bank errand

Off to drain my bank account a bit more by sending $700 to my US account. 

In other news, I'm still plowing through my Substack grammar units. Having made enough of the free material to last through November and into the first week of December, I've been working on the material for my paying subscribers, which is much more in-depth, involved, and explicitly curricular in nature. If I stay on schedule in developing that material, I ought to finish enough by early October to be able to take a month off to walk across the country. And I might finally have some tests—not just quizzes—ready. The irony, of course, is that I still have only two paying subscribers, so all of this labor I'm doing is just for them. Meanwhile, I have 15 or 16 non-paying subscribers who seem perfectly happy to remain where they are. I think I'm going to have to develop another Substack that's paying-subscriber-only in nature. What could I create that is tantalizing enough to lure people in to subscribe? It's really tempting to do something related to life with heart failure, but (1) I don't think heart failure makes me special (I'm one of 64 million worldwide) and (2) that would feel like a crass commodification of a health condition for monetary gain. Bleh, whatever... I'll figure something out.

more AI-animal interviews

a guy with a 276 IQ ought to have no accent

Do you agree with this reasoning? I sure don't. This is basically Aquinas's Five Ways or the Kalam argument for the existence of God. It's just as unconvincing now as it was when I first heard it because it doesn't take infinite series seriously.

banchan/반찬 (side dishes)—why so many? here's one opinion

the hair disaster

un-disastered

I had been shaving my beard the other night when, in a moment of inattention, I let my electric trimmer slide too high, and zot—I'd shaved away a bit of hair above my ear. Shit. I tried using the trimmer to even the mistake out, but that only made it worse. I tried repeating the mistake on the other side of my head to at least even the look out, but that, too, only made things worse. So on Wednesday afternoon, I went to my building's barber in shame and requested my typical haircut, which normally involves getting the sides and the back of my head trimmed down thin, with modest trimming on the top. What you see above is the post-disaster picture. I should've taken a pic of what my hair had looked like before: it was a shit-show. Well, maybe it's better not to give you nightmares.

Leave hair-cutting to the pros. Advice for the ages.

give the gift of joy to your five-year-old

a call from the ex-boss

Today, the ex-boss messaged and asked how I was. I think he was checking whether I had died. Like some other expats I know, he hates writing and prefers talking—jabber, jabber, jabber, schmooze, schmooze, schmooze, network, network, network.* Writing is like Kryptonite for people who love to talk your ear off. I keep my phone on airplane mode when I'm in my apartment, so I never receive phone calls since airplane mode cuts off the cell phone's radio. This is frustrating for the ex-boss, who wants instant access to me via phone, and it never occurs to him to try to contact me via text or email. (I receive texts while on airplane mode, but only some; I think a lot of texts are actually blocked on airplane mode, too.) From my end, airplane mode makes life so much more peaceful. From my ex-boss's end, my being on airplane mode is a pain in the ass. After getting the ex-boss's text, I grudgingly put the phone on LTE and glumly awaited his call, which came about half an hour later.

We talked a bit about the future. I told the ex-boss I'm no longer holding out any hope for the startup (there's been no mention of a timeline or anything), so I'm on my own. He told me not to lose hope quite yet, so I said in a lackluster way that I'd keep one ear open. Frankly, though, I'm not planning on jumping on board anything the boss might be planning, assuming he's planning anything at all. He told me (as he'd told an ex-coworker of mine) about how he'd gone to work, two days a week, for a hagweon where he could teach Korean to foreigners (the boss is Korean-fluent). But that job didn't last even a month, I gather: the hagweon's "president" (hagweonjang/학원장 or just weonjang/원장) was too set in her ways and had too many little, freedom-constricting and privacy-violating rules and habits, like barging into the classroom—every class—to "take pictures for the blog." But the ex-boss, after leaving that job, now has another job that, funnily enough, puts him right down the street from me at the COEX Building, where he's been tasked with being the native-speaker interviewer on a panel of interviewers for people trying to enter some kind of high-paying work and blah-blah-blah. So the boss can at least pay the bills. Until he leaves that job, too, I guess.

I still have a few tens of thousands of dollars left in my own account, so I'm good at least through the end of the year and through part of next year. I'm putting out feelers to an old job, KMA (which I wouldn't want to rejoin until after I've done this year's trans-Korea walk), but I don't know whether they'll take me once they find out I'm currently a Substacking freelancer and not a full-time employee at a Korean company. We'll see. I'm not going to lead with the "I'm a freelancer" thing. At the same time, I don't want to trap KMA into doing anything illegal, so my current employment status is going to have to come out at some point. (KMA, for legal reasons, prefers to hire people who already have full-time jobs. KMA work tends to be weekend work.)

So there's the ex-boss update.

__________

*One of my friends is, ironically, horrible at written English—making constant typos and writing in a sloppy style that screams for decent editing to make it halfway readable. Yet this guy is teaching writing and presentation classes at a prominent university in Seoul. Koreans who suspect that many expats teaching EFL have no damn clue what they're talking about are often right to feel that way. A lot of the expats I know wouldn't be able to tell me what a comma splice is, or what the preterite tense is, or what a subordinating conjunction is. They'd wave me off with a dismissive Nah... you don't need any of that.

more fun with weapons

when the shrimp is as big as my...

self-defense weapons

baseball Karen

easy SAT-math problem

The guy rejects my way of solving it, but my way of solving the problem took me under 30 seconds. Watch the video for the guy's solution; read the comments for my solution.

more AI animal interviews

some possibly good news

Ever since I added dumbbell bench presses to my routine, I think my frozen shoulder (left shoulder) has begun to improve. While the problem with frozen shoulder is how it limits your range of motion, the solution may be to put pressure on the joint through weight. I admit that the bench presses I'm doing are on my bed, i.e., I'm not on a narrow bench where my elbows can sink below the level of my torso, but that day may be coming soon.*

But it could also be that it's been a couple years, so the frozen shoulder is now just "thawing" on its own. With these long-lasting conditions, it's kind of hard to tell.

