Brian does pan sauces

When he was here in 2024, my buddy Mike made a nice steak pan sauce.

Cry Havoc and Gone Tomorrow: a two-fer review

Former Navy SEAL sniper Jack Carr is the author of the Terminal List series of novels, the first book of which got made into a successful Amazon streaming series starring Chris Pratt. Carr's novels, of which there are now eight, are: The Terminal List (2018), True Believer (2019), Savage Son (2020), The Devil's Hand (2021), In the Blood (2022), Only the Dead (2023), Red Sky Mourning (2024), and his latest, Cry Havoc (2025). Cry Havoc is different because the focus isn't on James Reece the ex-Navy SEAL (you write what you know), but rather on a young Tom Reece, James's Navy SEAL father. Cry Havoc takes place in 1968 and weaves historical fact through its fictional narrative. 1968, the year before I was born, was the year of the Tet Offensive, a massive, coordinated attack against American forces. Tom Reece is part of an inter-service MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam—Studies and Observations Group) group doing undercover, illegal operations inside and outside of Vietnam in places like Laos and Cambodia. Reece works with Army Special Forces (Green Beret) operator Frank Quinn, his senior and mentor. The plot zooms in and out between the fighting and operations on the ground and the plotting going on in places like Moscow: Southeast Asia is one of the chessboards on which the USA and the USSR are playing The Great Game, and it's the locals (as well as US and other troops) who pay the price for all of the global, geopolitical maneuvering. I found this novel to be a refreshing change of pace after seven James Reece adventures, which had all begun to run together. Tom Reece is fighting in a different era, but Carr is at pains to include prose reflecting how that far-off era still has relevance for today. While I'm not expert enough to separate all of the fact from all of the fiction, I felt that I had gained a bit of an inside view as to the geopolitics of the time, not to mention a better appreciation for the risks taken and the sacrifices made by all of the fighting men of that era. Tom Reece appears more as a memory in the earlier James Reece novels, so seeing him up close and personal helped to fill in a lot of blanks. It's a great novel if you're into this genre—lots of weapons-tech talk, plenty of blood and guts and friends lost, and lots of spy-level intrigue (James Reece remembers his father best as a covert operator). The novel goes by quickly, even for a slow reader like me. Recommended.

Lee Child's 2009 Gone Tomorrow may be the best of the Jack Reacher novels that I've read thus far. I will say right off the bat, though, that the novel's principal villains don't end up getting the poetic justice they deserved, so that was frustrating. Some background: Lee Child is the pen name of England-born James Dover Grant, originally from Coventry, England before eventually relocating to New York City. His knowledge of NYC plays a huge role in the plot of Gone Tomorrow, which involves his hulking protagonist Jack Reacher in a mystery that begins in New York City when Reacher sees a stressed-out, muttering woman on a late-night subway who looks as if she might be a suicide bomber. This assessment is based on an Israeli twelve-point list of things to look for in suicide bombers, and she ticks off all twelve points. As it turns out, though, the woman has no bomb: she has a gun. When Reacher approaches her, thinking to put her out of commission before she can blow up the train, she pulls the gun out, exchanges cryptic words with Reacher, then blows her own brains out. As is typical of these Reacher stories, we eventually come to realize that the woman's death has international implications for high-level US politicians as well as organizations in the "-stan" countries. The villains in this story are some of the most nightmarishly vicious people ever put to print: there's a slow, cruel disembowelment scene that stuck with me, and that reminded me of a harrowing passage about impalement from an old book called Bridge on the Drina. I was hoping that, by the end, Reacher would deliver poetic justice by disemboweling the villains once he'd found them, but alas, it was not to be. That said, the novel as a whole is a satisfying read, with plenty of Reacher's terse, first-person narration, constant reminders of how huge he is (250 pounds with gorilla-length arms), and a decent sense of closure by the end. It was interesting to see Osama bin Laden figure as a major background player: when the novel was published in 2009, bin Laden was still alive and at large; he was killed in 2011. 

It occurs to me that Gone Tomorrow and Cry Havoc have disembowelment in common: in Cry Havoc, one of Tom Reece's best friends ends up being captured and gutted, his intestines covered in gas and burned in front of him while he's still alive. The novels also have international intrigue in common as the camera zooms back to show us the global scope of their respective plots. Child, being British, is sometimes unable—even after thirteen novels—to drop certain Britishisms from his prose in what is supposed to be an American narrative. He uses the UK term hosepipe for example; Americans normally just say hose. But despite his occasional linguistic lapses (I'm sure I'd make the mirror image of his mistakes were I to write a British story), Child has a good grasp of American idiom and speech patterns, so Reacher as a character feels authentic. Since most Reacher novels are a first-person narrative from Jack Reacher's perspective, there's little suspense about whether Reacher will survive his various encounters. With these novels, it's never about whether Reacher will survive but about how he'll do so, and what sort of fate awaits his enemies. Reacher is written as unapologetically ruthless and implacable, especially once he's riled. He's also a drifter, moving from region to region in every novel, which makes the novels more episodic than long-form in their storytelling. Jack Carr's novels, by contrast, have been weaving a complex narrative tapestry, each novel building on the previous one, and given the prolific pace at which Carr writes, one has to wonder when he's going to burn out.

Both novels, Cry Havoc and Gone Tomorrow, make for very good reads. I normally read Reacher novels only when I learn what the newest streaming-video season of "Reacher" is going to be based on. By contrast, I read Jack Carr's novels whenever I learn he's published a new one. So far, there's only one season of "The Terminal List" and one miniseries ("Dark Wolf," more about eventual betrayer Ben Edwards than about James Reece); "Reacher," meanwhile, will be starting Season 4 soon on streaming video.

