Now Klara has hand, foot and mouth disease. I’ll never finish the darn article about Russian immigrants in the Spanish novel of the crisis. 

It’s curious how often people mistake their own psychological problems for “truths universally acknowledged”: 

What allows us to be happy and satisfied on a daily basis at work? . . In my opinion, the best predictor is how wonderful the people are in our departments and our own labs. What are some other variables that are not as important? In my opinion, that includes funding levels, the type of institution, campus politics, commuting, and many other kinds of stuff.

People described in the linked post make for shitty workers. They believe that work exists in order to provide them with the comforting experience of an idealized, supportive, warm, and cocooning family. They expect a job to fulfill a need that no job is meant to do. In the end, they always end up recreating the unhealthy family dynamic that they come from in the workplace. 

However, they are also the ideal type of neoliberal worker. They come to work in order to satisfy a yearning for relationships and emotional fulfilment. You can mistreat them as you wish, deprive them of funding, undermine their research, create intolerable working conditions, yet they will keep coming for more because they are addicted to the illusion of familial relationships at work. Ask these poor sods to unionize, and all you’ll hear in response is a speech on how wrong it is to be adversarial and antagonistic. 

This week we are going to swap regular plates for saucers. As you sit down for your most significant meal of the day, take out 3 or as many as you need saucers instead and place your food in them. 

Mind you, this is NOT about portion control or weight loss. The goal is not to eat less but to get yourself to try a new way of interacting with with table utensils and food logistics. 

Another terror attack in London? It’s unbelievable how much shit has befallen that city lately. 

A propos the dumb Wonder Woman flick and all of the equally silly Hunger Games and Co, it’s beyond annoying how people keep getting duped into thinking that gender equality is about getting women successfully to mimic the worst stereotypes of the aggressive, ass-kicking, emotionally stunted, sullen, and super-ripped masculinity.

Since when is the goal of feminism to get women to turn into a caricature of manhood’s worst features?

The word I write most often for Klara is her name. As a result, she decided that “Klara” refers not only to herself but to the very act of writing. Now whenever she sees anybody write anything, she says knowingly, “Klara!”

Hey, this Camille Paglia broad is not in the least dumb. I just read an interview with her, and it’s good. I haven’t read anything more insightful on the 3 subjects she covers in a while. Hah. 

I was going to post a quote but there are too many good passages for me to reproduce here. The last paragraph is really great, so make sure you get to the end. 

 

I don’t know why I’m posting food all day today but this cedar-grilled salmon was delicious.

 

 

Does anybody know if these planks are reusable? The packaging doesn’t say.

N says this salmon changed his whole worldview.

The idea that one can make somebody kill themselves through text messages is insane. If some hysteric flipped and offed himself, it’s all on him, and not on whoever texted him. 

He could have always turned off his phone or blocked this particular sender, couldn’t he?

It’s like the idea of individual responsibility is totally dead. If we accept that this Michelle person is criminally liable, then we most certainly have to accept every “I was just following orders” excuse from every uniformed torturer, Nazi, etc. And that’s simply wrong. 

When Klara is sleepy, she motions towards her crib. We put her in the crib and leave. If she doesn’t fall asleep immediately, she sings a little song to herself, shifts around for a while, stares at her fingers, and then falls asleep. Except for actually placing her in the crib, she doesn’t need us to help her fall asleep. 

We never used any of the “let her scream it out and she’ll fall asleep eventually” methods to get this result. We are old parents, and we’d have heart attacks after hearing her scream for 15 seconds, let alone 15 minutes. 

All we did was never put her to sleep anywhere but the crib and never let her do anything but sleep in that crib. We don’t use it as a playpen, and we have never given her a bottle, let alone any food, in the crib. 

This didn’t happen immediately, of course. She needed rocking to sleep when she was an infant. But by the time she was a little over a year old, she learned to put herself to sleep both at night and for her naps during the day.