double standard

Headline (paywall):

Why Gaza and not the Uighurs?

The Babylon Bee, “the newspaper of record” for anyone with a sense of humor, posed a more interesting thought about the campus demonstrations than anything you can find in the New York Times or Washington Post. The Bee’s headline proclaimed, “Uighur Slaves Struggling to Keep Up with Demand for Palestinian Headscarves.”

Dark humor indeed. The headscarves, like the masks, serve one obvious function: they hide the faces of demonstrators. That’s why bank robbers wear masks, too. Students know they are breaking the rules and professional agitators know they are breaking the law, so it’s smart to…

I'm not an economist, so help me understand the issue

US representative from Texas Chip Roy asks a question to which he hasn't heard a good answer. If you think you have the answer, leave it in the comments.

more on morons

Chris Chappell on the pro-Hamas campus encampments:

As pizza rater Dave Portnoy says, he wouldn't hire any of these jokers: they hate America, and all they're doing is making noise before moving on to the next cause. They don't actually care about the Gazans: they are, as Dave calls them, "serial protestors."

Socratic method: a student defeats himself

A student claims JK Rowling is "phobic about a lot of things," then proves unable to back up any of his statements. Warren Smith, a young college prof teacher, has been making a name for himself for these Socratic Method videos in which he allows his "opponents" to wear themselves down and show everyone the emptiness of their points of view. Smith simply and calmly allows his interlocutors to talk while asking them focused questions. It's rare to see minds changed through debate, but Smith seems to be making a tiny bit of headway, student by student. I'm impressed. Faced with such massive stupidity, he's way calmer than I'd be.

UPDATE: Warren Smith was fired not long after this video came out, which is doubtless one reason why it's suddenly labeled as "private." Sorry about that. As a consolation prize, here's a link to a Rumble video of Piers Morgan interviewing Warren Smith.

vomitous pie filling: epilogue

I decided to throw away my keto "apple" pie filling. It was a sad waste of perfectly good jicama, which definitely has a fibrous, apple-like crunch to it, even after a fifteen-minute cook. Here's the thing: I dumped the pie filling into a colander, then rinsed off the filling from the jicama chunks. On a random impulse, and right before throwing everything out, I then tasted one of the chunks... and it didn't taste vomitous at all.

So, a possible theory: it was something acidic in the recipe that caused the unpleasant taste, and it got washed away. The recipe called for an inordinate amount of lemon juice—about a third of a cup. When I normally make an apple pie, I might add in a spritz or two of juice from the lemon-shaped bottle, but that's about it—just enough to accent the pie filling. It's conceivable, though, that the sour taste might have come from something else, e.g., the powdered apple extract. I don't think the extract is acidic (I sampled a fingertip of it before using it, and it was pleasantly apple-y), but you never know.

There's a chance, then, that taking out the acidic elements from the recipe might solve the problem. I had six jicamas originally; I now have three. I'd been thinking of turning the remaining three into jicama "french fries," but I might try the "apple"-pie thing again, this time without lemon juice. We'll see.

is a CGM smartwatch worth it?

For us diabetics:

Upshot: the answer seems to be: Not quite yet.

Biden's economy: sluggish Q1 growth

Sorry to all of you stuck in Fantasyland who think Trump is still somehow steering the economic ship into the shoals, but Biden has been taking a sledgehammer to the US economy from the beginning. We're at the end of his first (and hopefully only) term, and the numbers are in. Ignore them or spin them at your peril.

the shopping-cart test

They say true character comes out in a crisis, but it also comes out when you think no one else is looking. Here's an interesting and everyday ethical test.

I keep hoping

If the New York jury is at all rational, they'll see that the prosecution's star witness, Michael Cohen, serial liar and formerly Trump's "fixer," is not to be trusted: he is little more than a walking pile of garbage.

Headline:

Michael Cohen Admits on the Witness Stand That He Stole From the Trump Organization

Michael Cohen admitted on the witness stand Monday that he stole from the Trump Organization, according to multiple reports.

Cohen testified Monday that he lied to former Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg in 2017 about how much he needed to be reimbursed for a payment to the tech company RedFinch. While he asked for $50,000, Cohen testified that he only gave the company $20,000.

Nonetheless, Cohen asked for the 50K reimbursement from the Trump Organization.

In a just world, this case would never have arisen. Just dismiss it already instead of dragging us through this kangaroo-court bullshit.

the Iranian power vacuum

Celebrations in Iran with the death of its president:

Where to from here?

