Do you know if there are significant differences between the Korean language of North Korea, and the Korean language of South Korea?

Or are they still very similar?

I only really know one word in Korean… I would sound it out as ’ gam zeh hah mee da '.

I asked some local, older aged, shop owners of South Korean descent how to say ‘thank you’ in Korean so I could thank them with more respect when I shop at their stores… I may be pronouncing or spelling my pronunciation wrong.

Apoarently it is 감사합니다 in Korean… but that is likely South Korean, and it seems that South Korean and North Korean use different words, or pronounciations, for at least some terms…

It would be interesting to learn if there are more differences between the two forms of Korean. :D

American here:

About 20% of Americans are functionally illiterate, 2nd grade or worse reading and writing skills.

The average literacy level of Americans is between 5th and 6th grade… meaning the next 30% have the reading/writing skills of someone who basically only conpleted elementary school.

These are numbers for adults 18 and up, by the way, not kids.

Almost every single person I’ve met who learned English as a second language… can speak it more fluently than most native English speakers I’ve known who grew up in America. More extensive vocabularies, better grammar, better spelling.

And this will get worse.

Covid resulted in a year to two years of remote or missed classes for Gen Alpha, and the Repulicans look poised to finally kill off the public education system in all but the wealthier, solid blue states. Department of Education will be disbanded by the end of the year or earlier if nobody stops it.

Not an unreasonable assumption.

That or he’s a die hard fan, really into that subculture.

… Delete… all… IP law?

So… just literally make all piracy legal, switch all gaming and tv show and movie production/consumption… to an optional donation model?

Fuck it, why not.

I am both an avid pirate and have a degree in econ, wrote papers as an undergrad on how to potentially reform the DMCA… and uh yeah, at this point yeah no one has any fucking idea how any thing works, everyone is an idiot, sure fuck it, blow it all up, why not.

Don’t forget they also spun up their own ‘production studio’, and… it mostly produced basically the anime equivalent of lolcows in terms of their general reception and percieved quality, always overbudget and/or massively missing deadlines, never renewed for another season.

And then that was shut down within 3 years.

Oh right, and the union busting, also very cool.

I agree with all of that.

Maybe … 5 to 10% of Dems, like Federal Congresspeople, State governors… are willing to meaningfully go against pro corporate policies… at least more than half of the time.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some kind of psyop used to induce or intensify infighting among younger leftists, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if … there really wasn’t something specifically aimed at doing exactly that.

I know Russia has been very successfully employing the uh, hyperreality tactic, just fund or assist or influence enough people who are bombastic enough in any political persuasion, publish and spread baseless nonsense all across the spectrum to just sow general chaos…

But I do also think a lot of it really is people just adopting a vocabulary generally shared by leftists and then using it to their own, individual ends.

The thing with the CIA’s Simple Sabotage model is that it describes basically every social circle or work environment I’ve ever been in, or hear about from a friend.

General incompetence and … wasting time over petty stupid bullshit … just sounds like the norm in America generally, for pretty much my whole life… but maybe I have just had particularly bad luck with that.

Yep.

It is mostly just revisiting older news from decades before that… as would be reasonable when a newcomer to politics now seems to stand a reasonable chance of becoming President, might want to do a more thorough journalistic background check on the guy.

Leftists critical of Trump, back then, before even his first term, were … you know, kind of worried about Trump having Hitler in his nightstand table, very, very obviously seeing him as a role model and source of inspiration…

And then they said things like … is Trump a Nazi? Is Trump a fascist? This stuff is … quite concerning, along with his bombastic rhetoric and extremely nebulous and fluid ‘policies’, that all seem to converge on a return to past greatness, hypermasculinity, racism, sexism… all very much in line with … a populist, which historically very often leads to fascism…

And then almost every one else in the country dismissed that as hyperbolic nonsense, and ‘everything/one you don’t like is fascist’ was born.

… And now here we are, evidently in the bizzaro clownworld timeline, where Trump is ‘the joker, baby’ all the Republicans are his brainwashed cult of goons, the Democrats almost all as well sane-washed the shit out of Trump untill way after it was too late… and, as is also predictable broadly by history, the leftists, with few exceptions, fought each other over idpol, purity tests and tone policing, effectively negating any coherent opposition.

Numbers 5:11 to 5:31 uh, fairly clearly explains that if a woman is suspected to be pregnant by ‘not her husband’, she is to undergo a ritual and drink a potion which will cause an abortion/miscarriage.

https://biblia.com/bible/esv/numbers/5/11-31

ESV uses a … too literal translation to result into ‘her thigh will fall away’…

https://biblia.com/bible/niv2011/numbers/5/11-31

But the NIV translators are capable of understanding context dependent modifiers and just directly uses ‘miscarry’.

https://biblia.com/bible/nlt/numbers/5/11-31

NLT ends up with ‘womb will shrivel/shrink’.

https://biblia.com/bible/nkjv/numbers/5/11-31

NKJ also goes for a very, word by word literal approach (what a surprise) and says ‘thigh will rot’.

