For when you feel defeated and tell yourself that something is impossible:

Harris’s favorability increased dramatically due to absolute nothing she did besides becoming a Dem candidate through no effort of her own. The media told the public they must love her, and the public obediently did.

Nobody who remembers the COVID era can be surprised. There’s a significant part of the population that will saw off its own arm if the  TV tells them to.

Most curiously, these are always the people who love the dumb cliché “critical thinking.”

I’m reading this Spanish dissertation, and I’m thinking that my thesis advisor would have rightfully murdered and dismembered me if I’d produced such a wordy, repetitive 520-page-long tome. Would have been acquitted, too, in all probability.

The dissertation is not bad, actually, even though the author is far far FAR left. But it is ever so repetitive, God, I read the exact same sentence about how “we don’t live in the best of possible worlds” at least 6 times already.

Spanish-speakers, have you considered that everybody prefers to read Anglo authors not because of “cultural hegemony” but because you can’t get to the goshdarn point?

We are hosting a mini sleepover for a child of a MAGA Dad and a pro-Harris BLM Mom. I don’t hover (to put it mildly) but I’m very curious how a political discussion with this guest might go.

As I explained in great detail previously, affirmative action in college admissions is a non-issue. It’s invented to keep simpletons on both sides occupied and inflamed. One of such simpletons decided to send in this question.

The overwhelming majority of colleges in this country never used affirmative action because they don’t have any standards of admission. Everybody gets accepted. Even people who don’t apply get accepted. You’ve got to be every kind of stupid to blether on excitedly about Yale (where, unlike me, you never studied or taught) instead of concentrating on what’s happening at the community college in town or the public university next door.

What the bloody ef do you, incredible doofus, care about Harvard? What is it to you which wealthy kid gets to memorize neoliberal mantras there? How does that impact your life what race that kid is?

I just can’t with these people who wouldn’t be bothered to notice what’s happening under their noses. The public education is getting destroyed as we speak. Forget bloody Harvard and its stupid race-mongering. These are rich people with their rich-people problems. They don’t care about you. Why are you so sore over their imaginary problems?

Also, would it be so hard to enter “affirmative action” in the search box of the blog and see what was the most recent thing I said about it instead of making inane assumptions?

I’m evaluating a doctoral dissertation. On page 4, the author says, “the current system is profoundly unjust and creates suffering, pain, and violence.”

I want to claw my eyes out, and there are 514 pages to go.

Our 8-year-old stunned us at the breakfast table with an announcement that she’s voting for Trump. Her class held a vote at recess and Trump won. Biden lost. Nobody heard of Kamala, so she garnered no votes. The breakdown was: girls for Trump, boys for Biden.

I’ve never mentioned Trump or anything political in her presence, we don’t turn on the TV, we don’t hang out with people who talk politics when the kids are around. This is why it came as a shock that she knows who Trump and Biden are. She also related the story of both assassination attempts on Trump with all sorts of correct details.

I said I didn’t know who I was going to vote for, and Klara responded, “Come on, Mommy, it’s obvious. He was shot at twice and the other guy dropped out when nobody shot at him.”

I have no idea why I thought she wouldn’t know about this stuff. My parents talked to me about what the USSR really was when I was 9, and my kid is 8,5.

Not only is our town’s Oktoberfest not in October, this is the food we are offered:

We have a historically large German population around here. Everybody has a German last name. But you can’t get German food even at our sad mockery of Oktoberfest.