We just received a social security number for the baby. It’s so cute, she’s so tiny, yet already has a bunch if paperwork to her name.

So we are now watching the Norwegian TV show Occupied about an imaginary Russian invasion of Norway. All I can say is that Putin must be deeply flattered. Everything he’s been doing has paid off if Europeans finally imagine Russians not as pathetic recipients of charity but as a fearsome, malignant power they cannot resist.

For me, the most interesting aspect of the show is that it reveals the emerging anxieties about the erosion of the nation-state model. The very meaning of the nation is in question and the characters are trying to learn to live with this new reality. 

Today we cleaned the house, then my friend came by with her kids. We had the very first barbecue of the season since it’s so hot outside. Then we watched some TV and chatted.

Everything is exactly as usual, except that there’s a tiny baby sleeping in the midst of it all.

Totally blows my mind.

A friend who studies the Ukrainian revolution was interviewing an Azerbaijani fellow who became a Ukrainian nationalist and fought in the Maidan, defending the revolution.

“I like that Ted Cruz fellow,” the Azerbaijani suddenly announced.

“But why??” asked my friend.

“He’s right when he says that all those Mexicans are destroying the White Culture. Why do they keep coming in? They need to be kept out!”

In case you don’t understand why this is funny, you need to know that Azerbaijanis were not considered white back in the USSR. Today, the Azerbaijani man is member of an ultra-nationalist Ukrainian organization. He was only granted partial membership, though, because the nationalists are wary of all those non-white folks who keep pouring across the border.

N says he dreamt of a map with the directions of Russian aggression against other countries marked with red arrows. There were Georgia, Ukraine, Syria. . .

“And one other country,” he says. “But I don’t remember what it was.”

“You need to remember!” I say. “What if the dream means you accidentally accessed a telepathic network Putin uses to let Russians know who the next enemy is?”

For now, N hasn’t figured out Russia’s next target but he’ll keep trying.

We are now watching Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad spinoff. I resisted the idea of watching this show for a while because I liked neither the character of Saul nor the story line in the original show, but Better Call Saul is proving to be very good.

What I especially like is the unglamorous depiction of lawyering. My students think that nothing can be better than becoming a lawyer and don’t believe me when I tell them that chic offices in Manhattan skyscrapers filled with fashionably dressed, leisurely individuals they see on TV are not what lawyering is like for most people in the profession.

So Hillary won Nevada. I’m very glad.

MSNBC is alternating between “it’s not a real victory” and “imagine how much damage losing would have done to Hillary’s campaign.” There’s nothing she can do to win with them, and it’s not because they are ideologically closer to Bernie or respond better to his campaign. It’s simply because you can squeeze out more coverage from a Bernie win.

As a Russian writer once said to his colleague, “Gosh, it’s such a relief to know you are being a blackguard because you are getting paid for it. I was afraid your heart was in it but if it’s just for money, that’s better.”

The Angel in the House is the famous model of 19th century femininity that positioned a woman as angelically self-sacrificing and completely dedicated to the needs of her family members. The Angel always smiled, never complained, and lived for the sake of her husband and children. She could never allow herself to criticize the husband because her submission to him was supposed to be complete.

Today, many women believe that the greatest goal of feminism was to turn them from Angels in the House into Angels Outside the House. They enact exactly the same kind of self-sacrificing, never complaining, completely submissive femininity and believe that, by virtue of having a job and making money, they have achieved a qualitatively different state of being than their 19th – century sisters. And of course, they feel great resentment because combining the roles of a graceful domestic angel with no needs of her own and of a breadwinner is a pretty lousy gig.

Examples of this resentment abound. The most recent one I’ve seen is an article titled “Having It All Kinda Sucks.” The article’s author rants and raves about feminism that, as she believes, made her life completely sucky. She had a baby a month ago and has worked every day since delivery because money is needed to keep her husband’s business afloat. As she runs around, popping stitches, working and trying to take care of the baby, the worthless gigolo of the husband appears in the kitchen to inquire what the plan is for dinner. After which, the woman drops everything and, without any objection, rushes to fix him dinner.

Of course, if such a fellow surfaced in my general vicinity, he’d soon know that the plan for dinner is to rip out his liver and feed it to coyotes. But that’s because I understand that the goal of feminism is not to give jobs to Stepford wives but to recognize women as fully human, valuable and important. The ecstatic tales of “look how I sacrifice my every need to those of my family” are not about feminism, irrespective of whether the person sharing them receives a paycheck or not.

Recently, there has been a bout of eager linking and retweeting of a study that supposedly demonstrated that female coders were discriminated against because of their gender even when their code was good.

Of course, the actual study demonstrated absolutely nothing of the kind. It showed that coders were judged more harshly whenever they revealed any gender. In the multiple reposts, however, the results of the study were perverted beyond all recognition.

The gleeful reposting of this study was engaged in by people who loudly claim to oppose discrimination. In reality, though, they have such a profound need to inhabit the world where women are victimized that they will invent that world and service this fantasy by falsifying all information that comes their way.

This is the most pernicious kind of sexism because it’s entirely unconscious and masks behind what looks and feels like sincere concern for women. If you try to tell these folks that they are the source of the discrimination they so loudly decry, they will get extremely offended and never believe you.

In Russia, several history teachers got into trouble for presenting to students “a negative image of Stalin.” They are now angrily denounced in the press and hounded at work for mentioning in class that Stalin’s regime incarcerated many people. The teachers are accused of having been bribed by the EU to conduct this anti-Stalin propaganda.