ChatGPT and the Muhammad question

bring on the crazy estrogen

written in a comment elsewhere

I wrote this (slightly edited):

...there are a lot of people who think they can run from or at least drown out the voices in their heads. Maybe because most people are so social, they thrive on noise—the sounds of other people jabbering and blathering and singing and shouting and just filling the silence with ear garbage and other arrant bullshit. Getting these people together for a 20-minute meditation session—in which you just sit, drink in the quiet, and start to feel the oceanic rhythms of your consciousness—would drive them nuts because they're so superficial and so noise-addicted that silence actually makes them uncomfortable. So they're unwilling to face the silence. Because they don't want to confront the voices. A shame, really. It's like sitting with a chatterbox who doesn't know when to shut the fuck up. If he doesn't hear a voice, he'll talk just so there's sound. I've ridden with taxi drivers who, to fill the silence, would reflexively turn on the radio just to have the comforting presence of sound. For some people, silence is oppressive. I pity them.

The above isn't meant to say that no one should ever talk or engage in noisy self-expression. It is, however, a comment on the old wisdom that the babbling brook is shallow while still waters run deep. And I'm not making myself out to be an enlightened guru in this regard: hell, I talk out loud to myself during my long walks, sometimes to the point of telling myself to shut up.

I know someone who would appreciate this

Just seen on Instapundit. Here's a groaner of a dad pun for you:

I thought this was going to be a joke about massive fraud. Gimme my money back.

the thermal images are nicer, I think

ripping babies in half

Wow. He really went there with his comedy. I love it.

penultimate walk-blog post is up, sadly

Go check out my next-to-last post for what turned out to be an abortive walk.

But only if you dare. There be some serious toe pics.

ululate!

The legendary martial artist Chuck Norris, proficient in several Korean martial arts and a smattering of non-Korean combat systems, has died at the age of 86. At this writing, no cause of death has been given, but Norris's family announced that Norris had been "recently hospitalized." My understanding was that he seemed quite healthy and was still working out. I had seen purportedly recent video of Norris engaged in a sparring workout at some gym. Norris was a quiet conservative, a mediocre but not-bad actor, and the subject of an ever-growing roster of jokes that, in the spirit of tall tales, exaggerated his abilities to almost godlike proportions. I suppose I should end this in memoriam with a list of some of those bits of humor. Norris himself got a kick(!) out of lot of these:

1. Chuck Norris doesn’t flush the toilet. He scares the shit out of it.
2. When Chuck Norris was born, he drove his mom home from the hospital.
3. When Chuck Norris slices onions, the onions cry.
4. Chuck Norris counted to infinity—twice.
5. When the boogeyman goes to sleep at night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.
6. Chuck Norris has a mug of nails instead of coffee in the morning.
7. Chuck Norris can clap with one hand.
8. Chuck Norris uses ribbed condoms inside out so he gets the pleasure.
9. Time waits for no man. Unless that man is Chuck Norris.
10. There is no theory of evolution, just a list of animals Chuck Norris allows to live.

11. Chuck Norris doesn’t actually write books. The words assemble themselves out of fear.

12. Chuck Norris can divide by zero.

13. Chuck Norris can delete the Recycling Bin.

14. Death once had a near-Chuck-Norris experience.

15. When God said, “Let there be LIGHT!”, Chuck Norris said, “Say please.”

16. Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one bird.

17. Chuck Norris destroyed the periodic table because Chuck Norris only recognizes the element of surprise.

18. There is no chin behind Chuck Norris’ beard. There is only another fist.

19. Chuck Norris can slam a revolving door.

20. When Chuck Norris does a push-up, he isn’t lifting himself up: he’s pushing the earth down.

21. Chuck Norris doesn’t wear a watch. He simply decides what time it is.

22. Chuck Norris built the hospital he was born in.

23. When Chuck Norris turned 18, his parents moved out.

24. Chuck Norris doesn’t sleep. He waits.

25. Chuck Norris has been to Mars. That’s why there are no signs of life there.

26. Chuck Norris once ate a Rubik’s Cube and pooped it out solved.

27. The flu has to get Chuck Norris shots every year.

28. The Dead Sea was alive before Chuck Norris swam there.

29. Chuck Norris doesn’t fill out online forms because he doesn’t submit.

30. Chuck Norris starred in Star Wars. He was the Force.

31. Chuck Norris likes his meat so rare he only eats unicorns.

32. Chuck Norris doesn’t read books. He stares them down until he gets the information he wants.

34. If Chuck Norris were to travel to an alternate dimension in which there was another Chuck Norris and they both fought, they would both win.

