I drank raw milk as a child. It was normal in Ukraine. I was a big-city kid with relatives in the countryside and I first got to milk a cow on one of our visits when I was four. It didn’t work out because I was afraid to tug, and nobody was going to be able to persuade me that the cow didn’t mind and, in fact, welcomed being able to lighten the burden of her udders. An adult would always end up doing the milking and give me a cup “fresh from under the cow”, as it was called.

I didn’t like the taste, so I never sought out raw milk since then. But I’m very much alive, as we can see. I get why people would drink raw milk “from under the cow” but seeking it in stores looks like an affectation. The transportation, the storage – the purported freshness is an illusion after all that.

In short, nobody is going to die either from drinking it or not drinking it. Getting emotionally attached to either activity is silly.

We often forget where many people are intellectually and then feel surprised when their actions affect us.

The Chase Bank glitch is a case in point:

A ‘glitch’ at Chase bank’s ATMs which allowed customers to withdraw money from their account after depositing fake checks for large sums has seen a wave of people flaunt their cash online.

It appears some Chase customers wrote checks with outlandish amounts and deposited them to get tens of thousands of dollars that weren’t theirs, which had some calling it an ‘infinite money hack.’

But experts say this isn’t a harmless life hack but rather a case classic check fraud, which is punishable by fines and jail time in serious cases.

“Experts say” is particularly lovely, given that anybody with a 3-digit IQ would know not to deposit fake checks without needing to consult any experts.

People say Chase did this on purpose to discover fraudsters but the people who participated in the “free money” extravaganza, posting their exploits on social media and expecting not to have to return the fraudulent gains or pay fines, are profoundly stupid. They don’t have anything that Chase might want to take, so the purpose of an organized glitch is unclear.

I’m not very interested in Chase – which is probably the worst bank in America anyway – but these people could vote. Or let their ballots be harvested, which is more likely.

It is quite extraordinary that an individual who said something like this should hold any elected office:

• I strongly support immigrant communities. I support policies that keep law enforcement from enforcing federal laws that everyone knows are broken. I will not back down on that commitment, and I won't back down to a bully.

— Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) May 23, 2018

He supports “policies” that make sure laws aren’t enforced. And the only reason he gives for behaving so outrageously is that “everyone knows” these laws are “broken.” The language of a lisping, stupid airhead is combined with the neoliberal determination to dismantle policing.

It’s also fascinating how the word “community” is emptied of meaning and perverted. And how his actual voters – which the illegal migrants he’s talking about aren’t supposed to be – are completely disregarded. They aren’t a community. They are altogether absent. The only real communion happens around breaking laws and weakening the nation-state.

And still, people went and voted for this unintelligent ideologue. And they’ll do it again, refusing to see any connection between their own actions and the results of those actions.

Instead of feeling guilty for watching too much YouTube, or doing too much Instagram,  or being on Twitter too much, do this:

1. Ask yourself what you’d do if you weren’t watching YouTube or posting on FB. What activity would help you feel virtuous and like you are using time wisely? What would the ideal you do with this time?
2. Do that activity for 30 minutes and then go back to your Twitter, Instagram, or TV.
3. If 30 isn’t working, do 15. Put it on your calendar and do it daily. And remember that doing it daily erases any culpability for the time you spend on social media.

There’s no need to do anything dramatic or force yourself off social media altogether. Make a little space for whatever feels virtuous and leave feelings of guilt behind.

In more festive news, I have begun cooking with duck fat, and it’s going great. I’d tried getting into beef tallow but it didn’t work for me. It’s too crumbly and overall too much work for too little gain.

I put duck fat into everything. Soups, stews. I fry with it. Delicious.

The only downside is that “duck” keeps getting autocorrected to “dick” all the time, and people have received some confusing text messages from me as a result.

We are being promised an end to non-existent lynchings and to equally non-existent non-consensual gender surgeries precisely because no politician is remotely interested in giving us anything that we actually want.

And that’s not because it’s hard to give us what we want. Some of the most pressing issues of the moment are exceptionally easy to solve. I already explained this in what concerns border issues, and won’t repeat but it’s mostly all like that. An easy fix.

But nobody will bother to do any of it because we have become unnecessary. We aren’t a source of legitimacy. We are annoying whiners who get in the way. We have collectively eagerly embraced that role and have nobody to blame.

It’s going to be so fun when N and I go to see Matt Walsh’s Am I Racist. As usual, we are the perfect contrast. I know everything and feel passionately on the subject of BLM while N is as innocent about this shameful excrecence as we all were in 1992 and hasn’t the foggiest who Robin DiAngelo or Saira Rao are.

My daughter knows the names of the books of the Bible in order. I had no idea until she started reciting them in front of my new friend whom I really didn’t mind impressing.

My choice of school for her has been completely validated.

In a nation-state, politicians derive their legitimacy from the consent of the people. They convince us that they deserve to represent our interests and in return we invest them with power.

In neoliberalism, it goes the opposite way. The people derive their legitimacy from the politicians. Supporting a politician gives them a sense of belonging, importance, a sense of purpose. Politicians no longer have to do anything for the citizens. Lonely, confused citizens are so desperate to feel part of something that they don’t ask for it.

Has anybody met more obnoxious and mean people than these pro-Palestinian protestors?

McGill University in Canada had to put new grass at the lawn in front of the school this summer after it was destroyed by the anti-Israel tent city there

As a new school year is starting, anti-Israel students decided to destroy the new grass straight away pic.twitter.com/gUM3X6UmWq

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) September 1, 2024

They have no interest in helping anybody. All they want to do is to be absolute pests all the time.

Such nasty, self-involved types.