indeed

the next quiz is ready to go

Verbs, Part 3: Linking and Auxiliary Verbs is now up. Give it a whirl and leave a comment or email if you find any problems.

Seven more quizzes here, and we move on to the next section.

female bodybuilders versus regular men

And the women admit to 'roiding up.

the wish

When every video is a variation of "The Monkey's Paw"...

real friends

I was never the type to get grabby about wayward baseballs so as to steal all the credit, but I do wonder whether I was ever as unselfish as these friends are. To any friends I might have slighted by acting selfishly, not rejoicing in your victories, I apologize.

Real friends celebrate your wins like their own pic.twitter.com/Mteuzbgq92

— Dudes Posting Their W’s (@DudespostingWs) April 5, 2026

more plot details and hints

I'm not pumped for much, these days, but I'm pumped for Dune 3, coming at the end of this year. Many questions need answering.

creepy Jesus and other thoughts

I re-watched Mel Gibson's 2004 The Passion of the Christ for the first time in years this past weekend. I'm not sure how I missed this screamingly obvious detail when I last saw the movie in a Korean theater, but this time around, I saw that Jesus' eyes were a disturbing color—somewhere between light brown and yellow, a kind of weird amber. The effect looked almost evil; it certainly put me into the uncanny valley. Perhaps the point was to simultaneously emphasize Jesus' humanity and his divinity—his humanity came through as we watched the man suffer at the hands of the Romans; his divinity was made manifest through the otherworldliness of his eye color (actor Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus, has naturally blue eyes, so they were re-colored by computer). 

I'm again reminded of Stephen R. Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever: The main character, Thomas Covenant, is driven crazy at the beginning of the story by finding himself in an alternate universe where he is healed of his leprosy, allowing him to feel things again and removing the impotence caused by his leprosy. Covenant meets a lovely teenage girl, Lena, who is nothing but kind to him; his self-hatred, plus the impossible return of his health, makes him angry at her kindness and drives him mad; in a horrible act that taints the rest of the chronicles, he rapes her. In the second novel of the first chronicles, Covenant meets the adult Elena, child of his rape (time moves differently between worlds); she has an otherworldly, displaced stare because she is the child of two different worlds. I thought of Elena's unnerving stare every time I looked into the movie Jesus' eyes.

And since my recent review of the movie Project Hail Mary went on about book-versus-movie differences (book review here), I guess it's only fair to point out how Gibson's film departs from various aspects of scripture: the flashbacks to Jesus as a child being comforted by Mary; the scenes of the Devil (Rosalinda Celentano) and the Devil's weird child (Davide Marotta); the quick scene of Judas being harassed by the furry, simian demon, then later being harassed by the crazy-eyed, demonic children who eventually goad him into suicide; the various cruel details of Jesus' crucifixion; the number of times Jesus falls in the movie (six) versus the Stations of the Cross (three); the detailed look into the character of Simon of Cyrene (Jarreth J. Merz), etc. Was Gibson justified in treating the Jesus story this way? To get the viewer to feel something instead of taking us with faithful literalness through the story? Was this a case of feelings over facts?* (And isn't that normally what liberal-leftists are accused of doing when they argue? Prioritizing feelings over facts?)**

Aside: I did a review of/meditation on The Passion of the Christ way back in 2004 when the film had first come out, and my blog was not even a year old. That essay made it into my first self-published book, Water from a Skull (2006)—no longer available through the now-downsized CafePress, which doesn't allow authors to self-publish books anymore. Water from a Skull will eventually be back, but on Amazon this time.

Did you rewatch The Passion of the Christ? Did you watch some other cinematic portrayal of the Jesus story this Easter season? Maybe the more Gnostically tinged The Last Temptation of Christ, or something more classic like The Greatest Story Ever Told? Did you take your celebration in a more pagan direction (this looks like a website worth exploring: It's by an atheist but against many anti-theistic misuses of history to formulate anti-religious arguments)? Or did you just have yourself a normal weekend free of all this Easter nonsense?

Well, I guess we can all look forward to Low Sunday this coming weekend.

