s saying cut all that out.
You get your pay and nothing else.
There’s no bonuses. There’s no benefits.
Lawmakers and cabinet members should
make the same amount of money including
herself. I have a lot of respect for
that. She’s actually made a promise.
She’s keeping the promise. And the
promise is technically hurting her and
the people who work for her, but that
means we’re spending less money,
taxpayer money, on the people who are in
power. I’m really on board with that.
So, I’m really torn. This might be a
case where this is like a real life
situation where she has good points and
bad points. I’m just hoping at the end
of the day she has more good points and
we get to see more of those later.
Uh DL site is a kind of spicy little
website that I’ve mentioned before. Uh I
mentioned before in a previous episode
when we were talking about Mastercard
and Visa trying to do what would be
called financial censorship. So
basically, if you run a website that
does uh specific documentaries about the
reproductive cycles of humans, uh you
would not be able to use credit cards,
Mastercard or Visa on your sites because
they’ll say like we don’t want to
promote that. Our advertisers don’t want
to be connected to that. So you can’t
use your card discard system unless you
get rid of all the porn. This site, DL
site, wanted to resist these censorship
efforts, which I okay, I think if you
want to look at it, you should be
allowed to look at it. It’s just that
simple. So, I don’t think there should
be a lot of censorship as long as
everyone involved is consenting. Like,
if they’re consenting adults, they want
to do it. They can do it. Uh, I don’t
agree with manipulation.
That’s a lot harder. It’s a much grayer
zone. So, they they have decided, okay,
we’re not going to use Visa Mastercard
because they want to censor us. So, what
we’re going to do is create our own
essentially internet coin that you can
use. So, you can buy credits and you can
use those credits towards actually
buying content on that website. They
have just come out with a Twitter clone.
So, it’s called Pomu and Pomu is
basically a Twitter feed and it’s a
friendly secret hangout for otaku. Now,
it’s not really secret because they just
advertised it, but they’re trying to
integrate like a social service, so a a
social website into their other
services. And of course, you can use
their coin on both. Now, this has been a
very friendly website to people who make
a certain kind of art. art depicting
maybe,
how can I say in the most gentle terms,
uh, the human form. It does have a nice
thing though, one feature. So, up in the
top right corner, it has a little
button, and it’s a little button where
you can toggle R18, which is restricted
to 18-year-olds and not. So, you can
basically have a safe for work and not
safe for work button, you can turn on
and off. Apparently, when you turn off
the not the safe for work button and
turn it on to not safe for work, the
feed changes dramatically. But again, if
that’s what you want to look at and
everyone’s consenting, I’m on board with
it. I think you should be allowed to do
that. Apparently, the website has
already been flooded with, and I put
this in quotation marks, art, and I’m
sure there is a lot of art. Uh, you can
register with a Vivian ID, which is part
of their alternate payment solution. Uh,
they’re creating a whole sort of corner
of the internet that isn’t ruled by
censorship, isn’t ruled by Visa,
Mastercard, or this financial
censorship. And while I probably won’t
spend a lot of time on that website, I
am all for it existing.
78-year-old man had an obsession with a
woman in her 20s.
And I I just I worry that I’m going to
be that 78-year-old man. I’m in my 50s.
I’ve held it together so far, but I’ve
done so many stories about men in their
mid50s who just lost their and just
started doing weird weird stuff. I’m
like, is it an inevitability? Am I going
to be that guy? Maybe I make it through
my 50s and it happens to me in my 60s,
but it looks like this dude in his 70s,
late 70s, exactly the same issue. He’s
known her for about two years, and he
says he developed feelings for her. He
was already arrested for breaking into
her home and stealing perfume. So, that
shows the weird level of obsession that
this guy already has. He had done this.
He’d been arrested for it. He got in
trouble for it, but he still had these
feelings for her. So, how does he
express his feelings? But let’s say
let’s say age gap isn’t the problem.
Let’s say that he does have a chance.
You have to show your sincere and honest
love for someone. What is the one thing
you can do that will generally have them
change their opinion about you, make you
think you’re a better person? He set her
car on fire. And then when he was
arrested, he said, “I’m dissatisfied
with being arrested.” Which is a very,
very entitled old Japanese man thing to
say. I have just set a woman’s car on
fire because I find her attractive and
she’s not returning my affection despite
the 50year age gap, which should be
