I wish US politicians had balls like these:
Saturday, April 27, 2024
"Florida Man vs. Entire SWAT Team"
He deserved death. All his bad life-choices led up to this moment.
"Star Trek: Picard," Season 1: review
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| L to R: Soji (Isa Briones), Elnor (Evan Evagora), Picard (Patrick Stewart), Jurati (Alison Pill) |
[WARNING: spoilers.]
I guess I'll have to state my unpopular opinion: "Star Trek: Picard," Season 1, wasn't quite the horrible disaster I'd thought it would be—had been led by certain critics to believe it would be. Don't get me wrong: the show was deeply flawed and laughably bad at several points (although I liked the opening-theme music!), and I didn't come away loving the first season at all, but there may have been some redeeming aspects that the conservative critics missed in their haste to lambaste the season. Here are some of my jumbled thoughts.
Because I'd refused to watch Seasons 1 and 2, my viewing of "Star Trek: Picard" began with Season 3, which critics from all over the spectrum raved about. Terry Matalas, writer/showrunner/producer, had been placed front and center, and he brought higher-quality writing, the general absence of a woke agenda, and plenty of memberberries to placate disgruntled fans who'd hated the previous two seasons. I'd heard about those earlier seasons from the usual critics I listen to: Chris Stuckmann (leftie); Jeremy Jahns (moderate leftie); Will Jordan (a.k.a., The Critical Drinker, rightie, not to mention a relentless mocker of Chris Stuckmann); and Gary Buechler (Nerdrotic, rightie). The rightie critics, in particular, hated how Picard had been reduced to a shell of his former self—impotent and constantly yelled at by younger, stronger female characters. A lot was made of Patrick Stewart's influence over the first two seasons: he wanted a Picard who was largely divorced from the prominent Star Trek tropes like the Enterprise and Starfleet. If you consider the course of Stewart's career, though, you can see how the dramatic choices made in Season 1 (the only season I've seen thus far) are consistent with Stewart's penchant for controversy (see my review of BBC's Hamlet here). By the time Season 3 of "Picard" rolled around, people were convinced that it was a good thing Stewart's vision for the show got dethroned. Now that I've seen Season 1 of "Picard," though... I can, at least somewhat, see what Stewart was striving for, and it wasn't all woke.
It's presumptuous to get inside Stewart's head, but I think the essential thing he wanted was to have a Picard who reflected Stewart's own aging process. In the show, Picard is in his nineties—old, feeble, and forced to rely on others when he wants to get anything done. This inevitably means that everyone around him is going to be younger, stronger, and possessed of greater agency. The Critical Drinker complained that this made Picard "a guest on his own show," and he's not wrong, but I was left thinking that, just maybe, that was the idea. Picard encounters a crisis, does what he can to assemble a team, then relies on the charity of others to move forward to his goal.
The show features some strong female characters, but it's not all girl-bosses. Among the most powerful females are Admiral Kirsten Clancy (Ann Magnuson), who comes off as a stone-cold bitch in the early episodes, but who turns out to be reasonable by the end; and Commodore Oh (Tamlyn Tomita), a Romulan spy with Vulcan training, under deep cover as Starfleet head of security. Raffaela Musiker (Michelle Hurd), who was serving under Picard when Picard resigned from Starfleet, has reasons to be bitter toward her former superior; she's also a recovering addict estranged from her son, who rejects her for having been a horrible parent when she was in the middle of her addiction. The main female in the plot is Soji (Isa Briones), one of a pair of twins, who isn't who she seems, but she's simultaneously vulnerable and powerful. One Romulan lieutenant named Narissa (Peyton List) is a bit of a girl-boss, but really, that's about it for what critic Adam Olinger hilariously calls the Stroooooong Female Leeeeeeeeeeads. Cyberneticist Dr. Agnes Jurati (Alison Pill—one of the funniest cast members in "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World") comes off as anything but strong—she's timid, flaky, and untrustworthy. We'll have more to say about her later. And there's no lack of strong male characters, either: Captain Chris Rios (Santiago Cabrera), pilot of a small vessel called La Sirena (a possible reference to the Sirens of Greek legend, or more generically to mermaids), is an obvious stand-in for Han Solo, and he's dealing with his own troubled past. Romulan warrior Elnor, who seems to have sprung from Tolkien's universe with his elfin appearance and martial ways, worships Picard and fights like a dervish while ritually imploring his opponents to "Choose to live." Picard eventually finds himself asking for the help of his old first officer, Will Riker, and while we first meet Riker as he's making a pizza, we see the original, tough Riker by the end of the season.
Although I don't think the show was quite as woke as the right-leaning critics made it out to be, it wasn't without its flaws, and many of those flaws ran deep. To understand the flaws, though, we need to take a look at the overall story of Season 1. A simple summary might not be possible because the season was overloaded with subplots, many of which twist together and converge, but not always smoothly or coherently.
