trim it down

when the dealership deems a trade-in "uncleanable"

It just takes patience and fortitude, my son.

ululate!

Canadian-American comic actress Catherine O'Hara just died at the age of 71. She was apparently found at home, not breathing. As of right now, her cause of death is undisclosed, but she had been rushed to a hospital. I hadn't followed O'Hara's decades-long career that closely, but I know her as an iconic presence in movies like "Beetlejuice" and "Home Alone." Despite my not having seen that many of her films, O'Hara was/is a noticeable background presence in my past. She seemed to have a special talent for playing goofy ditzes and tart bitches. About her health, Wikipedia says, "She had dextrocardia with situs inversus, a condition where her heart and other major internal organs are reversed from their normal positions." This might be related: My maternal grandmother suffered from a congenitally inverted stomach, which made digestion painful and kept her body weight at around a frail 70 pounds. Perhaps there'll be an update later as to what happened to O'Hara. RIP.

the death of Piggy

Happy February

My buddy Mike, when he had a blog, used to be in the habit of posting "Rabbit!" on the first of every month in the spirit of an old, possibly British tradition of saying "Rabbit rabbit!" upon waking as a way to have good luck the entire month. Well, that's obviously a bunch of superstitious hogwash and balderdash.

Rabbit rabbit!

new types of melee weapons

What if you thought in a more science-fictiony vein about weapons that function well in zero gee and in high gee?

guess the accent

When I lived in French-speaking Europe, I used to be pretty good at guessing what general region a French-speaker came from—the northwest, the east near Germany, the southeast near Italy, etc. No longer. I'm out of practice. And whatever small ability I'd had to do accents has pretty much dried up since the stroke.

after hours of wrestling

I hate MS Word. When you're dealing with documents larger than, oh, ten pages, Word gets unruly. You make changes in one part of the document, and a totally unrelated part of the document decides to shift itself—usually some part waaaaay back in the document, near the beginning, that you thought had been formatted to your satisfaction. Then you get to the point where you want to save your document as a PDF, so you do that, thinking all is well. And as you're reviewing the PDF, you see the fucking dirty thing Word had done, waaaaay back in the document. So you go Fuck! and return to your MS Word document and start combing through it from the beginning, once again ironing out the kinks. And something else goes wrong as you're working, so you have to stop and repair that. Eventually, you get everything where you want it (or so you think, so you hope), and you make another PDF. By this point, hours have passed—just you, getting visibly older and fatter as you hunch over your computer screen, trying to bang out this goddamn document that should have been done half a day ago.

All of the above to say that I think I've finally got a decent, updated version of my book contents uploaded, so anyone who wants to order a hard copy should give it a try.

Fuck. I'm going to bed. But I can't sleep: I'm too stressed out.

Bestiality porn, here I come. O sheepie, give me solace and comfort.

is it the ultimate sin?

I don't normally mind pineapple on pizza, but the local Papa John's does a terrible job with it. Near the old place I used to work at around 2017 or 2018, there was a pizza shop run by a Korean guy who had lived in New York a few years, and one of his most popular pizzas was pepperoni-pineapple. I used to get that one all the time, and it was great. But thanks to the local Papa John's, I now know that it's possible to do pineapple wrong.

meaty budae-jjigae

Inspired by my buddy Mike's son, who had made a ramyeon bowl for his dad, I decided to go whole-hog and make some vulgar budae-jjigae. The main stew came from a Johnsonville(!) package of assembly-line budae. I bought extra spam and hot dogs and tofu, though, and while I had told my buddy Mike (who lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia) that I'd stick in some edamame pasta, I ended up just using the veggie tofu (the white disks you see below). Click on any photo to see it more clearly. The lower image quality you're seeing right now is because this image is just a thumbnail, a rough facsimile of the original.

Before I fired up the burner:

See the frozen hunk of meats in the middle? Took almost ten minutes at full boil to thaw that. (Kimchi not visible.)

After ten or twelve minutes:

We want our meat nice and relaxed. (See the kimchi now?)

Into a bowl:

up close and personal

I ended up having enough for both lunch and dinner (these days, I normally eat only one full meal a day). Plenty of protein for a growing boy with heart failure. I did, however, forget to put in the promised eggs. These days, I can't be expected to remember everything.

chocolatiers versus chocolate

I came away from this with cravings.

the Amazon hard copy of the 2026 edition of Think Like a Teacher

The Amazon hard copy of my book arrived at the lobby of my building yesterday, and I picked it up just a few minutes ago. Click on the pics to increase their clarity and resolution.

locally printed 2026 copy, 2022 copy, Amazon (still in package, my info mosaicked)

all is revealed (slight order change, L to R: 2022 copy, locally printed copy, Amazon copy)

I just flipped through the newest book, and it looks good. I'll need to read through all of my copies page by page, but for the moment, I'm ecstatic. Everything looks to be in place in terms of images and text formatting. There's some slight page-to-page unevenness with some of the text alignment, but that can't be helped as long as the word processor is set to prevent widows and orphans. And there are risks that come with turning off that setting, too. Damned if you do, etc. I'm not going to worry too much about that particular problem.