PS: I have at least two ways to measure the disappearance of my frozen shoulder: (1) Can I put a button-down shirt on the way I used to? —and (2) Can I do kettlebell around-the-worlds the normal way instead of doing semicircles, which is what I do now? Well, today, I put my button-down shirt on the normal way, but I still can't do around-the-worlds the right way** because doing the handoff behind my back is still too painful. I'll eventually need to see whether I can do a full-body hang without screaming in agony.

__________

*I can simulate a true bench by doing bench presses with my head at one corner of my bed and my body lying diagonally across it. This would give my elbows room to sink down for a fuller range of motion. But the whole point of using the bed in the first place was to prevent pain from overextension, so... let's do this in baby steps, yes?

**More badass version of the exercise here. This adds antirotation to the mix.

Chef Makinson assesses other YouTube chefs

These guys are always assessing each other. It's like watching college profs.

if you can provably do this in two weeks, I'll eat my cat

PC방 food for 24 hours

Chef Andy becomes a line cook again

9K

I just finished a 9K walk to the Han River and back. It started shakily with a hint of a heartburn-y feeling that I now know is a kind of low-grade angina, but I rested on a local bench for about seven minutes, and there was no problem afterward.* If I stopped after that, it was only to snap photos (only one of which came out, alas—see below). Otherwise, my pace was a much-better-than-usual 3.9 kph—still slow by human standards, but better than my usual lame, decrepit pace (3.4-3.6 kph). The cooler nighttime temps doubtless helped. I'll do another 9K walk on Thursday, then tape my feet up for an 18K walk that I hope to do starting early Saturday so that I can eat later in the day. Eating and then walking is still bad news for me despite my having weaned myself off insulin (my blood-sugar numbers have been fine, too, for the past 17 insulin-free days—not radically different at all, and sometimes even better than when I'd been using that poison). Angina when not moving is almost nonexistent now.

In other walking news, I've been thinking about my route. While I'm dying to do the Four Rivers one last time, I've also been thinking that I'd like to redeem myself after last year's disaster, in which my walk was interrupted for a month because my feet had gotten severely injured after some nastily wet weather. So my choice is: a last-hurrah 633K along the Four Rivers path or one more shot at the Nakdong River route, from Busan to Andong, with no stupid injuries and no damn month-long breaks this time. But that walk would be only about 400K, factoring in the places I'd stay at.

travel companion, tired of life

I'm going to have to make a decision within the next few days if I want to get this year's tee shirt designed, printed, and sent to me in time for the walk.

__________

*That's how it was before my heart attack last year, too! Life is on repeat.

sniper shot: real life vs. the movies

ChatGPT dream interpretation

By buddy Neil wryly mentioned in a comment that he had run my latest dream through ChatGPT and had asked it to sum up with a four-word analysis. Click here to see what GPT said. Curious, I ran the narrative of my previous dream through GPT. I, too, asked for a four-word analysis of "the person whose dream this was," and got:

Lonely, striving, anxious, uncertain.

This makes me wonder what kind of psychoanalysis Neil had asked GPT to do. Several lenses are possible. Anyway, in my case, the AI was positively talkative. I prompted it with:

No Freudian "vagina" references or anything? Interesting.

It responded:

😅 Fair point — if we were doing the classic Freud playbook, the imagery of a gigantic rounded tunnel mouth, fog, and entering with a group could easily be read as sexual symbolism (Freud often saw tunnels, caves, and passages as vaginal symbols, while climbing/penetrating movements could be phallic or represent striving toward union).

But modern dream analysis (and my earlier four-word summary) tends to read your account less in terms of universalized sexual metaphors and more in terms of personal themes:

The group ahead = belonging, community, or goals you feel drawn toward.
The curve that becomes vertical = ambitions or life paths that feel manageable at first but soon overwhelm.
The vanishing group = fear of being left behind.
The wind and paralysis = anxiety, vulnerability, and being stuck.

So Freud might have smiled knowingly and said “tunnel = vagina,” while Jung might have said “you’re grappling with individuation and the daunting climb into the unknown fog.”

Would you like me to give you a comparative reading (Freudian vs Jungian vs modern psychological) of this dream, side-by-side?

I said:

Sure, thanks.

It went on:

Great — here’s a comparative reading of your dream through three lenses:

---

1. Freudian View

Tunnel: Classic vaginal symbol; entering = sexual union or birth imagery.
Climbing the wall vertically: Phallic striving, an almost impossible sexual ascent.
Group ahead (laughter, Gandalf): Wish fulfillment — social belonging, maybe paternal authority (Gandalf as symbolic father).
Fear of falling: Anxiety about impotence, failure in sexual or life potency.

Freud would likely reduce most of this to sexuality + unconscious fears of inadequacy or desire for union.

---

2. Jungian View

The group / Gandalf: Archetypal “wise old man” plus youthful energies — companions on a mythic journey.
The tunnel: Archetype of passage / initiation — moving toward transformation, mystery.
Curving vertical wall: The challenge of individuation — the self confronting limits.
Fog and disappearance: The unknown, unconscious, mystery of what lies ahead.
Wind and paralysis: Confrontation with the Shadow — your fear that pursuing the path may destroy you.

