I feel unmatched levels of disgust for people who use the expression “breath play.” If you engage in a practice, you should be able to name it without hiding behind this infantilizing lisping.
Drone.
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Continue reading →: Marxist Promiscuity
Whittaker Chambers wrote this in 1952:
They were widely known in the Communist Party for their inviolable prudery which was, in fact, chiefly their way of living uncontaminated by that steaming emotional jungle in which the [Communist] Party had raised promiscuity to a Marxist principle.
– Witness
I highly recommend this book. It’s fascinating.
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Continue reading →: Academic Indifference
At academic conferences, we always organize an activity called a CV clinic. Professors help graduate students who are going on the job market to revise their CVs to make them more employable. These events used to be very popular. We would have students line up to get help with their job application portfolios. At one of the conferences, we had to introduce an appointment system so that the graduate students who wanted help wouldn’t have to wait in line for an hour.
After COVID, this all dried up completely. We still organize CV clinics and sit there for hours alone, reading or working on our research, because nobody comes. The job market did not improve. If anything, it has gotten worse. But the prospective applicants stopped seeking help. When I volunteer for these CV clinics, I mark them in my calendar as writing time because I know that nobody will come.
This observation bears out in other aspects of academic life as well. I have offered help to get published in a journal or an edited volume. I have offered to help job seekers revise their articles for publication, but nobody ever takes me up on these offers anymore. The last time somebody did was in 2019, right before COVID hit.
My own academic career was literally saved by a senior colleague who mentored me and explained what I was doing wrong and why I couldn’t get published. I wanted to pay it forward and transmit this knowledge now that I am a senior academic. My university instituted a program where it would actually pay extra to senior academics to mentor tenure-track colleagues so that they would be able to present a successful tenure case. I didn’t manage even to get as far as convincing the two people I was mentoring to send me their CVs because they couldn’t find the time to do that. The university still paid me, but I stepped down from the program after one year because I feel uncomfortable getting paid for the work I don’t do.
I’m old enough to know that this wasn’t always like this. And it’s not simply my own experience. Last year, there were six of us manning the CV clinic. I asked the other five people how many students showed up to seek help with their CVs. The answer was one. In the three days of the conference, one person actually came by to seek help. Every professor at the CV clinic stated that this was a dramatic change from only a few years ago.
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Continue reading →: Missouri or Illinois?
I have finally figured it out. I am not an Illinoisan. I’m a Missourian. Every time I see one of those maps on social media that show the most beloved dish, beverage, slang word, event, etc., in each state, I don’t even recognize the ones chosen for Illinois.
For food, Illinois is supposed to be into something called deep-dish pizza. But we don’t have that around where I live. To the contrary, our famous local pizza is very thin-crust. The famous Missouri dishes, such as toasted ravioli and gooey butter cake, are the ones I know.
Everybody around here says “soda.” I’ve never even met a person who would say “pop.” We love Fitz’s root beer.
I keep seeing on these food and beverage state maps that the most disgusting thing in Missouri is supposed to be Provel cheese. I love Provel cheese and find it puzzling why anybody would complain about it.
I’m Missouri all the way.
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Comments:
1Continue reading →: Book Notes: El aire quema by Mónica González InésThe people of Spain are engaged in a collective exercise in self-numbing, where they’re trying to convince themselves that a world without jobs is the optimal one. It’s easier to come across a giraffe in Spain than a full-time, well-paid, permanent job. People are trying to talk themselves into accepting their post-work reality.
As a result, any random novel one picks up from the recent bestseller list is likely to advance the idea that having a well-paid, comfortable office job is terrible. People who still, by some miracle, happen to have jobs should liberate themselves from this terrible burden. Those who have been trying to make ends meet through a patchwork of badly paid part-time gigs and small welfare payments should consider themselves extremely lucky, because not having a job makes them better-quality humans.
It’s gotten to the point that this is the only kind of novel one reads because that’s all there is. El aire quema by Mónica González Inés it’s about a woman who has a great job, but having a job and enjoying work is the worst thing that a female character in today’s Spanish literature can be. Lúa Cruz is extremely unpleasant, and her life in a beautiful new house with a husband and a child, an excellent income, recognition, prestige, and expensive business trips is portrayed as pure horror. The novel clearly aims to make middle-aged women who have no jobs, barely any income, no family, and who live with roommates in crappy rented apartments at the age of 38 feel superior, precisely by virtue of never being able to enjoy everything that Lúa has.
This subgenre is the opposite of Soviet literature, where people were supposed to derive enormous enjoyment from work, and they lived for their jobs. The Soviet literature in question was, of course, manipulative and aimed at inspiring people to donate free labor to the state. But the post-work literature that is currently so popular in Spain is equality manipulative. And honestly, it’s a lot more depressing than anything, than Stakhanovite novels in the USSR. It keeps beating people over the head with the idea that working is terrible, having a job is an unbearable imposition, having children is an even worse one, and the only desirable state for a human being is to do nothing except scroll social media.
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Continue reading →: They Grew Young
I watched a couple of snippets of Seinfeld for the first time since the show originally aired. The characters no longer look very old to me. That is quite disturbing.
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Continue reading →: WASP Eating Habits
I have come across the most enlightening thing in weeks, and I must immediately share it:
My observation eating at wasp households is that they eat One Meat, One Carb and One Vegetable, all cooked separately and that inhabit different parts of your plate and idk if I’m on board with that
https://x.com/lillybilly299/status/2116544731614212158?a=GlHJQly-VP17JeiQt7M&s=19
This is how my daughter eats, and she’s very adamant that everything should be served exactly this way. I’ve wondered about this for the longest time because our eating habits are the exact opposite. Is this some sort of an American thing that she absorbed through cultural osmosis?
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Continue reading →: The Rage of the Unchosen
Melania Trump helped negotiate a humanitarian ceasefire and evacuation from the embattled Ukrainian town of Oleshky. Thank her for that because the conditions in Oleshky were getting really bad.
The residents of the town were allowed to choose whether they would get on the buses going to Russia or to Ukraine. Here are the buses going in the opposite directions:
Only four buses are going to Russia, and the people on them are predominantly Russian military. The rest of the people chose to go to Ukraine.
This picture symbolizes the reason behind this war better than any other.
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Continue reading →: Cultural Competence
Nothing integrates you into a country like raising a child. We were at Sam’s Club today, and there was a long line alongside the queue for the exit.
I asked what people were queuing for and they said, Needoh. 6 different squishies in a Power Tower for $19.98, which is a steal. I immediately knew why it was a crucial line to join because I know the whole trajectory of the coveted squishie.
They were selling two Needoh Power Towers max for each customer. Definite Soviet vibes except everybody was extremely friendly and polite.
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Continue reading →: The Starting Salary
In 1938, Whittaker Chambers was hired to write book reviews. The salary that he made for it is double what I make today if we adjust for inflation, purchasing power, etc.
Even though Chambers was in his late thirties at the time, this was his first job because he’d been an underground Communist agent before and didn’t have to work.
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