Anime Seasons

Japanese anime fit themselves into a rather rigid formula. 

There are four anime seasons a year: January to March, April to June, July to September, and October to December. All anime seasons run in parallel to each other. There are 12-13 episodes per season unless something went horribly wrong in the production process. Some shows that are received well will received additional seasons (although sometimes two consecutive seasons are called a single twenty-four to twenty-six episode season).

Each episode to 23-24 minutes long, including a minute and a half long intro sequence (sometimes after a cold open) and a minute and a half ending sequence (sometimes followed by a few seconds about the next episode or a post-script sequence). There is a suitable place for a commercial break about half way through. Sometime an episode is broken into two or three mini-stories with commercial break spots between them.

The evolving U.S. and streaming driven model of experimenting with series that have different lengths (even within the same series for different episodes), start at different times across the year, and can be terminated mid-season if ratings are poor, mostly hasn't spread to Japanese anime producers.

(There are also sometimes one or two 3-5 minute short episode series in a season, with the same number of episodes aired weekly, presumably distributed in a different medium.)

There are also plenty of genre and sub-genre conventions that they follow.

Anime fans decide at the beginning of each season which shows they plan to watch for the season sometimes sampling a lot of them for a week or two until they hone in on the shows that they will be following. If you dread watching the next week's episode somewhere mid-season, sometimes that show is dropped as well.

Fans generally know what they want and pick accordingly, although sometimes a highly hyped new series will lure someone who normally wouldn't watch something in that sub-genre or with its notable elements.

But, this can go awry. Suppose you like sweet, high school rom-coms. Depending on the season, there might be several of them available and standing alone, they might all be reasonably enjoyable. But if you cue up too many of them, and too few other anime types to provide variety, it can be overwhelming and you can get sugar sick from too much of a good thing.

That's me this season. 

Civilian Gun Ownership Doesn't Prevent Tyranny

The trouble with this meme is that it is utter bullshit. While the political theory of the Second Amendment is facially plausible, it turns out that it is actually just plain wrong.

How is an armed public preventing tyranny in the United States right now? 

It isn't and it won't. 

Armed citizens are no competition for the U.S. military if it is deployed. They aren't even competition for law enforcement.

The U.K. and Japan both have near complete bans on gun ownership. 

Do they have far fewer murders than the U.S. does? 

Yes. 

Do they are far fewer mass shootings and mass killings? 

Yes. 

Are they tyrannies? 

No. Both are more democratic and show more respect for the rule of law than the United States does at the moment.

Armed intimidation by private citizens was actually one factor of many that made the Third Reich possible. 

Germany saw significant political violence from the fall of the Empire and the rise of the Republic through the German Revolution of 1918–1919, until the rise of the Nazi Party to power with 1933 elections and the proclamation of the Enabling Act of 1933 that fully broke down all opposition. The violence was characterized by assassinations and by confrontations between right-wing groups such as the Freikorps (sometimes in collusion with the state), and left-wing organisations such as the Communist Party of Germany.

Between 1919 and 1922, there were at least 354 politically-motivated murders by right-wing extremists, primarily Freikorps, and a minimum of 22 murders by left-wing extremists. Compared to right-wing murders, left-wing motivated murders were criminally prosecuted much more frequently and received significantly harsher sentencing.

And, of course, there was armed resistance by Jews, most famously, in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which failed.

The reality is that there are really no examples in world history of an armed civilian population preventing tyranny. Even the American Revolution, which inspired the Second Amendment, was fought by state organized militias that banded together to form a state sponsored military insurgency, not by armed private citizens organizing themselves privately.

The Russian Ruse

The Russian government recently had a huge military parade celebrating the Soviet Union's victory over Germany at the end of World War II, which it calls the "Great War", has recently told the U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance in negotiations related to the Ukraine War that it demands that it receive more land than it has already taken by force over the last three years plus, and has announced an expansion of its navy.

All of this is basically a poker bluff.

In truth, the Russian army hasn't been as depleted as it is now as a result of the Ukraine War since shortly after the Russian Revolution more than a century ago. And, the Russian army is only getting weaker as it suffers more and more military casualties to men and equipment in the Ukraine War that it doesn't have the resources to adequately replace as quickly as it is suffering losses. Russia has not made significant progress in increasing the amount of Ukrainian territory it holds in years and has no strong prospects of doing so in the near future. And, Russia is sadly strapped for money and doesn't actually have the economic resources needed to expand its navy in the way that it claims it is beginning to.

Russia wants to look strong at the negotiating table in the hopes that at least some of its claims are credible enough to secure some concessions in its favor, and in the hope that it will sustain morale at home. So, it has pulled out all stops to create the appearance that it is strong.

Whether these efforts are at all successful remains to be seen. 

If the West stands pat and doesn't give into this bluff by brokering a treaty unduly favorable to Russia to end the Ukraine War, this ruse will continue to fall apart. Indeed, as prior posts at this blog have explored, Russia may virtually run out of key military assets by the time that the fourth anniversary of the Ukraine War rolls around, if not sooner. Ukraine's support from the West, in contrast, gives it greater staying power. Ukraine is still suffering massive losses (both civilian and military) in the war as well, but its Western support (and the more urgent support it has from its people who are facing an existential threat and suffering almost all of the harm to civilians and their property) gives Ukraine a greater ability to replace those losses.

The Old Guard Army Leader Perspective On Tanks

 “Bring out the Super heavy giant xl mega big tank!!!”

From here.