35. Chuck Norris can strangle you with a cordless phone.

36. Chuck Norris can kill your imaginary friends.

37. Chuck Norris can hear sign language.

38. Chuck Norris tells Simon what to do.

39. Chuck Norris lost his virginity before his dad did.

40. If it looks like chicken, tastes like chicken, and feels like chicken, but Chuck Norris says it’s beef, it’s beef.

41. Chuck Norris does not own a stove, oven, or microwave because revenge is a dish best served cold.

42. Chuck Norris has never blinked in his entire life.

43. Chuck Norris can speak Braille.

44. Chuck Norris once had a heart attack. His heart lost.

45. Chuck Norris doesn’t cheat death. He wins fair and square.

46. Chuck Norris is the reason Waldo is hiding.

48. Chuck Norris sleeps with a pillow under his gun.

49. MC Hammer learned the hard way that Chuck Norris can touch this.

50. Chuck refers to himself in the fourth person.

51. The only time Chuck Norris was ever wrong was when he thought he had made a mistake.

52. A bulletproof vest wears Chuck Norris for protection.

53. Chuck Norris once won an underwater breathing contest with a fish.

54. Chuck Norris narrates Morgan Freeman’s life.

55. The Great Wall of China was created to keep Chuck Norris out. It didn’t work.

56. It takes Chuck Norris 20 minutes to watch 60 Minutes.

57. Chuck Norris once ordered a steak in a restaurant. The steak did what it was told.

58. Bigfoot claims he once saw Chuck Norris.

59. Chuck Norris can sit in the corner of a round room.

60. Chuck Norris can make a slinky go upstairs.

61. Chuck Norris can squeeze orange juice out of a lemon.

62. Chuck Norris cannot turn left because he is always right.

63. Chuck Norris invented airplanes because he was tired of being the only person who could fly.

64. Freddy Krueger has nightmares about Chuck Norris.

65. Chuck Norris’ cowboy boots are made from real cowboys.

66. Chuck Norris used to beat the shit out of his shadow because it was following too close behind him. It now stands back a safe 30 feet.

67. Before he forgot a gift for Chuck Norris, Santa Claus was real.

68. Chuck Norris doesn’t need to shave. His beard is too scared to grow.

69. Chuck Norris had to stop washing his clothes in the ocean. Too many tsunamis.

70. Chuck Norris can cook minute rice in 30 seconds.

71. Chuck Norris once made a Happy Meal cry.

72. When Chuck Norris enters a room, he doesn’t turn the lights on. He turns the dark off.

73. Chuck Norris can unscramble an egg.

74. Chuck Norris can make a snowman out of fire.

75. When Chuck Norris jumps into a pool, he doesn’t get wet. The water gets Chuck Norris.

76. Chuck Norris can win a staring contest with his eyes closed.

77. Chuck Norris can win a game of Connect Four in just three moves.

78. Chuck Norris can lick a 9-volt battery and not get shocked.

79. Chuck Norris knows Victoria’s secret.

80. When Chuck Norris was in middle school, his English teacher assigned an essay: “What is courage?” He received an A-plus for turning in a blank page with only his name at the top.

I remember Norris got a "Chuckle" when reading a version of this one aloud:

Chuck Norris was bitten by a rattlesnake... after five days of pain and suffering, the rattlesnake died.

debating with academics is often useless

Maybe some academics listen to reason, but most don't. Most also think that their Ph.D. makes them experts in everything, including matters quite outside of their field. There's often a Dunning-Kruger dynamic at play, and in the exchange below, Friedman—a smart guy who happens to be right—seems to be wasting his time.

Lindybeige versus Star Wars fan films

d'oh (sounds like a Steven Wright one-liner)

A documentary made by the Flat Earth society has been nominated for a Golden Globe.

— mariana Z (@mariana057) March 12, 2026

hey, rat—got a present for ya'

more college idiots

Is this staged, or are we really this sad as a nation?

Max and WW2 mincemeat pie

ouch

 

Guga does Beijing beef

it's a spectacular moment, but does it make sense?

I've come to like The Last Jedi less and less as the years have passed. And The Critical Drinker is right about Rian Johnson and his soccer-ball-shaped (the Drinker would doubtless say football-shaped) head.

\ tomɑ dɑkɛ̃ \

(In case you didn't figure out the above, that's the IPA—International Phonetic Alphabet—rendering of Thomas d'Aquin, the French way to say Thomas Aquinas.)

ha...?

 

they wouldn't be woke if they weren't melting down all the time

blast those pests

but why, Andy?

Hey, let's put our twist on an old classic and utterly fuck up the moral!

St. Patrick's Day limericks by a half-Korean, part-Irish bastard

My uncle eats nothing but gators;
he tries to sell meat to our waiters,
and they always say no
because business is slow,
but in truth, they're all just gator-haters.

A robber and witch were in trouble,

so the witch made a magic brew bubble,

then they drank the dose right,

turned to tall heaps of shite

—head to toe, covered with pubic stubble.

The Lord, He was taking a tally;

He saw a young maid, name of Sally

—so He changed to a man,

and He called himself Stan,

but the lass never showed Him her valley.

