The whole foundation on which this article builds its argument upon, that the labor market is strong, may not be true. There is data suggesting that the gig economy is obscuring the true unemployment numbers and that it has been growing for quite some time.
Interested to learn about the encroachment into bear territory. Disappointed this article didn't dig more into exactly why this is becoming an increasing problem. Since Japan's population is declining and most younger people moving into larger cities like Tokyo in search of jobs, my assumption would be that there would be less development in more rural areas, not more.
> Scientists speculated that the uptick in attacks has been driven by a growing bear population, coupled with the year's bad acorn harvest, USA TODAY previously reported. These conditions created an area "overcrowded with hungry bears," driving the large animals to populated areas in search of food.
Perhaps, because there are less people living in the rural areas, the bears are emboldened to roam more freely, thus increasing the frequency of encounters with the human occupiers.
Eh, I don't think there is much active encroachment happening any longer. Japan is no longer growing into its rural areas so much as receding from them.
Also, under certain constructions of the word "territory," (including the legal one) all territory in Japan is human territory. The bears are allowed to live on some of it but it is at the sufferance of the Japanese people.
the fact that young people are moving has meant that money, attention and labor is missing, these days in rural sections of aging and developed countries the expertise and interest in forestry or wildlife management simply isn't there any more. I spent a few months in rural Japan a few years ago and it affected all kinds of jobs. Agriculture, pest control, or even much more mundane repair work. I knew a couple that moved there enticed by low property prices but they had to wait months to get the roof fixed.
People living in rural areas were capable of fixing most of their houses by themselves. When I grew up I spent most summers in a mountain village where people were self-resilient, I had all sorts of woodworking tools in the shed and other than electricity there was nothing my grandpa was not fixing himself and it was the same for all our neighbours.
Now a couple moving from a city to a rural area needs to learn to do this work or not move to a village. The population decline in most places makes it clear that availability of services is only going to get worse.
It's hard work. It's dangerous. Many areas get heavy snowfall in the winter which interferes with work. Summers are brutally hot. Many customers in rural areas are living on fixed income, so you are limited in how much you can charge. Commutes to job sites can be long.
My roof was damaged in heavy snowfall this winter and I needed to wait 3 months to get it repaired. And I'm not even really in a rural area. The guy who did the repairs looked to be in his 60s - I don't think many young people are looking to get into this business.
I think most contractors would do better in more densely populated areas where lots of new construction is happening.
Can anyone speak to the quality of the apartments built too? I imagine a large part of affluent families choosing to continue to live in apartments is because their quality of living doesn't decrease. Whereas I feel the median apartment in the US has issues with noise between walls/windows, low quality flooring/cabinetry, and depending on the area you may not even get the benefits of mixed used zoning.
Depends where you live and what you buy. Older buildings are pretty noisy, and Spaniards in general are loud and less noise-aware than elsewhere.
I live on the canary islands in a new building - modern dry walling has made leaps in sound isolation even though we do no thermal insulation here. Cant complain.
It's interesting to compare this with non-solar based pattern as in the Siffre cave experiment where they ended up falling into 48 hour sleep cycles instead.
I also fall into the camp where I believe that there are probably a variety of different sleep cycles that people are just predisposed to. I haven't seen any studies definitively indicating that there are a common sleep cycle. Even anecdotally, I know several people that are just more alert at night.
I've always wondered if there was a way to structure society so that there could be more time variety in socially needed functions. Perhaps one bank could be open 9-5 but another bank could be open 5-12. Or at the very least, improved flexibility for jobs where constant communication is not needed and can be done asynchronously. A set of core hours where communications could happen and then allow workers to work on their own cycles, taking naps as needed so that they can operate when they are most productive.
What I’m curious about is what lead to larks ‘winning’ in the sense that there’s this massive prejudice against night owls.
Though I have heard that there are natural biological functions that depend on the sun such that night owls who are sleeping their natural pattern are STILL predisposed more towards certain physical/mental conditions. Though who knows?
The fact that the US is growing more soy when one of its largest importers, China, hasn't agreed to an import deal and actually seems to be importing more and more from Brazil instead, is extremely confusing. That is unless the farmers are pretty confident that the US will come to an agreement or failing that, expecting some type of US government bail out/subsidy.
The front page mentions that the intention is to capture the public opinion. I felt that looking at the rankings didn't really meaningfully give me any useful information about a broad consensus on any of the topics. As many have mentioned, there are many nuances to a lot of the options.
Perhaps adding a text input after the selection to ask a user to describe their position on the topic and having that broadly shared would help towards that goal?
The rankings page doesn't give me any sense either of how my opinion broadly tracks against the "public opinion". This would fundamentally change the flow you have going but presenting the options and then asking the user to manually tier list them would allow for that side by side comparison.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4846215-jobs-update-the-gig...
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2025/07/nes-gig-econo...
Even with that, the trend line of unemployment appears to be going upwards.