Not only is Bryan Cranston a lousy actor who completely spoiled Breaking Bad, he’s also a moron. The guy isn’t young. He achieved everything. Groveling and whelping like a pathetic, needy puppy at his age is unseemly and revolting.

And I said years ago he’s a shit actor.

Every time I plan to spend a romantic day with my husband and we both take vacation days, some sort of weather apocalypse ensues. First, it was a snowstorm. Now it’s freezing rain. Road closures haunt our romantic plans.

Before anybody starts smartassing about how road conditions relate to romantic dates, remember that we have a small child. If she’s not in school, nothing romantic is happening.

Folks, what’s a good laptop? I need recommendations. Not a Mac, not touchscreen, and ideally not one of those evil things where you have to log into Outlook every time you want to use it. Something that wouldn’t give me any trouble for at least 3 years and not run out of local memory immediately.

I’ve been extraordinarily unlucky with laptops. As a result, I have only desktops at home and at work. But now I need something portable. What would you get that’s low-maintenance, sturdy, and doesn’t have any unnecessary fanciness of touchscreens or other weird stuff? Size, weight, battery – none of that matters. I want something that I can open and start working. The last one I had couldn’t be started without Outlook, and I hate it for it.

And please don’t say refurbished if you don’t want to hurry me to my grave. I already had refurbished and am still waking up with night terrors from it.

Do you have a laptop that serves you well? Please drop links.

I’m liking the NYTimes Wordle a lot more than the original. I’m still undefeated in both English and Spanish but at least now words aren’t super easy. Yesterday, I actually had to make an effort.

Spanish almost defeated me a couple of days ago with the word “litio” (lithium) but I still won in the last-ditch effort.

In Russian I already lost several times because I can’t figure out the principle behind the choice of word forms and parts of speech. Some adverbs are allowed but some aren’t. The same for diminutives. Of course. We are Russian-speakers. The rules aren’t for us. We’ll do what the little toe on our left foot wants. I shouldn’t complain. I’m like that, too. I’m yet to meet a rule I didn’t immediately try to break.

Speaking about truckers, I’m about to give an in-person public talk about Peru in my new t-shirt in support of Canadian truckers.

In a public school in Quebec, a teacher announced in class to a group of 12-year-old students that people at the trucker protests are Nazis.

I feel profound disgust.

Somebody taught Klara to say “y’all” and “piller” instead of pillow, so now it’s all, “and where’s mah favorite piller, y’all?” It’s hilarious.

The government of Quebec plans to cancel vaccine passports starting on March 14.

Thing is, vaccines were always an excuse. They were training wheels for permanent suspensions of civil liberties, private property, etc. The moment Trudeau announced that you can be arbitrarily separated from your property, the vaccine passports became unnecessary.

Do you want to know the next step?

The next step is having to do specific things to deserve having access to your bank account. We are a short distance away from having to read certain material, watch certain videos, and post certain slogans to be able to access your own money.

Prove you don’t feel any sympathy for protesters. Film yourself throwing stones at them, vandalizing their houses, hurting their children. Make a public statement repudiating an ideologically unreliable friend or relative. Present an offer of proof to have your bank account unfrozen.

Everybody who showed their vaccine passport has contributed to making this possible. Remember, you can’t comply your way into something better. Compliance always invites more abuse.

We have to provide syllabi for courses that haven’t been taught in forever. Everybody is running around like a beheaded chicken. “But what do we do? This is catastrophic! How do I create dozens of syllabi on the spot?”

I sat down and made 6 syllabi for different languages in under 10 minutes. What? How? The courses are intermediate conversation 2 in Greek, Russian, German, Italian, Arabic, and Yoruba. I took the existing syllabus for Spanish, did find and replace for the word “Spanish” and pasted photos of corresponding countries at the top. Changed the textbook, played around with fonts, so they don’t look identical, and it’s all done.

People are either pathologically honest or like needless drama.