croak I must

Thursday with Dan

I met longtime commenter Daniel for dinner and dessert Thursday (June 4) evening. This was our second time meeting face to face. Dan is a busy guy with a huge family and a concomitant need to work many jobs to keep up with life. Although I'm only beginning to get to know him, he already strikes me as one of the hardest-working people I've ever met. How he stays so damn cheerful is a mystery; I'd have been worn out years ago. What's his secret? Insanity?

Neither of us likes Itaewon that much, but Dan showed me two places I'd known nothing about, and they were both winners. Dan had suggested several spots we could eat at, ranging from Amurrican food to Turkish to Middle Eastern to Russian to East Asian. He mentioned a very good Chinese-style dumpling place, and that intrigued me. Since one of my default modes, when cooking, is to go Middle Eastern/Mediterranean/Tex-Mex/American (without really knowing what I'm doing), I decided against American and Turkish/Middle-Eastern options. While Russian sounded intriguing, I don't think I was quite in the mood for Russian food. So—dumplings. Something about that pulled at me.

Here are Dan's pics first. A word of warning: Either his camera makes my head look huge and my shoulders look really narrow, or I naturally have a huge head and narrow shoulders, things I normally don't see when I look in a mirror. (What I do see is my gut!)

our Mapa dubu

"Mapa tofu," said Dan as we ordered a dish to supplement our Chinese-style mandu. In my head, though, I was thinking the pronunciation was "Mapo tofu." But when I saw the Korean side of our menu, I saw that it was spelled Mapa, not Mapo, in hangeul. Once home, I looked up the difference; it turns out that Mapo is the Anglo pronunciation (based on the original Chinese) and Mapa is the Korean pronunciation. And we're in Korea, so it's a good thing I hadn't opened my stupid mouth.

The tofu dish came with bits of ground meat (pork?) in it, and the slightly peppery spice was good. I've had this dish before, but the taste is intriguing, so I think I ought to eat this more often if there's a less carby variety of it (maybe made with xanthan gum instead of cornstarch as the thickener). Dan ordered extra rice for what was a two-person portion.

Trivia: The name Mapo/Mapa apparently comes from a person. The AI god says:

In Chinese, the dish is written as 麻婆豆腐 (mápó dòufu). The two characters that make up "mapo" break down as follows:

• Ma (麻): Short for mazi (麻子), meaning "pockmarks."
• Po (婆): Means "old woman" or "grandma."

The Story Behind the Name

The dish was allegedly invented in 1862 at a small restaurant in Chengdu, the capital of China's Sichuan province. The restaurant was run by a woman named Mrs. Chen, who had pockmarks on her face (often a result of surviving smallpox).

Because the locals affectionately referred to her as "Chen Mapo" (Pockmarked Grandma Chen), the incredible tofu stew she cooked and sold became known simply as Mapo Tofu.

While "mapo" is a proper noun honoring a specific person in its origin, it has evolved into a well-known culinary proper noun—the specific name of the spicy, numbing, and iconic Sichuan dish.

fat head, narrow shoulders, and Mapa dubu between us

If Dan hadn't kept reminding me to take photos by announcing he'd be taking his own, I'd have simply plowed my way through the food without recording a single thing.

Oh, right: There was a slight wait to get into the place, which was called Jonny Dumpling in English but with a large-font Chinese sign out front that turned out to say Gyo Ja (see more below), i.e., what the Japanese call gyoza, which is their name for the potstickers that Koreans call mandu. As we were waiting in the street, an interesting pair of people who'd gotten there before us—a man and a woman—were conversing in Spanish.

The Itaewon area is traditionally full of non-Koreans, and it often feels as though it's not fully part of Korea, which may be one reason why I'm not thrilled with the place. As I've said repeatedly, I didn't come to Korea just to hang out in a foreigner's bubble, but with that said, I admit I often get the foreign-food jones, and if the dish is something I can't or don't make for myself, then every once in a while, I have little choice but to visit cultural islands like Itaewon.

