Author: William Lise

Long-term (49-plus years) resident of Japan. Former electrical engineer and have been translating and interpreting for over four decades.

The outrageous Microsoft behavior continues.

Microsoft persists in preventing me from making comments on posts on LinkedIn, its social media platform masquerading as a professional networking platform.

They hint strongly that this is because of my verification status. This includes posts by people I’m connected with.

I, of course, am not verified and not going to “verify.”

What does Microsoft expect to gain from such behavior? Does it expect its user victims to submit to its suggestion to be “verified?”

The last time I looked at the verification process, it required the scanning of an IC-embedded government-issued document. Who in their right mind would submit to that?

I think the answer to that is clearly that it is people who suffer from FONBOL, fear of not being on LinkedIn, perhaps believing that LinkedIn is where it all happens.

A case can be made that LinkedIn is a place where lots of phony things happen, and lots of delusional things happen. More and more, however, since so many things appear to be done online, there’s nothing special about being on LinkedIn or most anywhere else online.

On the contrary, there is an ever-increasing value to being out in the real world. This is particularly the case of freelancers who are in a captive labor pool that can’t break away from the service brokers they depend on for income.

That is a tough pill to swallow for people who have grown up staring at their computer or smartphone screens thinking that today’s the day it’s going to happen. That’s a highly optimistic dream from which people need to awaken as soon as possible if they are looking to survive.

Yokohama beat Kasumigaura at Koshien. 

Seeing Kasumigaura reminds me of things wartime. People who know about the Japanese military might pick up on the connection. There is a well-known wartime song that mentions Kasumigaura in the first verse. 

I remember it from among the numerous war songs I learned back in the 1960s. 

When I was in a yakitoriya one time—I’m always in some yakitoriya, right? Lot’s of stuff going on there—a right-wing thugmobile truck drove by playing that song at somewhere over the pain threshold and with about 35 percent distortion.

Feeling mischievous, I commented to the guy sitting next to me (another regular) “I know it’s wrong. I really do know it’s wrong, but when I hear these rousing war songs, I’m overtaken by an urge to go to China and stab babies.”

The fellow immediately launched into all the reasons why I should not repeat the horrible mistakes made by the Japanese military during World War II, apparently feeling compelled to warn me of making the same mistakes.

Sarcasm and black humor don’t work in Japan.