__________

*I'm using facts, here, in a sense meant to be appreciated by scripturalists. If you're an atheist, you are of course more likely to dismiss scripture as merely a silly fairy tale.

**A partial answer might be that Gibson's version of the story was based on the mystical writings of AC Emmerich, a German nun prone to visions.

primordial humor

the algorithm is pushing this hard

Sticky toffee pudding. YouTube is pushing me to try to make it.

Maybe someday. On some cheat day.

do animals have a sense of play?

Of course they do.

Just a dog having the best day of its life. pic.twitter.com/nNMkauFig0

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) April 5, 2026

destroyer of souls

I'm happy for all of my friends who are happily married. You guys hit the jackpot. As for everyone else... I am so, so sorry, but I'm glad I don't know your private hell.

Jeremy Jahns reviews Ender's Game

I'm putting up this old Jeremy Jahns review of Ender's Game, the movie (from November 1, 2013), because there's a brief discussion in there about why Jahns didn't read the book first. His insights are relevant to my recent review of Project Hail Mary. A lot of that review was devoted to the issue of book/movie differences.

follow the bouncing...

Too bad that this...

...doesn't come without a dose of crazy.

At twenty, they bounce and they flounce.
At thirty, they've still got a jounce.
But as time crawls its loop,
and the boobs tend to droop,
you'll be forced to accept or renounce.

Choose wisely.

yeah, fuck those corny jokes

"making us dumb"

The dangers of AI as brought home in this video.

Colion gets flirty

It's kind of nice to watch Colion Noir get hot and bothered when he meets a woman more capable than he is. And as the video shows, she's obviously the real deal.

Easter meal

That heavy-cream powder goes fast. I made my second and final batch of "carnivore" buns today using the same procedure as the one I'd used yesterday. I switched up the protein, though, and decided to make myself some PLTs: pepperoni, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches. I ate three PLTs, then split the fourth bun in half and made myself a no-sugar-added blueberry "shortcake." It was good despite my not having added any sweetener to the bun batter (that's an experiment for later; I have no idea whether a sweetener like BochaSweet will prevent the buns from rising or what).

Yeah, yeah—I did the "croissant" cut again. Twice.

The "bottomings" go on.

Next is the 'roni.

Pretty please with cheese on top.

lettuce on top for two; lettuce on the bottom for one (what was I thinking?)

cross-sectional bite

blueberry "shortcake"—the sugar granules are actually BochaSweet

Damn—I should have dusted the top layer of whipped cream with a bit of cinnamon.

The whipped cream was under-whipped. I normally use either my regular food processor or my hand-held one. I still don't have the timing right. I used the regular food processor today and went for 90 seconds, which was enough to make me fear the ire of my net-door neighbor. But 90 seconds proved to be enough only to whip the cream partially; some of it was stiff while other parts of it were runny. Still, it came out fine taste-wise, and even the runny parts were somewhat thick. As in viscous, not stupid.

from "bread" to "bread"

Here's a progression from my first carnivore-bread recipe to my latest:

the Chris Cooking Nashville recipe

Victoria's Keto Kitchen recipe

the lilsipper_official recipe—winner!

I was looking over the Chris Cooking Nashville recipe last night. It's so damn complicated. Not just the soufflé-like procedure of separating the egg whites and yolks, then whipping the whites into a froth, but also the sheer number of ingredients needed, some for stability—things like gelatin, baking soda, vinegar (to activate the baking soda), cream cheese, and egg-white powder. That's just five of the eight ingredients I'd used to make Chris's recipe (I added a non-sugar sweetener). Compare that to the lilsipper recipe—three ingredients, simple procedure, better results. Just mix the two dry ingredients together, scramble the eggs separately, then pour the dry ingredients into the eggs while stirring. There's just no comparison.

the Easter miracle?

I had four almost-keto hamburgers yesterday, and when I checked my blood sugar this morning, I saw that it had risen only 8 points from the day before. I think that that carnivore-bread recipe is a keeper.

VFX guys and Pat Tubach

I didn't know who Pat Tubach was, either.

strength exercises

Happy Easter!

