https://twitter.com/kateisabroad/status/1720474779369553977?t=olZB6-ds-entIAXEHRbSUA&s=19

I read the comments, and, curiously, she isn’t being attacked by any conservatives. Only the leftist mob is hassling her for being a white supremacist and writing a book they never read because it hasn’t been published yet.

When will people learn that you can’t win at the wokeness game? You’ll always lose because there’s always somebody more intersectionally diverse than you?

I first discovered I had a gift for public speaking in the penultimate year of high school. We had this big event where everybody was brought to a large auditorium, and my form teacher forced me to go on stage to recite a poem. I was still tragically shy back then, plus, it’s the uncomfortable age, you know. There are all these body parts that suddenly appear on your body, and there was a boy I liked in the audience who never knew I existed. Walking towards that stage was like ascending to the échafaud, whatever you call it in English.

But then, strangely, the moment I faced the audience, I became a different person. The students were going nuts, yelling and being rowdy, so I said in a loud, deep, authoritative voice I had no idea I possessed, “Everybody, shut up and listen to this poem.” There was complete silence, and I recited the poem in the same powerful voice.

Then I left the stage and resumed my life as a mousy, shy person.

People usually have to work hard to become good public speakers but I never had to work for it. Whenever I face an audience, the bigger the better, I suddenly become this very funny, extremely entertaining person. I have no problem with eye contact or engaging individual audience members. And then the moment the performance ends, I go back to being me. It’s really weird how it works. People always come up to me after my public appearances but by that time I’m already back to being me and just wanting them all to go away.

I feel no pride in my excellent public speaking skills because I never worked for them. It’s a gift that was always there. I don’t feel nervous before my talks, I don’t prepare, and often I look up the subject of the talk on my way to the venue.

I was told by people who are very familiar with the publishing industry in Ukraine that the patriotic thing to do is, as soon as it appears in print, to place it in open access on a few popular websites. I’m all for doing the patriotic thing, so I’ll heed this advice.

I’ll drop the links here as soon as that happens, and everybody will be able to read it. Yes, it’s in Ukrainian but my husband is reading it with the help of Google Translate. He takes copious notes and puts his objections and observations in writing. We have the most intense, fascinating discussions about it because he’s a profound thinker with a very unique point of view.

There’s an enormous amount of extreme helplessness that I’m observing. I spent an hour yesterday with an early-career academic who’s stressing out about the job search process. After listening to him go on and on about how there are only 9 jobs in his field this year, I asked where he’s looking and was stunned to discover that he used a single website where people have to pay a bundle to place job ads. He never attempted to consult the big free websites that post jobs. We looked at one of those websites and found almost a hundred job ads in his field. A hundred! It’s November, and most departments already started interviewing, so he pretty much destroyed his chances of getting a job this year.

I also am receiving job applications for a graduate assistant position. This position carries a 100% tuition waiver in addition to the salary. Our GA position pool has been cut by 66% university wide. For many people, not getting this job means not being able to go to graduate school at all. One would think people would make a minimal effort, at least, to get the job.

But no. Out of the 12 applications I have received so far, only one applicant addressed me by my name. The name that is prominently mentioned in the job ad. Most address me as “Hi!” Two don’t address me at all. One went really far and opened with “Dear Sir/Madam” and then proceeded to inform me that he’s very detail-oriented.

At this very moment, I’m sitting at an event where we offer CV editing services to graduate students who are going on the job market. I’ve been doing this since 2012 (with a break for COVID). And guess what? There have been zero people coming by. Before, I’d have a line of people seeking help. But now it’s like everybody just gave up.

People aren’t even trying. It’s sad but it’s everywhere.

I was finally able to open a section of American Sign Language. When students were allowed to enroll, the section filled up completely with a wait-list within two days. This never happened to me before with any of the courses in the other 8 languages that I offer.

What would happen in a profit-oriented organization in the midst of a severe budget crisis?

A second section would immediately be opened, and people on the wait-list would be moved there, right?

But no. In our supposedly corporatized university, it will take me a million years to ask and ask and ask for a second section.

