That would certainly make his unlikely career trajectory (constant lateral moves upwards once sussed out as a fraud or just plain bad employee) make even more sense than the typical “rich dad ergo fail upward” explanation.
Now do Alan Dershowitz!
Intention doesn’t always carry over well via text, but going from “shocking” and “I guess…” to “Do you not understand…?” comes across as a bit condescending/aggressive. Perhaps you thought I was being hostile? Or, perhaps I’m misreading the intent.
At any rate, keeping in mind the things that don’t carry across over text, I wasn’t disagreeing with you and was merely speculating in a parallel fashion about those that don’t return and/or are deemed unacceptable defection by the leadership in Pyongyang. I haven’t picked over my initial comment but it’s possible that I put a period somewhere a question mark was supposed to go or something. Regardless, I apologize if I came across as trying to argue against what you were saying, it was not my intention. I don’t tend to process things in a strictly linear progression and that translates to words that come out sometimes a bit disordered seeming or perhaps seemingly lacking in explicit context where it might be needed to ensure clarity in what I’m saying.
To answer the question rather than treat it as rhetorical: It’s quite possible that I don’t know how North Korean defection usually works because I’m not North Korean nor a policy analyst/SME specializing in North Korea. I read the article and your comment and found myself speculating, given the situation and deepening ties with Russia (who are objectively experts at tracking down dissidents abroad) about what policy and procedures might be in place now the event of would-be permanent defectors that end up becoming anti-Pyongyang mouthpieces or are high rank enough to leak meaningful intel to an adversary (I doubt they are sending any such people to Ukraine). But, I’m not an expert, I’m just a person speculating and commenting because I enjoy doing so and seeing what others have to say (including you). Thanks for sharing the article, have a good one.
Or maybe they have an agreement to receive intel from Russia on the whereabouts of any problematic defectors/assistance dealing with them. I imagine the threat to loved ones back home is a huge deterrent for most would be defectors, though some are obviously desperate enough to overcome that and defect anyway.
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Nobody tell David Zaslav about this wonderful opportunity for “tax savings.”
!If any humans survive at this point, we’ll probably be starting over from the bronze age. !<
Eh, if there are human survivors then data (digital and analog) and technology will survive, as well as localized means of generating power. Between that and knowledge of post-bronze age technology existing in the minds of survivors (it doesn’t have to be an understanding of how technology works, merely the idea that it exists is a huge head start since initially imagining a thing is the first huge hurdle towards creating it), I would bet on survivors not needing to reinvent so many wheels if we are also assuming the basic conditions necessary for a small number of humans to survive and reproduce indefinitely exist in this post-apocalyptic scenario. Bonus points if any of the survivors happen to be experts in a modern domain or two, but even the knowledge of basic maths that many people retain from adolescent education is a huge advantage over our distant ancestors. Just knowing that something is possible is enough to drive humans to figure out how to do it, and there would be scraps of all sorts of materials and things around to remind/inspire survivors.
That all isn’t to say that I think day to day life would be at all functionally similar to life as it is now. Technology aside, just the sheer loss of population and infrastructure would mean modern convenience would be gone and life would initially be a brutal hands-on echo of the 19th century in many regards.
I think it’s probably “bone pain” scrambled in translation, since it’s a dengue fever outbreak.
FTFY (though, I’m mostly being sarcastic here - like most things, moderation there is a mixed bag from community to community).