So go tuck yourself in and have a read if you're into this testosterone-filled genre. It occurs to me that I've been reading this sort of prose since I was a kid: I used to have several Mack Bolan (The Executioner) novels. There's nothing quite like a 9-mm Parabellum round wetly exploding some bad guy's skull. Maybe that's what fuels my consumption of squirrel- and rat-shooting YouTube videos: the grim satisfaction of seeing pests eliminated.

blasting God's little creatures

come on, she's just a typically racist Asian

Max Miller on "Indian pudding"

another question set done

For my upcoming app (Do You Deserve to Vote?), I've done yet another question set, this time for the "Can You Think Logically?" section. I worked with ChatGPT to refine some of my questions. I never used ChatGPT's suggested wording but always went with my own, redrafting and redrafting until ChatGPT accepted that the question was now both properly logical and properly testing logical thinking. So, no—none of my questions is AI-generated—just AI-verified, and most of my questions passed muster on the first try. The few that needed tweaking needed only minor tweaking because the AI got pedantic about literal meanings and implications. I imagine there will still be gripes and complaints by people who dare the quiz no matter how rigorously I craft the questions.

This puts me halfway through question-generation. As with my grammar quizzes (like this one or this one), I've created three similar types of questions from which the program will select one randomly to display. The answers beneath the questions will also appear in randomized order, and the questions themselves, while appearing in sets of ten for each section, will also appear in randomized order, so there are at least three levels of randomization. This way, for people who retake the quiz five or ten or twenty or a hundred times, it should never be the exact same quiz twice.

Sections done so far:

1. Do you have a more-than-basic grasp of English?

2. Do you have a more-than-basic education? (science, math, history, geography, art)

3. Can you think logically?

Still to do:

4. How Much Do You Know About Civics?

5. Can You Pass a Basic, Stripped-Down Citizenship Test?

6. How Much Do You Know About Current Politicians' Stands on Today's Issues?

Section (6) is going to require very frequent updating. I'm tempted to add other sections like "Do You Know Who These Politicians Are?" and so on. For Section (2), I could've included music (basic concepts and principles, and maybe genres from classical to folk to rock to jazz to rap to hip-hop to whatever's current), but I'm a musical illiterate. Maybe I'll include it anyway. Nothing is set in stone at this point.

I expect everyone I personally know to blaze through the beta version of this quiz and get a 100% or, at worst, a 95%. These are meant to be basic, basic questions—not trick questions or "gotcha" questions, just the sort of things that a halfway-educated citizen ought to know if they're planning to vote. And of course, the quiz itself has no meaning beyond being a quiz. You can choose to accept whether it validly rates your worth as a voter or not. I don't care. Take the quiz out of curiosity if you want, not out of any earnest desire to see whether you measure up. And rest assured that, no matter how dumb or uneducated you are and no matter what Thomas Jefferson might think (might have thought) about the need for an educated electorate, your right to vote is guaranteed by modern interpretations of the US Constitution, so this quiz won't take anything away from you if you're a moron. Your rights are secure. And while it's tempting to create a database of test results that collect demographic data, I've elected not to do that because such data can be faked.

Should I, however, create a demographic-info section in which people are encouraged to assess their intelligence level as a rating from 1 to 10 the way KeroNgb does in his videos (he usually starts off by asking interviewees how smart they think they are, and most are ego-filled enough to say numbers like 8 or 9, which is hilarious; I would rate myself a solid 2)? Maybe I should, but I already know the data will simply confirm that pride goeth before the fall. America: mostly a nation of idiots and illiterates with some brilliant exceptions.

another "best-ever fried chicken" recipe

With so many bests out there, it's hard to know where to turn.

Matt Walsh demystifies the reason for movies' failure

The problem isn't wokeness, Walsh says.

back and forth

I'm currently going back and forth with System Pro, the print shop near Seoul National University. The lady keeps texting about how this or that needs to be adjusted on my back-cover graphic (it was all originally formatted for B5 paper, including bleed-to-the-edge considerations, so no adjustments should be necessary), and how the front-cover graphic will look strange if we do a bleed-to-the-edge for the image. She asked me to send pics of the previous version of the book from 2022, so I sent some photos over since I no longer have the original files (died with my laptop). She seemed to have no trouble, last time, with making her own tweaks before printing. I don't know what the problem is this time. Oh, yeah: her projected cost to print one copy of the book is W11,800, so it'll be almost W240,000 for twenty copies. I had set the ISBN and cover price at $11.99, which comes out to almost exactly W17,000 as of today, so I'd be making barely W5,000 per copy—about $3.50. Yay, me.

People had better buy the print-on-demand paperback version, which costs me nothing to print. One person has already purchased a copy. That's nice. A cool $4.32 in my pocketses. If I could convince 500,000 parents to buy the book, that'd be $2,160,000 before taxes, and I imagine the taxes would come close to 50% for that amount of money.

Once System Pro prints my books, the next thing I'll do is contact that publishing house in Daegu—the one whose ad I'd seen on my walk. If they're a real publishing house and not just a vanity publisher/printer, they could help with marketing, with getting my book into stores, etc. (assuming anyone outside of old-school academics buys dead-tree books anymore!).

Meanwhile, I'm still generating questions for my Do You Deserve to Vote? app. The logic problem I'd put up earlier is part of the section called "Can You Think Logically?" Once I've got everything vibe-coded and up on my quiz/test website, I'll invite some curmudgeons to use the app and suggest improvements, then eventually put the app up for sale at the Apple App store and the Google Play Store. There are also other, slightly more niche places where apps can be sold, like Flippa. I'm still learning the ropes about all of this, so bear with my clumsiness (or Pardon Our Dust, as they say).

the bots are taking a day off

With my overinflated stats, I'm normally at about 4,000 visits by this point in the day, but I currently have a little over 800 visits. Even bots need sleep.

this shouldn't be hard, right?

Simple logic problem:

5C. For breakfast, Jack hates all cereal and muffins but likes all toast and doughnuts. Lorna hates all toast, doughnuts, and cereal but likes only blueberry muffins. Steve hates all muffins, doughnuts, and cereal but likes avocado toast. Which meal will make exactly one person happy?

a. avocado toast

b. cranberry muffins

c. chocolate doughnuts**

d. any kind of cereal

__________

Here is ChatGPT's confusing assessment:

No — (c) chocolate doughnuts is not correct, and there’s a clear logical hole.

