The underlying structure of sexuality is composed of the gender dimorphism, which engenders a psychic duality including “gender tension”, of sexual reproduction, of the enigmas of sexual attraction and feelings of arousal and love, and of the palpable physical quality of sensations. Some feminists are as reluctant to recognize this solid core of
gender and sexuality as are those neosexuals who advertise themselves as modular multi-inventers. Yet this core remains solid because no “bio-man”, for instance, will
ever truly know what the onset of menstruation, what pregnancy or abortion, birth or breast-feeding or the natural loss of fertility at an age that is hardly regarded as
advanced today really mean. Inalterably linked with physical gender, these events have tremendous effects on the body and the soul.

Sigusch, Volkmar. “On Cultural Transformations of Sexuality and Gender in Recent Decades.” German Medical Science 2 (2004): 1-14.

Only 20 years ago, this was a position that a scholar could express openly in a scientific journal. And look what we did since then.

In America, we never find out the names of the blind reviewers of our academic books. But in Ukraine it’s different (which I didn’t know). If the blind reviewers like the book and approve it for publication, their names and affiliations must appear on the title page. Which, I believe, is a great idea we should adopt in the US.

The reviewers of my Ukrainian book have finally been revealed to me, and one of them is the (not “a”, “the”) leading Ukrainian Hispanist. I feel very vindicated.

Back in October, I emailed a friend of my father’s who is very well-known Ukrainian author with a boatload of books in literary studies. I asked him for advice, and he said that it’s an absolute impossibility to publish a book by a no-name author right now. There’s a war going on, the number of books that get published dropped, paper costs soared, and I should just forget about it. “Thank you, kind sir,” I said, while thinking to myself, fuck that noise. As a result, I found 4 interested publishers, got great reviews, interviews, public appearance invitations, and my father’s friend is now so into the book that he’s nominating me for a literary award.

The moral of the story is: just go for it. Forget what anybody else says, and proceed according to your own criterion. When I was 22, my academic advisor laughed in my face when I said I wanted to do a PhD in Spanish literature. And I wasn’t even upset. I found it funny that she would be so adamant I would fail. And guess who was right the whole time? I mean, you don’t have to guess. We all know how that story turned out.

I also have an experience with a doctor who told me it was lunacy to try to get pregnant again after the horror of my first pregnancy. “Some women’s bodies are simply not made to carry a child to term. Have you considered adoption?” As a result, my very happy child turned 8 yesterday.

So yeah. Stand your ground. And fuck that noise.

We have a lecturer who’s from a small village in Nigeria. He’s had a very tough life, and that made him into an extraordinary person. He’s one of the most organized and efficient people I have ever met. The self-control and the capacity for strategic thinking on this dude is impressive.

He came into my office today, weeping. He’s been accepted to a PhD program in Oklahoma. Totally deserved, and they are lucky to have him. I’m so glad I brought him over and gave him the opportunity. I find that my best lecturers come from small towns because these are people who are not spoiled by privilege and who are happy to have an opportunity to succeed.

Neoliberalism is all about maximizing individual freedom and freeing individuals from all manner of constraints.

So why, then, do authoritarian regimes like neoliberalism so much? China, Russia, and now the illiberal Left in Canada, the UK and the US are all really into neoliberalism. Why?

Neoliberalism convinces us that every problem is a result of our individual failings. COVID spread because individuals didn’t “mask up” (what a horrid expression) actively enough. An unemployed former miner in West Virginia is poor because he failed to learn how to code. Russia is a mess because individuals engage in corruption. What an easy argument for any authoritarian regime to use to excuse its failings. It’s not me, it’s you! You are imperfect. Absolutely nothing is wrong with our political system. The economy is amazing. If you can’t see that and turn it to your advantage, it’s because you are a loser.

Humans are, indeed, imperfect. We all know extremely well exactly where our imperfections lie. This argument works because it speaks to our intimate understanding of how massively imperfect we are. We feel a pang of guilt and immediately let the authoritarian regime off the hook. Yes, it’s me, I must have caused this somehow. What’s not to like if you are a politician eager to establish authoritarian rule? You can do absolutely anything you want to the people and they’ll just blame themselves for not having superhuman capabilities.

In a twist that will shock nobody with even a minimal attention span, the most recent “Trump said” (“Trump told Russia to attack a NATO country”) turned out to be a lie.

I wonder if the anti-Trump people realize how many Trump supporters aren’t that into Trump but simply are appalled and disgusted by this endless stream of lies. The only reasonable conclusion a person can reach when seeing all this prevarication is, “ah, if every criticism of Trump is a lie, then the truth must be that you don’t have any real criticisms. If you did, you wouldn’t have to invent all these stories.”

And the reason why nobody can express any real criticisms of Trump is that all of his mistakes are being repeated by the Democrats but to a much larger extent. As a result, we are stuck in this cycle of lies on top of more lies, and with each one more people get disaffected and decide to vote not so much for Trump but against the dishonesty of his detractors. For me this started with “Trump mocked a disabled journalist” lie all the way back in 2015. I thought, “hey, of this is untrue, then I wonder what else is.” It turned out that it was all untrue. Every single “Trump says” scandal. Trump has many defects but they are all the opposite of what we are constantly told.

