Ont the food shortage front, North Korea kind of got hit by a perfect storm of problems that might not have been so severe, had they not all occurred in short order. In brief, over the span of several years in the 1990s, the DPRK managed to lose their greatest backer and trading partner with the collapse of the USSR, which in turn meant that flaws present in some already failing internal policies could no longer be ignored, and were, in fact, exacerbated. Then they had widespread flooding that devastated domestic agriculture, making a bad situation worse. International sanctions would have also impeded efforts to turn to international markets temporarily to purchase additional food and necessary supplies to turn the situation around. While the US did supply food aid starting in 1996, much like how the US weaponized the embargos on Cuba and sanctions on Iran in a way that worsened their situation during the Covid pandemic, George W. Bush severely cut US food aid, and in some years, it was eliminated entirely.

There’s a whole article on the subject on Wikipedia that is a good start for understanding it. While there are certainly plenty of things to criticize North Korea for, I think the general “Hurr durr, communism is bad, look at all this nice food I have,” take that has become widespread in the US is a pretty reductive bit of anti-DPRK propaganda. Also, I don’t know how much of their relative success before that point was due to the USSR propping up an allied state and how much could be attributed to Kim Il Sung’s capabilities as a statesman, but his successors don’t seem to be his equal either in finding strong parties to ally with or in their statecraft. It’s also entirely possible that they are simply the Juche version of failsons, slowly dissipating their father’s legacy for their own gratification after having grown up fairly privileged and viewing the enterprise left to them (or state, in this case) purely as part of their inheritance to plunder for personal gain.

From what I’ve seen in other articles about the same case, it’s basically nothing special. The North Korean applies under a false identity that isn’t associated with North Korea, and they have (or at least claim to have) relevant education and experience that would make them good fits for roles like programming, then they apply for remote jobs where they can continually work at one job without having to go in and interact with people face to face.

I kind of doubt the problem is being suspected of being an operative, though, so much as ex filtration of corporate secrets and potentially falling afoul of sanctions against North Korea if they continue to employ someone in their company once they have a reasonable suspicion that the person is a North Korean national working under a false identity. They would be helping the North Korean government to maintain a steady inflow of foreign currency that they need, which I’m sure could land them in trouble. Aside from that liability, I would imagine they would beore concerned about company IP and tratedsecrets this employee would have access to being available to the DPRK to do what they will with, as well as others in the government being able to use their credentials to potentially access and compromise systems on the company’s network that this employee could access.

I wouldn’t even say it’s a challenge to talk to strangers. I can do it fine, and do it all day at my job. It’s just, I don’t feel the desire to do so simply for the sake of doing it. If I’m sat in a park reading a book on a Saturday morning, I can pretty much guarantee you I do not want to talk to people, yet you’ll get people who just want to plop down next to you on the bench, let out a sigh and say “Hoo, boy what a week, eh?,” and expect you to put down what you were doing to keep the conversation going.

I think it was only “better” in the past, because it was far less likely for someone to have things like properly isolating headphones and portable devices that could replay sound. I say better in air quotes, because people who feel an incessant need to fill any silence with mindless small talk were still annoying as hell back then for those of us who just wanted to be left in peace to do whatever we were trying to do before someone decided that they urgently needed to remark “Oh, it’s really raining,” upon seeing rain out the window of the bus, or what have you.

I’ve never had an issue with actually talking to people, mind you, it’s just that I find many people in the US have an insanely extroverted approach to conversation and will try to force it no matter the context. If I’m at a concert, or a book club or something, sure, we’re there to hang out, have a good time and meet people. If you’re trying to make conversation at a bus stop just to make conversation, it’s unnecessary. I planned for this downtime, I brought a book with me that I wanted to read. That you didn’t plan anything to occupy your time and your mind with doesn’t make it my responsibility to entertain you for however long I happen to be next to you.

Mind you, I’m not opposed to any and all conversation, but to keep with the mass transit theme, I’ll give you a recent example of what I’m talking about.

Guy: “Hey, you’re reading a book.” Me: “Yes, I am.” G: “That book isn’t in English.” M: “I’m aware, thanks.” G: “But then how do you know what it says?”

On and on for twenty minutes. This sort of vapid conversation that exists only to fill dead air is annoying as hell, and makes me more inclined to just not engage with people. Mind you, I don’t hate any and all conversations. I’ve had other interactions that start from a similar, “Wow, that book you’re reading isn’t in English,” observation, but then transition into something worth sustaining, like if they ask if there are any pointers for studying language, or how they really enjoy books from one country and want to study that language, or something else beyond merely speaking every time they perceive something, to let us know they do, in fact, have functioning sensory organs.