enough to explain why she’s not as into
you as you think she should be. I mean,
let’s say I’m in a situation like that.
I look at someone way younger than me
and I find them attractive. I’d be like,
my first thought is they will not find
me attractive. They would have to come
with a sign that says, “Chunk beef
chest, I find you attractive.” and that
it’ be like,
“But are they telling the truth?” So
that self-doubt is actually a benefit
when you get into these older years
where you could be doing really weird,
dangerous stuff and just letting the
obsessive aspects of your life take
over. Because this guy, he’s 78, I’m
assuming retired, has a lot of free
time. He’s just sitting around
obsessing. And that’s where this has
gone wrong. Totally. But then when he
gets arrested to complain about the fact
he got arrested because he set a woman’s
car on fire. I’m dissatisfied with being
arrested. I think he should not be
allowed out anymore.
Two teens were arrested, 17 and 18 year
olds, for a fishing scam. Every episode
of the last like five, six months has
had a scam story involved in Engineers
Japan because it is just it’s taking
over the country. uh they found people
online and they would say, “I’m looking
for a companion to go to an idol
concert.” So, they’re targeting a very
specific group that has uh money to
spend on things like idol concerts.
Uh they said, “Let’s talk about how to
pay for the tickets. I’ll get the
tickets. Uh I’ll send you one yen on our
like uh payment system so you can get
like it’s a real address. It’s legit.”
And then you put the money in to this
fake website. and they put the money
into the fake website and that’s how it
collected their credit card information
and then the teens could take the credit
card information and then drain their
bank accounts from one account they
drained 500,000 yen. So the 17-year-old
would transfer the money from their
account to the other kid’s account
uh and they seem to have got this is not
a confirmed number but at least 13
million yen in total. So this was a very
very successful scam. The thing is
they’ve used a lot of AI tools to create
the website. So they created a website
that looks real. They’ve created used
the tools to make stuff that makes it so
that they can collect the information
and it’s made it very easy because they
can basically just go into AI. I bet
you’re not allowed to say I want to make
a fishing site, but you could say I want
to make a site that looks like this that
has this aspect and it just builds it
for you and then you just post it on the
internet and then now that it’s been
shut down, they can go make another one
in a few minutes because they have AI do
it for them. The 17-year-old is the
better criminal. I’ll be very honest. He
said, “I don’t remember the incident.”
So, he’s just saying, “I ignorance. I
don’t know. You have to do your job as a
police officer and prove the crime. I’m
not going to help you with that.” The
18-year-old, not as good a criminal. He
admitted fault right away.
85year-old man grabs another guy and
tries to stab him who’s 65 years old.
So, he’s the younger person in this
because he had been sent to take money
from him. Except that guy was actually
just going to work. So, the old dude,
86-y old, knocks over the 65year-old and
tries to stab him a couple times. So,
the guy ends up with his hand up. So, he
gets some minor defensive wounds. Uh, an
offduty cop happened to be jogging in
the morning doing his morning workout.
He saw this and intervened. Turns out
the guy had a kitchen knife in his right
hand as he was attacking the 65-year-old
and two more knives in his left hand.
So, he had again hit this weird paranoid
level. He he had hit this weird paranoia
just kind of like our previous old guy
story where he’s like all up in his head
and he’s now thinks that’s reality where
the reality is no one’s coming to take
your money but he is so locked in that
this guy’s coming to take my money he
brought three knives with him. I don’t
know how you’re holding two knives in
one hand like is it one blade out of
each one? Is it like just two so that if
you drop the hand that drop the knife
that in your in your dominant hand you
can just swap out really quick? He
clearly walked out of his house that
morning wanting to stab stab somebody
for something and then had this weird
paranoia. So the police arrested him.
He’s not made any comment other than he
thought that that man was sent to take
money from him. So like some kind of
fishing scam. But that guy was just
walking to work that day and he got
attacked by a knife. So luckily no one
was really hurt. He got again a couple
cuts on his hands and stuff, but nothing
that was like life-threatening or
particularly dangerous. He’s going to
heal from that just fine. No problem.
the mental trauma. I mean, you get
tackled by an 86 year old and you have
to fend him off because he has multiple
knives in his two hands. That is a scary
way uh to live. And be careful out there
of everyone, especially old Japanese
men.

