I love everything about the American higher ed. Except for this kind of thing. I already heard enough of this earnest, fiery crap back in the USSR. I don’t want to hear it again.

In 2015, when 32 people burned to death in Romania, hundreds of thousands of people came out into the streets to protest against corruption that caused the tragedy. It

Yesterday, 300 children burned to death in Russia because of exactly the same kind of corruption. Nobody has come out to protest so far. I’m still hoping people will wake up but for now nobody seems to care.

From Five Thirty Eight:
Politics Podcast: How Should The Media Cover Stormy Daniels’s Story?

It shouldn’t. “The story” is completely ridiculous and I can’t wait for it to stop littering my news feed.

So here are some research-related questions I have.

1. Does it make any sense to invest time into publishing in conference proceedings? or should I just concentrate on writing my article (which is going to become part of the new book)?
2. What’s better, publishing an article in a journal or a chapter in an edited collection? There is an edited collection that screams my current research topic, but I got some sense recently that edited collections don’t rank as highly as journal publications. Is that true?
3. Is it crucial to try to become an editor of an edited collection? Or is it better to get the new book out as soon as possible since there is interest in it?

I finally found time to read FOSTA. I don’t comment on issues on the basis of what somebody somewhere said about them. I read the actual text or I don’t opine.

FOSTA is one of those last-ditch efforts by the nation-state to battle fluidity. A nation-state can’t exist without a shared morality dictated and policed by the state. It needs to claim supremacy over the only God that is massively worshiped without reservations today, namely, the freedom to consume.

The nation-state will lose this battle, just like it will lose all of them. The freedom to consume will win. Fluid morality in the service of global flows of capital will remain uncontested. Score a win for progress. Yippee.

Saying and doing are completely different things. Sounds trivial but people often forget about that.

Many think that Theresa May actually did something in response to Russia’s poisoning of people on its territory. In reality, she did a whole bunch of nothing, thereby showing Putin that it’s ok to keep on with his aggression. But she blustered, so everybody thinks she’s really on it.

Or take election meddling. Russia has meddled like there is no tomorrow in every European election for at least 10 years. And if nobody ever tried to address or even acknowledge it, that’s because everybody is happy about it.

Or look at Zuckerberg. All of his bleating about feminism and all of his covering himself in rainbow flags foot to toe are completely meaningless. He’ll sell you to the first passing woman-hater or homophobe because it’s convenient. That’s what his actions prove.