Alina vs. Letitia

ugh

I tried making a jicama "apple" pie filling this morning. It seemed fine while it was hot: the apple extract gave the filling an apple-y smell, but the jicama itself didn't taste like apples at all. When I got back from work, I tasted the filling again now that it had cooled down completely... and there was a nasty, acidic aspect to it that reminded me of vomit. Maybe it's just me; maybe I'm wired strangely, like people who perceive cilantro as soap. I had planned to make the pie crust tonight and serve the keto "apple" pie to my boss and coworker, but now, all I want to do is throw the filling away. Truly awful, and I'm not finding much corroboration for this experience online. Am I just weird, or did something go terribly wrong?

oh, those wacky climate predictions

As I've said before, I'm all for cleaning up the environment, and there are plenty of obvious problems we could be focusing on, e.g., rivers clogged with plastic bottles, the Texas-sized trash island in the ocean, kids playing in piles of garbage and rivulets of sludge, etc. But the greenies lose me whenever they start to make their loony climate predictions based on woefully incomplete models that often get cause and effect backward—stuff like "Ten years to the end of the world," and "No more snows of Kilimanjaro," and "By 2015, island nations will be under water," and "The polar caps will have disappeared by 2020" and the worst one of all: "Climate change causes CO₂ buildup." Stupid, apocalyptic, fearmongering "predictions" like that drive me nuts.

on the probable death of Iran's president

The president of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, may have just died in a helicopter crash along with his foreign minister and other high-level staffers. Can't say I'll be mourning any of these people. Iran is a sponsor and major funding source for various terrorist organizations, as well as specifically being a force behind the current Israel-Hamas conflict. I hope all of those guys in the copter are roasting in hell. They got a foretaste of the afterlife as their chopper went down.

On Instapundit, there's a lot of this going around:

The average age of an Instapundit commenter is about 60. Hence the WKRP reference.

UPDATE: confirmed dead.

JJ McCullough and the "consumerism is evil" myth

Possessing things isn't the problem. Letting your things possess you is the problem.

Pelosi mentally outmatched at the Oxford Union

Headline:

Pelosi Thinks [We] Peasants Are Blocked by “Guns, Gays, God”

Nancy Pelosi recently made it clear that she thinks all of us peasants who aren’t progressives are too ignorant to understand their brilliance. We are “blocked” by “Guns, Gays, and God.”

Nancy Pelosi appeared at the Oxford Union debate while Winston Marshal presented the case for populism. Marshal debated opposing a motion to declare populism “a threat to democracy.”

He reviewed how the left is changing language and associating negative views with the populists in the United States. Marshal compared January 6 with the George Floyd riots, and she started waving her bony finger from her seat in the first row, insisting J6 was worse than the riots as it was an insurrection instigated by Donald Trump. She received applause, which doesn’t say much about the audience’s knowledge.

Nancy Pelosi did not like what I had to say...

Populism is not a threat to democracy.

Democrat elites like her are.

Watch my full Oxford Union speech from the debate with her: pic.twitter.com/ZNm8maNZjy

— Winston Marshall (@MrWinMarshall) May 10, 2024

I guess I'll give Pelosi credit for having the balls or the stupidity—more likely stupidity—to appear before the Oxford Union thinking she could carry on a debate. Too bad about the ignorant crowd, though, eh?

recapitulating that "Raiders of the Lost Ark" scene

Stupid guy with sword commits suicide by cop:

But this is how you handle the mentally unbalanced. They may be insane, they may be in the grip of forces that aren't their fault—problems they were born with or that appeared thanks to a quirk of nature—but they're still responsible for their actions, still making choices, and in cases like this, you have to put them down just as you'd put down a hangry, threatening bear that ambles into town and tries to eat the townspeople.

This video contains a second (bonus) incident as well.

Never Trumpers... defending Trump

a 2A win?

Some people don't want you able to defend yourself:

trouble with Coupang

Is anybody else having trouble accessing Coupang, or is it just me? I can't reach Coupang through my phone app, which is how I usually access it: a warning message pops up about the lack of a network connection (everything else that's Net-related on my phone works just fine). The same warning screen offers the option of accessing Coupang via the Web, taking you directly to the Coupang website. That's also a no-go.

...ah. For whatever reason, the problem seems to be related to my VPN. Once I turn the VPN off, I can access Coupang just fine. Go figure. 

So a new question arises: why was Coupang working just fine with my VPN on before, but it's not playing nicely with my VPN now?

Mystery upon mystery.

ex-Obama intern turns Trump supporter

supermodel fucks off from California, middle finger raised

airline food: the olden days

I have a friend who suffers from a severe nut allergy, but if I'm honest, I think the nut-allergic crowd ruined it for the rest of us when airlines switched from nuts to goddamn pretzels. Sorry, Dave. Gotta speak my troof. Why not offer passengers a choice?

My father was an airline employee—Northwest—and he sometimes got defensive when people made certain complaints, e.g., that airlines should offer free hotel bookings to people who get bumped, or that airline food is alway terrible. I'll kind of agree with that last thing: airline food is perfectly edible. It's not top-notch, Michelin-star cuisine to be sure, but it's easily adequate for a long flight. In fact, I often find it's a bit too much, even for me: if I'm flying from the States to Korea, for example, there will be several meals and snacks, and I'll often end up skipping some of the snacks (usually in the form of random, bland, unsauced deli sandwiches). The meals are small and simple, but they're just the right amount for someone who's just sitting in a chair for sixteen hours. And if I'm honest, they don't taste bad at all; they're just a little "meh," but if it's a choice between dinner and nothing, I'll pick dinner.

ta-da!