Jung would see this as a symbolic narrative of your psyche’s growth, pulling you toward transformation but also confronting you with risk and isolation.

---

3. Modern Psychological View

Theme of falling behind: Social comparison — fear of not keeping up with peers.
Manageable slope → vertical impossibility: Goals that seem attainable at first but become overwhelming.
Group disappears, you’re alone: Loneliness, anxiety, fear of abandonment.
Fear of falling / stuckness: A waking-life sense of being overextended, exhausted, or paralyzed by risk.

Modern interpretation focuses less on universal symbols and more on your current stressors, anxieties, and perceptions of community vs isolation.

---

👉 Summary:

Freud = sex, birth, potency anxiety.
Jung = heroic journey, individuation, transformation.
Modern psychology = anxiety about belonging, life goals, and overwhelm.

Well, that was fun. God, I have to wonder what government agent is getting his jollies from reading this nonsense and profiling me. I should next ask ChatGPT to pretend it's a Korean 점쟁이/jeomjaengi, give it my 평생사주/pyeongsaeng saju and my two dreams, and see if it can role-play the Korean fortune teller well.

GunTubers all want to be Kentucky Ballistics

Kentucky Ballistics might be the ne plus ultra of all of GunTube, but I can't tell you how much I've learned about firearms just by watching all of these channels—including this silly one, i.e., Yee Yee Life, a "Christian" GunTube channel (because Jesus loved his guns). Of the GunTubers, my faves are probably Kentucky Ballistics and Ballistic High Speed.

possible walk dates (they need to be locked down)

I'm thinking I might head out for a Four Rivers walk around October 27 and finish in late November—about the 24th, i.e., the Monday before Thanksgiving (so I guess Thanksgiving's a wash this year). Temps should be in the balmy low 60s (ºF, or about 15-16ºC) during the day, which means it'll be cold in the mornings. By the time I reach Busan, daytime temps that far south will be in the 50s (or about 10-11ºC). As long as there isn't much rain, the walking ought to be nice. And to train myself up, I need to start walking on a MWF schedule again—initially at night, when it's cool (September is still hot during the day), then later in the mornings once it's cool all day. There's been no angina for a while now—almost two weeks.

VFX guys take on "Superman" and "KPop Demon Hunters"

reassurance

Yes, I've begun writing my review of "Battlestar Galactica" (BSG). In one of my Substack posts, BOE #36—not appearing until November—I've got a porn title that riffs off BSG: Buttlestar Buttsmacktica. So, you know, my mind goes there.

'nuther weird dream

It's fading now, but this is part of a strange trend: I normally never remember the content of my dreams, but lately, I've been waking up in the morning with the details of a dream still clear in my head. I find this very disturbing.

This dream involved living in a home that I knew not to be my own house, but I thought of it as mine anyway—just a typical American suburban dwelling with carpeted floors and the works. An intruder who reminded me of Crispin Glover had broken in. Using a weapon that seemed a lot like an Exacto knife, I somehow managed to slash "Glover" deeply in several places. There was something satisfying about the knife's blade sinking into flesh. The blade cut perfectly; pulling it through flesh felt like pulling it through a thick block of Gouda. I don't recall that there was any noise at all during the struggle. "Glover" went down, right there on what was presumably the living-room rug. Some moments passed. My goddaughter came over and saw the body, and for whatever reason, we both agreed that I should go take a walk to clear my head. No sticking around and calling the police—we would just find a local trail and walk. The short hike proved to be pleasant enough, but there was a road crossing near the end that felt dangerous because I couldn't understand the weird timing of the traffic lights. At some point, my goddaughter left me; I guess her role in the dream was over. I got back to my place and considered calling the police... and that's when I noticed the body was no longer there, and the carpet had no blood on it. Everything was perfectly clean except for some telltale depressions in the rug, maybe footprints of some sort, as if a team had been at work in my living room. I felt a mounting sense of dread about what all of this might mean...

...and that's when I woke up, feeling dirty for having killed someone. I recall being flooded with relief that this had all been a dream, but there was still a lingering unease.

I'd like to go back to forgetting my dreams. What usually happens when I have an intense dream is that I'll wake up still feeling the dream's emotions but not remembering any details. This is a dream I'd rather forget.

"knock-down karate"

Dolph Lundgren's style.

who uses a blunderbuss these days?

But a blunderbuss may be good for home defense: big impact, low penetration through walls.

third quiz is up

The third quiz is up. The first quiz, as its title suggests, deals with topics found in BOE (Bad Online English) Units 1 through 5. The second quiz deals with topics from Units 5 through 8. The third quiz deals with Units 8 through 13.

That's all I have for now. I'm gassed out. What a weekend.

Please don't move on to a subsequent quiz until you're getting at least an "A" on the previous quiz. If I could build in something to prevent students from moving on—like Khan Academy, which has established hurdles that you must clear before you can advance—I would do so. Maybe I can ask ChatGPT to add that code, but that might require students to register and have a student number. Right now, with the way things are, all scores are private and not recorded anywhere. With the Khan Academy system, students have to register; I assume they get a student number, and their performance is recorded and tracked. I'm not nearly that ambitious yet, and if I were, I'd study to become a web designer. No, I think the current relaxed format is good for casual students who are looking for a challenge.

As mentioned before, you can garner partial credit for all questions. The people have spoken. While ChatGPT didn't code each answer choice as a, b, c, or d, what it did do is give each answer choice its own check box. Each answer for each question is worth 1/4 point. Simple as that. Unlike typical multiple-choice questions, where you have a 1 out of 4 chance of getting a question right, my multiple-choice questions can have any number of correct answer selections, from zero to one to two to three to four. In the end, though, only one answer configuration is correct out of all the possibilities. And how many possibilities are there?

