I can’t imagine anybody thinking that this isn’t great. Very, very positive developments.
“Weidel’s German … Does anybody know?” I was wondering if having a non-native speaking partner might be part of it,…
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Continue reading →: Regional Accents
On the positive side, I understand Weidel’s German enormously better than I understand Merz. Do they have different regional accents? Does anybody know?
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Continue reading →: AfD’s Success
I don’t have much of an opinion on AfD’s successes in Germany. Of course, people are tired of mass migration and are looking for somebody who would put an end to this horror show. Unfortunately, I don’t think that Weidel is that person. Nothing about her is remotely conservative.
I have no idea at this point what would be a good path forward for Germany. I’m much more optimistic for Spain.
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Continue reading →: The Stupidity of Gender Wars
People are freaking out about this because they are not extremely smart, to put it mildly:
This is an effect of deportations. The Trump administration is delivering on its immigration promises. But people are so invested into ridiculous gender wars that they are incapable of figuring it out. They look at a piece of excellent news and wail to the skies because they’re so blinded by irrational emotion that they can’t understand what the news is actually about.
There is a male equivalent of Lindsey Clancy’s supporters. They feel robbed, wounded, and persecuted by women, just like the Clancy women, feel robbed, abused, and persecuted by men.
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Continue reading →: Small Diner Trends
A small local diner, not a chain, charges between $90 and $100 for a standard breakfast for two. Coffee, eggs, breakfast, toast, hash browns. It is also the first local establishment that uses AI imagery in advertisement.
I shared these observations with somebody I know, and he says that this is a growing trend: massively overpriced local restaurants and stores with AI advertisement. In short, these places show their contempt for the customers in several different ways at once.
Breakfast used to be my favorite restaurant meal, but at this point, the prices make no sense. I have to refuse hash browns and toast for health reasons, and the price ends up being something like $10 per egg.
The diner in question is posting pitiful screeds on social media, berating the local residents for abandoning the diner and causing a sad situation where its employees can’t afford to put food on their own tables. I feel bad for the diner and its workers, and I don’t want this local landmark to go out of business, but I can’t justify these prices.
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Continue reading →: Cooking Adventures
I’ve been cooking since morning to distract myself. Made vegetable ragout (asparagus, broccoli, mushrooms, and carrots in a cumin tadka sauce), two kinds of kotlety, mashed potatoes, and a raspberry/cherry pie.
We don’t have that many eaters, so I probably should stop at this point.
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Continue reading →: 13
Today is a harsh day because my son would be turning 13 if he survived. But Klara has a new hobby of making pens. I bought her a kit of supplies, which arrived at 6:45 am, and now she’s very happy and telling me I’m the best mommy ever, and that helps.
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Continue reading →: From Manson to Clancy
There is a clear line from the Manson murders to Lindsay Clancy. The female murderers in the Manson case did not get off but were given lighter sentences and then were coddled and lionized in prison, while a dude who wasn’t even at the scene of the crime was punished much more harshly.
I have zero sympathy for Charles Manson. He was a nasty, scuzzy piece of trash. But the women who killed Sharon Tate and the other victims were completely guilty of those murders. All of this incredible rubbish about brainwashing and mind control is the equivalent of today’s debates about how Clancy did it because she was let down by the universe.
Identical arguments were rolled out during the Manson trial and the Clancy trial. “The women are not guilty of this murder because they didn’t commit another murder before committing this particular murder. She was a beauty queen before becoming a killer. She was a good mom.” Nobody ever applies these arguments to men.
The underlying idea is that women cannot be violent unless some man broke them in one way or another. Mind control, drugs, brainwashing, pills, all sorts of excuses are invented because people can’t get it through their heads that women can be just as violent as men.
This is why getting attached to a narrative of sex-based differences in behavior is dangerous. It’s so cute, haha. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, until you can’t put a mass murderer in jail because everybody took this narrative seriously. People have heard their whole lives that women think and act in a way that is so dramatically not like men’s that they sincerely don’t understand why they should apply the same legal standard to men and women in court.
The same people who are complaining about the verdict contribute to it daily by supporting this utterly moronic, socially destructive “men are from Mars” mentality.
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Continue reading →: They Don’t Need a Motive
Does anybody here know the book Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties? I haven’t finished yet, so please no spoilers, but I want to mention that it’s a very typical example of conspiracy theory thinking.
The author suspects that there must be a massive conspiracy behind the Manson murders because the motive for the murders, as it was presented at trial, is ridiculous. It doesn’t cross his mind that the murderers were skanky, stupid, drug-addled losers. They weren’t sitting there composing complex life strategies for themselves. They didn’t need a motive. They got high and started running around murdering people.
A bunch of stinky, whoreish women used like human toilets by anybody who would bother to ejaculate into them murdered a beautiful pregnant Hollywood star. Yes, why on earth would they do that? Where’s the motive? It must have been the CIA.
Of course, the stupid stinkpots didn’t know that Sharon Tate was being used as a human toilet by men as well. There’s irony in that. But the obsession with motive is the purview of stupid people. Very often, criminals commit criminal acts because they feel like it, because they can, because they are bored, angry, or upset, because the crime seems like a good idea to their primitive brains.
The book is addictive because observing the author spin increasingly deranged tales about the murders is quite fascinating.
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Continue reading →: Intellectual Regrets
I was asked whether there are things that I published before my conservative turn that I now regret. This is an excellent question.
There are things I published even at the very start of my academic career that I stand by completely today. There are also things on which I changed my mind and would not have written today. I think that this is good. It’s a sign that I am growing as a scholar and an intellectual. I have no ego investment in maintaining a mythology of my infallibility. My ego investment goes in the opposite direction. I’m proud of being able to see and openly recognize my mistakes.
For instance, there are already two big things that the new department chair has done enormously better than I did it during my two terms. I feel no desire to defend my way of doing them because I can see that it was clearly inferior to hers. This has given me an opportunity to learn something new and ponder why I made these mistakes. The reason is the usual: I was hubristically attached to the idea of being strong, magnanimous, and not needing anybody’s help. I routinely fall into the trap of not asking for help, and the reason is always hubris. In the distant future, when I become department chair again, I will not repeat the same mistakes.
Similarly, as a scholar, I recognize that some of my publications were based on weak, formulaic readings. I still have to make an effort not to fall into the familiar lefty cliches when I write. But that’s ok. The process is the goal. I’m certain that some of the things I write today will look superficial and weak to me in 10 years. If that doesn’t happen, that will be disappointing because it will mean that I wasted a decade of my life and did not develop intellectually.
So no, I don’t have regrets because this is like regretting that one didn’t spring out of one’s mother’s womb perfectly formed and complete. I can read some of the things that I have published and say, “Well, that was dumb,” and not feel ashamed or tortured because of it. Even for me, claiming to have perfect infallibility would be way too much hubris.
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