Saturday, June 27, 2026
the problem with most metaphysical and theological arguments
Dr. Vallicella, in a Substack post about "the two assurances of religion," says the following:
For it is a meta-philosophical conviction of mine that no argument in metaphysics in support of a substantive proposition, no matter how rigorously deployed, is rationally coercive.
So all of those "logical proofs" for the existence of God don't amount to anything in terms of rational persuasion. How logical those proofs are, in and of themselves, isn't as important as whether the arguments can persuade you rationally if the goal is to bring about change.
Ultimately, it all comes down to faith or core convictions, which tend to be rooted in emotion. And anything rooted in emotion is nearly impossible to uproot. A tendency to liberalism or conservatism, to use an overly simplistic example (because we are all liberal about some things and conservative about others, with our various convictions on a sliding scale from weak to strong), is ultimately rooted in emotion, not rationality, so all the political argument in the world isn't going to do anything to move any needles.
But boy, will we keep trying. Theologians will continue to try to formulate logical "proofs" of God's existence. Politically minded people will continue to offer "logical" arguments for their side—partly rooted in what they consider empirical evidence, partly rooted in what they call "reason," partly rooted in examples meant to evoke powerful, primitive emotions.
Ultimately, there's little point in trying to persuade people. But many of us—maybe most of us—are wired to keep trying. I'm (predisposed to be) persuaded by this point of view.
thanks, Daniel
Daniel sent me a link to a job ad that I had missed on Dave's ESL Cafe: it's for a teaching position in Daegu, at DGIST (Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology), School of Undergraduate Studies. While the job ad gives me a similar feeling to the UNIST ad (which I'd found via Unijobs.kr—another Daniel-found resource), I'm going to apply anyway; no harm in doing that. My thanks to Daniel for looking out for me. Daniel also sent contact info for someone he knows at Gyodae/교대 (Seoul National University of Education, or SNUE, just a few subway stops away from where I live). I plan to email her for whatever work she might have available, but I realize that that's going to be a long shot. Maybe I should point her to a copy of my Think Like a Teacher book on Amazon and tell her that, if the book intrigues her, I can send her a free PDF copy upon request. Anything's possible.
FINAL WARNING!
THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING!
I AM PRIVATIZING THIS BLOG AS OF TOMORROW EVENING!
LEAVE YOUR EMAIL IF YOU WANT TO BE ON THE EXCLUSIVE ACCESS LIST!
THE BLOG WILL BE ACCESSIBLE ONLY TO THOSE I INVITE BY EMAIL!
This is it!
The blog will be making the switchover to private tomorrow, making it inaccessible to bots and the general public. I will send out invitation emails to everyone on my list; those good folks will have to acquire a Google account (not a Gmail address) to be able to access my blog. There will be no RSS feed to remind anyone of updates I make, so once enrolled, everyone will just have to make a habit of checking in every so often. Thus far, I have twelve people on my list.
To repeat a previous post—
__________
A few things to remember:
1. You will receive an email invitation from me, and there will probably be some sort of procedure (maybe involving a password? maybe not) the first time you try to log on to my blog. After that, you should be able to access the blog freely unless you sign out/log off.
2. You do need to acquire a Google account (not a Gmail address) if you don't already have one. That's Google's requirement, not mine. Sorry. See procedure here. Or Google something like, "how to get a Google account without a Gmail address."
3. There will be no RSS feed, so you'll just have to make it a habit to visit the blog now and then since there will be no notifications about new posts.
4. I will probably be posting a lot less unoriginal content once the circle constricts to whatever the final number will be on Sunday (keeping in mind that others might join belatedly). So please expect very little in terms of embedded tweets, YouTube videos, and memes. I have a feeling that a lot of that lazy blogging is why I have so many bots crawling all over the blog.
5. Since you're about to embark on an exclusive experience here, why not also become a free subscriber to my Substack, where I have a small circle of only a couple dozen people? A free subscription gets you access to 10% of my Substack content plus occasional extras (including free previews of paid content); moving to a paying subscription of only $5/month or $50/year (cheaper per month) gets you the other 90%, and I will never charge more than that. See more here. And/or see my blog's sidebar.
__________
Also:
6. Any straggler who, after Sunday, sees the now-inaccessible blog and wants access can email me directly with a request. My email is on the blog's sidebar. Take a note of it while you still can. You have a little more than 24 hours.
