Impurities are melted into slag. Not the iron. That’s what slag is.

What century of katana are you speaking about? Many katana were used with modern metallurgy technology and imported steel. Do you think modern Japanese created cars are also made from steel refined from sand? Do you think the guns Japanese Samurai used were made from steel refined from sand?

Yeah they’re a bit better at slashing whilst a straight sword is slightly better at thrusting. Typically a curved sword is a bit better whilst on horseback or whilst fighting unarmoured or lightly armoured opponents and straight blades are a bit better whilst fighting one-on-one and against somewhat more armoured opponents.

But these are slight differences and sword styles are also varied in each region, so the Japanese did develop swords which were more adapted to thrusting with reinforced tips and Europeans did develop swords which were more effective at slashing.

I think some people obsess over what swords are the best and the worst. In reality the style of sword was unlikely to be the major deciding factor in a one on one fight. The amount and quality of armour and the skill and capacity (Size and strength) of the fighters themselves are much bigger factors.

The whole “Japanese steel was really weak” thing is as much of a myth as the whole “katanas are super powerful superior weapons” thing.

They’re all just swords, and don’t make that much of a difference either way.

The comment was talking about things being Orwellian. Is it not Orwellian to have police killing many, many civilians?

Where are the horse exoskeletons for horses that fall and get injured in completely unnecessary horse races?

You are 66 times more likely to be killed by a police officer if you are in the US compared to in the UK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_annual_rates_and_counts_for_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers

Yep, just seems disingenuous to act like the history of the spice trade hasn’t affected our food culture when it clearly has massively. Hell, even curry in Japan is popular not because of India but because of British influence. The reason “Katsu Curry” is called Katsu is because of the English word “Cuts” referring to the cuts of meat in the curry, which is Japanese sounds like ‘katsu’.

I’m British and I see it’s wrong because it simply isn’t true… We have a ton of spicy foods. The stereotype that we only eat comfort foods like in the meme is old and worn out. Maybe that’s all you eat, but that’s on you.

If I had this flyer delivered to me I’d use my reasoning skills to bin it, maybe mock it first. Seems silly not to deliver it. It’s only going to be read by the already bigoted. Any sensible individual knows what to do with it.

Ruby is adorable.

Whenever this discussion happens in my country, where the death penalty has been abolished, I always point them to cases like this. They argue “But we will be better”. Historically we have not been better, and we are only getting worse.

Not sure how it works in Japan, but in many nations you have to file for a patent before or pretty soon after you release your product / service. In the US I think there’s a 1 year grace period. It’s a pretty common sense thing that stops whole businesses springing up and then being shut down by patent creation just like we are seeing here.

There are many games out there now that involve catching monsters and making them fight for you, Nintendo would be shutting down 100s, if not 1000s of developers if they wanted to go ahead with this and have it be taken seriously.

Anyone that has played Palworld will tell you that it much more resembles ARK than it does any Pokémon game or experience anyway.

Half of Pokémon are heavily inspired by artist’s (who are not affiliated with Nintendo) illustrations of popular Yokai (Japanese mythological creatures). The rest are simply animals with very generic additions. “It’s a cow but bipedal” “It’s a kangaroo but with horns” “It’s a pigeon but… actually yeah it’s just a pigeon. No difference.”

How can you copyright/patent that? It’s hardly original.

I say this as someone who grew up loving Pokémon.