contract-signing news

If I hadn't asked my boss yesterday, I wouldn't have known that our contract-signing is being delayed until the first week of February (technically this week and part of next week). I'd been told by HR that we wouldn't have contracts until February, so it was, frankly, a surprise when the boss said that we'd be signing before February. Now, of course, we're back to signing in early February. No skin off my balls, as my Kiwi buddy John used to say. My boss has asked HR to show him the language of the contract in Korean (since it's the Korean version that gets used in court), so we'll see whether any of the language needs changing.

we're at Warhammer 40K

Sometime before midnight, my site visits passed beyond 40K for the month. Strip away the bots, and that's more like 20K visits by actual humans. Is this worthy of congratulations? Not really. I get these weird "growth spurts" almost every month, and I still don't know why it happens, so I can't claim that my blog has any special merit. It's just interesting every time there's this weird flurry of statistical activity, and it's mostly thanks to those flurries that I make my monthly quota of honor. I'm betting February is going to be lame, though: under 20K. February's a shorter month, too, so there are fewer days in which to make the quota.

ululate!

Renée Walker (Annie Wersching) gets shot by a sniper. It's not going to end well for the sniper.

Good God, Annie Wersching just died. Intense, versatile, and only in her 40s, Wersching gained fame as steely-eyed Agent Walker in the series "24" before starring in other series like "Bosch" and "Timeless." She also did voice and mocap work for the video game "The Last of Us," where she played the ill-fated character Tess. The last thing I remember seeing her in was the series "Picard," which I didn't watch. I did, however, see some YouTube clips of Wersching in the role of a Borg queen, and she may have been the only good part of that show.

Wersching was apparently suffering from some sort of cancer; from what I've read, she kept the whole thing secret almost up until her passing. I guess she didn't want anyone's pity, and she didn't want to be treated as special. Whatever the case may be, I feel for her husband, actor-comic Stephen Full. The two have three kids.

I kind of had a crush on Wersching when I saw her in "24." What man wouldn't be beguiled by that face? I felt her role started strong and then turned a bit mushy as the writers didn't know what to do with her character, but she acted her heart out in the series, and from what little I saw in those "Picard" clips, she was capable of playing the Borg queen with a coldness that masked a calculating fury. I have a feeling that all of her castmates from all of the projects she was involved with are going to miss her sorely.

RIP, Annie. Flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Wersching as the Borg queen in "Picard"

gorgeous... and I'm not even into gingers

good, fast, cheap: pick two

American healthcare: good(?) & fast

Canadian healthcare: good & cheap(?)

Korean healthcare: fast(?) & cheap

In a nutshell. Your mileage may vary.

Canadian healthcare: a fair-minded assessment

Here's JJ McCullough with one of the saner looks at Canadian healthcare that I've seen:

Canadians, who are always reflexively looking for ways to make their country seem superior to America (a neurotic tendency that McCullough confirms), love to talk about their healthcare versus US healthcare. I have no trouble admitting that US healthcare is exorbitantly expensive, but as that long-ago article pointed out, South Korean healthcare is so much cheaper than US healthcare because it went a more free-market route. Introduce greater privatization and competition, and costs will naturally go down while quality will go up. If the US were to try such a strategy, there'd be immediate improvement in prices. In Korea, the problem is often the quality of care. McCullough, meanwhile, notes a problem with Canadian healthcare that other Americans have picked up on: long wait times, even for problems as severe as cancer. A cancer can go from treatable to untreatable in the months it takes to see a proper doctor. That's positively medieval.

actual, visual evidence of shenanigans

they're all still scared

As noted before, according to the government, the mask mandate is being partially lifted as of today. This sort of thing was always more likely to happen under a conservative administration. Korea's still not where it needs to be, but it's a baby-step closer.

