What I found weird is that if you look at the block listings
https://bitminter.com/blocks?commodity=allThe Namecoin blocks are generated more frequently, but whenever someone generates a bitcoin block, the same person will generate a namecoin block at the same time.
So the namecoin chain is identical to the bitcoin chain, just at a lower difficulty?
yes, this is to be expected, the same share is submitted to namecoin and Bitcoin, with Bitcoin having higher difficulty more nmc blocks are expected, which also means for merged mining a winning bitcoin share will also generate a namecoin block.