My plan to read in English for fun while on vacation is failing most abjectly. The book titled New Old World by the Indian journalist Pallavi Aiyar has proven to be excruciatingly stupid. The author begins by referring to herself without a shade of irony as “an Oxford-educated sophisticate” and makes sure that the readers are aware of how superior she feels to those Indians who did not go to Oxford.

Aiyar lived in Europe for several years and decided to write a book about the economic crisis. In her opinion, the reason for the crisis is that there isn’t enough capitalism in Europe. The spoiled, lazy, degenerate Europeans dare to expect holidays, weekends and pensions which signals the utter degeneration of the European civilization. According to Aiyar, the future belongs to the Indians and the Chinese who are prepared to work 24/7 365 days per year. Any attempt by any workers to gain any rights whatsoever provokes a paroxysm of rage in Aiyar.

Her greatest hatred is directed at Jews who, in Aiyar’s opinion, are extraordinarily lazy, even by European standards. Jews seethe with rage against Indians because they envy how hard-working Indians are. For Aiyar, anybody who says that there are more things to life than making money is a reprobate of the worst order. When a Jew she meets tells her that he values spending time with his family more than making money, she almost has a fainting fit. The only people more despicable than these lazy Jews are workers who strike. They are responsible for turning Europe socialist and causing its total degeneration.

All of this sounds like the ramblings of a diseased mind. Aiyar insists that she’s a super famous journalist in India but I have no idea how much she can be trusted. This is a very, very stupid person with narcissistic tendencies.

Things are getting worse in Ukraine. The Russians have intensified fire and bombings. There are various places on the front lines where they are trying to go on the offensive. Every day, peaceful citizens and Ukrainian soldiers are killed in the war zone.

As Ukraine’s Independence Day approaches, the Russians become more aggressive. The state of the economy in Russia is getting quite bad, so Putin needs a resounding success in the war on Ukraine to distract his people from the plummeting rouble and the incinerated food.

In the meanwhile, EU bureaucrats are actively helping Putin. They are trying to force the Ukrainian army to abstain from returning fire (which will effectively turn the soldiers into sitting ducks for Russians to slaughter).

It’s become clear a long time ago that the US and the EU will do nothing to honor the Budapest agreements and help Ukraine. Ukrainians have figured out a way to fight without them. The problem, however, is that both the US and the EU are actively sabotaging Ukraine and helping Putin.

Sorry, no good news today.

It’s like all of these Bush boys have a congenital brain defect:

I’m going to focus on my candidacy and my experience and my views and let others – I hope that Secretary Trump takes advantage of APPS to have a sit-down conversation and have a detailed conversation about things of substance,” he said. “That’s what Americans want in the end, that’s what I’m going to focus on. I’ll let others judge people’s qualifications.” It was not immediately clear why Bush referred to the real estate mogul as “Secretary Trump.”

What, it’s that hard to keep track of which of the opponents is referred to as “Secretary”?

There’s more Bushie idiocy at the link.

One of the leaders of Spain ‘ s new political party Podemos was asked about the future of Catalonia.

“The people of Catalonia should be able to decide whether they want independence on their own,” the fellow announced brightly. And it’s such an accessible, easy concept that everybody gets warm and fuzzy feelings upon hearing it. To hell with what the constitution says, to hell with complexities and ramifications. People should decide, how can this possibly be wrong?

The same kind of crap goes across the ocean. Just cancel birthright citizenship, what can be easier than that? And to hell with the constitution because it isn’t like anybody has got the time to read that ancient thing.

Voters are desperate for somebody who will stop reminding them of the world’s inevitable complexity and will, instead, offer a simple fairy tale where everything is always good and nothing is ever bad.

Tax the evil banksters and give everybody a lot of free money! Build a big wall and make Mexicans pay for it! Whoever said that politics was hard? Just go by whatever feels right and try not to overthink it.

