sp3ctr4l

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.

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.