(upbeat music)
- There’s a story that caught my attention
lately and I’m finding it fascinating.
And only because of
the, wow, it’s North Korea.
North Korea is always fascinated me and
then I kind of check in every now and then.
They shoot missiles over Japan
a lot, so they pop up in the news.
In the past South Koreans
have sent memory sticks
with music, Korean dramas, food, medicine,
and money over the North Korean border.
So what they do is they
connect it to a balloon and they
float it up in the air and
the wind will carry it over.
This is often led by North Korean defectors,
so people who lived in North Korea
have defected to the South and they’re
trying to get other people to understand,
you know, there’s a different
world, a different way they could do it.
They should defect too.
So if you’re North Korean
and a loyal North Korean,
then this is, you know,
what would we call it?
This is the worst kind of propaganda.
Showing people that
there’s a different life
outside of North Korea
that might actually be better.
I remember a story of two North Korean,
basically high school boys
who were sentenced to prison
because they were
watching episodes of Friends.
They were watching episodes of Friends
because they got their hands
on one of those USB sticks
and they had some friends
on it and they watched Friends.
So they watched an English American show,
not just a K-drama, and that got them sent
to prison for who knows how long, right?
This is North Korea, so the
sentences are quite arbitrary.
Last week, North Korea, well,
they must have had a meeting
of something and they’re
like, you know what,
we’re gonna send something
back over the border.
We’re gonna send a message.
And that message is gonna be really clear
that you don’t wanna do this,
you shouldn’t do this anymore.
So they were like, we’re going to
send balloons back over the border.
The military explosives unit was
dispatched to check on the balloons.
There were more than 260
balloons that were dropped
onto the dropped through
to North South Korea.
They had plastic bags attached to them.
So these plastic bags,
there’s a question of,
what did North Korean, this was done
officially, this was done by the government.
What are we gonna put
in these plastic bags?
So if you were at the meeting, you’d
have like a North Korean general maybe,
and he’s like, what
should we put in the bags
to demonstrate the resolve
and the might of North Korea?
And then for some reason,
there was a five-year-old
in the room and the
five-year-old went, poop.
We wanna, the North Korean
general then looks around
the room and goes, we want to lure South
Koreans from their decadent lifestyle back
to the North Korean family they should have
known reunites the North and the South.
What would represent North
Korea’s desires in that way,
the best, what could we put
in that to send that message?
And then the five-year-old
speaks over again and goes, poop.
And then everyone around the table
went, you know he makes a good point.
Who let the five-year-old in?
If you ever watch any of those
old movies, 80s movies did this a lot,
where you had kids for the main
characters and then it somehow
involved the military and
then at some point in the movie,
there’s a literal military
meeting with kids in the room
and they’re like giving
comments and advising
these adult generals
on what should be done
in this situation, usually
it was the aliens and stuff.
It was very silly to look at,
the more you think about it, the
more ridiculous it is, but it
does make sense for this situation
’cause how would you
get a group of military
leaders to go, you
know what we should do?
We should put poop in bags, attach it
to blooms and send it across the border
and that’s gonna send some kind of
message The message to me is a bit garbled.
I’m a bit unsure of what
it actually should be.
So what actually was in it
was plastic trash and manure.
The reason we know that was
manure and not human feces
was because it must have
been someone’s job to test it,
so the explosive unit rushes
out, so these are like very
serious military guys, they
know how to defuse bombs.
They get these bomb disposal
guys get to these balloons
and there’s again, there’s
two hundred in CCMs,
there’s a lot, so
there’s like no time to
waste, they have to check
them and analyze them,
make sure they’re safe, make
sure they’re not gonna hurt anybody,
and they, you know,
gonna have to go through
a lot of procedures
to open them carefully
and they open them one after
the other and spread it out,
so they would have had
to find all the particulate
in it, so the plastic, the
papers and the manure,
and then they have to send
it back to labs for testing,
and so that is how we know there is no
human feces, it was manure from animals.
And I just think of
there’s something poor
guy, that’s his job,
his job was to test it.
North Korea stated that
balloons from the South
were dirty things and a
dangerous provocation.
Mounds of waste paper and
filth will be sent in response,
so what they’re saying is view send
balloons over the border to the north,
we are going to send balloons back
over the border full of garbage and manure.
