And the Rest of It

Uh-oh:

A powerful typhoon sweeping toward southern Japan on Tuesday triggered the cancellation of hundreds of flights, with officials urging hundreds of thousands of people to seek shelter.

Typhoon Khanun was packing maximum sustained wind speeds of 180 kilometers per hour (112 miles per hour) as it crossed the Pacific Ocean toward Okinawa Prefecture.

The Meteorological Agency said the storm, which it described as "very strong," was about 170 km southeast of the regional capital of Naha at 2:45 p.m.

The center of the typhoon was expected to brush past Okinawa late Tuesday or early Wednesday before crossing to eastern China later in the week.

 

 

Was it the time you invaded Georgia?:

A cruise ship with Russian passengers docked in Batumi, Georgia, was met with jeers from locals who were protesting the Ukraine war and the disputed territories occupied by Russia.

The cruise ship Astoria Grande was met with a large protesting crowd when it docked in the Georgian port of Batumi on Thursday and Monday, according to various media reports, including the local outlet Georgia Today.

On July 27, the ship was forced to leave Batumi earlier than intended after the protests broke out, Radio Free Europe and Meduza reported. The ship's original departure schedule is unclear.

 

 

India's Christians are being defiled by their own countrymen:

Carnage in Manipur showcases the tragedy unfolding around India’s anti-Christian ‘conversion laws’.

Two Christian women from the Kuki tribe, allegedly raped by Hindu extremists, are an example of how reluctant Western and Indian authorities are to call it persecution.

Both women, one middle-aged and the other in her 20s, were marched naked down a street towards a field before authorities claim they were gang-raped by ‘dozens’ of men in early May.

The mob also allegedly murdered the father and brother of the youngest victim, after the men attempted to intervene in the sexual assault.

Sky News, referring to the Hindu mob as ‘the majority community’, explained three more women were made to strip at gunpoint.

Alongside this, men hunting Kuki women allegedly murdered two Kuki girls, both in their 20s.

After seeking refuge under a ‘bed at their car wash shop’, co-workers said they heard the girls ‘screaming and pleading with seven men who’d locked themselves in the room’.

‘The girls were later found dead, their blood and hair splattered all over the room’ as reported by Indian news organisation, the Print.

The May 3 attackers apparently justified their actions as ‘revenge’.

Reacting to a viral photo of Aayushi Chaudhary, a Delhi nursing student murdered by her parents in 2022, Hindu violence spread after social media users falsely claimed the photo was of a murdered Meitei woman, killed by Kuki men.

The Print said police failed to stop the outbreak of violence, even after busting the ‘fake news’ photo within 48 hours of it going viral.

 

 

If one must discuss the wartime bombings of Japan and the current trend towards shameless and tasteless advertising, at least do it in the context of Japan being an Axis power and rather similar to ISIS at the time:

There has been criticism that Oppenheimer features no scenes of the devastation wrought by the atomic bomb blasts on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (where 220,000 died) and has no Japanese actors in the cast. 

 (Sidebar:I'm going to suggest that this is due to the film being about Oppenheimer.)

The timing of the film’s release is also unpropitious: August 6 and 9 are the anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks, with August 15 and September 2 the dates respectively of the announcement and signing of Japan’s surrender. The Oppenheimer trailer does rather portray the atomic bomb project as a thrilling and heroic endeavor, so any release in Japan around these dates would jar horribly with the official sombet mood of reflection and remorse. ...

 In any case, anyone who assumes the feelings and views of the Japanese is usually wrong. There is evidence that the Japanese have a surprisingly accepting view of the atomic bombings and the relationship with America. A 2015 poll by public broadcaster NHK found that 40 percent of the population agreed with the proposition that the US had no choice but to use the bomb; surprisingly, the figure in Hiroshima, 44 percent, is higher than the rest of the country and higher than those who called it “unforgivable.” In a recent survey, 90 percent praised the US-Japan alliance for helping preserve the country’s peace and safety.

Some Japanese have welcomed the film and the chance it might bring to kickstart a serious debate about Japan’s attitude to nuclear weapons. As Gearoid Ready writes in the Washington Post, Japan publicly opposes nuclear technology but relies on it, under the US umbrella, for its own defense. With a conflict between the US and China, perhaps flaring over the issue of Taiwan, an ever more pressing concern here, some sort of grown-up discussion seems overdue.

 

So there's that.

 

 

Interesting:

Two thousand years after cooks ground spices there for a curry paste, the scent of nutmeg still lingers at an archaeological complex in southern Vietnam.

Researchers found cooking tools buried two metres beneath the surface in Oc Eo, including a footed sandstone grinding slab similar to those used to make curry pastes today. On these tools, they identified microscopic plant remains. Evidence of Southeast Asia’s earliest known curry — the oldest found outside of India — according to a study published in the journal Science Advances.