So in the bottom photo, the leftmost and middle books are both locally printed, therefore both are in the B5 metric format (176 × 250 mm, or 6.9" × 9.8") favored in Korea. The rightmost book, from Amazon, is a US-standard 6" × 9", one of the print sizes offered by Amazon for people self-publishing print-on-demand paperbacks. The perfect-binding quality of the Amazon book seems about the same as the Korean book; the major difference is in the feel of the respective covers. The locally printed Korean version looks glossy, but it was printed by a color printer. When you run your fingers over the surface, you can feel the bumps of the inked parts, so despite the generally good quality, the book's cover has a wee bit of a laser-printed feel to it. The Amazon copy, by contrast, feels perfectly smooth, the way an American paperback should. The only real hint of cheapness is the line along the spine that indicates the manuscript had been tightly clamped together as the padding compound (glue) was applied.

And luckily, this time, the Amazon copy seems to be holding together well. In 2022, when I received a hard copy from Amazon, the book was much thinner because it was an English-only manuscript. The Amazon-printed hard-copy version was small at 6" × 9" and very thin—so thin that Amazon's on-site cover-design program wouldn't allow me to write any spine text. As a result, I hate the 2022 Amazon paperback version, which is what prompted me to have the book printed locally four years ago. The Korean print shop had no trouble adding my spine design, even to such a small book. Now, this 2026 edition is twice as thick, so Amazon had room for spine text, and the book is thick enough that Amazon was able to add plenty of padding compound to the perfect binding. As a result, the new book holds together well; no pages are falling out. With every hard copy of the 2022 book I'd ordered, the pages would always fall out, and I assumed that this meant Amazon's printer was shitty. Theoretically, it still might be shitty, but now, I think I know why: Too thin of a book means not enough padding compound for the binding, leading to loose pages that fall out. Any book I want printed via Amazon, from now on, should have at least 150 pages.

. . . 

Okay, I paused a bit to look through the text formatting more closely, and there were some spacing problems with the Korean-language manuscript. I can't fix those in the locally printed copies of my book (which I'll simply be giving away as gifts, anyway), but I can fix the problem for the Amazon copies simply by redoing the MS Word manuscript, printing to PDF, then re-uploading the PDF. Amazon automatically institutes the book-content changes, which appear in anywhere from a few minutes to 24 or so hours. All in all, there's nothing upsetting to report. From this point on, any mistakes remaining in these versions of the book are my responsibility. And what mistakes I saw did not constitute a major tragedy—they're more like a minor annoyance that doesn't affect readability. Right: I've got some editing and re-uploading to do. Second time's a charm, I hope.

we're gonna see a lot more of this nonsense

And one day, the cops aren't going to be so tolerant.

last day of January

As always, it's hard to believe we're already done with the first month of the new year. I hope January went well for you. For me, it's been both quiet and busy. I finished up a whirlwind of content generation on Substack and other sites where I have regularly appearing posts. Today, I'll be making a big, obnoxious, meaty variation of budae-jjigae prompted by my buddy Mike's having shown me a pic of a ramyeon  lunch prepped by his son. This variation will have eggs in it, which isn't typical for budae. But when you're hungry, you're hungry.

Enjoy the final dregs of January and steel yourself for February. In the States, you've got Groundhog Day and Valentine's Day coming up, not to mention Black History Month and Mardi Gras, Presidents' Day, and even (I never knew this) National Chili Day. I might make myself some chili dogs on that day (February 26).

Here in South Korea, from February 16 to 18, we've got Seollal, the lunar new year, to look forward to. I'll do my usual thing and avoid what the Brits call the rellies (relatives), unless I decide to deliver cookies or something. Otherwise, for me, February just means more work, work, work on various projects, then during the final week of February, I need to start generating more Substack content to last me through April so I have breathing room to continue working on books, videos, and other things.

Oh, yeah—today, as promised, I need to think about contacting that publishing house in Daegu. It's an email thing, so if I don't get to it today, it's not a tragedy, but I'll nevertheless aim for doing it today. January dregs!

UPDATE: Charles had a busy January as well.

retrenchment

A couple weeks back, I cancelled my Shopify site. There are already platforms on which to sell art and other items, ranging from eBay to Etsy. There are other platforms on which to sell books, the biggest being Amazon. But Shopify costs a few tens of dollars per month to maintain. On top of that, I had created an independent domain that also costs me money to maintain. That, too, sets me back several tens of dollars per month, and I'm thinking I might get rid of that, too, for now. Everything costs money.

as the old joke goes

Gee! Ah'm a tree!

talkin' Rocky and "Project Hail Mary"

A lot of people like Rocky's creature design, but I'm not a fan. They could've made him more organic-looking and less Muppety.

Chef Andy talks saving money on steak

a bunch of "Stranger Things" Pitch Meetings

I never saw a single episode.

dead-tree books—the unboxing

I need to read through these to make sure they're okay, but at this point, they're all printed out, so they'd better be okay. Right?

I felt bad being in Charles's neighborhood, walking right by his residence on my way to the print shop, and not bothering to say hey. But he may have been on campus for all I know. I don't know his class hours or his travel habits. Anyway, I got the twenty book copies I'd ordered. I'll be handing a few out to local people. Here's the unboxing:

"Miilk" is a common brand of copier paper here; it's just a leftover box into which they put my copies.

Just a reminder: If the photos look a little grainy, click on them to magnify, and they'll also look sharper and clearer.

Peekaboo! Stink Like a Teacher, Slink Like a Teacher...

Spine seems okay.

I look really sunburned. What happened with the tint?