On 2014, the North tried shooting the balloons
down, I do like they use the word try,
’cause that means they weren’t successful,
so they have a, these are big balloons,
like these are supposed to
carry the contents for miles,
and they’re shooting at them, and
maybe they’re not very good shots,
I don’t know, it’s ’cause I hear
stories about how the North
Korean military, all they do
is train so they’re very good,
but then you also hear
they also have no food,
so how can they be
very good at anything?
They got a lot of complaints of
people who live near the border,
so those people were saying like,
please don’t shoot down the balloons
or try to shoot down the balloons anymore,
’cause their guns are going off all night.
In 2021, the government in South Korea
said, we should put a ban on these balloons,
it’s provoking the North, we don’t
want that, it’s gonna cause trouble,
we don’t want some of
the shooting at balloons,
and then the bullets come
down somewhere in South
Korea and actually injure
someone by accident,
that could accidentally set
off a war, we don’t want that.
But then a court said,
well, telling people they can’t
send messages to North Korea
is a violation of free speech,
so sending the balloons from South Korea to
North Korea is a protected writing Korea,
which is a very interesting piece of
legislation that had to be discussed.
But again, they’re trying
to send medicine, money,
they are sending USB sticks with like popular
content, K-pop and K-dramas and stuff.
Kim Yojin, who’s North Korean
leaders, sister, who is kind
of poised to take over and
she’s very serious looking.
She said, we will make it
clear that we will respond
with 10 times more the amount of filth
to what the South sends in the future.
So what they’re saying is for every balloon
that send, they send
over the borders of the
North, they’re gonna
send 10 times that amount
of balloons to 10 balloons
back, full of garbage and filth.
Two days ago, as of this recording,
90 more balloons were sent.
So there’s 260 in the first
batch, 90 in the second batch.
They were full of paper,
plastic, and cigarette butts.
So you got Korean soldiers and generals,
and just be like, well,
keep throwing in these
trash bags and we’re
gonna tie these trash bags up
instead of throwing them
away, disposing of them.
We’re gonna send them
over to the Southern border
as a message to our Southern
compatriots that we’re better.
I don’t know what the message there is.
I mean, I guess the message
is to stop, don’t send this stuff.
But, I don’t know, I don’t think it’s that.
There are real world ramifications of this.
So I kind of gloved on to this story
because the idea of sending poop
from North Korea to South
Korea as a message was
interesting ’cause in my
head, in my heart, my dreams,
what is the message they’re
actually trying to send?
Well, they’re trying to say
that the stuff you’re sending us
is dirty, we’re sending you
something even dirtier back.
But the real world ramifications are
that there was a treaty signed in 2018
designed to ease tensions
surrounding the border.
So they’re like, we’re
gonna sign this treaty
and the South is not going
to do military exercises
close to the border, it
makes everyone nervous.
The North is going to ease off the border
’cause that’s what makes everyone nervous.
And they don’t want a war to kick off.
But, because of these balloons being friends
sent from North Korea to South Korea,
they’re now talking about
suspending this agreement
and they start doing
drills close to the border
because again, this is where
the balloons are coming from.
It’s sort of invading their country.
A Korean general said
he will take sufficient
and immediate measures, but
no clarification is what that was.
So it could be that we’re gonna
try to shoot down their balloons
so that the manure from their
balloons falls on their border
and doesn’t get to us so they
have to pick up their own garbage.
So far, no one’s been hurt.
Now, these balloons
have like a timer in them
and they think the timer is
supposed to pop the balloon
when it’s over a city
center and then drop the
balloon into the city,
something like that.
That could fall on someone and hurt them.
Again, this is problematic because this
is how a war could kick off in the future.
My biggest concern, North
Korea is testing missiles
all the time, they shoot
missiles, they go towards Japan,
over Japan, into the
Sea of Japan all around.
And it is you get missile alerts on
your phone, like we get that regularly.
And then one of the problems
is new people come to Japan
and I meet them and they
hear about missiles being shot
and they like freak out
and I’m like, no, no, no.
That’s like literally a
weekly occurrence in Japan.
It’s just North Korea shooting missiles.
My concern though, so they
tend to just fall into the water
and then it’s just a test is
my actual concern is they hit
a fishing vessel or
something else by accident.
So they don’t actually right
now intend to do anything
but it’s a show of force,
it’s intimidation, intimidation.