Let’s check each person:

Jack: hates all cereal and muffins, but likes all toast and doughnuts.
Lorna: hates all toast, doughnuts, and cereal, but likes only blueberry muffins.
Steve: hates all muffins, doughnuts, and cereal, but likes avocado toast (a kind of toast).

Now evaluate each option for “definitely makes exactly one person happy”:

a) avocado toast

Jack likes all toast → happy
Lorna hates all toast → unhappy
Steve likes avocado toast → happy

✅ Makes two people happy (Jack + Steve). Not correct.

b) cranberry muffins

Jack hates all muffins → unhappy
Lorna likes only blueberry muffins → cranberry muffin = unhappy
Steve hates all muffins → unhappy

✅ Makes zero people happy. Not correct.

c) chocolate doughnuts (starred)

Jack likes all doughnuts → happy
Lorna hates all doughnuts → unhappy
Steve hates all doughnuts → unhappy

✅ Makes exactly one person happy (Jack). This one actually is correct.

So the starred answer is correct as written.

d) any kind of cereal

Jack hates all cereal → unhappy
Lorna hates all cereal → unhappy
Steve hates all cereal → unhappy

✅ Makes zero people happy. Not correct.

Any holes?

Only a potential ambiguity: is “avocado toast” considered “toast”? In normal English it is, and you explicitly say Steve “likes avocado toast,” so that’s fine. If someone tried to argue “toast” means plain toast, the question would become ambiguous — but your wording strongly implies avocado toast is a type of toast.

Conclusion: The logic is solid, and (c) chocolate doughnuts is the only option that definitely makes exactly one person happy.

__________

I countered the above with:

In my defense, I did use the phrase "all toast" to mean "all types of toast," so avocado toast ought to fall under that umbrella, no? 

Also: I'm confused that, at the beginning, you said, "No — (c) chocolate doughnuts is not correct, and there’s a clear logical hole."—but for chocolate doughnuts, you said, "So the starred answer is correct as written."

__________

ChatGPT's reply:

You’re 100% right on both points.

1) “All toast” absolutely includes avocado toast

Yes — if Jack likes all toast, then any type of toast (including avocado toast) is included. So:

• avocado toast makes Jack happy (toast)

• and also makes Steve happy (specifically avocado toast)

So (a) cannot be the answer, because it makes two people happy.

2) I contradicted myself — my first sentence was wrong

That was my mistake. I initially wrote “No — (c) … is not correct,” but when I actually checked the logic, (c) is correct. The correct verdict is:

✅ (c) chocolate doughnuts will definitely make exactly one person happy (Jack), because:

• Jack likes all doughnuts → happy

• Lorna hates all doughnuts → unhappy

• Steve hates all doughnuts → unhappy

Final answer

• Starred answer (c) is correct

• No real holes in the logic, assuming “toast” includes “avocado toast” (which it does in normal usage, and you reinforce it with “all toast”).

And that's where things stand. Maybe I should just delete avocado so as not to confuse computers and the computer-minded.

allez, Amaury!

The man is a miracle-worker.

failing America's kids and the death of US public education

Headline:

Education’s Great Betrayal: How We Failed America’s Children and Wasted Billions on Empty Promises

Test scores are plummeting, learning gaps are widening, and billions spent on federal education reforms have delivered nothing but failure. It’s time to DOGE.

Education is a deeply complex subject, rife with countless studies and intertwined variables. Claiming to have all the answers would be both naïve and irresponsible. Still, one undeniable trend emerges from the data: educational quality in America is declining—and this drop persists across all demographic groups.

[ ... ]

The most reliable domestic measure of student performance is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report card, which tracks reading and mathematics proficiency for 4th and 8th graders. Across all demographic groups, scores reached their highest levels between 2009 and 2012.

Does this suggest that the quality of American schools peaked in 2012? Perhaps, but there’s a compelling environmental factor to consider. NAEP testing began in 1978, a time when the average blood lead level in children was 15.2 μg/dL. By 2011, that figure had fallen to 0.83 μg/dL. The significance of this drop cannot be overstated—lead exposure is a known cause of cognitive impairment, with a 15 μg/dL difference equating to an approximate loss of 9 IQ points.

A 9-point increase in IQ corresponds to a full 0.6 standard deviation improvement in cognitive ability. This means children became significantly more capable during this period purely due to reduced lead exposure. As a result, even without changes in teaching methods, we would expect educational performance to improve noticeably between 1978 and 2011—and the data confirms this trend.

Between 2010 and 2014, American education underwent a seismic shift with the introduction of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, widely known as Common Core. Backed by Bill Gates, this initiative sought to revolutionize the teaching of reading, writing, and mathematics. The Washington Post described it as “one of the swiftest and most remarkable shifts in education policy in U.S. history,” and for good reason. It was a comprehensive overhaul of the curriculum, changing not just what students learned, but how they were taught.

[ ... ]

In theory, this approach helps children understand the "why" behind calculations rather than memorizing steps. Bill Gates envisioned this as the dawn of a new educational era. He promised it would provide "a foundation for students to actually become those innovators that we know they could be in the future." Yet, in practice, I have yet to meet a parent who feels their child benefited from this approach. Both of my children ended up relying on traditional methods. If there was innovation in the marketplace, it was in creating tools that taught the old methods under a new guise.

Despite these sweeping changes, test scores tell a different story. After an eight-year hiatus in NAEP testing, the results in 2020 revealed troubling trends: scores plateaued or declined across all demographics.

The most significant drop occurred among Black students—a stark irony given that one of Common Core's implicit goals was to promote equity in education through uniform standards.

The same pattern emerged in international assessments. In the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), mathematics scores for all demographics peaked in either 2009 or 2012, underscoring that Common Core failed to result in educational progress.

