Archives: Tweets

For all the use I get out of social media, one painful “gift” it’s given that I don’t like having is the ordeal of having to see old friends psychologically crumble over time. Like, you could remember onetime friends as they were, instead of beholding horror of what they become. Like, say, seeing an old friend metastasize into the kind of person who is all “end lockdown now!” and thinks that antivaxxers are the optimum source for critical assessments of how epidemiologists are doing these days, because Niall Ferguson’s affair or something.

@GeekinKorea @JustinHowe And yeah, I will need time to read the game system thru.

@JustinHowe @GeekinKorea That was the plan… I was just thinking it’s an interesting system for running and afterlife game. Like, as you advance thru the narrative you flashback and gain memories, etc.

@GeekinKorea You mean Wraithing the system from Nibiru? I wouldn’t be running something like that now anyway! That’s for someday, and I’d be going with a more weird afterlife vibe than straight up Wraith (which isn’t for everyone even in the best of times).

@GeekinKorea I’m going to need a week or two to actually read and digest the system and think up a scenario, but would be happy to try it out after we’re all done with work for the semester!

@GeekinKorea I even said, “I’m taking my first weekend off course management since mid-March. Still working, just *grading your midterm exams*, but I need some time off: constant work is affecting my health. So I’m not answering emails till Monday. Please just do [xyz]…”

And… @GeekinKorea *bing*… +1 email.

@GeekinKorea Amazing. And… not at all surprising. @GeekinKorea Emails still trickling ~12 hours after I announced a 2nd time, “If you ignored my reminders and missed the deadline 4 days ago to sign up for a partner and don’t have one, here’s what to do…” How can so many people feel instructions don’t apply to them, just everyone else?

@teresempierre Across an ocean (in Korea) but I’m Canadian and a spec lit writer! All short stories so far, but… a bunch of them in magazines you know & year’s bests and anthologies and, er, I was a Campbell’s Best New Writer finalist many years ago? Some horror (short) screenwriting too… @teresempierre And… it’s nice to meet you!

I’ve been trying to catch up and it’s all overwhelming. It was all a loop of videos of U.S. cops kneeling and hugging protesters on TV here when I was at the doctor’s office for 30 min this afternoon. Supposedly the coverage is more balanced than just that here, though.

In the light of… everything. (Worth a read.) twitter.com/RachaelKJones/…

Ha, finally something worth applauding in the world of Kpop. 🙂 Seriously though… this is great. twitter.com/soberthots_/st…

@GeekinKorea Ha, that does not (at all) surprise me. I know someone (*wink*) who was hired illegally by a certain ROK gov’t department to edit an English-language pamphlet about illegal side work and its consequences. And they knew the editor was working illegally… and said, “It’s fine!”

And yes, I realize the world has absolutely fallen apart, but I’m still catching up. (Was juggling an injured spouse and kid and WAY too much work.) I look away for ten days and America’s on fire, Hong Kong’s been thrown under a bus and run over… what next?

Someone still uploads the occasional broken .doc/docx due to older versions of HWP’s export function being badly broken… but now others students field that and say, “You’re not supposed to use HWP! HWP broke your text!” And some actually just use GDocs from the get-go.

Ah, what could have been, if only… Though I’ll note that this semester, I haven’t had to deal with a single .HWP file after Week 3. (Require students to post work in Google Drive and give one another peer feedback via Google Docs. GDocs can’t open HWP. Upload HWP, zero credit. Hence no more HWP files.)

@JustinHowe It really is!

Here’s the teaser trailer for my forthcoming LotFP adventure book… 🙂 https://t.co/K3PxxXTWWL And yes, if you’re paying close attention, one image is a snippet of a recipe—a little something extra for Referees who homebrew is included on the cigar band, so if you want it you’ll need to pick up the print edition. 😉

… I can’t help but think back to this post:

populargusts.blogspot.com/2007/11/yusin-…

Which is dated: a lot has changed since then, and yet…

Back to public schools in South Korea: one teacher told Reuters that they feel it’s like carrying a time bomb, with all the difficult-to-implement rules: https://t.co/UbE1CeJ9f7 So, yeah, I’m watching and wondering just how this is all going to unfold. Given the number of asymptomatic cases uncovered and the gov’t warnings of how many more probably exist? Well… I’ll keep my predictions to myself, but…

(Incidentally, if I read that first line right, it suggests about 80% of students objected to the return to classrooms; that’s approximately the same result I got polling my undergrads about their feelings regarding offline classes, a few weeks ago.) (Tellingly, among the students I polled in my classes, 79.2% felt classes should remain online. Probably not coincidentally, equal numbers disagreed (20.8%) and, in a different question, stated that said their reasons were purely non-academic but rather social.)

But the Ministry of Education presses on, because “It is not possible to provide sufficient education to students through remote classes alone.” (Ahem: really?)

https://t.co/J7DgsJeRD8 I’ve heard that some high school seniors have protested, “We’re not lab rats!” after being sent back first, like canaries into the coalmine:

mobile.newsis.com/view.html?ar_i…

Despite the discovery of many asymptomatic cases in recent days… Yeah, this is gonna go *great*. https://t.co/n26DgtGtZW Those asymptomatic cases came up in follow-up testing after a cluster among workers in an express delivery company in Bucheon, Incheon, and Seoul:

koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20…

What’s that, you want an “Appendix N” of inspiring Korean fantasy books, movies, TV shows, and music for your RPG game? Sure thing!

Here’s installment 1 (of many more to come), on The Koryo Hall of Adventures website:

hallofadventures.com/jeon-woochi/

@BorjimusP @LotFP Thanks!

@BorjimusP @LotFP No, pretty sure it’s not!

