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:

1. Sign in to your Blogger account.
2. In the top left corner, select the blog you want to make private.
3. From the menu on the left, click Settings.
4. Scroll down to the Permissions section and click on Reader access.
5. 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.
6. 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.

bad news from SCH

I wrote to Soonchunhyang University to find out the status of my job application. They, too, had the decency to reply, but as with UNIST in Ulsan, I can tell they wouldn't have replied had I not asked first. As you might already have guessed, SCH also said no to my application, so I'm now 0 for 2. That's embarrassing, too, since SCH has been called a good place "for beginners" who are just embarking on a university teaching career, and I'm no beginner. I have a feeling, especially based on what Charles told me during dinner this evening, that Hanyang is also going to say no given that they're primarily looking for a researcher, which leaves Kyungpook National U. (KNU) as my last hope before I have to start looking in earnest for part-time hagweon work. I've seen no new university wants ads for work at Dave's ESL Cafe or Unijobs.kr or Koreabridge. So unless some miraculous uni job shows up at the last minute, I'm pretty much cooked and have to look at hagweon work soon if I plan to stay in Korea—either at the end of this week or, at the latest, the end of next week.

Fingers and tentacles crossed for Kyungpook. But honestly, I'm not really that hopeful.

And hagweon work is a game for the young. Sigh.

technique vs. gadgets in the kitchen

talking about income

He's got around 3.5 million subscribers.

in case you've been living under a rock

Even as little as I've been paying attention to the World Cup, I've been bombarded by videos from Europeans who are currently visiting the United States and proclaiming both their love for America and Americans and their shock at the extent to which their own media had been lying to them about the state of the United States—a land supposedly full of mean, violent people, constant gun battles, and war-torn conditions. Instead, what Europeans (outside of US big cities) are discovering is a land of friendly people, clean and safe parks, and—surprise!—great food served in ridiculous quantities.

And can it be? Can it be that even the French have shown the States a little love? Incroyable!

I feel sorry for the Europeans who've been exposed to the uglier, seedier side of American culture. If those people are putting out negative videos, well, those videos aren't popping up in my feed. I don't want to blame the victims, but they should've stayed out of the big cities and visited the smaller towns and 'burbs instead. One thing that makes me chuckle is all the remarks I'm seeing about the "miracle" that is air conditioning. Oh, and the other thing is Europeans finally being convinced that, yes, putting ice in your drinks makes sense during the summer. My French "brother" Dominique wrote to say that it's la canicule (heat wave, from the same Latin root as dog—cf. "dog days of summer") in France right now, with a string of 42ºC (108ºF!!) days in his part of France (Le Vanneau-Irleau). Dom has to worry about his parents, who live down the street, and no one in that neighborhood has air conditioning. What it's like to suffer from that heat, I can't even imagine. Dom also said that, at his second job at a wood-basket company, temps got as high as 70ºC (158ºF), causing fire alarms to go off. But the French will never learn. They will, instead, just learn to do without. And hey, that's character-building, too! Even if a few thousand old and sick people have to die of heatstroke.

connections

beau geste

another nice walk

4:42 a.m., looking left and southeast (sunrise is northeast) while heading back to my place

Another good 10K walk, but there was some angina plaguing me even after my initial five-minute rest. At the U-turn point, I rested another 15 minutes, and that seemed to do the trick.

I started at 2:30 a.m. and finished at 5:10 a.m., with 20 minutes of rest. So: 2:20:00 of walking for 10 km comes out to 4.26 kph, which really isn't bad for me. Slow by normal standards, but not bad at all for me. Then again, it was only 10K, and I wasn't weighed down with a pack.

the bots are getting ridiculous

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:

1. Sign in to your Blogger account.
2. In the top left corner, select the blog you want to make private.
3. From the menu on the left, click Settings.
4. Scroll down to the Permissions section and click on Reader access.
5. 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.
6. 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.

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:

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.

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.

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, but 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:

What a way to die, eh?

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.

get your story straight

Those gorilla arms go well with the wife beater.

small achievements

What's the blog for if not to celebrate the tiny victories? The other night, I noticed that a button had fallen off one of my button-down shirts. This was distressing because I'd worn the shirt to go to the post office and send a package out to France. I now wonder if the female staffer had left her post not because she'd made data-entry typos but because she'd gotten sick of looking through my shirt at my still-massive, rippling gut.

Anyway, I found the button lying under my dining table. Since I have one of those pocket-sized mini sewing kits that comes with needles, thread, and minuscule scissors, I broke that out, myopically threaded a needle, then sewed the button back onto my shirt. I'm a veteran at putting buttons back onto shirts, probably because I wear my shirts until they're pretty worn down, so I've experienced a lot of popped-off, dropped-off, and lost buttons. For someone with big, clumsy, fat fingers, sewing is a slow, delicate process, but I can get it done.