Margins look better this time around.

facing page

Korean-language Chapter 7

again, facing page

I did get a chance to flip through a book while typing this. Everything looks the way it did on the PDF for both the English section and the Korean section. The lady at the shop, like in 2022, was still not enthused about the cover design; I think she thought the lettering was too big, thick, and heavy on the front and back covers (childish?). That's fine; I'm not a fan of thin, fine fonts, especially anything Sans Serif, which look weak and can be hard to read, whether inside the book or on the covers. Especially when such font is large.

If you want a copy of my book, and you're a friend or regular reader, shoot me an email with a mailing address, and I'll send you a book for free.

There was an older gentleman working in the shop as well, and he rather grandly told me that they were giving me twenty-five copies of my book, but I just counted the copies, and I saw only twenty. Maybe he'd forgotten to include the five extra copies. Or maybe I misunderstood, which wouldn't be the first time that's happened. Not a big deal. I got the twenty copies I'd ordered. The guy also wanted to know how I'd found out about the place in 2022, asking why I'd go all the way across town to get my books printed. I gave Charles credit for that and told the guy that Charles had recommended the place (I honestly can't remember whether that's true or not, but whom else do I know who lives in that neighborhood?).

Right—so there's one dead-tree version of my book. The other is available on Amazon as a print-on-demand paperback. I have a copy coming to me, estimated to arrive during the first week of February. Some other mystery person has already ordered a copy for themselves. If that person is in the States, s/he will get his/her copy before I get mine.

Brian does pan sauces

When he was here in 2024, my buddy Mike made a nice steak pan sauce.

Cry Havoc and Gone Tomorrow: a two-fer review

Former Navy SEAL sniper Jack Carr is the author of the Terminal List series of novels, the first book of which got made into a successful Amazon streaming series starring Chris Pratt. Carr's novels, of which there are now eight, are: The Terminal List (2018), True Believer (2019), Savage Son (2020), The Devil's Hand (2021), In the Blood (2022), Only the Dead (2023), Red Sky Mourning (2024), and his latest, Cry Havoc (2025). Cry Havoc is different because the focus isn't on James Reece the ex-Navy SEAL (you write what you know), but rather on a young Tom Reece, James's Navy SEAL father. Cry Havoc takes place in 1968 and weaves historical fact through its fictional narrative. 1968, the year before I was born, was the year of the Tet Offensive, a massive, coordinated attack against American forces. Tom Reece is part of an inter-service MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam—Studies and Observations Group) group doing undercover, illegal operations inside and outside of Vietnam in places like Laos and Cambodia. Reece works with Army Special Forces (Green Beret) operator Frank Quinn, his senior and mentor. The plot zooms in and out between the fighting and operations on the ground and the plotting going on in places like Moscow: Southeast Asia is one of the chessboards on which the USA and the USSR are playing The Great Game, and it's the locals (as well as US and other troops) who pay the price for all of the global, geopolitical maneuvering. I found this novel to be a refreshing change of pace after seven James Reece adventures, which had all begun to run together. Tom Reece is fighting in a different era, but Carr is at pains to include prose reflecting how that far-off era still has relevance for today. While I'm not expert enough to separate all of the fact from all of the fiction, I felt that I had gained a bit of an inside view as to the geopolitics of the time, not to mention a better appreciation for the risks taken and the sacrifices made by all of the fighting men of that era. Tom Reece appears more as a memory in the earlier James Reece novels, so seeing him up close and personal helped to fill in a lot of blanks. It's a great novel if you're into this genre—lots of weapons-tech talk, plenty of blood and guts and friends lost, and lots of spy-level intrigue (James Reece remembers his father best as a covert operator). The novel goes by quickly, even for a slow reader like me. Recommended.

Lee Child's 2009 Gone Tomorrow may be the best of the Jack Reacher novels that I've read thus far. I will say right off the bat, though, that the novel's principal villains don't end up getting the poetic justice they deserved, so that was frustrating. Some background: Lee Child is the pen name of England-born James Dover Grant, originally from Coventry, England before eventually relocating to New York City. His knowledge of NYC plays a huge role in the plot of Gone Tomorrow, which involves his hulking protagonist Jack Reacher in a mystery that begins in New York City when Reacher sees a stressed-out, muttering woman on a late-night subway who looks as if she might be a suicide bomber. This assessment is based on an Israeli twelve-point list of things to look for in suicide bombers, and she ticks off all twelve points. As it turns out, though, the woman has no bomb: she has a gun. When Reacher approaches her, thinking to put her out of commission before she can blow up the train, she pulls the gun out, exchanges cryptic words with Reacher, then blows her own brains out. As is typical of these Reacher stories, we eventually come to realize that the woman's death has international implications for high-level US politicians as well as organizations in the "-stan" countries. The villains in this story are some of the most nightmarishly vicious people ever put to print: there's a slow, cruel disembowelment scene that stuck with me, and that reminded me of a harrowing passage about impalement from an old book called Bridge on the Drina. I was hoping that, by the end, Reacher would deliver poetic justice by disemboweling the villains once he'd found them, but alas, it was not to be. That said, the novel as a whole is a satisfying read, with plenty of Reacher's terse, first-person narration, constant reminders of how huge he is (250 pounds with gorilla-length arms), and a decent sense of closure by the end. It was interesting to see Osama bin Laden figure as a major background player: when the novel was published in 2009, bin Laden was still alive and at large; he was killed in 2011. 

