By the way, very conservative right is surging in elections in Argentina and Chile. A little bit more COVID lunacy, and I wonder what we’ll see in Europe. Interesting developments await us.

Finally, Klara has discovered the beauty of decorating one’s planner as a hobby. We spent two blissful hours today decorating our planners.

If anybody is tempted to ask what a 5-year-old could be planning, that’s a surefire sign they have no understanding of what decorating a planner is all about. It’s an artistic and aesthetic experience.

I agree that the behavior depicted here is undignified and idiotic but “city as a brand” and, even more disturbingly, “country as a brand” is a terrible idea.

In my book on crisis literature, I have a few pages on how the concept of Spain as a brand was developed and what kind of people were put in charge of the project. The only reason it was done was to hide the destruction of public services and the impoverishment of the people. We deserve real nations and real cities, not some stupid marketing projects.

JK Rowling’s Robert Galbraith mysteries turned out to be a lot better than I expected and now I’m a huge fan of the series.

Her recent book for little kids, though, is very bad. The plot is tortured. The story is humorless and narrated in a clumsy, annoying tone. The main character is supremely unlikeable. And he’s a little boy! How do you even manage to make an 8-year-old boy sound anything but cute?

Rowling is a capable writer but the reason why the book is so horrid is that her philosophy of childhood is completely off. She sees 8-year-olds as oversized toddlers. Kids are a lot better than what she portrays them.

I’m not criticizing Rowling for any political reason. In fact, I’m a dedicated supporter of her fight for women’s rights. But I’m a literary critic first, and the book stinks.

Here’s a hilarious video depicting the “he crossed state lines” cult.

I happen to live right next to the “state line,” and many of us in this area cross state lines to go to the toilet, so the pompous invocations of “state lines” are particularly funny. We now joke about this with friends.

“Hey, want to go to that brunch place we did last week?”

“What? And cross the state lines? Living on the edge, baby. OK, I’ll do it but don’t tell my Dad. He already had one heart attack. I don’t want to scare him too much.”

It’s easy to dunk on Canada but we are going in this direction, too: