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Answers to questions that you might have.

Q: What does "Pantsu Prophet" mean?

A: I first came up with this name in college. I had for a long time tried to balance and integrate my silly otaku side with my serious, scholarly side. It rolls off the tongue and sounds amusing. I also have always liked and felt inspired by the idea of a "prophet" in the very old, biblical sense: someone who has to remove himself from the comforts of the modern world and defy its norms in order to grapple with difficult truths, grow spiritually, and then convey it to others out of the motivation of a higher sense of love. Of course, I would never be so arrogant as to claim that this describes me. I have been made fun of before for coming across as very oracular and all-knowing, so I made this name to make fun of my self-importance to a degree.

Q: What does "Amlux" mean?

A: When I was in early high school I liked a lot of Japanese noise-related music like Melt-Banana, Boredoms, Haino Keiji, etc. The first "pure" noise album I ever heard was called "Amlux" by Merzbow. I believe the name Amlux is just the name of a certain Toyota showroom building in Toukyou that is prominent on the album cover. It was a challenging listen for me like nothing I'd ever heard and while it's not my favorite noise album or even my favorite Merzbow album today, it had an important effect in making me appreciate avant-garde music and therefore avant-garde art in general. So I stuck with it as a username because it's simple, short, memorable, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, etc. Call me by my arcade initials "LUX" if you want to shorten it even more. It means "light" in Latin which was apparnetly my first word as a baby, so I think it's a perfect nickname.

Q: Why do you spell/write X like that?

A: I write Japanese names as they are actually, authentically used in Japan: family name before personal name. That means:
Ozu Yasujirou, not Yasujirou Ozu
Mishima Yukio, not Yukio Mishima
Hirasawa Susumu, not Susumu Hirasawa
etc.
While it is starting to change, for some time all east Asian countries except Japan have been granted this luxury in modern western discourse, even ones that exist in a much less harmonious relationship with western powers like China and North Korea. We say the names of people from other east Asian countries according to their proper order and expect people to learn their standard of family name > personal name when speaking of them. We say Xi Jinping, Yoon Suk-yeol, Kim Jong-un, Cai Ing-wen, and Nguyen Phú Trọng, for example, when talking about people from other countries in the east Asian sphere. Why should Japanese people alone be referred to as "Fumio Kishida" rather than Kishida Fumio? It seems unfair and culturally disrespectful to not grant Japan the same right of learning their ways of speech that we give to these countries. That said, I'm not a shrieking SJW who will get mad at you for not following my example. It's just what I prefer to do because I want to make it more of a norm. Do whatever you're comfortable with; I won't take it as an insult. I will in fact admit that some Japanese names kind of have a better ring to them when written in the western order, but I have to have a level of standardization.

Oh, by the way, I do the same for Hungarian names. Hungary is the only country in Europe that uses the Family Name > Personal Name order in their native language and culture. I have no idea why they do, but I follow it.

As for writing "Toukyou," "Kyouto," and "Oosaka" instead of "Tokyo," "Kyoto," and "Osaka," it is because I really dislike how romanization usually obscures the difference between a short and long "o" sound in Japanese. I want to preserve that, so I write it as, say "tou" or "too" to distinguish it from the short sound of "to," or "yuu" to distinguish it from the short sound of "yu." As to why sometimes I write it as "ou" and sometimes as "oo," this is complex to explain if you don't speak Japanese, but it has to do with certain words whose pronunciations are inherited from China and others that are native to the archipelago. All you need to remember is that "ou" and "oo" are both long "o" sounds.

Lastly, I try to romanize Chinese by Hanyu Pinyin rules pretty consistently, and this includes some words that are otherwise more commonly written in Wade-Giles. The most notable one for my interests is "Taoism," which I write as "Daoism," in a way that is closer to its actual pronunciation. Still, I'm in the process of making this shift. I won't lie, writing "Dao De Jing" instead of "Tao Te Ching" still feels weird and wrong to me! And in some cases I don't even realize I'm using Wade-Giles because I can't speak Chinese like I can Japanese. But I care a lot about being standardized and consistent. A lot of this also gets caught up in weird political identity things between Taiwan and the mainland too, so let me make it clear that I by no means emphasize Pinyin as a political move. It's just easier to read!

Q: Why do you use metric units if you're American?

