You know how whenever there’s cake at work, there are always at least two women in the group who will engage in a weird, masturbatory performance around the cake?

“Should I have a slice? No, I really shouldn’t. But I was so good at lunch today! And at breakfast! I had almost no breakfast! Do you think I can have some? I’ve had no dessert in a week!”

And all the time I want to yell, “You don’t have to ‘be good’ to have it. Eat the cake, don’t eat that cake, but quit the spectacle already.”

Totally reminds me of how the COVID crowd engages with reality. “If I’m really good, maybe I’ll be allowed to travel in 6 months.” You can already travel. And eat cake. And travel while eating cake. Or not. Just stop performing your neurosis in front of everybody.

OT: why are the words “cake” and “cookies” so ugly? They sound like something is stuck in one’s throat.

People are so gullible.

Biden called Putin a murderer! Putin challenged Biden to a debate! Such a great own!

What do you think matters to Putin more, this childish name-calling or that Biden is making gas prices skyrocket removed the ban on Russia and China selling weapons to Iran, and rolled over on Nordstream 2?

Yes, Putin is stupid but he isn’t as stupid as the folks who think words are magical and matter more than actions.

Biden is pro-Putin because his actions are. Nothing but actions matters.

A famous Spanish writer wants me to call her on WhatsApp. I’ve never used WhatsApp. Does anybody know how it works? Is it like a regular phone conversation? She sent me a phone number, so I guess it is. Or not?

I’m panicking right now.

I’m really eager to read this book:

I don’t know about the 1960s, but by the 1970s Soviet art went from featuring powerful feminist women to being overwhelmingly about embittered harpies dreaming of patriarchy and weak, pathetic men who couldn’t satisfy that need. It became an obsessive topic of Soviet literature and film throughout the 1980s and 1990s. I have my ideas about why that massive change happened but it’s interesting to see what actual scholars have to say.

So yes, there definitely was a massive masculinity and femininity crisis in the USSR. A massive and rapid disruption in gender roles isn’t a road to paradise. It’s a road to extreme psychological and social dysfunction. I became a feminist in response to witnessing this dysfunction first-hand, and this is why my feminism (and that of all of us from my part of the world) is different. Everything that Western feminists dream of, we already had that. And it wasn’t good.

I don’t know how this author manages to separate the Soviet masculinity crisis from the Soviet femininity crisis. They were absolutely part of the same phenomenon. It’s something that I find endlessly fascinating. Westerners would greatly benefit from learning something about other parts of the world. There are lessons that can be learned from our experience. There is no need to reinvent the wheel so painstakingly and dumbly.