When we step back and look at the big picture, the score declines may be slight, but they’re undeniably consistent—raising serious questions about the payoff for the estimated $16 billion invested in developing and implementing Common Core. The results are far from the transformative improvement many had hoped for.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought another shock to education: distance learning. Schools across the country closed, some for as long as two years. States like California, Illinois, and Maryland had some of the longest closures, leaving students reliant on virtual learning well into 2021 and beyond.

NAES test scores took their biggest drop in 2023, particularly among Black and Hispanic students.

[ ... ]

Taken together, this paints a grim picture: America’s children are in the midst of an educational crisis. Federal standards have locked us into a rigid system that fails to accommodate diverse learning needs. I believe this rigidity may even be contributing to the rise in autism diagnoses, as Common Core’s one-size-fits-all approach often labels children with unique learning styles as "disordered."

What has all this achieved? Despite billions spent on federal education initiatives, the returns have been counterproductive. It’s time to address the root of the problem. Eliminate the Department of Education, redirect resources to parents, and empower schools to innovate. Let schools hire the best teachers for their unique needs, and let parents choose the best schools for their children.

The above article is from Data Republican's Substack (I'm subscribed to her). Note how her approach isn't the usual rightie froth about sexually explicit books in elementary libraries (which do exist), rampant bullying (which is a problem), school shootings (which do frequently make the news), and woke agendas (which are real despite the leftie gaslighting). Her main focuses are on lead consumption, distance learning due to COVID, and signal failures of the Common Core curriculum. Her solution is a classically conservative one: less centralized control and more local control to improve outcomes.

Well, you can't get much more local than homeschooling. What's ironic is when you meet a public-school teacher who tells you that homeschooling leads to kids living in reality-shielding bubbles while, ironically, the teacher seems blissfully unaware that her cherished system is crumbling all around her, swirling down the toilet. The richer irony is that the teacher's obliviousness comes from being in a bubble that prevents awareness of the deterioration. So if reality-shielding bubbles are bad, public-school teachers might need to step out of theirs or be ground under by current trends.

more pressure-washing ASMR

massacre dans le corridor

Hallway scenes in Star Wars films and shows have apparently become a thing now. Vader got such a scene. So did Luke. And I think Ben Kenobi got one, too.

this is from last November, sure, but...

From just before last (US, not Canadian) Thanksgiving:

Cry Havoc and Gone Tomorrow

I recently finished Jack Carr's novel Cry Havoc, which takes place in 1968 in the era of the Tet Offensive.  The novel focuses on Tom Reece, the Navy SEAL father of James Reece from The Terminal List. I'm also currently reading Lee Child's Gone Tomorrow since that's the novel on which Season 4 of Amazon's "Reacher" is to be based. So far, so good. Not much action, but an interesting mystery as Reacher puts everything together with no help from a loyal crew. The Amazon show will doubtless add a lot of action, plot elements, and some of Reacher's former associates. I'll probably do a two-fer review of these books soon, so stay tuned.

"what is 18 divided by 3?"

You watch enough of these depressing videos, and you become convinced it really is stupidity you're seeing. (Ignore the AI girl in the thumbnail, by the way.)

"woman makes man pay for her [kid's/kids'] food on first date"

One comment below the picture said:

Never play another man's saved game.

I cracked up. And yeah, as other commenters noted, it's tasteless to bring the kids along on a first date unless you're going somewhere kid-friendly, and you know the guy's okay with kids.

ADDENDUM: and another bad-English image for Substack.

the Drinker's hopes re: "Project Hail Mary"

I have high hopes, too. It's a great story. My review of the book is here.

squirrelhammering

shrew-jitsu

The most awesome thing you will see today. She won in the first five seconds (and no, she's not really a shrew). Of course, once she got him in the choke, he never bothered to try an escape. So it was an easy victory for her because the guy didn't know how to fight. Still, I absolutely give her credit for getting him in a choke within the first second or two. Had she faced an opponent with her level of training, though...

The comments suggest the guy tapped but she continued to choke. I couldn't tell on my screen; the lighting and angle were both bad. If so, she was ruthless. But he did walk into it.

"Starfleet Academy" reactions, Part 2

"Starfleet Academy" reactions, Part 1

Universally shat upon. Star Trek's "The Acolyte." Starships full of fatties and "neurodivergent" people autistically shouting "Red alert! Red alert! Red alert!" when the red-alert siren blares. Jesus Christ, what a shit show. And the stars of the show are, of course, reacting angrily to the fans' response. Because the fans are nothing but racist bigots, you see. I used to like Holly Hunter. I used to like a lot of famous people. Not so much these days.

the next best thing

I had originally tried to order myself three proof copies of my recently self-published homeschooling book, Think Like a Teacher, bilingual edition. Amazon claimed it couldn't deliver proof copies to me in Korea, but since I remember receiving hard copies of the 2022 edition of my book, I knew I'd be able to order regular copies this time, too. So I did. Estimated arrival date is February 2. I'll be curious to see whether the print quality is better this time. Last time, the pages of the book kept falling out, probably because the book was too thin, meaning there wasn't enough padding compound to make the perfect binding work. This time, thanks to the addition of the Korean translation, the book is now twice as thick. I'll also be checking for text-alignment problems and other annoyances.

ADDENDUM: I had emailed a print request to the Korean print shop close to Seoul National University, but I haven't heard back from it this week. The Korean printer did a much better job last time, but each hard copy cost me around W5,500 to print. With the book now twice as thick, and with inflation since 2022, I can easily imagine these new books costing me over W10,000 apiece to print. But that's why I upped the cover price to $11.99, or currently, about W17,300. That way, I can at least make a few bucks.

can you fight?