There once was a dragon named Pringle

who had the most ponderous dingle

all the people were wowed

and the prostitutes, cowed

—but the dragon remained ever single.

'Twas nighttime when Greyhair McFiddle
heard Margie his wife cry, "Let's diddle!"
And quite ancient, with rolls,
Margie unearthed her holes,
and so Greyhair aimed right for the middle.

3D Last Supper

How nifty.

¡son conchas, pendejo!

Andong's Berlin food recommendations

To hear Andong tell it, Berlin is a real food mecca. The last time I was there was in 1989 for the fall of the Wall. I gather that a lot has changed since then.

do this for New Year's Eve 2026

I've never been a "huge slab of meat" kind of guy, but I don't mind a good steak now and then.

who farted?

Smell that? Seoul is currently 13 hours ahead of DC, but we can smell it from here. Later today, it's the Academy Awards. Are you as excited as I am, Poison Girls?

Anyway, here's Dan Murrell with a truckload of predictions. Not that I care. I suspect that the best way to pick Oscar winners is to use the politically correct-o-meter: the more PC-leftie a film is, the more likely it is to win an Oscar. I realize that that doesn't make most choices any easier since almost all of the films tilt left in some way or other, but can you think of a better metric? What's that you say? Actual merit?? Ha! Don't make me laugh. But your naïveté is adorable. Leave predictions in the comments. If you're interested. I doubt any of you are.

what—not ET?

get forked

when fetishes meet

The girl I was head over heels for in high school was cross-country team co-captain, and I discovered, thanks to her legs, that I have a thing for women's calves. Meaty, muscular calves.

departure time!

Ides of March! Watch out for multiple daggers.

My SRT train leaving for Daejeon from Suseo Station departs at 3 p.m. It'll take less than an hour to arrive at Daejeon's Shintanjin Station, and motels there are well within walking distance. The walk starts the following day and goes through Friday. Follow me over at my walk blog, Kevin's Walk 10. Leave lots of comments, but do read the comments policy under the comment window: No anonymous comments! You may sign in as "Anonymous" or "Unknown," but in that case, please leave a name or screen name at the end of your comment. I'll be deleting all anonymous comments, even the nice ones.

more Anatoly pranks with bodybuilders

You have to wonder, though, whether these guys are actually in on the pranks.

when it's too difficult for the native speakers

It's the day I depart for my walk, which starts tomorrow, so this blog is now on a reduced schedule. There will still be scheduled posts throughout the day, but not as many. In the meantime, please visit my walk blog, Kevin's Walk 10, for the latest updates on how the Geumgang walk is going.

Below, we have more evidence that Korean education is a joke—another case of designing a test that doesn't test for anything real or practical. In Korea, the English test for college entrance doesn't test for whether the student possesses any practical skills: the test is full of tricks, filled with twists and turns and traps. It has no connection to reality at all, and whether a student does well or poorly on the test (I imagine most Americans, who are language idiots, would do poorly) says nothing about that student's real English ability. The test is more like a logic test that uses English as its medium. Schools would be better off giving students a symbol-filled, non-linguistic IQ test (like this one) instead.

I hate seeing English used this way.

Marvel be sweatin'

Ryan Kinel says it's not looking good for Doomsday.

duck!

I'd like to take a try... at this pie

Dave Cullen on Avengers: Doomsday

I'm not even the least bit interested.

Dr. Ekberg on what accelerates your dementia

You guessed it: carbs. Avoid processed foods, especially the sugary ones. Avoid alcohol. Avoid "low-fat"  processed foods. Avoid smoking. Avoid a high-grain diet. Avoiding eating many times during the day. Sleep well. Don't be sedentary. Take in plenty of Omega-3, not so much Omega-6. Reduce your screen time.

think only happy thoughts

seen in Instapundit comments

Such gleeful dedication.

The way he jumped in without hesitation 😭

This is peak dog happiness.pic.twitter.com/kk0YuYklLp

— Interesting things (@awkwardgoogle) March 13, 2026

HISHE for Deadpool & Wolverine

How it should have ended:

des chiens qui rêvent

A hilarious video of dogs dreaming. As Dr. Chandra said in 2010: "All intelligent creatures dream. No one knows why."

toocher horn and shootcher guns!

I'm a strong proponent of the Second Amendment, colloquially called "2A." The Second Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms. Different states, however, interpret this right in different ways and set different limitations on that right. Ideally, there should be no limitations at all.

And if you're one of those idiots who like to shout about how "gun rights = gang violence," you really, really don't understand the problem. Or, probably, the statistics.

Chineepoo!