Golden Crotch

Shoutout to Lone Listeners [00:00:16]

I don’t check the stats on this podcast very often because, honestly, you get obsessed with the numbers going up or down, and it makes you feel really happy or sad. But I was interested, I was just looking through the numbers and it was showing me where people are from. The ones I find most interesting, it’s when it’s like a single person from a place is listening. So you think of an entire country, and in that entire country, there’s one person who’s listening to Ninja News Japan. So if you are from Oslo and you are listening to this podcast, you are the only person in Oslo listening to Ninja News Japan. And I personally would like to say thank you, single person in Oslo, for listening to Ninja News Japan. Because that’s kind of cool. You’re there, I’m here, talking about Japan, having a good time. I love you. I don’t know what your feelings are about me, but if you want to let me know, that’s fine.

There is one person in Paraíba, Brazil who listens to Ninja News Japan. Now, last month they only listened to one episode, but that was enough. I mean, I got the one number from you and I’m like, hey, I don’t speak Portuguese, but if you’re listening to the podcast, I assume you speak English. If you don’t, this is a very weird sleep aid you have going on. But, drink one for me.

And the final one I wanted to reach out to, there are two people in Punjab who are listening to Ninja News Japan. And I would like to say, hey, I enjoy you and I hope you can continue to enjoy me. I hope I make my enjoyment possible for you. I don’t know what I’m saying right now. But what I really want to say is thank you, Oslo, Paraíba, and Punjab for taking the time to listen to the podcast. I think that’s really cool. If you’re in a country where there’s a whole bunch of people listening, meh. That’s such a mean thing to say. But it’s kind of neat. All I want to say is thank you for listening. It’s just one of those things where it’s places, cities, countries I haven’t thought about people listening to this podcast that are. It is the beauty of podcasting. The beauty of podcasting is you are sending out your message to the world and someone in Oslo is picking it up. Someone in Paraíba in Brazil is picking it up. Someone in Punjab is picking it up, and I think that’s kind of cool. I just want to take a moment and say, I would love for a single listener in every country. More than a mass of people listening in one place, I think it would be extra funny if it was just one person in every country listened. That’d still be like, what, there’s 300 countries, 300 listeners? Not bad.

Fukuoka Assembly Members’ Gold Pins [00:03:00]

Fukuoka assembly members used to wear 18-karat gold pins. Now, this is something that if you come to Japan, you’ll notice maybe that guys wear suits, and on the suits, they’ll have a lapel pin, a little usually circle, something like that. And it’s the company they work for. And those can be made of brass, but the high-level ones, expensive, rich companies, they make them out of gold. Well, assembly members in the government, they made theirs out of gold because they’re fancy people. You get them for being a lifetime employee, you get them for being on a certain contract type that says you’re dedicated to this. You get it for passing the bar exam and being a lawyer, that kind of stuff. Any sort of membership will have this kind of thing.

I’m going to be really honest, the first time I knew about them, I learned about them was actually after I’d come to Japan, and it wasn’t from living in Japan and seeing people wear them, it was from the Yakuza games. No, it was Judgment, Lost Judgment. That video game, they make a very special “I’m a lawyer” move where he like flips over his jacket and you can see the pin to prove that he’s a lawyer and not just a private investigator. And that was the first time I really like looked at them and tried to find out what they were. So I’d lived in the country for a long time, seen them before and just like, ah, it’s a pin you get for the company you work at, who cares? No, it’s kind of a bigger deal than that because it represents that you are dedicated to that company in some way.