I did end up making it to the office tonight, where I worked for a few hours and made up some of my hospital time. Salsa will be a Sunday project: my building's grocery will be open, so I'll have no trouble shopping for salsa ingredients.

Also on the agenda for cooking projects:

• Oreo "chaffles"
• keto white bread
• keto hot-dog buns
• keto hamburger buns
• keto tortillas
• keto "apple" pie (æpəl?) with jicama

Most of this is to bring in on Monday for my boss and coworker to sample. My Korean coworker is as thin as a rail, but his doc told him his blood sugar is a little high, so he needs to cut back on carbs a bit (as do we all). High blood sugar strikes everyone, and my coworker has shown an interest in various keto breads.

I've made keto tortillas (or flatbreads: I've used them for both tacos and gyros) many times before, but this time, now that I have some corn extract, I'm going to add that in and see whether I can make something like a "corn" (or qorn, I guess) tortilla.

Also on tap as part of the usual Sunday agenda: laundry. Yay.

preach!

I'm not quite this excited or gung-ho, but I like the way he thinks:

just before goodbye

G and M sent me this selfie that M took right before we parted ways. We're standing in the first floor of my building, right next to the infamous Paris Baguette where I get my salads:

boob sag from cell phone

dinner

The Keirsey/Bates definition of extroversion and introversion (see page 2 of this document) focuses on where people get their energy: an extrovert draws his energy from the people around him, but an introvert draws his energy from himself. So an extrovert in a crowd or with a bunch of friends only gets more pumped up as time goes by while an introvert, needing time to recharge when faced with a crowd, gets worn down and eventually needs "me" time to reenergize. I guess today's meet-up with G and M exhausted me because I slept right through my phone's alarm after writing that other blog post. Never made it to the office. So there goes any chance to work at the office today or to consider doing a walk down to Bundang. I might walk toward the Han River later tonight, but work will have to wait for tomorrow (Sunday). That, or I could start coming in to work during the week two hours early for several days. So I resigned myself to typing out this blog post and eating a bit of dinner. Darn the luck.

absolutely awful, terrible dinner

all your Chinese (and more) are belong to us

While leftists focus, wild-eyed, on supposed Western imperialism, here's real imperialism:

whew

Today, I was up at the ungodly hour of 9:30 a.m. I ran through my routine health checks (lower-than-usual blood sugar, which I'll be ruining through some heavy-duty carb ingestion today), finished stuffing my Costco and No Brand bags with items for the picnic (plates, utensils, gas range, tablecloth, food items, a bottle of fresh chimichurri as a gift, etc.), and headed out, around 10:30, to the park next to my building to set up a picnic table, then go back to my building's lobby to await the couple's arrival. I forgot to bring along my bokgeum-pan (a deep, almost wok-shaped sort of frying pan), so I had to walk back to the building, take the elevator to the 14th floor, then tromp over to my apartment to grab the pan and a silicone spatula to be able to stir the chicken.

I had planned to serve my chicken atop a nice bed of couscous... but I have no idea where all of my couscous went! I thought I had five whole bags of the stuff (Bob's Red Mill, of course), but when I opened my spice drawer last night, all the couscous was gone. What the fuck had I done with it? I couldn't remember. That, friends, was a true senior moment. I had absolutely no recollection of how all of that couscous could possibly have escaped from my clutches. My brain went into overdrive as I mentally explored ways to get couscous before 11 a.m. the next day. I looked through drawers and cabinets for possible alternatives... and that's how I found a long-lost, unopened box of quinoa. Cooked quinoa is couscous-like in terms of fluffy texture, and you can sprinkle it with garlic powder and load it up with butter just like couscous, so I told myself that this would have to do. Luckily, quinoa is also absurdly easy to cook in a rice cooker, so I did that, and at the end of the cook, I added a huge lump of butter and sprinkled the top of the cooked seeds with garlic powder, fluffing the whole thing after it had had a chance to cool down a bit. So that was the carb problem sorted, and quinoa is arguably healthier, carb-wise, than couscous.

By the time I got my pan and spatula and barley water (to drink, in case you're not familiar with barley water), it was close to 11 a.m., so I decided to go straight to the lobby to await the couple. They were already there, as it turned out, and they greeted me with hearty hellos. We walked out a side door so as to access the nearby park a little faster. Monsieur and Madame were impressed by the picnic setup I'd created. I felt lucky to have snagged the only pavilion in the park with a picnic-table setup. It wasn't in an ideal spot: we had noisy people playing basketball and the native game of 족구/jok-gu (a combination of soccer and tennis/volleyball where two teams use soccer moves to hit a ball over a tennis-style net); I would have preferred a spot with a grander view of the park's green spaces, but you work with what you have.

