Very few books get translated into English. If something does get translated, one can assume it’s among the best a culture has created. The novel Petty Lies by the South Korean author Sulmi Bak is a surprising choice for a translated novel unless there’s truly nothing better coming out of South Korea than this semi-childish effort at creating a psychological thriller.

The structure of Petty Lies is badly thought-out. The big reveal at the end is fumbled. The motivations are flimsy, the dialogues are infantile, and the most interesting thing about the plot is the characters’ obsession with test scores. These are people who are really really into text scores. The test scores are so important that they also become characters. Especially since the actual characters are boring.

There’s always a chance that the translator is incompetent and made the author sound like a moron. But even assuming that the translator here is an absolute hack, the novel is still painfully weak.

There is something very gross about men who pursue women multiple decades their juniors – it's so clearly about the power differential, deep insecurity, and wanting to have the ego stroked by being an authority-teacher to a woman too young to see through the schtick.

— Jill Filipovic (@JillFilipovic) November 18, 2025

The idea that, in a relationship between a 55-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman, the power lies with the man can only come from somebody who never observed any actual humans. Men are almost invariably the marks in this type of con.

Klara is finishing the second volume of her handwritten memoir titled My Wonderful Life.

If you let kids be bored and don’t jump in to alleviate the boredom like an eager monkey, they’ll invent excellent ways to entertain themselves. Klara’s memoir was born on the day I had to bring her to work with me and she was forced to sit quietly in a corner through two meetings, one lecture, and several conversations with colleagues and students. The first two pages of the memoir are variations on the phrase “I’m so bored.” After that, it’s stories, pictures, hand drawn puzzles, secret codes, and building plans.

“Even at an overwhelmingly liberal institution like Harvard, concentrating in [Women and Gender Studies] is seen as less than serious.”

Students want more ideological diversity in the program, which covers Davis and Butler but not Paglia and Dworkin.

They suggest hiring a… pic.twitter.com/aZwealHVCB

— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) November 18, 2025

True. Gender Studies programs are insignificant and graduate no students to speak of. The belief that there are crowds of people with degrees in Gender Studies is as realistic as the idea that people take out $200K loans to get PhDs.

There are many serious problems in higher education but they don’t include Gender Studies or expensive PhDs.

The first time I was contacted for an interview by a major newspaper was in 2010. There was an issue at my alma mater, and they wanted my perspective as somebody with specific knowledge of the situation. Since then, I’ve been contacted at different times and on a variety of issues by Newsweek, Chicago Post Tribune, St Louis Post Dispatch, and others. I’ve also been contacted by individual journalists working on freelance projects. I ended up rejecting every single request except for an interview with Rod Dreher.

The reason why I always end up rejecting interviews is because the way it works for an in-depth piece is that you receive the questions before the actual interview. Alternatively, there’s a pre-interview where parameters are set and the conversation is prepared. Every single time (except with Rod Dreher who behaved with the utmost professionalism), the journalist would come to the interview with what I can only qualify as egregious bias. No space was left within the interview for me to talk about what actually happened. We are not talking about opinion pieces, mind you. These were supposed to be articles on specific events at the institutions where I worked.

The questions were of the following variety:

“Please describe instances of racism at your college. How did it make you feel to witness them?”

“Please describe the trauma that Professor X caused you with his repeated sexual harassment. What are some of the professional costs of this trauma?”

These questions were based on absolutely no claims of mine. I never witnessed any racism on any campus. Professor X never caused me a second of unpleasantness. I’ve never in my life been sexually harassed in any academic environment. But the journalists were treating these fantasies as fact. I knew that no matter what I said at the interview, my words would be perverted to mean whatever lie the journalist wanted to advance.

One of my instructors agreed to a TV news appearance and was horrified at how her comments were edited to transmit the opposite message from what she actually said. Again, this wasn’t about opinions. The instructor was trying to describe an event in which she took part. The journalist turned her into a whiny, pathetic bastard when the message the colleague was trying to send was that of cheerful positivity. This wasn’t an issue of world politics or elections. Still, the journalist found it necessary to inject lies into the story. Events exist so that journalists can turn them into lies. The lie is the ultimate goal.

This is not only personally aggravating but scary. The information we receive about the world is vitiated. Yarvin and Zizek point to a very real problem that makes our entire pretense at democracy look pathetic.

Yesterday Trump said to a dumb, unprofessional journalist who kept interrupting in a voice of an excited toddler who urgently needs the bathroom, “Are you with Bloomberg? You are horrible. Horrible. I don’t know why they even have you.” That felt good. It felt like he was saying it to every single one of these bastards who tried to put words into my mouth and use me for dishonest purposes. We can get upset with Trump or with Zizek but the question remains. How can any of what we call democracy mean anything if everything we call the news is lies, including about pretty trivial issues?

Slavoj Zizek agrees with Curtis Yarvin:

Zizek on Curtis Yarvin *sniffs* pic.twitter.com/CQwaJgwPoD

— pak (@notsashapak) November 4, 2025

They are both right. What we call democracy is meaningless because the press is dishonest and spreads politically biased lies. The cultural apparatuses are completely ideologically captured and aren’t performing their functions. Politicians can’t afford to have a long-term vision because they need to please the lowest common denominator voters with fantasies and unrealistic promises.

What we get as a result of all this is oligarchy dressed up as democracy. The only part of it that is democratic is the effort to coddle and please the most undisciplined, dumb and emotional among us. What Yarvin proposes is telling this part of the population to get shafted and let people who aren’t low-IQ emotional wrecks steer society.

The biggest objection to Yarvin’s proposal is that there’s no way to ensure that the oligarchy that will come to power as a result will, indeed, be responsible and will act for the common good. However, the democratic oligarchy we currently have definitely isn’t responsible and isn’t acting for the common good.

There’s a funny social media scandal about several journalists and politicians (Keith Olbermann, Ryan Lizza, RFK, some weirdo politician from South Carolina) who were all passing around some hooker and imagining that they were in a relationship with her.

Middle age hits people hard if they don’t manage to stabilize their personal life before it comes.

I highly recommend the Netflix cartoon film In Your Dreams to people with children. It’s a very nice children’s movie that promotes the following ideas:

1. When parents fight, children suffer. Strong marriages and a normal, good family life are the most important things.
2. Reality is more important than fantasy. No matter how attractive fantasy is, you must remain grounded in reality.
3. Life isn’t supposed to be perfect or problem-free. Problems are normal, disagreements are normal. But love between siblings and parents and children can overcome great hardships.

A very wholesome, utterly unobjectionable movie. I particularly loved that the importance of reality was at the heart of the plot. If you want a children’s movie with a conservative sensibility, this one is perfect.

Did you know that at some Florida universities faculty and staff are obligated to take flu shots?

I’ve never seen anything of the kind. Flu shots seem kind of random.

I fear to ask if COVID is considered a type of flu.

DHS statement to FOX via @TriciaOhio:

“Not only was Akhror Bozorov—a wanted terrorist—RELEASED into the country by the Biden administration, but he was he was also given a commercial driver’s license by Governor Shapiro’s Pennsylvania. This should go without saying, but terrorist illegal aliens should not be operating 18-wheelers on America’s highways.”

Not only did this wanted terrorist get a driver’s license, he got Real ID:

I don’t have one because it’s very hard to get. How come criminal illegals are handed out Real IDs? The dude is an open jihadi. Is there a reason why such efforts were made to give him the only form of ID besides a passport that gets you on a commercial flight?