Any of the following are possible ways to check the squares:

Possibility 1 ☐☐☐☐ nothing checked

Possibility 2 ☑︎☐☐☐ one checked

Possibility 3 ☐☑︎☐☐ one checked

Possibility 4 ☐☐☑︎☐ one checked

Possibility 5 ☐☐☐☑︎ one checked

Possibility 6 ☑︎☑︎☐☐ two checked

Possibility 7 ☑︎☐☑︎☐ two checked

Possibility 8 ☑︎☐☐☑︎ two checked

Possibility 9 ☐☑︎☑︎☐ two checked

Possibility 10 ☐☑︎☐☑︎ two checked

Possibility 11 ☐☐☑︎☑︎ two checked

Possibility 12 ☑︎☑︎☑︎☐ three checked

Possibility 13 ☑︎☑︎☐☑︎ three checked

Possibility 14 ☑︎☐☑︎☑︎ three checked

Possibility 15 ☐☑︎☑︎☑︎ three checked

Possibility 16 ☑︎☑︎☑︎☑︎ all four checked

...and only one of the above is correct per question.

(On the quiz, the check boxes are aligned vertically.)

So unless I've counted wrong, every question has 16 possibilities—for idiots who are merely guessing. For people who know the right answers, there's only one possible answer set per question. So you can try to guess your way through the quiz, but you probably won't pass via random guessing. ChatGPT calculates the chance of passing via random guessing as 

__________

About 13.16%.

Why: each quiz has 5 questions × 4 options = 20 option-states to match (checked vs. unchecked). If someone blindly guesses each checkbox independently with 50/50, each option has a 0.5 chance to match its correct state. So the total number of matches is Binomial(n=20, p=0.5).

“Passing” on your scale means ≥64% of 5 points = ≥3.2 points. Points come in 0.25 steps, so the minimum passing total is 3.25 points = 13/20 matches. Thus:

$$P(\text{pass})=P(X\ge 13),\quad X\sim \text{Binomial}(20,0.5) = \frac{\sum_{k=13}^{20} \binom{20}{k}}{2^{20}} \approx 0.1316.$$

P(pass)=P(X≥13),X∼Binomial(20,0.5)=220∑k=1320​(k20​)​≈0.1316.

So a pure coin-flip guesser passes about 1 time in 7.6.

(If someone uses a non-random “strategy” like leaving everything unchecked, the probability depends on how many options are actually false that round. The 13.16% figure is for true random guessing on each checkbox.)

__________

(I don't have the math to verify GPT's calculations, but I'll trust it for now.) So, guessers, you have a small chance, about 13%, but you'd be better off studying. Or take the quizzes relentlessly over and over again, memorizing the correct answers to every question you encounter... but by that point, you'll have been learning the grammar I've been teaching, so it won't be cheating.

And get this—cheating is an anagram of teaching. That means nothing, but whoa.

but they're all disasters, aren't they?

duh

Working with ChatGPT—asking it to do your coding for you because you're too fucking code-illiterate to do it yourself—is like working with an earnest-but-retarded genie that, doglike, really wants to help you but can't always quite do it. I finally got the second quiz up today, less than an hour ago, with none of that "disappearing first quiz" bullshit happening anymore, but Jesus, it took a few hours. There was one point at the end where the quiz was 95% of the way to perfect. I asked GPT to render the code one final time, and a fuckup appeared in the quiz's title, which now bizarrely showed the Decimal Numeric Character Reference code for em dashes (—). It took several more iterations before GPT could get everything right, with no code visible to the tester.* Ever had that feeling, shared by movie villains the world over, of being on the brink of an orgasmic triumph when, at the very last moment, something or someone bumbles onto the scene and undoes your victory? Yeah. It was like that.

One way or another, though—by hook or by crook—the second quiz is now up. If you're following me on Substack, please don't take the second quiz until you've gotten at least an "A" on the first quiz. If you're just a rando reader who wants to try the quiz for whatever reason, go ahead, but in that case, why not become a free or paid subscriber to my Substack? I've apparently hit a ceiling at 17 or 18 subscribers (weird fluctuation still happening); your addition could finally push me past that frustrating barrier.

__________

*It's always tempting to write testee, but can it be done without adolescent snickering?

mac-and-cheese madness

Looks good.

more sculpture shenanigans

Happy Birfday, little bro

L to R from last year: little bro David (49), Sean's hubby Jeff (56?), little bro Sean (46 in October)

My little brother David, our family's "bicentennial baby," was born in 1976 and is seven years younger than I am. He turns 49 today. I hope he enjoys the day, enjoys his last year in his forties, eats lots of decadent food, and has fun with his dog Penny, who is recuperating from major surgery. David still works as a creative director for the DC-based Hager Sharp, but he works remotely, living out in the wilds of New Mexico.

Happy Birfday, Big Boy!

I guess I'd be toast

Jeremy Jahns reviews "The Long Walk," a new movie based on a Stephen King novel written long, long ago. The premise is that, in a post-Civil War 2 America, there's a yearly walk—a sort of contest in which competitors must maintain a minimum speed of 3 mph or be shot and left for dead. As contestants are killed, the last person standing is the winner (I don't know whether it matters if the last person crosses the official finish line or not). I have no particular desire to see this movie, but if 3 mph (about 5 kph) is the minimum speed, I know I'd be among the first to die. I can no longer walk even that fast.

the rise and fall of Amber the Turd

I remember, years ago, thinking Amber was actually kind of funny in "Aquaman." Now, she's known for physically abusing Johnny Depp, shitting spitefully in his bed, then lying about everything in court. So I guess you could say my opinion of Heard changed slightly.

one quiz is now up at Test Central, but...