A Republican has the perfect explanation of Trump’s appeal: “Trumpism offers a simple explanation for why things are the way they are, and offers a simple solution.” Whenever you feel even remotely drawn to what Trump is saying, remember: it’s a gross simplification.

[Spanish] A Jewish singer is harassed in Spain.

Religious fanatics are on the offensive in Tallahassee.

“Windows 10 has the right to install whatever it wants on your system without notice and to read and disclose all your personal information and files when it sees fit – even with files you place in private folders.”

These days, doing any kind of work registers as “heroic” in the minds of many.

In the past year, the richest businessmen  (read, bandits) of Russia lost between $1 billion and $4,6 billion each as a result of the sanctions.

Of course, this isn’t their money. They were allowed to hold these assets for their criminal organization with the goal of duping the West into believing that it won the Cold War and that capitalism was being adopted in the post-Soviet territories.

Almost none of these oligarchs have Russian last names. The people who were selected by the organized crime concern to hold the assets mostly had Jewish and Central Asian last names. This was done in order to help regular Russians to channel their resentments into the familiar direction of ethnic and racial hatred.

For the first 400 pages, this book seemed like the perfect beach read. The life at a small motel in the 1950s Vermont was described beautifully. The struggles of a family whose livelihood is destroyed by a highway built nearby made a lot of sense. The way of life of a little town that is demolished by technological progress was of great interest.

The author, however, decided it was too much trouble to tie all the loose ends at the end of the novel and instead came up with an easy answer to the questions posed by the plot: fairy-tale monsters. It’s quite a jarring experience to have the supernatural sprung at you on page 400. Everything before that was extremely realistic, and there was no way anybody could anticipate the appearance of magical monsters.

But this wasn’t even the worst part. What really annoyed me was the source of the evil monstrosity. I’m telling you, folks, you’ll never guess who brought all of this malignant monstrosity to the quiet, peaceful Vermont.

Brits.

Yes, you read right. The British people in the novel carry inside them this genetic disease that turns them into monsters who kill good, trusting, earnest Americans.

I had no idea that the image of evil, scary foreign women who carry inside of them the taint of a disfiguring, incurable disease was even a thing any longer. I don’t even know how to rate this book because this all looks so outre to me.

Well, I have 3 more books in the “entertaining beach reading” category. Let’s see if they are any better.

There’s been a deluge recently of articles about the evils of paid work. Salon workers, Amazon workers, Google workers, Amazon workers again are depicted as poor persecuted victims of tge very concept of work.

It’s becoming clear how this post-work society (also known as “gig economy”) will function. Those with careers will pacify those without with stories about the tragic victimhood of the people who work. And so instead of protesting, the poor discarded losers will actually feel privileged and fortunate to be excluded from the evil workplace.

And hey, people are lapping up these ridiculous articles. I have not encountered a single piece questioning their purpose. Such a primitive little manipulation strategy, and look how well it works.

I was not technically abused as a child, but I was not treated well. My father used to hit us when he was drunk. He never broke anything but he came close a few times, and my brother and I both thought he was likely to kill us one day. I was chronically terrified. My mother ridiculed everything about me, from my ideas to my appearance to my speech patterns. When I was small she would threaten to give me to an orphanage when I misbehaved, and would laugh when I tearfully begged her for reassurance that she would keep me.

Beaten, terrorized, ridiculed, threatened, humiliated, but none of this counts as abuse. God, what a stupid, pathetic tool. Even in adulthood, she can’t manage to give a name to what happened to her.

People in Florida are so pleasant, kind, and welcoming that even the proverbially nice Midwesterners begin to look like gruff, unsociable grinches by their side.

I wonder if there are people who are even pleasanter than this and what that would look like.

I’m also happy that I first emigrated to the somewhat aloof Montréal because I think I’d have had a mental breakdown if I’d had to face the super friendly Floridians straight off the boat. I could barely keep myself together when every store attendant in my early immigration days said, “Hi, how are you?” I suspected them of harboring evil designs on my person and meager property because why else would they smile at me?