Well, it's almost 2:30. Time to go out for a stroll.

what happens now with the paperback

I've successfully republished the paperback, but I still need to give it a manual check. It can take up to 72 hours for the paperback to go live on Amazon (it's usually faster after the first time uploading); when that happens, I'll order myself another "author copy" (basically a proof), look it over when it arrives in a week or so, then officially declare the paperback ready to sell. Please don't buy the book until I've made that announcement.

UPDATE: I just ordered an author copy. Still expensive thanks to shipping.

stop! cancel your order!

I don't know who just ordered a paperback copy of my book, but I haven't said that it's ready! (I'd said it was "out" a few days ago, but I took that back when I found two or three errors, and it's been a shit-show ever since.) THE PAPERBACK IS NOT READY, SO CANCEL YOUR DAMN ORDER!! It'll be ready, I hope, sometime tomorrow. Please wait until I say it's ready.

(Frankly, I have no idea who ordered. A blog reader? Someone from Instapundit? Some random person?  A compulsive book-buyer? I don't get to see who orders my books. If I knew, I'd target my message to that person.)

Dr. Shawn Baker, carnivore, on the new food pyramid

Dr. Baker's issue is with how the new pyramid deals with saturated fat.

my 10-kilo bag of sea salt

I dragged out my 10-kilogram bag of sea salt (recently bought) to replenish the sea salt in my plastic container—the salt I use for my daily foot soaks. But when I took the heavy bag out of a closet and slammed it onto my dining table today, I immediately noticed a puddle of liquid under the bag, plus random fallen salt crystals (huge, chunky ones). Was this a natural occurrence, or had something unrelated sprung a leak somewhere? My next thought: Well, shit, if I'm storing this in my closet, what the hell's happening inside there? I rushed over to check, and sure enough, the bottom of the closet was a puddle of salty water. I held the sea-salt bag over the kitchenette sink, brushed off the salt crystals clinging to the exterior, then wiped the bag down with paper towels and bagged the sea-salt bag in two layers of plastic grocery bags. While that ought to temporarily solve the soaking problem, I still needed to find out what might be happening. Turns out there's no leak from anywhere else. The source of the water, it turns out, is the crazy atmospheric humidity in my apartment (I run my A/C for only about 60-90 minutes a day, in 30-minute bursts). 

Here's what's been going on according to the AI god:

Water at the bottom of a bag of sea salt is caused by a chemical process called deliquescence. Sea salt is naturally hygroscopic (moisture-absorbing), and unrefined salts often lack anti-caking agents. When exposed to high humidity, the salt absorbs so much airborne moisture that it begins to dissolve in it.

Here is a breakdown of why this happens and how to manage the salt:

• Natural Deliquescence: When the ambient humidity rises above roughly 75%, sea salt absorbs the moisture and liquefies into a concentrated brine pool.
• Trace Minerals: Unrefined sea salts often contain trace, mineral-rich brines (like calcium or magnesium chloride) that are highly deliquescent.
• Safety: The damp salt or the liquid at the bottom is perfectly safe to use for cooking, as it is just concentrated salt water.

Deliquescence. Lovely. So the salt bag has been absorbing my apartment's humidity; the water gathers at the bottom of the bag as salt water; the salt water seeps through the bag material; the water re-evaporates, thus leaving salt crystals outside the salt bag. Lovely.

And this is only going to continue through the summer. I'll keep losing salt unless I seal the bag, but I don't have a Ziploc that big, and I doubt I can make my 20-liter grocery bags that airtight. I guess I could transfer the salt to multiple Ziplocs and put paper towels inside each little bag to act as desiccants, changing the towels out now and then. Hmmm.

Something to do tomorrow, perhaps.

UNIST says no

As I suspected, UNIST in Ulsan has said no to my job application. The uni would never have replied had I not sent in a status request an hour ago, but they replied promptly to the request once they got it. It was a politely worded let-down:

Dear Applicant, 

Thank you for your interest in the Visiting Professor position at the School of Liberal Arts, UNIST, and for taking the time to apply. 

After careful consideration, we regret to inform you that we are unable to offer you the position at this time. 

We sincerely appreciate your interest in UNIST and wish you continued success in your academic and professional endeavors. 

Kind regards,

I sent a similar update request to Soonchunhyang University (SCH); so far, no reply.  Most universities—rather unprofessionally, in my opinion—never reply if they're saying no to your application, which is why you often have to go out of your way and ask.

While the timeline for UNIST and SCH has reached its conclusion, I'm still waiting on responses from Hanyang YK Intercollege (Seoul) and Kyungpook National University (Sangju). Hanyang is at the 10-day mark; the timeline for Kyungpook started only yesterday. Upshot: I'll contact Hanyang next week, and I'll contact Kyungpook late in the first week of July. In the meantime, I'm going to have to start looking earnestly for hagweon work.

