bbrodriguez

Korean doesn’t reduce typing compared to English from my experience. What looks like a “character” is actually a syllable block called “eumjeol” that’s made up of consonants (moeum)and vowels (jaeum). You can’t have a vowel only syllable either so you always have to pair it with a null consonant no matter what (which kinda looks like a zero: ㅇ) and while nouns can be much more concise compared to English, verbs can get verbose.

The main benefit of Korean actually comes from the fact that the language itself fits perfectly into a standard 27 alphabet keys and laid out in such a way that lets you type ridiculously fast. The consonant letters are always situated in the left half and the vowels are in the right half of the keyboard. This means it is extremely easy to train muscle memory because you’re mostly alternating keystrokes on your left hand and right hand.

Anecdotally I feel like when I’m typing in English, each half of my brain needs to coordinate more compared to when I’m typing in Korean, the right brain only need to remember the consonant positions for my left hand and my left brain only need to remember the vowel positions.

I recently had an elevated D-Dimer level in my blood lab which indicates a clot of some sort. I remember sitting in the doctor’s office while my primary care doctor was reading the lab results. He literally started Googling “primary causes of D-Dimer elevation” and clicked on the link to a WebMD documentation on D-Dimer levels. That’s when I realized that’s their StackOverflow. Combined with their existing training, I assume WebMD helps them make better judgement calls (definitely compared to a lay person self-diagnosing themselves). He then said, “well, none of the top causes really apply to your situation: you didn’t have a surgery recently and it’s impossible for you to get pregnant as a guy”.

I was consequently referred to a hematologist.

When I started seeing posts of people complaining about the price, it was mainly complaints about how the updated model was more expensive than the outdated model that languished for several years. I would argue that the new model still launched at a cheaper price but the rate of price reduction definitely slowed down enough for people to notice. Considering the first MacBook Air launched in 2008 at $1,799 starting price, that would be around $2,100 in today's dollars adjusted for inflation. Then the second gen launched at a reduced base price of $1,299 in 2010. That would be around $1,530 today. Compare that to the 2018 version that just launched for $1,199 which is still several hundred dollars cheaper.

I think the rate of price reduction in tech has slowed down enough that even though the prices are being reduced, the inflation offsets the perceived price reduction and ordinary people just get upset that Apple jacked up the prices yet again.

While not directly rated to Hillsong, there's an interesting series of episodes from Gimlet Media's StartUp podcast called Church Planting that dives down to reveal more day to day operations on how church plants that start small like Hillsong grow into bigger churches. Lot of the aspects of pitching to established investor churches, growth hacking, etc. have a lot more in common to a startup company than a church and pastors more like founders. Church plants that can adapt have a more successful growth. I think it provides an interesting perspective into how "successful" churches like Hillsong that started by meeting in a high school end up turning into megachurches across 6 continents.