Had he lived for a couple of years longer, Rafael Chirbes would have totally been one of us. Already in 2006, he was pointing out in his diaries that progressives had gone completely nuts. They defend radical Islamists, praise women in hijabs, yet are completely opposed to Catholics who are anti-abortion? That makes no sense, he says.

Chirbes was a person of deeply conservative sensibilities. The destruction of the old ways of life by modernity was something that he perceived as a profound wound.

The writer was from a very working-class family. Having any affinity whatsoever for the working classes ends up making you conservative because progressivism is extremely cruel precisely to this class of people.

I’m teaching Spanish 101 this month. There are 29 students in my class. This is week 2 of class, and we are learning to use adjectives correctly. Students are asked to create short descriptions of themselves and people they know. For example: “I’m athletic. My friend is kind. My teacher is old.”

Out of 29 students, 4 started the exercise by writing “I’m liberal. My father is conservative.” 0 students wrote the opposite.

Whatever you lead with in this kind of exercise is your salient identity. Of course, students know that “I’m liberal” is likely to get approval from the instructor in the course. But so is “I’m hardworking.”

On the opposite end of the spectrum from my parenting is this:

My daughter doesn’t have a bum summer like most kids. She has a list of nonnegotiable daily chores, has to workout and has to actively pass out her resume, apply online for jobs and if she doesn’t have a job or being scheduled for interviews by the end of this week, she’ll be working around the house.

She also has to meal PLAN, write out a grocery list and meal PREP on her designated day of the week so it doesn’t clash with my husband or my meal prep days. She also has a designated laundry day where does everyone’s towels.

If she does it on her own initiative and because that’s what her own way of being requires, that’s fantastic. If it’s forced on her by the parents, chances are she’ll get into drinking, drugging, and debauchery in a couple of years. The capital letters in PLAN and PREP make me want to engage in drinking, drugging, and debauchery, and I don’t have to be in that kind of household anymore.

The point is to get them to want to do this. Forcing works until a point, after which it doesn’t, and a counter reaction sets in.

Klara doesn’t want to go to summer camp anymore so she comes to work with me. I’m enjoying this so much that I might have a problem returning her to school when the school year starts.

The way we make it work is that she does some athletic or physically strenuous activity in the morning. After that she can sit and draw, read, or play with her dollies for a while and I write.

Good news, people. Karmelo Anthony has been found guilty of murdering Austin Metcalf. This was very expected because the killer had absolutely no defense and barely put on any witnesses. If his parents had an ounce of concern for their son, they would have hired a serious lawyer with all of the money that had been donated to them and that lawyer would have pled Karmelo down. Of course, if Karmelo had this kind of caring parents, his story might have been very different.

I hope he gets the maximum possible term in jail.

Poor Peruvians. Yes, it’s great that the leftist candidate is losing. But Keiko Fujimori is terrible. Once again, Peru ends up with no positive scenario.

Late-arriving ballots continue their enthusiastic embrace of higher sales taxes in Los Angeles County. "Yes" on Measure ER has overtaken "No" in the June 8 update of the vote. Post-Election Day, it has moved in one direction only. pic.twitter.com/5QeVOnCFUm

— Susan Shelley (@Susan_Shelley) June 9, 2026

There is an interesting constituency in LA that is being revealed by these late-arriving ballots. These people are simultaneously for the socialist far-left candidate AND for higher taxes on consumer goods. They all vote late and by mail. They are an extremely solid and nearly unanimous voting bloc. The incoherence of their beliefs belies the consistency of their group behavior.

Yes, this sounds impossible to believe. It’s far likelier that these are fake ballots.

Rafael Chirbes was insanely talented. But he lived like he wasn’t even a teensy bit talented. He put in so much work like he was the least talented hack on the planet.

That’s the only way to live.

In Rafael Chirbes’s diaries, you can see the extraordinary amount of reading, thinking, struggling to write, editing, rewriting, self-doubt, pain, and desolation that went into each of the novels. Chirbes’s Crematorio and En la orilla are the last two novels published while he was alive. These are his masterpieces. The writer put a lifetime of reading and thinking about literature, about art, about language, about what makes a good novel into them. He would read for 10-15 hours a day and then write about what he read. For years, for decades, that’s how he lived.

When I think about that and the ease with which AI produces its “texts”, it’s kind of really funny. I don’t think we’re in great danger of being replaced, is what I’m saying.

Ladies, you need to be babymaxxxxing…especially later in life.

Women who had a child after the age of 40 were FOUR TIMES more likely to live to 100.

Pregnancies massively increase progesterone, the most healing female hormone. pic.twitter.com/pELuaEcxD6

— Carnivore Aurelius ©🥩 ☀️🦙 (@AlpacaAurelius) June 8, 2026

Having babies is obviously amazing. But isn’t it more likely if you can get pregnant, carry to term, and give birth at that age, that already means that you’re healthier and more resilient than the norm?

Having been pregnant and given birth at 40, I know for a fact that it is a physically very taxing proposition. If you are capable of carrying it out, it’s a sign of your general state of health. And even if you are capable of doing it, it takes a while to recover, and very often the recovery is never complete.