It occurs to me that Gone Tomorrow and Cry Havoc have disembowelment in common: in Cry Havoc, one of Tom Reece's best friends ends up being captured and gutted, his intestines covered in gas and burned in front of him while he's still alive. The novels also have international intrigue in common as the camera zooms back to show us the global scope of their respective plots. Child, being British, is sometimes unable—even after thirteen novels—to drop certain Britishisms from his prose in what is supposed to be an American narrative. He uses the UK term hosepipe for example; Americans normally just say hose. But despite his occasional linguistic lapses (I'm sure I'd make the mirror image of his mistakes were I to write a British story), Child has a good grasp of American idiom and speech patterns, so Reacher as a character feels authentic. Since most Reacher novels are a first-person narrative from Jack Reacher's perspective, there's little suspense about whether Reacher will survive his various encounters. With these novels, it's never about whether Reacher will survive but about how he'll do so, and what sort of fate awaits his enemies. Reacher is written as unapologetically ruthless and implacable, especially once he's riled. He's also a drifter, moving from region to region in every novel, which makes the novels more episodic than long-form in their storytelling. Jack Carr's novels, by contrast, have been weaving a complex narrative tapestry, each novel building on the previous one, and given the prolific pace at which Carr writes, one has to wonder when he's going to burn out.

Both novels, Cry Havoc and Gone Tomorrow, make for very good reads. I normally read Reacher novels only when I learn what the newest streaming-video season of "Reacher" is going to be based on. By contrast, I read Jack Carr's novels whenever I learn he's published a new one. So far, there's only one season of "The Terminal List" and one miniseries ("Dark Wolf," more about eventual betrayer Ben Edwards than about James Reece); "Reacher," meanwhile, will be starting Season 4 soon on streaming video.

So go tuck yourself in and have a read if you're into this testosterone-filled genre. It occurs to me that I've been reading this sort of prose since I was a kid: I used to have several Mack Bolan (The Executioner) novels. There's nothing quite like a 9-mm Parabellum round wetly exploding some bad guy's skull. Maybe that's what fuels my consumption of squirrel- and rat-shooting YouTube videos: the grim satisfaction of seeing pests eliminated.

blasting God's little creatures

come on, she's just a typically racist Asian

Max Miller on "Indian pudding"

another question set done

For my upcoming app (Do You Deserve to Vote?), I've done yet another question set, this time for the "Can You Think Logically?" section. I worked with ChatGPT to refine some of my questions. I never used ChatGPT's suggested wording but always went with my own, redrafting and redrafting until ChatGPT accepted that the question was now both properly logical and properly testing logical thinking. So, no—none of my questions is AI-generated—just AI-verified, and most of my questions passed muster on the first try. The few that needed tweaking needed only minor tweaking because the AI got pedantic about literal meanings and implications. I imagine there will still be gripes and complaints by people who dare the quiz no matter how rigorously I craft the questions.

This puts me halfway through question-generation. As with my grammar quizzes (like this one or this one), I've created three similar types of questions from which the program will select one randomly to display. The answers beneath the questions will also appear in randomized order, and the questions themselves, while appearing in sets of ten for each section, will also appear in randomized order, so there are at least three levels of randomization. This way, for people who retake the quiz five or ten or twenty or a hundred times, it should never be the exact same quiz twice.

Sections done so far:

1. Do you have a more-than-basic grasp of English?

2. Do you have a more-than-basic education? (science, math, history, geography, art)

3. Can you think logically?

Still to do:

4. How Much Do You Know About Civics?

5. Can You Pass a Basic, Stripped-Down Citizenship Test?

6. How Much Do You Know About Current Politicians' Stands on Today's Issues?

Section (6) is going to require very frequent updating. I'm tempted to add other sections like "Do You Know Who These Politicians Are?" and so on. For Section (2), I could've included music (basic concepts and principles, and maybe genres from classical to folk to rock to jazz to rap to hip-hop to whatever's current), but I'm a musical illiterate. Maybe I'll include it anyway. Nothing is set in stone at this point.

I expect everyone I personally know to blaze through the beta version of this quiz and get a 100% or, at worst, a 95%. These are meant to be basic, basic questions—not trick questions or "gotcha" questions, just the sort of things that a halfway-educated citizen ought to know if they're planning to vote. And of course, the quiz itself has no meaning beyond being a quiz. You can choose to accept whether it validly rates your worth as a voter or not. I don't care. Take the quiz out of curiosity if you want, not out of any earnest desire to see whether you measure up. And rest assured that, no matter how dumb or uneducated you are and no matter what Thomas Jefferson might think (might have thought) about the need for an educated electorate, your right to vote is guaranteed by modern interpretations of the US Constitution, so this quiz won't take anything away from you if you're a moron. Your rights are secure. And while it's tempting to create a database of test results that collect demographic data, I've elected not to do that because such data can be faked.

Should I, however, create a demographic-info section in which people are encouraged to assess their intelligence level as a rating from 1 to 10 the way KeroNgb does in his videos (he usually starts off by asking interviewees how smart they think they are, and most are ego-filled enough to say numbers like 8 or 9, which is hilarious; I would rate myself a solid 2)? Maybe I should, but I already know the data will simply confirm that pride goeth before the fall. America: mostly a nation of idiots and illiterates with some brilliant exceptions.

another "best-ever fried chicken" recipe

With so many bests out there, it's hard to know where to turn.

