PokerPirate
2d ago
My favorite part of OPOL is having a secret language to use out in public with the kids.
One time I was at Costco with my 3 year old boy. There was a dwarf walking around the store, and my son was asking reasonable questions about why an adult was small like a child... but it was in Spanish and so the dwarf didn't hear himself being talked about... but then after seeing the dwarf for the 4th or 5th time, my boy had a sudden flash of inspiration. He shouts with all the wild-eyed enthusiasm of a toddler: "Me pregunto si mi pene es mas grande que lo suyo?" (I wonder if my penis is bigger than his?) Let me tell you I've never been more happy that my child spoke spanish. The free sample lady we were talking too doubled over laughing, but no one else in the store registered the outburst.
But I'm not super strict about OPOL. I also speak a handful of other languages with the kids that I'm not fully proficient in like Korean. Unfortunately, Korean has a number of words that sound the same as English words but mean very different things. Once when we were out hiking, my then 2 year old (different kid) saw a pair of men walking a dog. He shouts at the top of his lungs "Gay!!! Daddy I see a gay!!!" You see, "Gay" means dog in Korean, and my 2yo was doing the natural 2yo thing of being excited about a dog. Of course the men were horrified, and my brief explanation that my son was talking Korean did nothing to mollify them. Fortunately for us, my son never addressed me in the 2nd person around any black people (you is pronounced "nigga" in Korean).
Anyways, the point of my stories is that language is a chance for you to bond and have fun with your kids. If OPOL doesn't sound fun to you, then don't do it. For me, speaking weird languages to my kids has been tons of fun for us and for mom. Mom doesn't speak any of the languages I do with the kids, except that she now knows lots of different words for poop. And it's fun for all of us to talk about oonga and caca and pedos and bangui.
PokerPirate
4d ago
Groups like the Amish do not have this tension, and I think the ideal Christian behavior is far closer to the Amish than it is to the modal American/European Christian.
PokerPirate
4d ago
I have always been fascinated by Christian political parties. The idea seems repulsive to me both as an American (due to separation of church and state) and as a Christian (I'm from a tradition that sees even voting as borderline sinful).
PokerPirate
15d ago
This is similar to what Trump did with North Korea... they are now working within normal diplomatic relations that fall short of war.
The claim that North Korea has fewer military provocations now than before Trump's 2017-2018 negotiations is false. We've previously discussed this. I'm reposting my response below for the benefit of other readers:
My semi-insider understanding [of North Korea's provocations is that they] are far more in number and severity than before. For example:
- There continued to be major missile tests yearly until 2023, and in 2022 they flew a missile over Japan.
- In 2022, a North Korean drone got within 2 miles of the Blue House (where the South Korean president lives). This type of drone is more like a cruise missile than a quadcopter.
- In 2024, the North has officially abandoned a policy of reunification with the South and there's been all sorts of major border skirmishes. In 2024, the North launched artillery into the South.
- The North has been sending troops to fight in Ukraine and sending supplies to the Russians.
If you are seeing less provocations in the news, I think that's just your media diet.
PokerPirate
22d ago
Typical GDP growth in the US is about 2%/year. That means just waiting 4 years doing normal stuff gets you ~10% productivity improvement. ChatGPT was released just about 4 years ago.
There's a lot of subtleties in the economic figures. But my back-of-the-napkin math above argues that we would have had this 10% permanent productivity gain without any investment in AI.
They always call me obba (Korean for dad), which is why this never came up.
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