G and M seemed well rested after their cross-country walk. Both are former ultramarathoners, so they got through the walk with no problem (unlike yours truly and my perennial foot issues). I told them I'd be heading out to my office soon after lunch, and they told me they also had to head out to M's brother's house, where they would be staying for two nights before heading back to San Diego not long after. M told me about a friend of hers who has pancreatic cancer and was getting chemotherapy. I privately thought the situation sounded fairly bleak: the prognosis for pancreatic cancer is rarely good. We talked randomly about things like Sicilian culture and life in Chicago; the couple cooed over my food when I opened up the containers and started spooning the chicken dish into my pan for reheating.

Lunch itself went well; I was a little apprehensive about what the couple might think, but they enjoyed their fairly meager portions. (M is around 77; her husband G is around 83, so neither one eats like a Viking.) Out of modesty, I didn't load up my plate, either, so there were plenty of leftovers, which I planned to cart over to the office to share with the crew on Monday.

M gave me a pair of walking shoes that turned out to be a bit too small for me; I'm going to see about foisting the shoes onto my boss, who has two tween boys who might find the shoes useful (their feet could actually be too big already!). She also gave me the rest of her fresh fruit as well as a couple traditional Korean snacks that I'm not particularly fond of. I'll be sharing this bounty with my officemates, but I doubt they'll be all that enthusiastic, either.

Anyway—surprise, surprise: the meet-up took almost exactly an hour. We said our goodbyes as the couple headed back underground to the subway; they once again invited me to see them in San Diego; M insisted that I think of them as Grandpa and Grandma (although G and M would both be closer to my parents in age); I could tell that M was feeling that hard-to-translate Korean jeong (something like a warm fellow-feeling or connection); the feeling wasn't exactly mutual, but I can't say I had a bad time with the couple. I wished them a safe trip back to the States; M promised to use the chimichurri tonight because they'll be grilling meat at her brother's place.

And that was that. Something of a relief to be done, but I do sincerely wish the couple well. I forgot to ask them where their next walking adventure would take them, but I'm sure we'll be in contact via email.

G and M just before sitting down and eating.

This plate ought to look familiar. I've done this dish several times before (but never with quinoa).

Trust me, there's a lot more left than just this.

G is originally from Sicily, and he was amused by the ground pistachios, which are a must in Sicilian food.

was Marx wrong on religion?

Michael Malice on Marx and religion:

one final meeting

While I'm not exactly dreading my meeting with the older couple at 11:00 this morning, I do look forward to getting this over with, catching up on some sleep, then spending the rest of my Saturday doing things like working in the office for a few hours, making salsa with my leftover cilantro, and possibly taking an evening walk down to Bundang (18K). I've got various keto breads I've been wanting to bake (and pan-fry) as well; that'll be work for tomorrow. I don't want to spend too much time with the couple today, but I have a sinking feeling that we'll be together for more than an hour. (Still, by need to be at the office by 1 p.m. if I'm to get any work done today. I'm still making up for time spent in hospital.) Expect photos of the get-together. It's happening very soon.

Joe Rogan versus Justin Trudeau (and evil people)

This is being widely quoted. I don't agree with Tucker's idea that evil is "an independent force." If that's the case, then what's the role of human responsibility? I think we all have some measure of Satan in us, but not Satan-as-puppet-master, but rather Satan as something organically grown, arising from the corrupted soil of one's own heart. And it goes without saying that you don't have to believe in Satan to believe in the existence of evil.

squirrels versus slugs

The usual warnings apply.

more on RFK Jr.

From 3 weeks ago, when all was rosy for RFK Jr.:

On not supporting Donald Trump:

RFK Jr. may have screwed the pooch with his campaign:

RFK Jr. isn't having the effect the left says he's having:

more poll discussion

I'm stuck on that high wire, balancing between looking at the polls and mistrusting them.

This one's not a poll, per se, but more of a man-on-the-street assessment:

a few PJWs

On South Korea's big demographic mistake as it opens up immigration to the unsavory:

Not a sob story, sending migrants to Rwanda:

"Punk"?

pre-incident

Here's a pic taken of some street art just outside of California Kitchen, the burger-and-burrito joint close to Itaewon in neighboring Gyeongnidan, on March 30, not long before I ended up going to the hospital. When I met Charles and Tom, I was tired and out of breath that day, and I was still thinking my symptoms were COVID-related. Little did I know.

The street sign with the number "3" on it advertises this as Hoenamu 26th Street/회나무로26길, so I had to wonder what kind of tree (namu) a hoenamu* was. As often happens with the biological names of Korean life forms, finding a straightforward name for the hoenamu in English wasn't easy. The Naver dictionary called this by a Latin designation, Euonymus sachalinensis. According to Wikipedia (which did me wrong regarding that Korean logo), the common English designation for the tree is the flat-stalked spindle. So put that in your pipe and smoke it. If I learn something, you're going to have to learn along with me.

