As reported yesterday, dismissal of the two Indian-American principals was inevitable as soon as Musk completed his acquisition. Agrawal and Gadde, who clashed with Musk in the days leading to the takeover over purported fake accounts and censorship, were literally shown the door, reportedly escorted out of the Twitter headquarters.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.timesofindia.com/business/india-business/fired-by-elon-musk-parag-agrawal-and-vijaya-gadde-are-said-to-exit-with-big-payouts/amp_articleshow/95150997.cms

Of course, they will get sky-high payouts to make themselves scarce but these are very unhealthy people who shouldn’t be anywhere where they can unleash their fanaticism on others.

The current big thing in Russia is the endlessly repeated news that the UK has been reduced to such poverty that a quarter of the population can’t afford toilet paper, soap or shampoo. As all propaganda, this is ancient and boring. We already heard all this back in the USSR. Yet people still believe it and nod sagely to the news of the miserable Brits who haven’t seen a bar of soap or a roll of toilet paper since summer.

In recent years, activists in the film and publishing worlds have tried to create a kind of moral monopoly over certain topics by maintaining that no one can speak about injustice that they haven’t experienced. Such injustice, in fact, now seems to be as carefully guarded as a financial asset — which, in some ways, it is.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/10/inside-the-shameful-cancellation-of-jihad-rehab-2/

This goes right to the heart of the issue. It’s “markets in everything,” including in every piece of wokester lunacy. Victim status is a good mine, and it only makes sense to stake out your claim and fend off interlopers.

There’s only that much time and attention that you can give to things (as clearly evidenced by my school closure fail this morning), so I have no idea what’s happening in Iran. I know there are protests, I know what provoked them but I have no idea what the protesters are trying to achieve. Usually, when a protest is provoked by a specific egregious event, it takes people a bit of time to define what they want to happen. In Ukraine in 2014, the government murdered a group of unarmed students, which provoked the protests. Soon enough, the protesters figured out that what they really wanted was a functioning democracy and they got one. Also they got war but democracy never comes cheaply.

Does anybody know what the Iranian protesters want at this point? Democracy? A secular state? A hijab ban? Something else?

I woke Klara up early and dragged her to school only to realize that there’s no school today.

“Why did you wake me up if there’s no school, Mommy?” Klara asked.

“Because I’m a bloody idiot,” I replied.

“I don’t know what that means,” Klara said primly, “but I hope it means ‘best mommy ever’ because that’s what you are.”

I’m still feeling like a bloody idjit because I didn’t have to wake up early either. I can’t wait for October to end and my busy season to recede into memory.

At the parent-teacher conference, Klaras teacher told me that Klara gave a little presentation on borscht in class because it’s her favorite food. Then the teacher showed me Klara’s drawings, in which every human and animal holds the Ukrainian flag.

After that, the teacher asked me how long ago I came to the US from… Russia.