Gold has hit an all-time high, not just in Japan, everywhere. So in 2018, a single gold badge, this little pin that you put on your lapel, 32,400 yen. That is way too much money for a pin. Like I’m just going to be really honest, like you could make it out of a way cheaper material, it would look just as good. In 2022, because the price of gold had gone up, and 2022 was the last time they made them, it was 66,000 yen per badge. That’s a PlayStation. So they’re wearing a PlayStation in just that little pin on their chest, which is really dumb. The next time they have to make the pin is going to be two years from now. The assumption is the price of gold is going to go up between now and then, which will make it even more expensive. How many pins do you have to actually make? You have to make one for every member and old members and things like that, like people who are still connected to it, maybe alumni, that kind of thing. That means the pins are going to cost 30 million yen total. So you’re not buying, it’s not like 66,000 yen is one pin, that’s one pin per person and there’s lots of people who are in the assembly. So 30 million yen, and they’re like, we’ve now hit a point where we can’t make them solid gold, that doesn’t make sense. So we’re going to go from solid gold to plated gold and it will bring the price from 30 million yen down to 2 million yen, which is very sensible. This is actually responsible government. This is guys going like, yeah, we’re big fancy people who do a big fancy job, but at the end of the day, we’re using taxpayer money to pay for these little badges. These little badges, they don’t need to be pure gold. They can be plated, they could be gold-coated of some sort. 30 million yen is silly, let’s bring that down to 2 million yen. It’s a way sensible thing. It shows that there are actually some sensible politicians out there.

Japan vs. OpenAI [00:06:10]

Japan versus OpenAI. Now, this has happened already because it had OpenAI had that whole trend basically last year where it was like, you put in a picture and our AI will turn it into Ghibli-style art. Ghibli-style art, the style cannot really be copyrighted so clearly. So you can copyright an art style, and so Ghibli has basically done that since then, which is probably why that trend went away. But, Japan versus OpenAI. Now last year, there was a big trend of you take your picture and you put it in OpenAI and it will change it into Ghibli-style art. Now that Ghibli-style art, that art style is technically copyrighted, but it’s very hard to prove because it’s hard to copyright a style. You can copyright characters, you can copyright images, you can copyright, you know, I have done copyright on this thing, but style becomes a much harder thing to copyright. So that’s kind of where this was a little in a legal gray zone.

The Japanese government’s been like, no, you guys are going too far because what you’re actually doing is taking away from Japan. Japan’s art, this is a piece of Japan that you’re ripping off. So they’re talking about mainly manga and anime, and they don’t want OpenAI to be able to replicate manga and anime. Sam Altman has said that OpenAI has a huge debt to the remarkable creative output of Japan. So basically saying that, oh, we took all the stuff Japan made, we stole all that, put it in our AI, and now we’re able to replicate all that stuff. We owe them a huge debt, one we have no intention of paying. Like we’re not giving anybody any money from that country that produced all the stuff that we can make really cool stuff with now. The Liberal Democratic Party has said that this is a serious legal and political problem, as in they as a country are now going to go after OpenAI if they keep doing this. Article 16 of the AI Promotion Act says they can demand disclosure of Sora 2 specifications. So basically they’re saying, if you keep ripping off our artwork, we’re going to force you to let us look at the specifications, the internal workings of your AI, and then we can rip that off. So basically, you rip us off, we’re going to politically force you to let us rip you off, and then what happens? What’s going on, buddy? And I actually think that’s a very interesting tactic to take. We’re not going to sue you for money, we’re going to sue you for your technology and then have access to your technology, and then Japan will be able to make a technology that will maybe outdo OpenAI or something else. But OpenAI wants to be the one and only, and they can’t be that if they get sued by Japan the country, and then Japan the country’s like, you now have to, if you want to function within our borders, let us look at your specifications.

Japan’s New Prime Minister on Work-Life Balance [00:09:20]

Japan recently got a new prime minister, and it’s a lady-type prime minister. Woo! Now, at first, I was kind of excited about having a female prime minister, and then I realized like she is way more conservative than most other people. So I actually think that our new lady prime minister might be bad for ladies. It’s a very interesting predicament to be in because I want to support women, but I want to support women who support women, not women who will end up oppressing other women. It’s a weird spot because I don’t know enough about her politics. I only know the most shallow version that I get from the news. And this is an interesting thing that I know that the new prime minister, Takaichi, is very conservative. And one of the first things she said is, “I will throw away the phrase ‘work-life balance.'” And then immediately said, “We should relax limits on overtime.” So right now, the limit on overtime legally is 45 hours a month or 360 hours a year. There’s a cap. And she’s like, let’s remove that cap. And she said, “On the premise of maintaining physical and mental health and respecting employee choice.” As in, employees should decide if they want to ruin their mental health. Employees should decide if they want to work themselves to death. And the thing is, this is a country that is already working itself to death. And I don’t think there’s the benefit from it. So like, people in Japan work massive amounts of hours. People in Japan work themselves to death, but they don’t actually produce the wealth that they claim to be producing. Japan as an economy has not been growing, and obviously this amount of work hasn’t been doing it. And then you have the baby population issue with a declining population and not making enough babies. And I think, as a non-expert, that that is directly correlated to the fact that people work themselves to death.