As the season opens, several things happen at once. Admiral Picard, in his nineties, has retired to Château Picard in La Barre, France. There, he lives the life of a farmer and is assisted by two Romulans named Laris (Orla Brady, still fetching at 60-something) and Zhaban (Jamie McShane), as well as by his pet dog, Number One. Elsewhere, a young woman named Dahj (also Briones) is with her boyfriend when they are both attacked by assassins. The boyfriend is killed, but the attack awakens something in Dahj, who is able to kill the assassins. She finds herself plagued by visions of Picard, so she finds her way to him. We learn that, fourteen years earlier, an effort to rescue Romulans after their sun exploded was interrupted when, on Mars, a contingent of "synths" (androids) rose up and massacred their human masters. The synths were nothing like Lieutenant Commander Data; very little progress had been made in creating synths as complex as he was. The result of this attack was a permanent ban on all things synth-related: research, manufacture, everything. Since the synths had also been instrumental in the effort to rescue the Romulans from their solar system's disaster, that rescue effort was effectively halted, leaving an enraged Picard to threaten resignation. Starfleet called his bluff; Picard resigned, and his friend and subordinate Raffi (Hurd) was booted out of Starfleet because of her loyalty to Picard, who did nothing to help her. This left Raffi humiliated and embittered, and she went to live in isolation in the desert.
Picard meets Dahj and has ideas about what might be happening—all linked to Data, from whose neurons Dahj, an organic android, had been made. This was the one strand of advancement that had happened with research into synths. Picard visits the Earthbound branch of the Daystrom Institute, where cybernetic research continues, but only in simulation. Picard finds the head of the research team, Dr. Agnes Jurati, but while at Daystrom, the assassination team comes again for Dahj, and Picard watches helplessly as she fights and gets killed—all before Jurati has a chance to meet Dahj, who is indirectly the result of Jurati's work.
As the season unfolds, we discover the assassins are members of Romulan secret special forces, a branch called the Zhat Vash, who are religiously committed to the elimination of all synthetic life because of an ancient prophecy or vision, known as the Admonition, that foretells wholesale destruction should synthetic life ever be allowed to predominate. The Zhat Vash see themselves as holy warriors cleansing the galaxy of an abomination. Meanwhile, Jurati reveals that the nature of the "neuronic cloning" that gave rise to Dahj would generally result in a twinning process, which means Dahj had, or has, a sister. Like Dahj, this sister, named Soji—Dr. Soji Asha—believes herself to be human, and the Zhat Vash is aware of her existence. Soji works on a decommissioned Borg cube called the Artifact, rehabilitating former Borg drones by helping to remove their cybernetic parts, but a Romulan officer named Narek (Harry Treadaway) has been slyly insinuating himself into Soji's life, seducing her so as to glean certain information from her unconscious about a special planet where a colony of synths lives an isolated existence. Narek's sister Narissa will lead the attack on the synths once the world is discovered; Narissa also works with the Starfleet-embedded Commodore Oh, whose spy network is sinister and far-reaching.
Rejected by Admiral Clancy when he asks her for a ship, Picard reluctantly turns to the embittered Raffi to find him a pilot, and she points him to Chris Rios, captain of La Sirena. Jurati and Raffi end up joining Picard as he pieces together where to find Soji, the living twin sister of Dahj. Picard also discovers that Data had once painted a picture titled "Daughter," in which either Soji or Dahj is prominently featured, thus tightening the connection between Data and the two young women.
The rest of the season is about how Picard assembles his group, and what happens next: he recruits the help of Elnor, now a young and talented warrior who pledges himself to lost causes, and he travels to the planet Nepenthe where he meets a happily domesticated Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Troi (Marina Sirtis). They have a daughter named Kestra (Lulu Wilson), and they used to have a son named Thad, who died indirectly as a result of the ban on synths: a cure for a silicon-based virus was no longer possible because of the ban. Picard's travels also lead him to meet with ex-Borg Hugh (Jonathan del Arco) and Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan). Seven works as a "vigilante" for the Fenris Rangers, protecting people where Starfleet cannot. Hugh, meanwhile, is head of the operations on the Artifact to help undo the damage the Borg did in assimilating so many humanoid species. As all of this is happening—Picard's race to beat the Romulans to the synth's "home" planet, the machinations of the Romulan spies, a series of revelations about some of the main characters' pasts—Picard has to deal with the fact that a brain anomaly has left him terminally ill. Can he complete his mission to rescue the synths from destruction in time?
It's a dizzying number of plot strands to cover, and I haven't mentioned half of them. "Picard," Season 1, definitely bites off more than it can chew, and I think that, more than any perceived wokeness, is one of its major flaws. I also think the quality of the show's writing was both inconsistent and, at times, illogical. Agnes Jurati, for example, turns out to be a betrayer who murders a former lover and says nothing, for a long time, about having ingested a Romulan tracking device (it dissolves in the blood) that allows Narek to track La Sirena even when Rios's ship enters a Borg transwarp conduit to travel enormous distances in a short time. Jurati also falls for Captain Rios—a romantic subplot that both came out of nowhere and led nowhere. I also don't understand how, after Jurati's murder of her mentor and lover, and her betrayal of the Sirena's crew and passengers by not mentioning the tracking device, everyone was able to forgive Jurati and let her continue on with them in their adventure. Rios himself was something of a poorly written mixed bag as well; falling for someone like Jurati struck me as very out of character. But I could see some potential in his character; it just never got realized by the end of the season.
At the same time, other characters struck me as both richly dimensional and well written. Raffi may be the best example of this. A totally new character never once seen in "The Next Generation," Raffi has history with Picard, and that's partly thanks to how old Picard is. She's strong but flawed: a horrible mom rejected by her son, who is married and about to become a father. She's trying to put the pieces of her life back together, but she's angry at Picard for how things went down during the botched rescue of the Romulans. The only false note for Raffi is something that is hinted at in the middle of the season but comes to fruition only in the season's final episode: it turns out she's bisexual and attracted to Seven of Nine (who is also bisexual, considering her heterosexual romances over the course of "Star Trek: Discovery"). It's not that I think the bisexuality is icky: it just came out of nowhere, a lot like the Rios/Jurati romance. But maybe Season 2, which I have yet to watch, will flesh this out a bit more. Picard himself is fairly well written even if we're given a horrifying glimpse, in Episode 1, of just how bad Patrick Stewart's spoken French is (and there's a hint that Picard did not grow up speaking much French). Picard is still good at giving inspiring speeches and having philosophical moments; he remains a thinker—perhaps even more so now that he's in his nineties and unable to move about as spryly as he once did.