Below is Jeremy Jahns's review (it only just came out!) of Mel Gibson's 2004 The Passion of the Christ. This movie apparently fascinated the Muslim world. Word is that Muslims in Muslim-majority countries quietly obtained DVDs of the movie to watch it secretly. While I doubt it affected any Muslim's fundamental outlook, I hope it provided at least a glimmer of insight into what Christians think of the one they name their savior. Muslims, of course, don't believe that Jesus was anything more than a great prophet. They also subscribe to the heretical notion that the corpus upon the cross was not really Jesus, and that there had been a sort of divine substitution. Last bit of Muslim-Christian trivia: Jesus (Isa) is named in the Qur'an more often than Muhammad is.

Jahns, in his review, does mention the idea that some saw Gibson's movie as a kind of "torture porn." Thanks to a class I had taken on Catholic sacramentality, and thanks as well to the philosopher Dr. Vallicella's writings, I understand that Catholic sacramentality sees a unity of flesh and spirit: spiritual agony is reflected as physical agony, and vice versa. By this reckoning, the suffering of Jesus had to be portrayed by Gibson—a conservative Catholic—in all of its awfulness, as a symphony of rent, pierced flesh and cries of anguish. So what non-Catholics see as mere "torture porn" is seen by Catholics as a proper reflection of Christ's spiritual pain and desolation. Hence the movie's title.

Dr. Vallicella's contribution to my knowledge comes from his various discourses on and critiques of St. Thomas Aquinas and his "hylomorphic dualism," which comes down to the idea that the soul is the form of the body. I'm at least nominally Presbyterian, yet the notion makes a weird kind of sense to me even though I don't believe in souls. My buddy Mike, in the States, rediscovered his Catholicism years ago, so I can only imagine (if this isn't too presumptuous) that he subscribes to something like a Thomistic view of hylomorphic dualism. This dualism, in which two elements are so intertwined as to be inseparable from each other, might even be thought of as a kind of nondualism.

Interestingly, Mike's wife is a Christian Scientist, and in Christian Science, it's taught that there is no matter: there is only a monism of spirit, therefore no hylomorphic dualism. I once told Mike that Christian Science sounds a lot like Greek idealism. It could also be seen as a species of panpsychism, but Greek idealism generally reduces the cosmos to Platonic Ideal Forms while panpsychism reduces the world to mind or soul (noūs/νους "mind" or psyche/ψυχή "mind/soul/spirit"). But both of these views share with Christian Science a resolute immaterialism. (And yes, despite their fundamental religious differences, Mike and the Missus make their marriage work, and quite happily, too.)

Well, whatever perspective you come from, I wish you a Happy Easter. May it be a good day for you, however it is that you define "good," Jesus or not.

The standard benediction from my old church:

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all, now and forever. Hallelujah and amen.
—variation of 2 Corinthians 13:14

I sometimes feel like this

 

one of my big concerns

Examples of litter, big and small, abound. Oh, for a Mr. Fusion.

Holy Saturday burgers, Batman!

Success! It seems rare, these days, for me to be able to crow about a culinary victory, but here we are: it's Saturday, and I've eaten dinner, my only meal for the day. I'd like to say it was 100% keto hamburgers, but the BBQ sauce was a half-and-half mix of keto BBQ sauce and regular sauce, so there was a wee bit of real sugar in every burger.

The crucial thing I was testing today was a new "carnivore" recipe for burger buns (and possibly hot-dog buns). Long story short: this new recipe is much, much better than the previous carnivore recipe I'd used for my 2024 batch of carnivore burger buns (recipe by Chris Cooking Nashville... bye, Chris!). I had also made keto burger buns thanks to a recipe from Victoria's Keto Kitchen. That went pretty well, but I have to say... this newest recipe produces buns that are just as soft, and that taste way better than either of the other recipes. This newest recipe comes from a lady who goes by the moniker lilsipper_official on YouTube. Her recipe is a three-ingredient one, and for once, it's literally three ingredients (a lot of YouTube chefs will claim their recipe has X number of ingredients, then it turns out that they're not mentioning salt, pepper, water, etc.—ingredients you're assumed to have around the house). I had put up a link, before, to lilsipper's carnivore-bun recipe, but here it is again, and here's the video where she shows how the buns are made.