A: Because imperial units suck fat dick and I'm not going to try to cope and pretend they don't. Yes, it's inconveneint for me because I was raised with nonsense. If you're not American, you're welcome. If you're American, learn them. If someone as bad at math as me can get used to converting, you can too. If this is a form of cultural erasure and globalization, I'm all for this particular form of it. If I send kids to a school in the future, I want them to get the residential school-style ruler treatment if they start using imperial units. And no, I'm not one of those people who tries to blindly hate everything American and worship everything European to look cool or smart. I outgrew that when I turned 15.

Q: How did you learn Japanese?

A: There's no silver bullet. I studied for a long time. I started studying in high school at a local community center as an extracurricular activity that my parents were kind enough to support me with. I studied it in college and continued to have tutors as well. I drill Anki cards everyday and try to speak to Japanese friends as much as I can, but I still have to try my best to use it as much as I can to not lose it. (TODO: Make a more robust guide with my advice on learning including the tools and methods I used.)

Q: Do you hate X group?

A: Short answer, no. I don't hate any group of people. I hate certain ideas but don't hate individual people.

Of course, few people would just outright say "yes, I'm a bigot." So let me elaborate. I use some pretty spicy language because I'm very against the gradual expansion of policing of language on all major social media platforms. Therefore, I make it a point to use words like NIGGER, FAGGOT, RETARDED, TRANNY, etc. But I don't think that any race is worse than any other, that gay or transgender people are all sick perverts, that you should be mean to people with mental disabilities, etc. I want to recover the norm of acting completely different online than you do in real life and not being afraid to be foul and crude. I make a lot of jokes, but I trust the intelligence of readers to be able to tell when I'm joking and when I'm serious. You may notice me use the phrase "globohomo" on this site a lot, but the homo in it refers to "homogenization," not to homosexual. It's an important enough concept that I think we need a short term like this to describe it. Of course, a lot of the times globalization is accompanied by the soyest, lamest, most soulless artstyle possible (you know the one), so I think a phrase like globohomo is justified to fully capture the fagginess of it.

Q: You said X here and Y there. Why are you being inconsistent?

One of the most wonderful things about the internet is that you can put up words and they will stay there. The downside of this is that we become biased to interpreting all words online as eternal proclamations. My mind sometimes changes. I try to put dates on the essays I write here, so that people don't forget that I'm always writing at a certain snapshot in time and that nothing can be taken as an eternal truth. In general though, the more recently something has been written/updated, the more accurate it is, but everything else should be assumed to still be my opinion unless it contradicts something newer. (TODO: Create a script for this site which automatically says when certain pages were last updated.)

Q: Why do you write html like that?

A: I'm a beginner at this stuff and mostly taught myself by looking at html of sites that I like rather than learning html conventions. Some of it probably looks confusing or messy due to lack of indentations, inconsistencies in tags, and so on. It triggers my OCD at times too but what can I say? I'm still figuring this shit out and I think the best way to learn is by writing shitty html over and over again until you get better at it.

Q: How do you stay happy when things in the world are so terrible?

A: It's not easy and I don't always manage it. If you live in the west and are struggling, my only advice is to meditate if you haven't tried it and join a sangha online or in person if you feel up to it. And go to a therapist if you still need more.

Q: I want to talk to you directly! Can I reach out to you?

A: Of course! It makes my day to get mail from readers.
Email: pantsuprophet@disroot.org
XMPP: amlux@xmpp.earth
Matrix: @amlux:matrix.org
I am receptive to feedback about anything on my site. Some things I especially expect and encourage are:
＊Corrections to information I say (I hate spreading misinformation)
＊Corrections to interpretations and readings of philosophers and other more subjective matters, or questions for areas that I haven't made clear
＊Suggestions for my Miko List! (although I only add entries when I've finished the piece of media, so it might take some time to add your suggestion)

I don't claim to be an expert about anything I say. I only speak from my own understanding, research, experience, and interpretation. I try to make that my own limitations transparent but I sometimes mess up. There may be misinformed or inconsistent parts of my writing, and I'd love those to be pointed out. And for more debatable matters, I've changed my mind or added nuance to my opinion about all kinds of stuff in the past, so feel free to seek out a dialogue if you want to. I might be convinced and change my view, and even if I don't, it's always valuable to hear opposing opinions. Feedback of the "kys pedo/nazi/libcuck/etc." variety will of course be ignored.