Dan had also noted earlier that Itaewon looked as though it were both dying out and being radically redeveloped. From what I saw, many familiar storefronts had been shuttered, and some new buildings had appeared along the main drag. I wondered aloud whether all of this was being guided by a coherent vision, and I compared whatever was happening in Itaewon to former president Lee Myung-bak's vision when he developed the Cheonggye-cheon, the creek that got reopened, re-landscaped, and turned into an attraction for tourists and citizens alike. The coherence of Lee's vision—whatever else you might think about the man and his corruption—was impressive, and despite some false starts at the beginning of the rejuvenated creek's life, Lee stuck with it, kicked out the former merchants, and made the creek area into a thriving, repurposed place. Dan added that Lee was also the driving force behind the development of the Four Rivers trail that I love so much. I hadn't known that, but now that I know, I'm grateful to Lee. But what force is guiding the changes happening in Itaewon? It's mostly my own lack of fluency in Korean that's preventing me from knowing (and/or my own laziness when it comes to online research in English*). 

overhead view of the mandu madness

One thing you often see with Chinese-style dumplings is the "skirt" or the "lace" made from a slurry of water and flour, plus maybe a bit of cornstarch and vinegar.

me, with swollen head, suddenly remembering to take my own pics thanks to Dan's prompting

A double selfie (an ourselvesie?)... I look more proportionate here.

For whatever reason, the above and below pictures were horizontally flipped when I got them (selfie mode?), so I flipped them back in my camera before uploading. Not a big deal, and if you're not used to East Asian culture, you might not even have noticed the backwards Chinese had I not flipped the photos aright. But people who know how Chinese characters work would see something amiss right away.

another ourselvesie (see the napkin that's fallen on my foot?)

After this very nice dinner, in which we ate two ten-mandu servings (I probably ate more by accident) plus that two-person portion of Mapa dubu, we thanked the ladies running the place and went down the street a bit to a new(?) crêperie that Dan knew about, run by a lone woman. Unlike at the tofu restaurant, this place required us to navigate a Korean ordering kiosk, one of those electronic things that uses a touch screen to take your order. I got a banana-strawberry crêpe, which also included a sprinkling of cereal for crunch, some marshmallow fluff for texture, and of course—Nutella, an idea straight from Europe. My first bite of the crêpe when it came out, though, was painful because the strawberries inside it were still frozen, and one of my molars caught the full brunt of that freeze. Dan, for his part, got what struck me as an East Asian monstrosity, a culinary version of Konglish: a crêpe with Nutella, mozzarella, and some sort of cheesecake-y filling. According to Dan, it was very good, but I told him frankly that I just couldn't envision pairing chocolate with mozzarella. I did concede, though, that the cheesecake-y filling probably did a lot to mediate between the chocolate and the mozz. It's possible to layer disparate flavors and textures together well if you add something to mediate the extremes. I was utterly uninterested in trying Dan's mutant dessert, but he seemed to enjoy it. He also discovered that he could get a free coffee if he scanned a QR code, gave the food a rating, and did some other things. Two iced coffees came out, and since I'm not a coffee drinker, I took only a few sips of my free drink.

Here's Dan's pic of his crêpe:

Yes, Texas Papa is the place's name. God only knows why. Crêpes don't exactly scream "Texas."

My right shoulder appears to be almost nonexistent in this photo.

And here are my pics:

Gyoza?

See that sign? When I got home, I had to look up one of the above yellow-font, red-background Chinese characters. The sign turns out to say Gyo (餃) Ja (子), which I assume is the Korean way to say gyoza (dumpling/s) the way the Japanese do. The gyo turns out to mean ddeok/떡, or chewy Korean rice cakes, maybe signifying the dumpling's outer layer. The ja can mean "son" or "offspring," but I don't know what ja means in this specific context.

AI adds this:

In Chinese, 餃子 (simplified: 饺子) translates to "dumpling." The word is pronounced "jiǎo zi" in Mandarin (roughly as jyow-dze).

Breakdown and Meaning

• Jiǎo (餃): Means "dumpling" or "crescent-shaped."
• Zi (子): A common noun suffix in Chinese (meaning "child" or "small thing") that is added to create the full noun.

Culturally, Chinese dumplings (historically shaped like ancient gold ingots) are a staple of Chinese cuisine and symbolize wealth, family unity, and good luck.

The resto's English name: Jonny Dumpling. See all of the blue-ribbon awards the place has won?

The red-font Chinese beneath the English says 천천복복/天天福福/cheon-cheon bok-bok, which I guess is literally thousand-thousand happinesses-happinesses. Is that the resto's Asian name and not Gyo Ja? I have no idea. The AI god suggests the name means something like "Daily Blessings/Happiness/Fortune."

