Yes, I changed the way the blog looks. Just to shake things around a bit.

As I was doing it, I noticed that we are closing up on 6,000,000 visits. That’s insane! It would have been a lot more, of course, if I hadn’t taken down most of the archive out of fear of persecution.

On the subject of being happy in academia, I have an article due on September 1. Another one due on October 1. And another one due on January 1. Of course, I’m also writing a book. So yes, I’m happy in academia.

By the way, the article that is due on September 1 is all about mocking Almudena Grandes’s doorstop of a novel titled Frankenstein’s Mother. I’m enjoying the process of writing it immensely. God, I hate that novel.

And the article due on October 1 is about Ana Iris Simon’s novel Feria that created all that scandal in Spain because it ridiculed leftist pieties.

I kept wondering why I ended up in this random small town. But now I know. I was meant to spend this pandemic here because if I’d stayed in Montreal or had a job in Chicago, like I always wanted, I would have died of apoplexy last year. No disrespect to people living there but I’m not made for that kind of thing.

Parts of Australia are in lockdown again?? Even crazy Canada is starting to reopen. What’s wrong with English-speaking countries that aren’t the US? Why have they been so insane? I’ve still not seen an explanation for the shared COVID lunacy of such geographically and climatically distant societies as the UK, Canada, and Australia.

I’m still upset over a ten-week lockdown I experienced in April-May of 2020. We’ve been back to normal since then but I’m still not over that ridiculousness. For people to stay in it for over a year – I have no words. I mean, I do but I don’t want to make anybody feel bad.

Somebody on Twitter asked if academics liked their jobs. The result was a thousand-comment thread of sheer wonderfulness. Aside from a couple of “structural inequalities” freaks, everybody else loves their job and is very happy. It’s the best thing I’ve ever read on Twitter because people dropped the performative academic misery and were honest.

Folks, here’s a really funny, very well-written article. The author is probably one of those pronoun-listing AOC supporters but he’s talented.

Here’s an example of what happened to the gigantically popular anti-austerity movements.

In Spain, there was a massive protest movement against austerity. People congregated in plazas by the million and refused to leave. A new political party was created and immediately gained gigantic popularity. Huge electoral success. Immense bipartisan support. Yippee. This was all in 2011-12.

Then, as if by magic, the anti-austerity party rebranded and came out as a neoliberal party interested in nothing but identity politics. Women with penises, open borders, toppling statues, hunting imaginary fascists, that sort of thing. Of course, voters noticed and the former anti-austerity party collapsed in the polls. A far-right party (something unimaginable in Spain as recently as 2014) sprang up and started doing amazingly well at the polls because it’s at least pushing back against mutilating kids to please women with penises. Nobody speaks about austerity any more, of course.

Austerity used to be of interest. Millions of young people in different countries protested against it. And then ta da! Social media explode, everybody gets glued to a smartphone, all mentions of austerity evaporate, and instead mentions of racismracismracism explode.

Amazon and Netflix aren’t promoting books and videos about poverty, inequality, neoliberalism, austerity, or anything of the kind. Instead, they plaster one’s screen with anti-racist babies and all that silliness. Because “anti-racism” is not endangering their profit streams. To the contrary, it helps the bottom line.

All of these people who are loudly debating CRT in schools, where were they when millions of kids were deprived of schools and forced to stare at screens? That’s more damaging to kids than decades of CRT conditioning. Why did nobody care? When education money was diverted from actual education and handed over to Microsoft and Google? Which, by the way, is textbook austerity. Where are the discussions of how money is being diverted from medical services and given to telemedicine companies or Pfizer/Moderna? That’s austerity, but even the word is now forgotten.

Oh, and I didn’t even mention being denied access to education unless you get vaccinated for an illness that doesn’t threaten you. Where is a protest against the deaths and heart attacks of young people caused by COVID “vaccines”? The only people who are talking about it are, once again, the same old Gen X and boomer oldsters. The young people are accepting it all with the patience of sheep because Facebook didn’t tell them they need to be upset.

They come out in droves to support BLM in countries with no black population. But something that directly affects them – nope. Not at all.

The anti-lockdown crowd is all 40+-years-old. That is, the generation that isn’t suffering that badly from the lockdowns. It’s easier to find an 88-year-old who is passionately against the lockdowns than an 18yo or 28yo.

The anti-CRT crowd is all oldsters. Sometimes, a crazy mom drags out some poor 8yo and forces the kid to recite something for the crowd but other than that it’s all middle-aged people. Where are the actual 18-year-olds who are being told that being black makes them pathetic losers who’ll never amount to anything?

Where are the young people who are – I’m not even saying protesting but at least having some reaction to being so obviously and cynically duped about college loan forgiveness? Where are the young people speaking out against being priced out of real estate by Blackrock and Co? The only folks who have a problem with it already have houses that are mostly paid off.

I’ll tell you where they are. Watch the cartoon I posted last night. That’s where they are. They are glued to their devices, awaiting the orders from some rich bastard to join some neoliberal BLM or climate shock troop.

So please don’t tell me that the destruction of human subjectivity by surveillance capitalism is not a big deal. It’s a very, very big deal. We are soon not going to have any people capable of questioning anything that the owners of social media companies want them to believe.

A great cartoon, friends. Please watch.

https://twitter.com/mandystadt/status/1409194649399414787?s=19