France's imminent sea change

Yoon Seok-yeol, good old-fashioned authoritarian

ROK Drop links to an article saying that impeached conservative South Korean president Yoon Seok-yeol has barricaded himself in his presidential compound and has vowed to fight attempts by an anti-corruption agency to arrest him, arguing that any attempt to arrest Yoon goes beyond the agency's authority, and that Yoon’s own personal security might arrest those attempting to arrest Yoon.

While there's good reason to believe that the Korean left is practicing its own version of US-style leftist lawfare against Yoon, Yoon himself is making it hard to sympathize with him. His abortive power grab in early December, whatever the cause, was a clumsy move on his part to try to get the National Assembly to work in his favor. Yoon doesn't have the finesse (or the legal firepower) of a Donald Trump to be able to pull off a minor coup; his quickly rescinded declaration of martial law ended up looking like nothing so much as a naked power grab. (Trump himself would never have resorted to brute force to get his way, anyway, whatever the left might claim about his supposedly authoritarian nature.)

While I'm convinced a conservative president is at least in principle better for South Korea, Yoon seems to be a throwback to the dictatorships of old. I don't normally dabble in Korean politics, which is too confusing for my tiny brain, but that's how things look from my perch. I'm sure Korean conservatives will argue that Yoon is somehow getting a raw deal. By my lights, he lacks the necessary subtlety to make deals and form coalitions, preferring force to negotiations. And his possible replacement, leftist Lee Jae-myung, doesn't promise to be any better for the country. 

how the government uses your money

real estate done right

A humorous overview of rich homes:

strung along

Wait just a little longer, the boss says. I had sent an email to our HR department, late Thursday morning, to ask about the procedure for obtaining an apartment-rental contract. Hours later, there'd been no answer. HR might not even be aware my contract has technically ended (December 31 was my last day). I went through this same line of questioning before a couple years back, and it seems the same situation is repeating itself again: the boss wants me to wait a bit longer, to avoid talking with HR, because he thinks the CEO might actually answer him, and if the CEO fails to answer him, the boss says he knows someone with legal experience who can advise him. I don't think I can say any more than that, so I'll leave the rest to your imagination. For myself, though, I think this isn't a repeat of recent history: this feels like the end, and I have no doubt that our CEO has a much bigger legal team of his own for just such contingencies—i.e., for disgruntled employees. Mentally, I'm already out the door, but I did humor the boss by sending HR a "belay that" email later in the day.

The frustration for me is that, if the boss really wants me to sit tight and to spend January working for the company—despite the fact that I might not get paid in February for January work—I'm not going to have time to make a SquareSpace blog, take SkillShare classes, learn InDesign, and enroll in Master Class (a platform suggested by my brother David when I emailed him about video-making). And what does that mean, exactly? It means pushing my self-education back by half a year at least. The boss really seems to think he can get us another six months, after which we disband and eventually re-form as our own company. But I'm starting to think the boss hasn't made much effort, over the past two years, to gather the resources for a new company—new investors, potential contracts, etc.—and he'd rather stick with the Golden Goose as long as possible. It's the easier route. I'd been under the impression that we'd be transferring over to our own company at the start of this year, but that's obviously not happening. So I may have to take matters into my own hands and just walk, at least temporarily, while the boss settles his own affairs. Unfortunately, it's not that simple: the reason the boss is fighting to keep the team together for another six months is that that's enough time to complete the current book series and, we hope, to see it get used. Which means that, if he does somehow improbably succeed at buying us another six months, I can't afford to step away from the company. How can he complete the series without me?

The whole situation gives me the vibe of a toxic, abusive relationship. Not that I'm being abused like a Dickensian kid in a factory: my job is relatively low-stress and not very mentally demanding. But there are elements of toxicity there: "Just wait a little longer" sounds a lot like "Just give me one more chance, and I promise things'll be better." So it becomes a matter of my own self-respect, and as I've done with so many Korean jobs in the past, I may have to grab the initiative, pick up, and move on instead of throwing my lot in with a venture that the boss apparently hasn't even begun working on. The lazy, passive, easy thing to do would be to stick around, risk doing unpaid work while I wait for the boss to get in contact with the CEO, then hope for another six months with the company (insert toneless yay here).

What to do? Decisions, decisions. I guess surviving a stroke and a heart attack doesn't lead to some vague "happily ever after." Life, in all its difficulty, rolls on.

memento mori

While it's tempting to quote this post in full given that it's short, I'll quote only part of it:

The clock is running, and in the game of life it is sudden death with no way of knowing when the flag will fall.

For some of us the harvest years come late and we hope for many such years in which to reap what we have sown, but we dare not count on them. For another and greater Reaper is gaining on us and we cannot stay the hand that wields the scythe that will cut us down.

The perichoresis of time, death, and change.

Chris Chappell on the H-1B debate

Chappell has choice words about Vivek's perceived insecure nerdiness. He also pushes back against some of the points I'd made in my previous post.

from Charles re: AI's "realism"

Enjoy as the AI tries to depict a pole dancer:

I don't know... I'd call this a success!

