So? What’s up with the elections in Israel? Who won?

Zygmunt Bauman was one of the first philosophers who started talking about the erosion of the nation-state and the growing fluidity of existence back in 1999. The following quote from his foundational volume Liquid Modernity explains things such as the mattress-carrying battle against terrifying articles at Northwestern U that I blogged about earlier today:

The body has become the last shelter and sanctuary of continuity and duration. . . It is becoming safety’s last line of trenches which are exposed to constant enemy bombardment, or the last oasis among wind-swept moving sands. Hence the rabid, obsessive, feverish and overwrought concern with the defense of the body.

The higher education is being eroded. Nobody knows how to hang on to everything that made higher education worthwhile or even verbalize what is happening. The anxiety produced by these feelings of helplessness intensifies the need to protect what is perceived as the only territory that one still kind of controls, namely, the body.

The boundary between the body and the world outside is among the most vigilantly policed of contemporary frontiers.

No other boundary is safe from erosion, which is why the need to protect this very last frontier from fading becomes so urgent and fraught.

I keep hearing that things are bad for women in tech, but how can they improve if this kind of idiocy keeps happening (emphasis is mine):

The Ipsos Girls’ Lounge is . . . creating a safe haven for women at tech, media and advertising conferences, including SXSW. The group believes it can foster networking and deals between women and help empower them through pro-female programming facilitated by manicures, makeup and a bit of bubbly. . .

“Guys do deals,” Ipsos Girls’ Lounge CEO Shelley Zalis said. “Girls create relationships. I think there’s confidence in the pack. We’re creating an environment where women feel comfortable, where real conversations happen and you have time to spend together.”

Every single word of this is offensive in the extreme. I would not be caught dead at any event where it is acceptable to insult me with the condescending “girls create relationships” and “let me empower you with a manicure.” It’s 2015, how is this shit still possible?

Are you noticing anything unusual in the list of my blog visitors?

Yes. I finally have visitors from Russia and Ukraine thanks to my recent bout of Twitter activity.

I banned over 100 Putinbots on Twitter yesterday. It was fun and also very educational because it’s obvious how many of them are simply trolling for a modest salary.

When a drama-queenish, melodramatic professor encounters a group of drama-queenish, melodramatic students, the result is very embarrassing.

A short resume for those who have missed the whole sorry thing. A professor at Northwestern complained in an online article that many of her students are overwrought and behave like “trauma cases waiting to happen.”

The students proved her right by freaking out about the article in really bizarre ways and claiming they were “terrified” of the article.

The professor proved that this was not a generational issue when she responded with outlandish stories of professors being terrified of the terrified students. In professor’s words:

Someone on my campus—tenured—wrote me about literally lying awake at night worrying about causing trauma to a student, becoming a national story, losing her job, and not being able to support her kid. It seemed completely probable to her that a triggered student could take down a tenured professor with a snowball of social media.

The most surprising thing is that none of the participants in this bit of arrant idiocy are noticing how stupid they are making themselves look.