Since 2014, in the occupied territories Russians engaged in kidnappings, torture, and murder of Protestant Ukrainians. One of the most horrific mass murders was that of several members of the Pentecostal church who were dragged away during the Pentecost church service, tortured, raped, and murdered. The killers searched for the pastor but he managed to hide.

Please think about these innocent Ukrainians, murdered by Russia for their religious faith, whenever you hear the lies about the lack of religious freedom in Ukraine. Those lies are spread by the same people who have been murdering Protestant Christians in the occupied territories.

Yes, there is religious persecution in Ukraine. It’s conducted exclusively by the Russians on the territories they control.

As soon as Klara adds a new dish to the very limited repertoire of what she eats, she immediately drops something off the list. It’s like there’s a certain number of slots and new ones can’t be added.

I was so happy when all of a sudden she started eating pelmeni. Pelmeni are a godsend. She hasn’t eaten anything in the pelmeni family since a short-lived interest in ravioli when she was 3,5.

And then I discovered that pelmeni have displaced a previously deeply loved Mac and cheese. And I need her to like Mac and cheese because that was one of the only two typical American foods on her menu. She doesn’t eat burgers, tacos, chips or fries of any kind. She eats cheese pizza but that’s it.

I can’t complain because she eats borscht and soup any time of day, and fresh vegetables are always a hit. But nobody can cook borscht every two days. One needs easy solutions.

Domestic oil production is back to the pre-COVID level. This is excellent on many different levels.

Friends, if you want to up your reading game but have very little time, I have a great solution for you.

The book Complete Short Stories by Elizabeth Taylor is a great solution because they are mostly quite short. If you only have 10 minutes at bedtime or during a break at work, you can read a story, experience the aesthetic pleasure of a talented work of art, and spend some time away from social media.

These stories are so good. There are many of them in the book, and they are all exceptionally well-written, touching and beautiful. Sometimes you feel like taking a short break but you don’t know what healthy, useful, enjoyable activity you can accomplish in 10-15 minutes. This is that activity.

Usually, collected short stories by one author are a mixed bag. Some are amazing, some bad, and the rest middling. But the beauty of this collection is that all stories are wonderful. Easy to read and just… timeless. I can’t find a better word for them.

It’s just 10 minutes a day. Available on any device with a reading app and on paper. Think about it.

Between 2014 and 2022, Ukraine held about 200 rounds of peace talks with Russia. That’s two hundred.

During this period, 20 cease-fire agreements were reached, all of which were quickly violated by Russia. Twenty. All broken by the same side immediately or almost immediately.

None of the 200 rounds of talks or the 20 ceasefires prevented Putin from launching a brutal all-out invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022.

People who say Ukraine should hold peace talks with Russia either suffer from mental retardation or are very dishonest.

It’s impossible to give people with a narcissistic injury what they need. It’s impossible to content them. Concessions make them angry instead of happy because after each concession they realize that their hunger can’t be fed.

Ohio voters approved a ballot measure Tuesday night that will effectively outlaw any restrictions on abortion and other procedures that involve reproduction, including gender-transition surgeries. The measure, known as Issue 1, will also remove parental-consent and notification requirements for minors who undergo the procedures. . . The amendment was written by the ACLU, which has spent years fighting to remove parental involvement from abortion and gender-transition procedures. . . Ohio voters also approved a ballot measure to legalize the sale of marijuana to people 21 and over, and permit growing the plant as a cash crop.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/ohio-voters-approve-radical-amendment-removing-limits-on-abortion-gender-transition-procedures/

Good job, Ohio voters! The dysfunction I saw in Cincinnati last week is clearly very wanted and deserved by you. Keep on this ACLU track and there is no limit to your impoverishment and exploitation.

A colleague who teaches interpersonal communication invited me to be an external grader for an exam on small talk. I appear in class, students engage me in small talk, and I grade them.

This colleague either is an extremely poor judge of interpersonal skills or really hates his students.

I’m going to make my debut as an expert on small talk after Thanksgiving. Stay tuned for updates.

Here’s what’s causing the rainbow – Christian clashes on campus.

The preacher has been coming to campus for decades. And nobody ever cared. But our neoliberal administrator I’ve been posting about received atrocious reviews in his first year in the job. He’s not releasing them, of course, because they are extremely embarrassing. But I know the person whose job is to compile the reviews. She says they were so bad, she felt uncomfortable even reading them.

Everybody on campus hates this administrator. The professors, the janitors, the cafeteria workers, the pro-Palestinians, the pro-Israelis, the MAGAS, the AOC fans, the building personnel. Everybody. The administrator tried to give a talk last week but he was heckled out of the room by irate workers.

The faculty Senate has created a recommendation for the Board of Trustees to terminate the guy’s contract. He’s not reaching any of the numbers he keeps promising. So even from the strictly neoliberal point of view, he’s a dud.

So what does the guy need to save his job?

The answer is clear. He needs an achievement. He needs the kind of achievement that will make him impossible to fire.

If he manages to defend “vulnerable student populations” from “bigotry and hate on campus”, that would be precisely such an achievement.

So he riles up the woke student organizations. These are very young people who are easy to manipulate. He meets with them as part of his job, and all he needs to say is, “I know it must be deeply painful to confront this kind of bigotry on campus. You must be devastated and exhausted by not being seen on this campus.” The young people realize that they are wasting a major opportunity to be exhausted and devastated, so they begin to congregate around the preacher.

The administrator will let this boil for a while. Then, he’ll triumphantly eject the preacher. Students will see him as a hero. Or at least the students who matter will. Then it will be impossible to eject him from his job.

Remember, neoliberal achievement subjects have iron discipline. They strategize. They don’t gush. They advocate breaking boundaries to the silly dupes they want to exploit. Their own boundaries, however, remain strong. This administrator raised tuition for the first time in a very long time. But gushy students will disregard the fact that this guy in $600 shoes is robbing them. They’ll value the opportunity to gush more than their own finances.

The lesson is this: boundary yourself up in every possible way against the slick operators who want to rob you.

I’m not interested in age gaps or affairs but look at the average number of children. It’s exactly what I’ve been saying.

Not having a lot of children isn’t about money. It’s about the way we understand what a human being is. That understanding is a unique and wonderful achievement of our great civilization. Let’s spit out the self-hating lies we’ve had stuffed down our throats and stand in awe of our incredible achievement. No, we don’t mass produce dispensable cogs. We do artisanal fine-tuning of unique gems.

If you have 6 kids, you are fine-tuning six gems. You are amazing. This isn’t meant to be a criticism of people in the West who have many children. I’m all for those people. But they can’t extract themselves from their civilizational context. We are all going to treat our children like rare gems and throw our whole being into their welfare. And those who don’t have children will treat the children of other people like rare gems. It’s unavoidable. It’s inside us.

Please stop fighting this and accept that it’s here and it’s great.

We are not like everybody else on my campus. For the past 3 weeks, we’ve had loud, spirited and crowded debates on the quad every Tuesday. Sometimes, things come to blows and campus police arrives to drag away the most rambunctious protesters.

No, it’s not pro-Palestinians battling Jews. I found no evidence our students even know about that. Our campus battles are between Christians and rainbow protesters. Christians start preaching, and the rainbow supporters try to beat them up. It all inevitably becomes racialized because the preacher is white. I’d really like to see what would happen if a black preacher showed up.