"when your white friend is more Mexican than you"

The joke would have worked even better had the gringo not had a strong gringo accent:

"Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga": review

Anya Taylor-Joy as Imperator Furiosa

[WARNING: spoilers.]

2024 gave us "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga," a film that was liked by critics and audience members alike, but that flopped at the box office, probably from lack of interest about Imperator Furiosa's backstory. Directed by George Miller and starring both Alyla Browne and Anya Taylor-Joy as Furiosa at different stages in her life, the movie tells the story of how Furiosa came to be the character we meet in "Mad Max: Fury Road." As the story progresses, there are one or two scenes that make it vague as to whether Taylor-Joy's portrayal of Furiosa somehow overlaps with the portrayal we got from Charlize Theron (who also appears through archive footage in the end credits of this film).

The story begins Edenically in the Green Place, a post-apocalyptic patch of land in Australia as yet unaffected by desertification. A young Furiosa (Browne) is picking peaches with her friend Valkyrie when they spot some strange bikers who have intruded into the Green Place and stolen some meat. Furiosa tries to sneak over and disable their bikes, but she is caught by them and taken to their leader Dementus of the Biker Horde (Chris Hemsworth). Furiosa's mother Mary (Charlee Fraser) gives chase, but she is eventually caught by Dementus, who crucifies her in front of her daughter.

Dementus proves to be clever on a personal level but not much of a leader. He and his Horde eventually run into the Citadel, led by a young Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme), already wearing his trademark mask and armor. Dementus at first unsuccessfully tries attacking the Citadel before making a deal with Joe that involves taking over the nearby Gastown and handing over Furiosa, who catches the perverse attention of one of Joe's sons, Rictus Erectus (Nathan Jones, reprising his role from the first movie). Furiosa escapes from Rictus, disguises herself as a boy, and moves up in the ranks until, after several years (and now played by Taylor-Joy), she is on a team that is working on the construction of a War Rig to transport gas and supplies. Furiosa ends up working with one of Joe's top lieutenants, Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke), who finds out Furiosa is a girl, and who develops a bond of mutual respect with her. Unfortunately, Dementus ends up capturing Furiosa and Jack, and Jack gets dragged to death while being eaten by wild dogs. Furiosa is hung by her injured arm (which she loses) and is forced to watch Jack's death, just as she'd been forced to watch her mother's crucifixion.

Furiosa's two sources of motivation are (1) to get back to the Green Place and (2) to avenge her mother and Jack by killing Dementus. The rest of the movie is mostly about the latter. We already know the fate of the Green Place from what we saw in "Fury Road."

Visually, "Furiosa" is just as sumptuous-looking as "Fury Road" was, but as many critics complained, the new movie is way more obvious about its use of CGI. Plot-wise, the story feels like one long chase, a bit like the first movie, and the running time of 148 minutes could have been cut down to 120. Another complaint I saw, and would have to agree with, is that the "young Furiosa" prologue, with Alyla Browne as the very young Furiosa, is too long. I'm also not convinced that Chris Hemsworth's Dementus was all that great of a villain. As written, he's an awful leader who can't hold on to the things he captures, and his underlings end up rebelling against him. Dementus therefore survives on luck and the cunning that arises in him during emergencies. Aside from that, his defeat was telegraphed before the movie even began, and that's one of the major problems with making prequels.

All in all, I'd say "Furiosa" was entertaining, and it didn't deserve its status as a bomb. Sure, Chris Hemsworth's latex nose looks fake mainly because we all know what Chris Hemsworth really looks like, but the problems of pacing, prequelitis, and lack of interest in a side character who is decidedly not Mad Max may have been what really dug this movie's grave. I'd recommend "Furiosa" to people looking to pass their time in an interesting way, but they shouldn't expect this movie to be anything like the masterpiece that "Fury Road" was.

invideo AI: not for me

I just had my first toe-dip into video creation with invideo AI, an online generative-AI video-creation platform. You type prose commands into the AI, and it cranks out a video according to the parameters you've set. I typed in a prompt to create a video about walking the Four Rivers bike path, describing the route from Incheon to Busan as well as food to eat, places to stay, and sights to see. You can select what length of video to produce, so I chose a 4-minute video. The site took a while to think and churn out the end product; I stepped away from the computer for a while to give the site time to do its thing.

The result was a mix of impressive and laughable. It was a stitched-together pastiche of video clips with a voiceover narration. No maps of the route were included despite my having requested one map of the whole route plus maps of each segment (assuming an average of 26K per day). The video clips of the trail were all of places outside of Korea. The clips of street food were all from cities, and the AI's pronunciation of Korean city names, sight names, and food names was overly literal (e.g., Incheon was "inn-chee-AWN"). The actual narration's content, though, wasn't half bad. Done in the pleasant tones of a British narrator, the narration described the four rivers of the Four Rivers trail, but without noting that two of those rivers aren't encountered along the Incheon-to-Busan route. Otherwise, the AI narrator gave an accurate general description of the trail, a more or less accurate description of Korean food, and some encouraging words for travelers. Most egregiously of all, the narration failed to talk about walking the bike trail and instead described the trail as it was meant for bikers.