I have my very first quiz up at BigHominid's Test Central, but there's something wrong with the code that only becomes apparent when I try to upload the second quiz (which is also now coded but not available yet). For whatever weird reason, uploading the second quiz renders the first quiz invisible, which shouldn't happen, so there's a bug in the coding of the first or second quiz that's affecting the entire blog. All the quizzes and tests I will eventually put up should be visible all the time, with nothing bizarrely disappearing. This is frustrating.

I've spent all day with ChatGPT trying to figure out this second-quiz problem, but I'm at an impasse, so I'm giving up tonight and will pick up again tomorrow. All of this is getting in the way of writing a "Battlestar Galactica" review, but once I have this coding problem figured out, I'll get to the review as soon as I can. Meanwhile, even though the poll about partial credit is still up, you should feel free to go and try the quiz out. I'm not sure that the randomization I'd asked for is totally random; I may have to go back to GPT and ask it to be a bit stricter about not letting previous questions reappear too often (their rapid reappearance doesn't feel random... but neither does preventing such repetition, really). 

For what it's worth, try the quiz out—several times—and tell me what you think. It does give partial credit for partially correct answers. I hope you do well on it; I think I've worked out most of the kinks (aside from over-repetitiveness of previously seen questions every time you hit "refresh"), but leave a comment if you find more (or if some answers are wrong).

Be sure to read the blurb at that post first so that you understand what to do. I know there are meatheads out there who charge ahead without reading instructions, and their obtuse behavior always bites them in the ass. Of course, those are the same kind of people who are wired to learn by constantly crashing into walls until they get lucky and figure out a path. Some people are just built that way—not programmed to sit quietly and observe first. And unfortunately, these people survive long enough to breed.

ADDENDUM: I just hand-checked the randomization, and ChatGPT did a great job, so I'd say that, while the same question will reappear every two or three times you hit the quiz's "reset" button, the order of the answers will be different, and it'll usually be several "resets" before you see the same question again. This is fantastic. I got that right, at least.

could I unclog my arteries through diet alone?

A tour of the causes of arterial plaque, diabetes, lipoproteins (ApoB), and what to do about it through more intelligent eating.

"did you know" (full version)

poll expires in two days

My Substack poll expires in two days. If you haven't voted yet, git on out there an' vote!

Meanwhile, this weekend, I'm working on coding my first quiz. Since, so far, the vote is 100% in favor of partial credit, I will bow to the will of the masses and code my quizzes and tests for partial credit. No need to be unnecessarily cruel, right?

a recipe

A potentially useful recipe for "keto egg nog." It even has a section devoted to egg-yolk powder. Skip the blah-blah rhetoric and hit the "Jump to Recipe" button.

the rich and the tasteless

you have to stop spiking your insulin

Remember: eating anything spikes your insulin; it's a matter of how much it gets spiked, and how frequently. Insulin is both a blood-sugar-reducing hormone (good) and a fat-storing hormone (bad). Normally, insulin spikes in response to a perceived increase in blood sugar, often from high-glycemic foods that are full of refined carbs (bread, pasta, desserts, snacks, etc.), but even in response to seemingly harmless artificial sweeteners found in diet drinks, keto desserts, etc. If your insulin spikes too often, your body develops a tolerance and becomes insulin-resistant—one of the signs of type 2 diabetes. Taking exogenous insulin doesn't really address the insulin-resistance issue, but it does make your body store more carb energy as fat, i.e., exogenous insulin isn't going to help you to lose weight. In all, taking extra insulin is a net negative. Control your insulin through diet. Below, Dr. Fung addresses the idea of reducing insulin without cutting carbs. Is it possible? Well, there's a trick to it.

a talk with Roy Taylor (Newcastle Diet) about diabetes

keto "nog"

I'm still working on this.

Heavy cream is considered keto because it's low-glycemic and has very little in the way of carbs. But because it's fatty, it's highly caloric, so ideally, you're not supposed to have more than 100-200 calories' worth at a pop, which really isn't very much (about 60 ml). I often find I can't restrain myself to drinking that little cream, but a thought did occur to me: Can I make a sort of keto egg nog?

Here's what I have thus far: I pour myself a mug of heavy cream. That's the base. In my quick-heating electric kettle, I put in a little water; it'll boil in a minute. Meanwhile, I put about 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon and a tablespoon of BochaSweet into a different mug, plus a splash of vanilla extract (I've also sometimes used banana extract, which I like). I pour a little of the boiling water into the cinnamon-Bocha-vanilla mixture and stir—enough to melt the BochaSweet granules and distribute the cinnamon with getting too many lumps. I then pour that little bit of water into the heavy cream and stir. Voilà—a nog-like "nog."

You'll notice there's no egg. The point of making nog this way, though, is to avoid all of the heartache that comes of separating whites and yolks, then making an almost-custard, then tempering the eggs... it's a lot of procedural nonsense that I'd rather avoid.

What I do have, though, is powdered yolk and powdered whites. (These end up in keto-bread recipes.) I'm casting about for nog recipes that use some proportion of powdered egg to see whether I can make a noggier-tasting nog. So there might be updates on this. Sit tight.

the magic of simple physics

fight scenes!

For the fight-choreography junkies out there:

I'm still not sure what the thumbnail has to do with the content.

"cutting power"

real vs. fake Buddhism

Watch these two videos:

One of the above is a good example of what happens when you start smuggling in Western culture and values into what is supposedly a Buddhist message. Whether the Western culture and values are themselves good or bad isn't the point: it's the disingenuousness of passing off a non-Buddhist message as Buddhist—at least by implication. Can you guess which of the above videos is more or less "authentically" Buddhist?

