American Otaku Kit 🇺🇸 アメリカン・オタク・キット

America First.

Love Japanese anime/music.

すき:「このすば」

すき:「ベビーメタル」・「新しい学校のリーダーズ」・「ファントムシータ」・「初音ミク」

きらい：すし・こめ・こんざつ

[Mann Made Cinema @Hotshot_Movie]

If you live in LA and your neighborhood is covered in graffiti and the city is ignoring it, just spray paint “VOTE PRATT” over it, and Karen will have it painted over within 20 minutes.

[Ethan Brooks @alt_w_v_g]

You used to sell stuff on eBay.

Maybe an old camera. Maybe Beanie Babies. Maybe a coat that didn't fit.

You paid a small fee. The buyer got the thing. Everyone went home.

That eBay is gone.

The website looks the same. The logo is the same. The 135 million buyers are still there.

But the company isn't really a marketplace anymore.

It is an advertising business with a marketplace attached for distribution.

Last year, sellers paid eBay $2 billion just to make sure their own listings showed up.

Read that again.

The board calls this growth.

A Canadian who runs a video game store called it something else.

Here is what actually happened.

In 2020 the board hired a new CEO. His name is Jamie Iannone. He arrived with a strategy called focused categories.

In plain English, that means leaning into the stuff people pay extra for. Sneakers. Watches. Trading cards. Auto parts.

The everyday seller, the person with the camera and the coat, was no longer the customer.

The customer was now the seller who would pay to be seen.

In 2025 eBay did $80 billion in transactions. They kept $11 billion of that as revenue. Of that $11 billion, $2 billion came from advertising.

Sellers paid them $2 billion to promote listings on a website those sellers already pay fees to use.

That is the growth story.

In the same year, the number of enthusiast buyers, eBay's own term for their best customers, was 16 million.

It was also 16 million the year before.

And the year before that.

And the year before that.

Four years. Zero growth. They mention this on every earnings call without mentioning it.

So what does a company do when growth stops?

It buys back its own stock.

In 2025, eBay returned over $3 billion to shareholders. Most of that was buybacks. In February the board authorized another $2 billion on top.

Buybacks shrink the share count. Earnings per share goes up even when earnings stay flat. The stock price follows.

The stock was $68 a year ago. It is $108 today.

The company did not improve. The denominator got smaller.

Then a man from Canada noticed.

His name is Ryan Cohen. He runs GameStop. He started his career selling pet food online and sold it to PetSmart for $3.35 billion.

He looked at eBay. 135 million buyers. $80 billion in transactions. Real margins. Real cash flow. A board harvesting the business instead of running it.

He bought 5% of the company through derivatives and stock.

Then on May 4, he offered to buy the rest. $125 per share. $56 billion total.

On May 12, the eBay board rejected the bid. They called it not credible.

The math is credible.

What the board means by not credible is we would have to explain why we sold.

Then Cohen went on Piers Morgan.

He said eBay is run by a bunch of losers with perverse financial incentives.

He pointed out that eBay's CEO has been paid $144 million over six years.

He pointed out that he personally takes no salary and has put $128 million of his own money into the company he runs.

You do not have to like Ryan Cohen to notice he is making a point that is hard to argue with.

eBay used to be a place where regular people sold things to other regular people.

Now it is a $48 billion company whose largest growth driver is charging its own sellers to advertise to a buyer base that stopped growing four years ago, while spending billions a year buying its own stock to make the chart go up.

The board calls this strategy.

A video game CEO from Canada called it what it is.

The market is now waiting to see who else agrees.

Plz fix. Thx.

Sent from my iPhone

[American Otaku Kit 🇺🇸 アメリカン・オタク・キット @KitNKat2]

I think computer games have regressed with all the pronouns and identity nonsense.

When I was younger, my Commodore 64 did not have enough RAM to fully support playing as a male or a female. Reducing the load time, and the number of times the floppy disk needed to be flipped was also important.

Fewer options also meant fewer bugs. And there was no patching games from the Internet. Once a game was released, that floppy disk would always have the same bugs as the day it was released.

Now we have computers that have more than enough memory, no floppy disk to flip, and no long wait for loading times. Then there were games that we could play as a male or a female. We could finally create the character we want to play.

Now, I have to choose a "Body Type" and then a "pronoun". Not male or female. Developers no longer need to make a good male model or a good female model. Just a generic models that can be used for either, with the only real difference is the bust size. The can then claim the game is "inclusive", while reducing the quality.

[American Otaku Kit 🇺🇸 アメリカン・オタク・キット @KitNKat2]

Forza Horizon 6 did stop me from playing any female character that I would want to play. No twin-tails hairstyles. No light blue hair color. No long hair. No bright pink hair color.

