“What is this, Klara?” I ask, pointing at a very messy corner with toys and books. “What do you call this, young lady?”

“It’s chaos, Mommy,” she says calmly. “The adjective is chaotic. The synonyms are messy and dirty. The antonyms are…”

Of course, I collapse with laughter and don’t manage to tell her off for the mess. Thankfully, she was so gratified by the effect of her response that she cleaned up with needing further imprecations.

For white collar workers, #MeToo, BLM and the rainbows are what strikes were for factory workers 100 years ago. They are the picket lines created in an attempt to prevent employers from firing them in favor of cheaper workers who’ll agree to work in poorer conditions. It’s usually the low-rung, most dispensable people at an organization who do pronouns and BLM slogans in email signatures.

Since I’m on this topic, yesterday I was asked about the difference between capitalism in the manufacturing stage and today. Here’s the answer: factory capitalism needed people. It needed them to come and stay put, showing up dependably every day at the conveyor belt. Digital or neoliberal capitalism doesn’t need people. It wants them to go away. The capitalism of firing substituted the capitalism of hiring.

The first thing our new top administrator said to us is that there are too many people. These were his literal words, too many people. He proceeded to firing everybody in sight with fanatical zeal. Nothing is more annoying to a neoliberal than workers, payrolls, all these people expecting to be paid, demanding working conditions, vacations, sick days, leaving at the strike of five pm, encumbered with families – what a bother.

This is why there’s a vogue of putting “diverse people” in leadership roles. They can do the firing without the employees managing to BLM or LGBTQIA+ them. They are the strikebreakers.

True Detective is a brilliant show. Beautifully made. Such talent. Of course, there’s the requisite propaganda: the guy who is against globalism and for school choice turns out to be a murderer pedophile. But there’s always propaganda, what can you do?

We are watching the first season but I heard the second sucked. Should we skip it and go to the third? Or is that not great either?

Before True Detective we tried watching Peaky Blinders. But it was so corny, repetitive and stupidly woke that we gave up. As I said, there’s propaganda everywhere but at least in True Detective it’s not all there is.

I wanted to share a little video of Kharkiv before the war:

The fountains were always really famous. And the cathedrals but you only see a tiny part here.

Trump made “the darkest, most divisive speech in US history” at his inauguration. Biden made “the darkest, most divisive, etc” yesterday. I obviously never watched either, so maybe it’s the same speech. Whatever any president says, the speech is going to be “the darkest, most divisive,” so why waste time on writing any speeches? Make an avatar of a generic president repeating on a loop “I’m dark and divisive,” and everybody will be happy.

What’s funny is that both Trump and Biden are simultaneously extremely strong and extremely weak to their detractors. Biden is a senile old fool who can barely walk but he’s also a terrifying dictator. Trump was a terrifying dictator, too, but at the same time a puppet of the Russians. How you can be simultaneously a puppet and a dictator, senile and authoritarian is never explained.

But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is how unimaginative and repetitive this all is. Nazi, fascist, dictator, democracy in danger, genocide, Nazi, fascist. . . No, you are the real racist! No, you are!