In the meantime, if all I get for my invitation list is twelve people, then so be it. Optimistically assuming everyone visits the blog at least twice or three times a day, that's a maximum of 24–36 daily unique visits. Assuming one visit per day, that's a tentative minimum of 12 unique visits per day. Assuming a certain level of faithlessness (i.e., people who don't visit every day), the theoretical minimum is 0 unique visits per day. Whatever the case, that'll at least initially come as a relief after this storm of bots (29,000 visits today so far—unbelievable). 0–24 visits will feel country-quiet. And I'll have at least some idea of who my visitors will be.
Righto... either get on the list or say bye-bye tomorrow.
"religious studies"
There's only one Return, okay, and it ain't of the King, it's of the Jedi!
—Randal (Dante's vulgar friend), Clerks II
If you've never seen the LOTR-versus-Star Wars battle from Clerks II, watch it here.
Trinitarian Christians will quibble with the wording of the quiz/test question, which says parts when referring to the Persons of the Trinity. A part is a fraction or a portion of something, but the whole point of the mystery of the Trinity is that each Person of it (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) is fully God—100%, not 33.333...%. And those three Persons together are a single, 100% God. So you, being a logical person and a nonbeliever, will inevitably ask, "How the hell can 100% + 100% + 100% add up to 100%? That makes no sense!" And that's why it's considered a mystery, and no number of "triangle" analogies (three vertices, one figure!) can metaphorically spell that out: Either you believe or you don't.
For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.—1 Corinthians 1:18-23
And whether the above question about the Trinity qualifies as a "religious studies" question is also open to debate. While theology deals with systematic discourse about the divine—the unraveling of scriptural and doctrinal and experiential implications—religious studies is a soft science along the lines of other soft sciences like psychology, sociology, and anthropology. To engage in religious studies isn't to do theology; this very interdisciplinary field focuses, instead, on the question of what religion is. Do all religions have gods or a higher power? How about prayer? Special buildings? Special times of the year? Are they all communitarian, or are some religions focused on individuals and individual praxis? Do they all see history as linear, cyclical, and helical? Do they all have an eschatology (a concept of the "end times" or a Teilhard-style "Omega Point")? Is there a catch-all definition of religion that can include all known religions (and not just the major ones)? With questions like these, can the question in the above photo be a religious-studies question? I think not. I'd say it's a theological question, the answer to which comes from doctrines that you either believe or disbelieve.
Of course, it might be a religious-studies question if other questions on the exam ask similar things about other religions—about Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Jainism, etc. Look at the questions on my religion quiz to get an idea of what those might be.
July 10 = D Day
I've decided: Friday, July 10, will be the day I start looking for hagweon work in earnest. Since I've heard that Hanyang U. is hopeless (they're looking for researchers), my only remaining hope is Kyungpook National U., but I have a sinking feeling that they won't be calling me, either. By July 10—the day of my hospital appointment—if I haven't heard anything from KNU, I'll assume it's a lost cause and start the search for a hagweon, which will mean a return to my 90s-era roots. I started at hagweons when I was in my twenties, and here I am now, nearly 60, going back to that grind. Yay. But I plan to seek only part-time work so I can continue plugging away at the extracurricular activity that I've been doing for a year and a half. Life is up in the air right now, but I do have some ideas for how to move forward.
Friday, June 26, 2026
from 9 to 11
I have a feeling that a few people are going to wait until the last possible moment to get on my email list for when I privatize the blog this coming Sunday night (Seoul time). The list has gone from nine people to eleven as some folks have come out of the woodwork to leave comments. My thanks to those folks, and apologies for sounding mean about lurkers. Please understand, though, that's it's frustrating for someone who writes as much as I do never to be rewarded by reactions from readers. I don't know... maybe these readers feel they have nothing to say. Maybe I should try harder to make people feel welcome. I'm at a loss.
Whatever the case may be, it's no longer the Nine Ringwraiths. I can jump from Tolkien to Christianity when we reach twelve (12 apostles), but that is going to sound awfully pretentious, as though I were implying that I'm Jesus and that these people are somehow my followers, which they obviously aren't. So here's hoping we move on to thirteen people before Sunday night because we can then have the Thirteen Colonies from Battlestar Galactica.
If I'm going to write for an exclusive group, though, I do hope that some or all of my invitees will take it upon themselves to find other people for me to invite into the circle because Lord knows I still want to grow the circle. If you find people, please send me their emails (with their permission, of course). You can always email me directly (see address on my sidebar).
A few things to remember:
1. You will receive an email invitation from me, and there will probably be some sort of procedure (maybe involving a password? maybe not) the first time you try to log on to my blog. After that, you should be able to access the blog freely unless you sign out/log off.
2. You do need to acquire a Google account (not a Gmail address) if you don't already have one. That's Google's requirement, not mine. Sorry. See procedure here.
3. There will be no RSS feed, so you'll just have to make it a habit to visit the blog now and then since there will be no notifications about new posts.
4. I will probably be posting a lot less unoriginal content once the circle constricts to whatever the final number will be on Sunday (keeping in mind that others might join belatedly). So please expect very little in terms of embedded tweets, YouTube videos, and memes. I have a feeling that a lot of that lazy blogging is why I have so many bots crawling all over the blog.
5. Since you're about to embark on an exclusive experience here, why not also become a free subscriber to my Substack, where I have a small circle of only a couple dozen people? A free subscription gets you access to 10% of my Substack content plus occasional extras (including free previews of paid content); moving to a paying subscription of only $5/month or $50/year (cheaper per month) gets you the other 90%, and I will never charge more than that. See more here. And/or see my blog's sidebar.
nouvelle découverte
You can go years and years with something sitting right under your nose, and because you didn't have the smarts or the initiative to check for it, you can spend years quietly suffering (maybe suffering is too dramatic a term) without it.
Today, I was just about to visit the Play Store to download a second countdown timer onto my phone when I saw the AI god's advice that all I need to do, to call up a second timer, is just hit the "+" symbol to add another timer. What? All this time?
This is relevant to people who cook certain things where timing is important, e.g., when baking or when making boiling pasta, where a difference of a minute or two can mean going from correct to overcooked. Earlier today, I had the A/C on and was using the timer to count down from 45 minutes. As the A/C was chugging along, I got the idea to bake some more cookies since I had a bunch of cookie dough left. When I did a batch the other day, I set the oven temp to 191ºC and did an initial bottom-burner-only bake for 7:30 after letting the oven heat up a bit. I used a timer to track that. I then did another 3:30 of baking with both the top and bottom burners on to make sure the top got cooked enough. Normally, when I use my biggest baking tray and place only eight lumps of cookie dough on it, the cookies almost always come out perfect. Let them cool for six minutes, then remove them from the pan and let them cool the rest of the way. That's what I did with my Wednesday batch (originally meant for Charles, but I baked it too late), to great success, and that's what I was wanting to do this evening—another batch.
So the thought occurred to me, as the A/C was running down its 45 minutes, that I would need a second countdown timer to be able to time the cookies while the A/C's timer was still running. What I often do in such cases is use an "online egg timer." But it's inconvenient to have one timer on my cell phone (set for 45 minutes) and one timer on my desktop monitor (set for 7:30). I'd rather have two concurrent timers on my phone. So when I asked AI about downloading a second countdown timer from the Google Play Store, the AI suggested—since I had named my phone's model (Samsung Galaxy S21)—that I could just create a second timer right there by using the "+" symbol and go to town. Well, fuck me dead.
It's now much later in the evening, and I still haven't baked that second batch of cookies. I'll do it tomorrow since I've got no one to bake the cookies for. Charles specifically said not to give him anything since he's about to shove off to the States, and he and his wife are emptying out their refrigerator. I ended up giving the Wednesday batch to the four concierges who take turns working downstairs in the lobby, manning the front desk 24/7 except when they do their sunchal/순찰 (patrol). I had a small batch of eight cookies to give away, so I told the guard I saw that the four staffers could have two each. I trust that this concierge will be honorable about doling out the cookies. There's one guard down there who strikes me as a bit of a greedy hoarder, and I know he likes the cookies and cakes I've given to the staff before.
Anyway, that's the story of today's discovery. Sometimes, you learn the damndest things—things you should've learned years earlier.
the Nine Ringwraiths
I thought I had only five readers, but thus far, nine people have thrown their names into the ring. Will they together form a community of commenters who comment on each other, or will the dynamic (which is at least partially determined by yours truly, an introvert) remain what it currently is, i.e., library-quiet, with no real intercommunication? I'd like for a community to form, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.
