For the first time, some universities are warning job applicants for Assistant Professor positions that they won’t be helping them get H1B visas. This effectively means that immigrants without green cards shouldn’t apply. 

Knowing what the job market is for people entering the profession, I can’t even blame such universities.

Somehow Klara has already figured out that papa and mama require entirely different strategies of handling. When I come into her room in the morning, I hear that no, she doesn’t want any milk, and she doesn’t want to get dressed, and she really doesn’t want to get changed, and all she wants is night-night, but no, she doesn’t want any night-night, she wants Baby, no, she wants monkey, no, she doesn’t want them, she wants books, no, she doesn’t want books, etc. 

When N is the one to get her up in the morning, she cheerfully accepts the bottle, the change, the toothbrush, the clothes, and everything else. And when I ask N, “So how did it go? Was it exhausting?”, he says that it went perfectly and he has no idea what I’m complaining about.

It’s a conspiracy to make me feel inadequate.

The way propaganda works is that you tell people what they want to hear and casually slip in one or two little things that you want them to hear. 

Let’s say you want to turn public opinion against the union at University X. What you do is join discussions that have nothing to do with the union and whose participants don’t know much and don’t care about it. And then you begin to agree with them, trying to imitate their speech patterns as much as possible.

“You are absolutely right! Trump is such a disaster for this country. And that extremely corrupt family of his? Gosh, it feels like it’s posoning the whole country with its rot. There’s this union at University X – and by the way, I’m completely a union person, and always have been – but this union, it’s completely corrupt in the worst Trumpian manner. And hey, did you see that he’s completely dismantling EPA?”

And then you do the same thing among people discussing the political situation in France, the economy of Indiana, and the results of the recent football game. 

The second time people hear of your union, they will already have a warm and fuzzy memory of a person who has really convincing beliefs and original, valuable ideas telling them the truth about this horrible union. 

I saw this unfold when the war in Ukraine started. Good, wonderful, well-meaning people were reciting outlandish propaganda at me. They had nothing against Ukraine but they were completely convinced by these smart, persuasive folks who told them everything they wanted to hear about things that really mattered to them. Unlike some silly conflict in some boring Ukraine. 

People want to belong. You agree with them on something they care about, and they will gladly repay by agreeing with you on something they don’t see as very important.

Ah, so now it’s the season of “I’m hugely victimized by that time in 1988 when nothing whatsoever happened between me and Kevin Spacey” stories. 

It’s our fault because we all fed these trolls.

I was at a party today at the house of an elementary school teacher and a professor from my school. They have an enormous, beautiful ranch out in the country with incredible views. They are from the area which makes it easier, but still, it’s good to see that a guy who teaches small kids and a woman who works for a state college in a broke state can live so well.

I was invited to the party by people who are not in academia, by the way. Only the couple who invited me and my family weren’t Trump supporters there. Everybody else was. Not that anybody talked about politics. 

Now we are wondering why we didn’t buy a house out in the country. It’s impossibly beautiful there. And we saw cows, which made Klara very happy. I still can’t get over how fat cows are on this continent. Cows back in Ukraine looked very emaciated.

I like N because he is a very complex person. When he opens his mouth, I never know what he is going to say. He’s always studying arcane, unpredictable subjects and develops the strangest hobbies. 

He has very Spartan tastes and still wears the clothes he had when we first met. He’s never had a smartphone and is using a 5-year-old cell he bought at Walmart for $20. And I can’t convince him to let go of a laptop that’s older than our marriage and get a new one because he says it’s still quite usable.

Yet today we went to pick out eyeglasses for him and he chose Salvatore Ferragamo frames. And it wasn’t by mistake. He knows the brand. I supported the choice because he looks sensational in them. 

Not only is trick or treating spread over two days, it also starts at noon and goes until 9 pm. I’m glad it’s not a late-night thing because Klara starts her bath time at 7:15 pm. But noon sounds a little lacking in the scariness department. 

“Busy brain = happy brain.” I recognize myself in this a lot. 

When I blogged back in 2014 that there were international conferences of neo-Nazis in Russia, nobody cared. And now everybody is suddenly noticing the results. I’m so tired of this idiotic provincialism.

A very good post on the Reformation and modernity from Steve. It’s lovely to see somebody who is a great erudite on this subject.

Japan, an experiment in unbridled neoliberalism that is a warning to all of us.

Twitter is horrible and we should all boycott it. Just the fact that it’s Trump’s favorite medium of communication should tell people something.

Total cuteness: the mid-century dining club. 

The New Yorker rehabilitates itself after the ridiculous yet famous piece by Ronan Farrow with a great article on “the family that built an empire of pain.” By the way, I hated the Farrow piece long before I knew he was the son of repugnant people.

Whatever else is wrong with Walmart, it has the most courteous, professional salespeople ever. They should be unionized.

I’m like a broken record, saying that everybody should be unionized but what can I do? I’m a bit obsessed.

Folks, I need your help. I’ll tell you a story and you’ll let me know if I’m completely deranged and need to get over myself, OK? I’ll be very happy to do so if there’s a popular consensus.

I’m on a committee that audits the work of one of the University’s academic departments. We talk to students and faculty, conduct surveys, visit the facilities, and in the end rank the department’s performance. If we rank it as unsatisfactory, it has to cease operations immediately because that means it’s not doing its job. This is called academic self-governance. The administration doesn’t do this. Only faculty revise each other’s work in complete anonymity. I happen to think it’s a very important principle, and I take this work very seriously.

Usually, we get together as a committee, decide the ranking, create a list of recommendations for the department and the administration, and write a report explaining our recommendations. That’s how it usually works. 

This time, though, everybody decided (without me) that we will write the report first, and then the recommendations will somehow come out of that. We will all be writing separate sections in Dropbox without meeting in person and agreeing on what we want to recommend and why. There was never any discussion of anything. 

So now I’m completely stumped. I don’t want to be difficult and complicate anybody’s life but I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to be writing about the recommendations nobody has outlined. This is all supposed to be done over the weekend, so I have no chance to talk to anybody. This is the fifth time I’m doing this committee, and I never had a problem before. I simply fail to understand this method of collective writing in complete isolation.

Am I being rigid? Am I a contrarian bitch? Should I just write any vague bullshit and agree to sign my name to the recommendations I never approved?

Sorry for a long post.