Our plate of Mapa dubu, which came out first and was like an appetizer:

Quite good... I might have to go back and try it again.

side dishes

The AI god guesses that the shredded, kimchi-ish side dish is:

This dish is likely Zhacai, a type of Chinese pickled mustard green often served as a side dish.

I should've just asked the ladies what it was.

As for the yellow veggies: The Japanese call them daikon (radishes); the Japanese-occupied Koreans called them dak-ggwang, riffing off the Japanese pronunciation, but in modern Korean, given all the attempts to recover Korean terms after 36 years of Japanese occupation, the yellow-stained radishes are now called danmuji, or roughly, "sweet, pickled radish."

Other words recovered from the Japanese:

국민학생/gukmin haksaeng → /초등학생/chodeung haksaeng
     from "national-citizen student" to "beginner-level (elementary) student"

야끼만두/yaki-mandu** → 군만두/gun-mandu
     from Jpn. "fried mandu" to Kor. "fried mandu"

with a serving of tofu and rice in my dish

The rice is all carbs, and the sauce is probably full of cornstarch and thus also carby, but the tofu and the bits of ground meat are carb-free.

I got a good shot of the "skirt" for one portion of our mandu.

I deliberately broke these up for easier eating.

As we strolled over to the dessert spot, Dan pointed out this burger place that, according to him, makes good regular burgers (not smash burgers). Note the signage, though: On the awning, the place is called NO MERCY BURGER. The building's roof, though, calls it NORMECY BURGER. Hilariously, and this may be hard to see, the NORMECY has a graffito that looks like a proofreader's correction saying to move the "R" to in between the "E" and the "C." So it's supposed to be "No Mercy." I found the typo and the correction hilarious, but the mistake gives the place character.

One thing I've long wondered, though, is how signs with glaring misprints even get made. Is there no final proofreading of the sign's text before the design is painted or etched or chiseled onto a surface? I mean, I've made some boneheaded proofreading mistakes for books that then went on to be printed, but my mistakes couldn't possibly be as embarrassing as fucking up signage on a building. "Quality Learing Center," anyone?

At least it has character, and someone recognized the mistake.

my own pic of the crêpes

Above: Remember Dan's pic of me taking a photo of something across from me? Above is what I'd been taking a picture of.

another pic of the signage (and no language errors)

I've eaten most of the bananas in this photo.

The crêpes proved to be quite delicious, we both agreed. Interesting note: In French, crêpe is pronounced "krep"; in English, it's commonly pronounced "kreyp" (and spelled without the circumflex), and in Korean, it's pronounced "kreh-peh," almost as if the French word had traveled through German first, where it had picked up the German tendency to pronounce the final "e" in words ending in -e.

And that was dinner and dessert out in Itaewon. Dan and I, on our way home, both started out going in the same direction, but I got off to transfer at Yaksu Station whereas Dan went farther to transfer later. My blood sugar is going to be a smoking ruin Friday morning, but I at least no longer have to worry about a French wedding feast jacking up my blood sugar one more time before my mid-July hospital visit (cardiac doc this time).

One last thing: Dan's wife was apparently not impressed with Jonny Dumplng when Dan took her there. I thought it was pretty damn good, and I want to go back.

Yes, even though it's in Itaewon.

__________

*Just Google "the driving force behind the project to renew Itaewon in S Korea." What's happening now is not the vision of a single person.

**I would ideally romanize the expression as yakgi-mandu, with a very strong hard "g" sound, but the accepted romanization is yaki-mandu. It makes no sense and leads foreigners to mispronounce the Korean, but whatever. The official Korean romanization of 떡볶이 as tteokbokki also makes zero sense to me. So I get rebellious and romanize it more self-consistently as ddeok-bokgi, a spelling that's less likely to lead a foreigner astray. But I'm not consistent with my rebellion, which I recognize is a problem. But the greater problem is that no romanization system is ever going to be universally satisfactory to all people.

let's rewind back to the Before Times

This is from months ago. The show is, unbelievably, getting a second season, then nothing more. Canceled. Everyone hated it.