If the final group ends up being more than nine people, I'm going to have to search hard for other Tolkien-related numbers. Thirteen dwarves, fifteen adventurers (with Gandalf and Bilbo)? What about ten, eleven, and twelve?
And what Tolkienian numbers lie beyond thirteen?
Ave, Dr. Gilleland!
Dr. Gilleland quotes a fable from Aesop, one I've never heard before. It's about a shepherd who finds and raises some wolf cubs. Hmmm... what might the moral be? And how might it be relevant to modern Western society?
second-to-last call
You've got today's warning and tomorrow's warning, and that's it! If you're a "long-time lurker" who's never left a comment, you're going to lose your blog-reading privileges as of this coming Sunday if you say nothing. So, one more time, with feeling:
WARNING!
I AM PRIVATIZING THIS BLOG!
LEAVE YOUR EMAIL IF YOU WANT TO BE ON THE EXCLUSIVE ACCESS LIST!
THE BLOG WILL BE ACCESSIBLE ONLY TO THOSE I INVITE BY EMAIL!
Don't come knocking later. I might—or might not—respond.
You will need a Google account (not a Gmail address) to access this blog. Read more here.
fake title? deliberate?
Victor Tangermann is, at least, a real person, and Futurism is a real publication. But something feels fake: How does a wind "blow out of" a planet?
UPDATE: I guess the article isn't fake. And the "wind" was a "solar-wind event."
lil sis
Gave the ball to his sister with zero hesitation 🥹 pic.twitter.com/OJj4IepcLq
— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) April 19, 2026
Venezuela quake
A really good, detailed initial report about the 7.5M Venezuela earthquake is here. While fewer than 200 deaths were initially reported, estimates could theoretically rise to around 100,000 deaths. The report notes that, 26 minutes after this quake, a 6.9M quake was reported in Japan. It's still unclear whether the first quake caused the second. For what it's worth, I'm not feeling anything here in Korea.
We've seen massive destruction like this before. Remember Bam, Iran and its 34,000 deaths?
Thursday, June 25, 2026
wrestling with carnivore bread
I think I've moved beyond Chris Cooking Nashville and his carnivore-bread recipes, but it's good to see him tackling some of the issues with making it head-on. My problem with Chris's recipes comes down to how they're too much like making a soufflé, which is a volatile thing that collapses easily even if you try to cool it down gently.
heads-up to non-Gmail users
A few people who are on my list of invitees do not have email accounts ending with "@gmail.com." You do not need to have a Gmail account to access my blog once it's privatized, but from what I'm reading, you will need to have a Google account. Here's the procedure as written by the AI god:
You can obtain a Google account without creating a Gmail address by using your existing third-party email address (such as Outlook, Yahoo, or a corporate domain) during the registration process. This grants you full access to Google services like YouTube, Google Drive, Meet, and Docs without adding another email inbox to manage. [1, 2, 3]Step-by-Step Guide
- Open the sign-up page: Navigate directly to the Google Account Sign-In Page or the dedicated Google Account Creation Page. [1, 2]
- Initiate account creation: Click Create account and select For my personal use from the drop-down menu. [1, 2]
- Enter basic details: Fill in your name, date of birth, and gender, then click Next. [1, 2]
- Bypass the Gmail prompt: When Google prompts you to pick or create a Gmail address, click the link that says "Use your existing email" or "Use my current email address instead". [1, 2, 3]
- Input your current email: Type in your existing external email address and click Next. [1, 2]
- Verify your inbox: Open your external email inbox to find a 6-digit verification code sent by Google. Enter this code on the registration page. [1, 2]
- Secure your account: Create a strong password. Follow the remaining prompts to complete mobile verification and agree to the privacy terms. [1, 2, 3]
Just a quick clarification about the AI's above remarks on YouTube: If you don't have a Google account, you can obviously still visit YouTube, watch videos, and do other basic things. But without a Google account, you are locked out of YouTube's more interactive features.
If you're looking at the above procedure and thinking the whole thing is going to be a headache and not worth your time, I completely understand if you choose not to go through with getting a Google account. Absolutely no hard feelings. We'll just be thankful for the time we've spent together and move on with the rest of our lives.