When she said, “I will throw away the phrase ‘work-life balance,'” I don’t think she meant for the country. I think she was trying to say like, I am going to work so hard for the country that I am not going to consider work-life balance a thing. I am only going to work. I’m going to work the LDP like a workhorse, is one of the phrases she said. The next day, with a big smile, she says, “I encourage everyone to have value, a work-life balance.” So, I think there is sort of a misinterpretation. So she was saying, “I’m going to work my team to death to try to make this a better country.” But she wasn’t saying that for the whole country, but then she turned around and said, “I want to have a proposition that we remove the cap we’ve already put on work-life balance.” So it’s very unclear what she actually means. I think what she’s saying is, yes, I’m a conservative politician, I want companies to exploit the worker. This is what a lot of politicians think, and I think we should be honest about it. And that’s her premise and that’s her platform, and if you support that, okay. I don’t support that. I actually think there should be caps on how much people work because people work themselves to death and that creates all the problems that you have in the modern Japanese society. But, she didn’t, when she made the statement, “I’m going to throw away the phrase ‘work-life balance,'” I don’t think she actually meant everybody. I think she meant for herself. I think she was saying, “I’m going to work super hard.” And this is one of the problems with the misinterpretations and back and forth of modern media and one of the problems you should be aware of it. So when you read stuff about politicians and what politicians say, you need the context of what they’re talking about. But then also look at their policies, and her policies actually support the negative thing she just said. So where are we now? I still don’t know. I pretty much don’t like her, let’s put it that way.

Sexual Harassment Case Involving “-chan” Honorific [00:12:46]

That said, I don’t really like any politician most of the time. This is a story that just hit my feed over and over and over again. And it was a company employee harassed a younger coworker by using the honorific “-chan.” So, I think you know if you’re into Japan in any way, you know about, you know, “Ah, Mariko-chan,” and it’s a nice way to talk to a girl. And it’s usually young girls. So when you have kids, you have “-chan” is girls, “-kun” is boys. So I would be Chunk of Beef Chest-kun, and then my the girl my age, I could refer to as “-chan.” As the children, it’s all very innocent. Now, when you start dating, you often refer to your partner as “-chan.” So I have my girlfriend, and I would go, “Girlfriend-chan,” and she would be like, “Oh, he’s using this like cutesy way of talking to me, and that’s really nice.” It can happen from older people to younger people, but it takes on a slightly creepier feeling because you’ve, you’re not talking adult to child anymore or superior to like a lower, inferior person. You are talking to someone who is fundamentally an equal because you’re both working at the same company and you’re both like adults who are working. But it’s because you go through that phase in your teens and 20s and 30s where you refer to your sexual partners as something-chan, that is the issue because it changes the tone of that word.

The feed said that this guy got sued for using this and this was sexual harassment. Now, that alone legally is not enough to constitute sexual harassment. Now, because of what I just said, it can have a sexual tone, it cannot have a sexual tone. So his defense would be like, “I meant it in an innocent way. I wasn’t saying anything else. I was trying to be familiar. I apologize,” end of story. Now that’s, of course, you need the more details. So there’s a great website called Bengo4.com. Bengo4 means lawyer, and it’s lawyers talk about political issues. I’ve actually only been able to get into this website recently and actually find some of the details. They were talking about this. What makes this sexual harassment? Sued for sexual harassment because he referred to girl plus “-chan” is a great headline because that’s going to catch a lot of attention. But it’s of course not, that by itself is not enough. So what else did he say to constitute this being sexual harassment? Well, he said, “You have such a great figure, while I’m so skinny.” So, commenting on someone’s physical appearance in that way is, could be constituted sexual harassment because it depends on how it makes the other person feel. You might think you’re complimenting someone and they are made uncomfortable by it, that is sexual harassment. That’s actually pretty clear-cut. He also said, “I can see your underwear.” Now, we don’t know how what he meant by this, like you’re wearing white clothes and black underwear, I can see your underwear through your clothes. I can see the outline of your underwear, your unsightly panty lines, that kind of stuff. How this is said is also could be or could not be sexual harassment. Like, “I can see your underwear” might be actually like, “Hey, just to let you know, I can see your underwear, maybe you want to be more careful next time.” That could be good advice or helpful. But I think combination “-chan” plus “your figure” plus “I can see your underwear” is clearly a pattern of sexual harassment. So that sets up the pattern, that makes it sexual harassment, that’s what makes him guilty.