Dave Cullen on the cancellation of Blade

As much as I respect Mahershala Ali as an actor, Wesley Snipes utterly owns this character.

why I don't use the word friend lightly

encouraging your lunch

couldn't sleep, so...

I couldn't sleep after a six-hot-dog weekend and a hot/humid Monday (during which I ate the rest of my chili and made tomato soup with the rest of my passata and some heavy cream—all more or less keto), so I waited until 2:30 a.m. and took a walk out to the Han River. There were, of course, walkers and runners and bikers out, not to mention old people who couldn't sleep because that is the lot of old people. The chili made this into a farty walk, and I worried about sharts to the point where, when I was about to pass by a restroom, I decided to stop and offload some of my troubles. The result was a few measly crumbs of solid matter and a lot of intestinal gas, coming out with the blatting noise of a deflating, sausage-shaped balloon. Aside from those technical troubles, I rested five minutes at the outset to stave off some tightness around the chest; after that, I was good to go for the rest of the walk.

By starting the walk so early (pulling a Jeff Hodges, he of the 2:30 a.m. reveille), I enjoyed an awesome 10 kilometers accompanied by a decent breeze much of the time and an ambient temperature of about 23ºC (73.4ºF). The sun's rays never touched me. Although people were out at that time of day, it was an hour earlier, so there were fewer early birds. Always good for us introverts. However, when I was almost back at my place and muttering aloud to myself, as I often do, I got greeted by a friendly, grandmotherly old woman who smiled as I passed. She'd probably heard me muttering; maybe she thought I was a kindred spirit, a fellow self-talker. I greeted her back and felt unwontedly good about the exchange. In the US and Switzerland, walkers/hikers tend to greet each other on the path; in Korea, people often mind their own business, but it's a bit different out in the boonies. Out in the far distance between cities, Koreans that you encounter tend to be more open and friendly, and when you approach any big city, the walkers and cyclists tend to become more closed and reserved again. That's just one of the costs of being on the trail. In the States, walkers and bikers tend to greet you as a fellow traveler, part of the same club. In Switzerland, people often hail you with a hearty Grüezi or a Grüß Gott—one of the many things I miss about Switzerland. So yes, the Korean grandma's greeting to me as I was muttering to myself was unusual since we were inside the city, but it was still a welcome thing despite my introversion.

4:40 a.m., following the Tan-cheon and approaching the Yangjae-cheon, Lotte World Tower in the distance as the sky brightens. We're apparently now past the summer solstice (this past June 21), so the days ought to start shortening again, but true summer heat and humidity haven't even begun yet. And we've got the monsoon season to look forward to as well. And creek floods. Joy.

I admit this is kinda mean

 

But if the head of the Church of England is gonna kowtow to another religion...

let's kick it in the head one more time

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy got canceled, but it also had been picked up for two seasons, so there will be a Season 2. Prepare for even more greatness.

Citizen Vigilante: review

Armie Hammer as Sanders

2026's Citizen Vigilante is directed by trash filmmaker Uwe Boll (of the critically panned House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, and BloodRayne) and stars Armie Hammer as Sanders, an ex-military man who has come to Europe on an "extended vacation" to take over his father's business after the man's passing. This business apparently involves the management and upkeep of numerous properties in Central Europe (the plot takes place in an unnamed country but is probably Slovenia), but the upshot is that Sanders doesn't lack for money. While in Europe, and for reasons never quite made known to us, Sanders becomes personally disgusted with the European justice system's failure to prosecute illegal-immigrant criminals who randomly gang-rape and murder native European women, then get let off by lenient judges. Sanders goes on a vigilante campaign, basically becoming this movie's low-rent version of Batman, using his gigantic arsenal of weaponry, quasi-evolved stealth tactics, and video presence to begin a terror campaign against those who escaped justice in the slow-moving court system, as well as against the judges who let these criminals back on the street. Social-media reactions to Sanders—the ones shown, anyway—are universally positive: "We need someone like this in Germany" or "We need someone like this in Italy" or "I want to marry that guy" or "I love him. Is that weird?" For his part, Sanders mosaicks out his own face and alters his voice when he makes his videos, and his repeated refrain to Europeans is: "Remember: I do this for you until you learn to do this for yourself." Meanwhile, Sanders is being chased by Chief Henry of Interpol (Costas Mandylor, looking uncannily like Andy Serkis), who sympathizes with the victims but is determined to bring the "citizen vigilante" down. From Chief Henry's point of view, vigilantes bring only chaos and societal ruin—an ironic attitude given that allowing criminals to escape punishment, then letting them back out on the street, also brings only chaos and societal ruin. In a weird way, if we take this to be the film's true subtext, then the story—which comes off as right-wing agitprop—might actually be more evenhanded than it first appears.