RT @mentnelson: I’m a 31 yr old, black artist from a small town in SC. I’m the first artist in my family and it’s not the easiest selling a…

@ecmyers Yeah, pretty gross. I mean, even for a douchebag like Bryan Adams…

(And yeah, I’m behind. Time moves differently in Coronaworld… even moreso when I’m resurrecting my hard drive from the underworld after its untimely demise. Whew.)

I’d never cheer on anyone’s racist shitbaggery, I’m with @JesseBrown (via @Canadaland) in hoping this frees my homeland from the dumpster fire of Bryan Adams’ recorded works and the hellish torture of having to endure them year after year. (A truly Canadian affliction.) https://t.co/65YZhsCDbw Oh, and in case you don’t know what this is about, here’s a screenshot of a tweet from Adams from a week or two ago, looning incoherently about how the evil of Chinese cuisine and “greedy” bioweapon plottings (or something?) prevented him abusing a bunch of eardrums in London.

@mbennardo It’s worth a listen if you ever need a break from the audiobooks, to be sure. 🙂

(I jumped into podcasts as a break from audiobooks myself.)

@JustinHowe As one does…

@mbennardo There was a really good episode on the Nice Try! Utopias podcast, but I imagine the podcast also covered a lot of the same ground.

curbed.com/2019/5/7/18514…

Also… guilt tripping someone over “students” being stuck home is… puzzling. Like…what’s the logic? “If you all would stop spreading this disease, then our kids could go back to hakwon”? Like, that’s the natural order being restored? Helicopter-parent tunnelvision.

This is tricky: I kinda share the sentiment that it’s problematic to go being going to clubs after the gov’t has warned about asymptomatic cases being plentiful. FFS, stay home.

But singling people out and shaming them/witch-hunting isn’t gonna help containment efforts. At all. https://t.co/LqgymCo17n And, I mean, a lot of people who could be telecommuting aren’t being allowed to, and their employers are certainly NOT being called out & publicly shamed in the same way though *they* absolutely should be, but… they won’t be. So priorities are messed up all over. *shrug*

If only more workplaces had the basic human decency to speak like this to their employees. twitter.com/slavetothehat/…

@DrDSM Right, I just noticed that (and was tweeting it) as you posted it. I was fooled by the stock photo of a full stadium, and then saw the empty stands in a Yonhap report:

https://t.co/W6XIAV78VC

Thanks though, I appreciate it! @DrDSM The Yonhap article also mentions piped in sounds of fans cheering, which is… wild. The Zoom equivalent of a sports audience or something.

Curious what 36 countries it’s being broadcast in…

@ahimsakerp @JustinHowe @hannytenny Ah, the self-control!

@JustinHowe @ahimsakerp @hannytenny It’s “curmudgrenating,” isn’t it? (Ah, I miss my giant two-volume Oxford English Dictionary with the magnifying glass included in a drawer in the slipcase.)

@JustinHowe @GeekinKorea

I kinda feel this is yet another of the little things that could add up to S. Korea snatching late defeat from the jaws of early… well, as close to victory as one gets with a pandemic.

So no going to bars or clubs… https://t.co/P2hAYoMS8h But massive soccer games get the go-ahead? That’s… interesting.

twitter.com/thekoreaherald… twitter.com/TheKoreaHerald…

@GeekinKorea She did delay things for optics, mind you! But that’s no reason for her to be saddled with this mess, no…

@GeekinKorea I dunno, I was actually gunning to be the WickerBeing except use its powers for good (smash the ICE Facility to pieces, end up on news), but that’s because I didn’t expect a “happy” ending for him anyway! 🙂

@GeekinKorea It was a great time! Thanks for running it! I am especially pleased that my character ended up being a sentient plant-man likely destined for a lifetime of scientific observation by militant U.N. librarians and that, for him, this is pretty much a HAPPY ending. 🙂

@ahimsakerp @JustinHowe @hannytenny I mean, I don’t think I could have resisted having a long discussion about how, no, not all foreigners go there, in fact most of them don’t, and way more Koreans go there, are you questioning all the Korean staff and instructors? No? You do realize it’s way more likely that—(etc) @ahimsakerp @JustinHowe @hannytenny But I’m one of those more “troublesome” and “annoying” foreigners who insists on “making an issue out of everything.” (Have actually been told this… by people who had NO idea how much I just rolled my eyes at and ignored because it wasn’t worth getting into it.)

@ahimsakerp @JustinHowe @hannytenny Because of course all foreigners go to Itaewon every weekend.

(Last time I was there—a few years ago now, I guess—90% of people in Itaewon were Korean twenty-somethings and the few remaining foreigners were all sullenly complaining about the gentrification.)

@JustinHowe I have seen you retweet him but hadn’t followed him till today. He’s on the ball the time’s I’ve seen posts, though. And I agree, it’s a smart move. (Also, if lots of club goers clubhop like this guy did, it also makes sense in and of itself.)

https://t.co/lIuq3LsRGE @JustinHowe I mean, above and beyond just giving people a way to report for testing with less risk of stigma/blame/etc.

@JustinHowe @hannytenny Yep!

@JustinHowe Yeah, unfortunately. Also, I hear that one of the clubs was a gay club? Which… if homophobia becomes the new anti-Shincheonji, it’ll only further complicate the already-difficult and stigma-complicated task of tracking, tracing, and testing those exposed. Sigh.

@JustinHowe @hannytenny Well, I hear the gov’t is now tracking a few thousand people who might have been exposed because some dumbass decided to go with his pals to FIVE nightclubs in one weekend while he had a fever and diarrhea, so… *shrug* @JustinHowe @hannytenny How one even handles going to to FIVE nightclubs while sick, I can’t fathom. (Not even in my 20s could I have done that, even if I’d wanted to.)