One big story element that makes me both more and less forgiving of the series is how it incorporates ideas from Isaac Asimov's fictional universe. I've read all of Asimov's Foundation series, and even though I never touched his Robot series, I've been aware for a long time that the two stories were meant to converge eventually. Season 1 of "Picard" hints at something like this, and it's a grandiose idea: by the time we learn about the Admonition, we're made aware that there are intelligent, synthetic beings, godlike in stature, that are looking out for all synthetic life, wherever it may be found. That idea in itself is fascinating, and I wish Season 1 had pushed more in that magnificent direction: new life forms, and new civilizations stretching the limits of human imagination. But—and this is what makes me feel less forgiving of the season—the final episode gets us to a point where the synths on their "home" planet have opened a portal to these greater beings, to summon them and stamp out organic life, and when we get a quick glimpse of what these beings look like... all we see are these armored appendages reminiscent of both angry centipedes and Dr. Octopus's AI robots arms, all flailing about—right as the portal closes. Basically, "Picard" takes a wonderful Asimovian idea—that robotic life might actually predate and supersede organic life—and turns it into a cheap horror-movie special effect. This, too, is a much worse sin than any wokeness in the season.
There was also one major bit of utter sci-fi ridiculousness: the concept of an octonary, a "planetary system with eight component stars." Such arrangements rarely occur naturally, and the Romulans have come to view one particular octonary as a warning: this octonary contains a planet on which can be found the site where the Admonition—foretelling the destruction of organic life—can be experienced. The idea that supreme alien beings would drag together stars and planets in such a unique shape merely to serve as a warning struck me, while I watched the show, as utterly absurd. How would another alien race ever come to the conclusion that the octonary was a warning?
And here's the biggest spoiler of them all: late in the season, when the motley crew of La Sirena finds the synth planet Coppelius, Picard is able to avert disaster with help from Will Riker and a fleet of Federation vessels, but the old admiral finally succumbs to his terminal illness and dies. Luckily for him, it was teased, an episode or two before his death, that the residents of Coppelius had perfected the art of transferring consciousness to "golems," i.e., synth versions of human bodies. So Picard's consciousness is "rescued" from his human body and implanted in a golem that has been made to model Picard's ninety-some-year-old body in every particular: no super strength, no youthful appearance, nothing. This was done to give Picard a chance to get used to the new body without receiving too great of a shock. Honestly, I'm not sure how I felt about this. The downloading and uploading of consciousness brings up many of the same philosophical issues associated with transporter technology: has a copy been created, or was something real and indestructible carried over from one bodily manifestation to another? This new "golem" Picard has all of the previous Picard's memories, but is the golem "ensouled" with the previous Picard's consciousness? Is this the same Picard in a meaningful way, or are we all simply going to pretend he/it is?
Overall, I didn't think Season 1 of "Picard" was bad in the way that rightie critics thought it was bad: it was bad for some woke-related reasons, yes, but more fundamentally for totally different reasons. We were almost given a glimpse of something that could have been transcendent—the sort of transcendence that the series finale of "The Next Generation" succeeded at doing—and were instead left with stale narrative crumbs and a feeling of deep frustration. At the same time, the season showed brief moments of potential brilliance even as it deconstructed the tropes that made us love the older TV series. So I finished Season 1 of "Picard" feeling battered and at least a little betrayed, but I can't quite convince myself the season was totally irredeemable. All I can say is: "Watch at your own risk."
And now, I move on to Season 2, which I fear is going to be much, much worse: it uses time travel and supposedly takes aim at Trump-era immigration policy.
Friday, April 26, 2024
poll discussion from 2 weeks ago
The political weather is always changing. By that standard, this news is on the verge of becoming stale:
the drawdown of my meds
Here's an update. I've just done the legwork of comparing the meds I received on April 11 and the meds I received today, on April 26. The doc did indeed reduce some dosages: 3 out of 8 of meds went from "take twice a day" to "take once a day"—not much of a drawdown, but not nothing, either. Better news: one blood-sugar med was removed entirely. All in all, I still have 8 types of pills to take per day, but the raw number of pills has gone down from 16 to just 10, which is close to the 8 pills a day I used to take. Alas, I'm still doing insulin injections, but if I stay ruthlessly low-carb from now on, I might wean myself off that, too. Per what the doc had said, the meds may get further reduced in a few months: we have to see how well I perform in the meantime. What I'm doing now seems to be working: Newcastle plus walking. I might also do the occasional one- or two-day fast to kickstart even more weight loss, but with my blood-pressure meds still being a huge component, I don't know if I should fast beyond 48 hours—not until my meds are reduced further.
back from the horse spittle
I got back from the hospital earlier than I thought I would. I guess it was a slow day (or there were no-shows) because I got bumped from a 4:50 p.m. appointment to a 4:15 appointment. I got to Samsung Hospital two hours beforehand, like a good little boy, and immediately saw they'd rearranged everything—nothing was where it had been three years earlier: the diabetes center had moved; the blood-work center was in a different spot, and everywhere I went, I had to ask directions. My paperwork was only partially helpful, basically telling me what building and what floor to go to, but beyond that, I had to talk to staffers for the details.