Warning 1 that I'm about to privatize this blog.
Warning 2 that I'm about to privatize this blog.
Warning 3 that I'm about to privatize this blog.
You'll get two more warnings—tomorrow and Saturday. If I don't hear from you by Sunday, you will not be on the list of invitees. You can, of course, belatedly send me a personal email to request access to the blog, and I'll probably get you on the list. But don't be the foot-dragging, clueless dickhead who puts me in that position. Thanks.
I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to the silence. No goddamn bots.
definitely making the switchover this weekend
This weekend, probably on Sunday, I will make the switch from having a free and open blog to having a custom-readers-only blog. The term custom reader is fairly new to me, but the concept isn't: The blog will become available only to the readers who receive an emailed invitation to access it. Those readers—who must all have Google accounts—will have to click on a link and/or type in a password only once, and after that, they'll have free access to my blog. I expect a huge drop in my visitor numbers as a result, with the number of visits I receive being roughly equal to the number of people on that email-invitation list.
Thus far, only two or three people have shown an interest by either leaving their email address in the comments or saying "You know what my email address is." Please don't assume, though, that just because I know your email address, I'll include you on the invitation list. If you don't actively express interest in being included, you will not be included. I'm being strict about this because I'm utterly sick of all the bots, and extreme measures now seem most appropriate. So speak up now or be shunned forever. And as I implied above, "showing interest" doesn't mean you have to leave an email. It's enough to leave a comment reminding me that I already know what your email address is. But still—do leave a comment, or you will be excluded. You've got until this coming weekend.
Meanwhile, over the past hour, my visit numbers jumped from 8900-something to 24,800.
Ridiculous. And this happens almost every day lately.
But none of this is happening to my walk blogs, thank Jeebus.
just in time
My new Chase Amazon Visa card arrived yesterday. The information on it is all the same as what's on the previous card except for the 3-digit CVV number. The other differences are that (1) the card needs no activation because it arrived "ready to use," and (2) there's no place to sign your name, maybe because people have come to realize that no one checks the signature anyway, and people use each other's cards all the time.
I wish the new card had come with a raised credit limit, but that's fine. The credit limit's already plenty high.
old, quirky George
I had no idea about any of this. And shouldn't it be Tippler, with two "P"s?
George Washington bred his own pack of hunting dogs and named them like a man with zero supervision. We're talking Sweet Lips, Tipsy, Tipler, Drunkard, and one named Vulcan who was so big a kid could ride him like a pony. Vulcan once stole an entire ham straight off the dinner… pic.twitter.com/bdXOln8Ioi
— Echoes of War (@EchoesofWarYT) June 24, 2026
no, you turn the other cheek
Louisiana pastor beats up a man who allegedly threatened to r*pe and kill his wife and grandchildren.
— Daily Loud (@DailyLoud) June 24, 2026
pic.twitter.com/nbbSUT73XD
congrats, Oz!
Feels a bit like cultural suicide there, love.
Luckily, Oz, you're defended on all sides by the ocean, so you won't feel the consequences of having such a person at the reins too acutely.
the mystery
The mystery to me is why this is funny. Am I missing something? This isn't like those jokes about how the tyrannosaur couldn't answer his cell phone because of his short arms. So why did Godzilla have a stroke while trying to read "this"? What's the "this"?
I got the above image, like most of my stolen images, from an Instapundit comment thread. Maybe the image was meant to be a response to a previous bit of text—maybe something lame, and the lameness is what caused Godzilla's stroke. Hmmm.
dinner with Charles and HJ
I found myself out in the Seoul National University neighborhood Wednesday evening, having dinner with my buddy Charles and his wife HJ. They're prepping for a trip to the States that starts next week (read more about it here), and they told me about some of the difficulties they're going to face in the States since HJ isn't American: according to Charles, the top eleven national parks in the US have a policy of charging foreigners (i.e., non-Americans) an extra fee on top of the entrance fee to get into the park, and part of the couple's trip involves visiting some of these parks.
When I was recently in the States, I got charged to enter Shenandoah National Park, so I ended up just forking cash over for a year-long pass, which made random visits easier. It's too bad that foreigners at these parks are being charged extra.