“Trump says, Trump says, Trump says.” There are whole trees of messages from people having vapors over some new “Trump says.” Nine years of daily spectacles of extreme outrage over “Trump says.”

And these absolute simpletons who fall for the same basic manipulation every day for a decade call Trump supporters stupid.

“Trump says” these things, you incredible dummies, to get precisely the reaction you give. This feeling of anger and outrage you experience is how he hits you, bleeds you, and wins. It’s the most primitive trick in the book, and you are falling for it. I shouldn’t care because you deserve to lose but it’s boring to have to make my way through the forests of “Trump says” to get to actual news.

I watched this movie with N to get him caught up on why we aren’t letting Klara watch YouTube. N is very innocent about these things and he needs to be forewarned. In the famous program of ideological control*, he’s now somewhere on step 2.

The movie served the purpose I had set for it but it’s not a great film. It’s very low-budget, which is understandable, and it’s not well-done. It’s a collection of interviews interspersed with read-aloud text that’s delivered in unnatural voices and from uncomfortable camera angles. Nobody who doesn’t already agree with every word will watch it because you need to be very dedicated to the cause to suffer through the talentless pastiche of interviews and stock images.

The Right urgently needs somebody with Michael Moore’s talent**. We have all the ideas but no talent to make them popular or even just known. The Left has talent but no ideas. I don’t know, maybe it’s time to convert some gifted people and lure them over from the Left?

The movie, well, it’s all true what it says but one almost wishes that the important things it says weren’t true because they are tarnished by the medium.

* Step one. This isn’t happening and you are a bigot for suggesting it;

Step two. It’s happening but very rarely and you are a bigot for making a big deal about it;

Step three. It’s happening a lot and you are a bigot for not celebrating it.

** Yes, he’s a very talented filmmaker. And it’s precisely the incapacity to recognize the difference between talent and correct opinions that makes our side so lacking in talent. We scare people away, and that’s self-defeating.

An Indian guru landed in rural Oregon in 1981 and started a free-love sect for US hippies. The sect took over a tiny town of Antelope, population 93, antagonized the residents with public nudity and loud orgies, and started delivering its message of love and peace with weapons, threats, and murder.

The story of the Oregon sect is like a trial run for the current political moment. The believers started by preaching decolonization, anti-racism, abortion, environmentalism and anti-capitalism. They renamed Main Street into something less colonialist and practiced nudism in the city park. Then they decided it would be helpful to overtake the local government. They dragged homeless from all over the country to flood the local elections with “new residents.” But when the homeless became rowdy, the sect members drugged them into compliance. That wasn’t enough, so they took the homeless to another town and dumped them in the streets.

I told you. It’s really recognizable.

Wild Wild Country is a Netflix documentary, so the creators are sympathetic to the sect. They try to persuade the viewers that the locals only objected to having the sect around because they were bigoted toothless hicks. I mean, who else would have a problem with open-air orgies and hordes of psychotic homeless? But the filmmakers fail at massaging reality into a DEI narrative. The documentary is good and quite eerie in the recognizability of its themes.

Thanks to deep work, last year I only worked 3,7 hours a day 5 days a week (I didn’t count reading). In that time, I chaired my department with 9 different languages, taught, wrote a book and 3 articles, and did my translation work.

Deep work is a life-changer, my friends. Gone are the days where I graded or prepared classes on weekends or in the evenings. By the way, I always teach new classes because it bores me to repeat stuff. So it’s not like I’m skating on old material.

Highly, highly recommended. Once I finish out my term as Chair, I’ll drop it to 2 hours a day. That will be so cool.

From Freddie de Boer’s blog:

if you’re looking for something to meaningfully move your child around in the academic performance spectrum, to take an X percentile kid and make him an X+Y percentile kid, the answer is no, what you’re asking me about doesn’t work, won’t matter, isn’t worth it. Because outside of some very specific and rare scenarios like schooling a child who has received literally no formal education or removing a kid from extreme neglect or abuse, nothing substantially changes the average kid’s place in the performance spectrum. Academic outputs are dominantly student-side and uncontrollable, based largely on genetics, conditions in the womb, and the “unshared environment,” which is our awkward term for that big chunk of variation we can neither explain nor control.

That is absolutely 100% true. The reason to take a kid to robotics (if the kid really wants to go) or any other extracurricular is so that the kid has fun.

You can’t change a kid’s IQ. At all. But you can do something much more important. Imagine looking into a mirror your whole life and seeing a strikingly beautiful woman or a sensationally good-looking man every single time. Imagine living with a feeling that the world is conspiring in your favor, that everything will turn out just right for you because you are that kind of person. Who needs academic outputs if you can have that?

This is what we can give our children.

People get stuck on these stupid academic outputs like they can make anybody happy.