Matt Walsh demystifies the reason for movies' failure

The problem isn't wokeness, Walsh says.

back and forth

I'm currently going back and forth with System Pro, the print shop near Seoul National University. The lady keeps texting about how this or that needs to be adjusted on my back-cover graphic (it was all originally formatted for B5 paper, including bleed-to-the-edge considerations, so no adjustments should be necessary), and how the front-cover graphic will look strange if we do a bleed-to-the-edge for the image. She asked me to send pics of the previous version of the book from 2022, so I sent some photos over since I no longer have the original files (died with my laptop). She seemed to have no trouble, last time, with making her own tweaks before printing. I don't know what the problem is this time. Oh, yeah: her projected cost to print one copy of the book is W11,800, so it'll be almost W240,000 for twenty copies. I had set the ISBN and cover price at $11.99, which comes out to almost exactly W17,000 as of today, so I'd be making barely W5,000 per copy—about $3.50. Yay, me.

People had better buy the print-on-demand paperback version, which costs me nothing to print. One person has already purchased a copy. That's nice. A cool $4.32 in my pocketses. If I could convince 500,000 parents to buy the book, that'd be $2,160,000 before taxes, and I imagine the taxes would come close to 50% for that amount of money.

Once System Pro prints my books, the next thing I'll do is contact that publishing house in Daegu—the one whose ad I'd seen on my walk. If they're a real publishing house and not just a vanity publisher/printer, they could help with marketing, with getting my book into stores, etc. (assuming anyone outside of old-school academics buys dead-tree books anymore!).

Meanwhile, I'm still generating questions for my Do You Deserve to Vote? app. The logic problem I'd put up earlier is part of the section called "Can You Think Logically?" Once I've got everything vibe-coded and up on my quiz/test website, I'll invite some curmudgeons to use the app and suggest improvements, then eventually put the app up for sale at the Apple App store and the Google Play Store. There are also other, slightly more niche places where apps can be sold, like Flippa. I'm still learning the ropes about all of this, so bear with my clumsiness (or Pardon Our Dust, as they say).

the bots are taking a day off

With my overinflated stats, I'm normally at about 4,000 visits by this point in the day, but I currently have a little over 800 visits. Even bots need sleep.

this shouldn't be hard, right?

Simple logic problem:

5C. For breakfast, Jack hates all cereal and muffins but likes all toast and doughnuts. Lorna hates all toast, doughnuts, and cereal but likes only blueberry muffins. Steve hates all muffins, doughnuts, and cereal but likes avocado toast. Which meal will make exactly one person happy?

a. avocado toast

b. cranberry muffins

c. chocolate doughnuts**

d. any kind of cereal

__________

Here is ChatGPT's confusing assessment:

No — (c) chocolate doughnuts is not correct, and there’s a clear logical hole.

Let’s check each person:

Jack: hates all cereal and muffins, but likes all toast and doughnuts.
Lorna: hates all toast, doughnuts, and cereal, but likes only blueberry muffins.
Steve: hates all muffins, doughnuts, and cereal, but likes avocado toast (a kind of toast).

Now evaluate each option for “definitely makes exactly one person happy”:

a) avocado toast

Jack likes all toast → happy
Lorna hates all toast → unhappy
Steve likes avocado toast → happy

✅ Makes two people happy (Jack + Steve). Not correct.

b) cranberry muffins

Jack hates all muffins → unhappy
Lorna likes only blueberry muffins → cranberry muffin = unhappy
Steve hates all muffins → unhappy

✅ Makes zero people happy. Not correct.

c) chocolate doughnuts (starred)

Jack likes all doughnuts → happy
Lorna hates all doughnuts → unhappy
Steve hates all doughnuts → unhappy

✅ Makes exactly one person happy (Jack). This one actually is correct.

So the starred answer is correct as written.

d) any kind of cereal

Jack hates all cereal → unhappy
Lorna hates all cereal → unhappy
Steve hates all cereal → unhappy

✅ Makes zero people happy. Not correct.

Any holes?

Only a potential ambiguity: is “avocado toast” considered “toast”? In normal English it is, and you explicitly say Steve “likes avocado toast,” so that’s fine. If someone tried to argue “toast” means plain toast, the question would become ambiguous — but your wording strongly implies avocado toast is a type of toast.

Conclusion: The logic is solid, and (c) chocolate doughnuts is the only option that definitely makes exactly one person happy.

__________

I countered the above with:

In my defense, I did use the phrase "all toast" to mean "all types of toast," so avocado toast ought to fall under that umbrella, no? 

Also: I'm confused that, at the beginning, you said, "No — (c) chocolate doughnuts is not correct, and there’s a clear logical hole."—but for chocolate doughnuts, you said, "So the starred answer is correct as written."

__________

ChatGPT's reply:

You’re 100% right on both points.

1) “All toast” absolutely includes avocado toast

Yes — if Jack likes all toast, then any type of toast (including avocado toast) is included. So:

• avocado toast makes Jack happy (toast)

• and also makes Steve happy (specifically avocado toast)

So (a) cannot be the answer, because it makes two people happy.

2) I contradicted myself — my first sentence was wrong

That was my mistake. I initially wrote “No — (c) … is not correct,” but when I actually checked the logic, (c) is correct. The correct verdict is:

✅ (c) chocolate doughnuts will definitely make exactly one person happy (Jack), because:

• Jack likes all doughnuts → happy

• Lorna hates all doughnuts → unhappy

• Steve hates all doughnuts → unhappy

Final answer

• Starred answer (c) is correct

• No real holes in the logic, assuming “toast” includes “avocado toast” (which it does in normal usage, and you reinforce it with “all toast”).

And that's where things stand. Maybe I should just delete avocado so as not to confuse computers and the computer-minded.

allez, Amaury!