The day began with three tests, and one nurse suggested I do them in a different order from what was on the paper, so I did my blood sample first, then the chest x-ray, then the electrocardiogram. These tests take time to process, hence the two-hours-early arrival time. Lastly, there was the consult, which occurred in Room 8 of the cardio wing. I was done with all of my tests by 2:30 p.m., so I shuffled over to the cardio wing to wait for my 4:50 consult. Once I got there, I was told there was one last thing to do, but I'd expected it: my BP. There were several BP stations in the front section of the cardio wing; I scanned my patient number at one of them, sat down, hit "start," and let the machine do its thing. I saw with grim satisfaction that, even though these machines often seem to inflate my BP numbers, I was still slightly below normal thanks to the enormous amounts of meds I've been taking. It seems that nothing short of a good pounding by Thor's hammer is enough to tamp my BP down.
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I'm the "KIM" who's next in line. They never write the name in Korean. |
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| Looking and feeling woozy from taking meds last night and then fasting from yesterday to this appointment. |
When Dr. Park saw me, she commented that my heart condition had "stabilized," but that I was still on the weak side. I told her about my meds and my wooziness; I'm not sure I completely understood her reply, but it sounded as though she were saying she'd lower the meds a bit this time around, but lowering them further would require a few months' more time to see what progress I'm making. If, around July, I'm still improving, then she'll lower the meds even more. We talked a bit about exercise and chest pain, and she basically said to take it easy. Key take-away concepts from the consult were "stabilized," "improved," and "still needs improvement." And after only five minutes, I was done.
Once I left Samsung, my first priority—after paying for tests and consults and then hunting down my meds at the local pharmacy (more money out the window)—was to get some food into me. I've done that, and I feel a bit better now, but I'll likely be resting for the rest of today. My next appointment, for both cardio and diabetes, is in about a month (28 days), and those consults are rather spread apart on the schedule: one at 11:10 a.m., and one at 5:20 p.m. I'll once again have to be at the hospital two hours early to run the same three tests I had today. This next appointment is on May 24, a Friday, so I won't be at work at all on that day. I'm going to have to work some weekends to make up for these absences. Not fun.
...and while you're at it, prosecute Jon Stewart
But you know they won't. The door only swings one way.
morning numbers
blood sugar: 108 (thanks to fasting plus walking)
BP: 104/63 (sure to be way higher at the hospital, especially as the meds wear off)
weight: 113 kg (again, fasting)
pulse: 65 or 73 (BP cuff or oximeter; they always give different numbers)
pulse-ox: 99
estimated A1c since 4/15: 7.14
The A1c number is in no way accurate: at the hospital, when they do the blood work, it'll be much higher because A1c is a three-month average. The date of April 15 just happens to be when I started measuring my numbers in earnest again. Last time I had my A1c officially checked, I was at 10.2, which is scarily high (under 5.5 is ideal for normies; I've never been that low). In a few months, though, I ought to be in the 5 or 6 range.
So far this morning, I'm not feeling faint or woozy, so I should be able to survive into the afternoon with no problems. I'd been worried about taking my meds on an empty stomach, but truth be told, my stomach wasn't entirely empty: before midnight last night, I indulged in a mug of coffee with a ton of cream and some artificial sweetener.* Despite the sweetener and its BS/insulin spikes, I woke up to a blood-sugar reading of 108, which is a major step down from previous numbers.** That's definitely because I've started walking again. For the moment, these are relatively short walks of about two hours. At my currently slow speed, that's not even quite 8K in terms of distance. I just walk out to the Han River and back to my place. This weekend, I'll do my first long walk, maybe down to Bundang (18K).
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*The hospital said I needed to fast nine hours before coming. My appointment today is at 4:50 p.m., so I need to be at the hospital two hours earlier, i.e., by 2:50 p.m. I've had nothing since that coffee, so by 2:50 p.m. today, I'll have fasted at least 14 hours—more than enough time by hospital standards.
**From April 15:
165 (4/15, then skipped a few days)
178 (4/18)190 (4/19)
175 (4/20)
157 (4/21)
163 (4/22)
152 (4/23)
140 (4/24)
155 (4/25)
108 (4/26)
See the sudden drop at the end? That's fasting plus walking. I'll start eating again later today, so the number will go back up, but as you see from 4/15 to 4/25, there is a slight downward trend from 165 to 155. That's the important trend to note amidst all the fluctuations.
Matt Walsh vs. Greg Abbott
Texas governor Greg Abbott has a new executive order targeting campus antisemitism:
faces in the concrete
Demonic "faces" seen during my walk Thursday night. Some don't look like faces at all, so you'll have to use your imagination to see anything. Think of the less human "faces" as the result of having lost fights, with some or most facial features having been mangled or ripped off. Enjoy the gallery.
Thursday, April 25, 2024
Thursday-night walk
Same route as before, and I did manage to do one fairly puny staircase of 30-40 steps. No chest pains at all tonight. I guess all I needed was to fast.
Doctor's appointment tomorrow afternoon, 4:50 p.m. I have to be there two hours early for blood work, an x-ray, etc. The boss told me not to bother coming in to work.