Discussion

It should have been an easy guess since one features a real monk while the other features a script read by a monk-like AI voice. Phrases in the AI-voice video like "it only disconnects you from your truth" are clues that the script is subtly smuggling in Western concepts like your truth. This is also true of language like "Your memories live in your soul..." or "If the energy dishonors your spirit...." Buddhists aren't big on "soul/spirit" language—which is more Christian—because of the doctrine of anatman/anatta (無我/무아/mu-a, lit. "no self," in Chinese and Korean Buddhism), often roughly translated as no self or no soul. It's not that Buddhists believe there is simply no such thing as a self; what they deny is that the self is anything fundamental, permanent, and eternally unchanging, which is what the atman is in Hinduism, i.e., a diamond-hard core of self. Instead, Buddhists see the self as a processual aggregate—constantly changing and evolving yet retaining a certain impermanent distinctness. Over in the West, in AN Whitehead's process philosophy, a close analogue to the Buddhist concepts of self and distinct phenomena is arguably concrescence—i.e. the coming-together of things into a discrete-but-impermanent phenomenon, like a distinct wave in the ocean that is there, brought together by the confluence of matter, energy, and forces, and then gone. Of course, the water that made up the wave still remains, so in a sense, the wave is never truly gone; it's just that particular concrescence that is no longer there. By that reckoning, a human life, and a human's being, is little different from that wave: there for a while, then gone, but never really gone. Being is process. The AI video also uses very moony, California-like language like, "Go where your energy is respected." Californians love "energy" language; maybe the AI's scriptwriter is from there.

All of that said, I don't think the AI video's message is bad, per se. The advice can be boiled down to (as one video commenter wrote—I'm stealing this straight from him/her): 

THINGS NOT TO SAY (AS A SENIOR)

1. Back in my day, things were better.
2. I am too old to change.
3. I wish I had... 

THINGS NOT TO DO (AS A SENIOR)

1. Stop chasing the approval of the younger generation.
2. Do not hoard out of fear.
3. Stop dwelling on what you have lost.

PLACES NOT TO GO (AS A SENIOR)

1. Stop going where you are not respected.
2. Stop going where you are merely tolerated.
3. Stop going back into your past trying to fix what is already finished.

I can see the Buddhist messaging in a lot of this, so I'm not implying that the video is utterly un-Buddhist. It isn't. And it's entirely possible for Buddhists to use "God" and "spirit" and "soul" and "energy" language in foreign cultures if that's what it takes to get the basic message through, which is a message of detachment from the impermanent because reality is always in flow, and we merely need to recognize that.

The real Buddhist video, by contrast, sounds like many of the dharma talks I've heard. It moves directly to this idea that we are all clinging to something, that we form attachments, and that these attachments can lead to suffering. "We destroy the beauty of things" through our desires, our attachments. Our attachments, in the form of desires, seem to bind us to things, but as the monk says, we're not so much attached to things as we are bound by our desires. Things merely are what they are—impermanent, part of the flow of reality. To let go of desire isn't to let go of pleasure and the enjoyment of things: it's to put yourself and the world each in their proper place. Note that this video contains absolutely no soul/spirit/energy or "God" language: it's a dharma talk straight from the mouth of a Sri Lankan monk. I could feel the authenticity of the Buddhist vibes right away.

Buddhism doesn't traffic in quite the same conceptual/moral world of Christianity, with its dramatic (Karen Armstrong's adjective for monotheism) sense of sin, fallenness, redemption, soul/spirit, righteousness, purity, faith, belief, metanoia, sacrifice, etc. There are definite overlaps between Buddhism and Christianity, especially on the ethical/practical level, but beware of seeing these vague similarities and declaring them to be exact parallels.

In the meantime, watch for videos that subtly try to hoodwink you into thinking you're hearing 100% Buddhism when the message is, in fact, laced with non-Buddhist language and values. At the same time, don't dismiss the message as garbage just because you're aware that it's a jumble of ideas from different places and perspectives.

warring urges

My pedantry is getting the better of me. I'm glad I can see that now, while I'm still in the early stages of putting out this Substack grammar curriculum. Among my 17 or 18 subscribers (the numbers seem to be fluctuating) are people who really need help with language and people who know so much about grammar that they don't belong on my Substack at all because there's nothing I can teach them. So who is my core audience? To whom am I really teaching? I think I can safely ignore the super-astute subscribers; they'll get whatever they get out of reading my drivel. That leaves the people in the middle and at the bottom, so a practical question arises: what benefit do those people get from a curriculum in which each post/chapter is getting longer and more detailed?

Teachers usually learn that they have only a finite amount of time in which to impart a finite amount of information. To use one's pedagogical time wisely, it's sometimes necessary to prioritize the material, cut out whatever is least important, reduce the rest into small chunks, and dole out those small chunks at a steady trickle. What I'm doing right now, especially in my paid Substack (the section I call The Profound), is making increasingly massive posts because each topic is proving to be such a rabbit hole, and I want to explain everything as thoroughly as I can, leaving nothing out. This means a lot of thinking and research and typing-typing-typing. The felt obligation to overwrite is one of my worst urges.