The man is a miracle-worker.

failing America's kids and the death of US public education

Headline:

Education’s Great Betrayal: How We Failed America’s Children and Wasted Billions on Empty Promises

Test scores are plummeting, learning gaps are widening, and billions spent on federal education reforms have delivered nothing but failure. It’s time to DOGE.

Education is a deeply complex subject, rife with countless studies and intertwined variables. Claiming to have all the answers would be both naïve and irresponsible. Still, one undeniable trend emerges from the data: educational quality in America is declining—and this drop persists across all demographic groups.

[ ... ]

The most reliable domestic measure of student performance is the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report card, which tracks reading and mathematics proficiency for 4th and 8th graders. Across all demographic groups, scores reached their highest levels between 2009 and 2012.

Does this suggest that the quality of American schools peaked in 2012? Perhaps, but there’s a compelling environmental factor to consider. NAEP testing began in 1978, a time when the average blood lead level in children was 15.2 μg/dL. By 2011, that figure had fallen to 0.83 μg/dL. The significance of this drop cannot be overstated—lead exposure is a known cause of cognitive impairment, with a 15 μg/dL difference equating to an approximate loss of 9 IQ points.

A 9-point increase in IQ corresponds to a full 0.6 standard deviation improvement in cognitive ability. This means children became significantly more capable during this period purely due to reduced lead exposure. As a result, even without changes in teaching methods, we would expect educational performance to improve noticeably between 1978 and 2011—and the data confirms this trend.

Between 2010 and 2014, American education underwent a seismic shift with the introduction of the Common Core State Standards Initiative, widely known as Common Core. Backed by Bill Gates, this initiative sought to revolutionize the teaching of reading, writing, and mathematics. The Washington Post described it as “one of the swiftest and most remarkable shifts in education policy in U.S. history,” and for good reason. It was a comprehensive overhaul of the curriculum, changing not just what students learned, but how they were taught.

[ ... ]

In theory, this approach helps children understand the "why" behind calculations rather than memorizing steps. Bill Gates envisioned this as the dawn of a new educational era. He promised it would provide "a foundation for students to actually become those innovators that we know they could be in the future." Yet, in practice, I have yet to meet a parent who feels their child benefited from this approach. Both of my children ended up relying on traditional methods. If there was innovation in the marketplace, it was in creating tools that taught the old methods under a new guise.

Despite these sweeping changes, test scores tell a different story. After an eight-year hiatus in NAEP testing, the results in 2020 revealed troubling trends: scores plateaued or declined across all demographics.

The most significant drop occurred among Black students—a stark irony given that one of Common Core's implicit goals was to promote equity in education through uniform standards.

The same pattern emerged in international assessments. In the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), mathematics scores for all demographics peaked in either 2009 or 2012, underscoring that Common Core failed to result in educational progress.

When we step back and look at the big picture, the score declines may be slight, but they’re undeniably consistent—raising serious questions about the payoff for the estimated $16 billion invested in developing and implementing Common Core. The results are far from the transformative improvement many had hoped for.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought another shock to education: distance learning. Schools across the country closed, some for as long as two years. States like California, Illinois, and Maryland had some of the longest closures, leaving students reliant on virtual learning well into 2021 and beyond.

NAES test scores took their biggest drop in 2023, particularly among Black and Hispanic students.

[ ... ]

Taken together, this paints a grim picture: America’s children are in the midst of an educational crisis. Federal standards have locked us into a rigid system that fails to accommodate diverse learning needs. I believe this rigidity may even be contributing to the rise in autism diagnoses, as Common Core’s one-size-fits-all approach often labels children with unique learning styles as "disordered."

What has all this achieved? Despite billions spent on federal education initiatives, the returns have been counterproductive. It’s time to address the root of the problem. Eliminate the Department of Education, redirect resources to parents, and empower schools to innovate. Let schools hire the best teachers for their unique needs, and let parents choose the best schools for their children.

The above article is from Data Republican's Substack (I'm subscribed to her). Note how her approach isn't the usual rightie froth about sexually explicit books in elementary libraries (which do exist), rampant bullying (which is a problem), school shootings (which do frequently make the news), and woke agendas (which are real despite the leftie gaslighting). Her main focuses are on lead consumption, distance learning due to COVID, and signal failures of the Common Core curriculum. Her solution is a classically conservative one: less centralized control and more local control to improve outcomes.

Well, you can't get much more local than homeschooling. What's ironic is when you meet a public-school teacher who tells you that homeschooling leads to kids living in reality-shielding bubbles while, ironically, the teacher seems blissfully unaware that her cherished system is crumbling all around her, swirling down the toilet. The richer irony is that the teacher's obliviousness comes from being in a bubble that prevents awareness of the deterioration. So if reality-shielding bubbles are bad, public-school teachers might need to step out of theirs or be ground under by current trends.

more pressure-washing ASMR

massacre dans le corridor

Hallway scenes in Star Wars films and shows have apparently become a thing now. Vader got such a scene. So did Luke. And I think Ben Kenobi got one, too.

this is from last November, sure, but...

From just before last (US, not Canadian) Thanksgiving:

Cry Havoc and Gone Tomorrow

I recently finished Jack Carr's novel Cry Havoc, which takes place in 1968 in the era of the Tet Offensive.  The novel focuses on Tom Reece, the Navy SEAL father of James Reece from The Terminal List. I'm also currently reading Lee Child's Gone Tomorrow since that's the novel on which Season 4 of Amazon's "Reacher" is to be based. So far, so good. Not much action, but an interesting mystery as Reacher puts everything together with no help from a loyal crew. The Amazon show will doubtless add a lot of action, plot elements, and some of Reacher's former associates. I'll probably do a two-fer review of these books soon, so stay tuned.