I know I said the previous carnivore buns were victories, but this newest recipe definitely takes the cake. Downsides first: Like the Chris Cooking Nashville buns, these new buns also taste a wee bit eggy, but the egginess isn't anywhere near bad enough to be off-putting. Also: The buns actually taste good, and I think there's room to take them in both a sweet and a savory direction (I can even see parfaits, shortcakes, or even sponge cakes). Another downside: Also like the Chris Cooking Nashville buns, these new buns tend to deflate after cooling (or if cooled too rapidly). That doesn't matter to me as long as the buns don't deflate to the point of becoming tortillas. (They don't.)

Advantages: This new recipe is extremely simple to put together, and unlike with the Chris recipe, there's no need to try to create a soufflé by separating out the egg whites and whipping them into a foam. This means I don't need any special equipment. The new recipe is as light as the Chris recipe's buns, which means it's not as heavy as the buns from Victoria's recipe. Like other faux-bread recipes that I have, this recipe results in a scoopable batter that isn't really a dough. Which is fine. I made the batter and didn't have to worry about the soufflé-foam deflating if I waited too long (but since the rising agent is baking powder, one can't wait too long because the baking powder starts reacting to its moist environment immediately). I panicked when I couldn't find my little, nonstick burger-bun baking tins at first, but I finally found them, hiding in plain sight. It was then only a matter of scooping 80 g of batter into each tin and cooking the buns for the requisite time (about 12 minutes) at the requisite temperature (about 177ºC, with a little top-burner action toward the end of the bake to brown the buns' tops). It was a delight to watch the buns puff up as they baked, looking almost like real hamburger buns. But I knew that, with so much egg in the recipe, the buns would eventually have to deflate the way a quiche does. You can minimize the deflation by prepping the buns a day in advance, then letting them just cool slowly inside the oven until the oven itself has cooled down. But I was impatient and wanted dinner tonight, so here we are.

I had purchased only a one-pound bag of heavy-cream powder (454 grams), which means I have just enough powder to make two four-bun batches. The powder isn't cheap, either, but when I tried a heaping spoonful of it out of monkey curiosity, it tasted pretty good on its own, and that's probably why these buns taste so much better than either Chris's or Victoria's.

From your perspective, the buns won't look that impressive. They will, in fact, look almost exactly like the buns from Chris's recipe. But for me, the simplicity of the recipe and the better taste make this new approach a winner in my mind, and I think my search for a decent keto/carnivore burger-bun recipe is now over.

Enjoy the photo essay below.

shredduce

unsweetened dill pickles from my downstairs grocery

surprisingly meaty and ripe tomatoes, bought at a discount because they were a little old

tonight's local-grocery cheese of choice

home-ground, homemade burgers

As you might already have guessed, the midget burger in the middle was a sacrifice to the gods. It died first, allowing me to taste-test whether the patties were any good.

I make my patties from skirt steak, which is not very fatty but is pretty juicy. I did my usual herbs and seasonings, but next time, I'm going to try something simpler: just salt and pepper for a more classic burger taste. These were 90-gram patties (90 g before cooking). Except for the midget patty, of course.

buns, just out of the oven and still looking puffy

food-porn angle

Six minutes later, and the buns have had a chance to collapse since I took them out of the oven.

You can see how they've fallen in on themselves.

But there's decent browning on top.

I was originally going to follow the lady's instructions and put the patties straight onto a parchment-paper-lined tray, but once I saw how goopy my batter was, I elected to scoop the batter into my burger-bun tins to give them some shape. 80 grams was the perfect amount of batter: nothing spilled over. I also ended up putting the tins onto the tray anyway.

bun bottoms (sounds a bit redundant)

The one in the middle looks the best, but they all tasted the same.

burger patties, fresh off the frying pan (midget already eaten)

I put the cheese on a bit late, so I used the microwave to get a slight melt.