More hours to make up later.
your "old man yells at cloud" moment
Let him have his crotchety-old-man rant:
We've talked about one of those idiots before. Our ranter has a point.
last night's walk, tomorrow's appointment
Last night, I walked from work to the Han River, then home—same route I'd walked the other day. I'd planned to include some creekside staircase work, but as the walk started out, I began experiencing some minor chest pains, and that was enough to warn me away from the stairs. After about ten or twenty minutes of walking, though, the chest pains disappeared, and the rest of the walk went fine. I recall feeling resentful, as if the hospital had done something to me, making my recovery this time slower than it had been after my stroke. Honestly, I'm still not quite sure of the nature of what afflicts me. Simply saying "heart failure" doesn't tell me much; the term is just a label covering a spectrum of symptoms and conditions.
I think part of my resentment had to do with the fact that the chest pains' appearance and disappearance followed the same pattern as from before I'd been hospitalized. I'd thought the hospital treatment and the new meds might do something to break the pattern, but apparently not. So I'm stuck in some sort of medical samsara.
Today's a fasting day: my first follow-up appointment at the hospital is tomorrow, and my paperwork says I have to fast for at least nine hours before arriving. To my delight, I saw that my weight had gone down when I weighed myself this morning: I'd dropped from 115.5 kg to 114 kg. That's undoubtedly thanks to walking yesterday. Since I'm fasting and walking today, I expect to drop another kilo. It's all liquid weight, of course, but as long as the trend keeps going down, then I don't mind. My only worry is that I might get woozy tomorrow if I go too long without food, and the appointment is at 4:50 p.m. I can say that taking meds at night has been a good strategy thus far: when I wake up in the morning, I'm not woozy at all. Then again, I do have a diet smoothie for breakfast after waking up and recording my numbers. Tomorrow, my worry is there will be no breaking of the fast until much later in the day. I guess we'll see how it goes.
Here's hoping for a chest-pain-free walk tonight. And maybe some stair work.
UPDATE: the message with my QR code finally arrived. I was getting worried.
some Euro news with the burly Michael Heaver
Poland in revolt:
The Reform UK populist surge:
Tough times in Holland:
what if we made everything gay?
The people I can't stand are the ones who can never see past their own demographic. As I'd ranted before, they start their sentences with, "As a [demographic]..." and can only see the world in those blinkered terms. Women who go into feminism studies, black folks who go into African-American studies, Asians who go into Asian studies—the list of insufferables goes on. Ideally, these people would all be rounded up and burned with flamethrowers, but as long as the twisted ideas live on, more such people will arise like an unending wave of zombies.
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
a slew from PJW
France's pre-Olympics "social cleansing":
News from a while back—PJW on NYC women getting slugged:
Following up on the above NYC problem:
The UAE and the recent wrath of God... or was this man-made?
Possibly repeated post: woke French actress won't charge person who ransacked her home:
bit of news
The Kakao message confirming my Friday appointment came in, so I'm now waiting for a second message containing my hospital-pass QR code and, I hope, a note as to whether to be there 2 hours in advance to get my blood work done before I see the doc. If Friday turns out not to be a blood-work day, I might not have to fast tomorrow. But we'll see. Everything often happens at the last minute around here.
2 from Styx
"SCOTUS: Where DEI Goes to Die":
"The Uniparty's Obsession with Gagging Trump is Clearly Backfiring":
wut ah it deez daze
Ah, the irony.
I despise the Paris Baguette bakery chain for its poorly executed baguettes, but just like three years ago, the chain will once again be my savior, providing me the mostly iceberg-lettuce salads that will help me get my weight down: the opposite of calorie-dense.
If you look carefully, though, you might see some additions: bacon crumbles, bleu or Gorgonzola cheese, raisins, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, and mandarin oranges. That latter ingredient is carby, and so are the raisins, but in terms of overall volume, those two ingredients don't amount to much.
Tonight, I'll be doing some creekside walking and stair work, then tomorrow, I have to fast for my Friday appointment. Still no text from the hospital. Maybe it'll come tonight or tomorrow.
found (thanks, Paul)
Click to enlarge:
No guarantees. When someone as gorgeous and healthy-seeming as the Duchess of Windsor can end up with cancer, no one is safe. You can live to 100 while smoking cigars and drinking scotch like George Burns; you can die of COVID complications in your 70s like Meat Loaf; you can end up with pancreatic cancer like Patrick Swayze (57!) and God knows how many other celebrities... ain't no guarantees.
some numbers
My weight remains about the same, but that's partly because I haven't been walking. My blood pressure remains low, and that's entirely thanks to the meds. Many of my meds are devoted to BP; the docs really piled them on to get those numbers down, and the numbers are definitely down—ruthlessly so. Blood sugar is coming down, albeit slowly.
I have my first follow-up appointment at the hospital this coming Friday. Seems like old times.* My next appointment, after this week's session, is in late May. I assume the appointments after this will be spread out more on the calendar.
April 15, 2024 numbers
blood sugar: 165 (not tragic if you're diabetic, but ideally under 99 for normies)
BP: 127/89
weight: 116 kg
pulse: 74
blood sugar: 165 (not tragic if you're diabetic, but ideally under 99 for normies)
BP: 127/89
weight: 116 kg
pulse: 74
April 24, 2024 numbers
blood sugar: 140 (creeping down)
BP: 116/75
weight: 115.5 kg (not budging for the moment)
pulse: 61
BP and pulse are always elevated when I go to the hospital—a fact I have to explain and reexplain to the diabetes doc whenever I go there. Clinics and hospitals stress me out on an unconscious level, I guess, and it doesn't matter whether I use breathing/concentration techniques. I've tried so many. No dice.
Side note: I'm looking into buying a home-use A1c meter. A1c is a three-month average of your blood sugar, and thus a much better indication of trend lines than a daily blood-sugar read: your daily number will vary hour by hour; all those fluctuations make it inaccurate. (I've discovered that there are fasting-glucose convert-to-A1c websites out there—even a mathematical formula that you can use—if all you have are fasting-glucose numbers. Still discovering new resources even after all these years.)
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*But I haven't gotten my Kakao message from the hospital that confirms the appointment and gives me my QR-code pass to allow me to enter the hospital. When I left the hospital a few weeks ago, I did get an initial confirmation message about the May 24 appointment. We'll see, in a day or two, whether the hospital forgot about this coming Friday's session. I'm tempted to let it slide, but I'm about to run out of some meds.
trying to find a cartoon
I had this conversation with ChatGPT:
You: Can you tell me what year Berke Breathed drew a cartoon (I can't remember whether it was "Bloom County" or "Outland") in which a jogger gets hit by a meteor after bragging about his healthy habit of jogging? And to whom was the jogger talking? Opus the penguin or Steve Dallas?
ChatGPT: That cartoon you're referring to is from "Bloom County." It was drawn by Berke Breathed and was published on October 5, 1986. In the cartoon, the jogger who gets hit by the meteor was boasting about his jogging habit to Steve Dallas, not Opus the penguin. It's one of the memorable moments from the strip, highlighting the quirky humor and social commentary characteristic of Breathed's work.
I'm still looking for the cartoon. If you find it, please link it to me, and please tell me how you found it. I tried a lot of search strings that I thought were clever.
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
should the right forgive Tulsi Gabbard for her former 2A rhetoric?
Tulsi Gabbard changed on many issues once she realized it was time to leave the Democrat party (she's an independent now). One major area of change was her stance on guns. While I don't think she's totally there yet, she now seems to have a clearer understanding about the left's desire to grab guns and severely restrict gun usage, and she sounds almost reformed. Do we trust her? Do we forgive her? The following video explores that question.
huff and puff
I've been a lazy shit in terms of walking and staircase work, but I do plan on doing both some walking and some stairs work tomorrow. We've got rain forecast through noon; that'll doubtless change. But after tomorrow, it seems the April showers will be done, and we'll soon be into the May flowers phase of spring, which is already starting to feel like summer. That means a switch back to nighttime walking... but I'm not sure I want to walk at night and do the apartment stairs in the early morning. I'd rather do the creekside stairs than the apartment stairs since I can do both—walk and stairs—at night and both along the same route (Yangjae Creek), killing two birds with one stone, and maybe occasionally doing the apartment stairs just to check on my pulmonary progress. No matter—I'll work things out somehow.
Tonight, meanwhile, more of "Picard," Season 1. I'm more than halfway through.
Vivek on public service
Vivek: "You should not be able to profit (above your salary) as a public servant."
Got that, Nancy Pelosi and all the rest of you dirty, insider-trading motherfuckers? This is a problem at the core of both major parties. How many of these people would be interested in politics if these and other benefits didn't exist?* What if politicians really did live lives of service, not rule? Hell, Vivek himself would be affected by this worldview.
__________
*Donald Trump may be one of the few politicians whose net worth went down while he was in office. Again, a good lesson for bottom-feeders like Nancy Pelosi, Joetato, et al.
this is not reassuring
For those of us mired in the hospital system, this isn't comforting at all, but it dovetails with my own suspicions:
chef vs. the 1500-year-old recipe
Measurements are unclear, so there's a lot of guesswork. The goal is to make a primordial lasagna. Can Chef James do it, or will he crash and burn?
Monday, April 22, 2024
how many ways into John Mac's home?
John,
I have questions. This was the thing that confused me when I saw your photo and caption: am I looking at one home or two? If it's only one home, does it have two entrances, upper and lower? Or am I looking at two homes with two separate entrances?
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| Sorry about the really shitty arrows. |
my new favorite thing
This just might be my new favorite thing. I love this guy's hilariously over-the-top cooking videos. He definitely has a Texan's sense of proportion.
gaslighting and performance comparisons
Here's a chart based on recent data:
 |
| no source given, but a similar source is the Wilson Group, Bureau of Labor Statistics, from last year |
The above chart comes from this video, which argues we're being gaslit about how good things are, how lovely everything is, and how bad the previous administration was:
bet on the chromosomal male
Three weeks earlier, I'd put up swimmer Riley Gaines's tweet about this:
As I've said many times before, I see no moral problem with someone's having a bone-deep conviction that s/he belongs in a different body. If anything, I salute the sheer cojones it takes to want to undergo surgical alteration and hormone treatment in pursuit of that vision. But as I've also said, I have a moral problem with the athletes who go beyond that simple desire to wanting to compete with biological women in track and field, MMA, weightlifting, etc. Biological males shouldn't be allowed to win prizes meant for biological females. A biological male in the MMA octagon should never, ever be allowed to pound on a biological female. Women deserve their competitive spaces. For trans people, start a damn trans league.
Here's Pierre Poilievre's perspective.
Sunday, April 21, 2024
breaking the culinary rules! (redux)
Are these culinary rules legit to you, or do you break them?
1. "Always sift dry ingredients."
2. "Don't cook steak from fridge cold." (i.e., from fridge-cold temperatures)
3. "Never cook with cheap wine."
4. "Don't mix salt into burger-patty mixture."