I basically stay away from Trek and Wars and Who these days.

about to try something abnormal

It's getting to that time of year when I'd rather not be out walking at all, but I'm going to try something weird tonight: At 8:30, I'm going to step out and take a late-evening walk. Keep in mind that I normally prefer to do walks when my meds are still free-floating in my bloodstream, and since I take my meds in the morning, I prefer to do walks in the morning or very early afternoon. And normally, this sort of timing is good for me; any chest pain is minimal or nonexistent. But today, I took my meds in the morning, and I'm about to step out for a nighttime walk. All I ate today was a random handful of cashews (as penance for the awful thing I'd done to myself yesterday), so I think I ought to be good. Eating a lot and then walking is a bad move for me, a sure way to get angina (which is why I rested after yesterday's foodfest), but my stomach right now is pretty empty, and walking in a fasted state is the new, trendy thing (alongside Japanese-style power walking).

Basically, with the weather getting hotter, even the under-the-bridge shadows won't protect me from the ambient heat of the day, so I'm going to have to start walking either in the early morning or in the evening. So tonight's an experiment on several levels.

If I start walking and get chest pains, you can be sure I'll stop, rest, then turn around.

Don'chu worry none.

the genius lineup

Entertaining if nothing else.

I've applied to Hanyang Seoul campus

An ad for research-fellow positions at Hanyang University Seoul campus, just came out last night, so I sent in my initial application packet a few minutes ago. The job starts in "early July 2026 and goes for a year, with another year possible if one's "evaluations" are high enough. While the ad mentions several research-fellow positions, it also says there's a possibility for teaching with a potential for extra pay ("with eligibility for extra allowance"—not the most appetizing phrasing). So if I got this job, there's a chance that I'd be wearing several hats. The ad's reluctance to show the salary tells me that the pay is probably shamefully low, but anything is better than nothing at this point, and who knows what sort of networking I might be able to do while on campus?

A huge advantage is that the relevant university campus is under an hour away, so the commute wouldn't be terrible in terms of time. (I have no idea how terrible it might be in terms of crowding during rush hour.) A huge disadvantage, from what I hear, is that Hanyang's campus is extremely hilly. That's going to be a problem for my heart. Either I'll die, or I'll start to re-strengthen my heart muscle.

The AI god says:

Hanyang University's Seoul campus is notorious among students for its intense inclines and endless stairs. Built into the side of a mountain, the campus requires a significant uphill trek, with some pathways boasting gradients steeper than 45 degrees. The physical workout, while demanding, rewards students with spectacular panoramic views of the city.

So working at Hanyang for a year or two could kill me. Or, as Nietzsche said, That which does not kill us makes us stronger. I doubt he was thinking of frosted flakes.

One way or another, my initial paperwork has instantly zipped over to campus, and the receiving team will either accept or reject my application. We'll see. I've heard nothing from UNIST or Soonchunhyang.

ADDENDUM: Take a drone tour of Hanyang's stair-steppy, hilly campus:

"not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door..."

Why this sudden desire to fly across the planet to see a humble church door?

One of the most famous church doors in the world, this is the north porch at St Edward's in Stow-on-the-Wold in Gloucestershire 🇬🇧. It isn't clear which Edward we're talking about here but it seems to come down to one of the two later Anglo-Saxon Edwards, either the Martyr or the… pic.twitter.com/TjdTtEpkpq

— ArchaeoHistories (@histories_arch) June 4, 2026

Oi, Bilbo! You home?

for... scale

final day of the five-day literary sprint

Many thanks to the fellow Substackers who've been commenting intelligently on my stories. Maybe one day, if I get enough subscribers (decades from now), I'll be able to witness some lively discussions among the commenters. For now, though, I'm thankful that at least a couple of people are sharing their insights. It's a learning experience for me.

Well... today (Friday, June 5, Seoul time) is the final day of this weekday-spanning literary sprint: Five Stories in Five Days. The four stories thus far have been:

Mon: "When Mr. Fusion Finally Arrived" (the ultimate power source—good or bad?)
Tue: "A Tale of Ass" (a sullen boy at a Buddhist temple in the mountains meets a tiger)
Wed: "Telekinetically Yours" (frustrated Marv gains a superpower but no wisdom)
Thu: "Alien Life" (a speculative meditation on aliens with the merest wisp of a plot)

Today's story, appearing in a little over five hours, is "Very, Very Bad Erotica," and it is very bad indeed. See you at 5 p.m. Seoul time, then! (That's 4 a.m. DC time on Friday.) Oh, and according to most of the online gurus who talk about good and bad storytelling, this story commits something akin to the greatest narrative sin of all.

Future literary sprints will be happening in the Creative Stuff section of my paid Substack. My thanks to those who've come by to read; my view numbers for each story have mostly exceeded my subscriber numbers, so I know that people from outside of Substack are coming by. I appreciate you all, O Nameless Heroes! Please spread the word if you feel so moved.

(And here's a reminder that my ebook is on sale. Dead-tree version coming in a few weeks.)

le poulet grillé

but the outcome is easy enough to predict

This morning I ran into a genie who granted me one wish. "I said, I want to live forever."

He sighed, "I can't do that. It's against the rules. Ask for something else."

I thought about it for a minute, and said, "Okay, I want to live until my wife is happy with her outfit, and…

— Clinton (@614clinton) April 17, 2026

You do know how this is going to end, though, right? The husband's not going to live forever because he never wished for his wife to live forever so that she could remain forever dissatisfied. So, in no literal sense will she be eternally unsatisfied with her outfit. And being noneternal, she will die, but she might well be reliably dissatisfied until she dies. Once she passes away, though, the force of the wish will disappear. Why? Because the genie has already said "I can't do that" regarding the man's initial wish for eternal life. With only the man left after the wife dies, the nature of the wish must necessarily change to "Keep this man eternally alive," which the genie has already stated can't be done. Also, you can't change the nature of a wish without changing the wish. So in the end, there will be an end for the man.

And what about this: If the wife is, one day, unwontedly satisfied with her outfit, then the husband will die before she does! Either way, the man is going to die.

outfoxing the genie

This morning I ran into a genie who granted me one wish. "I said, I want to live forever."

He sighed, "I can't do that. It's against the rules. Ask for something else."

I thought about it for a minute, and said, "Okay, I want to live until my wife is happy with her outfit, and…

— Clinton (@614clinton) April 17, 2026

all Venned out

My buddy Mike sends me the following humorous Venn diagrams: 

This one works only if you mentally convert grinding on a boner to grinding bones.

This one's pretty good.

I told Mike this is one of my two favorites.

I kind of like this one.

I told Mike this is my other favorite.

This one doesn't quite work.

I'm not sure this one even makes sense.

Spring strikes back

Spring—suddenly motivated to act by my having asked my credit-card company to revoke Spring's charges—wrote me to say that it can't revoke the charges because the shipment has been sent. And when were my products sent? you ask. According to the tracking information I was just given, the shipments occurred on June 3. I.e., they occurred after Spring had received a payment-cancellation notice from Chase Amazon, my credit-card company. So all it took to light a fire under the company's ass was to attempt to revoke the charge for an order originally made in March. Fine, whatever. Assuming my products come to me in the next few days, I'll check them all out and send them to France. That way, my French family might not have me there to attend Augustin's wedding, but they'll at least have my box of humble gifts. Man, I really hope there were no printing fuckups on these products. There usually are.

walk image, June 2

You tell me—is this a heron? The AI god is guessing it's a grey heron.

ready for launch

What I found remarkable is that, in Korea, all of the big, leggy birds (storks, cranes, herons, egrets, etc., which I always get all mixed up) are extremely skittish, especially when they see me off in the distance, suddenly stopping and making ready to take a picture. 

But the bird above didn't move at all. It probably saw me, but it stood there like a sculpture and let me take my digitally zoomed picture from a distance. It was a rare moment with a particularly brave avian. A bravian if you will.

scenes from June 1

It's rare to catch both a special-looking bike (well, more like a trike) and a truck at the same time on the bike path. I've gotten used to seeing trucks on the bike paths in this part of Seoul; I now know that a lot of these guys are on this path because of various construction or landscaping projects. I don't like their presence here, but I at least understand it. As for the biker (triker) up ahead, I'd at first thought he was on some sort of recumbent contraption... but then I got closer. He's not recumbent at all.

truck and trike—June 1, 2026, 10:52 a.m.

And while I've seen this sort of person before, the sight hits me fresh every time: The dude's not recumbent, and that's because he's upright. And he's upright because he has no legs.

Guess you gotta have some ball protection between you and the ground when you're motoring around without legs.

To be clear, I'm not laughing at the guy at all. This is one of those cases where I have to use humor just to deal with the situation. If anything, I feel the same "I wanna salute you" level of respect for this guy that I do for the poor saps I see on the path who are suffering from what looks like the vestiges of polio, out on the path and limping around, legs swinging awkwardly from malformed joints, getting their kilometers in. These people—the legless ones, the polio-stricken ones, the handicapped ones who try and try despite severe disabilities—these are the people who put me to shame, and who are guaranteed a place in heaven if heaven exists.