These are almost, but not quite, smash-burger patties. I'd need a lot more heat for proper smash burgers.

Okay, yeah, I fucked up splitting one of the buns in half. Sue me. Mayo on the bottom buns.

I did figure out a better bun-splitting method (stop snickering) for the next pair of burgers: Rotate the buns while cutting carefully to avoid that spiral-cut-ham effect.

mayo, patty, cheese, 'maters

pickles on top

shredduce next

The burgers were juicy, but not juicy enough to justify putting whole-leaf lettuce on the bottom to prevent drippage ("bottomings," as Alton Brown calls this reversal of toppings). One more thing left: BBQ sauce.

Half-real BBQ sauce is better than no sauce at all.

Prepped and ready for consumption. I'm almost getting croissant vibes from the top bread.

food-porn side view

second pair of burger buns, sliced better and more carefully this time

For Easter Sunday, I'll try making some different things with my second and final batch of this bread. I've also got another experiment planned for my tried-and-true keto "baguette" recipe, another scoopable batter that turns into a loaf with some outside assistance. I'm thinking that that recipe might make for a really good pizza crust if I get the timing right.

Okay... back to digesting and feeling smug.

revisiting the transforming chess pieces

Adam Savage nerds out over those transforming chess pieces.

from Christmas 2025

Spoiler: David did not end up beating Avatar at the box office. I'd still like to see it at some point. David, I mean.

April 4

April 4 is the day Martin Luther King was assassinated.

One man come in the name of love
One man come and go
One man come, he to justify
One man to overthrow

In the name of love
What more in the name of love?
In the name of love
What more in the name of love?

One man caught on a barbed wire fence
One man, he resist
One man washed on an empty beach
One man betrayed with a kiss

In the name of love
What more in the name of love?
In the name of love
What more in the name of love?

Nobody but you
Somebody lied to you (It's all right)
Somebody to you
(The bright line)
(It's all ready, mate)
(It's the right time)

Early morning, April four
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride

In the name of love
What more in the name of love?
In the name of love
What more in the name of love?
In the name of love 
What more in the name of love?
In the name of love
What more in the name of love?

__________

Does anyone still share this dream?

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

...when we allow freedom [to] ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

And how are we doing as a nation today? Any better than in the 1960s?

In my grad course on ecclesiology, Father Komonchak flatly asked, Since Jesus, has the world become a better place?

scene and character analysis: early Game of Thrones

I find no fault in this meme

A cynic will talk about how these edifices took money, forced labor, and political savvy to build. But there was also artistic motivation, focused conviction, spiritual vision, and a desire that perdured over generations—a truly human, truly civilizational effort.

new noods

I saw these keto-ish noodles over at Justin's blog, so I was inspired to buy some for myself. The box arrived looking ripped-up (see the sad pic below; the box was inside a large, padded envelope and obviously got dinged around a lot), but the contents were undamaged. Not that it matters: Out of curiosity, I ate a one-serving package, and... I'm not sure how much I like these noodles, which are an unholy fusion of konjac and oat fiber.

In Korean, konjac is hangeulized as 곤약/gonyak, which means that Koreans pronounce the word like cognac. But according to the YouTube pronunciation guy, it's pronounced somewhere between "con Jack" and "cone Jack" in the West. So take your phonetic pick. The noodles can be eaten straight, no cooking, according to what it says on the box; they can even be pan-fried (which I might try next), boiled, or whatever. I tried them cold, which might not have been the best idea. They tasted funny, and the texture is like a combination of Korean dotori-muk/도토리묵 (acorn-starch jelly) and earlobe cartilage: there's a stiff, rubbery give to it, along with an unpleasantly cartilaginous texture when you bite through. Yeah, I definitely want to try frying these noodles up, but if you like cartilage, you'll be in heaven. I doubt they'll behave like rice noodles or Korean vermicelli pasta (dang-myeon/당면), but I hope that, when I fry them, they crisp up at least somewhat (a possible vision of the future here).

I had hoped to use these as a substitute for regular pasta for things like spaghetti, but I suspect that these noodles go a lot better with an Asian flavor profile.