But if they hit a boat and
they hit that boat by accident
and kill some Japanese
or South Korean fishermen,
citizens, the government
has to respond.
There’s no way you can
actually just let that go.
Like you killed five, 10, 15, maybe 20,
30 people depends how big the boat is.
You can’t kill that many people
and then not have a response.
North Korea being the way it is,
they never admit to any wrongdoing.
So they’re not gonna apologize, they’re
not gonna say they did something wrong,
they’re not gonna try to
make any amends for that.
They’re going to stick
to their guns and say,
well, you shouldn’t be
fishing in our waters,
even though it’s not their
water, something like that.
And that’s where the
problem is gonna arise.
So right now, sending poop across
the border is actually quite funny,
but you can see it escalates
and these small escalations
tend to have real world problems,
which actually could be an issue,
but still, maybe they should get
that five-year-old out of the room.
This is something I’ve
maybe talked about in
the past and it’s Kung
Fu fights to the death.
And I talk about Kung Fu a lot.
I like this kind of genre of stuff
and I like fighting movies and stuff.
But Kung Fu movies had
a thing that I always found
was illogical and it was
the fights to the death
of the best of the best to prove
which style was the best style.
Because the problem is, if you have
the two best Kung Fu guys in the world,
let’s say there’s a group of 10 there,
the best Kung Fu guys in the world.
And two of them fight
and one of them has to die.
Now that guy who died,
that means you now only
have nine of the best
Kung Fu guys in the world.
And it’s not like someone
just moves up into that
position, there is a
skill gap that is created.
So if those 10 guys all have to fight
each other until there’s only one left,
that means those guys
who are all the best
in the world don’t get
to teach anyone else.
And that means that
lowers the overall quality
and skill level of Kung Fu
in the martial arts world.
And this is always bug me.
It’s one of those things that’s
illogical to fight to the death in a film.
If the whole point is to prove
that your style is the best.
I guess maybe what they wanna
do is have the other styles die off.
But my other thought is,
even if you win the fight,
these two of the best fighters in the
world fighting means you’re gonna get hurt.
Like you just get hurt.
That’s what happens when you fight.
They don’t usually show that move.
Movies you recover really quick.
People get shot in their shoulder
and they just keep running and stuff.
I’m sure I would at least have
to lie down if that were to happen.
I watched Doom II recently and
there were a couple of elements
that struck me as
really, I don’t know, old.
Off putting way back in the day.
I don’t know, like in ’80s kind of thingy.
When I was young, I didn’t
think about it very much.
But now as I’m getting
older, I’m seeing it.
And it doesn’t sort of
fit in movies anymore.
And it’s when the bad guy lashes out
and kills an underling
standing too close to him.
So this, maybe the most
iconic ones were Darth Vader.
Now he would kill people he
would like crush their throat
when they failed or when
they didn’t do what he wanted.
But in Doom II, you have the
young Harkonan leader guy.
And basically someone standing next
to him and he says, “Let’s go over here.
” And that guy goes,
“Oh, we can’t go over there.
” And he slashes his throat.
And the guy dies.
And you think that would
only happen once or twice
before people will be like,
“You know what, I’m going to do?
I’m not going to stand with
an arms reach of that guy.
” But the problem is they should be promoting
competent people to these positions.
This is an organization.
So they should be promoting
people into these positions.
We have a certain skill set.
And if because they have
to deliver information to you
that you don’t like,
that you actually kill
them in that moment,
well, that’s problematic.
Because you’re out now
taking these skilled managers
and workers around
you and getting rid of
them is which means
they have to be replaced.
And then select the
guy who has to look at
the screen for you and
to deliver information.
You have to replace that guy.
So the guy who gets
promoted in that position
maybe he’s not ready
for that position yet.
Maybe he doesn’t have those skills.
Maybe he is smart enough to
stay out of arms reach, though.
That actually would
be an interesting thing.
But I’m concerned that the overall level
of competence is going to be minimized.
Because anyone with any real
competence is going to realize,
like, I don’t want to be
promoted to the point
where I am within arms
reach of the head bad guy.
Because when the bad guy
gets upset, he kills people.
And I came up with this kind
of like four solutions to this.
And one is you don’t
stand within arms reach.
This doesn’t work with
Darth Vader because
he was using the force
so he could choke you.
He actually did one where he
choked a guy on another spaceship
because he was looking at
him through a view screen.