Euonymus sounds as if it comes from Greek. Many Latin terms come from Greek; the Romans stole a lot. Eu, in Greek, means "good," as in euphony ("good sounds," as opposed to cacophony, "bad sounds"). The nym part of onymus means "name." I figured out that much on my own. Euonymus—probably a Latinized version of the original name (Greek names often end in -os, not -us... think Kerberos, not Cerberus)—turns out to be a figure in Greek mythology, a son of Gaia: he is the "well-named" one (see here). So is a flat-stalked spindle a well-named tree?

__________

*Pronounce it "hweh-nah-moo."

before RFK Jr. fell from grace

News from almost 3 weeks ago—RFK Jr. makes it onto the ballots in the Rust Belt:

RFK Jr. has since fallen from grace, what with the brain-worm thing and the news that he used a former Vivek staffer to smear Trump:

If you weren't cautious about RFK Jr. before, you ought to be now. It's good news for Trump, though: RFK Jr. is showing his Democrat colors, which will draw more votes away from Biden while conservatives who'd initially thought the man was reasonable will prudently back off and stick with Trump.

"Joe, I need you to not say anything crazy today."

Iran/Israel: "WW3 averted!"

This isn't about Trump and the Abraham Accords:

another happy self-immolator

2 weeks ago, a guy lit himself on fire in front of the Trump trial in NYC:

calling out Oprah and Michelle for being faux feminists

If, as they say, sunlight is the best disinfectant, then expose these bitches:

We need more people like Masih Alinejad.

"the utter failure of multiculturalism"

When people in the West cheer on the death of the West:

I solved this in about a minute

Here's a good old, straight-up algebra problem:

My answer is between the brackets below. Highlight to see.

[The problem says: (4/π)/69 = 4/(x/69), so we have to solve for x. This converts to the equation

(4/π)•(1/69) = (4/1)•(69/x)

In other words,

4/69π = (69•4)/x.

Get rid of the 4s through division:

1/69π = 69/x.

Multiply by x:

x/69π = 69.

Multiply by 69π:

x = 69²π, or

x = 4761π.

QED.]

My brain might be Strokey McStrokington, but I can still do basic math.

let's talk about heart failure

Severe left-ventricular systolic dysfunction. This is what I learned I had when I was at Samsung Hospital's ER that first night. But what does that mean, and is it a death sentence the way congestive heart failure is?

What I'm learning through my own research is that there are types of heart failure, but one can lead to another, so these types shouldn't be thought of as mere isolated categories but more as stages in a larger process, a bit like watching the train wreck that is cancer, which is infamous for having its own stages (as well as grades*).

This resource says the following about my condition:

Congestive heart failure (CHF) and heart failure are chronic progressive conditions characterized by a weakened heart that is unable to pump enough blood to meet the body’s energy needs.

Heart failure often refers to early-stage weakening of the heart without congestion. As the damage to the heart progresses, it causes fluid to build up in the feet, arms, lungs, and other organs, which is referred to as congestion, throughout the body. This stage of heart failure is called CHF.

CHF is normally what leads to death in months or years. My friend Bill Keezer, who passed away in his early 80s, had it. I don't have CHF, but from the above, it seems I'm on the path to eventually acquiring CHF, at which point the clock will be ticking if it wasn't before.

The above text from the website is accompanied by this cute image:

No swelling or sudden weight gain for me, but I have the rest of the symptoms.

I have everything but the sudden weight gain and the swelling of the extremities, and today (Wednesday, the Buddha's birthday, I mean) was a good example of "sudden fatigue or weakness": I slept for much of the day instead of doing all the cooking I'd hoped to do.

This resource talks in detail about the typology of heart failure. When the heart's pumping ability (ejection fraction) is weakened, this is systolic heart failure—what I have. When there's heart failure without this weakening (but with stiffened heart muscle), this is diastolic heart failure. Another way to break the heart-failure question down has to do with the course of the condition: acute or chronic. Acute heart failure appears suddenly, and often as a result of something like a heart attack. Chronic heart failure, which is what I have, arises as a result of a years-long condition like high blood pressure. Yet another way to classify heart failure is by which side of the heart is affected. My case is the more common one: left-sided heart failure. Specifically for me, the heart-muscle weakness is in the lower chamber of the heart, i.e., the ventricle, not the auricle (or atrium). Here's what the just-cited resource has to say about my condition:

Left-sided heart failure: The left ventricle of the heart no longer pumps enough blood around the body. As a result, blood builds up in the blood vessels that carry blood away from the lungs. This causes shortness of breath, trouble breathing or coughing – especially during physical exertion. Left-sided heart failure is the most common type of heart failure. It is usually caused by coronary artery disease (CAD), a heart attack or long-term high blood pressure.

While I might have CAD, my own heart failure is most likely because of long-term high blood pressure, the result of years of bad dietary and lifestyle choices. I started distance walking in 2017, and before that, I'd been an avid walker when I'd lived in Switzerland during the 1989-90 academic year. But I recall having regained weight after I came back from Switzerland, and it's possible that, with the bad habits I've had since 1990, my recent distance-walking habits may have started too late to save me.