So along with keto burgers, look out for some kind of Asian-ish preparation.

Gary Eats vs. The George

Want good fish and chips? I watch these England videos and mentally build up a list of places I'd love to visit.

just call me Kevin McClogger

I almost feel bad mentioning this once more, but... It Happened Again. You know what. Lately, it always seems to happen on fasting days, when my body takes advantage of the break from consumption to try to get rid of, shall we say, prandial buildups. It was another prodigious one today, too. I can hear Jacob Marley's ghost yelling about how "It was a ponderous chain!" But do you know how ponderous, dear Jacob? I once again feared I would have to bring out the heavy artillery to dislodge the demon-child of my loins, but like last time, my smaller, concave companion was able to handle the problem deftly.

As a result, the world can exist for another day.

Lego shredder?

morbidly fascinating overview of AI "morality"

Various AIs are put to the test with the famous "trolley problem" and the larger issue of self-sacrifice. At this stage in development, you do not want AI to be put in charge of life-and-death decisions for human beings. But the reality is that AI probably already holds some of those levers of power despite the fact that it has no mind and doesn't really care. How blithely we give up our own autonomy, privacy, and authority—our own freedom—in our pursuit of dependence. Psychoanalyst Eric Fromm was a partial Marxist, but maybe he was right.

action vs. stative verbs

The more I think about it, the more I think I should never have started the Substack section on verbs with Action and Stative Verbs. The distinction between these verbs is subtle and often lawyerly, and I can't say that, even with the several definitions/parameters I've seen, a truly clear and satisfying explanation of these verb categories exists. Here's how I concluded my lesson on the topic (in a rare display of paid content on a free format like my blog!), with some recent rewriting:

NB: Although it might seem like a stative verb because it denotes moving from one state (life) to another (death), perish is actually a dynamic verb because of that very process of physical transitioning. So remember that fact for perish and all of its cousins: die, croak, buy the farm, cark it, check out, bite the big one, etc. But don’t lean too hard on that logic: some such verbs are stative, but when they denote a transition from one state to another, the verbs could be active. Even this logic, though, can be problematic: agree is a stative verb, but your mind is moving from a neutral or negative state to a state of being actively in accord with someone’s claim or opinion, so wouldn’t that transition make agree an action verb? It’s a philosophical can of worms. So there are plenty of edge cases where you may have to use your discretion in determining if a verb is active/dynamic or not. It may be better to think of action verbs as more external/empirical (“Can people see me doing it?”) while stative verbs are more internal. But again, even this guideline should be taken with a grain of salt. Edge cases.

Because the line between action and stative is often blurred, especially when talking about cognition, I would recommend not worrying too much about the distinction in cognitional contexts. I found an online example of how to think can be either dynamic or stative. Look at this:

I think that’s a good idea. (stative: just holding an opinion)
She is thinking about her next holiday. (action: actively contemplating)

Note as well that, in example (2) above, the verb is in the present progressive, which is usually reserved for action verbs, so that’s a hint for you. Still, all of this is a subtle, lawyerly distinction, and whether you go to heaven or hell probably won’t depend on your ability to tell action from stative verbs. So as I wrote above, don’t worry too much about this particular distinction except when it’s clear (eat vs. know, for example).

I give up. And if I were teaching this to a class, I doubt I'd test the class on the distinction.

Some of the ways that action verbs and stative verbs are distinguished from each other:

1. physical/objective vs. mental/subjective—Action verbs supposedly deal mostly with dynamic physical transitions while stative verbs deal mostly with subjective mental states (or physical qualities).

2. static nature of the state—It's often said that, with stative verbs, the state is unlikely to change, which is one clue that it's stative. Example: I know you're a virgin. The knowing isn't likely to change until the objective facts get updated.

3. progressive tense—Stative verbs supposedly don't get expressed in progressive tenses. We say, for example, that We understand, not We are understanding. Or we say We agree, not We are agreeing. Or we say The human body consists of a collection of cells, not The human body is consisting of a collection of cells.

But...