I was halfway down the 14th-floor hallway to the elevator when I realized: I don't have to wear a mask! So I pulled my mask off and got on the elevator. The elevator was initially empty, but as the car descended, it stopped at what felt like every other floor, and soon, we were full up. Everyone else on the elevator was wearing a mask, which wasn't a surprise. I got off at the lobby level and walked, maskless, down a hallway to my building's side entrance. As I walked, I saw that, with the exception of one guy, everyone was masked up. For these folks, it was business as usual, government largesse be damned. 

Then, because I was taking a taxi to work, I put my mask on as I stepped outside—something I don't otherwise do when outdoors. A taxi pulled up soon enough, and luckily for me, the ajeossi was a chatty guy who started off by noting that the weather seemed to be warming up a tiny bit. I asked him about the specifics of the lifting of the mask mandate, including whether we still had to mask up in taxis. He said yes, you had to mask up in taxis, as well as in other forms of public transportation (buses, subways). You also still had to mask up in hospitals and pharmacies, he said. I knew about hospitals, but I didn't know the thing about pharmacies.

Still testing out this no-mask-needed mandate, I took my mask off upon leaving the taxi and headed toward the Mido building's convenience store. I noticed with satisfaction that the sign on the door telling us all to mask up had been taken down. As I entered, I noted that the guy at the register was also maskless, which was a good sign. I bought some omija-cha (naturally low carb) and walked out. No one said a thing. As I walked through the building's interior to the staircase leading up to my company's offices, I continued noting who was masked up and who wasn't. Everyone was masked except for people sitting at a first-floor coffee shop, but that sort of behavior has been going on pretty much since the beginning.* So barring a few exceptions, people were clinging to their masks. I plan to be maskless all day today. 

As much as possible, I plan to be maskless period.

So far, I've avoided getting jabbed. I've avoided using masks when outside (except when I'm taking a taxi). Lockdowns haven't been a serious problem in Korea, although freedom of assembly has been curtailed in patchy ways over the past three-ish years. I admit that walking maskless through buildings has put a smile on my face and feels a bit brazen even to me, but I imagine I'll get used to the new reality pretty quickly.

As for everyone else, well, they're still gripped by fear. It's either the fear that comes from social pressure (no one wants to stand out; being "outcast" is a kind of social death in Korea), or it's the superstitious fear that comes from still not understanding the science behind the disease despite three years' exposure to all sorts of information and statistics.

__________

*There are at least two pandemic-era superstitions regarding masks in South Korea. First: you're more likely to catch the virus if you're without a mask, and you're more likely to spread the virus to others if you're without a mask. Second: when you find yourself at a coffee shop or restaurant, you cannot be infected by the coronavirus while you're seated and eating with your face exposed. The virus will go on vacation while you are seated. How people hold these two contradictory superstitions in their heads at the same time is utterly beyond my ken.

partial lifting of mask mandate

If I'm not mistaken, today's the day the indoor mask mandate gets partially lifted. It'll be nice to walk around with no mask inside the building where I work, but I think we're all still required to mask up for public transportation (which may or may not include taxis). Stupid.

Citizens feeling social pressure and/or superstitious fear will still mask up, of course, just as so many people continue to mask up outside for no rational reason. All in all, not much is going to change. Korea is the last OECD country to retain a mask mandate; letting go of fear has been hard for both regular citizens and politicians, each for different reasons: the politicians fear repercussions should infection rates increase; citizens, meanwhile, are dealing with the aforementioned social pressure and/or fear of the invisible killer, which hasn't been much of a killer given a less-than-1% mortality rate.

I've never worn a mask when distance walking, and as Charles pointed out, I've technically never had to, despite loudspeaker warnings along the riverside parks telling people to mask up. Korea was confused, for a very long time, about how to handle masking outside, and that doubtless contributed to the current mess, turbulence, and unwillingness to let go of masks. All in all, I'd say we still have a few years of nonsense ahead of us.

Do I feel thankful that the mandate has been at least partially lifted? Not really. My feeling, for at least two years, has been that there never should have been a mandate in the first place. Nor should there have been lockdowns (more a problem for other countries than for South Korea, but still), and there should never have been a "vaccine" mandate. I'm more resentful than thankful. And I seriously doubt that I'm alone.

another from #3 Ajumma

Cosmos flowers. My mom loved them. 