But I can't hide my opinion: This was a shit movie, all in all. Some of the action scenes carried a certain amount of visceral satisfaction, but other scenes, from the first random murder of a mother in front of her son (with ridiculous digital blood) to the scene in which Sanders massacres a bunch of police officers (an act that I was sure would seal his fate), were ridiculous in setup and extremely poorly edited. Dainty little bullet spatters were intercut with incongruously graphic gore. In the police-massacre scene, for example, most of the officers die from what appears to be small-arms fire; they're taken down by two machine guns spitting rounds at them. But the camera suddenly and bizarrely takes a moment to focus on one officer's face right as it's blown off (you read that right—his face gets blown off) by something much, much larger than a small-arms round. So where did that round come from? And the SWAT tactic of confronting Sanders with two automatic rifles pointed at the SWAT team, whose members were neatly fanned out and just standing there, waiting to be shot, needed some work. Even I could have arrived at better tactics.

All of the characters in this unnamed Central European country speak English except for one Middle-Eastern family near the end, which is shown engaging in conversation at least partly in Arabic. Police-radio traffic is all in English, and while the police cars have the non-English Policija label on their outsides, when the SWAT team is storming what they think is the vigilante's compound, the officers' jackets all have the English initialism SWAT on them. (Or, hey, maybe that's how it is in Central Europe!)

The movie's dialogue is so on-the-nose that Sanders, who has a tendency to speechify before killing his victims, often sounds as though he's rattling off a set of right-wing talking points. These sorts of right-wing indie productions almost all tend to be overtly preachy in some way, and that didactic tone is usually their downfall (cf. The Hunt, which I loved). Perhaps in an attempt to seem balanced, the movie's script has Sanders sneer at both Democrat and Republican presidents—including Trump—for not being personally brave enough to stand at the front lines of the immigration war themselves, doing what needs to be done. But despite the attempt at balance, the movie clearly leans in favor of an anti-illegal-immigrant agenda.

If nothing else comes through, the movie is perfectly clear about its politics. It could have won more hearts and minds, though, with better scripting and characterization, a more balanced viewpoint, and a better understanding of urban-warfare tactics. I would like to have learned what triggering event had turned Sanders into a vigilante. I would like to have seen Sanders get emotional about something that reminded him of his painful past—maybe something from his army days. I would like to have seen Sanders and Chief Henry meet face to face and have a real sit-down, a clash of ideologies playing like an angrily aggressive Socratic dialogue. After all of Sanders's video messages to the people of Europe, I would definitely like to have seen clusters and crowds of Europeans taking justice into their own hands and clawing back their streets and countries. I also wouldn't have minded seeing some realistically European reactions to the cheeky American vigilante who presumes to tell Europe its business instead of the nearly self-righteous paternalism that we get from Sanders. In the real world, social-media reactions to Sanders would not be universally positive; replies would be angry, and quite a few would involve gaslighting. All that said, most of the actors are very good in their roles, including Armie Hammer, who plays Sanders with deadpan seriousness.

This is definitely not a Hollywood movie. It's way too un-PC. To its credit, the movie follows its own weird vision, and it definitely goes there; when the very white Sanders starts killing people, he kills everybody, including that entire, aforementioned Middle-Eastern family. So: plenty of brown and black people are in the body count. There are quite a few white people, too, in the form of cops and several crime-lenient judges. Basically: liberals.

While I consider myself right of center, I can't say that I recommend this movie. Parts of its agenda, when it does present a coherent argument, are items I can agree with. And the actors portraying all the overt and covert villains deserve praise for being such good sports. But overall, the movie is so ham-handed in terms of editing, so poorly written in terms of story and characterization, and so vague in terms of what the real issues are that I would simply say, to my leftie and rightie friends alike: Give this one a pass. It's not worth your time. Go watch The Equalizer 3. That's a much more entertaining vigilante film. And hey, if you're European, watch the movie with a group of your friends for the comedic value of having an American—from a country with its own problems—trying to tell Europeans how to solve their internal problems. Mind you, I don't think the Sanders character is completely wrong, but I think the way the movie sets up the entire situation is just ludicrous. All in all, this movie was the misbegotten, unserious rightie version of the left-biased and equally unserious Don't Look Up.

__________

ADDENDUM: I somehow got through the review without mentioning Armie Hammer's troubled personal life, which has kept him out of movies for several years. Hammer got #MeToo'ed with several accusations of assault some years back, but I think there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute him. For an actor, though, just wearing the scarlet letter is enough to tarnish one's reputation, and Hammer has admitted to a certain level of BDSM kink in his sexual life, which is probably not something anyone should publicly admit to if they want to appear professional in serious circles. I don't know any details, though, so I won't cast any judgment on Hammer and his... esoteric preferences.