Rebuttal to (1): See my agree example above. To agree is to move from a neutral or negative mental state to one that is in accord. So why is agree often listed as a stative verb? Think about the verb to die: this, too, is a transition from a state of living to a state of being dead. By this standard, to die is considered an action (dynamic) verb. Whether your mental state is also physical (electrochemical) depends on your personal philosophy of mind. So whether agree is an action verb or a stative verb may depend on what you think consciousness is!

Rebuttal to (2): Again using agree: Has there not been a change in one's mental state? And how necessarily permanent is an agreement? I frequent a certain restaurant because I like the food, the ambiance, and the service, so I agree to patronize the place. But when there's a sudden drop in the place's quality, I'd say the agreement no longer stands: I no longer agree to frequent that place. So what is fundamentally static or permanent about the mental state of agreement? This standard strikes me as shaky at best.

Rebuttal to (3): As I mention in my lesson, it's possible to say I am understanding in Indian English. But you don't even need to reach as far as India to find counterexamples to this supposed "rule/criterion." In US English, for example, you can imagine a situation in which a father is yelling at his son about some point, but the son had sullenly come around to the father's point of view five minutes ago. Still, the oblivious father keeps yelling, and his wife finally storms in and shouts at her husband, "You idiot! Can't you see that he's agreeing with you?" That strikes me as a perfectly natural example of using the progressive tense with what is supposedly a stative verb.

Basically, I apologize to the two or three people following (or, really, not following) my paid curriculum on Substack. Forcing you to go through the action/stative distinction—especially as the very first unit on verbs—probably caused you nothing but headaches. It's still causing me headaches.

So my challenge to my readers is to find an airtight definitional distinction between action verbs and stative verbs for which there are no possible counterexamples. Can you do it?

a map for "beggars"

As with other places around the world, food's getting expensive in Korea, too. Sounds like the perfect opportunity to go on a starvation diet. Save some money. Anyway, the belt-tightening has created a necessity, and necessity is the mother of invention, hence the "beggars' map." If it's a app, I couldn't find it at the Google Play store. I do know, from the linked blog post, that it's at least a website. And out of curiosity, I looked up whether there were any cheap places close to me, and there's one. So to anyone in search of a cheap meal: Happy hunting.

Warning: The map itself warns that some more expensive eateries are submitting their own names in an attempt to appear on the map, so proceed with caution. The map is crowdsourced, and there are apparently ways for the mapmakers to vet any given place being submitted for consideration, so expect this to become an ever-escalating arms race as vetting methods improve. People really do ruin everything, don't they?

lombalgie

I guess it was a pretty deep strain: It's still with me. My back hasn't flared up since Tuesday, but I can feel that it's one false move away from flaring up again. Move slowly, keep the core braced, hope for the best. I'm still staying off the weight training: it's best not to tempt fate.

transitive and intransitive verbs

The quiz for Verbs, Part 2 is done. As always, please leave a comment or send me an email if you try the quiz out and find problems.

Max talks 1700s chocolate wine

the meme needs work, but...

 The meme needs work, but it does have a point.

clickbaity title but educational video

you get the announcement first

I'll be announcing these quizzes on Substack after April 10, but you blog readers get the announcement first: The quiz for Verbs, Part 1 is now up. I didn't check it through quite as thoroughly as the previous quizzes, but I did run through variations of the quiz eight or nine times, and the "game play" seems all right. But you can help me out by trying the quiz out and seeing whether it works. Of course, to access my Verbs, Part 1 article to see what the answers are supposed to be, you'd need to become a paying subscriber, so if you don't do that, and you think you've found something wrong (or if you dispute something that the quiz has deemed wrong), leave a comment, and I'll either reply with quotes from my Substack article to justify the quiz's reasoning or affirm that you've found a legitimate mistake that needs correction.

proviso

My toe is healing up nicely. I haven't put up any update photos, but it's been almost two weeks since I returned from the failed walk, and things are looking great. I didn't even have to visit the doc for antibiotics. I basically just clean and dress the toe, and every couple of days, I give it a nice soak in an Epsom-salt solution, and that seems to be doing the trick. My foot had been slightly swollen when I first got back, but the swelling is almost all gone now, so things are definitely on the mend.