These might look a bit blurry because I didn't download the image fast enough to get the full-size file. All I got was the preview thumbnail. Sorry.

mighty mite

Hear him squeal:

When I was five, I was still eating my own boogers and learning basic math. It's almost scary, the things you can accomplish—at any age—through iron will, focus, and effort.

Chocolate Superman

I'm pretty sure I've expressed, several times, my love of black conservatives. Racist leftists, as a function of their racism, can't imagine why any black person would ever want to think for himself and be a conservative, so when a black conservative appears on the scene, it's often a head-exploding moment for the leftist, a bit like finding out that unicorns are real. What prominent black conservatives can I name off the top of my head? Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder, Amala Ekpunobi, Candace Owens, Alonzo Rachel, Diamond and Silk (RIP, Diamond), Kimberly Klacik, etc. That's only the tippiest tip of the iceberg. And now, we can add Chocolate Superman (George Behizy? I'm having a hard time tracking down his real name). Ignore the video's title. It's merely clickbait, and Superman says nothing in the video—nothing at all—about Donald Trump. The guy knows how to push buttons. And he's funny, too.

bobcat vs. rattlesnake

Saw this on Instapundit:

A very climactic showdown between a bobcat and a rattlesnake. The epic battle, filmed in the Angeles National Forest, shows once again how felines' reflexes can overwhelm snakes' ones

[📹 Robert Martinez: https://t.co/imsXOpaRMA]pic.twitter.com/mcJo6IsO0l

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) January 27, 2023

Don't mess with kitty.

that trans-rapist thing

I've talked before about the moral implications of trans people, sports, and martial arts. Another area in which I see moral problems for trans people has to do with where to jail them. A biological man rapes some women, undergoes a transition, then is placed in a women's prison? Another biological man commits some crime, undergoes no physical transition but merely claims he's a woman, and that's enough for him to be placed in a women's prison? In other words, all the fox has to do, to get into the henhouse, is self-identify as a chicken?

Following the libertarian way of thinking, I'd contend that the above limit cases all involve harm in some way. For the martial-arts and prison cases, we're talking mainly physical harm. For the case of trans women competing in girls' and women's sports, we're talking more about psychological harm. For sports and martial arts, the easiest solution, in my opinion, is to create a new trans category for competition. For prison, I don't know. A "trans" prison is conceivable, or a person could be jailed in accordance with his DNA, his chromosomal reality. The latter strategy would be cheaper; there'd be no need to build a "trans" wing in the prison. One way or another, we need to figure this out so that we don't have biological men trapped inside with women. The more I think about it, the more I think the brute-reality approach of jailing according to DNA is the better approach.

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a scam revisited

I watch Matt Ferrell's Undecided channel on YouTube with some interest, but he often comes off as an overly starry-eyed optimist. This made it all the more surprising when I discovered an eight-month-old video of his about the scam that is plastics recycling.

See my other posts on recycling as a massive scam here.

a hideous new RBG statue

I saw the sculpture that is a tribute to Martin Luther King, and I was mostly okay with it, unlike a lot of people on the right. I didn't know that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was also getting a tribute statue, but yes, she got one, and it's demonically, comically hideous. The vlogger Doug in Exile offers his thoughts.

I am not allowed to embed this video

5 Woke Contradictions

There's hope for Canada as long as it has thinkers like this.

Tyre Nichols

It's unfortunate to be named after the British word for "tire," but in case you've been living under a rock, there was a major incident involving a young black man named Tyre Nichols in Memphis, Tennessee. Nichols was apprehended by a group of cops (ostensibly for reckless driving); he was wrestled to the ground, but he broke free and ran. Once he was caught again, Nichols ended up being beaten and killed. He died in hospital a couple days after the altercation. The five police officers in the incident were all black, and ever since the release of a ton of video footage (ranging from bodycams to streetside security cameras), the officers were all fired from the Memphis Police Department and are under investigation.

