I’m so tired of people emoting around me that I started to reread Victoria Helen Stone’s Jane Doe books. The last thing I have time to do is reread anything but I can’t resist. Jane Doe is supposed to be an unfeeling, manipulative, cold sociopath but I find her refreshingly normal. She thinks more than feels, and it’s kind of sad that this, and not the opposite, is considered maladaptive.
The first book in the series is free on Prime, and the second is free on Kindle Unlimited. Reads like a breeze.
The number of students who are telling me they struggle with anxiety and depression is unprecedented in my career. And before anybody suggests I’m causing this, professors at other departments are saying the same. Everybody expected attendance problems because of COVID but they never materialized. Instead, students can’t study because they are depressed, paralyzed by panic attacks, covered in eczema because of stress, etc.
Adults aren’t doing much better. Everybody is on something, be it booze, weed, or scrips just to be able to get through the day. I don’t fully understand what’s causing this. I have heard explanations but I’m not feeling them. But it’s disturbing. I know two people who are behaving very erratically, and these are people I’d never seen in this state. One – a man in his early fifties – started weeping when I made a casual comment about the weather. “Hey, finally it’s nice outside!” I said, and the poor man started shaking, with tears rolling down his face. I’m friendly with his wife, and I know there haven’t been any events that caused this. Nobody died, nobody is sick or unemployed.
We didn’t have any lockdowns to speak of in this area. No vaccine mandates, nothing. So it’s not like people have been locked up for two years and are now devolving.
This boy is 16 years old. He’s been sentenced to a 5-year jail term because when he was 14 he and his friends were playing Minecraft in a way the government doesn’t like. They built a structure (in Minecraft, not in reality) that resembled a federal building and joked about blowing it up. In Minecraft, not in reality. They didn’t blow it up, in Minecraft or in reality but the authorities found out that the boys were doing very well in chemistry at school. Which must mean they are preparing terrorist attacks. So they got arrested on terrorism charges.
The boy’s name is Nikita Uvarov, and this is all taking place in Russia. Nikita is one of thousands of very young boys who, in recent years, were arrested on these kinds of charges, often beaten, tortured, raped, and jailed over pretty much nothing.
They all have something in common. They are very young, usually between 13 and 17 years of age. And there’s something else. Look at this boy’s face. What does his appearance tell you?
Yes, he’s ethnically Russian. The authorities are waging a war on these boys to make room for the replacement population, which speaks no or little Russian and is very easy to exploit and get to vote as needed. The crime rates – especially in what concerns sex crimes – among the replacement population are sky-high but the police are distracted by its hunt for Minecraft-playing boys who do well in school and like chemistry.
At trial, Nikita said, “If I’m convicted, I’ll serve my time with dignity because my conscience is clear. I did nothing wrong. I simply had friends and spent time with them.”
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