Can I fight? Me—these days? Probably not. Training matters. So do endurance, speed, agility, and the ability to take hits and keep on going. In my current, fallen condition, I no longer have any of those things. I'm an old cripple. If you put me in the octagon with Gina Carano, who's much tinier than I am, I have no doubt she'd split my skull open in the first round.

the slight return of shoulder flexibility

I can now just barely do kettlebell around-the-worlds the proper way. This involves swinging the kettlebell around your body, passing the kettlebell behind you to make a circle—first in one direction, then in the other. I'm currently doing a short set of 30: 15 one way, 15 the other. As with heavy clubs, kettlebell exercises develop core strength, which is no BS as I found out during my walk last year, when I was able to rise somewhat easily off a flat bench, like a normal person, after taking a nap. Quite a contrast from my past flopping and flailing and gasping as I would try to right myself from a prone position.

The core exercises I've chosen to do take into account my frozen shoulder (which seems finally to be entering the "thaw" phase). I can't do the McGill Big Three despite having tried it at the beginning of my campaign last year. Instead, I do kettlebell around-the-worlds, kettlebell swings, even (10 kg/10 kg) and uneven (20 kg/10 kg) farmer's carries, heavy-club inside and outside circles, heavy-club front presses and pullovers, wall planks, wall pushups, hollow-body holds, and dead bugs. It's still going to be a while before I can graduate to real bodyweight calisthenics. I'd eventually like to be able to do real pushups, burpees, Hindu pushups, full hangs, pullups, L-sits, etc. Planches and muscle-ups seem way beyond anything I can do now (which is nothing), so I won't consider those until much, much later.

But as I said at the beginning, the good news is that I can now do proper around-the-worlds. That's a sign that things are finally improving on the shoulder front.

reassessment

I did my first set of app questions yesterday, but I'm going to have to reassess how much I can do in a day. Yesterday, I made three sets of ten questions for the (rather incomplete) English-mastery section; my original ambition had been to make three sets of twenty questions for every section, but that didn't work out. So—three sets of ten it is.

whoa... someone else came back from Nam

Headline:

Lee Hae-chan dies in Vietnam, South Korea mourns democracy icon

Lee Hae-chan, senior vice chair of The Peaceful Unification Advisory Council (PUAC) and a former prime minister, died on the 25th (local time), three days after being admitted to Tam Anh General Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, due to a rapid deterioration in health.

Until the day before, Lee's complexion and breathing were said to have improved somewhat, and the possibility of transporting Lee to Korea was discussed. However, Lee's condition suddenly worsened that day, and Lee died at about 2:48 p.m.

A person at the scene said, "It was an unexpected situation," and noted, "Everyone was shocked and in tears."

At Lee's deathbed were Lee's wife, daughter, son-in-law and a grandchild, as well as Cho Jeong-sik, a Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker and the president's special political adviser, and Democratic Party lawmakers Lee Hae-sik and Lee Jae-jeong.

After Lee's passing, special adviser Cho met reporters at the entrance to the intensive care unit ward and said, "Senior Vice Chair Lee Hae-chan was a living witness of democracy who devoted his entire life to the development of democracy in Korea," adding, "Lee could have played a greater role going forward, so this is deeply heartbreaking and regrettable."

Lee was prime minister from 2004 to 2006 under President Roh Moo-hyeon. He was 73.

weight-loss drugs and body positivity

harmonious, or a jumbled mishmash?

the Drinker on "the Avatar paradox"

down, boy

the making of questions

First, an announcement: the new Kindle version of Think Like a Teacher is now out.

Today is the start of app development. The app: Do You Deserve to Vote? It will deal with topics like:

1. Do you have a more-than-basic grasp of English?
2. Do you have a more-than-basic education?
3. Can you think logically?
4. How much do you know about civics?
5. Can you pass a basic, stripped-down citizenship test?
6. How much do you know about current politicians' stands on today's major issues?

The app is an expression of my frustration about who exactly deserves to vote in national elections. When I first talked about this question of "deserving to vote," I got pushback in the comments about how my thoughts amounted to something unconstitutional. Fine—I concede all of my commenters' points. Despite the fact that even Thomas Jefferson himself expressed a strong preference for an educated electorate and not a nation of emotionally incontinent morons, I will grant, for the sake of argument, that allowing the morons to vote is somehow healthier for the country as a whole (it isn't, but I'll grant the point anyway). So since I'll never become god-emperor of the US, I am instead making this app to give people an idea of whether—according to quasi-Jeffersonian standards—they really deserve to be casting a vote.

And yes, I realize that the label "quasi-Jeffersonian" may be playing fast and loose with both language and history. I have done no deep research into what exactly Jefferson meant by "educated" when he expressed his preference for an educated electorate. But at a guess, the polymath who founded the University of Virginia would have wanted people to know at least the basics. So when someone asks, "How educated are you?", they're asking both How much do you know? and How well can you think? I think Thomas Jefferson would have agreed with at least that.

To that end, using the above six questions as a guide, I'll be developing a set of twenty or more questions for each topic. Nothing too complicated or abstruse: I won't ask, for example, "What year was the 16th Amendment passed, and what was the amendment about?" (I had to look that up just now.) To give you an example of the questions I would call "basic," watch any KeroNgb video on YouTube. That guy's asking simple stuff like, "How many letters are there in the English alphabet?" and "Name two countries outside of North America" and "How many stripes are on the American flag"? and "How many minutes are in a quarter of an hour?" Basic stuff that any elementary school kid should know. 

Making these questions might take me into the beginning of February.

breaker, breaker

pulling an Eastwood

carjacker karma

handling ChatGPT

is he worthy?

This guy is almost as good as John McCrarey.

proof copies ordered

I've ordered proof copies of the Kindle version of Think Like a Teacher. Creating the 6" × 9" version was a slow, frustrating experience, as it always is. I won't whine about the details, but let's just say that I was controlling my breathing by the end. While I wait for the proofs, I've also published the book as is (print-on-demand paperback), but it'll take a few hours to appear after it gets reviewed by AI and human eyes. Once the entry is out, I'll be sure to provide a link to the book if you're interested in buying a bilingual hard copy for $11.99. If not, the original, English-only Kindle ebook is still available and is much cheaper at $2.99.

So that's the easiest book project out of the way. What's next? I think I want to work on an app next: Do you deserve to vote?