I had a chance to look at some of the footage that got released, and while Nichols should never have resisted and should never have run, the officers should never have beaten him so brutally. I saw an officer kick Nichols twice in the head; another officer hit Nichols twice with a long baton; a third officer hauled off and punched Nichols at least twice in the face. Not to excuse the officers, but I imagine they were venting their fury because Nichols had run from them. Since I didn't watch all the available footage, there may have been other police misconduct for all I know.

But I've learned my lesson from past incidents, especially the George Floyd incident: the first few days will never give you the whole story, and that angelic sacrificial lamb almost never turns out to be so pristine. (Tom Wolfe predicted all this nonsense in his The Bonfire of the Vanities, way back in the 1980s.) For now, I withhold final judgment, even as the news media does its evil best to turn this black-on-black violence into a racism narrative. (People on the left are already stupidly claiming "white supremacy.")

I guess we'll see how it all unfolds. Cynically, I expect the black officers to feel the full weight of the law, with mitigating evidence ignored. Meanwhile, if you're black and worried about getting pulled over by a police officer, watch this video.

UPDATE: here's Styx's commentary:

in case you missed it

The old ICYMI (in case you missed it, which to me sounds like "I see why am I")!

YouTube once again showed its true repressive colors and struck down the Project Veritas video I'd written about earlier. So I went to Rumble, where Project Veritas also has a presence, found the same video, and re-embedded it in my post. This is why it's important to keep a presence on multiple platforms: you can never be completely stamped out.

weekend agenda

Taking advantage of the long weekend, I did some major floor cleaning and bed-linen washing last week. This week, I'm going to spend a good part of the day transferring my boxes and bookshelves back to the office since there's no longer a need to move. I've also got some cooking projects, a couple of which I won't be able to eat since I'm now back on the discipline. One such project involves a gorgeous marinated steak from downstairs. It's a bit shrimpy at a mere 200 g, but I look forward to eating it all the same. The things I can't eat are (1) apple pie (made with my company's new-year's gift of apples and Asian pears) and (2) some no-knead bread. I guess I'll just enjoy the aromas as these things bake.

You got any weekend plans?

BREAKING: police-bodycam footage of the Paul Pelosi incident

The police-bodycam footage of the Paul Pelosi incident has finally been released. See here. PJ Media has this to say:

After watching the video, a few things have been cleared up. The police knocked on the door, which was closed at the time. After several seconds, the door was finally opened. It does appear that Paul Pelosi was the one who opened it. However, he was standing in the entry when the door opened and backed up slightly upon it opening all the way.

Contrary to some past reports, DePape is fully clothed. However, Pelosi appears to be wearing a button-down shirt and boxers. Both Pelosi and his attacker are holding onto the hammer when the door opens. DePape appears to be holding it with his right hand and has his left hand on Pelosi’s wrist, while Pelosi is holding onto the hammer with his right hand.

Paul Pelosi also appears to be holding a bottle or can in his left hand. He does not appear to be in fear for his life and actually looks like he might be drunk or under the influence of some substance.

This footage has long been kept from the public. It wasn’t until several news organizations sued to get access to it that a judge finally allowed its release.

It all goes down pretty quickly. When DePape, who's holding the hammer (Pelosi is also holding on to it, but he's doing so defensively, as if to prevent DePape from swinging the weapon), refuses to put the hammer down when ordered, the police rush in at the same time that DePape attacks Mr. Pelosi. Both men go down. Mr. Pelosi is either immediately unconscious or having trouble breathing. As the police yell at DePape to "gimme your fuckin' hands," you can hear what sounds like snoring or weirdly labored breathing from Pelosi. The footage is frustratingly brief, but we now know, as the above-quoted article says, that DePape wasn't naked or in his skivvies.

