So to finish my story about Russian suffixes, the problem is that there are very few feminine suffixes for professions. And remember that Russian adjectives are gendered. There isn’t really such a word as ” a physicist” or “a professor.” The suffixes turn these words into ” male physicist” or “male professor.” One can stick the word “female” in front but then the whole construction turns into “a female male doctor.” It’s so annoying! 

I keep saying things like ” our pediatrician who is a woman talked to the HR director who is also a woman.” It sounds beyond dumb but what can one do?

So after we raised the tiniest of stinks about the health insurance, money suddenly appeared and part of unpaid claims was magically covered. And it was a very small stink. There wasn’t even a rally or any newscasts.

If anybody tells you that protesting is useless  and speaking out is a waste of time , don’t believe them. If we don’t allow anybody to distract us with discussions of walls, ancestries, or any such crap, we can make things happen.

I never used Airbnb because I detest staying in strangers’ houses, it feels too Soviet. But now I’m definitely not going to be using it. Airbnb has gone nuts and is asking all customers to sign something nauseatingly called “Community Commitment”:

You commit to treat everyone—regardless of race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or age—with respect, and without judgment or bias.

If you don’t sign like an  obedient little child, you can’t use the service . Please note that no business is signing any pledges not to ddiscriminate, exploit or abuse the workers or the environment . We somehow owe a business venture the right to police our emotions or judgments but no business offers us any pledge of, say, offering parental leave or wage growth.
Fuck that shit, Airbnb. Go lecture somebody else on respect and community.

In a Friday call to Sara Danius, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Dylan said he would accept the award. “The news about the Nobel Prize left me speechless,” he said. “I appreciate the honour so much.”

Speechless for two whole weeks, eh? Of all attention seeking tricks, this sounds like a particularly pathetic one. 

The vocabulary of the Russian language is quite poor. Next to the OED, its Russian equivalent looks like a Kleenex next to War and Peace . The paucity of actual words in the language is ccompensated , however, by an enormous number of suffixes and prefixes. They can be attached to words together, separately, several at once, creating new words that transmit the minutest shades of meaning . I come up with new words on a daily basis because it’s so much fun.

Now you can see why the vocabulary of swear words in Russian is so rich. If you take 30 prefixes and 30 suffixes, how many words can you create on the basis of just 10 slurs? Are there any mathematicians here who can give us an estimate ? Remember that a  word can have a prefix, a suffix, or both.