Chinese food in Korea usually comes down to a menu of only a handful of things, with a whole subsidiary section of the menu devoted to expensive, esoteric food. The low-end standards are usually: (1) some form of jjajang-myeon (noodles in black-bean sauce), (2) some form of jjambbong (salty, spicy seafood-and-noodle soup), (3) some form of bokgeumbap (fried rice), and (4) fried mandu (thick-skinned dumplings or potstickers). The mandu, despite their thick, capacious skins, are usually filled with cellophane noodles, scallions, and maybe, grudgingly, a little ground pork. The somewhat higher-end standards are (1) some form of tangsuyuk (sweet-sour pork), (2) gganpoonggi (fried chicken tenders in sweet-spicy sauce), and maybe (3) ggansho-saeyu (the shrimp version of gganpoonggi). Even more expensive are lesser-known, less frequently tried, and more esoteric dishes like (1) palbochae (lit. "eight treasures vegetables"—veggie combo, often with some small amount of protein, usually slathered in a lighter, clearer sauce than is found on the cheaper dishes; and (2) nanjawans (pork meatballs or medallions, usually but not always in a veggie-filled sauce).

A new Chinese place opened up in my building's basement a month or two ago, and it's become fairly popular in the way of most Chinese-food restaurants. I tried visiting yesterday (Thursday) after waking up too late in the evening, but at 8:30 p.m., the resto was closed to new customers. I went back today (Friday), a bit earlier this time, after I'd gotten my haircut. The lady who had turned me away recognized me today and was all smiles; I let myself in and found a table. As with many restos these days, ordering was via touch screen:

On the touch menu, you see jjajangmyeon, jjambbong, and bokgeumbap.

The place was obviously not shy about its prices. When I'm testing out a new place, I normally get a plate of mandu and something fried and sauced. You can tell a lot about a place by what they serve you, which is why An Shi Seong in Daegu caught me by surprise: compared to most Korean-style Chinese places, An Shi Seong isn't fucking around.

So I got fried mandu and a W35,000 plate of gganpoonggi. Neither is healthy for someone like me, but I'm about to embark on a longish walk, so I hope to burn off the calories. The point is that I had low expectations for dinner, so the mandu I got was, surprisingly, slightly better than expected:

Eight mandu for W9,000. A bit expensive. But good.

The gganpoonggi was about what I expected, but definitely a letdown compared to An Shi Seong. Most Seoul Chinese restos are disappointing in that way, and I've had Chinese all over Seoul. If you're based in Seoul and know of an awesome Korean Chinese resto (i.e., not Din Tai Fung, which is a global chain and not Korean), let me know in the comments.

slightly crunchy, mostly soggy... all in all, meh

Overall, everything was... not bad. Nothing wowed me, but the place was good enough that I might go back in a month. I'll try other dishes next time. I won't be trying the gganpoonggi again. Too much sadness, pain, and disappointment, like when you briefly meet an angel but find yourself dating an overly made-up slut.

the Meat Guy in Saudi Arabia for Mr. Beast's theme-park food

Someone, a detractor, once called Mr. Beast's smile a "rictus smile." I'd agree: there's something creepily fake about that guy. And freaks like Mr. Beast are usually the ones making all of the money. What does that say about the rest of us?

not my war face exactly, but...

I'm no looker, I realize, so whatever's on display below is Klingon-ugly—more of a Worf-face than a war face. Behold:

In preparation for Monday's walk, then, the hair has been cut. The toenails are also cut (with, as usual,  and frustratingly, one bleeder). The fingernails were cut recently; I can survive the walk without trimming them too soon (or I can trim them en chemin if they get too long by Day 4). I do need to whittle down the beard a bit, but five days' extra growth won't matter much, so shaving isn't a top priority.

Left to do today: finish up a batch of chapters for the movie-review book (almost done with that); do some heavy-club, kettlebell, and dumbbell work; start finalizing my trip's equipment list and begin packing. Tomorrow, once packed, I'll do a practice walk with my backpack on plus 1.5 liters of water on my person. Ideally, the upcoming walk ought to be fairly austere, but I know myself well enough to know I frequently misbehave, food-wise, while on the trail. Since my French "brother's" son's wedding is in July, I want to see whether I can get into fighting shape for that event, then keep the weight off once I'm back in Korea. 

Let's find out what's possible together.

ex-SEAL rates Chris Pratt's SEAL roles

Who doesn't like Jocko Willink?

losing the worst fat

walk post up on the walk blog

I decided to put the full post of my 33K walk up on my walk blog.

Today's (Friday's) agenda:

1. Sleep a bit.
2. Get a haircut.
3. Try the new Chinese resto that opened up downstairs.
4. Add a few more chapters to the movie-review book.
5. Resistance training.
6. Start packing for Sunday's trip out to Daejeon.

Not necessarily in that order.

I'm still miffed that my train ticket down to Daejeon is 입석/ipseok, i.e. a standing-room-only ticket. At least the ride will be less than an hour long. I hope it's not too crowded, but if I was issued an ipseok ticket, then it probably will be. Is Daejeon that popular of a destination? Last time I was there was in 1993 or thereabouts, for the Daejeon Expo. I went with one of my Korean uncles, back when I couldn't speak much Korean. It was an awful, awkward experience, not helped by the fact that my uncle (#3 Ajeossi, who died of liver cancer) was even more taciturn than I could be. Sigh...

