It’s finally going to be not hot outside tomorrow. This summer has been relatively mild but a person deserves not to sweat, battle off mosquitos and work with a massive ventilator 5 inches away from her face in bloody November.

It’s going to be summer again in just a few months, and I resent every day that has the potential to be cold and doesn’t.

And yes, I’m moaning about the hot weather again. It takes great restraint not to moan about it more often than I do

I agree that Hamas is a total whore, so no argument there.

I don’t like Jake Sullivan, and for anybody who follows the news it must be very clear why. But his recent article in Foreign Affairs is massively important and fascinating. There is a lot of pre-election political speak but that’s all noise. Let’s concentrate on what Sullivan is saying that is actually important. Here are some quotes:

“In the previous era, there was reluctance to tackle clear market failures that threatened the resilience of the U.S. economy. Since the U.S. military had no peer, and as a response to 9/11, Washington focused on nonstate actors and rogue nations. It did not focus on improving its strategic position and preparing for a new era in which competitors would seek to replicate its military advantages, since that was not the world it faced at the time.”

“the United States is to win the competition to shape the future of the international order”

“the United States needs to prepare for a new era of strategic competition—in particular by deterring and responding to great-power aggression”

“the coming era of competition will be unlike anything experienced before. European security competition in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was largely a regional contest between midsize and proximate powers that ultimately ended in calamity. The Cold War that followed the most destructive war in human history was waged between two superpowers that had very low levels of interdependence. That ended decisively and in America’s favor. Today’s competition is fundamentally different. The United States and China are economically interdependent.”

“we seek a free, open, prosperous, and secure international order, one that protects the interests of the United States and its friends and delivers global public goods. But we do not expect a transformative end state like the one that resulted from the collapse of the Soviet Union. There will be an ebb and flow to the competition—the United States will make gains, but China will, too.”

“And we need a sustained sense of confidence in our capacity to outcompete any country.”

“At times, the competition will be intense. “

“Washington and Beijing need to figure out how to manage competition to reduce tensions and find a way forward on shared challenges.”

“But it also needs to be clear about what is most important to the United States. That is how we will seek to shape relations with them: so that on balance they have incentives to act in ways consistent with U.S. interests.”

“This commitment to national strength through industrial investment began to erode in the 1980s, and there was little perceived need for it after the Cold War. “

What are you noticing in these quotes?

One obvious thing is the extraordinarily high incidence of the words “competition” and “competitors”. I only copied a tiny number of the sentences that contain these words. And what does the word “competition” tell us?

It’s a neoliberal concept par excellence. Neoliberalism turns everything into a competition. It gamifies everything. Sullivan can’t start telling us about neoliberalism because nobody will understand, so he does the next best thing and uses the clearest, easiest to understand descriptor. He is telling us that we are living in a neoliberal world that’s completely different from the preceding Cold War era.

And how are we to deal with this new neoliberal world?

By going back to being a nation-state.

There are also nice parts in the article about needing to bend the supranational institutions like the UN and the World Bank over the knee and make them serve the interests of the American nation-state. This is a highly nationalist text, the likes of which I never expected to see at this point in time.

This is not just god news. This is brilliant news.

I woke up at 3 am, and my brain started to compose an explanation I am forced to provide about why it’s important to teach in person. I tried my darndest to stop but my brain refused to comply. So I never went back to sleep. I’ve been fighting this fight for a little over 2 years now, and I’m very tired.

The administration can force us to read woke books against our will but it can do absolutely nothing to make people show up and do their jobs. It’s very frustrating because this shouldn’t be my fight. I’ve been physically present on campus every work day (except vacations and conferences) since July 1, 2020. I do my duty. I shouldn’t have to keep explaining the painfully obvious.

Decolonization now simply means “imposing the far-left dogma on everything”. This is why I blame Timothy Snyder for his efforts to connect this term to Ukraine. Ukrainians don’t know any better but he should.

I also absolutely hate the phrase “amplify voices”, and it’s another horrible, left-wing expression that a bunch of useful idiots are trying to connect to Ukraine.

Very rich people are all globalists. Nations annoy them because national borders stand in the way of a ceaseless rapid movement of money and people.

A delegation from Hamas is visiting the Kremlin, being feted and greeted there. Moscow is issuing calls for a ceasefire and blaming the US for “an increase in tensions between Israel and Palestine”. There’s no observable difference between the proclamations of the leading BLMers and the Kremlin’s position on the issue.

There are many people who should be feeling pretty stupid right now but they are too stupid to see what’s happening.

In an effort to find more economical dishes, I made pasta e fagioli. I don’t like the soupy kind because I can’t take soup to work as lunch. I made it like a regular dish. And finally I managed to make it right.

Turns out the secret is to add a lot of garlic. I was peeling garlic and got distracted, so there ended up being a lot of it. I didn’t want to waste it, so I went ahead and added all of it to the sofrito. And the dish became completely amazing.

The problem with amazing dishes, though, is that they evaporate fast. I’ll have to cook again today because there’s very little left.

What are your favorite economical dishes?