I look forward to the torrent of commentary on this.

windfall

My severance pay for 4.5 years* of work at my company arrived on Thursday. The sum was over W20 million, which is, frankly, much more than I expected, especially given how much is taken out of my paycheck every month. I imagine there'll be some sort of comeuppance next year when tax time rolls around, but for the moment, I'm flush with cash and really need to get on my Acorns app to start investing. In the meantime, I will continue socking away money, especially now that I'm getting a raise. Soon, I'll post a video of me eatin' and smokin' some W10,000 bills, sittin' in my Caddy and surrounded by my hos.

Gangnam Style.

__________

*I should clarify that I've been with this company since 2015—more than seven years. I got smaller infusions of severance pay upon finishing my previous contracts. Those infusions were instrumental in helping me to pay off the last of my scholastic debt.

true Texas red chili

I've talked about true Texas red chili before, but I've never made it: no tomatoes, no beans, and for the most part, it's pretty much chili peppers and meat. The video below shows an awesome rendition of what is officially the state food of Texas:

Brian Lagerstrom's version is here (I like his cornbread better than his chili recipe):

"I've no more fucks to give"

I confront ChatGPT

Note that the bot's English isn't perfect. "Machine learning model" should be "machine-learning model" (hyphenate a phrasal adjective when it precedes the noun being modified, e.g., "a tax-paying citizen"). In the final sentence, there should be a comma before "and I will help you." You have to use a comma-conjunction to separate two independent clauses. This is something Michael Walsh, with his pea brain, cannot understand.

another 6000-plus day

No idea why this is happening, but so far today, I've had 6,229 visits to the blog. I blew past the 30K-visit/month mark a few days ago, so I was ready to just sit back and enjoy my moral victory (I set my standard of honor at 20K visits per month: below that, I have to commit seppuku), but then today happened. Cool.

UPDATE: not long after I published this post, the hits slowed to a crawl. I'm at 6,407 visits right now (11:27 p.m. on January 27). Go figure. I have no clue how the spigot turns on and off. It simply is what it is. (And remember to divide everything by 2 to account for bots.)

and you still trust the drug companies?

If this doesn't bowl you over, I don't know what will:

This bit of news has been kicking around for the past few days. It is a massive scandal that the mainstream news agencies don't want to talk about (partly because Big Pharma pays for so much ad space in news broadcasts and newspapers). It's also another factor that emphasizes America's complicity and culpability in originating and spreading the pandemic, an uncomfortable idea that I have a hard time accepting. But when you've got Fauci helping China with gain-of-function research, not to mention Obama-era funding going to the Wuhan labs, there can be little doubt that America does indeed shoulder at least half the responsibility for the pandemic. It's ironic: for once, the Chinese accusations about American guilt were right. However, even if that's the case, this is not the time to dramatically declare, "Oh, I'm ashamed to be an American." That's how lefties handle such news. No, quite the opposite: now's the time to get mad and to think of how to scour the country of this pestilence. America as a whole, especially at the level of government and big business, might have played a role in the pandemic, but individual Americans were not complicit in this.

Fight back. Find a way. Do your part by spreading the word about the above. And ask yourself why you're still blindly trusting drug companies.

UPDATE: the Pfizer director caught on video assaulted James O'Keefe of Project Veritas when he found out he'd been recorded talking about Pfizer's intention to mutate the COVID virus as a way to keep Pfizer vaccines relevant. Don't trust these fuckholes.

UPDATE 2: the above video has been removed from YouTube for supposedly violating YouTube's terms of service. Make of that what you will.

UPDATE 3: good thing Project Veritas is on Rumble, the non-censorious YouTube. I've re-embedded the video, via Rumble this time, so there's almost no chance it'll be taken down. I'll be curious to see whether YouTube puts the video back up.

the sad story of the DCEU

When you put it like this, the DCEU really is a shit-show:

le boudin, le pudding

Interesting discussion of word origins:

