Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
Twitter is so fast, that this is super old news. Is it possible that 300 million use it (not at all once)? With over 16,000 tweets a second in Japan, the system went down at New Years. While there isn’t a cure to fix it except larger servers to handle this burst, Twitter will still grow. 300 million isn’t much when this is the dominant toy for cellphones.
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Comic Con Signing Line Up. We’ll most definitely be adding specials, deals, and more. I’d keep up with GR news via Twitter @giant_robot Yes, there’s an underscore @giantroboteric (that is me) @invictus (That’s Michelle B)
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Saying that history repeats itself is hardly a cliche. It’s an unpredictable trend. The same aphorism doubly applies to the internet. We all remembered what happened back in March after the Tohoku Earthquake. There was a great wave of sympathy directed towards Japan’s plight accompanied with a swell of hate. For whatever reason, people thought that a natural disaster was karmic retribution for World War II and deemed it socially acceptable to voice those thoughts online. As result, a UCLA political science major and a fourteen year old witnessed the internets collective moral fury firsthand. Such also seems to be the case for the Women’s World Cup. The Women’s team tied 2-2 on July 17th, 2011, but dominated with penalty kicks by 3-1 and proved victorious against USA. In light of this, “Pearl Harbor” and “Jap” is currently trending on Twitter as countlessly bitter American fans take to the World Wide Web. Granted, most of the current tweets are from those expressing outrage over such a trend, but the same thing also occurred in March. However, its doubtful that the same internet vigilantism will occur. It’s one thing to respond rancorously to the suffering of thousands and another to be a sour sport over a soccer game.
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Pain Mobiles in Odaiba “Proud itasha owners from all over Japan rode up to proudly display their wheeled wonders.” In case you were curious, those cars you may have seen on the internet with the amazing anime, manga and/or video game character paint jobs are called itasha, which literally means ‘pain mobile’. Typically the cars are decorated with a combination of actual paint, and stickers. And the typical itasha theme centers on cute female characters. The fad started back in the ‘80s, with only stickers and plush toys for decoration, but has evolved into the visually wonderful results you’ll see at the link, which features a big gallery of photos from the recent ItaG Fest in Odaiba, Tokyo. (Crunchyroll – Odaiba Itasha Fest) (For the odd origin of the term itasha, see Wikipedia.) Dazzling Gallery of Hand-colored Japan Images “Farsari’s photographic work was highly regarded, particularly his hand-colored portraits and landscapes, which he sold mostly to foreign residents and visitors.” In the 19th century, strange fate brought an Italian photographer to Yokohama, by way of the American Civil War. And now, over a century later, it is our good fortune Adolfo Farsari made his way to Japan. At the link, you will see many wonderful images which give us a visual insight into what life was like during the period in the late 1800s when Japan was just beginning to open itself to the world. Farsari shot his work in black and white, of course, but then made his stunning pictures all the more eye-catching by hand coloring them. We can only speculate that, try as he might, Farsari’s beautiful hand colors pale in comparison to the colors he actually saw in the images he photographed. (My Modern Metropolis – Farsari Colors Japan) For Malaysian Man, Apology is Such Tweet Sorrow “Whilst this is a fairly harmless outcome to the case for Fadzil, it does raise more questions as to the legal implications of what we say on public forums.” Fahmi Fadzil’s heart was probably in the right place last January when he used Twitter to criticize BluInc Media on behalf of a pregnant friend he thought the publishing company was treating badly. It still isn’t completely clear if the Malaysian social activist was entirely right, or entirely wrong. But a court in Malaysia found sufficient cause to rule that Fadzil’s comments on Twitter about BluInc were defamatory, and that he must take some kind of action to apologize. So, as part of an out-of-court settlement, Fadzil has agreed to post the following tweet 100 times: “I’ve DEFAMED Blu Inc Media & Female Magazine. My tweets on their HR Policies are untrue. I retract those words & hereby apologize.” Not a bad outcome for the guy, really, considering he could have had to pay a hefty fine, or been sued by the publishing company. (The Next Web – Malaysian Tweets 100 Apologies) Forget Disneyland, North Korea is the (Second) Happiest Place on Earth “North Koreans who are completely brainwashed, repeatedly...
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