Wataru Tenkawa 天河 航

Naturalized Japanese citizen from Michigan via San Francisco. Car-free Tokyo resident since 1978. Thriving on a no-mammals diet since 1970.

Bluesky: @10wataru.bsky.social

Last Notes

2026-07-30 14:05:05 CEST

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Not quite the same meaning, though

2026-07-30 13:57:11 CEST

With the advance of AI, we are hearing many new or unfamiliar terms, like "open weight," "AGI" and "tokens"; but one that suddenly has taken hold is "compute" as a noun, in the sense of computer time × capacity (which is what all the talk of data centers is about). I just saw it twice in headlines on my screen. Has anyone dared use it yet in a translation?
From Wired:
Despite the ongoing AI boom, LinkedIn is holding the line on compute spending. Instead, it’s challenging engineers to make every GPU count.
From a tech podcast:
Why compute might get 10x+ more expensive in coming years

2026-07-30 07:04:25 CEST

This was Korea, “the limited war”. The views of its architect, Curtis LeMay, serve as its epitaph. After it started, he said: “We slipped a note kind of under the door into the Pentagon and said let us go up there … and burn down five of the biggest towns in North Korea - and they’re not very big - and that ought to stop it. Well, the answer to that was four or five screams - ‘You’ll kill a lot of non-combatants’ and ‘It’s too horrible’. Yet over a period of three years or so … we burned down every town in North Korea and South Korea, too … Now, over a period of three years this is palatable, but to kill a few people to stop this from happening - a lot of people can’t stomach it”
-- J F Dulles Papers, Curtis LeMay oral history, 28 April 1966.

2026-07-21 05:55:17 CEST

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How do I know this? From my own experience, as a free-range child and then as an unwilling participant in various sports. But also from walking the neighborhood every day, where I see kids playing freely, and then other kids doing soccer training at the local grounds. The former are full of joyful vigor; the latter are being barked at by coaches and watched over by their moms from the sidelines. It's instantly clear who is having more fun.

2026-07-21 04:14:32 CEST

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Thanks for asking. I am a strong believer in the importance of play. Children instinctively know how to play, and do so most enjoyably without coaching. They would much prefer to play without having adults watching them or telling them how to play. But adults just can't stop themselves from interfering, turning the play into sports with winners and, in the end, mostly losers.

2026-07-21 04:02:33 CEST

Is is over yet? That party game where grown-up men dress like boys and try to pass a ball around without using their hands? Or do I have to go into exile for another 40 days?

2026-06-16 14:51:09 CEST

Love the way Japanese TV treasures its drag queens. (The one on the left is a regular commentator on afternoon variety shows.)
https://social-cdn.vivaldi.net/system/media_attachments/files/116/759/872/633/209/014/original/7122c3f80b5d4a80.jpg

2026-05-23 15:19:24 CEST

Watching Tamori Station on TV about all the construction work going on at Shinjuku and Shibuya. Shinjuku has around 3.6 million users a day, and yet they are carrying out these complex projects, totally replacing the Odakyu Department Store, for example. It's going to be so convenient by the time I'm like 97 years old.

2026-05-13 02:28:22 CEST

Which of these have you experienced? (multiple choices)

2026-04-17 12:52:45 CEST

A typical dinner at our home
Around 5:45PM, I haul out four bottles of sake and some sashimi, avocado with cottage cheese, or other sake no tomo, and start enjoying them, while my wife finishes preparing the main courses.
At 6PM or so, the family members join in and begin eating.
By 6:20PM, they have finished; but I am still eating and drinking, while my wife starts clearing the table and washing the dishes.
I continue eating the remaining food (can't let it go to waste!), finally finishing around 6:45PM.
I make coffee and we enjoy it with dessert. The dinner dishes have all been washed and mostly put away.
This is fine. [Insert dog in fire meme] We are all happy with our respective paces.

2026-04-04 12:22:26 CEST

Around 15 years ago, we were given an Asahiyama Sakura bonsai. It got broken when we moved a year later, so my wife planted it in a corner of our garden. The second photo is how it looked today before all the rain.
https://social-cdn.vivaldi.net/system/media_attachments/files/116/345/938/177/962/124/original/0e2e547e137faf3e.jpg
https://social-cdn.vivaldi.net/system/media_attachments/files/116/345/938/164/966/391/original/266c1a1c03998b3b.jpg

2026-03-31 13:55:04 CEST

What's your favo(u)rite of these tropical fruits?

2026-03-30 06:20:42 CEST

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What I disliked about Bluesky was all the people posting about how much they hate Twitter. I hope Mastodon does not get that way about Bluesky. Let's just be ourselves, doing what we do best, and not get so obsessed about other platforms.