…

So yeah, there you go, anytime you run into a bible thumper who proclaims that the ten commandments are the basis of western civilization, show them that the old testament also very clearly and explicitly … not just condones, but mandates abortion in certain circumstances.

If they then say that we are under the new covenant, throw this at them:

https://biblehub.com/matthew/5-18.htm

Matthew 5:18

Jesus, the man himself, says to follow the Law (ie, the old testament, or at the very least the first 5 books, the torah, which includes the entire book of numbers) exactly, precisely, to the letter, to the ‘jot and tittle’.

… Oh but also the Bible is inerrant and never contradicts itself, which must mean the old and new covenant have perfect agreement and never contradict, and are therefore identical, right?

Roll the dice huh?

You know, I’m actually really into TTRPGs… and I actually keep my a few of my dice on me as a sort of silly good luck charm, here, lemme show you!

rolls for initiative in my own mind

reaches into jacket, draws concealed pistol

Great work kitty kat.

Yep.

Yes.

That is the mouse, right in front of you, juuuust out of reach.

Again, great work.

I mean, makes sense, Hitler is one of Trump’s favorite authors.

No, I am not being hyperbolic.

https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trumps-ex-wife-once-said-he-kept-a-book-of-hitlers-speeches-by-his-bed-2015-8?op=1

Trump kept a collection of Hitler’s speechs from the 1930s in his nighstand table, and would read from it before going to bed in the 80s and 90s.

When asked about this,

" ‘Trump hesitated’ and then said, ‘Who told you that?’ "

Oh goodie, thats wonderful news for the 401k havers, rofl.

I believe you.

… so we now have fractal, simultaneously compounding and also decohering layers of irony.

The irony factor now has an imaginary, unreal component rofl.

Oh lord.

Ah, ok, I appreciate the correction!

Doing my best trying to remember my course work from almost two decades ago, looks like I missed an important detail.

… and that detail makes the situation… even worse, wonderful.

Hey.

HEY!

There are a lot of penguins on some godforsaken island in the middle of nowhere that need to be bombed until they understand democracy and freedom.

(‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ subject to terms and conditions, limited time offer, no refunds)

No disagreements, no notes.

We (USians) are completely cooked, totally fucked.

We’d have to erect a new government, and then actually demonstrate stability for a decade or two… to begin to be able to undo Trump’s damage, to be treated as anything other than basically a rogue nation that also has the world’s… either the first or second largest/most powerful military.

I can only hope some more civilized places may begin to more seriously consider Americans seeking asylum… though I of course completely understand why they wouldn’t.

For reference:

May Day, A View to a Kill (1985):

May Day, Goldeneye (N64, 1997):

Fuck, that sounds awesome!

I used to have a set up like that, though it was wired, not wireless. I’d just haul the rig out to the living room lol, had a fairly small and light pc, so it wasn’t too much work, did cable management to make the transitioning easier.

Also somewhat related… I was just talking with another person who was unable to get that level of quality, resolution and frame rate via streaming their PC to their living room TV… also they mentioned input latency with very fast paced and fine tuned racing games.

You mind if I ask how you’re actually doing the streaming?

I meant it jokingly, meta referencing the toxicity of the entire ‘real gamer’ elitist nonsense.

You are still a real gamer to me lol.

Though I genuinely would suggest you play Ocarina of Time, if you can.

You say you’re a PC gamer? Yesterday I was in a Nintendo Switch 2 / Steam Deck discussion, and I just set up an emulator and am running the 3ds OoT remaster at 60 fps!

(Somebody just asked 'hey can you run 3ds games on a Deck? So I just… did it, and reported back lol)

If I can do that on a Deck, you can do it on a PC =D

My only quibble is: Great Depression 2.0, not Great Recession 2.0.

This will be much, much worse than 07 08 09.

Also IMO absolutely yes, Obama should have let the US auto industry collapse if they didn’t accept being completely nationalized.

Play stupid games, win stuoid prizes.

Thats how capitalism works, right, right?

Oh wait no, its actually uh, bribe politicians to subsidize your inefficient and mismanaged business, and then also fund a bunch of PR to convince people that… that isn’t happening, that isn’t your business model.

Instead we got basically this situation where US auto mfctrs are stupendously subsidized by the US gov… yet have no accountability to it in terms of high level, long term business strategy.

That lead to all of C Suite just chasing as much profit as possible by basically just saying… fuck making a reliable cheapish car, everything is now a luxury priced giganto sized pavement princess with horrendous maintenance problems.

If they’d accepted being nationalized, well then at least we would have kept actual ownership domestic, and the GAO could have just done audits on these entire companies and then everyone would know where all the mismanagement was going on. …

Same thing with Boeing. Boeing is massively subsidized, is a near text book perfect example of how to do regulatory capture, and wow what a surprise, it was run in a manner to maximize balance sheets at the loss of fundamental ability to actually deliver a reliable product.