But will I be healed enough to try that walk again later this month? I don't know. Maybe. I'll keep checking my toe, which is no longer bleeding, but which is still seeping/weeping fluid. If I were to go on a long walk right now, I'd end up reopening the various little wounds. So I need to see what state I'm in two weeks from now. If I judge that my toe isn't sufficiently healed, I'll try this walk in the fall. In the meantime, I'll start walking again but will keep the treks short and limited in scope, e.g., my 9.5K route up to the river and back and the occasional longer walk (25-35K) on weekends.

So—provided that my toe is healed enough, I'll walk later this month. Otherwise... autumn.

And I still need to figure out a re-plotted route with different stopping points.

sounds carby but good

Sam tries his hand at "chicken pot-pie soup":

don't disrespect the appendix

I will never look at my appendix the same way ever again.

this month

I think I'm going to try the Geumgang route again later this month, but I still need to re-plot my course so I can do it without needing to camp. 

I also want to divide the course up into shorter segments (18-25K) so my feet don't get quite as abused. And when I arrive at the Shintanjin Station area, I'm going to include the walk from that neighborhood to the trail's starting point as part of my overall walk. That way, I won't have to worry about stupid, assholish taxi drivers. Also: since I'm doing this walk so soon after my recent failure, I'll be chronicling this latest attempt on the same walk blog. Think of this as... Kevin's Walk 10a if you will.

Re-plotting the course will be a task for this weekend.

I'll just have to watch out for those April showers.

That word—assholish. Weirdly reminds me of a French verb, assoler, which has nothing to do with assholes, but which means to organize land into parcels for crop rotation. The noun is assolement. Just another one of those uncomfortable phonetic resemblances to naughty English words, like la phoque, which doesn't mean "fuck" but does mean "seal," as in the marine mammal. Tu vois cette petite phoque-là? See that little phoque there?

cleaning a rare, old car

a mystery for you

What could I possibly be making this weekend with just these three ingredients?

The answer is here. And see here for details. And once again, keto leads me into the weeds of alchemy as I discover the existence of heavy-cream powder. It's mostly butterfat, and less than a single gram of carbs per 6-gram tablespoon.

Andong and the crispy Vietnamese pancake

I wonder, too

 

I asked the AI god where man buns are most likely to be found. It said:

Man buns are most frequently spotted in trend-conscious urban environments, creative workspaces, and places associated with leisure, fitness, and hip counter-culture. Based on typical sightings and styling trends, here are the most likely places to see them:

Urban and Neighborhood Hotspots

Brooklyn (NYC), Shoreditch (London), and Berlin: These areas are considered the "cultural ovens" where the style was popularized.

Artisanal Coffee Shops & Cafes: Casual, hipster-friendly cafes are prime spots.

Speakeasy-style Bars & Pubs: Common among bartenders and patrons in trendy nightlife areas.

Leisure and Retail

Disneyland: The park became famous for "man bun" spotting, with many appearing on Instagram. 

Trendy Shopping Districts: Places like All Saints or artisan markets.

Art-Sociology Buildings/Campuses: College areas often host trends.

Professional and Fitness Settings

Creative Offices & Co-working Spaces: Tech and creative industries often allow for more relaxed grooming.

Gyms & Fitness Centers: Popular among men who work out frequently and need to keep long hair in place.

Barbershops: Specifically those offering "undercut" or "taper fade" services, often paired with a well-groomed beard.

Appearance Variations

The "Top Knot" or High Bun: Often seen on the crown of the head, favored for a "pineapple" or trendy look.

The "Low Bun": Located at the nape of the neck, often worn by men with a "beach bum" or "casual" style.

Undercut/Fade Bun: Shaved or closely clipped sides with a full bun on top.

Best Times/Conditions to See Them

Sunny weather: Often paired with a "disheveled" look.

"After-work" hours: In metropolitan cities, they are sometimes worn as a sophisticated look for the office or a night out.