I’m giving an interview to our student newspaper today about our ASL course. I’m holding a promotional event on the 14th. This will undoubtedly bring many more students eager to enroll. It would be great to have an unfilled section ready for them. Instead, I’ll have to go through an entire crowd of scared bureaucrats who wouldn’t be able to make a decision.

I dream of a corporatized university. I have almost erotic fantasies of working in an environment where it’s all about bringing in the profit, innovating, achieving, and making things happen.

I’m not a hinting woman. I’m an oversharing, excessively verbalizing woman. Fifteen years in, it’s still a struggle to explain to my husband that I don’t hint.

I’d say something like, “Get this, Tom and Janey are getting divorced. She says the marriage hasn’t been working for a long time and she’s ready to give up.”

And he’d come back with, “Are you trying to say our marriage isn’t working and you want a divorce?”

“No. I’m saying exactly what I said. Tom and Janey are getting divorced. This isn’t about us at all.”

“Really? Then why are you saying it to me?”

“I’m sharing. This is a story I’ve heard, and I want to share it with my husband. With whom I’m in a great marriage. Where we share.”

“Ah, well, you should have said so from the start!”

So now I start every other story with “Our marriage is great. I’m very happy. I have no plans to criticize you for anything. But get this, Tom and Janey…”

This doesn’t eliminate the problem completely. Sometimes, I’d be doing something in complete silence and he’d stare at me with a severe look.

“So …” he’d say. “Any complaints? Do you have any thoughts about getting rid of me, throwing me out of the house and divorcing me?”

This is actually great progress. Years ago, he’d imagine that I was planning to divorce him because of something really trivial, like I’d suggest a movie and he didn’t want to watch it. He’d torture himself for weeks and then finally erupt, begging me to put him out of his misery and just say that I hated him because of the movie that I had forgotten about 3 seconds after the initial discussion.

I feel great compassion because none of this is about me at all. His favorite quote that he repeats regularly is from A Dog’s Heart by Mikhail Bulgakov. At the end of the novel, a stray dog who was picked up by a genius surgeon for medical experimentation says, “I’m so lucky. I’ve really been accepted into this apartment.” This is very sad.

So yeah, I don’t hint.

Another really good read for the day:

This pandemic pandemonium was an iatrogenic social experiment. One that weaponized fear, panic and pseudoscience to reorder our social hierarchy into a more primitive class pyramid of autocratic nobility at its apex and a sea of serfs at the base; the two separated by an impenetrable chasm of discrimination mandated through bureaucratic fiat. It was, by every metric, class warfare conducted at a scale and intensity with no modern parallels. And like so many other paradoxes and ironies that pockmarked the pandemic landscape, was waged by the very devotees of equality and worshippers of equity. Many aspects of this iatrogenic feudalism bore uncanny resemblance to the caste order system of ancient India.

https://thesovereignmind.substack.com/p/iatrogenic-shudras-the-birth-of-covid

This article by a Jewish person in London really spoke to me. This is exactly how I felt in 2014. I’m sad that other people got to feel it, too.

Jewish people need to be aware that there’s psychological pressure deployed against them through the many fake videos and reports about Jews in America being assaulted on campuses and in the streets. That video of a Jewish student being crowded at Harvard, for example. It’s a craftily edited, manipulative piece. The student got in the face of some protesters, and they got in his face in response. That’s what students do. Nobody was harmed, and the Jewish student clearly felt very safe to confront the protesters. And the same goes for the obviously fake video of “Jews hiding in a campus library”.

This is done on purpose to make you weak. Every time you get scared, angry, upset, you become a leaky vessel. Don’t watch videos where you are a victim. Watch the ones where you are a winner.

It’s good advice for everybody.

The airplane was very tiny, and the gentleman sitting next to me was not. Neither am I, so when he reached for his seat belt, his hand brushed against me.

“I’m not trying to do anything!” the poor guy exclaimed. “It’s the seat belt! I’m trying to get the seat belt!”

I understand his stress. At any moment one can run into a crazy person who would start posting TikTok rants about “feeling unsafe” on airplanes.