The number of people in Russia who believe the Russian economy will suffer as a result of the Western sanctions has dropped from 53% in March to 35% today. The majority of Russians believe the economy in Russia is improving, in spite of massive evidence to the contrary.

At least, back in the USSR nobody believed the lies about huge advances in the economy they heard about on TV. The silly Communist leaders had no idea how to make themselves massively loved and trusted. And all they needed to do was just go and slaughter some Ukrainians. If the Communist Party of the USSR had thought of this before, the USSR would still be around.

The inhabitants of Donetsk have remembered the experiences of their grandparents and started forming guerrilla groups to fight against the Russian terrorists who have been plundering their region.

The unarmed civilian guerrillas are facing professional Russian troops and the career criminals who have joined them and who are armed to the teeth with the most sophisticated weaponry provided by Putin.

The guerrillas are not unsuccessful in their struggle, though. Yesterday they have managed to destroy a BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launcher used by the terrorists to terrorize Donetsk. Find a picture of the launcher in Google and you ‘ll see why it’s a big deal for untrained civilians to destroy it.

People in the Donetsk region are notoriously passive and apolitical. This is precisely why Russians invaded this area, knowing that the locals would be too bored to oppose the invading forces. However, the endless rapes, kidnappings, murders, torture, killings and lootings that the terrorists have been visiting on the people they are claiming to want to “save” are getting even to the sleepy inhabitants of Donbass.

First, Putin made an ass of himself by outlawing lingerie. Then he made hungry asses of all Russians by outlawing imports of food. And then he made asses out of goats by outlawing the import of goat sperm Russian farmers use to inseminate goats.

This will show ’em Yanks!

I’ve been working non-stop since 7 am with no end in sight so I decided to venture onto Facebook for some mindless scrolling.

That was when I discovered that my nervous system cannot be adapted to tolerating boundless idiocy. I’m very sheltered. I don’t meet idiots and I have purged my blog to the point where I now only have extraordinarily brilliant commenters.

Of course, I didn’t add any idiots on Facebook. But other people did. And the moment I open the Facebook account, I find the kind of stupidity I didn’t even know existed in real life. There are Putinoids lurking everywhere. They look completely normal but there is madness hiding inside.

I wrote a comment on my aunt’s Facebook page and then some unknown Russian freakazoid told me that I “spout garbage.” Russian trolls are not like those form anywhere else. You can’t repel them with aggression because they will always turn out to be angrier, meaner, and scarier than you. But I know them and I have the best weapon against them.

“Please excuse me, Ma’am,” I wrote, “I will not be able to continue a discussion with you in this tone. My upbringing prevents me from doing so. I wish you all the best!”

The freakazoid is surely collapsing in rage now. Post-Soviet people hate to be reminded of their gutter origins and horrible manners.

The textbook just informed me that, during Franco’s dictatorship, the artists who supported the regime were more self-assured and calm than those who didn’t.

No shit, who could have possibly guessed? I wonder what strange psychological quirk made them that way.

Of course, since I couldn’t choose my own textbook, I ended up with a profoundly pro-Franco textbook ordered by our former professor who had been, of all the bizarre things, a Catholic priest in Spain during Franco. The 500-page book contains exactly 7 pages on the Spanish Civil War, dedicated, for the most part, to “the atrocities perpetrated by the Reds.”

The chapter on Franco is all about Franco’s wisdom in organizing the country’s international relations and his crucial labor of restoring the innate religiosity of the Spaniards.

This will be a really fun course to teach.

From a new gem in my collection of ridiculous articles by academics:

The poker metaphor describes the hellish fate of the all-but-dissertation (ABD) student. Only in the parallel universe of academia is it possible to log years of Herculean scholarship, write and defend a complex dissertation proposal, and — upon failing to complete one’s dissertation — come away with nothing to show but the humiliation of not being recognized by the academic industrial complex for one’s blood, sweat and uncompensated toil.

I keep wondering, do people even remotely realize how idiotic they sound with all these “hellish fates, Herculean scholarships, humiliations, and blood, sweat and toils”? The article continues in the same vein, piling on one ridiculously overblown drama-queenish statement after another:

Dysfunctional graduate departments, toxic faculty, and the Navy Seal-like brutality of the Ph.D. process all contribute to the burnout experienced by the estimated 50-plus percent of Ph.D. students who fail to earn their doctorates.

This is why I like talking with my contractor. He doesn’t have an easy life. His wife has been made redundant at her job last week, and they need her salary to make ends meet. He works 70 hours a week, doing hard manual labor, often outside in the scorching heat. There is never any certainty as to whether he’ll have any orders next week or next month. Clients often refuse to pay, lose stuff in their houses and accuse the contractor of stealing, call the police. The truck is disintegrating, and the contractor’s back is giving him a lot of trouble.

And in spite of all these normal problems of an adult’s life, the contractor is a very content, happy person. I like hanging around him when he works because he exudes peacefulness, calm, and contentment. When he shares his problems, it’s always in a “Life is a funny yet beautiful thing” tone. He very obviously digs what he does and really enjoys his life, problems and all.

You can blab all you want about “the Navy Seal-like brutality of the Ph.D. process” but it is obvious to everybody but the most entitled and self-involved that sitting on one’s ass in an air-conditioned, quiet, beautiful library is a little less taxing than chopping wood and hauling branches for 7 hours  in the +93F heat. Everywhere, in all walks of life (which is a stupid expression but I’m on the run and don’t have time to look for an alternative) people do their work, face problems, find solutions, and enjoy existence. It is only in academia where sheltered, extremely fortunate people whine all day and every day over every tiny little thing that is not absolutely perfect. 

And the shit is contagious. I isolate myself as much as I can but sometimes I can’t avoid getting into “the Navy Seal-like brutality of stubbing my toe” mode. It’s pleasing to indulge in the dramatic self-aggrandizement, it makes one feel important, and delightfully persecuted. It also offers a great excuse to get no work done. 

In spite of these important bonuses, however, this is an absolutely shameful way of frittering away one’s own life.

I’m preparing my course syllabi for next semester and I just had a brilliant idea for how to make oral presentations more meaningful. I hate oral presentations for several reasons. First, there is Google that creeps into every presentation. Then there is the sad fact that while one person is delivering the presentation, everybody else in the class is distracted, snoozing, texting, or doing their homework. I have 25 students in each class, which means that if everybody presents for 30 minutes, that’s over 12 hours of class time eaten by these presentations that most people don’t even listen to. And I don’t do group presentations in advanced courses because I don’t believe in the concept. Plus, I don’t want to arbitrate in the endless disputes of who in the group did all of the work and who did none.

So here is what I have come up with. We have two thick history textbooks in one of my courses. One is 500 pages, another one is almost 300. (These are the old textbooks I had to make do with because the one I chose wasn’t made available.) There is no way we will be able to read both of these textbooks in class. So. Here is the new format for the presentations:

Each student will get assigned several pages from the textbook that we won’t cover in class.

The student will have to read, understand, and teach the material to the rest of class (in Spanish, obviously).

The grade will depend on how well everybody understands the material.

After the presentation, the class will do a small quiz I will prepare in advance based on this material. And everybody will be motivated to listen and try to understand the material because the quiz will be part of their participation grade.

This will remove the problem of “Why is my grade so low? It’s all just your subjective opinion.” Plus, every student who presents will see how hard my job is, which is always an added bonus.

Is this genius, or what?

I have a new admirer. He fell in love with my Amazon reviews and is now leaving semi-creepy comments to my reviews. I mentioned my husband in a review of a face cream, and now the poor admirer is heart-broken.