"what is 18 divided by 3?"

You watch enough of these depressing videos, and you become convinced it really is stupidity you're seeing. (Ignore the AI girl in the thumbnail, by the way.)

"woman makes man pay for her [kid's/kids'] food on first date"

One comment below the picture said:

Never play another man's saved game.

I cracked up. And yeah, as other commenters noted, it's tasteless to bring the kids along on a first date unless you're going somewhere kid-friendly, and you know the guy's okay with kids.

ADDENDUM: and another bad-English image for Substack.

the Drinker's hopes re: "Project Hail Mary"

I have high hopes, too. It's a great story. My review of the book is here.

squirrelhammering

shrew-jitsu

The most awesome thing you will see today. She won in the first five seconds (and no, she's not really a shrew). Of course, once she got him in the choke, he never bothered to try an escape. So it was an easy victory for her because the guy didn't know how to fight. Still, I absolutely give her credit for getting him in a choke within the first second or two. Had she faced an opponent with her level of training, though...

The comments suggest the guy tapped but she continued to choke. I couldn't tell on my screen; the lighting and angle were both bad. If so, she was ruthless. But he did walk into it.

"Starfleet Academy" reactions, Part 2

"Starfleet Academy" reactions, Part 1

Universally shat upon. Star Trek's "The Acolyte." Starships full of fatties and "neurodivergent" people autistically shouting "Red alert! Red alert! Red alert!" when the red-alert siren blares. Jesus Christ, what a shit show. And the stars of the show are, of course, reacting angrily to the fans' response. Because the fans are nothing but racist bigots, you see. I used to like Holly Hunter. I used to like a lot of famous people. Not so much these days.

the next best thing

I had originally tried to order myself three proof copies of my recently self-published homeschooling book, Think Like a Teacher, bilingual edition. Amazon claimed it couldn't deliver proof copies to me in Korea, but since I remember receiving hard copies of the 2022 edition of my book, I knew I'd be able to order regular copies this time, too. So I did. Estimated arrival date is February 2. I'll be curious to see whether the print quality is better this time. Last time, the pages of the book kept falling out, probably because the book was too thin, meaning there wasn't enough padding compound to make the perfect binding work. This time, thanks to the addition of the Korean translation, the book is now twice as thick. I'll also be checking for text-alignment problems and other annoyances.

ADDENDUM: I had emailed a print request to the Korean print shop close to Seoul National University, but I haven't heard back from it this week. The Korean printer did a much better job last time, but each hard copy cost me around W5,500 to print. With the book now twice as thick, and with inflation since 2022, I can easily imagine these new books costing me over W10,000 apiece to print. But that's why I upped the cover price to $11.99, or currently, about W17,300. That way, I can at least make a few bucks.

can you fight?

Can I fight? Me—these days? Probably not. Training matters. So do endurance, speed, agility, and the ability to take hits and keep on going. In my current, fallen condition, I no longer have any of those things. I'm an old cripple. If you put me in the octagon with Gina Carano, who's much tinier than I am, I have no doubt she'd split my skull open in the first round.

the slight return of shoulder flexibility

I can now just barely do kettlebell around-the-worlds the proper way. This involves swinging the kettlebell around your body, passing the kettlebell behind you to make a circle—first in one direction, then in the other. I'm currently doing a short set of 30: 15 one way, 15 the other. As with heavy clubs, kettlebell exercises develop core strength, which is no BS as I found out during my walk last year, when I was able to rise somewhat easily off a flat bench, like a normal person, after taking a nap. Quite a contrast from my past flopping and flailing and gasping as I would try to right myself from a prone position.

The core exercises I've chosen to do take into account my frozen shoulder (which seems finally to be entering the "thaw" phase). I can't do the McGill Big Three despite having tried it at the beginning of my campaign last year. Instead, I do kettlebell around-the-worlds, kettlebell swings, even (10 kg/10 kg) and uneven (20 kg/10 kg) farmer's carries, heavy-club inside and outside circles, heavy-club front presses and pullovers, wall planks, wall pushups, hollow-body holds, and dead bugs. It's still going to be a while before I can graduate to real bodyweight calisthenics. I'd eventually like to be able to do real pushups, burpees, Hindu pushups, full hangs, pullups, L-sits, etc. Planches and muscle-ups seem way beyond anything I can do now (which is nothing), so I won't consider those until much, much later.

But as I said at the beginning, the good news is that I can now do proper around-the-worlds. That's a sign that things are finally improving on the shoulder front.

reassessment

I did my first set of app questions yesterday, but I'm going to have to reassess how much I can do in a day. Yesterday, I made three sets of ten questions for the (rather incomplete) English-mastery section; my original ambition had been to make three sets of twenty questions for every section, but that didn't work out. So—three sets of ten it is.

whoa... someone else came back from Nam

Headline:

Lee Hae-chan dies in Vietnam, South Korea mourns democracy icon

Lee Hae-chan, senior vice chair of The Peaceful Unification Advisory Council (PUAC) and a former prime minister, died on the 25th (local time), three days after being admitted to Tam Anh General Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, due to a rapid deterioration in health.