I keep coming back to what the doc at the hospital had said. They insisted that my breathing problems, when I was admitted, had nothing to do with COVID. If I assume they were right, then there are some dark implications to tease out from that, the main one being that heart failure was likely already a deep-set problem by the time I went to the ER. What I don't understand is how the severe symptoms of heart failure manifested themselves after I had started staircase training this past January. Wouldn't it make sense that walking up 26 floors would strengthen my heart, not weaken it? I guess that's another question I'll have to ask the doc during my appointment on the 24th, especially as it applies to future training.

Tentative conclusion from all this: the clock is ticking already, and I may be on borrowed time. Will I make it to 60? I hope so, so that I can do that Camino de Santiago walk with my buddy Mike in five years. But there's a chance I won't make it, which is something I've long suspected. As I keep reading up on life with heart failure, I'll pass along whatever wisdom I find regarding how I can improve or at least maintain a certain quality of life.

For more info on prognosis, see here. Based on the stats, making it five more years seems very likely, but making it another ten years, not so much.

__________

*What's the difference between a stage and a grade with cancer? The stage has to do with time and progress: it's how far a given cancer has gotten in eating you up. If your ovarian cancer has gotten to stage IV, there's nothing more to be done. The grade has to do with how aggressive the cancer inherently is. When my mom was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), we were told it was a grade 4 cancer, i.e., the most aggressive type in terms of growth and spread. That doesn't change over time.

"madhouse" manager Fani Willis should be in jail

Doug opines:

Guga utters heresy

It's a heretical idea, but Guga did an experiment, and it seemed to prove his point:

images from last night's walk

It wasn't a great walk last night. Oh, the weather was fabulous—just the right temperature for a nice, brisk 9K stroll out to the Han River and back. The problem was internal: I'd hoped that my chest pains were gone for good, but the previous walk's lack of chest pains may have been a mere fluke: last night was pretty bad. And it didn't help that some dude came out of nowhere and started walking alongside me, going just faster than I was going, which meant he took his sweet fucking time passing me. I hate people who do that. Most Koreans, like me, also prefer not to walk close to strangers, so what normally happens is that they'll get up behind me, then start jogging to get past me. Once they're about twenty meters ahead of me, they stop jogging and just keep walking. But this guy last night wasn't sensitive to the problem of proximity at all: he did eventually pass me, but only by walking, not by speeding up. Almost neck and neck, with me lagging slightly behind, we both went across the footbridge that leads from my neighborhood to the upper-level path parallel to the Tan Creek; I'd intended to sit down at the bench located just past the footbridge, but this fucker goes right to my bench and sits on it before I can get there. So there I am, chest hurting and feeling as if I'm close to having a heart attack, and he's taken the bench I was planning to rest on for ten minutes. Fuck. So I turn right and schlep painfully downhill, down a ramp, feeling my heart laboring the entire time as I'm forced to walk an extra few hundred meters. Luckily, there's an area with benches right at the bottom of the ramp I've just descended to reach the creekside, so I sit there, relieved but angry, and take the following picture:

Jamshil across the way: Lotte World Tower, standing alone and dominant.

I rest until the chest pain goes away, about ten minutes. My pain defines the walk. It's impossible to ignore. But I push on slowly, deliberately not rushing, and have to rest once or twice more. It's well past midnight, and only a few crazy bikers are out. There are occasional walkers, too, but they're few and far between. It's a quiet night. Once I'm back in my neighborhood, I see a bunch of white roses and decide to snap some pics of them:

Roses: the wide establishing shot.

Closer in... note the one odd-colored rose.

A rose, tucking itself in at night, 2:58 a.m.

From the roses, it's only a few hundred meters more to my apartment building, but I'm going past my building to the convenience store. Cherry Coke Zero awaits. The following sculpture, across from my apartment building, looks like a combination of some sort of bovine and that bovine's opened-up circulatory system, like a deconstructed ox heart:

As I've said many times: Koreans love abstract sculptures. 3:13 a.m.

I took the above pic as I was on my way to the local convenience store. Bought four bottles of Cherry Coke Zero. Drank two bottles last night and will have two bottles for lunch today. I told the cashier I was happy that his store has Cherry Coke Zero. I could tell he didn't know what to say to that. I'm just a strange foreigner to him, making left-handed remarks and merely confirming my strangeness.

9K of walking so late at night proved not to be enough to lower my blood sugar. I was at 170 earlier today, which was frustrating, but I did snack a bit not long before taking my meds last night. Lapses of the will are my downfall. I still haven't internalized the message that fasting means fasting—period. Well, tonight's another chance to try again, and I now have a Korean appetite suppressant that might or might not help with that: my boss had suggested I try it; he has this 한약/hanyak (Chinese medicine) guy who supplies him with all sorts of potions and nostrums, so I shrugged and decided to get some even though I have doubts about the medicine's efficacy. I had taken some of the hanyak before leaving work yesterday, and I guess it didn't help given that I snacked after my walk. I'll try again tonight; maybe it's a cumulative thing, with non-hunger building up over time. We'll see.