The woman wanted to sue him for 5.5 million yen, which is a lot of money. She got 220,000 yen. So basically, again, the lawsuits in Japan are not like the lawsuits in America where lawsuits in America, they try to take you for millions and millions of dollars and you’ll get millions and millions of dollars for like all the mental anguish you’ve suffered. In Japan, it’s punitive, but to a degree that is reasonable. It’s punishment for the thing and no more. She went into a depression, she quit her job, she sued the guy. The guy had not touched her or anything, so it was only verbal, but he was the cause of the source of this pain. So he said, so the judge granted 220,000 yen. Now, the company did not stop him from saying this. So the company also got sued and they got, they had to pay 700,000 yen for not creating a safe workspace. So that’s another interesting thing that the company actually got punished more than the actual individual who was doing the sexual harassing because the company is responsible for stopping the man, punishing the man, telling the man not to do this anymore. If she had reported to it, I assume she had said something to someone, otherwise she wouldn’t have gotten any money. If she had just kept this quiet, she could have sued the guy, maybe got some money, but again, you can see, not very much. But she must have reported it to a company and that the company didn’t do anything about it, so she got more money from the company.

Smuggling Gold in Underwear [00:17:30]

A former Osaka police, we got two stories about cops who should have known to stop while they were ahead. A former Osaka police officer impersonated a Kyoto police officer for a very classic scam where they call up someone, usually an older person, in this case it was a man in his 70s, and they said, “Your cards, like your debit cards, your cards that you’re using for your credit cards, have been used in fraudulent withdrawals. We are going to send a police officer to your house. He’s going to get your cards and he’s going to cut them, cut the magnetic strip so they can’t be used anymore.” So this guy pretended to be a Kyoto police officer. He knows the how you’re supposed to talk, how you’re supposed to act because he used to be an Osaka police officer. So actually, you think he’d be really good at this scam. But he made a point of saying, “I’m going to cut your cards, cut the magnetic strips so they can’t be used anymore.” And then he cut the cards in front of the 70-year-old man, but he didn’t cut the magnetic strips. And I was like, ah, he shouldn’t have drawn attention to it. He should have just said, “I’m going to cut your cards so they can’t be used anymore,” cut them and then not cut the strips. But because he drew attention to it and then didn’t do it, the 70-year-old man was like, “There’s something suspicious about this.” He called the police, found out that this guy does not work for the Kyoto police, and then the man was arrested. Now, he is a police, a former police officer, so he knows what you, I’ve complained many times about criminals in Japan who just come out and say like, “Yeah, I did it and I did this and I did all that.” You’re not being a good criminal then. You have to keep your mouth shut. So, when asked for a statement, this former Osaka police officer said, “I’ll think carefully before I speak.” Chef’s kiss, that is the perfect response. I’m not talking to the cops because I know you don’t talk to the cops. Doesn’t matter what country you’re in, do not talk to the cops. I don’t care if you’re innocent or guilty, they’re trying to pin something on you, do not help them do that.

