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.

… 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.

Fellow autist here, here’s my funniest Elon moment:

The cybertruck reveal, softball pitch into the window.

Musk audibly gasps and says ‘O-oh myfuckinggod.’

Comedy gold.

That moment, right there, that was the high water mark.

Then, the window cracks, and shortly afterward, his entire general public facade and reputation begin to crack and shattet as well.

I do appreciate a visual metaphor.

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.

Well, the ‘listening to their constituents’ thing certainly hasn’t been going well lately… what with all the screaming matches, arrests, barely contained open revolts and what not.

They just kinda said those were all fake news and then stopped doing them.

I tried to type out ‘megalomaniac’ and unintentionally misspelled it as ‘magalomaniac’ in a comment i made somewhere yesterday.

Went back to my comment, noticed this, and then realized… no, wait, this is a good misspelling, and wrote an addendum.

I entirely support ‘magalomaniac’ and ‘magalomania’ as terms, lets get them in the DSM 6.

I get that.

What… would actually make much more sense would be to index the minimum wage to some other, per state metric.

A fraction of median income, some formula that actually does a good job of estimating a minimum standard of living…

But, that will never happen, because … well basically half of voters and half state legislatures fundamentally either do not understand how to, or believe in laying a foundational safety net layer for society.

The income and CoL disparities within the US are… basically as wild as the differences between EU member states, but our governance systems are… well, pretty much fundamentally broken at this point.

More than that would create private business deserts in poor areas, forcing the locals to exclusively patronize corporations. More of the population would need social program assistance to help pay for the increased cost of our domestic food supply.

… If we’re talking about Arkansas… all of that has already happened.

You know Walmart is… from, and based in Arkansas, right?

20 ish % of the population is already below the poverty line… and the poverty line is basically ‘lets assume you have no rent and are homeless and just want to be able to buy food’.

That means 20% of the state is already getting SSI, SNAP, TANF, etc.

…

The US Federal poverty line is about $35 dollars a day. about $13k a year.

If you converted that to a full time wage, thats about $6.75 an hour.

The US Federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.

50 cents of difference.

Hasn’t changed since 2009.

From 2009 to 2025, if you go by CPI, a single 2009 dollar is worth about $1.50 2025 dollars, that is to say, prices have risen by 50% in 16 years.

…

Arkansas is literally an economic disaster zone.

41% of the state struggles with getting their basic needs met, multiple independent observers and international aid agencies have compared the level of poverty, lack of education, access to healthcare… to areas of the world recently devastated by wars.

You say the cost of living is 36-37k.

That must be for a single person.

As of Nov 24, the median individual income in Arkansas is $29,740.

That makes the median wage about $15.50 an hour.

The median individual income in Arkansas cannot afford the average cost of living for a single person.

Arkansas is already the state equivalent of a mentally unsound person being deemed incompitent to make their own decisions and be declared a ward of the state.

Bumping up the min wage would be more like doubling the care and support staff for the assisted living facility that is Arkansas, already massively dependent on Federal subsidies to the poor… and the laughably tiny tax rates on giant megacorps that allow said megacorps to dominate its economy.

…

If you want to see what unchecked hypercapitalism looks like, you’re looking at Arkansas.

Median one bed apartment rent, across the entire US, is $1550 as of Feb 2025.

Lets knock 20% of that off, to approximate a median studio apartment instead, give some leeway to poorer parts of the country.

(there are not as good or reliable general stats counted for studio apartments, but a studio being 20% less than a one bed is… hopefully a reasonable, napkin math aporoximation)

Ok, that’s $1240.

Alright, now we use the ‘rent should be 30% of your income’ rule.

Thats $4135 a month, rounded up very slightly to the nearest 5.

Ok, 40 hours a week, roughly 4 weeks a month = 160 hours.

4135 / 160 = $25.85, again rounded up to the closet 5 cents for simplicity, so thats your actual minimum ‘living wage’.

If you wanna say a studio should be 30% off a one bedroom?

Math works out to roughly $22.60

If you wanna say an actual one bedroom should be the standard, works out to about $32.60

Any way you look at this, $17 an hour is too low, that’s still… you can’t even afford a studio (as in, you cannot pass the rent to income threshold without a cosigner or double deposit or somethingnon your lease) you need roommates, you’re still living with your parents.

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?

If I were to pronounce it outloud, I would say:

D. B. Zero.

Like D. B. Cooper, lol.

the… zer(o), 0 swap is… basically old school l33tsp34k… like uh… l00tb0x, pr0n, type of … dialect? syntax?

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

… unless you are posadist.

Extend communication, and then citizenship to the Dolphins!

Huh.

Well, I appreciate the info and shrugging magic, but uh… hrm.

I dunno then.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ok whew, we are truly almost back to the 1890’s, Trumpublicans apparently favored era of America.

19th Ammendment was passed back in… 1920.

Basically this undoes women’s suffrage, so married women either just can’t vote, or will face massive uneccesarry hurdles voting.

And of course transfolk as well, they’re now pretty much formerly formally (ducking autocorrect) disenfranchised.

I wonder, do we have bootleggers (smugglers) for abortifacients, birth control, horomone therapy drugs yet?

I guess that’ll be the ‘growth market’.

Framing the Overton Window.

A feature for some, an anti-feature for others.

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?’ "