Ukrainian Wordle decided to be lazy today and used the same word as the NYTimes Wordle. I feel cheated.

What have you changed your mind about in the past year? This is an exercise I regularly propose to help us discover whether we have become too rigid in our thinking.

I’ve changed my mind on a bunch of things recently.

1. Translation. Throughout the spring semester, I kept telling my translation students that I’m never going to work as a paid translator again. It was done, it was all in the past, I had moved on. And now I’m translating for money again, enjoying it massively, and planning to continue.

2. I was completely sure Russia wouldn’t invade Ukraine until the actual moment of the invasion. I tend to hyper-intellectualize everything and forget about the power of emotions. An invasion would be so irrational and stupid that I thought Russians would never do it. But as always, my belief in the power of rationality played a bad joke on me. Many people were in the same situation but instead of accepting that we were completely wrong, they have tried to evade an encounter with reality and kept arguing that the war wasn’t happening.

3. I was sure that I’d never vote D again because I’d never get over the lockdowns and the riots. I’m still not over the lockdowns and the riots but if Republicans don’t run any candidates with John McCain’s lucidity on Russia, I’ll have to cover my nose from the bad stench and go with the Ds. Although I’m hoping I wouldn’t have to.

These are the three big ones this year so far. What are yours?

Russians are delivering most of the strikes from their own territory. Even when Ukraine retakes all of the occupied territories, there’s absolutely nothing to prevent Russia from making sporadic strikes on Ukrainian shopping malls, hospitals, or residential areas pretty much forever. Or for as long as Russia exists.

Can anybody suggest any solution to this problem that isn’t disbanding the Russian Federation? It’s not a rhetorical question. I sincerely see no other solution.

Our new top administrator is proving to be exactly as neoliberal as he was during the job interview. You have to give it to the guy, he’s honest. Never misrepresented himself, never pretended to be less neoliberal than he is. But now everybody is upset. “He’s saying there will be a hiring freeze and personnel cuts! How could he?” He can because he told us he would and we hired him. So he’s doing exactly what brought him the job. “He’s pretending that our sister university doesn’t exist!” Yes, just like he did during the job interview where he didn’t mention the sister university a single time.

We had 4 candidates. We chose the most neoliberal one. A large hiring committee filled with the same faculty members who are now complaining chose him. So whom should we now blame? It’s definitely not the candidate, in my opinion.

Seeing the photos of Setenil de las Bodegas in Spain makes me acutely aware of how much stronger some people’s nervous system is than mine. I can’t see the picture without freaking out, let alone want to be there.