If there's one bit of praise that I can give my former boss, it's that he was good about curbing my worst tendencies when it comes to prolixity. The ex-boss—a terse, blunt man—was an excellent editor in the "violently slash and burn" sense, cutting out anything he saw as irrelevant or pace-decreasing. Now, it's true that, on occasion, his extreme cuts in the early part of a textbook chapter would sometimes inadvertently affect later material in the chapter (and I would complain loudly whenever he did this), but I learned to appreciate the cuts all the same. Alas, I don't have my ex-boss with me now to rein me in when I start to go off the reservation and plunge into excess, so it's up to me to get my head out of my ass and realize when I'm going on too long. The best solution, I think, is to cut my "chapters" into much shorter, more easily digestible segments for learners to handle instead of blasting them with a fire hose's torrent of new information, then expecting them to take a quiz. (Of course, when they take a given quiz or test is entirely up to them; I can't control that, so they'll have to know the state of their own knowledge to decide whether they're ready for a quiz or test.)

I'm also beginning to wonder whether I should cut my output down to only one newsletter (of each type of Substack post) per week. This, too, would give learners more time to digest information (especially if it's a Friday newsletter that they can peruse at leisure over the weekend), and it would sure as hell cut down on my workload. But at the same time, having published at my current rate for a few weeks, there's a chance that some people might feel cheated if the newsletters suddenly go from 2X/week to 1X/week. Fortunately or unfortunately, I have only my two paying subscribers, so I can just put the question to them directly: Would paying $5/month for a once-a-week newsletter be worth your while? Do you think it'd be worth it for future paying subscribers?

The answer could be a tentative yes because there are other things I could publish in the meantime, like Notes, which are the Substack version of tweets but with no character limits. Back when I was on Twitter, I would often tweet up a storm of inanity.

So those are my warring urges: detail-conscious prolixity versus a desire to present material in a more easily digestible form. As always, I have a lot to think about.

not very bulletproof, but entertaining

how to get John McCrarey to eat Filipino food

what's for dinner? why, a camel's hump!

As the guy was cutting up what was essentially a giant, solid lump of fat, I found myself a bit grossed out by the cartilaginous, "fibrous tissue" noises that the hump was making as the chef's blade sliced through it. And I kept wondering, as the chef sliced the hump into smaller and smaller bits, just how small of a portion would be considered edible. I mean, the thing was pure fat. In the end, though, the final dish made sense. And in typical fashion for that part of the world, the meal involved a toroidal, pizza-ish bread painted with egg and sprinkled with black sesame seeds. That bread is great when it's fresh.

the Drinker finally reviews "KPop Demon Hunters"

I think that, with regard to this movie, it's become standard practice for all of us male critics of a certain age (or older) to utter some version of "My first impression was wrong" and/or "I am not the target demographic." The Drinker doesn't escape this vortex, either.

My own review is here.

ululate!

done too soon

We interrupt this moratorium on political news to announce that—unless this is some sort of massive prank—conservative thinker, writer, and activist Charlie Kirk has been shot and killed. This happened while I was sleeping, and it seems to be breaking news. I was never a close follower of Kirk and his various exploits (he founded Turning Point USA), but you don't have to go far on YouTube to find videos of Kirk engaging in endless debates with angry campus leftists to understand that he might end up in the crosshairs of a particularly loving and tolerant leftist. Kirk wasn't "on my bingo card," as they say, for death by assassination in 2025, but his death also isn't surprising. News is still coming out; as of right this moment, it appears the shooter is still at large (update: caught now, I think). Kirk knew the risk he was taking by giving the left a focus for its rage. It seems the right has lost one of its leading lights. The left, unable to assassinate Trump, must have concluded that Kirk would do in Trump’s place. Kirk was only 31. RIP and sympathies to Kirk's family.

ADDENDUM: I can say that, if the left was looking to damage its chances in the upcoming midterms, they could hardly have chosen a better strategy than to make a martyr of such a prominent rightie figure.

ADDENDUM 2: quotes from the Instapundit commentariat:

• Man assassinated for the crime of wanting to debate ideas.
• The most depressing part is seeing so many people across social media celebrating his murder. This is what they want, not just for Charlie Kirk, but for anyone that has the temerity to share his beliefs. And I have to wonder how many more people need to die before conservatives wake up and realize that the left has chosen violence, and they will not be satisfied with anything less.
• I asked a leftist who posted on Facebook that Kirk had it coming to give a specific example of Kirk's hate speech. After an extended back and forth with said leftist calling me names, it became clear that she had no idea of anything Kirk ever said.
• Remember, Bluesky was created because the political left said Elon Musk was allowing "hateful rhetoric" to spread on Twitter/X. (tweet)
• At his press conference, Governor Cox just reminded everyone that Utah has the death penalty.
• I hope this person lives to stand trial, is neither murdered nor given the chance to commit suicide. It is very important that his motives be publicly aired.
• Cooler heads need to prevail concerning this tragedy while we mourn. We need to know everything there is about the murderer, including anybody he is affiliated with who might have assisted in this.
• IMO, he was the absolute pinnacle of the American ideal of polite political discourse and discussion. He embodied the true goal we (both sides) should [aspire] to as the root of our first-amendment freedoms. Discuss anything and convince people while using facts and the truth, never violence or ill will. While it's easy to see how people could disagree with him, it is beyond me how anyone could think of it as hate speech or an incitement to violence.
• The media will describe the shooter as a MAGA NRA member in 3, 2, 1...

About that last item: a lot of Instapundit commenters are cynically wondering aloud whether the shooter was trans. Sigh.

ADDENDUM 3: Nick Freitas's thoughts.

