All of the books shortlisted for the Booker this year seem hopeless. And the Premio Planeta went to the horrid Isabel Allende.
I’m a victim of profound unfairness.
Russell Brand was sentenced to 10 years in jail on an unsubstantiated rape allegation by a besotted groupie from 20 years ago.
I feel bad for the dude, but this is society trying to regain traditional sexual morality. Men will have to gatekeep sex, or they will have the fate of Russell Brand and Cornell 7 hanging over them in perpetuity.
The existing sexual mores are unsustainable, so I don’t believe it’s a bad thing that they are being curbed, if in this skewed, imperfect way.
The first place we drove straight from the airport is, as always, Global Foods. There I found this food item that made us weep with laughter. I’m sorry, but you have to be a native speaker of Russian to understand why “halal sosiski” is funny.
This is for those three readers of the blog who can understand the humor of it.
Somebody asked what Republicans could have done to improve the economy.
The answer is nothing. Republicans, Democrats, none of that matters to the global economy. Economic globalization has long made the concept of a country irrelevant. Consequently, the political process of individual countries is of no interest to global economic trends.
This process cannot currently be reversed because, even though the economy is punishing, nobody is willing to give up the way of being in the world that makes this economy inevitable.
Let’s say you love the feeling of being drunk, but you hate the hangovers and the terrible health effects. Can you arrange things in such a way that you keep getting drunk daily but do not suffer any consequences? Which political party will help you achieve this goal?
People keep saying “culture wars versus the economy”, but it’s like saying liver cirrhosis versus alcoholism. You can’t stop careening in this economic direction without getting out of the car. We would have to change the entire internal architecture of our being. And let’s be honest, there is currently zero appetite for that.
I mentioned before that my daughter has a class at school that is mandated by the state and unavoidable. It’s called “social emotional learning.” Even the name is cringe, but the material children are taught is even worse.
Last week, the teacher explained the following bit of insanity leading to utter emotional dysregulation.
“If somebody says something mean to you”, she said, “the words will damage you like this.” And she crumpled a sheet of paper to demonstrate.
“And then,” the teacher continued, “even if the person says they’re sorry, they will not be able to undo the damage.”
She smoothed the sheet of paper and showed that there are still creases on it. “See?” she asked triumphantly. “The sheet is still damaged.”
The rise of the “words are violence” crowd has finally been explained. Turns out, this is taught in elementary school because the state forces teachers to do it. In Illinois, this was first mandated in 2003. The first cohort of children who were taught this garbage by state mandate are now old enough to send their own children to elementary school.
I’m buckling up for worse because this course will eventually require that children “recognize their own identity.”
Americans, you know I love you and please don’t get too crumpled by the words I’m about to write, but what the everloving fuck is this utter garbage?
The really funny addendum to the preceding post (which you should read before this one or the joke won’t land) is that when N and I got married he had no credit cards and consequently no credit score. We actually had a fight when I suggested that he get his first credit card. N is extremely even-tempered, so this was one of the very few times in 19 years that I’ve seen him get angry.
The reason was that he didn’t believe me when I told him how credit cards work. N was certain that you were obligated to carry debt and pay interest. I explained that you can pay your entire balance every month and never pay a dime of interest.
And he didn’t believe me.
“I read that Americans carry almost a trillion dollars in credit debt,” he said above a whisper, which with him counts as almost yelling. “And you are saying they could just pay off the balance each month and never pay interest? That makes no sense.”
“Yes, people are legally allowed to pay off the balance at any moment,” I confirmed.
“That’s not possible!” N insisted. “The credit card companies wouldn’t be able to exist. There’s no business model for this. Nobody would willingly pay 15% interest!”
“It’s between 25 and 35%,” I clarified. “The business model is based on human nature. People understand that they will end up paying much more for whatever they bought on credit but they accept that.”
“Such people don’t exist!” vociferated N at above the pitch of rustling leaves which I heard him do exactly twice in our entire relationship: during this conversation and later when he was teaching me to drive, and I gingerly ran a stop sign, almost colliding with an oncoming vehicle.
“I carry $16,000 in credit card debt,” I reminded him.