I'd like to download the video, upload it to YouTube, and embed it here, but doing so would require me to "upgrade" to invideo AI's "premium" service. Frankly, I'm not convinced there's anything "premium" about the crap the site churned out. AI still needs a lot of work.

schedule

Today: rest. It's the new year.

Thursday, 1/2: get my phone repaired, draw up a rental contract with my building, visit the office to begin packing (we've been given no definite move-out date), and while at the office, flesh out the outline for my schedule for the next five months.

Friday, 1/3: start moving out my boxes.

Saturday, 1/4: finish the move.

Our team went out for dinner at the Chinese restaurant that replaced Ho Lee Chow down the street from us. The new place is called Il Il Hyang (일일향, 日日香), which may translate to something like "Aroma Day After Day." The food turned out to be mediocre for such an expensive place, but it was about what I'd expected. 

More important is what happened after the meal: I decided, on the spur of the moment, to walk home, which led almost immediately to a feeling of pressure in my chest, light vertigo, and slight breathing issues. I also realized I needed to take a piss; I barely managed to hold it in until I found a restroom by the trail.

The return of pre-heart attack symptoms was alarming to say the least. I think I can partially blame this on the worsening of blockages that I'd been told about last August, and I suspect that yesterday's extremely carby meal may have hastened things a bit: we had gganpoonggi (fried chicken in sweet/spicy sauce), fried-and-stuffed eggplant (the best part of the meal), jjajangmyeon (chewy noodles in black-bean sauce), and some bowls of rice. Very carby. So I spent most of last night's walk thinking I was about to keel over dead, but I made it to the restroom, relieved myself, then made it home and relieved myself again. I started rewatching Season 3 of "Picard," which is a feel-good season, and I got so distracted that midnight came and went without my noticing, so I neglected to take my yearly video of the Lotte World Tower doing its fireworks/light-show thing.

Anyway, I'm happy to say that I'm alive to greet 2025, and I've got a doctor's appointment on January 17, both cardiac doc and diabetes doc. I'll tell the cardiac doc about my symptoms, and maybe they'll schedule me to be put under, Roto-Rootered again, and stented. Without CPR this time. Or maybe they'll prescribe stronger clot-busting drugs. They do seem to love prescribing drugs here.

Meanwhile, I'm too afraid to eat anything today, so I might fast for the next few days, then cautiously nibble on a salad.

don't expect as much posting this year

Last year, in the midst of all the health problems, I was doing something of an experiment, trying to see whether it was worthwhile to schedule a bunch of posts well ahead of time. This was partly an effort to give me more free time during the week and to reduce the stress coming from the pressure of blogging constantly, and what I came to realize is that, by schedule-posting, I'm really not saving myself much time at all, if any, and I'm certainly not saving myself any stress. The only way to reduce the stress is to fight the compulsion to publish just anything and to put posts out the way I used to, i.e., when I had something to say.

Admittedly, even when I operated on that schedule, I was still putting out at least three posts a day. Well, with all this "free" time coming up now that I'm done with my contract, it's more imperative than ever for me to cut back on my blogging so I can work on projects. I'm also going to be making the move—finally—to SquareSpace, where I can more easily monetize content. I don't think SquareSpace is a free-speech zone, though, so the nature of my own content will have to change since, even here at Blogspot, oversensitive people will call attention to your political views if they don't like what you're saying or the tone in which you say it. (Most often, when I'm informed that a post has been pulled or put behind a warning, it's because of something I reposted from somewhere else. Occasionally, I'm dinged for my own original content, but in most cases, it's stuff I'm passing along.)

So I expect my readership to drop off, maybe even sinking below my old average of about 600 unique visits per day (half of which are bots, of course, and for the month of December, I was averaging 1500-1600 visits per day). I'll still be putting up videos and memes that I think are worth passing along, but this won't be nearly as frequent. The irony of trying to save time by schedule-posting is that I lose my weekends: I spend all weekend writing the posts up, and if for some reason I can't get them finished over the weekend, I end up schedule-posting during the week. The whole thing starts to feel a bit pointless.

We'll see how the bots and readers respond to my new posting pattern, which probably won't look that different from the old pattern. But astute readers ought to see an uptick in original content and not merely appended commentaries on video posts (when I bother to leave any commentary at all).

the big lie

This is what Ive been saying; it’s bigger than Watergate. Nixon lied about a third-rate break in he had nothing to do with; the people around @JoeBiden, the Dem Party leadership, @KamalaHarris misled the country about the ability of the President to carry out his duties as he was… https://t.co/YTgLXYqmkh

— Charles Gasparino (@CGasparino) December 31, 2024

Happy New Year

Here's hoping 2025 is a lot better than 2024 was!

UPDATE: I got too engrossed in rewatching Season 3 of "Picard" to go out and video the fireworks at the Lotte World Tower as I try to do every year except during the pandemic. Sorry about that! We'll try again next year if I'm still around.