The Biden administration is willing to incur the unnecessary cost to avoid sending these missiles to Ukraine. We need to stop swallowing the false narratives promoted by the MSM and start asking why. What is the Biden administration trying to achieve and why?

NOBODY in the world except for Ukraine has ever used American air defense systems in combat successfully against Russia’s “hypersonic” missiles. Since December 29, Russia launched a barrage of these missiles against residential areas of Ukrainian cities.

Every time Ukraine uses a Patriot system to down a Russian hypersonic Kh-47M2 Kinzhal, this improves the Patriot missile intercept algorithm. This, in turn, increases the accuracy for all Patriot systems.

In the last 5 days, Ukraine has used the Patriots with the effectiveness nobody remotely knew these systems could achieve. The Patriots today are what nobody knew they could be. This is a gigantic step towards improving America’s military defense.

America became a lot safer and stronger yesterday.

OK, I’ve said my piece. Now let’s continue discussing the career prospects of a rich, bald lady.

I had a long and detailed dream where I was Carrie Bradshaw in New York.

God hates me.

A woman, a person of color and a Canadian walk into a bar …

The number of anachronisms in books is extraordinary. Teenagers sexting on their smartphones in 2003. People “working remotely” (instead of “working from home”) in 2005. Twenty-year-olds waiting for the morning paper to be delivered to their houses to find out the news in 2018.

Last night Ukraine repelled the largest missile attack in modern history including hypersonic missiles. There are many dead and wounded. It’s an extraordinary victory that came at a huge cost.

And then I go to Anglo social media and find out that a diverse bean counter resigned at Harvard to make space for a more diverse bean counter. And people are really celebrating. Yippee.

We watched the Ricky Gervais special for our New Year’s entertainment. Of course, N is s bit like that guy in Montana who came down to a gas station from his isolated cabin in the mountains in the middle of COVID and was spooked by weird masked humans jumping away from each other in terror.

“There are two sexes!” Gervais says. The audience is in stitches.

“I looked into a boat with refugees, and they are all young men!” Again, the audience is collapsing with laughter.

“I don’t understand, what’s funny?” N asks.

I had to pause the video and explain the whole thing with not being allowed to notice the painfully obvious. People are experiencing relief that somebody is saying something considered transgressive. It’s the same reason why Gervais uses swear language on stage. He’s our sacrificial goat. We experience catharsis when we see somebody perform a forbidden act. It’s another question why observing existing reality has become a forbidden act. The best parts of the show are when Gervais says these completely mundane, self-evident things. Because we need him to say those things for us.

And that’s not at all funny.

In the New Year, I hope we all get over it and start saying what we know to be true.

On New Year’s, the biggest holiday in both Ukraine and Russia, Russia is bombing the peaceful Ukrainian city of Odessa. The brave Ukrainian citizens are singing a favorite Ukrainian folk song in response:

If you aren’t inspired and energized by this, please check your pulse. You might no longer be alive.

The slogan of the year 2024 from the President of Ukraine: I must do more than I can. Let us all do more than we can in the next year.

In 1997, a young woman named Anu Singh murdered her boyfriend Joe. Her friends and acquaintances knew she was planning the murder and helped her procure the drugs she used to subdue and poison her victim. The murder took several attempts. Singh would drug Joe with Rohypnol and try to inject him with a lethal dose of heroin. It took days for him to die as she sat and watched him and brought friends to observe Joe’s agony. No motive was ever uncovered for the murder aside from Anu Singh’s desire to feel important and flatter her narcissism by controlling another human being in the most inescapable way.

Singh and her friends were law school students from well-to-do families. They were fanatical believers in freedom and choice, which is why none of them did anything to thwart Singh’s choice to murder her boyfriend.

Singh was arrested, tried, and served 4 years in jail for the murder. It was a strange jail where male and female inmates were allowed to socialize, so Singh – known to be very promiscuous – found several boyfriends during the pre-trial stage. When she was released, she went to continue her complex personal life at her parents’ lavish house.

Her female accomplice in the murder who procured the lethal drugs and stuck around to observe Joe’s agony didn’t serve a day in jail.

Helen Garner writes about this terrible story in a way that turns a true crime story into something much bigger. She sees similarities between Singh’s sexual, emotional and verbal incontinence and her drug-addled carelessness and Garner’s own lifestyle 20 years earlier. The horror unleashed by Singh and the utter indifference of the legal system and the people around her grips you even 30 years later. Garner doesn’t want to cause additional pain to Joe’s parents with whom she developed a profound relationship while working on the book but the young man’s dysfunction that leads him into a relationship with the abusive, immoral Singh is clear to anybody willing to notice it.

I’ll be reading more by Helen Garner in the new year for sure because this is a talented writer with a strong point of view and a brilliant writing style.