UPDATE: I just got notification that proofs cannot be sent to a Korean address. Muddafuqqaz. But I bet that, when I order the regular copies, they'll come to Korea.

more "Dune 3" news with Nerd Cookies

NK women meet (gasp!) Amurricans!

Hana can't speak English very well, so she relies on AI translations and AI voiceovers to make her videos. She seems to have settled in South Korea but has visited the States. Assuming she's the real deal, her videos have been about her long deprogramming. Yes, she is a real human.

global warming!

Headline:

The winter apocalypse of 2026 has begun: 'This is a major to extreme ice threat'

Meteorologists across the country are calling on Americans to prepare.

A large-scale winter storm will affect large regions of the United States, and much of the panicking has already led to food and supply shortages at grocery stores.

Nearly half of the U.S. population is already under emergency watch, warnings, and alerts from Winter Storm Fern, according to the National Weather Service.

One meteorologist for WCNC-TV in North Carolina issued a dire warning on social media.

"Folks, I cannot stress this enough: Please prepare now!" said Brad Panovich. "We have all day today (Friday) and most of the daylight hours on Saturday to get ready. After that, the window closes. This is not a 'bread and milk' situation — this is a major to extreme ice threat. We are looking at a setup we haven't seen in at least 10 years, and if the higher ice totals hold, we could be looking at something we haven't dealt with in 20 years (think back to the 2002 ice storm)."

The coasts are gonna be swamped! Kamala, abandon your new, $8 million seaside mansion!

Nerdrotic on Grace Randolph versus Brie Larson

I've seen maybe one or two Grace Randolph movie-review videos. Otherwise, she's an utter irrelevancy to me. Brie Larson is a talented actress; she went through a woke-bitch period and has since been fairly quiet. Another vestige of a dying Hollywood.

the fate of SS soldiers

can you figure this one out?

I see right away that 9 = 3², so [4^√2]^x must equal 2. I also know that √2 = 2^1/2.

tomorrow's agenda

While I can't upload a Kindle-ebook version of my newly revised homeschooling book (slightly altered preface, Korean translation included), I can upload a print-on-demand, dead-tree version. In the past, the dead-tree version has proved bizarrely more popular than the cheaper ebook. Are homeschooling parents that old-school in their thinking that they need analog material? Maybe so, and really, I can't blame them. If you stuck me back in a language class, I'd probably want to stick to good old paper textbooks as well... although I'd definitely supplement the textbook with other media like Powerpoint (which is, truth be told, ancient by this point in history) or whatever the current presentation platform is.

The manuscript I'd just worked on is formatted for a B5-sized book. The Amazon size will be smaller at only 6" × 9", which means a ton more micro-adjustments. 

The Sunday slog.

to flail or not to flail?

The French word for a flail is un fléau.

sent

I finalized the covers and spine of the new English/Korean-language homeschooling book and combed through the manuscript one more time to find any lingering errors; what I found was mostly a tolerable unevenness in formatting because of a "no widows/orphans" toggle in MS Word. I was able to correct most of those problems; some I left as they were. I attached all my files to an email and sent it with a print request for 20 copies of the new book. I hope everything will be fine. Fingers and tentacles crossed.

Sam's version of "tie dye" pizza

I honestly don't know whether I'd want to try this.

Godfuckit

Sometimes, my computer will shut down and restart of its own accord. This doesn't happen often, but it's an annoying quirk. As a result of last night's shutdown/restart, I lost the most recent changes I'd made to both my front-cover and back-cover files yesterday. Luckily, I have snapshots of both covers (on the blog), so the first part of today will be devoted to getting the covers right and saving them before another shutdown/restart disaster happens. What a pain in the ass. And all because I didn't save before going to sleep.

taking it back from nature

from books to "TV"

In the age of streaming video, can one even speak meaningfully of TV anymore?

"Memories of Murder (살인의 추억)": review

In the very last moment of the movie, former detective Park Doo-man (Song Gang-ho) wonders whether the murderer is among us.

[WARNING: major spoilers for a 23-year-old film.]

2003's "Memories of Murder" (a literal translation of the Korean title "살인의 추억/Salin-ae Chueok"), directed by Bong Joon-ho, stars Song Gang-ho, Kim Sang-gyung, Kim Roi-ha, Jeon Mi-seon, Go Seo-hee, Song Jae-ho, Byun Hee-bong, Park No-shik, Ryu Tae-ho, and Park Hae-il. The story is based on a play about a real event in Korea's 1980s past: a serial killer in the Hwaseong area has been roaming the countryside, raping and killing young women. Meanwhile, the local police are at a loss for clues, so a detective from Seoul is brought in.

I should say right off the bat that I was reminded of a novel called The Shaker written by a good friend of mine. It's a mystery about a friend who goes missing. The main character, who is not a detective, puts on his Sherlock hat and clumsily tries to put together what clues he's gathered to find his friend. By the end of the novel, the friend is never found. The parallels between The Shaker and "Memories of Murder" are striking. I also noticed that, however much director Bong might be obsessed with a Marxist view of the world in recent years, this early work is devoid of that sort of social commentary (unless I missed some big clues). There is, however, other social commentary.

The premise is that local Hwaseong City detective Park Doo-man (Song Gang-ho) and his partner Cho Yong-koo (Kim Roi-ha) are called to the scene of a murder‚ one of a string of murders that all seem to have the same modus operandi. The crime scene is a godawful mess, though: nothing's been cordoned off, and a tractor has just run over a crucial shoe print found in the mud near the murder site. The press is making its usual mess of things, and as becomes obvious, our detectives aren't the brightest people, either (and neither is their boss). As with many films portraying 80s-era Korea, there's plenty of sloppiness, slovenliness, chaos, and unprofessionalism both in town and at the police station. To help move the futile investigation along, a hotshot detective from Seoul, Seo Tae-yoon (Kim Sang-gyung), is brought in. Unlike Detective Park, who claims to discover guilt or innocence through mere eye contact, Detective Seo is up on all the latest scientific procedures and has what Park thinks is an annoyingly American way about him. Park and Seo dislike each other, and Seo disapproves of Park's sloppy, unethical methods, which include allowing his violent partner Cho to beat up and torture suspects into confessing, thus resulting in an overabundance of confessions as well as unwanted attention from the press. As the case goes on, however, Seo finds himself knowing the region better and even stoops to getting rough with his suspects as he becomes more a part of the local culture. He and Park also eventually come to respect each other as they work on the case. Some tantalizing leads also come in from young, female officer Kwon Kwi-ok (Go), who realizes that the same piece of music plays every rainy night that a murder happens. 