Cancel culture is a product of the neoliberal society and will be solved by neoliberal means.

Here’s how.

Neoliberalism stratifies. There’s no middle in anything. It’s all extremes.

It’s also all about individual choices. If you have discipline and willpower, you win. If you don’t, you lose. Those who can boundary up win. Those who gush out lose.

It’s all quite new but soon enough the stratification will become very clear. The gushing, the emoting, the structurally oppressed and the perennially unsafe will run around with their outrage campaigns, cancellations, and dramas. That will be all they’ll have.

And then there will be those who won’t want to collapse into a mental heap. They’ll realize that they need to boundary up against the drama. They’ll know that they need to keep themselves under control because nobody else will. They’ll observe the cancel crowd like entomologists observe gnats.

In short, cancel culture won’t go away but nobody with anything resembling an actual life will notice.

Neoliberal mentality is seeping into the brain of each of us. Some have accepted it completely, others are trying to, and many more can’t or won’t join. Which category are you? This simple test will help you figure it out.

When I think about changing my profession or occupation to a completely new one, it feels

1 – exhilarating

2 – scary

3 – stupid

4 – completely detached from reality

How many apps do you use to track and enhance your productivity?

1 – one or two

2 – three or more

3 – none

4 – what are productivity apps?

Do you agree that traveling is one of the most important things in life?

1 – it’s fine but not crucial

2 – it is very important to be able to travel

3 – I don’t have money to travel

4 – it’s pretty unimportant

How do you feel about the expression “pushing the boundaries”?

1 – depends on the context

2 – positive

3 – negative

4 – I don’t understand the expression

What is more important, duty or freedom?

1 – duty but only if you freely chose it

2 – freedom

3 – depends on the context

4 – can’t say for sure

What are you most scared of from the following list:

1 – chronic illness

2 – a climate catastrophe

3 – going broke

4 – war

Do you agree that it’s crucial to have children to continue your bloodline?

1 – it’s important to have children but not for that reason

2 – every person has their own reasons to have or not have children, and these reasons are equally valid

3 – I agree

4 – it’s great if you can afford it

Mental illness is unfairly stigmatized

1 – nobody can stigmatize you if you haven’t chosen to be stigmatized

2 – it’s true

3 – to the contrary, it’s fashionable to be a mental basket case

4 – this is a woke talking point

I help my children do their homework (or would help if I had them)

1 –  there is homework? How quaint

2 – yes. Academic success is very important

3 – I homeschool

4 – I know I should but I don’t have the time

I don’t have enough money because

1 – I have psychological problems, and I’m working on them with my finance coach

2 – I don’t work hard enough and spend too much

3 – the economy is shit

4 – there’s no fairness in life

How many personal development courses have you taken in this calendar year?

1 – two or three

2 – do my yoga classes count?

3 – none

4 – are you trying to be funny on purpose?

Do you (or would you) read books on child-rearing?

1 – who has the time?

2 – yes, a lot

3 – I read articles online on the subject

4 – my parents raised me perfectly fine without any books

Where do you get most of your news?

1 – LinkedIn

2 – Twitter or Facebook

3 – TV

4 – I’m too busy for the news

What are your most used apps?

1 – email and reader apps

2 – social media apps

3 – I don’t use smartphones

4 – gaming / betting apps

Work/life balance is important

1 – that’s stupid because work is life

2 – very important but hard to achieve

3 – no, one is much more important than the other

4 – only snowflakes say that

You find yourself having to take care of an elderly relative you don’t much like, and you think…

1 – this is an opportunity for personal growth

2 – I hate having to take time away from my kids to take care of this relative

3 – I have to do what I have to do

4 – I need to have a drink. Or five

Ready for the responses? Here they are:

If none of the options fully describe you, place yourself into category 2 and remember that everything that is true for the 2s is even truer for you.

If you have more 1s than other numbers:

Congratulations! You have been completely neoliberalized, and neoliberalism is rewarding you very well for being a smart, loyal adherent. You must really love your life, even if many people think you are a cold bastard who has been very lucky. Neoliberalized, by the way, is not an insult. Neoliberalism can be bloody exhilarating if you do it right. And you definitely mastered it.

If you have more 2s than other numbers:

You really want to be part of the neoliberal game but you are not doing it right. The way you are playing it, you’ll end up on anti-anxiety meds and sleeping aids in no time. You are being hit with every negative consequence of neoliberalism and are catching no positives. Do you feel like what you just read means you aren’t trying hard enough? Wannabe neoliberals always feel like they aren’t trying hard enough. Guilt and self-blame are their constant companions. Want to move out of this category? Quit the guilt game.

If you have more 3s than other numbers:

Neoliberalism goes against your every instinct. And it doesn’t like you either. Neoliberalism and you are filled with well-deserved mutual resentment. You know exactly what you hate about it and why. Your courage is to be admired.

If you have more 4s than other numbers:

You are lost and confused in the neoliberal storm. And probably very pissed off. I don’t blame you but you’ll feel better if you calm down a bit and look over at category 3. These are your friends in the anti-neoliberal camp but they aren’t freaking out and can help.