Ya think? We’ve only been saying this forever.

Branch Covidians in the comments are going off their nut because their favorite toy is being taken away.

I left work to sit in my car with AC on full blast and read my book. The office is a fire-pit from hell because nobody can manage to remember how disgustingly hot it can get in October, so there’s no AC.

I’m so into the book I’m reading, it took a lot of willpower not to flake out on my meetings to read it. It’s 681 pages, so basically paradise. Also – stay out of my way, literary snobs – it’s by Jonathan Franzen, and I don’t care what anybody thinks. It’s massively enjoyable. More Anglo authors should write like Franzen. Simple, unadorned, direct writing with no annoying postmodern flourishes.

I spoke to a woman with a brilliant career who says she constantly feels guilty for taking time away from her kids to work.

I feel guilty about many things. Many, many things. But not this one. I’m a much better mother because I have a career. I’m not saying everybody is like me or that I’m a better mother than anybody. What I do know is that I – me, myself, not another person – would be a much, much worse mother if I didn’t work. I’m too much for any kid to bear without spreading the burden. Getting 100% of me would be a punishment. I’d leave no space for her to develop and grow into her own person. I’m intense. Most people are a lot more mellow, and that’s good.

Today, for instance, there was a slight change in Klara’s school schedule. She has to go into a different door, basically. I became completely nuts about it. Wrote six emails to everybody at school and deleted them because it was insane behavior. Asked N to take her and went to work because I was creating unnecessary drama over nothing. At work, I was distracted by a lecture on neoliberalism in Chile, and it got better. But imagine if there were no lecture on neoliberalism. I’d drive the poor kid bonkers.

I do feel guilty when I send her to the park with her Dad and stay reading at home. Which is stupid because they both love it. But a mother’s guilt is an irrational force.

And that’s how it’s been since 2016. They publish incredible garbage. People believe it. Then, there’s a retraction nobody ever sees because people don’t reread last week’s news. The lies become common knowledge.

Trump mocked a disabled reporter! He said Nazis are fine people! An officer was murdered with a fire extinguisher! 900,000 kids hospitalized with COVID! Russia collusion! White boys set a black girl’s hair on fire! A Yale student called the police on a black student who was sleeping in the common room!

Tiny-letter retractions are never noticed. Bamboozled people get more and more invested into the lies with every repetition. I said it myself, so it must be true!

Texas passed a bill that criminalizes abortion. The Hunter Biden laptop story has been debunked. Trump confessed to sexual assault on tape. COVID is very dangerous to children. Floridians aren’t getting vaccinated. A perfectly healthy 22-year old who weighed 400 pounds died of COVID. Fully vaccinated people died but it could be worse.

And on and on and on…