👓 Byunghwan 'Ben' Son

People say that this is a precursor of a political chaos. As Yoon will appeal for sure, narrowing the scope could help lighten the sentence in the upper courts. It's df annoying, but I am not as appalled by this as others. A recovery from backsliding ('democratic restoration) is a messy process. 2/2

What to Know About the Trial of South Korea’s Ousted Leader

Yoon is sentenced to life imprisonment. While the sentence itself is not much surprising, Judge Ji (whose political neutrality has been in question all along) pointed only to the deployment of troops to the National Assembly, not really highlighting all other aspects of the failed insurrection. 1/2

kimchi pancake

marinated steamed pork, sooyuk

marinated, stir fried pork, jeyuk

pork barbecue and egg soup

Some of the 🥘 I made in the past week.

All I am thinking is that I need to up my paper title game though.

Assigning this gem by @mcopelov.bsky.social & @tompepinsky.com to my grad class. Sold on the title alone.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

WASHINGTON (AP) — Washington Post says one-third of its staff across all departments, not just the newsroom, is being laid off.

Cooked almost all lunches and dinners in the past 6 days. Exhausted the repertoire now.

Someone needs to decompose the rise--how much of this is 1) silver's dual purpose (industrial + precious metal) and 2) speculation/safe heaven.

To be clear, I am just as frustrated as anybody.

The latest democratic resilience of S.Korea (to insurrection) is sort of an outlier, which is why I am working on it.

Not saying they are irrelevant, of course. In fact the *conclusion* of the process is usually thru their negotiation with the outgoing elites.

In many (not sure if most) cases of democratization, the major opposition party joins the resistance very late in the process. Just an empirical statement.

a cartoon of a robot saying " now what did i miss ? " ALT: a cartoon of a robot saying " now what did i miss ? "

When it seems like something happened and yet the post has been deleted:

Korean court rules 2024 martial law crisis an ‘insurrection,’ sentences ex-PM to 23 years Han Duck-soo, who was the prime minister at the time of Yoon Suk-yeol’s declaration of martial law on Dec. 3, 2024, was convicted on the majority of counts of performing duties essential to an insurre...

In sentencing former Prime Minister Han to 23 years, a South Korean court clearly defined Yoon’s actions as an *insurrection*. There is now no need to refer to it euphemistically as ‘the martial law case,’ if you ever wondered.

What to know about the trial in Hong Kong against Tiananmen vigil organizers A national security trial for former organizers of Hong Kong’s Tiananmen Square vigil opens Thursday.

What to know as a national security trial for former organizers of Hong Kong's Tiananmen Square vigil opens Thursday.

We are so not okay.

The first of these has been rolled out. For obstructing arrest, Yoon is sentenced to five years, which is half of what the SP asked for. Word on the ground is that it is too lenient given that he has shown no repentance at all. First of many, anyway.

I probably need to keep track of this. #SKorea

This capture image shows up everywhere and I don't think this was entirely coincidental. The text says "Yoon 'Smiled' When SP Demands Death Sentence and the Court Thrown into Turmoil" all the while Lee-Dakaichi summit was happening.

This is not the only charge that he's being tried on, though. There are others such as interfering with his arrests, corruption, and election law violations just to name a few. As news come out down the road, it's going to be important to see which is for what.

특검, 윤석열에 사형 구형…“반성 없어, 중형 선고돼야” 내란 우두머리 혐의로 법정에 선 윤석열 전 대통령에게 사형이 구형됐다. 2024년 12월3일 비상계엄 선포 이후 406일 만이다. 서울중앙지법 형사25부(재판장 지귀연) 심리로 13일 열린 윤 전 대통령 등 8명에 대한 내란 사건 결심 공판에서 조은석 특별검사팀은 윤

Special prosecutors demand a death sentence for Yoon on insurrection charges. Under Korean law, insurrection entails either the death penalty or life imprisonment. It seems that his consistent refusal to acknowledge wrongdoing led to the former.

Comment sections of news posts in FB are bad. So bad that your confidence in humanity is challenged.

I guess StackOverflow is done.

Things I remain shocked by:
-People in industries like journalism and education that are going to be turned upside down by AI who barely use or understand it
-People in those industries (often the same ones) who still feel comfortable making sweeping claims about AI's capabilities and limitations

YouTube video by 엠뉴 | MBC경남 NEWS 지금까지 공대공 미사일 개발 안 했던 이유?

All sessions are available in YouTube. Some broadcasters broke them into shorter snippets, like this one here where Lee asks why air-to-air missiles haven't been developed so far while S. Korea grew as a fighter jet exporter: youtu.be/nvbrMJ69j1Q?...

Not only the heads of these organizations attend; rank-and-file admins also show up to fill in details. It resembles an old-fashioned graduate seminar: the prez reviews pre-submitted reports and asks pointed questions as in 'on page 15, it says xyz, but wouldn't abc make more sense?' 2/3

Anybody interested in S. Korean politics or policy might have already been watching this -- the Korean government is currently hosting the National Policy Report Conference. Almost all government branches, government-sponsored projects, institutes, and public firms are subject to it. 1/3

Mortgage rates move higher after the Fed rate cut, causing loan demand to drop Mortgage rates moved higher after the Fed cut interest rates last week. That caused demand to drop for both home buying and refinancing.

Seems bad www.cnbc.com/2025/12/17/m...

What a week it has been. No, really.

14. Far too much literature is unnecessarily abstract, difficult, and defensive.

There is, of course, a massive alternative literature, "critical" and "interpretive", which can be a good antidote. But it often also has a lot of jargon or is too fundamentalist in its anti-positivist position.

U.S. data-center build-out status by year of construction or planning, in gigawatts of capacity Chart shows that data center build-out was in the single-digit gigawatts until '21 or so, then in 22 when chatgpt happened it goes hockey stick. 2025 planned data centers are *80 gigawatts*

My latest on the AI bubble in finance: 6 charts that tell the story in ways that are hard to put into words.

1. U.S. data-center build-out. Notice the explosion in 2025. That's the permitting gold rush happening now. Would be shocking if 1 in 20 of these get built, but they factor into projections.