Until the day before, Lee's complexion and breathing were said to have improved somewhat, and the possibility of transporting Lee to Korea was discussed. However, Lee's condition suddenly worsened that day, and Lee died at about 2:48 p.m.

A person at the scene said, "It was an unexpected situation," and noted, "Everyone was shocked and in tears."

At Lee's deathbed were Lee's wife, daughter, son-in-law and a grandchild, as well as Cho Jeong-sik, a Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker and the president's special political adviser, and Democratic Party lawmakers Lee Hae-sik and Lee Jae-jeong.

After Lee's passing, special adviser Cho met reporters at the entrance to the intensive care unit ward and said, "Senior Vice Chair Lee Hae-chan was a living witness of democracy who devoted his entire life to the development of democracy in Korea," adding, "Lee could have played a greater role going forward, so this is deeply heartbreaking and regrettable."

Lee was prime minister from 2004 to 2006 under President Roh Moo-hyeon. He was 73.

weight-loss drugs and body positivity

harmonious, or a jumbled mishmash?

the Drinker on "the Avatar paradox"

down, boy

the making of questions

First, an announcement: the new Kindle version of Think Like a Teacher is now out.

Today is the start of app development. The app: Do You Deserve to Vote? It will deal with topics like:

1. Do you have a more-than-basic grasp of English?
2. Do you have a more-than-basic education?
3. Can you think logically?
4. How much do you know about civics?
5. Can you pass a basic, stripped-down citizenship test?
6. How much do you know about current politicians' stands on today's major issues?

The app is an expression of my frustration about who exactly deserves to vote in national elections. When I first talked about this question of "deserving to vote," I got pushback in the comments about how my thoughts amounted to something unconstitutional. Fine—I concede all of my commenters' points. Despite the fact that even Thomas Jefferson himself expressed a strong preference for an educated electorate and not a nation of emotionally incontinent morons, I will grant, for the sake of argument, that allowing the morons to vote is somehow healthier for the country as a whole (it isn't, but I'll grant the point anyway). So since I'll never become god-emperor of the US, I am instead making this app to give people an idea of whether—according to quasi-Jeffersonian standards—they really deserve to be casting a vote.

And yes, I realize that the label "quasi-Jeffersonian" may be playing fast and loose with both language and history. I have done no deep research into what exactly Jefferson meant by "educated" when he expressed his preference for an educated electorate. But at a guess, the polymath who founded the University of Virginia would have wanted people to know at least the basics. So when someone asks, "How educated are you?", they're asking both How much do you know? and How well can you think? I think Thomas Jefferson would have agreed with at least that.

To that end, using the above six questions as a guide, I'll be developing a set of twenty or more questions for each topic. Nothing too complicated or abstruse: I won't ask, for example, "What year was the 16th Amendment passed, and what was the amendment about?" (I had to look that up just now.) To give you an example of the questions I would call "basic," watch any KeroNgb video on YouTube. That guy's asking simple stuff like, "How many letters are there in the English alphabet?" and "Name two countries outside of North America" and "How many stripes are on the American flag"? and "How many minutes are in a quarter of an hour?" Basic stuff that any elementary school kid should know. 

Making these questions might take me into the beginning of February.

breaker, breaker

pulling an Eastwood

carjacker karma

handling ChatGPT

is he worthy?

This guy is almost as good as John McCrarey.

proof copies ordered

I've ordered proof copies of the Kindle version of Think Like a Teacher. Creating the 6" × 9" version was a slow, frustrating experience, as it always is. I won't whine about the details, but let's just say that I was controlling my breathing by the end. While I wait for the proofs, I've also published the book as is (print-on-demand paperback), but it'll take a few hours to appear after it gets reviewed by AI and human eyes. Once the entry is out, I'll be sure to provide a link to the book if you're interested in buying a bilingual hard copy for $11.99. If not, the original, English-only Kindle ebook is still available and is much cheaper at $2.99.

So that's the easiest book project out of the way. What's next? I think I want to work on an app next: Do you deserve to vote?

UPDATE: I just got notification that proofs cannot be sent to a Korean address. Muddafuqqaz. But I bet that, when I order the regular copies, they'll come to Korea.

more "Dune 3" news with Nerd Cookies

NK women meet (gasp!) Amurricans!

Hana can't speak English very well, so she relies on AI translations and AI voiceovers to make her videos. She seems to have settled in South Korea but has visited the States. Assuming she's the real deal, her videos have been about her long deprogramming. Yes, she is a real human.

global warming!

Headline:

The winter apocalypse of 2026 has begun: 'This is a major to extreme ice threat'

Meteorologists across the country are calling on Americans to prepare.

A large-scale winter storm will affect large regions of the United States, and much of the panicking has already led to food and supply shortages at grocery stores.

Nearly half of the U.S. population is already under emergency watch, warnings, and alerts from Winter Storm Fern, according to the National Weather Service.

One meteorologist for WCNC-TV in North Carolina issued a dire warning on social media.

"Folks, I cannot stress this enough: Please prepare now!" said Brad Panovich. "We have all day today (Friday) and most of the daylight hours on Saturday to get ready. After that, the window closes. This is not a 'bread and milk' situation — this is a major to extreme ice threat. We are looking at a setup we haven't seen in at least 10 years, and if the higher ice totals hold, we could be looking at something we haven't dealt with in 20 years (think back to the 2002 ice storm)."

The coasts are gonna be swamped! Kamala, abandon your new, $8 million seaside mansion!