And he promoted the
guy standing next to him.
But that, again, I was like,
that guy standing next to him.
He might be standing next to him for a
reason because he wasn’t actually very good.
Be quit the job.
So they’re going to promote
you to stand next to the bad guy
who’s going to kill
you if you get so upset.
And you’re the guy who
has to deliver bad information.
You know what’s going on.
You know what?
I’m going to quit this
organization earlier retirement.
I’m out.
Because that’s the end of your career path.
The end of your career path
is you stand next to that guy.
You have to tell him some real information
that he should be able to act on
and then he slashes your throat.
The ones that are more realistic,
though– so you’re in this situation.
You’ve been promoted this position.
Let’s say it’s a military thing and you
can’t because it’s desertion if you run away.
You would end up not
giving him the bad news.
So you’re given bad news and you’re like,
if I deliver this bad news
to him, he’s going to kill me.
So I’m either not going
to deliver the bad news
or I’m going to reinterpret the
bad news so it doesn’t sound bad
so that I can survive,
which means this leader
is now no longer getting
accurate, like a faithfully
accurate information
for him to act on properly.
Which is what crumbles the entire
organization at the end of the day.
I actually would like to
see a movie made by that.
It’s actually the
underlings, the subordinates.
And they’re like, OK, we
have to deliver this information.
Like we’ve found the rebel
base or the rebels are still alive.
And they’re like, OK, but
we have to say this in a way
that makes it sound like we’ve won
or we’re not going to have a problem.
And in that way, maybe we can
remain living for an extended period.
So it’s them manipulating
information all the time.
And that’s how the empire would collapse
because none of the
information would actually
get to the people who are supposed
to act on it or give instructions.
And the last one, very
simple, I would run away.
And this is probably the most realistic one
is like, I guess a technically
counts the same as quit your job.
If you could quit formally, that would make
more sense and be probably a better idea.
But realistically speaking, you’re
probably not– you don’t get that option.
So you just start to run.
You’re like, I’m going to get out of here.
I know if I don’t–
he’s just going to kill me.
And the alternative is you get
caught and get killed anyways.
So there’s no real downside to just
bailing on the whole situation altogether.
I don’t see it as movies as much anymore.
Maybe this is because
Dune 2 is based on a book.
I think it’s from the
’80s, maybe even the ’70s.
And so they still were doing this thing.
Like the whole point of the bad guy
just lashing out and killing someone
because they heard bad news,
which is show how bad they are.
But I think we’ve now gotten to a point
where you need a different
reason or a different way
to show that because it actually makes
less logical sense to kill your underlings.
And going on with movies, like I’m just
tired of people being all shady
and sarcastic to each other.
I started playing a video game
called the Calisto Protocol.
And at the beginning, it has the
two guys, the pilot and the co-pilot.
And they’re just being
snippy to each other.
And I’m like, not in a friendly way.
Not like two friends
who are like bantering.
They were just annoyed
at being with each other.
And I was like, how do these guys
actually work together in a successful way
if they’re so annoyed with
each other all the time?
It doesn’t make sense.
And so I think writers, if
you’re going to write movies
and you have a bad guy, you want
to show how bad the bad guy is,
lashing out and killing
someone that is not the answer.
That is now a trope
and it’s now off the table.
I am now disallowing that as an option.
See him on the beach.
Okay, last little bit.
I accidentally quit caffeine.
It’s about two weeks ago now.
So I just woke up and I was really
busy and I had a rough day ahead of me.
So I just went out and I got
out there and started going.
And I went to work and then I
went halfway through the work.
Maybe a couple hours later, I
started getting the headache.
And I was like, oh, I actually
had the headache before.
It’s a caffeine headache.
But I’m busy and I’m
working so I can’t stop.
So I started popping medicine
and that sort of helped.
But I actually went through the sweats.
I had the headache.
I felt pain.
I felt like exhausted.
It was awful.
It was a terrible, terrible day.
And I was like, you know what?
I know that caffeine addiction kind of
gets out of your system in a day or two.
You still get the cravings and stuff.
But the worst part is already over.
I’ve already suffered through it.
So I might as well quit caffeine.
So then I just quit caffeine.
I was like, not going to drink anymore.
Coke, I never drank coffee.
But anything with caffeine,
I’m going to try to stop.
I do get allergies though and
I was still getting headaches.