Happy Friday the 13th.

Hollywood failure

Following the money in Hollywood is a dirty, byzantine business.

pachyderm sentience

Sentience has several meanings that often depend on which field of expertise is using the term. For some experts and thinkers, the word means the simple, brute ability to sense or feel (from the Latin sentire, to perceive/feel)—pain, emotion, hunger, whatever. For others, sentience means consciousness, be it rudimentary or complex. For still others, sentience refers mostly to self-awareness, the feeling of ego or "I"-ness. If a dog injures its leg, it might come running to you yelping, not because it's saying, "I'm in pain," but because it's just shouting "Pain!" without any ego-involvement at all.* But what about elephants? Are they sophisticated enough in intellect to recognize themselves when, say, they look into a mirror? (Most dogs can't do this.) See more below for some answers.

__________

*Dogs that fail the "mirror test" of self-recognition may nevertheless arguably possess other traits of self-awareness linked to things like scent and types of memory.

the sad story of Ezra

I remember liking Ezra Miller a lot when he was a relative unknown guest-starring on the series Royal Pains. The kid had talent. He still does, really. But something happened along the way—fame got to his head, or he just went crazy. Now, I just think he's nucking futz.

I keep telling myself I'll do this later

gettin' a little chili in here

Call it chili or chilli, but which is the best? Adam thinks he can answer this question.

ten pics from the walk

Full post, with full photo essay, to come later today. For now, I can say the walk was mostly dark until the final hour, and it was also pretty damn cold.

"not a giant ball of gas": the real Jupiter

Japan is not enough: Josh does China

VFX guys bring toys to life

one of my favorite things ever

There's a chain bakery in Korea called Tous les Jours (Every Day). One branch was close to where I used to live in Chungmuro. I don't know if it's still there, but I recall once visiting that branch—which was one of the larger-sized branches I've seen in Korea—and happening upon a lovely, wrapped, Bundt-shaped loaf of monkey bread, covered in a sugar-cinnamon syrup. Monkey bread can be a cake; it can also be bread-bread. It can be sweet (like what I'd bought at Tous les Jours), or it can be savory (there are pizza-ish variations). Whichever way it comes out I'm so there. I love monkey bread. The nastier and more decadent, the better.

a cosmic truth

A comment I just saw appended to a YouTube clip in which a man (Ioan Gruffudd) is flirting with a Russian woman:

Remember: If you're handsome, it's flirting, but if you're ugly, it's harassment.

down on our haunches and ready for launches

The city-gas lady came by to do her inspection. At the end, I asked her how many times a year she comes by, and she said, "Once a year." So there's the official answer to that question. If I'm moving out of here later this year, this might be the last time I see her. Of course, with her coming so infrequently, it's hard for me to remember whether she's the same inspector I've seen every time.

With the lady out of the way, though, I can focus on tonight's departure out to Yangpyeong. Same route as always: Take the Line #3 out to Oksu Station and transfer to the Gyeongeui Joongang Line, then ride that all the way out to Yangpyeong. I never get the timing right, alas: The last few times I've trained out to Yangpyeong, the Gyeongeui Joongang Line has been crowded for about the first forty minutes, after which it suddenly empties out as the train heads out of Seoul. I get to sit down and nap for only 20-30 minutes. Then, at Yangpyeong, it's go time, and I walk blearily out of the station to begin my 33K trek.

Tonight's walk ought to be interesting, not to mention a good reflection of the temperature swings I can expect during next week's walk: According to the National Weather Service, it'll be around 5ºC (41ºF) when I step out of the train around 9 p.m. Temps will be freezing (0ºC, 32ºF) for several hours between about 2 a.m. and 7 a.m., then around 1ºC (34ºF) at about the time I finish, close to 8 a.m. So I'm wearing my coat, my hat, and my gloves for most of the walk. I might take my scarf, too. The first half of March is still technically winter.

If nothing else, I'm looking forward to this practice walk. It's mainly just to make sure I can do the distance. And if I can do 33K, then the 40K I have to do on Day 1 of the upcoming walk (this coming Monday) ought to be no problem. I'll spend the next few days doing shorter practice walks with my Gregory backpack to get used to the weight.

why homeschooling is better for the kids

RIP, Hulk

no comment

Buying an insta360 before a helmet is peak smooth brain mentality pic.twitter.com/yVJntfEpAv

— MERICA MEMED (@Mericamemed) March 10, 2026

VFX guys explore the magic

Darwin comes for us all... but sooner for some of us

90s-era prescience

you will either laugh your ass off or have nightmares for a week

Someone combined John Bolton with Michael Bolton and I can’t unsee it pic.twitter.com/3gPTkpWWF6

— FilmX's Number One Fan (@GAltringham) March 2, 2026

the funniest tiger story you'll hear today

A hilarious tiger story told with gusto by the late Sean Lock. Oh, and the darts team in the story suffers a terrible fate.