I can give you my answers:
1. I think sifting is way overrated. I do understand that it can affect the perceived volume of a powdery substance like flour (sifted flour looks fluffier), which is why it's better to measure powders by weight (e.g., grams) and not by volume (e.g., milliliters, cups, etc). But I measure ruthlessly by weight where I can, so that's not an issue. Does not sifting result in lumps? Well, in some cases, as when you're making pancakes, lumps in the batter are actually considered a good thing. In other cases, if you use a Chef John rule like Hot roux, cold milk, no lumps, you don't even have to worry about lumps. And then there's just the idea that you can mix your dry ingredients thoroughly enough to achieve a no-lump mixture. So if the point of sifting is to avoid lumps, I'm here to say that, 9 times out of 10, you're not going to get lumps, anyway.
2. I'm not enough of a steak connoisseur to say, and ever since I discovered the fire-and-forget ease of sous-vide cooking, the question of fridge temp is irrelevant to me.
3. I use cheap wine with my beef burgundy all the time. Except for that one time. That said, I do subscribe to the Use a wine you would drink rule, whether the wine is cheap or not.
4. I've always found this to be absurd. Season it all up from the beginning, for God's sake. Don't listen to Babish; listen to Gordon Ramsay.
Here's Sorted Food, experimentally breaking rules to see the results:
Ave, Dr. Gilleland!
Dr. Mike Gilleland puts up a quote about why people balk at learning languages. My reaction was partly "Guilty as charged" (regarding my middling Korean) and "I know assholes like that" (regarding those I know who never get beyond pidgin level).
Partial quote:
Friends sometimes ask me why I like learning new languages. I always feel like asking them why they do not like learning new languages, but I never do. For one thing, it would be too much like asking a tone-deaf man why he does not care for Debussy. For another, I know that many of them are actually afraid, and it would be embarrassing to expose their fear. They are timid about sounding like fools or small children while they are learning, and they are reluctant to remold their thinking and their habits of speech. I sympathize with this. Every human being has some inhibitions about learning certain new activities: skiing or dancing, diving or acting, public speaking or private thinking, all repel some of us. Then again, some people of a conservative bent believe subconsciously that there is only one language, their own; and that all others are silly monkey-talk not worth learning. They will not make the effort, any more than they would learn to bark and mew because they had a dog and a cat.
from Vivek
Respond to the Great Reset with the Great Uprising:
How to get term limits:
Good money after bad:
"Two-tiered, Third-world Justice System":
On the need for debates:
meds at night: a winning strategy?
I tested my numbers just now, and the strategy of taking my meds at night seems, at least for now, to be paying off: my weight is down from 115.5 to 114.5 kg; blood pressure is 116/75 (slightly better than the classic 120/80 without being worrisome); pulse-ox is 98%; and finally, fasting glucose is 157, per the downward trend going from 190-something to 170-something to, now, 150-something. So this is all good news, and I might not have anything to report to the doc this coming Friday. Then again, I still don't enjoy the quantity of medicine I'm taking, so I might lobby to have my meds reduced. Mentioning faintness might help my case. Will I get my way? Only the Shadow knows.
the Rock and buyer's remorse
Some guess that Dwayne has political ambitions of his own, hence the return to the center:
Then there's this:
is English just a form of French?
In recent news, a French scholar declared that English is merely badly pronounced French. But is the reality really that simple? Despite the numerous Latinate words, English is usually classified as a Germanic language. The following video takes a reasonable stance on the issue:
the hate-watching has begun!
I just watched the first episode of Season 1 of "Star Trek: Picard." I didn't think the episode was all that bad, to tell you the truth. It didn't introduce all of the main characters in the series quite yet, but it laid out the basic premise and seemed to have a lot of potential. I assume the rest of Season 1 and all of Season 2 will drop the ball, though, so I'm bracing for impact. I'll be sure to write a review once I've made it through the first two seasons. I can say, though, that I now understand one of the main complaints about "Picard," Season 3: the Borg are apparently front and center in this story. They seem to dominate each season's storyline, and Episode 1 of Season 1 ends with a shot of what appears to be an abandoned and refurbished Borg cube being used as a research facility.
Expect a review in a few weeks.
Saturday, April 20, 2024
BP meds at night?
Regarding whether to take blood-pressure meds at night,
...the Mayo Clinic says:
In the past, many doctors recommended taking blood pressure medication at night because heart attacks happen most often in the early morning hours. However, since blood pressure typically drops at night in people with normal and high levels, it is unnecessary to drop it further.
...and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) say:
This is a robust study that shows that people who take their blood pressure medication at night have better blood pressure control and have reduced risk of a cardiovascular event such as a stroke or heart attack.
I was woozy and feeling faint for most of Friday morning and afternoon after taking my meds, which I think might need to be dialed down. It's possible I'm doing something wrong in terms of timing, but I think it's also likely that, in terms of BP meds, I'm ingesting too much. It's not blood sugar: my BS readings are still high but slowly coming down. It's definitely BP, which was way low (87/67) early Friday afternoon. So, in exploring the logic of the situation, I started wondering about taking my meds at night. The Mayo Clinic's advice, above, makes it seem as if I might fall into a coma if I'm not careful, whereas the NIH's advice suggests there are benefits to switching to a nocturnal schedule. Obviously, I need to read more, but my own thinking is that I'm less of a mess if I take my meds after eating, and since my roughly 16/8 intermittent-fasting schedule (Newcastle-diet version) skews toward the late end of the day, there'll be food in my stomach* by the time I take my meds at night. We'll see how things are in a few days.