So you still get headaches for a while.
And the headaches are
the worst part because I
get headaches for a
lot of different reasons.
I’m very sensitive to headaches.
So what I thought was, okay, I’ll just
take aspirin until this all goes away.
And then I started looking
at like buffer in stuff like that.
Look to the ingredients
list because I remembered
that almost every drug that you can take
over the counter drug has caffeine in it.
Buffer in plus, which is the
one that I was getting before,
has more caffeine in
two pills than an entire
bottle of like a 500
milliliter bottle of Coke.
And I was like, oh, so
if I actually quit caffeine
and then take headache medicine
to get rid of the caffeine headache,
it might be the fact that
I’m reintroducing caffeine
to my body that is actually getting rid
of the headache and not the painkillers.
So then I had to go start
looking for other medicines.
I started looking at everything.
So I take allergy medicine and I
looked at the box, has caffeine in it.
Caffeine makes it get into your blood faster,
makes it work into your system faster.
If it has a drowsy effect,
it’ll make you not drowsy.
So caffeine is really, really
beneficial to have in drugs.
An interesting side note is in Japan.
They always tell you to
take medicine with water.
And so I used to take it with Coke.
Like I would drink a Coke, down
some medicine and drink some Coke.
And my Japanese friends and
family would all be like, don’t do that.
You’re not supposed to do it.
You should take it with water.
And I’m like, why?
And they’ll go, why are
you taking it with Coke?
And like, Coke has caffeine in it.
Caffeine makes it get
into your body faster.
It means it works faster.
And they’re like, oh, no, that’s not true.
They weren’t using any science on this.
And I go, we’ll go get the
box and look at the box.
And it has caffeine on the box.
And they were shocked.
‘Cause I was like, you should take it with
caffeine ’cause that makes it work faster.
And sometimes even work better.
But I went online and I was like, why
do I need to get rid of the headaches?
And I looked for some options.
And it was like, you know, make
sure you drink enough water.
It was pretty much standard stuff.
And it was ways to quit caffeine.
So it was just wean yourself off it.
Why’d I already done the cold turkey?
I’d already done it hard and fast.
So I might as well just keep up.
Going back and weaning
myself didn’t make sense.
And it did warn about like medication,
often has caffeine at that kind of thing.
So you gotta be careful
of all these things.
One of the pieces of
advice was just don’t give up.
Because caffeine is so prominent
and it’s such a big part of people’s lives.
There’s absolutely no reason
to give up on it anyways
and your life will just
be easier if you don’t.
Which to me was really awful thing to put
and sort of a guide
on how to quit caffeine.
If you came to this page, it’s
because you wanted to quit caffeine.
I technically already had.
But if you wanted to quit caffeine,
hey, just give up on the
idea of quitting caffeine,
that didn’t seem like
really good advice to me.
So maybe it was big caffeine
that was actually behind it.
Is there a big caffeine?
I’m sure there’s big drug
companies behind everything.
It’s gotta be big caffeine,
there’s big pharma.
That’s all the same.
So I’ve quit caffeine, I found the
sugar-free, calorie-free caffeine-free Coke.
This is the Coke with the gold band on it.
So I kind of drink that one.
I get a craving for cola.
And it’s done pretty well.
I found that Tylenol, all Tylenol
products do not have caffeine in them.
So if I get a headache,
I’m now taking Tylenol
or I get any sort of pain or injury
from judo or something, I take a Tylenol.
But I went and looked at the
medicine section of the pharmacy,
the over-the-counter stuff, and I
went and looked at basically every box
and every single box
except Tylenol had caffeine
and some of it had
a lot of caffeine in it.
You could actually be
like dosing yourself to
caffeine way the more
than you think you are
if you’re taking headache
medicine on a regular basis.
And I’m not gonna give up.
I’m not gonna take like just give
up, giving up as a piece of advice.
I’m not gonna do that.
♪ After the mind will be a kad of me ♪
♪ Shut my pictures ♪
♪ Where the bastards of philosophy ♪
♪ Drinking the clutch ♪
♪ Rings of upper skills ♪
♪ Like a soccer punch ♪
♪ Won’t come to see ’em my beat ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah, yeah ♪
♪ Oh, see ’em my beat ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah, oh, see ’em my beat ♪
♪ Yeah, oh, see ’em my beat ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah, oh, oh ♪