I have mixed feelings

it's better to show you something fun

The other day, some Instapundit commenter had embedded a tweet showing a horrifying video. I considered embedding the video here as an object lesson in gun safety, but I decided not to give anyone else nightmares. So here's a description of what I saw: We see a small car and a black family that sounds as if its members are speaking an African language (I have no idea where this is happening). The right-rear door of the car is open; an adult male is sitting there, lecturing a child standing on the grass in front of him. In the adult's hands is a gun, and he's apparently telling the child about it. The man cocks the gun and hands it to the child, who looks younger than ten years old. The child says something to the adult while waving the gun about (a second adult is sitting in the car's driver seat); the waving stops, and the child points the gun straight at the adult who had been lecturing him. The adult puts out both hands and waves them back and forth in a warding gesture; the gun goes off, and the adult is hit square in the face. He falls back. The child has dropped the gun and now holds his head, aghast at what's just happened. People scream and run toward the car. End clip.

This was, frankly, fucking nightmarish, but it was also absolutely preventable. Responsible adults who train (train!) their kids on how to use firearms would never have allowed a situation like this to happen, and no rational, firearm-respecting adult would ever have placed such casual trust in a young child's ability to handle a semiautomatic. The entire situation was insane, and I knew within seconds that I was about to see something awful happen. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the video's been yanked even though the bullet impact is barely visible when it happens. Did the adult survive being shot in the face? What happened in the aftermath? Part of me doesn't even want to know. Jesus Christ.

So instead of showing you that bit of ghoulish business, I've got something fun for you instead. Another commenter suggested that this might be AI, but I recall wanting to make a video like this myself years ago. I don't think the action in this video requires AI to accomplish.

Hahah Legend pic.twitter.com/737MWa0JOC

— Enezator (@Enezator) March 5, 2026

one problem solved, another appears

I got a Kakao message from my bank, Shinhan, saying the time had come to renew the certification (injeungseo/인증서) on my phone. From past experience, I know that I can't do this procedure at home no matter how many times I try. This didn't stop me from stubbornly trying several times this morning, but in the end, as always, I failed and resigned myself to going to the local bank branch to ask a teller for help. It's always embarrassing to have to do this, but the teller was polite, and she herself had difficulty going through the procedure on my phone. Lots of long pauses and furrowed brows as she stared at my phone's screen. Well, the procedure took almost half an hour, and it involved my signing with a stylus on a touchscreen five or six times (print name, give signature, print name, give signature, print name, give signature, etc.) because of the Korean love for extra procedural steps and piles of red tape. I asked the teller whether this meant I wouldn't have to do this for another three years, and she said yes, but frankly, I don't trust her—not because I think she's a liar, but because I feel as if I've gone through this same fucking procedure every single year. Well, we'll see. If I have to do this again in early 2027, I will have forgotten that I'd written today's blog post.

So for a year at least, my certification-renewal problem has been solved yet again. But another problem has arisen.

When I left for the bank, I saw that the city gas (doshi gaseu/도시 가스) company that services our building had left a Post-It sticker saying they had come by for their inspection (usually once or twice a year) and to contact them to reschedule. So I texted the cell number given, and the person is coming back tomorrow at 11 a.m. This is bad for me because I had planned to leave tonight for an all-night walk from Yangpyeong to Yeosu. The walk would end around 8:00 or 9:00 tomorrow morning, and I'd take a bus back to Seoul as I usually do when doing this route. But the arrival time would be too close to the gas company's visiting time, so I've decided to put the walk off until tomorrow night, which is about as long as I can delay such a walk: my feet will need a few days to recover after 33 kilometers (almost exactly 20.5 miles).

So I can either eat my weekday salad today or wait to do it on Thursday. Walking in a fasted state is fine with me; I've done it many times before. But walking after three days' fasting (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday) might not be the greatest idea, so I think I'm going to go downstairs, grab my salads, and have a graze today. Maybe along with some chicken breasticles. The next time I eat will be Saturday.

partial victory

Remember my awful toilet disaster?

Below, you see the marks left by the toilet snake. This is "before," i.e., before cleaning. I then drained the toilet partway by shutting off the valve, flushing the toilet, and manually scooping out as much water as I could. There was still water in the bottom, and I wasn't about to go in with sponges to get the rest of the water out. I then used my Barkeepers Friend, an abrasive that's reminiscent of Ajax or Comet (my American readers will understand), and used my toilet brush to scrub, scrub, scrub away the marks. 

I was partially successful. Look at the second picture.

Here's what partial success looks like:

Basically, it was easier to remove the markings from the parts of the toilet bowl that were dry. Next time I get in there, I may have to do the sponge thing after all to dry out the bowl.

AI surreality haunts my dreams

tearin' up them tacos

"common sense" questions

What's being called "common sense" questions in this video are more like questions designed to catch you if you're not paying attention. Beyond that, the questions require you to be too literal or, contrarily, to think utterly outside the box.

