There are many debates on all sorts of subjects on social media. Often people argue about very arcane stuff. It’s very touching to observe people caring about all kinds of obscure subjects.

One thing is invariable in all these discussions. There are always comments by Americans feeling oppressed. You see a wide variety of takes, some very dumb, some funny. But Americans inevitably find an opportunity to burn with righteous indignation about some utterly invented oppression or injustice. There’s no topic that is immune. “How dare you talk about collecting ancient coins when there are people who are too oppressed to have a hobby!” “Many more people would enjoy painting by numbers if they didn’t have to spend every waking moment trying to survive being Black and brown in America!”

I read a discussion yesterday about which college courses it makes sense to take to prepare for graduate studies in a certain discipline, and every 3 minutes somebody would pipe up with reminders about how some structurally oppressed people are too deprived to take any courses. Which is true and we all know it but what’s the point of bringing it up?

This is very different from, for instance, Spanish-languge discussions. People yell, insult, argue but I have never, not once, seen anybody wrap themselves in a cloak of being wounded by structural oppressions. Even those who are really oppressed don’t do that. I follow a bunch of dissident Venezuelans, and they get very angry about what’s been done to their country. But they never assume the persona of a martyred defender of the oppressed. They don’t try to shut down discussions by appeals to extraneous (and usually imaginary) suffering.

I deeply love Americans but enough with this moralistic, preachy crap already.

This is from the WashPo, a paper not prone to caring about budget deficits:

The deficit surged during COVID, then predictably went down in 2022. It was supposed to go down in 2023 because there’s no war, recession, pandemic or anything of the kind. Instead, it jumped up like crazy. It hasn’t reached the COVID levels but look how high it got.

The whole college loan forgiveness business wasn’t even counted in this deficit because it never went through.

This is very concerning because Boomers are retiring, and this means huge Social Security and Medicare costs.

As we are all being endlessly entertained by Trump indictment number five million and yet another “Nazi threat”, there are serious things going on that nobody wants to talk about because they are boring and offer no immediate gratification. These numbers are an accumulation of mistakes and irresponsibility accruing over the years.

Elizabeth von Arnim’s sister became pregnant at the age of 13. There’s no record of how but her family didn’t seem too upset. Her Dad joked about it in his diaries, saying that she’d get her figure back once she gave birth.

The child seems to have been given up for adoption, but the early pregnancy didn’t prevent the girl from making a brilliant marriage at 18 to a wealthy young man with brilliant prospects. The family was accepted at Queen Victoria’s court in spite of being from the wealthy merchant class with zero aristocratic roots.

Kids bicker like their lives depend on it. Which they kind of do in evolutionary terms. I spent years not understanding evolution but after observing kids it all became very clear. They fight for every crumb of attention and recognition from an adult like it’s the Battle of the Somme.

Finally, unable to withstand any more bickering, a desperate adult screeches, “OK! Let’s go to the ice-cream place!” After a second of stunned silence, the kids begin to bicker more desperately than ever as to who will get more scoops and toppings.

Pfizer posts low profits and NYTimes is there with the ad pitch:

What’s funny is that the pitch never changed. It’s still stuck on the “killing grandma” wavelength. Of course, everybody who could have been persuaded by such crude, clumsy manipulation is already a repeat customer for Pfizer.

It looks like the pharma industry is as careless and lazy with promoting its poisons as it is with manufacturing them.

Turns out I have to go to Cincinnati in November. Is there anything one definitely needs to do or see there? Anything that it’s famous for?

Thirst for Salt is a first novel by a young writer from Australia. The novel came out this year but it’s not in the least woke. It’s written as if wokeness had never been invented.

Of course, the events in the novel occur in the world that exists in reality and will inevitably produce wokeness. Thirst for Salt is a love story, beautifully written, very touching and depicting a relationship that is clearly completely doomed. This isn’t a spoiler. The failure of the love between the main characters is announced from the first page. As we read about what caused the failure, it becomes clear that the characters collapse under the weight of endless choice and freedom. They have no idea how to proceed to the next stage, how to stop choosing, how to be content with life and not be lured by fantasies of imaginary other possibilities.

The man and the woman in this novel both want family, domesticity, stability, children and love that endures. But they always heard that wanting that is weird, embarrassing. You need “freedom” and “achievement”. So they play at “freedom” until there’s no more love left, and this game is, of course, a lot more damaging to a woman.

This is not an ideological novel. It’s a book about love, and it really reminded me about the early stages of my love with N. Beautiful writing, it’s all set in less inhabited areas of Southern Australia. Extremely memorable characters, and again, no wokeness. I came across this novel completely by accident at a bookstore yesterday, and I’m happy I did. This is why bookstores are great. On Amazon I’d never seek a debut novel by a 30-year-old Australian teaching at Columbia. But at a bookstore one gets a lot more adventurous.

I told you Biden turned out to be a much better president than he could have:

This Andre Damon is a socialist leader who alternates between pro-Russian slogans and COVID-mongering. Socialists stan both Putin and Fauci, which is a testament to how outdated their beliefs are.

And Taylor Lorenz is a mainstream journalist whose job is to make socialists like Damon mainstream.

That these people are upset with Biden and resort to their favorite trick of calling him a Nazi is to Biden’s credit.

People don’t get praised for things they don’t do but Biden could easily be locking down now to play into the seasonal Pfizer ad campaign. And he’s not in spite of the pressure.

Biden is very far from perfect, he’s fumbled and bumbled a lot more than necessary on Ukraine, dragged things out unnecessarily. But he’s been good in unexpected ways, both in what he does and doesn’t do.

(Obviously, by “Biden” I mean the collective Biden and not the actual individual. It’s boring to write “the Biden administration” in every sentence).

Great love has a way of seeming both miraculous and inevitable. After my brother was born, all the years I’d been without him seemed impossible. I felt like he’d always been a part of me, waiting in the wings to make his appearance. That kind of love, it alters the past as well as the future.

Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

Sometimes I truly wonder if people are OK in their heads: