My Twitter feed is filled with people repeating that they don’t care about the royal family. Unless the Queen died (and I hope she didn’t, obviously), I don’t want to know what’s provoking this round of insistent and repetitive not caring. But it’s certain that nobody declares such a lack of caring unless they really care.

A friend says she can’t meet because it’s tax season and she gets extra shifts at work. Her job is doing African hairstyles at the mall. I’m sure there’s a connection between her job and the tax season that I’m missing. Can anybody explain this?

I’d ask her myself but I won’t see her until next weekend.

I see this kind of thing, and it makes me not want to buy the product. Not because I didn’t know that Goya is “Hispanic-owned” but because I had my fill of this cheap, contemptuous didacticism back in the USSR.

But that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that in the USSR nobody was so excruciatingly stupid that they’d sincerely think this is a good thing. And here there are people who are that. . . simple. If at least we could all roll our eyes at this and scoff, that would make things easier. But the way everything is, you never know who in your acquaintance might be taking this – or the masks, or “the most diverse cabinet in history,” or “Biden solved poverty,” etc – seriously.

Klara slept in, and I had a chance to talk to my husband at breakfast. It was extremely refreshing. Normally, I feel like my own husband’s mistress, taking long luck breaks and sneaking out of office in the middle of the day to spend 30 minutes together on our own.

The feeling of always wanting to be together but never managing it really spices up a relationship. But I miss my husband, dang it!

The conference ended last night. Even though it was online, it was brilliant. It’s organized by one guy, and I have absolutely no idea how he manages to hold such a large event completely on his own twice a year. He’s promising that the next time it will be held in Cartagena de las Indias, for sure sure sure. I don’t necessarily believe this but this particular conference I’ll attend even if it’s online.

This was the second time I’m in this conference, and when I saw the panel where the organizer put me, I felt discouraged. The other speakers are in a different field and seemed completely unconnected to my research. But the moment the first person in my panel began to speak, it’s like lights were turned on. The organizer didn’t group us by genre, country, or time period. He grouped us on the basis of the ideas we were developing. How he managed to do this for 200 speakers is a mystery but the result is that I never have such intense, productive conversations as at this conference.

Another thing is that in terms of technology everything was perfect. I’m speaking at a large institutional conference next week, and they have already messed up the technology part. In order to sign into your Zoom room, you need to download an app, enter it, register, request a link, and so on and so forth. It’s fascinating how one guy can organize a conference a million times better than a bunch of organizing committees. He even sends out goodie bags for the online conferences! It doesn’t feel like a conference without a goodie bag, which large institutional conferences don’t understand.