#forced laborers

[softsoundingsea]

Japan removes monument for Korean forced labor victims despite criticism

By Yi Wonju

TOKYO, Feb. 1 (Yonhap) -- A Japanese local government has taken down a memorial stone for Korean victims of Japan's wartime forced labor at a public park earlier this week despite opposition from activist groups.

Authorities from Gunma Prefecture began pulling down the stone on Monday and finalized the removal on Wednesday, Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported the next day.

Aerial photographs taken by the news outlet showed the remains of what appeared to the base of the memorial stone smashed into pieces at the site.

The authorities are said to have spared the epitaph of the stone and handed it over to a civic group handling the memorial stone, before tearing down the concrete wall.

The phrase, "Remembrance, Reflection and Friendship," is engraved in Korean, Japanese and English on the epitaph.

The memorial stone was erected in 2004 by a civic group in Japan to promote the public's understanding of the shared past history from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula and the friendship between the two neighbors.

In 2014, Gunma Prefecture refused to extend the state approval for the establishment of the stone, claiming a civic activist made inappropriate remarks about the forced labor victims during a 2012 memorial event.

Japan's top court ruled in favor of the Gunma authorities in 2022, but the civic group has filed for separate suits seeking to block the removal.

Source: https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20240201008400315

[reasonsforhope]

Green energy is in its heyday. 

Renewable energy sources now account for 22% of the nation’s electricity, and solar has skyrocketed eight times over in the last decade. This spring in California, wind, water, and solar power energy sources exceeded expectations, accounting for an average of 61.5 percent of the state's electricity demand across 52 days. 

But green energy has a lithium problem. Lithium batteries control more than 90% of the global grid battery storage market. 

That’s not just cell phones, laptops, electric toothbrushes, and tools. Scooters, e-bikes, hybrids, and electric vehicles all rely on rechargeable lithium batteries to get going. 

Fortunately, this past week, Natron Energy launched its first-ever commercial-scale production of sodium-ion batteries in the U.S. 

“Sodium-ion batteries offer a unique alternative to lithium-ion, with higher power, faster recharge, longer lifecycle and a completely safe and stable chemistry,” said Colin Wessells — Natron Founder and Co-CEO — at the kick-off event in Michigan. 

The new sodium-ion batteries charge and discharge at rates 10 times faster than lithium-ion, with an estimated lifespan of 50,000 cycles.

Wessells said that using sodium as a primary mineral alternative eliminates industry-wide issues of worker negligence, geopolitical disruption, and the “questionable environmental impacts” inextricably linked to lithium mining. 

“The electrification of our economy is dependent on the development and production of new, innovative energy storage solutions,” Wessells said. 

Why are sodium batteries a better alternative to lithium?

The birth and death cycle of lithium is shadowed in environmental destruction. The process of extracting lithium pollutes the water, air, and soil, and when it’s eventually discarded, the flammable batteries are prone to bursting into flames and burning out in landfills. 

There’s also a human cost. Lithium-ion materials like cobalt and nickel are not only harder to source and procure, but their supply chains are also overwhelmingly attributed to hazardous working conditions and child labor law violations. 

Sodium, on the other hand, is estimated to be 1,000 times more abundant in the earth’s crust than lithium. 

“Unlike lithium, sodium can be produced from an abundant material: salt,” engineer Casey Crownhart wrote ​​in the MIT Technology Review. “Because the raw ingredients are cheap and widely available, there’s potential for sodium-ion batteries to be significantly less expensive than their lithium-ion counterparts if more companies start making more of them.”

What will these batteries be used for?

Right now, Natron has its focus set on AI models and data storage centers, which consume hefty amounts of energy. In 2023, the MIT Technology Review reported that one AI model can emit more than 626,00 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent. 

“We expect our battery solutions will be used to power the explosive growth in data centers used for Artificial Intelligence,” said Wendell Brooks, co-CEO of Natron. 

“With the start of commercial-scale production here in Michigan, we are well-positioned to capitalize on the growing demand for efficient, safe, and reliable battery energy storage.”

The fast-charging energy alternative also has limitless potential on a consumer level, and Natron is eying telecommunications and EV fast-charging once it begins servicing AI data storage centers in June. 

On a larger scale, sodium-ion batteries could radically change the manufacturing and production sectors — from housing energy to lower electricity costs in warehouses, to charging backup stations and powering electric vehicles, trucks, forklifts, and so on. 

“I founded Natron because we saw climate change as the defining problem of our time,” Wessells said. “We believe batteries have a role to play.”