In that spirit, I just now asked the AI god whether this was a Trump-era policy:
Yes, this is a policy enacted under the Trump administration. Stemming from a July 2025 executive order, the Department of the Interior introduced a surcharge for international tourists.The policy outlines specific surcharges for non-U.S. residents (ages 16 and older) at 11 of the most popular U.S. National Parks (Acadia, Bryce Canyon, Everglades, Glacier, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain, Sequoia & Kings Canyon, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Zion):
- Standard Surcharge: A $100 per-person fee in addition to the standard entry fee.
- Annual Pass: A $250 annual pass (which waives the $100 per-person surcharge).
Full details on the affected parks and passes can be viewed on the National Park Service Nonresident Fees page.
Now if, as conservatives insist, the problem in the US isn't the legal foreigners so much as it's the illegals (an attitude I can stand behind), I do have to ask why we're gouging legal foreign tourists in this manner. A hundred bucks per person (per foreigner) to enter a preeminent national park is asking a helluva lot.
I met Charles and HJ close to Seoul National U. Entrance Station, and we wandered into the local back streets after deliberating and eventually deciding on a meal of donggaseu... or per the Japanese romanization, tonkatsu:
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| our resto: Chang Hyeon Tonkatsu |
Interestingly, it was suggested that we order our meal via phone since HJ had, I think, already done the work of reserving a table for us as we were walking. I can feel myself slipping behind when it comes to modern tech. When my brothers visited me after my heart attack, they were able to navigate Seoul like pros, with no help from me, thanks largely to AI and various helpful apps. Charles and HJ seem just as capable, leaving me to feel like a fogey.
Here's the happy couple, smiles pasted on for the photo:
 |
| I didn't ask permission to put this photo on the blog, so I might be in trouble. |
We all decided to order the pork tenderloin. I didn't say anything about it while we were talking at the table, but it was pretty fucking incredible: perfectly cooked, perfectly tender. I do recall tossing off a stupid joke—before we got our meals—about how the chef might be gunning for a Michelin star, and HJ mentioned that a building next door had a Michelin-rated resto in it. And if I'm not mistaken, Charles said that the chef here was pretty serious, too.
We'd all ordered the same thing. Tenderloin on any farm animal is called anshim-sal in Korean, and we all got the pork tenderloin (the ton in tonkatsu comes from a Chinese character for "pork"). Each of us got six tenderloin medallions (see below), some shredded cabbage that served as the landing space for an addictive salad dressing (cream, herbs/spices, and an immodest amount of sesame oil, also visible below), some tiny sprinkles of salt, a small lump of wasabi (Charles said to put it straight on the meat since there was no soy sauce to mix it with), some julienned and pickled radish (I think... look next to the chopsticks in the image below), some mugwort tea (surprisingly good), and some rice and soup, which I apparently failed to take a picture of.
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| most of the meal (minus the rice and soup) |
I did the crass thing and dumped my rice into my soup. This was a carby meal, so In for a penny, in for a pound.
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| mugwort (ssuk/쑥) tea |
Ssuk is not to be confused with 쑥갓/ssukgat, or crown daisy, whatever the AI god says—
I asked Charles and HJ about 쑥 versus 쑥갓, and they both affirmed those are different things. Do not trust the AI god, which is a trickster.
I had a second helping of shredded cabbage since I loved the dressing so much. Soon enough, though, the wonderful meal was over, and HJ—who, by the way, teaches Korean to foreigners—took her leave. Three became two; Charles and I adjourned to a nearby gelato place where you can order tiny or huge containers of gelato (W5,500, W19,000, W31,000 sizes) in two or more flavors (depending on the size of the container), plus an extra spoonful of another flavor you might be curious about. So I got mint chocolate chip (regular chocolate was sold out), pistachio, and a tiny sample of tomato-basil at Charles's insistence. Frankly, I hadn't been looking forward to the tomato-basil, and while it turned out not to be as terrible as I'd thought it would be, I doubt I'll ever go for that flavor ever again. (I'm remembering the moment in Defending Your Life when Albert Brooks digs into a piece of something resembling burnt shit, tastes it, coughs, then demands, "This is what smart people eat?" No, the tomato-basil wasn't as bad as burnt shit, and I didn't hate it at all, but I did have to wonder how anyone could actively like that taste... for which there is no accounting, or so I've heard.)