In this period of Korean history, with Korea barely thirty years beyond the armistice that ended the fighting in the Korean War, CSI technology is almost unheard of, thus leaving the police—even Detective Seo—utterly stymied. The history of the actual case (Google Hwaseong serial killer or Hwaseong murders) is available online for anyone to read, and this movie came out 23 years ago, so I don't mind saying that the case was eventually solved in 2019: the killer was Lee Choon-jae. Bong's movie came out in 2003, with the murders still unsolved. He deliberately had actor Song Gang-ho look directly into the camera in the film's final scene, thus breaking the fourth wall, in the hopes that the serial killer might be in the crowd of moviegoers and see this look as a personal challenge. This was apparently the right move, as the killer himself later confessed: he had indeed seen the movie and been provoked.

Watching the movie from a 2020s-era American perspective produced mixed feelings. I'm pretty sure that most of the police abuse would be grounds for massive lawsuits these days, especially an egregious incident near the end of the film involving a train tunnel, handcuffs, and a gun. Given the surveillance state we all now live in, the beatings and torture depicted in Bong's film would be nearly impossible today. I did, however, appreciate the gorgeous farmland cinematography: I've walked through farmland and small towns like the areas depicted in the movie. I also appreciated the commentary Bong was making about the treatment of women in the office, where a perfectly capable female officer spends her day getting the men coffee and only making her presence known when she takes the initiative to offer her own insights. Bong also has a good eye for the chaos-prone nature of unruly Korean culture, and his film is a not-so-subtle criticism of male arrogance and vanity, and how those vices can ruin what should be a methodical, scientific investigation.

The character arcs and conflicts were well laid out, but I suppose some arcs and events were predictable. That Park and Seo would eventually come to respect each other was a given, and I could see the death of one character—a star witness who accidentally does himself in—from a mile away. My understanding is that the movie was only loosely based on real events, so I assume that the plot was full of the usual literary contrivances.

All that said, the movie was well directed, well acted, and an epistemologist's wet dream on the order of Wittgenstein's Poker, a book I'd read years ago about an altercation between the philosophers Ludwig "language games" Wittgenstein and Karl "falsifiability" Popper. This altercation took place at Cambridge University, in a parlor with a fireplace, and with many people around. Wittgenstein reputedly brandished the fireplace poker threateningly at Popper, but in later accounts of the incident, details were a confusing mess as to who, exactly, did what. The BBC journalists who wrote the book, David Edmonds and John Eidinow, noted the irony of the confused eyewitness testimony since the university parlor where the incident occurred was, at the time, full of epistemologists (epistemology = the study of how we know things). The book ends with a speculative recreation of the event from the best of the journalists' ability, but nothing is resolved. "Memories of Murder" is, frustratingly, a lot like that, with dead ends at every turn, and with none of the evidence adding up to anything definitive. Until 2019, that is, well after the film's release.

As I've gotten older, I've become more tolerant of vagueness and ambiguity as I've come to appreciate the swirling complexity of human society and the world in general. I remember rudely telling my novel-writing friend, years ago, that I had come away frustrated by his work because of his refusal to resolve things in a clear manner; if I could do so now, I would apologize to him for my superficiality and offer to edit and locally publish his work, which he had only ever released as an online file (now seemingly gone). I don't think I have his novel's manuscript any longer, but I did manage to find the critique I'd written and am now ashamed of. I cringed tonight as I reread what I had written.

"Memories of Murder" evoked a lot of my own memories (but not of murders since I'm fairly certain I haven't committed any of those). It's a well-written, well-structured, well-directed, well-acted, and frustrating film that follows the most unscientific, unmethodical, and unprofessional flailing-about I've seen in a film that wasn't a comedy. Or maybe it was: a black comedy. The story certainly has moments of obvious humor. It's a movie about how people can get in their own way, with ego often triumphing over truth. It's also remarkably free of the treacly sentimentality and melodrama found in so many lesser Korean productions. If you haven't seen this movie (and it was one of the earliest Korean movies to gain some popularity in the West), I recommend it. I will say, though, that there was one line repeated by Detective Seo, the city-slicker, that I found hilariously naive: "Documents don't lie." I also have to wonder what the Hwaseong police force thought about this unflattering depiction of it.

the real meaning of "the beetle scene" in "Game of Thrones"

cynics already know the answer, I'm sure, but I have to ask

Has AI already been harnessed by governments to quietly collect and parse data about us citizens—our preferences and movements and thoughts? I mean, I'm sure something like this has been going on for years, since long before AI became prominent, but now that AI is here, has it already been subverted and recruited as a government tool?

front and back cover for the B5 dead-tree edition

I had forgotten to stick the translator's name on my cover!

Here's the re-revised front cover:

That thin line along the bottom is not in the original file. I don't know what's up. Ignore it.

And here's the back cover:

There will be a different ISBN and bar code. And price (if I find a bar-code generator for prices).

The Korean text on the back cover is from AI, so if you see any problems, let me know. For the Korean market, there's no "homeschooling" language on the back, and when I write the blurb for the Amazon entry, I'll spin the book as a tool for Korean parents who either want to supplement their kids' education via limited, informal home-based learning or want to evaluate the quality of the education the kids are getting at school. I see via Reddit that homeschooling is often looked down upon in Korea, and it's apparently highly regulated, with lots of rules and stipulations.