Note: this wouldn't even be a consideration were it not for the fact that the number of pills I now take has more than doubled. Before, when I had only six or eight pills (only!), I had no problem taking them in the morning, in the evening, or whenever. My body mass protected me. Now, though, with so many drugs coursing through my system, I can no longer rely on my body mass to blunt the drugs' effects. I also felt that my body needed a break from the onslaught, so I skipped my insulin and pills today and will restart tonight. No wooziness today at all.
__________
*I'd felt a bit woozy before Friday, but the moment I ate something, the brain-fog and vertigo lifted, and I felt somewhat better. Food helps.
UPDATE: I'm not asleep yet, but I took my meds tonight, and I'll be curious to see my numbers in the morning. I can already tell that taking meds at night is the way to go. With a more or less full stomach, I'm not suffering any wooziness whatsoever, and the meds, which have to fight through the food, aren't hitting my body with a sledgehammer. Hey, good call, Kevin!
a volley from Chris Chappell
Can illegals bear arms?
The Deep State doesn't exist. The Deep State is cool!
The sorry state of the nation:
A question already asked many times:
Squatters:
Disney's civil war:
Why it doesn't pay to be soft on crime:
the converts
"How are there still people who think the person running this country is doing a great job?"
"The precise moment I was no longer a Democrat":
What this second guy says how Obamacare fucked him is important.
girl bosses are at least partly a fantasy
Watch a woman's SWAT team get its ass kicked in competition. As before, this isn't to gloat about how guys are "better" than women, but rather to make a point that some feminists just aren't getting regarding the physical differences between trained men and trained women:
Friday, April 19, 2024
when you ban something and end up causing more problems
Stupid laws and bans originate in emotion and don't benefit from deep, long-term thinking:
a few from Doug
Michelle Obama won't be running for office and attempting to "save" the US:
The prospect of suing Letitia James:
When the leftie meets someone with facts at his command:
Joy Behar used to love Trump:
Democrat-on-Democrat rhetoric:
"Satanic agenda":
Trump and Mike Johnson to propose a bill to prevent non-citizen voting in federal elections:
the "world's hardest muscle-up"
A muscle-up is an exercise that begins as a pull-up, then turns into the pushing component of a dip. Here's a YouTube Short on a cruel variant of the muscle-up—one in which you have to stop and freeze at various points during the movement. This was painful to watch.
spot the error!
Seen at ROK Drop:
I wonder if he volunteered for this unit or the ROK military put him in it for publicity reasons?
Highlight the space between the brackets to see the explanation.
[If a sentence begins with "I wonder if/whether..." or "He asked if/whether...", it's making a statement via indirect discourse, not asking a question.
WRONG: I wonder where he went?
RIGHT: I wonder where he went.
RIGHT: I wonder where he went.
When you say "I wonder," you're declaring your mental state.
And what's "indirect discourse"? It's when an utterance is embedded in another utterance. "Direct discourse" involves direct quotes. Here are some examples:
DIRECT: He said, "Sit down."
DIRECT: She wondered, "Would the party be fun?"
DIRECT: He asked, "Are you Sarah Connor?"
DIRECT: She wondered, "Would the party be fun?"
DIRECT: He asked, "Are you Sarah Connor?"
DIRECT: "Stay away from that dildo," he advised.
INDIRECT: He told her to sit down.
INDIRECT: She wondered if/whether the party would be fun.
INDIRECT: He asked if/whether she was Sarah Connor.
INDIRECT: He advised her to stay away from that dildo.]
A deeper dive on the if/whether question is here.
PJW on a host of topics
Violent crime by whom? They can't quite bring themselves to say it.
OJ Simpson and lingering racial politics:
The sex offender who couldn't be punished:
Yeesh... Lizzo:
Scottish hate-crime bill a "shit-show":
the painfully slow walk
Some walk stats for my Thursday-night stroll:
 |
| Starting in Daechi, finishing at Daecheong Station. |
 |
| I wish the chart showed average speed, not pace. |
This was a two-hour creekside walk (no stairs) at about a 3.94-kph speed. Not even 4 kilometers per hour: pretty slow. But this is only my first week back from my second trip to the hospital, so I'll cut myself a little slack.
As with the Wednesday-night walk, my heart and breathing were both fine. The activity burned almost an extra 800 calories, and my pedometer says I burned 1100 calories for the entire day (over and above my 1800 calories for basal metabolic rate). 2900-ish calories burned can't be bad. And—I forgot to factor in the food I ingested. On the Newcastle diet, that comes to about 800 calories, so really, it's a 2100-calorie deficit per day. That's 14,700 calories per week, or 4.2 pounds of fat (1.9 kg) lost per week. I actually doubt I'll lose that much, mainly because I'm likely to ingest more than 800 calories per day. But I'll lose at least a pound or so a week. We'll see how I am when I do a weigh-in a few days.
And hey—my shoulders didn't feel quite so flabby during tonight's walk, either. The walking helps. It reminds my body what I can do, smooths out the kinks.
I forgot to write, yesterday, about all the frogs ribbiting along the trail. Must be mating season. The frogs were ribbiting lustily tonight as well. My Thursday-night route took me out toward the Han River; I stopped and turned around once I reached the confluence of the Tan Creek and the Han. There's more construction going on along the last kilometer of the Tan before the confluence; construction workers waved us bikers and walkers and joggers along a prescribed path with their stubby, lightsaber-like flashlights.
This is the perfect moment to be out and walking at night: the air is pleasantly cool without the bite of winter, but it's not as warm as it's going to get once it's late spring. As I mentioned before, I might restart my stairs work this weekend; we'll see. But it's nice to know that life is realigning itself into something approaching normalcy again.
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