The liquid world is outfitting itself with new housing models that will provide people not only with short-term leases that last only as long as the next gig but also with prefab, short-term “communities.”

Life spent chasing after employment opportunities might get lonely, so why not purchase a simulacrum of a community?

I wonder how soon we will see a startup that will make a fortune peddling temporary families available to the customers wherever they find themselves next in their chase after liquid capital. The best thing about the idea is that the startup’s costs of doing business will be minimal. There is no need to provide the prefab families because the restless travelers will arrange themselves into temporary family-like structures on their own. All you need to do to get their money is tell them to do it.

So what did Justin Trudeau, Canada’s new prime – minister do the moment he was elected? Started posting selfies with shrouded women, of course.

This brave Liberal wants to make it abundantly clear that there is no issue more important in Canada than ensuring that all women remember very clearly that it’s very easy to turn each of them into a beaten down creature who has no role other than to signal her complete belonging to somebody with a penis.

A Nigerian artist expresses his love for Ukraine in a musical video.

Can you go any lower than this in trying to discredit your political opponent?

It is absolutely ridiculous that huge corporations like Yale and Princeton are allowed to pay no taxes.

There is no gun problem in the US! The real problem we have is with toddlers who need to be banned.

Weirdness at UCLA: “And all calls for university administrators to police the minutiae of campus life rob students of the opportunity to learn how to govern themselves even as they contribute to the spike in administrative costs that render so many unable to afford tuition. The notion that university money is best spent paying someone to sit in an office vetting the themes of fraternity parties sounds like the premise of a SNL skit.”

Putin of Arabia. This was the funniest article I read all week. Highly recommended.

France is stupid.

Have you heard of self-tracking pills? Shit is crazy as all hell.

So what, Liberals are winning in Canada? Bleh. I have nothing against the party. In fact, I would have gladly voted for it if it weren’t for Justin Trudeau. I detest nepotism, and these professional sons and daughters of famous people make me cringe.

I still can’t get over how small and homey the White House is. The lumber yard owner down the street from where I live has a larger house. And each of Putin’s thirteen palaces could house at least 13 White Houses in it.

I’m very happy to live in a country whose leader doesn’t live with the barbaric pomp of our Putins and Yanukoviches.

And since I’m on the subject of cte things in DC, here is a very Germanic sign that made me laugh:

At a voting poll in Canada, a letter from the Canadian government doesn’t suffice as proof of address. A bill from a private company, on the other hand, does.

At an entrance exam to a prestigious school for theater and film directors, students were given the assignment to stage the following scene. A man and a woman come to visit their friends. How can one make it immediately clear to the audience that they are husband and wife?

“Let them share a kiss the moment they come in,” one student suggested.

“But that could mean they are lovers or boyfriend and girlfriend,” the professor said.

“Let the man grumble, ‘I wish I never married you’,” said another student.

“But how do we know they aren’t divorced?” the professor retorted.

Finally, one talented student came up with the perfect answer.

“The man should remove a handkerchief from the woman’s handbag, blow his nose, and stick the handkerchief back into the handbag without saying anything.”

In order to show how inspired we are by Emma Sulkowicz (the woman who carried around a mattress at Columbia), my university will hold an event where students will bring decorated mattresses to campus and display them to demonstrate that we oppose rape. Then there will be a competition of these anti-rape mattresses, and the winners will get cash prizes. 

So whoever made the comment about selling ad space on the famous mattress, they were not that far off point.

P.S. And before anybody says anything, professors didn’t come up with this. Our student government did. 

On my trip to DC, I finally had some time to check out the novel that is attracting so much attention. After reading it, I can’t say I know what the hullabaloo is about. My Brilliant Friend is a solid but unremarkable addition to the genre of childhood and adolescence novels. I read a lot of this kind of thing when I was a kid because back in the USSR this was a genre that produced quite a bit of decent writing. Literature for adults and about adults was way too controlled ideologically while books about kids could avoid being quite as ideological. (They were still ideological, of course, but not to the crazy extent of the rest of available literature.)

The problem with this genre is that it is tied to the stages of human growth and ends up being way too scripted as a result. First toys, first friendships, first day at school, first fight, first book, pimples, insecurities, sexual awakening, first kiss, etc., etc. You can switch around a couple of these stages but that’s pretty much the only variation that the genre allows. 

There are a few ways of livening up this otherwise limited genre. One could work on the language to turn a pedestrian account of “she goes to school, she comes back from school, she does homework, she plays with her friends” into something a bit more like an actual work of art. One could set the childhood and adolescence in an interesting time in history and show how historic events shape the process of a child’s growth. Ferrante doesn’t do anything like that. History is even less than an afterthought in her novel, the writing is extremely straightforward, and the novel ends up being just like a million other childhood and adolescence novels. 

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a very good, decent contribution to the genre. If I read this book at the age of 12, I’d be all over it. I definitely recommend getting this book for an actual child or adolescent but I’m not sure what use an adult can derive from it other than relying on the novel for an undemanding beach or airport read.

On a serious note, it looks like the Trump rebellion might be coming to an end. The 9/11 remarks Trump is making seem calculated to boost Jeb’s anemic approval ratings. As you probably have heard, Wall Street donors are sticking with Jeb as their GOP candidate, and Trump looks ready to comply.