-via GoodGoodGood, May 3, 2024

--

Note: I wanted to make sure this was legit (scientifically and in general), and I'm happy to report that it really is! x, x, x, x

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

anyone else have multiple traumatic memories associated specifically with holidays/family vacations? because that is a topic I never see discussed in all the So You Had A Shitty Childhood, Now What? self-help books i've been reading. but for me, it was a significant thing. and the more i think about it the more it seems like this would be an (unfortunately) common experience. would be grateful to hear if this matches other peoples' experiences...

[kingbear8]

The exchange. My seed. Putting it inside you. A literal piece of myself. It'll grow. It'll change your body and life forever. I wanted this. Your wants don't really matter. I'm so much bigger than you, all you could do was take it. Don't worry, you'll be a good Mommy. To all of them.

[toomuchbirth]

Birth Quickie 2:

Conversation

I hadn't thought it would feel like this.

Sure I’d seen shows. Even videos. I assumed they were playing it up, being dramatic. It was taking all my focus not to scream with the contractions, or break down sobbing as I felt this parasite moving down inside me. I hadn't meant for it to.happen here, like this. I was supposed to be hiding in the shed, or at least the basement.

Then mom and dad had friends from the office over and asked me to stay upstairs. I didn't argue, assumed it would be ok. Then contractions started getting worse, my waters broke and soaked my sweats and panties. I knew from looking into it that didn't really mean anything. Sure, it was alarming, but come on. I could have hours still, even the better part of a day.

Of course, I couldn't be that lucky. I sat on the edge of my bed, facing away from the door, breathing through cramp after cramp. I was timing them, but I got really scared once I got around six minutes apart. Then I got a feeling like I kinda needed to use the bathroom, but I didn't want to risk getting stuck in there if the little accident was closer than I thought.

Turns out it was. That subtle bathroom-y feeling was a pushy feeling trying to creep in. I tried to fight it as long as I could, burning up in my layered T-shirt and long sleeve I’d been wearing to try to hide my growing belly from my parents. The urge got worse, stronger, more urgent as time went on. Contractions getting closer and closer, it started to hurt to not push. I barely managed to stay quiet, keeping my breath as steady as possible, eyes closed tight as I began to give in against my will, my body pushing on its own even as I fought it.

I tried to make a new plan on the fly. It was clearly coming. I’d have it and try to climb out the window, leave it at a shelter like I originally planned. I just needed to stay calm, let it come as quietly as I could. Mom and Dad could NOT know I had gotten pregnant, ever. Let alone how it had happened. I couldn't imagine how they would react but I know it would be horrible.

Speaking of horrible, the pain and pressure was getting worse. I had started pushing without meaning to, and at this point gave up fighting my body. This was happening, here and now. Gripping my blanket and lifting my knees slightly, I let out the tiniest grunt, face scrunching with effort and toes curling. I could immediately feel an entire new sensation. Not just the intense pressure of a head just inside my vagina, but BURNING. My lips were spreading, I was starting to crown into my soaked panties.

This was really happening. I was having a baby for him and he didn't even know, didn't care… it hurt so bad, I couldn't stand thinking about him, having a normal dinner happy and just thinking about the rest later this week, his latest practice, he probably barely remembered what he'd done-

The door opened to my bedroom, and I jumped with shock. “Hey… I just wanted to check in on you. Are you ok, sweetie?” I took a breath,.steadied myself, very vividly aware of the straining teardrop of my most intimate place hidden inside my clothes. “Y-yea! I’m doing fine! Just… you know. Thinking about stuff.” I tried to smile, looking back over my shoulder.

God, I was so hot. I could feel the sweat running down my face, soaking into my shirt. My hair was a mess, sticking to me and itself. I looked like a disaster. I looked like some dumb girl giving birth to a baby she didn't want in her bedroom, hoping her parents wouldn't catch her. I was so stupid, how did I think I could get away with this?!

“You’re probably annoyed with us, huh? I keep telling your father that we shouldn't make you go to your room when our friends are over, but he just says you probably don't want to be around anyway…”

“It’s f-fine!” I managed, and I prayed she didn’t hear the raised pitch of my voice, the way my smile looked like grit teeth, my hands twisting in the sheets as my body started to push on its own again, another contraction squeezing me tight. “Really! I just have stuff going on, and… I g-get it. You guys are people too… and I… I really do get it!” Fuck… I could feel the head… it wasn't a teardrop anymore… it was a full crown… no… worse, it… it-!

I convulsed as a sudden burst of movement overwhelmed me. The entire head slipped free of me, making a huge bulge in my underwear and sweatpants. Oh god, if Mom looked around me just a tiny bit, she’d see the soaked fabric, the shape of a baby coming out of her daughter in shameful secret. I heard the patter of fluid hitting the carpet impossibly loudly. There’s no way Mom wouldn't catch me. My life was over. She would make me keep it and I would be the first girl with a kid in my class and for Him no less…

“I appreciate it, hon.” Mom said, a sigh in her voice. “I just don't want to miss you while we have you in our lives. You’ve grown up so fast. Some girls your age have kids already, can you believe it? But I know you’re smarter than to ever let anything like that happen to you.”

