Right-wing ADHD and left-wing OCD are always battling each other, and the OCD tends to win. Persistence vs protean excitability is a predictable contest.

Isn’t it curious, though, that the proponents of changeable, flighty fluidity are like pitbulls with a bone regarding everything they want while the defenders of stability are malleable and movable?

The terrible impact of COVID mitigation on learning at every level is a very important topic. However, in what concerns the linked article, I’m overwhelmed by the learned helplessness and extreme entitlement of everybody involved. COVID looks like a tiny blip on the surface of a much bigger problem.

The new post on the Ukrainian blog is about my favorite Soviet spy novel. Plus, I added everybody’s favorite comment panel and a couple other things for the ease of use. I also got my first two visitors from Russia, which is weird but what are you going to do?

Douglas Murray is great, and I highly recommend his recent article about the British civil service scandal. Here’s a little quote:

When I survey the current state of Britain, apart from needing to lie down, I always face one question. When was it that the grown-ups disappeared, or otherwise chose to vacate the room? How is it that the party of Gordon Brown is simulating horror at the throwing of a cherry tomato? That civil servants complain if someone doesn’t like their homework? That the trial of the Deputy Prime Minister is being carried out by a man who boasts about commendations for his written work and for being ‘kind’? When did we all become such drips?

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/where-have-all-the-grownups-gone/

When one hears the accusations of bullying advanced by the complaining civil servants, one does think it’s a bad comedy show. That adult people would think it’s ok to infantilize themselves to such a degree is extraordinary.

But their affected childishness isn’t the real problem. Remember how I recently posted about the meeting agenda with pre-planned feelings? “We leave this meeting energized and confident…” Remember also the budget meeting that the administration tried to open with a conversation about our feelings over the Memphis video?

Here’s the deal: the moment you decide to start bringing your feelings to the workplace, you become a sitting duck. It will be deployed against you endlessly. Your energy will be sucked out of you by daily masturbatory conversations about how you feel. You will be stripped of authority and treated like an infant.

There’s a price to pay for everything. Expecting your job to heal (or arrange itself around) your emotional wounds will make you poorer and easier to exploit.

Folks, did you know that TikTok is a gambling platform? I had no idea. I’ve obviously never used it myself, so I thought it was one of the social media, like Twitter, Facebook, etc but for kids. Turns out, it’s nothing of the kind. It’s very straightforward gambling.

Apparently, there’s an algorithm that chooses a particular video to beam to the public. Such a video can garner tens of millions of views, making its creator a mega star instantly. It’s like winning the lottery. But the mechanisms of the algorithm are unknown. So people make a lot of completely meaningless videos in hopes that one of them will be chosen by the algorithm. Unlike YouTube, Twitter, etc. where views and likes reflect the quality of your work, TikTok is arbitrary. This reinforces the idea that hard work and effort are useless, that reality is chaotic and unpredictable, and that success is the result of stupid luck.