Six months ago, if asked what they understood by “woke”, most French people would have assumed it had something to do with Chinese cooking. And yet today in Paris, the notion of “le wokisme” is suddenly all the rage. The government warns of a new cultural totalitarianism creeping in from the “Anglosphere”. The education minister has set up a Laboratory of the Republic, dubbed an “anti-woke think tank”, to co-ordinate the fightback. And everywhere the precursors of what might be to come are being reported in the media: a new gender-neutral pronoun, a threatened statue of a dead statesman or a meeting on campus only for black students. For the French, these signifiers of what critics in the UK and US have termed “woke” are all very new and unfamiliar.

Well, good. In Spain, too, there’s a movement to resist this Anglo-inspired garbage. The Spanish government is in thrall to the woke mania but there’s a whole intellectual and artistic movement by the young artists and scholars to oppose it.

Hmm, remember my story about Gorbachev trying to prohibit alcohol and creating a much larger problem?

Somebody is trying to manufacture a drug addiction epidemic in New Zealand. Somebody has gotten a bribe. Somebody needs a drugged population that will be even easier to manipulate.

As we joked in the USSR, the best method of contraception is a condom worn over another condom plus complete abstinence.

Or, the best method of contraception is tomato juice. Before or after sex, you ask? The answer is, instead of!

See you in 6 years, Canadians. Or whatever remains of you by then.

Why do people say that quesadillas are healthy food? I went to an office quesadilla party, and everybody was ecstatic how healthy they were. I’m not a paragon of healthy eating by any measure but quesadillas? There’s nothing in them except salt and carbs.

They also taste something horrid but that’s a different issue.

By a strange coincidence, this is verbatim what Putin has been saying for years:

https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1470762041677914118?t=z0N3ZjCUb9UAGpMIXllqGg&s=19

I’m listening to the videos of a famous Ukrainian psychologist, and he has great suggestions on interacting with small children (up to 10 years of age or so).

Here are some:

1. Don’t tell children what NOT to do. Tell them what to do. A negative command prompts the behavior you are trying to discourage. Instead of “don’t splash water on the floor” say “move the water around gently.” Instead of “don’t leave your backpack by the door” say “put your packpack on the chair in your room.”

It’s all about how the human brain works, and stages of brain development. I said “don’t leave crumbs on the floor” yesterday, and immediately ended up with the floor covered with a layer of crumbs. It’s my own fault because I literally commanded the child to leave crumbs on the floor.

2. Don’t give multi-stage tasks like “take off your shoes, wash your hands, and come to the table.” Instead, give one task (“take off your shoes”), wait for it to be completed. Then give the second task. Wait for it to be completed. Etc.

As somebody said in the comments, this method works on husbands, too. (Not mine. Mine is such a treasure, he doesn’t need to be asked at all. He’s proactive.) Speaking about marriage, this psychologist says that an important symptom of a marriage that is nearing a crisis is when you have no time for yourself. Not the two of you but just your own self. A good marriage gives time and space for each spouse to do something that he or she enjoys doing for him or herself. Why do I lie in a bathtub with a mystery novel for hours? I’m being a good wife by doing it, that’s why.

For Russian speakers, the psychologist’s name is Дмитрий Карпачев, and his videos are all in Russian.

With? Meaning, clearly and undeniably not “of”? I looked up a dozen links. They all say “with.” And they also all say that this somehow means Omicron is not mild.