I wanted to scream, everything felt so wrong. “Yea! You taught me to be careful!” I managed to sneak out, back arching slightly, I HOPED subtly, as I pushed in front of her. It was coming out. Oh god the shoulders were so big… this was torture, they were bulging me so hard, my body was straining… I was giving birth!!!

“Well… your dad is probably worried about me. I just wanted to make sure you were ok. I worry about you, you know? I want you to know we care about you, we’re here for you. I love you.”

I couldn't stop pushing. I fought to keep the growl of effort out of my voice. “I love you too, mom.” I sounded hoarse, strained, but seemingly not too much. She closed the door and I heard her walk away.

Seconds after the couldn’t see me anymore, the inevitable happened. The shoulders slipped free, and the body slithered out of my most intimate place, filling my clothes as I sagged in exhaustion. “Oh god… oh god… I just gave birth…” I whisper-panted to myself, praying I could get away with this. I just wanted my normal life back.

[defire]

Fun things about trauma bonds I learned in the cult

(Specifically talking about the bond between victims of the same abuse)

Content: real-life scenarios, ptsd, trauma bond, forced labor, doublethink, emotional repression

Feels like they are the only ones that could ever understand you

Having similar conditioned responses

Having similar extreme responses--things that should be just funny become choking-hazard hilarious, things that should get a chuckle get a synchronous shrug

On that note, often saying the exact same thing in the exact same tone

Specific things like whumper's tone of voice when they say a certain thing, would be a joke when they weren't there

Singing to cope with many hours of forced hard labor, immediately going silent when whumper entered

Talking about the trauma was OFF LIMITS, only code-speak that whumper couldn't understand could be used to warn each other

Only certain feelings were allowed to be shown because we had been conditioned that some feelings were "not safe"

Openly admitting to each other that it wasn't safe inside the house with whumper and then telling outsiders that we were totally safe and thinking we were telling the truth both times

All saying exactly the same lines to strangers (example "we are all wretches" *shrug*)

Married-couple-level nonverbal communication.

"do you want this extra food? I'll sneak it to you under the table." "Give it to [other victim]." "Watch out, whumper's looking." All happened nonverbally with eye and head movements right in front of whumper.

Working together seamlessly (or else!)

As soon as you leave the cult, the pressure that forced the bond in the first place, the trauma-bond relationship can fall apart

No good relationship ever feels as intense or close as the trauma bond, and you wonder what you're doing wrong. Till you realize you aren't panicking constantly--that's the main difference

[baldwinheights]

[onlytiktoks]

[hearthfire-heartfire]

no one on the english-speaking side of this site gives a fuck about japanese people except as paper dolls in their fantasies. y’all don’t notice or care when we’re targets of violence in america STILL and you don’t notice when our history on this continent is being erased because you can’t fucking recognize it in the first place! even as we relive it.

i’m tired of the gentrification. i’m tired of vandalism, arson, and censorship. i’m tired of arguing about the atrocity of the a-bombs and the incarceration and model minority shit. i’m tired of people using my heritage as an escape, both in imagination and in physical reality. i’m tired of people’s fake familiarity that leads them to correct my grandmother’s accent coming out of my mouth.

if you don’t show up for nikkei where you live, if you don’t even know how, you don’t belong anywhere near japanese culture.

[nonbinarywannabepreggo]

I've been trying to experiment with femininity here and there, using women's clothes and displaying my huge birthing hips and fat ass. My hourglass shape shown off, denouncing my female anatomy.

My fiancée requested me yesterday to shave my pussy. I've done so and got carried away. I shaved every centimeter of my body, except my face. All those years of T and my body is still a woman's. I rubbed one of while shaving, thinking about how dysphoric that would make me feel and how much more of a proper wife he's turning me into. And now that I am indeed dysphoric, I can't wait for my fiancée to come here and fuck me in my fakeboy cunt, spraying his seed against my cervix and breeding me into the most feminine I can be: heavily pregnant, curvy, with enlarged udders. I'm just training to be your breeding bitch, when I am large and heavy carrying yours, so undeniably female.

Every time he insults my womanhood by saying I wouldn't be able to birth naturally because there would be no passage, I get wetter and hornier. I want to prove him I'm a proper mommy, and I want him by my side, telling me I'm a good girl and that I should just let my mother instinct take place, because that's what girls are for while I'm birthing his seed. i want him to remind me every second of it of how I'm now his woman, his wife, and that to accept my girl biology. You're the man, you are smarter than me. I should just put myself in my female role and obey the male. My job isn't to think, it's to carry and birth your children. Yours is to think, because my mind is all "pregnancy brain" from the moment I understood that was my duty.

[nevermeyers]

Do you know the number of manga authors who have died in the last decade? Do you know the number of physical illnesses a mangaka can develop due to his work? Muscle and posture problems, kidney problems, circulation problems. Not to mention that in recent years it is also common to say “being sick” to have depression, something that many manga artists suffer from due to the media exposure of their works to hundreds of thousands of ungrateful people who constantly insult and harass them.

Some of y'all are disgusting.

I hope I don't see any of you posting ANYTHING about the importance of mental health on your shitty profiles after everything you're doing with Gege Akutami. You're so self-fucking-centered and ungrateful.

[snortslaxatives]

Not to be really annoying and go ‘well actually’ to the joke about how silcos a twink who probably didn’t do shit in the mines and that miners all look like vander and are these big buff burly dudes is very much some propaganda in ur brain and not the reality of what conditions are like for miners from impoverished communities. You know they use children in mines bc they’re small right. If you’ve consumed any footage showing messed up mining communities that exists irl, like people who work in cobalt mines in Congo, they’re muscular, but at a glance, they’re not jacked and look pretty average. I think a lot of people are surprised seeing that they tend to be small and lanky for people doing hard manual labor all day, but that comes from not being able to afford enough quality food. You have to eat a ton of calories to get built, and that isn’t something many people who work in mines have.

[littl3d0ll-art]

My delicate princess of a husband <33

[kingbear8]

Something about making you take it. My seed. My genes. Planting it in your body where it could take root. Then absolutely everything will change, your body and life forever subjugated to attenteding my baby.

[toomuchbirth]

Birth Quickie 1:

Library

Your best friend and you were studying. They clearly were anxious about the upcoming test, their leg constantly bouncing, constantly shifting uncomfortably, closing their eyes to center themselves, taking deep, steadying breaths.

You kept trying to calm them down. "We're gonna figure this out. It's not even a super important test. I know you've been struggling in class, but you've been working really hard for this, and you're so smart." They smiled at you, their eyes warm and thankful, but their mouth seemed drawn sharply, strained. You knew all you could do is be there for them, but it still hurt seeing how hard of a time they were having.

The library was empty so far as you could tell, the only sounds their heavy breathing and little calming hums, and the turning of pages. Then their eyes snapped open. "Oh. Oh fuck. Fuck!" You were alarmed, confused. "Hey, what's wrong? What happened?"

Their hands were pressed flat on the table, and you noticed how bad the sweating had gotten, their shirt soaked around their neck, running down their face like they'd been running a marathon. Their chest was heaving and they clearly were fighting themselves to not freak out.

Finally, they managed to gather themselves enough to answer you. "I'm having a baby."

Of course, you were shocked. "Oh my God. You're... Pregnant?" Closing their eyes again, they shook their head. "No! I'm having a baby." Their hands curled into fists. "I'm having it." Their face started to redden, their teeth were grit. "I can feel it, fuck!"

You couldn't think of a reply. You scooted back, looked under the table. Their legs were spread. Their crotch was soaked. As you saw their legs trembling, a small bulge began to form between their legs. Oh god. Oh god, that couldn't be. They don't even look like they have a belly!

A blast of breath came from above you, and you came back up. "I don't know what to do! This wasn't supposed to happen, I had time! Was gonna have it in my room and then just pretend it never happened. Nobody was supposed to know! Fuck... Oh god it just won't stop... I'm not ready, I can't have a baby!"

Their back arched, they grabbed the sides of the chair. Chin tucked and feet on tip-toes, the bulge between their legs grew... Grew... A gush of fluid and a whispered "Fuck!" Erupted, the bulge suddenly growing, but they didn't stop. You saw more movement. Then more fluid forming a puddle in the chair, on the floor. The bulge became bagging, soaking wet fabric as your best friend sagged in exhaustion in their chair.

"God... I can't... I can't even..." They were clearly completely spent. "Just... G-go home... Ok? Promise me you won't tell anybody. Ok? If word got out... If my family found out, or God forbid Him... You just can't tell anyone, never even mention it to me again. Ok?"

You notice they haven't pulled their pants down, made any effort to comfort the baby they just birthed into the world... Watery cries of a newborn start to come from under the table, yet the silence outside of that is so heavy, so loud...

[sillybirdhole]

my favorite flavor of brudick and bruce&dick is Bruce being so emotionally stunted that he becomes incredibly attached to and dependent on his 9 year old ward

Dick growing up and moving out happens more like a terrible breakup because Bruce has no boundaries or emotional regulation when it comes to all things Dick-related

tfw it’s just canon