Straight white men are actually really smart. Who could have thought they would find a way to crush the competition in diversity Olympics? All they had to do was to say they are women, and they can easily eviscerate actual women and beat down black folks into the bargain.

This is all bloody brilliant.

Yes, most men (and women) don’t want to play these games. Sucks to be them.

When translating medical compliance documents for Nordic countries, we are required to dumb down all terminology to the level where a 12-year-old would be able to understand it. There’s zero likelihood that any 12-year-old would read this kind of paperwork that is addressed only to medical professionals (not patients) but that’s what the local legislation requires.

I wonder how they will go about the understandability requirement with the increasing numbers of migrants.

And also, why is it not OK for professional fields to not be inclusive? Why does everybody need to understand what specialists within their fields say to each other? Every professional field has its jargon. I’m sure I wouldn’t understand what car mechanics or electrical engineers say to each other. So what? Yes, I’m excluded. But they are equally excluded from my chats with a colleague about how better to teach the Spanish subjunctive.

It’s getting so, I break out in hives when I hear the word “inclusive”.

We have a “Barack Obama Highway” near St Louis.

And then people say that Trump followers are a cult.

Do people not understand that naming things after living politicians is cringe?

God, Obama. The war in Ukraine, the terrible situation in Yemen, the BLM, the spluttering post-Recession economy – all brought to us courtesy of Obama, and we can’t even let some time pass before running around, naming things after this inept, self-involved fellow.

What Americans used to be and what they will be again. For absolute certain.

Today we had one of our identity dinners.

That’s what we call them. We experience our culture during the identity dinners.

Boiled potatoes, salted herring, smoked haddock, pickled cabbage, pickled mushrooms, pickled veg.

It was delicious but the consequences of this salt bomb will not be pretty.

That’s our identity. It feels good for a short while but then there’s heavy payback.

Poor students are so scared of saying “Merry Christmas” that they were greeting me with “Happy Monday!” yesterday.

OK, I’m cured.

Some more of this, and I’ll live forever.

All nations are made up. So are computers. So is dentistry. So is indoor plumbing. Air travel. Underwear. Cake. Houses. Shoes.

Many of the best things in life don’t arise spontaneously in nature. And we still love them and use them to survive.

Some nations are more rooted in geography and language than others. It doesn’t make them stronger than those that were cobbled together two minutes ago in another hemisphere than their roots are from. Look at the US. Look at Canada. These are massively successful nations that are completely made up.

“My nation is natural while yours is made up” is something that only absolute morons say.

N and I are sick, and after an intense day of entertaining Klara, all we can do is watch a Netflix series. We found a really calm one where nothing happens. It’s titled Virgin River, and it’s very non-woke.

It’s still very neoliberal, though. The characters’ neoliberal worldview is presented as utterly normal and commonsensical when in reality it’s nothing short of insane.

“I was never that serious about our relationship,” says a man who’s pushing 50 about the woman he’s been with for two years and who’s pregnant with his twins. “This was supposed to be just casual. I’m not in love with her.” This man is a positive character, the hero of the series. Viewers are expected to take in stride his assertion that a two-year relationship that culminated in a pregnancy is “not that serious”.

The show’s heroine starts a romantic relationship with this man while he’s expecting children with another woman, and again we are supposed to accept this as normal. We all know that in actual reality only the generationally unemployed meth addicts behave this way but in the show it’s the educated, propertied middle classes that exist in this relational messiness.

This worldview not only doesn’t lead to happiness, it also doesn’t result in accumulation of wealth. Flittering about in search of new loves and leaving behind a slew of broken relationships and unwanted children, is a recipe for poverty. We receive the message that this is the only normal way to live from every electrical appliance and every gadget, and it’s the most impoverishing worldview, both economically and emotionally, that anybody can imagine.

It’s 17°C here (summertime in Fahrenheit), we are all sick as dogs, and I’m planning a French menu for the Christmas Eve dinner. Beef bourguignon, mashed potatoes, herbed wild mushrooms (Polish), Brussels sprouts with bacon, and baked apples with currant jam.