Connected to this, an ex-Tokyo cop, his job was inspecting fire investigations. So there’s a fire, he goes there, he looks around the building, he tries to figure out, was this arson? Was this for insurance fraud? Or was this just an actual accidental fire? And he going around the house, he stole cash. Now, he did this while he was on the job. He did it eight times and he got 9 million yen because again, lots of older people in Japan, they still keep cash. Now, this is the opposite of our previous cop where our previous cop said, “I’ll think carefully before I speak.” This guy, once he was caught, decided he was just going to spill the beans everywhere. He said, “I was worried about money, and when the money appeared in front of me, I was tempted and thought, ‘If only I had the money.'” So basically, he’s going around a burnt house, he’s finding where these probably older people are keeping cash in a box, in drawers and stuff. He’s checking all the things. He’s like, “That’s a lot of money. I know someone who could use money. This guy.” And then they’re going to think the money’s been burned up in the fire, they’re going to get the insurance, they get their money back. Victimless crime, who gets hurt? Well, you do when you get arrested for stealing money. He said, “There’s a saying that goes, ‘The net of heaven is wide and loose, but nothing escapes it.’ I knew that if I kept doing this, I’d be found out someday.” Which actually is true because he kept doing it and then he was found out. But he wasn’t found out for any of those massive sums of money that he must have been stealing from houses because to get eight times and 9 million yen means like for a couple times, he was getting more than a million yen per theft. Like I don’t remember how much a million yen is in actual money, but it’s like a big sum of money. The thing is, a firefighter saw him take 1,000 yen from a pouch. We’re talking like $7 and put it in his pocket. So during the investigation, he was walking around, there was a little pouch of money, there was 1,000 yen in it, he pulled the 1,000 yen out, he put it in his pocket, a firefighter saw him and reported him for that, and that led to the investigation that got him caught for this other 9 million yen. I mean, guy, you just got to, I mean, why even go for the 1,000 yen? It’s not worth it. It’s not worth stealing 1,000 yen to get caught when you’ve already taken 9 million yen and you were home free. You just had to stop. And this is the problem with every criminal across the board, you have to know when to stop.

Smuggling Gold in Underwear [00:21:48]

As far as knowing when to stop, this is interesting. Four people were arrested for trying to smuggle 8 kg of gold, which I just said recently hit an incredible high. So that’s actually our first story was how about they’re not using gold in these little badges anymore. 8 kg of gold is worth 98.7 million yen, and they were trying to get it from Hong Kong to Japan. I think the market for selling in Japan might be better, which is trying to smuggle it in. Like you think you would, the value of gold is pretty universal, so selling it in Hong Kong makes a lot of sense. So it must be a reason to actually bring it in. It’s 8 kg, so each person had to bring 2 kg of gold. And I’m like, wow, like a 2 kg bar is probably not that big, but it’s going to be very hard to hide on your body. But what they did is they had powdered gold, so it was gold powder, and they had sewn it and filled in their underwear. So they were wearing 2 kg of gold in their underwear that they were then trying to go through security with and stuff and walk naturally. And I would just, I now want to get myself, not gold, but a pair of 2 kg underwear and see like, how do I walk that day? Is it distributed evenly? Like 2 kg is not a lot, but it’s also right around your groin area wearing as underwear is a lot. This one guy recruited three women, said they were going to get so much money and he was going to pay for tickets and stuff. They all got caught. We have a beautiful picture of the 4 kg of powdered gold, which I now know has been in underwear and around someone’s crotch, which actually makes it kind of gross, piled up and a display on a table that the police, they do this after they catch anyone with anything, they put out like a nice little display. There’s the guy who lays things out, that’s his job. But honestly, I kind of grossed out now knowing that was crotch gold.

“Stealerium” Malware [00:23:34]

You could not have a more on-the-nose name for malware than Stealerium. So, steal-er-ium. This is a thing that used to be a scam, it was like a phishing scam. You’d get an email, I got a couple of these, and it was, “Hey,” and it would have like your username or something that’s taken off some website, maybe get your real name from your email or something, and go, “I have hacked your computer and I turned on your camera while you were masturbating and looking at porn, and I have a video of you, and if you don’t want that video released, you have to get Bitcoin and send it to me or I’ll release the video.” The funny part was, if you got a video of me masturbating to porn and posted it on the internet, I would be like, okay, go ahead. Like no one cares. No one wants to see it. No one wants to see this in action. You’re not going to get any money from me. You’re not going to get any money from anyone else. You’re going to, I would actually probably tell everyone, “Hey, there’s a video of me.” This guy got a video of me and thought he was going to threaten me and put it on the internet. Everyone go look at it and maybe I could get some like internet clout out of it. You can watch the Ninja News Japan guy jerking it to weird porn. Like that wasn’t a threat to me. So you have to like have the right audience. But of course, it’s just like that was just inserting your name into an email and mass emailing millions of people hoping to get some response.