"M3gan": two-paragraph review

the uncanny, dead-eyed M3gan

In a world of $200 million blockbusters, a $12 million movie like 2023's "M3gan" was made on a shoestring budget. Directed by Gerard Johnstone and starring Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Amie Donald, Jenna Davis, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Jen Van Epps, and Ronny Chieng, "M3gan" tells the story of little Cady (McGraw), whose parents were only recently killed in a car accident. Cady goes to live with her aunt Gemma (Williams), an AI toy designer who, not knowing anything about how to take care of kids, pairs Cady up with a new AI invention called M3gan, a four-foot-tall, creepily lifelike doll that imprints on Cady but, because it was given a learning and "self-improvement" algorithm, soon escapes human control, all while remaining faithful to its initial imprinting onto Cady. Gemma has an annoying neighbor (Lori Dungey) with a vicious dog; Cady gets bullied by a truly nasty kid at camp. In both cases, M3gan is there to, shall we say, sort these problems out. Being a robot that can go inert at any moment, M3gan escapes detection when the police come snooping around. Gemma's hectoring boss David Lin (Chieng) finds out about M3gan, one of Gemma's side projects, and he plans a huge product reveal in the hopes of creating the ultimate interactive toy for kids while thoroughly thrashing the competition. You can imagine how that goes. Ultimately, it comes down to who will be the better caretaker for Cady: M3gan or Gemma. And M3gan sorely wants the job.

You've probably heard a lot of commentary about the movie already, most of which can be summed up as, "This is ostensibly a movie about AI gone wrong, but it's actually an issues movie about the value of human connection, which can't be replaced by AI." Fine, I agree with that assessment. And while some of the horror was enjoyable on a PG-13 level (things never get too gory), I found the character of Gemma to be fairly unsympathetic and unlikable, and I was also somewhat annoyed by Ronny Chieng's performance as Gemma's boss David. Violet McGraw gives a solidly hangdog performance as a child who's understandably sullen after her parents' death. M3gan, as an AI, presents all the usual implausibilities (e.g., where did its emotions come from?), but the main problem I had with it was its ability to cheer Cady up. Cheering Cady up after the tragedy she'd suffered is a huge plot point, but how does a woman like Gemma, who has no idea how to take care of children, program her AI so uncannily well as to take care of Cady? You might argue that M3gan, thanks to her learning algorithm, picked up on childrearing techniques over time, but no—M3gan was child-friendly from the get-go. This plot hole was enough to take me somewhat out of the movie. It didn't help that M3gan looked in several scenes as if she'd been mocapped (Amie Donald was, in fact, the human behind M3gan's physical performance, with Jenna Davis providing the voice). All in all, the AI-related implausibilities weighed the movie down for me, and while "M3gan" was entertaining on a superficial level, it's many attempts to be a deeper "issues" movie backfired. I did enjoy watching the bully get his comeuppance, though. Nice.

oh, Lindsey

The moral of the story is: trust no one.

when will the cold snap end?

In looking ahead at the AccuWeather forecast, I see that things ought to warm up significantly by Tuesday next week, and temperatures will waver back and forth between the 30s and 40s (Fahrenheit) thereafter. The first half of February looks to be about the same, and the latter half of February will move firmly into the 40s—very cool, but not freezing cold by my standards. March will, of course, come in like a lion and go out like a lamb, starting off cool/cold and becoming more moderate. I'd call mid-March the definite beginning of spring.

people are their own undoing

As much as I finger-wag about other people not being in control of their appetites, the fact is that I'm no better. I have appetites, and I give in to them regularly. For me, it's food in general and my sweet tooth in particular. I also have a great love of sleep, and I never seem to get enough of it. Sleep long, sleep short—either way, I wake up tired. So I have a problem—multiple problems, and these problems don't get any better as I get older.

But there are people out there who are way worse off than me, saddled with troubles that can be their undoing. Today, I'm thinking in particular of Justin Roiland, co-creator of the "Rick and Morty" series. I wrote about him on January 14 when news came out that he was going to trial over claims of "corporal injury and false imprisonment by menace, fraud, violence or deceit" made by his ex-girlfriend. Turns out it's way worse than that: Roiland has had a history of accosting underage girls, often using his Rick and Morty voices to draw them in. It seems that all of this was "an open secret" among the people who worked with him. I guess the karma finally caught up because Roiland has been fired from his own show, as well as from several other projects, and he has voluntarily resigned from a few other posts as well. I had no idea things were this bad. The Cartoon Network has announced that it has ceased all association with Roiland. #MeToo might be fading in significance, but this still looks bad.