May is a split-personality month in Korea, a liminal month as seasons transition. Right now, the days are summer-warm while the nights are fairly cool, so that's one "split," but by the end of the month, summer will have arrived, and the nights will have become warm, too, so the other "split" is between the first and second halves of the month.* Right now is the perfect moment to enjoy nighttime walking before the heat and humidity come to dominate the entire 24-hour day. I'd enjoy these walks more if I weren't dealing with intermittent chest pain. I'll definitely talk to my doctor about that on the 24th.

__________

*Korean summer and winter are both about four months long. I'd say Korean summer starts about now, mid-May, and runs through roughly mid-September, which is when the nights start to cool down again. So I don't have many more cool nights left.

Vivek: "a bastardization of our legal system"

What is the "underlying crime" that Trump supposedly committed?

food on the Orient Express

You're not even supposed to say "Orient" or "Oriental" these days.

sorry, guys, but...

My Dash mini waffle maker operates in the 110-120-volt range. It does not automatically adjust to the Korean and European standard of 220V. Sorry! I'm stuck with my transformer.

2 from Rogan

Getting why Trump was elected in 2016—it wasn't a fluke:

Rogan versus the "journalist" who cried racism:

People like that "journalist" make me want to reach for a cudgel.

my jicama arrived

For a keto "apple" pie, you can't use apples: they're too carby. So your choices are chayote, jicama, or good old squash (zucchini). I ordered some jicama, and it arrived today. You can apparently store it in the fridge unpeeled for up to two weeks. If peeled, you can store it in water and eat it within three days. So keep that skin on!

While I plan on cooking some things tomorrow, including my Middle Eastern (Moroccan-inspired) chicken, I might not work on the pie until Sunday, then I'll bring it in on Monday, along with various keto breads (dog/burger buns and "white bread") and chaffles (keto waffles: cheese + waffle = chaffle). More on all of that soon. With pictures.

Off on a late walk now.

California and its homeless folks

Simply throwing money at the problem hasn't worked thus far.

A while ago, I talked about my horrific thought experiment: in every city with a homeless problem, you go in with machine guns and flamethrowers, you burn or shoot every homeless person that you can, and you scour and scourge your city until not a single homeless person is left. Mass graves, piles of corpses, smoking lots that were once tent cities... you get the idea. Problem now solved, right? Nope. Even after we do something that Hitleresque, I guarantee that, in six months, you'll have a thriving homeless population again. Why? Because no one looked at root causes. What's producing all these homeless people? Sure, sure—it's not just one thing. A family's bread-earner suddenly loses his job. A formerly stable guy becomes mentally ill. Someone develops an addiction to drugs. And the state puts out inadequate solutions that fail to address these problems well. Meanwhile, the "market"—sacred cow of the conservatives—can't be bothered to find market-driven solutions to the problem. So—what to do? A yearly culling? Make homelessness a capital offense? Something more benign?

a Buddha's-birthday repost (edited)

I somehow missed the fact that tomorrow is the Buddha's birthday in South Korea. My boss reminded me of the event. So we have tomorrow off. This birthday is celebrated at different times of the year in different countries, but for South Korea in 2024, it's on May 15—tomorrow, a Wednesday. Because Vesak is a national holiday here (Koreans don't say "Vesak"; they call this day 부처님오신날/Bucheo-nim oshin-nal—Buddha-arrival day—or 석가탄신일/Seokga tanshin-il—Shakyamuni's day of birth), Koreans are supposed to get a weekday off, so Wednesday has been chosen as that day.

When you create a Dalma-dō (picture of Bodhidharma), certain traits need to appear:

(1) a big forehead, bushy eyebrows, and a beard;

(2) an expression of intense, almost constipated concentration;

(3) pendulous Buddha-ears with an earring;

(4) a big, hula-hoop halo;

(5) huge, glowering eyes because Bodhidharma supposedly ripped his eyelids off during his nine-year meditation so as to keep himself from falling asleep;

(6) a bit of hair by the ear (this is optional), and the suggestion that the robed monk is a mountain, with the halo representing the sun rising over the mountain's peak (symbolizing enlightenment). Also, very often but not always, the characters bul and shim (佛, 心), meaning Buddha and mind.

None of the above is a picture of the Buddha, except in the Mahayana sense that we can all be Buddhas, expressive of and incarnating Buddha-nature. Specifically, these are all past attempts at depicting Dalma-daesa, a.k.a. Bodhidharma, First Patriarch of Zen Buddhism and Indian father of Chinese kung fu. Since I don't normally draw the Buddha himself, these images will have to do.

