That’s why I keep saying that if she doesn’t intensely desire you physically, the best decision is to run away at once:
I feel equally bad for Chris and his wife.
Author: Clarissa
What USAID Buys
Current annual investment by USAID in Laos now approaches $50 million, “spread across health, education, disability inclusion, environmental legacy, and governance”. This is what the US has bought with all this money in Laos:
I asked AI what exactly USAID has been funding in Laos, and it gave me a list longer than my arm. I won’t copy it here to avoid crowding the blog, but it’s kind of really crazy.
Whatever cuts have been imposed on USAID are insufficient. The whole program needs to be scrapped.
Book Notes: Sophie Hannah’s No One Would Do What the Lamberts Have Done
Sophie Hannah’s new standalone novel is a love letter to England. The book will be confusing and weird to anybody who has not been steeped in the English culture. But for those of us who grew up reading and dreaming about the quaint English villages that gave rise to the most amazing civilization on Earth, the novel is irresistible. The characters are delightfully non-diverse. They are crazy about dogs and houses. They take their gardens and their Agatha Christie book clubs extremely seriously. Most importantly, they live as if Miss Marple’s England were still there.
No One Would Do What the Lamberts Have Done is a strange book. It’s an invitation to a club that only those who truly understand and love England can join. I’ve been reading Sophie Hannah for pretty much as long as she’s been writing, and this novel is both very much hers and quite unusual for her.
Puny Celebrations
The 4th of July celebrations were puny like never before in my town. We had maybe 1/5 of what we usually do in people setting fireworks. Almost no flags. No grill parties in my neighborhood. No block party. No neighborhood parades. It’s not the weather. Yes, it is hot but we had hotter weather on this day in previous years, and that didn’t impact the celebrations.
We went out to walk around and see the fireworks last night. Instead of dressed up crowds mulling around and celebrating, we were mostly alone in empty streets. Please understand that I’ve been going out to see the fireworks for 16 years in these streets, and if I see a contrast, there surely is one.
People think that weekly anti-American protests don’t have an impact but they do. They depress the mood in a town that holds them, and everything ends up being sadder and drabber. People have talked themselves into thinking that this is a terrible country and can’t even get themselves to take a day off this fake drama.
The Cure for Higher Ed
The only way to cure American colleges from their addiction to large, shiny, utterly unnecessary buildings and large, well-staffed utterly unnecessary “services” is to cap both student aid and student loans.
Tuition skyrocketed in the past 30 years. In the same time period, the number of professors plummeted and class sizes increased. Libraries got stripped of books and academic journals. Student debt soared. The whole setup has been vitiated.
To give a single example, my university has a large and very generously staffed “career service.” The university itself is supposed to be a career service but instead of concentrating on the actual teaching, we take money away from the teaching and pour it into funding groups of fussy ladies who do weird, fussy things of zero value to students.
Any money that higher education gets will be immediately redirected into unnecessary buildings and “services.” Higher education doesn’t need money. It needs to go back to the place where teaching and research were the entire business of a college.
Lazy Minds
Much of the leftist discourse is simply a dislike for white people:
This slogan is an excellent encapsulation of the ideas that USAID spread around the world. This is why I laugh when I hear the oft-repeated mantra that USAID helped consolidate the “soft power” of the US. All that USAID programs did with a dedication of a crazed woodpecker was rubbish the US, stoke racial grievances, and explain to the recipients of USAID why they needed to detest the givers.
Also, I deeply detest the expressions “the right side of history” and “make the world a better place.” These saccharine clichés betray a lazy mind that is soaked in propaganda.
No Need for a Country
Your daily reminder that rich people don’t need countries. They find the concept stupid and tiresome:
I am certain that he very sincerely doesn’t get it. But it’s not just one person. The entire wealthy class (and the people the wealthy class controls informationally) very sincerely don’t understand what the problem is.
Homogeneous Societies
This is what a highly homogeneous society is like:
Every time after Russian bombings of Ukrainian cities, particularly Kyiv, in the morning, you see shop windows, cafes, pizzerias, restaurants, and delivery services shattered by debris and shockwaves — and yet there is absolutely no looting.
None at all.
And the morning after those sleepless nights under attacks, baristas still come to their damaged coffee shops — and their regular customers still come to get their coffee to support their favorite businesses and, in general, to continue living a normal life with the new morning, no matter what.https://x.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1941062391938101573?t=kTwWL81ARl8ZVOKS885Z1Q&s=19
When social cohesion and homogeneity are being sacrificed, it should be for something that is really worth it. It can’t be so that Big Agriculture can underpay workers.
Russia is as multiethnic as Ukraine isn’t, and this is one of the reasons why they’ll never be at peace.
We Need God
Kyiv, last night:
Now is an even better time to pray than normally.
Another Mamdani Scandal
The new scandal with Zohran Mamdani is that he had applied to Columbia as an African American. This was a lie because not only is he not African American, he was not American at all at that time.
But that’s not the funny part. Mamdani graduated from a very expensive, very prestigious private high school. Yet even with the words “African American” on his application, he couldn’t get accepted to Columbia. He’s received every advantage possible from his rich family, yet he’s dumb as a doorknob.
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