Stealerium is malware that does that actual thing. So it comes in an email with an attachment, and if you open the attachment, it can actually install malware on your computer that can turn on your camera and give the other person control as to when it turns on. When you go to an adult website, it logs your login information, which probably includes your credit card, which is what they probably really want more than anything else is your credit card information. But it can turn on the camera while you’re looking at the stuff and probably screen capture that stuff and send it back. So this thing that used to be just a phishing scam has now turned into, like inspired someone to make real malware that actually does the thing that they were threatening to do in the first place. All you have to do though is not open any attachments and you’ll actually be safe from it. But this is a real thing that’s happened that actually came from a story. So be careful on the internet.

AI Deepfake Pornography Arrest [00:25:48]

A 31-year-old company employee has been arrested for creating deepfakes porn with AI using famous women as sort of the base image. He’s been publishing them online. So he’s made 20,000 images of 262 different celebrities, and you could subscribe to his channel. I they didn’t actually say what channel it was on, like was it an OnlyFans or some Japanese version of that or just some porn site. But you could subscribe to him between $1 a month and $100 a month, and he would accept requests, I think at the higher tiers, for custom jobs. So, I don’t know if he was good at this. I didn’t actually get to see any of the porn. I’m not particularly interested if I’m being really honest. But the problem is, AI deepfake pornography is new technology, so there’s no laws actually on the books. So if he had actually followed Japanese laws and actually maybe, I don’t know about copyright laws with using someone’s image, if he had actually stuck to that, because there’s revenge porn laws, but this isn’t technically revenge porn, so he’s outside of that. He might be getting copyright issues for using a famous person’s face, but it’s very hard for a famous person to copyright their image. If an image is out on the internet and it’s like distributed everywhere and then you use it for something, it’s actually very hard for them to catch it and sue you for it. And then the actual deepfake, the porn part, if he’d followed Japanese laws, he’d actually might be safe there. But he was doing full nudity in his AI porn, which is illegal in Japan. So he’s not getting caught for the AI part, he’s not getting arrested for the deepfake part yet, because they’re actually working on laws on that right now. He’s getting arrested for making illegal porn in Japan. And then producing it and distributing it are all other laws and other rules as well. That’s all going to be a whole other thing.

But this is not a professional guy, he’s not like a tech guy. They arrested him and found out that he basically used tutorials online to get the images and put them into the AI and use the prompts and what prompts you should use to actually make the AI porn. And then he was actually making money online. He made 1.2 million yen. They didn’t really say over what period of time, but he was trying to start a business. So this might have just been the initial launch, this might have been just the first bunch. But 1.2 million yen just out of nowhere for having AI tools do a whole bunch of stuff for you, that’s free money as far as he was concerned. This has pushed up a lot of the attention for AI in Japan. This has pushed up a lot of what do we have to make rules about, what do we have to make laws about? There’s going to have to be protecting people from deepfakes. It’s going to be protecting people from having their image used in pornography. It’s going to have to be the pornography that’s produced, is that acceptable using AI? That kind of stuff. This is all stuff that’s hitting Japan now. If you remember Johnny Somali, he’s actually in trouble in Korea because they already have deepfake rules on the books. So he’s actually getting in trouble for creating a deepfake of him kissing another streamer that didn’t actually happen and distributing that on the internet. And that’s actually a big problem. That could be seven years in prison in Korea. In Japan, it’s a little bit behind, but now this kind of case, bring it to light, 262 famous people are on the other side, they’re going to have lawyers, they’re going to go after this guy. Those laws are going to come into place really soon. I’ll be really interested to see what kind of rules, punishments they make for AI deepfakes going forward in the future. You should do the opposite of what I’m doing right now and not put your face out on the internet. But I mean, again, sort of like the previous story, no one’s going to want to see this do that thing, so I think we’re okay if you’re an old dude on the internet, you’re safe from deepfake porn.