As I waited for my tiny cup to appear, I saw this guy:
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| What a way to die, eh? |
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| And I had to capture this bit of humor. Please do not tap on the glass. |
Afterward Charles, perhaps mindful of my heart, took us on a non-strenuous route out to the main road so I could catch a taxi back to my place. My section of Gangnam and Seoul National University's neighborhood are both connected by Nambusunhwan-no, a single street with a lot of traffic lights and a lot of traffic. It still takes a long time to get to Charles's place from my place. I normally budget a lot of time to get there.
Chang Hyeon Tonkatsu: an amazingly good dinner, all in all, and a place for me to revisit one of these days. The gelato place was excellent as well, and while I might not applaud the tomato-basil, I did love the mint chocolate chip and the pistachio. And I'll grudgingly applaud the gelato place's adventuresome spirit in concocting the tomato-basil flavor, which did taste distinctly of tomato and basil. Not for me, but it's for somebody.
6/25—a special date in South Korea
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| Statue of Brothers (형제의 상/Hyeongjae-ae sang), central Seoul |
June 25 is remembered in South Korea as Yuk I Oh/육이오, or "six two five," the numerical date of the start of the Korean War. Technically, the north and south are still at war, so there is no closing date (although July 27, 1953 is accepted as the date of the armistice that halted major fighting). So: A mindful 육이오 to you.
not my dad
My own dad was the son of two alcoholics, so he never touched alcohol (his little brother is a different story). I grew up in a house where we had a hutch cabinet whose bottom compartment was filled with a random assortment of unopened gift bottles of this or that whiskey. I wonder what happened to those bottles. Of course, Dad turned out not to need alcohol to reveal himself to be a lying, cowardly piece of shit.
Dad being dad pic.twitter.com/bIPfqu1ocV
— NO CONTEXT HUMANS (@HumansNoContext) April 19, 2026
I ended up doing this Tuesday night
Sea salt, now bagged up in Ziplocs:
I can't keep the bags open without letting in ambient humidity. But leaving the bags closed, even with paper towels inside them to act as desiccants, means the water inside can't escape. Solution: open the bags up periodically and change out the towels with new, dry ones. Keep the old, salt-covered towels, removing their salt, rinsing them, then dumping the removed salt back into the bags while letting the damp, used towels hang-dry. The final bag, also the lightest bag, is definitely the one with the most humidity in it. I should probably stick two towels in that one. I wonder how long it will take to achieve total dryness.
I can't wait for fall.
the bots are getting ridiculous 2
[Post from yesterday. Today's visit number is down by 10X but still a few thousand.]
The count for the past 24 hours won't be over until 9 a.m. It's 5:30 a.m. as I write this, and I've had over 325,000 unique visitors so far. That sounds to me like way more than 50% bots. That's closer to 90-95% bots. And it's not fun anymore. It really does feel like flies gathering on a corpse. Well, if I want to control the bot problem, the AI god says that there's one thing I can do about my situation:
You can make your Blogger (Blogspot) blog private by navigating to your Settings, selecting Reader access under the Permissions section, and choosing either "Private to authors" or "Custom readers."To get your blog securely hidden from the public, follow these steps:
- Sign in to your Blogger account.
- In the top left corner, select the blog you want to make private.
- From the menu on the left, click Settings.
- Scroll down to the Permissions section and click on Reader access.
- Select one of the following privacy settings:
- Private to authors: Only the authors and admins of the blog can view the content.
- Custom readers: Only specific email addresses that you invite will be able to access and read the blog.
- Click Save to apply your new privacy settings.
If you selected "Custom readers," don't forget to click Invite more readers, type in the email addresses of the people you want to grant access, and send the invitations. Those readers will need to accept the invitation and sign into a Google account to view your blog.
I might do this. Stay tuned. Meantime, if you want to have access to the blog after I privatize it, then I need to be able to send you an emailed invite, so please write your email in the comments if you want to be part of the exclusive club with access to the blog. I'll wait at least 24-48 hours before I do anything, and I'll likely repeat this announcement at different times of day to catch the largest number of real, human readers.
If I do this, I expect my daily numbers to drop from 325,000 to about 10. If that. I doubt I've built up a loyal fan base after 24 years of blogging. The price of introversion.
Note to all of you years-long "lurkers" out there who read and never react: If you don't give me your email address, you will be shut of this blog forever.
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