I can play a male pretending to be a female. But not a female cosplaying as Miku or Luka.

I couldn't play as a male that looked anything like Kaito either.

[American Otaku Kit 🇺🇸 アメリカン・オタク・キット @KitNKat2]

Taking a break from listening to BABYMETAL to play Forza Horizon 6, which is playing BABYMETAL.

[American Otaku Kit 🇺🇸 アメリカン・オタク・キット @KitNKat2]

I did get somewhat annoyed during the character creation. Pronouns? This is a game. There is nothing stopping me from playing a female character. This is the whole point of fantasy. I don't need to play a "male that is pretending to be a female".

[American Otaku Kit 🇺🇸 アメリカン・オタク・キット @KitNKat2]

I already knew that I liked "Idol" from YOASOBI, and it was already in my YouTube playlist. My favorite music is BABYMETAL, and that is what sparked my interest in listening to more Japanese music and trying to learn the language. There were already some "BAND-MAID" songs I liked.

I did not care for much of the Japanese music in "Forza Horizon 6", other than the ones I've already been listening to. This game has not helped me in finding new music.

[American Otaku Kit 🇺🇸 アメリカン・オタク・キット @KitNKat2]

I'm hoping it will play some good Japanese songs. Spotify tends to play songs I already know and like, so not very helpful in finding new music.

[Charles Curran @charliebcurran]

LA is worth saving. Vote Spencer Pratt.

[The Babylon Bee @TheBabylonBee]

Trump Enters Ceasefire Talks With Democrats https://t.co/dI1A3sH6nH

[Shawn Farash @Shawn_Farash]

Well.... What have we here?

SPLC staged Charlottesville... Charlottesville gives rise to Fuentes.

Fuentes is an op trying to demoralize and divide the right...

NAW... The SPLC would never...

[Matt Walsh @MattWalshBlog]

The SPLC is a criminal organization that funded “right wing hate groups” and organized fake right wing protests so that it could then turn around and fundraise off of them and use them as a pretext to crackdown on conservatives nationwide. Keep in mind that every leftist activist group is just as corrupt, dishonest, and sinister as this. SPLC is the tip of the iceberg.

[American Otaku Kit 🇺🇸 アメリカン・オタク・キット @KitNKat2]

Couldn't find a good YouTube version of 「チョコレイト・ディスコ」 with English translation + Kana or Romaji.

So I recently got my copy of "Perfume the Best: P Cubed".

I subtitled these three because I really like them:

「チョコレイト・ディスコ」 「エレクトロ・ワールド」 「ナチュラルに恋して」
Finally able to enjoy them properly with Kana + English subtitles ✨

[Mike Lee @BasedMikeLee]

Your terms are acceptable

[American Otaku Kit 🇺🇸 アメリカン・オタク・キット @KitNKat2]

@PulpoNewman @Depon_the_cat I work night shift also, so I'm always awake at this time. It is also my weekend. The rest of the family is asleep.

I could talk to Grok, watch anime, or listen to Japanese music. It is just too difficult when Japanese X is so active.

[American Otaku Kit 🇺🇸 アメリカン・オタク・キット @KitNKat2]

In America, there is no obvious choice for a second language.

Spanish is a good choice in most of the US. Where I grew up, I was close to Montreal, so French would be more useful.

When I was in the US Army, I was in South Korea for 15 months. Korean would have been a good language to know then.

I have no interest in learning Japanese just to respond to posts in Japanese, especially if X auto translates.

I want to learn Japanese because I watch a lot of anime, and the only music I listen to now is Japanese.

If X allows me to interact with the Japanese, and auto-translates, I'm taking advantage of that feature. Maybe I'll find new anime or music.

[さんど🇯🇵 @sand56100]

🇯🇵 イギリスのムスリム女性が説明しています：
「日本は過大評価されている。私は好きじゃない、ムスリムに優しくないから。彼らのご飯は豚の水で茹でら���ている」

この説明は正しい。拡散したいです。
どうぞ日本に来ないでください🙏

[Kosei Murata 🇯🇵 @ilovetheworld1]

Overseas friends,

Under the banner of “multicultural coexistence,” some elementary schools in Japan have begun teaching Muslim greetings.

We would appreciate hearing your thoughts and experiences.

[ボストン @BostonGame777]

日本人に自慢するためにいそいそとバーベキューコンロを掃除してウォールマートにデカい肉と��ールを買いに行き、友達と家族に声をかけまくってるアメリカのお父さん達可愛いすぎんか。

一方で日本人はコーラとピーナッツを買いにコンビニに行ったよ。そして絵を描いてる。
これが正しい文化交流だ。