Paul on "Pluribus"

Should I bother?

Scooby says: "Ruby-ruby Rooooose!"

what changed?

 

I took care of something that had long annoyed me about the original design. Click to see the image in clearer focus.

pulling a Bourdain again

Can Andy keep up?

hostage situation

you still hangin' around?

what I did on Thor's Day

I think I'm done with the manuscript for this bilingual version of my little book. Lots of little details needed to be checked, rechecked, and reworked. I'm happy to have the Korean text in there: it thickens the book and makes the spine roomier for text. This in turn means I can once again try to make a print-on-demand paperback. Unfortunately, that's going to require me to rearrange the manuscript's format for American dimensions (6" × 9" or something). The manuscript I worked on on Thursday conformed to the metric standard of a B5 sheet of paper, which is a wee bit bigger at 176 mm × 250 mm, or about 6.9" × 9.8". The ms (manuscript) is 154 pages long, including some blank ones that are in there for formatting's sake. 

I also began working on a new front cover that will be bilingual as well, and later today (Friday), I'll be revising the back cover and spine, too. Once I have everything ready to go, I'll email the print shop near SNU and make a request to print maybe twenty copies of the new, fatter book. After I get that done, I'll see about reformatting the whole thing for Amazon's print-on-demand service. The service wasn't very good last time, but I often wonder whether that was simply because the book itself was so small and thin that the machines weren't able to put on enough padding compound to make the pages stick to the spine/binding, which is why pages kept falling out. Amazon's page requirements were such that I had too few pages in my original English-only manuscript to justify having any spine text (where the title, author name, and publisher name all go). This time, with a book guaranteed to be twice as thicc, I'll be able to upload a spine graphic as well. Woo-hoo!

Okay, I think that's it for tonight. I'm punching out and going to bed soon.

ADDENDUM: I'm still working on this; design suggestions are welcome:

bilingual version of the original cover

all about glycine

I'm just shocked his parents named him after the Russian leader with huge eyebrows.

are they really "feats"?

funny no matter which side you're on

I've never liked underway—one word—as opposed to the more venerable under way (2 words), but it seems to have taken over. As I've said before: language changes mostly through fuckups that get embraced by the public. All you need is one illiterate moron to fuck something up, plus a bunch of morons who don't know any better to accept the fuckup, and you get aforementioned pronounced "affer-mentioned," and underway, and honing in instead of homing in. Sure, language also changes through self-conscious rebelliousness and creative license, but it's still mostly fuckups by morons, abetted by morons.

That said, and the tweet's text notwithstanding, this is pretty funny:

Not a single shot has been fired, but the meme phase of the war on Greenland is well underway pic.twitter.com/eeI3364FzW

— Sweet Meteor O'Death (@smod4real) January 21, 2026

don't go Romanoff the plantation

your clearing house for Chuck Norris jokes

Watch the video to see the elegant spinning backfist, then read the comments for all the Chuck Norris jokes collected in one place. These jokes have been around for years and never fail to give me a chuckle; despite not coming together to form a narrative, they're very much in the spirit of the pancultural tradition of tall tales. Someone ought to weave these jokes together into a story. Hmmm...

over 59,000

My blog's site meter has a 24-hour period that goes from 9 a.m. to 9 a.m. Yesterday's unique-visit count was 59,088. As always, I have no idea why the bots do what they do.

fire drill?

The fire bell was ringing a moment ago, and the PA announcement was calmly urging us all to please leave the building while an electronic siren blared. The whole thing was an awful racket, and I slowly got of bed and made to leave, all the while thinking of past times this same thing has happened. The noise and announcements went on for about five minutes, then stopped, so I stopped, too. I'm going to guess that most of us residents, like last time, didn't heed the call—we merely waited for the noise to stop, then went about our lives.

It's been a constant barrage of useless PA announcements over the past few days. Typical winter stuff: "When you leave your place, please shut your windows, unplug your electrical items," etc. Several times a day, for days. How are we supposed to take these announcements seriously when they come so relentlessly, one after another? Bleh... if there's a real fire right now, I'm tempted to just sit here and burn like a tallow candle.

the burrit-off

the bots are back

Happy 2026! The bots are back! Nearly 17,000 unique visits yesterday, and today so far, I've got almost 29,000 unique visits. I wish bots had enough intelligence to enjoy themselves. Too bad they're little more than non-sentient parasites.

I remember the day before our family dog died that he was absolutely covered in flies when I got home that afternoon. Is that my blog?

guess I should've checked first

What a goddamn waste. 

I got halfway through the upload process for the Kindle-ebook version of the 2026 edition of my homeschooling book, only to discover, when I used the Kindle site's preview function, that Kindle won't work with Korean. I should've checked. I keep assuming total globalization, interchangeability, and intertranslatability of anything and everything between and among cultures, which is obviously not the case. For what it's worth, on Kindle Create, the desktop app where I had generated the document to upload to my Amazon Bookshelf, the Korean does appear, but it's a terrible, ugly font. Behold what you could've seen on your phone:

Ugh. And that should've been a warning sign to me, frankly. Not that it matters: American Kindle can't publish ebooks in hangeul. So all that's left to me is to create a new dead-tree book and have some copies printed out by the print shop close to SNU. That'll be my mission for Thursday, and on Friday, I'll see about motorvating out to where that publishing house is near Andong. Here's hoping they accept walk-ins. I should probably call first and find out if the building where I saw their ad is in fact the building where the publishing house is headquartered. What a waste of time that would be, eh, to find out I'd gone to the wrong place.

UPDATE: I found that publishing house's website, and while their portfolio of books gives me some hope that they might deal with someone like me (homeschooling book, travel book, etc.), when I clicked on the website's 오시는길 button, I saw the company is headquartered in Daegu. Now, while I'd love to have an excuse to go back to my favorite Chinese restaurant in that city, I'm getting to a point where I need to keep my traveling close to where I live. I might still try emailing the company to find out more, though.