Here are examples of "common sense" questions from my youth:

1. A rooster in the northern hemisphere sits on a north-facing barn's rooftop and lays an egg. Which side of the barn does the egg roll down?
   ANSWER: Roosters don't lay eggs.
2. A plane full of Californians is flying from DC to California. The plane crashes east of the Mississippi River. Where do you bury the survivors?
   ANSWER: Survivors are alive.

The point of the above two questions is to see whether you're paying attention. While paying attention is part of common sense, common sense is itself a fairly vague (albeit useful), broad notion. Is a question that tests your attention to words really testing your overall common sense? We haven't even defined common sense yet, so how would we even know? Or how about these questions and answers from the video? Look—

1. C is the father of D, but D is not the son of C. How is that possible?
   ANSWER: D is the daughter.
2. How can a man go nine days without sleep?
   ANSWER: by sleeping at night.

So (1) is something akin to a logic question. Is common sense therefore reasoning? And (2) requires you to be suspicious of the wording and not to take it super-literally, i.e., to answer correctly, you must think that days = daytime. Note the trick is made even more complicated by the fact that days is a plural countable noun while daytime is normally uncountable. (Who says "many daytimes ago"?) So question (2) requires out-of-the-box thinking. Is that what common sense is?

When I was a kid, and my dad knew everything, Dad's terse definition of common sense was: If it's raining, go inside or get an umbrella. Short, sweet, simple. I imagine that a lot of men of his generation would say that.

Whatever your definition of it, I reject the idea that this quiz is testing for common sense. It's testing for a vague set of skills that may or may not be applicable to the undefined faculty of common sense. If I were teaching a course on test design, I'd be tempted to use this video as an example of how not to design questions for quizzes and tests.

and on that same cop-hating note...

I think the AI thumbnail is hilarious.

the deed is done

I've bought my ticket for France, God help me. Used my credit card and the miles I'd accumulated from last year's trip to the States. I'm leaving on July 2 and arriving at Paris Charles de Gaulle the same day (around 6:40 p.m.), then leaving Paris on July 6 on a 2:40 p.m. flight. Auguste's wedding is on the 4th, which also happens to be the US's 250th birthday. I'm going to try to keep my head down while I'm in France; I've become a lot less sociable over the past few years, and it remains true, like a cosmic law, that no tourist should ever talk politics with the French. I don't want to be a burden on anyone, either, so I'll do what I can to keep quiet and keep away, but I suspect I'm going to be sucked into various activities. If it's wedding prep, that's fine: it'll be good to be useful.

I'm waiting on responses from my brothers to see whether they might be interested in attending the wedding with me, but I doubt either brother will say yes... if they say anything at all. They tend to be uncommunicative.

bits of wisdom from the old man

A photographer talks with an 88-year-old man.

"the NRA promotes gun violence!"

If you're one of those idiots who think the NRA promotes anything other than responsible gun ownership, you need to stop chewing on your own colon polyps. Look at these sterling examples of humanity and ask yourself whether they're members of the NRA.

"Frodo deserved to be hanged"

But that's a bit clickbaity. Just watch.

War Machine: one-paragraph review

Alan Ritchson as unnamed recruit #81 in what's supposed to be Colorado but is actually Australia

Alan Ritchson, known for his role as Jack Reacher in the Amazon series Reacher, stars in the 2026 Netflix movie War Machine, a story about RASP trainees at an Army Ranger camp in Colorado who suddenly find themselves faced with an alien invasion. The title could be a reference to Ritchson's unnamed character (He's a war machine!) or to the alien device that morphs from an aircraft to a walking tank before wreaking havoc on the team of Ranger finalists who had thought they were simply on their final training mission. The first part of the movie is about our main character, who joined RASP in memory of his brother (Jai Courtney, cameo), who had wanted the brothers to become Rangers together. Our protag joins the program to fulfill a promise to get "across that finish line." Taciturn and antisocial, our RASP trainee, now known as 81 (all the soldiers in the program are given numbers), refuses opportunities to lead and simply wants to complete the program. Prior to RASP, he had been on a mission in which his brother was severely injured, but after trying to carry his brother back to base, he had passed out short of the base's perimeter; he was rescued, but his brother proved too injured to save. This guilt at not making it to the finish line is what drives 81 now, and the incident also explains his reluctance to lead since he had been platoon leader in the attack that had killed his brother, a fellow soldier. During the final RASP exercise, the team of recruits stumbles upon unfamiliar wreckage that looks to them like some kind of DARPA device but turns out to be an alien walker that immediately targets the troops and begins to eliminate them one by one. The rest of the story follows a formula you've seen a thousand times before in movies like Aliens and Predator, with our hero having to figure out ways to defeat the mysterious machine without any hi-tech weaponry (for the final mission, his team had been given rifles with blanks). War Machine is pure sap and formula; with most of the characters sporting numbers instead of names, it's hard to bond with anyone and equally hard to care when they die. The movie ends on a grim note: it turns out that the wave of machines that had landed all over the planet was merely the vanguard of a massive attack by some malign intelligence. We never discover the aliens' purpose, nor do we learn whether the deadly flying/walking machines have organic pilots; they could be drones for all we know. For me, the most ridiculous aspect of War Machine is the alien's utter obsession with finding and destroying every last member of 81's team. True, the mountainous region depicted in the movie isn't exactly a target-rich environment, so maybe the alien is just bored. In all, I'd say that War Machine isn't worth your time. It also stars Dennis Quaid and Esai Morales as sergeants leading the RASP exercises, but like Jai Courtney's character, they appear mostly as bookends, with most of the plot being devoted to RASP training and human-alien violence. With so little information about the aliens given to us, and with so little information about the human players aside from 81, the entire movie is hard to relate to. Give this one a pass.