So! Do you have any special plans for the Buddha's birthday? Since it's going to be raining, I'll be spending my day cooking and maybe writing up a review of "Invincible," Season 2.

walking tonight, but not tomorrow night

Tonight, I'm a-walkin' out toward the Han River again, just to the confluence of the Tan Creek and the Han River, i.e., my 9K route. (It's 7K if I start from work, turn around at the confluence, and head back to my place, but 9K if I start from my place and come back to my place.) Tomorrow night, I'll be staying in because it's supposed to rain all day and much of the night, from about 1 p.m. to midnight-ish according to the latest forecast for my area (although we all know that's subject to sudden change). That'll give me a chance to start prepping things like my Moroccan-inspired chicken and my various keto breads.

I'll be swinging by the local convenience store again tonight for another hit of Cherry Coke Zero. God help me, I'm an addict. If the store is true to form, though, it may be out: I cleared out their stock of Dr. Pepper Zero the other day, and they never restocked, the bastards. (The grocery in my building was no better: I cleared out their cans of Dr. Pepper Zero as well, and they never restocked.) I can see that happening with the Cherry Coke Zero, too. (Notice that no one ever says Diet Cherry Coke anymore: all the diet stuff has been successfully rebranded, and we must all comply with the new lingo.) So wish me luck and pray to the Cherry Coke gods that there are sodas in stock. If there aren't... I might be forced to Hulk out.

how much $$$ did Disney Star Wars actually lose?

At this point, Disney is pretty much dead to me.

You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

Danger Guy!

Everybody who follows my walk blogs knows how much I love Danger Guy, the hilarious cartoon character who appears in many forms on various cautionary signs in this country. Sometimes, like below, Danger Guy takes the form of a mostly featureless abstract icon. Occasionally, he takes the form of a more detailed image of a comically drowning kid. Danger Guy is pretty much always a guy, too: I've never seen a sign showing a Danger Gal unless we count those signs showing a family of illegals rushing across a road—and that sort of sign is found only in the States as far as I know. South Korea is surrounded by ocean, with its northern border defined by North Korea, where people only rarely escape (those who do usually come by sea or some other route, not directly across the DMZ). If Korea gets whole families fleeing oppression, that's news to me. Defectors usually regret leaving family behind.

Anyway, Danger Guy is now displayed on a sign in the park next to my building. After finishing my 9K walk last night, I went to the park to reconnoiter potential picnic spaces for this Saturday's lunch. While Danger Guy seems to be acting out the same hazardous situation in the two images below, the first image is a warning about falling (as in falling from a high place) while the second is about slipping (as when things are rainy or icy). I love the little, expressive motion lines that depict falling versus slipping. Next to the sign, on the fence, is a sun-mountain-river logo for the Seoul Football Club (Seoul FC) that looks like someone high-kicking a soccer ball. It's a clever design, serious where Danger Guy is humorous.

ADDENDUM: in the comments, Paul corrected me about Seoul FC. Don't trust Wikipedia.

lefties want to boot out Sotomayor?

Another example of the left eating itself:

"state media" and the ousting of an NPR editor

"NPR is a national disgrace":

Suspended for telling the truth. Also this:

The left always kills and eats its own.

on the meaning of tiramisu

The Pasta Queen explains the meaning of tiramisu:

old couple: one last hurrah

The older couple, G & M, are done with their cross-country walk, and I'll be meeting them at my building this coming Saturday. We'll do lunch out in the park next to my building; they'll be bringing water for their own drinks and fresh fruit to eat as dessert. I'll be serving my Moroccan-inspired chicken (you've seen it before) on a bed of couscous. I did find a picnic table protected by shade, but there's no guarantee it'll be free on Saturday, so I might have to set up a folding table at a different pavilion. All of our park's pavilions have their own benches, but I might bring folding chairs down to the park just in case. I've also just ordered a stereotypical, red-and-white crosshatched tablecloth, so I ought to be all set for an outdoors meal. I imagine the couple will be going back to San Diego soon after that as they ready themselves for yet another walking adventure in some other country. The impression I got from them when we met last time was that the Four Rivers was, for them, a relatively easy and pleasant trail with only a few challenging hills. That's about my impression as well despite the yearly damage to my feet: I normally tell people the trail is 90-95% flat, with two or three scary hills, all in the Nakdong River portion. Any other hills are minor.

After the couple head back, I'll do an afternoon walk down to Bundang—18K, since I know I can do 14K. And in that way, I'll ratchet back up to normal distances of 25-35K.

Tonight's walk featured no chest pain and only one rest stop (at a restroom). 

That's an improvement.

finally!

My local convenience store was out of Dr. Pepper Zero, but they had—miracle of miracles—Cherry Coke Zero! I'm not sure I've ever seen this anywhere in Korea. It's certainly not a local thing. I've seen regular Cherry Coke in places like Itaewon, but Cherry Coke Zero out in some random convenience store is unheard of.

So my eyes are full of capillaries. So what?

Imagine falling in love, then parting from your love. Years go by; the love seems to fade... and then, an eternity later, you meet your love again, and all of those old feelings—the ones you'd thought had faded—resurface, and they're as strong as ever. That's me and Cherry Coke. And even though I'd prefer the real thing to Zero, I'm happy to have Zero.