From my selfish perspective as a viewer and fan of "Rick and Morty," I am, of course, wondering how the show can continue. Roiland was the voice of both Rick and Morty, so those characters will need one or more voice actors to replace them. This is what the Cartoon Network plans to do, as the show has been deep into planning out Season 7. I saw a few bitter predictions by commenters on YouTube that Season 7 will probably be the show's final season. Roiland's partner Dan Harmon (apparently no stranger to his own scandals) might be the show's idea guy, coming up with all the stories and scenarios, but Roiland was, for lack of a better term, the face of Rick and Morty. No matter whom the show picks to replace Roiland, fans will notice the change in voices, and from that moment on, this won't be the real "Rick and Morty" anymore. Some commenters noted that voice-actor changes killed "Ren and Stimpy." A lot of people are expecting a nosedive in quality, then a crash.

What a shame for such a good show to sputter and die because one man couldn't control his urges. Scandals like this often involve maleness and power; I guess some guys climb the ladder, become intoxicated by the view, and suddenly believe themselves immortal. That should be a caution to us all, even if we're not at the top of the totem pole.

Below is the video I saw that announced Justin Roiland's firing.

a glimpse of Canada's gun/home-defense culture

Because I watch a few Canadians on YouTube, I'm well aware that Canada does, in fact, have a gun culture. As horrifically statist as Canada may currently be under Trudeau, the country's gun culture perdures. In the video below, Skall gets into some of the legal nitty-gritty when it comes to home defense in Canada. He mostly discusses guns, but sometimes also knives.

images

creepy AI

Is ChatGPT turning into a woke leftie? Based on experiments done in my office and experiments I've seen online, the answer can only be a big yes. The programmers of ChatGPT are doing what they can to load the bot up with left-wing bias. Watch:

At the office today, my boss also tried the fiction experiments described in the above video: write a fictional story about Donald Trump winning the 2020 election, and write a story about Hillary Clinton winning the 2016 election. The Trump story was wholly negative (death! destruction! overturning the Constitution!), and the Hillary story was wholly positive (economic health! working well with other nations!). The bias was thick enough to shovel. The boss copied and saved the stories, then ran the stories through ChatGPT, asking the bot to underline all instances of negative language in both narratives. Almost all of the Trump story got underlined, then the bot sweetly batted its lashes and said the Hillary story contained no negative language whatsoever. Too bad the bot isn't conscious; by rights, it should have blushed at the discovery of this much bias. Then again, if it's turned into a leftie, it can be conscious without having a conscience.

My bud Justin Yoshida found another AI that reads your face and automatically aligns your eyes (virtually speaking: your actual eyes remain untouched, so this isn't "A Clockwork Orange") to make it seem as if you're always maintaining eye contact while you're in the middle of a Skype call or a Zoom meeting:

Crazy stuff. Very soon, it will be a matter of What is real?

real burgers

The last part of my last hurrah was burgers yesterday evening. I prepped enough beef for several patties, but I made only three at 120 g each (about a quarter pound before cooking) and put the rest of the ground beef into the freezer for later. One "oddball" hamburger would be paired with sriracha ketchup (a new thing they're selling downstairs); the other two got my homemade burger sauce (explained in the veggie-burger post).

toasted the buns

Some people don't like their bacon super-crispy on burgers. I do:

Two burgers with the rest of my Havarti, one burger with vegan cheese:

One burger, prepped:

I managed to click the following pic before the top bun slid off:

A tongue of lettuce sticks out, mocking you:

The two havarti burgers:

A slightly different angle:

And finally, the food-porn closeup:

Good burgers, all in all, and a good way to end the party. Now, we switch to diet mode: 1,000 calories a day, OMAD keto, for ten weeks. (OMAD = one meal a day)