In the entire twenty-first century, there wasn’t a single month in the US when the number of black homicide victims would be over 1,000. Then, in May of 2020, that changed. Every remaining month of 2020 saw more than 1,000 black victims. In July of 2020, the number spiked to over 1,400. That’s twice what it was just a few months before in February 2020. I don’t think anybody would disagree that this is a dramatic and scary change. And it’s not a fluke but a trend that continued unabated.

Of course, there’s absolutely no explanation what could have caused this horrible spike starting in May 2020. This mystery will remain unsolved.

An absolutely shocking article about “sensitivity readers” – or simply put, censors – who do a Soviet-style culling of English-language books.

Reading the article almost immediately after I finished Chirbes’s diaries is a disturbing experience. There’s not a single word in the diaries that these censors would allow. Thankfully, Chirbes will never hear about “sensitivity readers” because he died before English speakers managed to export this Soviet throwback everywhere else.

I hold no grudges against people I know but I have intense, very long, unrelenting fits of rage against being mistreated by authority.

For instance, today I went all out to help a colleague who’s been nothing but shit to me for years. I sincerely don’t care that he’s lousy to me. It’s on him. I can’t be bothered to notice.

I discovered that somebody at work hates me and is spreading really crazy, vile rumors about me. This piece of news bores me so much I keep forgetting it. It gets comical when I meet the hater in the hallway, vaguely remember that I recently heard something about her and make an exaggeratedly happy face to conceal that I don’t remember what it was. Then I notice her outraged gaze and remember that what I recently heard was that she detests me.

However, that one single time when I had to wear a mask in the classroom – I’ll hold that grudge close to my heart forever. On my dying bed I will burn with indignation over it. Because it was done to me against my will.

There’s no chance I’m ever getting over a single lie I heard on the news, the “anti-racist books” we were forced to read against our will, the COVID lies. Twenty lifetimes are not enough to get over it.

Often, people are the other way round. They obsess over a single unintentional snub from a friend or an ignored text message from a relative but have no anger to spare over having to walk around in a face diaper for two years or having to inject some weird crap to be able to eat at a restaurant.

We should be kinder to each other and a lot less kind to institutions, organizations, agencies, and authorities.