So whose husband heard his wife mention to her sister on the phone that she’d been staring at Michael Kors handbags online for two hours, got up at 6 am, researched said handbags, and bought one for the adored person?

Yes.

Butter is the most fashionable brand of beauty products this season. In the photo you can see my new Butter nail polish. When I first wore it to class last Tuesday, students kept grabbing my hands to see it because it’s pretty.

And this is how fresh and recent it looks on Day 5 of wear. Of course, it’s a lot expensive than regular nail polish. However, I’m not rich enough to buy cheap polish that will start chipping on Day 2.

Nothing is worse than high-maintenance polish that requires constant attention after you apply it. The ideal polish gives you no reason to think about it for days on end. You end up using a lot less of it because it requires no touch-ups, so it isn’t really that much more expensive than the cheap flakey brands.

The color I’m wearing here is Molly Coddled but I will show others when this one wears off.

How weird is it that a restaurant should be called “Old Spaghetti Factory”? I see “old spaghetti” and I feel like avoiding it at all costs.

Spaghetti probably get more disgusting than any other food when it’s old. If anything should be eaten immediately, it’s spaghetti.

There is also a metaphysical reason why Germany is doing so well. This is the only country that is dedicated to making at least some kind of reparations for the damage it caused with its totalitarian past. Germans have taken a responsibility for the crimes of their progenitors and are expiating their collective guilt. The result can only be a healthier society that, of course, produces more.

Germans have sought out everybody whose labor was exploited by the Third Reich and is paying out reparations. Back in Ukraine, an illiterate Baba Motya whose apartment was across the landing from ours started receiving cheques from Germany back in 1990s. She had been forced to go to Germany to work on a farm for no pay during the WWII, and now Germans were trying to pay her for that work.

In the meanwhile, it took Spain forever to grant citizenship to the members of the International Brigades who had defended democracy in Spain in 1936-9. It isn’t like the country is so overpopulated that there won’t be any room for the few surviving brigadists (who are probably not planning to move in anyways). But even making this inexpensive gesture of recognition took a lot of effort.

And in my part of the world nobody is getting compensated or recognized in any form whatsoever.

This is why hopes are high for Germany’s future, not too low for Spain’s, and non-existent for us.

I think that the trend of taking away features and choice from software users is not a singular phenomenon. This authoritarian mindset must come from somewhere, and I believe it mirrors the move towards surveillance and control in society at large.

There is no reason for developers to remove features that many users depend on other than the desire to control.

I agree completely with this blogger. This is definitely a real trend. As the identities become more fluid and less prescribed, people begin to feel panicky and terrified. They need an organizing principle, a controlling authority because too much freedom is scary. So the same society that is shedding the limitations of identities (gender, sexual, racial, class, regional, etc.) is choosing to discipline itself through other forms of control.

This is a form of collective self-flagellation.