The whole “Just speak with anyone around you and be super outgoing,” approach to social interactions with strangers that’s been normalized in the US would be considered pretty weird elsewhere. Sure, people be too lost in social media or games or whatever is a bad thing if people aren’t learning how to socialize at all, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with people just preferring not to be available for interaction at any time and with anyone, and choosing not to engage with people when they don’t want to and have the means to block them out.

In short, a lot of folks just need to stfu and realize that not everyone wants to constantly talk, and they should learn to discern the time and place for it, rather than imposing their preferences on everyone around them.

Maybe he’s asking you to give it a go, too?

I don’t hate it, I just never got into it. I watched a few episodes which didn’t really do it for me, and I just didn’t really feel any need to continue it.

Mainline SMT games are a rather different beast. They don’t have any of the social sim elements of the Persona games, and tend to be old-school first-person dungeon crawlers, with an emphasis on exploration, the acquisition and fusing of demons, and developing a balanced team of demons to face off against the enemies and bosses you encounter in the dungeons. They also frequently feature a good/neutral/evil alignments that offers different endings, including different final bosses, depending on which alignment you wind up with as a result of the choices you make throughout the game. They’re a lot of fun if you’re into those sort of things.

I’ve just resigned myself to the fact that the things that interest me aren’t often recognized as valuable in our society, but just because a mad world doesn’t recognize their worth doesn’t mean I’m not improving myself with them. Studying history, learning languages that interest me, learning how to cook or sew, none of them are likely to get me a particularly well paid job or anything, but they’re all either skills or knowledge I can take with me, even if nobody else appreciates it at the time.

Ultimately there are not hard-coded rules saying a progressive vote is worth less than a conservative one

There might not be rules explicitly for this purpose, but the Electoral College and Senate are hard-coded institutions in the US government that effectively guarantee this. The antagonism there is more framed as a rural vs urban one, but it effectively amounts to the same thing in practice. Going by Wikipedia numbers, every elector for NY represents the votes of up to 714,372 residents of New York, while in Wyoming, that ration is considerably lower, at 1 elector for every 196,251 residents. This ignores things like residents counted in the population who are ineligible to vote and people who just don’t, but you get the point. Ditto for the Senate, where some 10 million New Yorkers get the same representation as just under 300,000 people in Wyoming.

Yes, rural states could eventually swing left again and make this no longer the case, but it certainly seems unlikely at any time in the near future.

Man, Microsoft doubling down on the whole “Let’s force most of our customers to purchase entirely new computers to use the next release!” strategy after it went so well for Windows 11 is just hilarious. Especially with hardware costs skyrocketing due to AI BS.

I might specify more often to clarify, like “All the female medalists/athletes,” but that’s quite different from when you hear someone say “Oh, you know how females can be.” It’s like their vocalization process includes a filter that converts “bitches” to “female” at some point between the first thought and actual speech, because they finally got the memo that not everyone is a misogynist like they are. You can hear the disdain in their voices when they say the word female.

A few months ago, the local dispensary was out of the vape I would normally buy, so I tried a new one instead. Took a hit, thought “Well, guess I’m going to bed right now, then,” and laid in bed. That thing hit me so hard, at one point I had to check the news on my phone to confirm whether there’d been another earthquake, or if I’d just ripped a massive fart and not realized.

I don’t think it’s an impossible task to get students quality language instruction that gets them on track to proficiency in a given foreign language. It’s doable, and people manage to do so all the time. The issue is more that people often don’t see the benefits of it in their daily lives where English suffices for everything, and they most certainly don’t see enough of a benefit that they wouldn’t collectively lose their shit over a proposed property tax hike intended to adequately fund foreign language instruction in the local school district. They’ll gladly fork over a few million dollars in tax money to trick out the football field, but to hire enough new teachers to have kids start learning French in 3rd grade and continue until graduation? Not a chance in hell. Ditto for French-language media purchases for the school library, or any other auxiliary purchases that would facilitate a genuine attempt at teaching and learning a foreign language.

Even for a wealthier state like New York, often thought of as more progressive on stuff like this, the actual requirements are a joke. You can just take a year of a language in 8th grade, pass the local test that meets the curriculum’s criteria, and never touch it again all the way to graduation from high school. At least when I was in school, they would at least try to dissuade you from not continuing it at least one more year to get on track for some sort of special diploma, but you could just opt out if your parents gave the okay to your guidance counselor.

Firefox is just the browser, Mozilla is the organization constantly wasting money on features Firefox’s users are actively hostile to in a bid to tempt away people already using Chrome. Not the OP, but I’d be down to donate to Firefox’s development directly, but I wouldn’t want to make a donation to Mozilla hoping it would go toward Firefox, only to find out they took my money to build some new LLM integration that nobody asked for, only to sit unused for years before being quietly shuttered in favor of the new tech buzzword of the day.