“You wouldn’t if you understood that it’s economically disadvantageous!” N parried, betraying a complete lack of theory of mind for human beings.
After days of, “I promise, honey, you will be allowed to pay off the balance before incurring interest. Please believe me this one time. You can make one tiny purchase and see for yourself. I promise it will work. I wouldn’t say this if I didn’t know for sure,” N grimly applied for his first credit card.
Now it’s his hobby to milk every credit card in existence for points and cash without paying a cent in interest.
How much money do you actually have to be to only fly business class, return to europe is genuinely $40k for two people.
Deadass have to have like $5m+ for it to make sense no?
Actually outrageous for like 12 hour flight I dont understand it but maybe im just too poor.https://x.com/SelfMadeBez/status/2119284256384094481?a=gPvmAo9yrmMkMaBiumg&s=19
I believe he is sincere, so I’ll explain. I fly business class often. When we traveled to Spain with our kid that was business tickets for all three of us, both ways. I returned from Canada to St Louis last month in business. The airfare to Spain for the 3 of us cost us $120. Not thousand. Dollars. From Montreal to St Louis it was something like $24. Again, dollars.
I have never paid anything over $150 for business class tickets. I’m talking about the entire price of the ticket, not business class surcharge. How do people think I can afford to travel so much? All the air fare and hotels, how do they think I pay for it all?
Here’s how it works. If you have an excellent (but not too excellent because that locks you out of opportunities) credit score and you carry no debt besides a mortgage, you can get tons of free stuff. You open a credit card, get rewards points, transfer them to the airline or a special account, close the card, rinse and repeat. Of course, this takes work. You need to know:
– which cards to open
– what is the sweet spot of excellent but not too excellent credit, and how to stay within that fairly small window
– when and how to close the cards so that you are not out of any money and don’t have to pay yearly fees
– how to convert points into airplane tickets and hotel stays, etc.
In case anybody worries that I’m engaged in something dishonest, when I travel for conferences, I never ask the university to reimburse my airfare. I inform them honestly that I will be using points, and the university only covers the registration, the conference hotel, per diem, shuttles, etc.
Aside from excellent (but not too excellent) credit, you need a very meticulous, focused personality to be able to carry it off. Obviously, none of this describes me. My husband is the travel manager of the family. He has spreadsheets, graphs, and a very complex system that makes this all work. He belongs to online communities that share tips and leads. He recorded a series of eight 30-minute videos to teach me how to take over the system in case of his death. I resisted massively, but he made me watch the videos and then pass tests on them.
Transatlantic air travel has gone to the absolute dogs. You need to be extremely healthy, be a person of leisure, or be crazily wealthy to undertake it. My trip to Spain in September is the perfect example. The flights kept getting canceled. I needed unanticipated hotel stays and to get new tickets on the fly if I wasn’t ready to sleep at the airport for three days. If I had to pay out of pocket for all this, it would be an economic disaster for me. But we have points, so a hotel and a fresh ticket with a different airline awaited me at every step of the journey for free or almost free. A young Peruvian couple that was on my canceled flights had to sleep at the airport for three days, but I wasn’t capable of such a feat, even when I was 30 years younger, let alone today.
Those people you see in business class seats never pay for those tickets with their own money. Often, their job pays. The rest do what we do. It pays, in a very literal sense, to have an excellent credit score and good financial literacy.
I’m leaving New York today and happy to not travel for a while because I have fulfilled my travel quota and then some.
One thing I want to mention before closing my observations of NYC is that everywhere, including poky little diners here serve cappuccino. Back home, you can’t find a place that has anything but horrid drip coffee to save your life. Everybody should follow New York’s example and serve good coffee.
Coffee here is good even by European standards. Everywhere else I’ve been in America, it’s horrid.
A statistic that sounds fake but isn’t: Not one single white American man born after 1984 has published a work of literary fiction in The New Yorker.
https://x.com/politicalmath/status/2119105264569745683?a=EIfuPswyD5_LnfuPNIM&s=19
Yes. This is why, when I list the best American writers of the century—Emma Cline, Jennifer Egan, Barbara Kingsolver— they’re all women. Men have been engineered out of the running. We don’t know what they would have written if they had a chance.
In Spain, this did not happen, and we have a healthy balance of male and female authors writing great literature today.
Back when I was a big city person and very leftist, I hated New York. But now that I’m a small-town person and very right-wing, I like it. I wouldn’t want to live here because it’s extremely expensive and everything reeks of pot, but other than that, I feel very comfortable in this city.
It’s very weird because shouldn’t it be the other way around?
A conservative literary critic and college professor
Our university has a reputation for being pretty woke (although I did not encounter most of the phenomena you described…
It is politically motivated and, at the same time, part of a much larger phenomenon. Why is this a difficult…
I’m happy as a clam that M. John Harrison won actually. The End of Everything is one of his weakest…
“To deny that Russell Brand’s trial and conviction are politically motivated is of course absurd” Of course it’s politically motivated,…
To deny that Russell Brand’s trial and conviction are politically motivated is of course absurd. Everyone and their dog can…
Wow, and with 26,000 students, I’m impressed. Walnut
Unlike feminism, electricity has been beneficial ;-D
LOL, KId, figured that might wake you up ;-D Sixty years ago, those women would already be busy grandmothers volunteering…
Yes, let’s wait for that to happen.
“…this is society trying to regain traditional sexual morality.” No, Lady Justice must return her blindfold, and take her fat…
And without electricity.
I taught at Cornell. It’s not what you’d call a hotbed of conservatism, to put it mildly.
My friend, did you just ask me, of all people, if I read the book I’m commenting on? Me? Am…
How do you know they were lefties? In any case the jet set thought Russell Brand was an adorable rogue…
cliff arroyo LOL, you do realize that the West lived for centuries without feminism ;-D
There can be no doubt whatsoever that the Cornell Seven were very leftie. Didn’t help them much, did it? Let’s…
Clarissa Friedan was not history to me, I lived through the second wave. But listen to Fiamengo, she bought into…
No, this is our overlords burning a political heretic at the stake. Walnut
Well, we are all a blue state now, so yay. Except Florida. Florida is doing great.
I was near Klara’s age in 2003 and was never taught any garbage like this. Fascinating glimpse into life in…
Thank you so much for the interest. I think it’s going to be very good. I have to cut out…
There might be minor quibbling with the details of Betty Friedan’s argument. But the overall message is indisputable and has…
Starting a new thread since the replies are getting wonky. Yeah the 30 last pages don’t exist. Problem isn’t that…
Clarissa Kid, no, NO, NO more unilateral female “fixing” anything ;-D Learn from a scholar who went through the second…
“I fear that in the West, we will have to agree to disagree” Don’t want any feminism? Aghanistan doesn’t have…
cliff arroyo “have never found much truth in feminism” “Oh there was.” Although it may well depend upon a specific…
Good public policy has reduced Argentina’s inflation rate from 290% to 30% annually, and created the first fiscal surplus in…
I know! They do take the teacher’s word as gospel.
I only found out about the crumpled paper activity because I jokingly said to my daughter, “Sticks and stones can…
Exactly. My kids also have this class at school (the name itself is the source of constant jokes: the class…
According to the metrics you use to consider Argentina and Singapore good economies, our economy is fantastic. Are you experiencing…
If your thesis is correct, explain Milei’s turnaround of Argentina, Singapore’s ongoing prosperity and how the Swiss, by not debasing…
Good point about Amadeo. Overall, I think that the book would have been enormously better without the last 30 pages.…
We need a new wave of feminism to correct the overreaches of the previous waves. Women have received all of…
I don’t want to be boring, but the situation where an individual can play against capitalism and still sometimes win…
I asked AI, and it says that, yes, you can do this in Israel, but in a much more limited…
Some parents will notice and have conversations with their children, explain why this mentality is rubbish, and model a different…
“what the everloving fuck is this utter garbage?” My guess is some unholy combination of 3rd wave feminism and/or DEI/diversity-uber-alles…
“have never found much truth in feminism” Oh there was. The problem is, again, movements need an exit plan. By…
Do not know if this works in Israel too, especially if one is ready to fly only El Al ,…