You go, buddy.

nice takedown of vocal fry

Vocal fry is very annoying, and while it's most closely associated with North American women, there are plenty of men who do it, too. Be it from a man or from a woman, it's fucking grating as hell. This video clip from a 2017-era show called Loudermilk shows one of those never-happens-in-real-life-but-I-wish-it-would encounters between snotty ex-alcoholic Sam Loudermilk (Ron Livingston) and a barista (Maddie Phillips) with a severe case of vocal fry.

While many of the comments to this clip cheer Loudermilk's objection to the girl's annoying way of talking, many other comments are focused on the weird, AI-filter quality of the image. So I guess there's a little something for everybody.

life after Kathleen

Disney Lucasfilm is basically a shambles. And George's ex-wife Marcia, the editor credited with saving the original Star Wars trilogy (and who had nothing good to say about the horrifically Frankensteined-together sequel trilogy), recently passed away. I think the franchise's true inheritors should be the team that did Andor.

down they go

Those little, multiplying pests. So much biomass when you think about it.

brings back memories

Back when I was teaching in Centreville, VA, I had a Chinese student—an actual Chinese national studying in the US—who had no idea who Tank Man was. 

I showed him on my laptop.

old flame war

Around 1,950 years ago in Pompeii, a weaver named Successus fell in love with a barmaid named Iris.

She did not love him back.

We know this because his rival, a man named Severus, decided to humiliate him publicly. He grabbed something sharp and carved this into a wall for the… pic.twitter.com/SZDci6t3Xj

— Ancient History Hub (@AncientHistorry) June 3, 2026

now you know

Or as my brothers used to say: Dow you doe.

this doesn't bode well for my writing career

You'll need to click on the tweet to read the whole story.

On June 3, 1888, the San Francisco Examiner buried a baseball poem on page 4, between the editorials and the weather.

The author was so embarrassed by it that he refused to sign his real name. The byline just said "Phin."

He was reportedly paid five dollars. Nobody noticed it.… pic.twitter.com/uFfKpW0XVI

— Echoes of War (@EchoesofWarYT) June 3, 2026

Here's what I want to know. The full tweet mentions that actor DeWolf Hopper, having once recited the famous "Casey" poem to thunderous applause, went on to "perform" it "more than 10,000 times over the next 47 years." If I understand "perform" correctly, Hopper got paid, and he got paid for reciting someone else's work. If I created a one-man show that used images and words I'd found online, I'd be hit with all sorts of copyright claims and lawsuits for using unoriginal material in a performance for which I was being paid. And rightly so! So my question is: How did Hopper get away with that for 47 years? I'd appreciate an answer deeper than, "Times were different back then."

whoa—the traveling shwimteo

What a regular shwimteo looks like:

October 29, 2025, a bit after 8 a.m.

The shwimteo I just saw on Instapundit:

Darth Vader's shwimteo

You have to wonder whether that weak, little roof might just break off with sudden changes in speed and direction.

pest control

Whoops, I guess. Or not.

the sprint continues

Today (Thursday, Seoul time) is Day 4 of my Five Stories in Five Days literary sprint. I hope you've been enjoying it so far. Each story has gotten several dozen visitors.

Day 1 (Monday, June 1): "When Mr. Fusion Finally Arrived"
     (breakthrough fuel source solves problems?)
Day 2 (Tuesday, June 2): "A Tale of Ass"
     (a sullen boy at a mountain Buddhist temple meets a tiger)
Day 3 (Wednesday, June 3): "Telekinetically Yours"
     (frustrated Marv gains a superpower) 

Today's story, coming out at 5 p.m. Seoul time, is "Alien Life," a meditation on what aliens might look like, and whether the creature in the narrator's lab might itself be an alien. Please visit my Substack and enjoy today's story. This week's literary sprint is free, but future sprints will be featured in my Creative Stuff section, which is part of my paid Substack.

when inertial dampeners become inertial diapers

must learn balance

Finally, someone who didn’t lie on their resume pic.twitter.com/KDJevnbzWW

— NO CONTEXT HUMANS (@HumansNoContext) April 16, 2026

heh... Lunchly