don't see this movie! (but they live!)

I need to see this.

when the future weighs on you

My buddy Charles sees the sand running out of his hourglass: his career is now half over. Go read his post and commiserate.

On my own wistful note, I wish I'd had cojones like these back in high school:

When the dad is laughing you know you did it rightpic.twitter.com/SucW2KbpJd

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) March 6, 2026

Hot Ones: Zoe vs. Sam

Notorious Foodie does lahmacun

And just what is lahmacun?

I'd try it without the sliced onions.

correcting an oversight

Over on Substack, I'm nearing the end of my syllabus's run through parts of speech, but I somehow failed to include, over the past several months, an explicit lesson on the three kinds of objects: direct, indirect, and prepositional. So I spent some time today making up a lesson, and it'll appear tomorrow alongside the regularly scheduled lesson for tomorrow, which is: Intro to Prepositions + Prepositions of Time/Sequence. I've named this new, special lesson, creatively enough, Nouns/Pronouns: Special Lesson—a focused lesson on three kinds of objects. Prepositions will take us to about the second week of April.

My back is also a bit achy today (am I doing my core work wrong?), so I won't be doing the Yangpyeong-to-Yeoju walk tonight. I've rescheduled that walk for Tuesday night, when I'll be nice and fasted after not eating all day Monday and Tuesday. In all likelihood, when I hit Yeoju's bus terminal Wednesday morning, I'll slip into a nearby convenience store and buy myself a snack or three to break the fast. I'll be back to fasting on Thursday and Friday, then eating a small, modest meal on Saturday, then training down to Daejeon on Sunday (no eating on that day); while on the trail, I'll revert to my usual on-the-trail eating schedule, i.e., eating in the afternoon when I'm done walking both because I'm used to doing things that way and because I avoid the potential for postprandial angina while walking. 

In less than two months, I've got a doctor's appointment to consider, so I need to make sure my A1c score, a three-month average—is down to a reasonable level.

Otherwise, I'm back to working on the movie-review book; it's been a weird experience to go back and read all my old prose, a lot of which makes me cringe. I've been proofreading more than editing, though, correcting obvious mistakes and reformatting text where it needs reformatting. I do occasionally add, subtract, or alter content, but I try to keep the prose as faithful as possible to its original form. This first book is going to be clunky as a result; anyone who reads it through chronologically will see how rough the prose was back in 2009 or so, and how I was still flailing around to find my voice as well as a proper movie-review format. (Some might argue that I'm still flailing, which may be true.) I was less rigorous about noting things that I note automatically now, like the year of a movie's release and the name of the film's director. These days, release date, director's name, and list of stars are almost always all noted in the first paragraph of every review I write. For some odd reason, though, I still only rarely mention screenwriters, which is probably an oversight on my part.

Righto—back to the grind.

ADDENDUM: I got my train ticket yesterday.

another contender for world's best hot chocolate... sigh...

This might be the best hot chocolate ever.

Skall on "tactical" swords

yeah, Gen X!

 

Better hurry up. Swayze's been dead a while. Who's next to kick off?

maybe tonight, Precious

This arrived a couple days ago:

Sure enough, the brand name is mis-written without an apostrophe. Oh, well: I guess that's the brand name, like it or not. Maybe it's following the same not-quite-genitive-case grammar of "Veterans Day," which also lacks an apostrophe, albeit for different, nobler reasons.

So I'll drain my toilet tonight and see whether this product actually does anything. Preliminary reports suggest that it's perfect for "buffing out" scratches in porcelain left by a toilet snake, so I guess we'll see.

Starfleet Academy: the dumping continues

I agree: You don't want to see a bunch of fatties on Trek. Especially if they're young.

I don't normally watch this science guy

There are a lot of ballistics channels. This one's a science/engineering channel that happens to be doing ballistics in this video.

Even with protection, though, would you really want to be hit by a .50 cal?

perfect hot chocolate?

duuuuuhhhh...