ADDENDUM 4: As of 1:55 a.m. on September 12, Seoul time, it appears that Kirk's killer has not been caught (fog of war), but they have his rifle, prints, and some video footage of him escaping. Meanwhile, in other corners, talk of civil war is brewing. I'm a little more than halfway through Kurt Schlichter's American Apocalypse, which reads a lot like his The Attack, which I'd reviewed. In American Apocalypse, Schlichter paints a picture of a Civil War 2 that begins after both Trump and Vance are assassinated, and leftist Democrats seize power. The style is the same "interview" format used in The Attack (which was about massive terrorism on US soil), and the interviews all take place during Civil War 2's aftermath, after the conservatives have won and begun to restore the country. Both of these novels have the subtext of This could really happen, so be vigilant. I'm beginning to wonder that myself.

ADDENDUM 5: The killer has been caught—for real, this time. 

ADDENDUM 6: And despite a leftie commenter's attempt to gaslight otherwise, yes, Tyler Robinson was a leftie loon. See this post's (my post's) comment thread for my links.

ADDENDUM 7: The left is really pushing the lie that Tyler Robinson is a rightie. Watch:

a mindful 9/11 to you

I'm sad to say that we forgot a lot, almost right away. But we'll try to remember.

horsin' around

This is funny now; I bet it's even funnier when you're drunk.

if only I could do this

One of my discoveries, as I've been on this path of training, has been this: as long as I have frozen shoulder, some movements just aren't available to me. Sucks.

Nerd Cookies on Starbuck's final fate

Well, Starbuck obviously didn't undergo a mortal death like normal humans, so that kind of narrows our choices as to what happened to her.

are we feeling falafel-y today?

Agaaaaaaaaaaaiiin!!!!!

Basically, how the Frankenstein monster came to life.

glorious... until the final moments

This may hurt to watch.

travel companions

I did a 9K walk last night out to the Han River and back, with no stopping. It was a cool night for early September—20°C (68°F). I've long said that September is a hot month in South Korea until about its final week, but that's mostly during the day: nighttime temps go steadily down throughout the month, but normally not this early. Met two travel companions who are normally out around this time of year:

seen on the way out to the river

Around October, the female mantises will all be pregnant, with their hundreds of orange eggs swelling their abdomens.

seen on the way back

Joro spiders can come out as early as late August; this year, I saw few to none during my one or two August walks. But the spiders are out now.

Happy Birthday to my goddaughter

I wish you, my goddaughter Rachael, a most Happy Birthday. Eat a lot of cake, enjoy time with friends and family, and continued good luck with your life and career. Hugs.

old Finnish PSA

An old-but-helpful public-service announcement from Finland:

Be sure to click on "CC" for the English closed captions. Don't miss the excitement.

eggplant-pizza thingie

Is this good or just bleh?

AI voice on fighting for the first time

Just remember to stay calm.

weird dream

Strange dream, only some of which I remember.

I was following a cheerful cluster of people, one of whom may have been Gandalf, plus some other unrecognizable young folks. We were all on a wide, concrete or stone path—more of a sprawling boulevard than a narrow road. 

The entire group had pulled ahead of me, but I could still hear people talking and laughing as they walked. There was a huge, modern structure up ahead that looked like the impossibly high, rounded mouth of a gargantuan tunnel. 

The top of the "tunnel" was foggy and vague; the day itself was a strange mix of bright and foggy; maybe we were walking toward a bridge or something. The group reached the tunnel, which proved to be awesomely huge, and I saw everyone swing gently to the left as they talked and laughed, apparently heading toward one of the tunnel's walls. Maybe our destination was up somewhere in the wall itself...? 

The tunnel was gently curved in shape, and the group ahead of me started up the angled slope, up the wall. At first, the angle seemed manageable to me as I, too, started up the slope, still significantly behind the group. The group kept moving relentlessly upward; the wall curved toward vertical, and the people finally disappeared in the fog. 

Not knowing what else to do, I continued up the curve of the tunnel's wall as it got steeper and steeper. I had to start using my hands. My path had been diagonally forward and upward at first, but in following the group's trajectory, I had begun to ascend the curved wall in a more directly vertical way—straight up. But there was no destination to reach, and I no longer heard the sounds of the group ahead. It was just me and a nearly vertical wall, and I was beginning to wonder what I was doing so far up, and whether I would slip and fall.

Things got so bad, so vertical, that I eventually couldn't move forward any more, and I was stuck as a mocking breeze blew by me. I was convinced that the next shift in my position would send me falling back to the tunnel's bottom, now unfathomably far below. I knew I could be seriously injured or even killed. I clung there, muscles locked, unsure of what to do as the wind kept blowing around me. Then I woke up.

Damn, that was a weird dream.

wither Star Wars?

Will Star Wars reach into the past for more derivative and unoriginal stories, or will it reach toward the future to find new characters and new adventures?

best exercise for glucose levels?

Good explanations of scientific method here. Listen carefully.

TL;DR: you need to incorporate some form of resistance training into your day, along with your cardio. In fact, resistance work is better for lowering blood sugar than cardio is.

this is insane

I've seen this done with a table before, but never with a chair.

Sam does pescado zarandeado

Good morning! Wake up to some fish tacos.

Carl Sagan on "God"

they're up

Your opinion is all that matters to me!

About the question of exams with or without partial credit...

On Substack, I put up a Note (a bit like a tweet, but you can write more) and a poll, which no one has voted on yet. Interestingly, the poll got a "like," but no vote.

The Note is forever, but the poll will be up for a week. It disappears at midnight, the very end of September 15. I hope there will be at least 10 votes.

Joshua Weissman takes on peri peri chicken

I'd like to try making this someday.

if we shorten the quizzes to mini-quiz length...

a mini-quiz = only 5 questions

If we shorten the quizzes to mini-quiz length, I've got three quizzes ready to be turned into code and slapped up on the Test Central blog. There'll be an announcement tonight.