Elizabeth von Arnim’s sister became pregnant at the age of 13. There’s no record of how but her family didn’t seem too upset. Her Dad joked about it in his diaries, saying that she’d get her figure back once she gave birth.

The child seems to have been given up for adoption, but the early pregnancy didn’t prevent the girl from making a brilliant marriage at 18 to a wealthy young man with brilliant prospects. The family was accepted at Queen Victoria’s court in spite of being from the wealthy merchant class with zero aristocratic roots.

Kids bicker like their lives depend on it. Which they kind of do in evolutionary terms. I spent years not understanding evolution but after observing kids it all became very clear. They fight for every crumb of attention and recognition from an adult like it’s the Battle of the Somme.

Finally, unable to withstand any more bickering, a desperate adult screeches, “OK! Let’s go to the ice-cream place!” After a second of stunned silence, the kids begin to bicker more desperately than ever as to who will get more scoops and toppings.

Pfizer posts low profits and NYTimes is there with the ad pitch:

What’s funny is that the pitch never changed. It’s still stuck on the “killing grandma” wavelength. Of course, everybody who could have been persuaded by such crude, clumsy manipulation is already a repeat customer for Pfizer.

It looks like the pharma industry is as careless and lazy with promoting its poisons as it is with manufacturing them.

Turns out I have to go to Cincinnati in November. Is there anything one definitely needs to do or see there? Anything that it’s famous for?

Thirst for Salt is a first novel by a young writer from Australia. The novel came out this year but it’s not in the least woke. It’s written as if wokeness had never been invented.

Of course, the events in the novel occur in the world that exists in reality and will inevitably produce wokeness. Thirst for Salt is a love story, beautifully written, very touching and depicting a relationship that is clearly completely doomed. This isn’t a spoiler. The failure of the love between the main characters is announced from the first page. As we read about what caused the failure, it becomes clear that the characters collapse under the weight of endless choice and freedom. They have no idea how to proceed to the next stage, how to stop choosing, how to be content with life and not be lured by fantasies of imaginary other possibilities.

The man and the woman in this novel both want family, domesticity, stability, children and love that endures. But they always heard that wanting that is weird, embarrassing. You need “freedom” and “achievement”. So they play at “freedom” until there’s no more love left, and this game is, of course, a lot more damaging to a woman.

This is not an ideological novel. It’s a book about love, and it really reminded me about the early stages of my love with N. Beautiful writing, it’s all set in less inhabited areas of Southern Australia. Extremely memorable characters, and again, no wokeness. I came across this novel completely by accident at a bookstore yesterday, and I’m happy I did. This is why bookstores are great. On Amazon I’d never seek a debut novel by a 30-year-old Australian teaching at Columbia. But at a bookstore one gets a lot more adventurous.

I told you Biden turned out to be a much better president than he could have:

This Andre Damon is a socialist leader who alternates between pro-Russian slogans and COVID-mongering. Socialists stan both Putin and Fauci, which is a testament to how outdated their beliefs are.

And Taylor Lorenz is a mainstream journalist whose job is to make socialists like Damon mainstream.

That these people are upset with Biden and resort to their favorite trick of calling him a Nazi is to Biden’s credit.

People don’t get praised for things they don’t do but Biden could easily be locking down now to play into the seasonal Pfizer ad campaign. And he’s not in spite of the pressure.

Biden is very far from perfect, he’s fumbled and bumbled a lot more than necessary on Ukraine, dragged things out unnecessarily. But he’s been good in unexpected ways, both in what he does and doesn’t do.

(Obviously, by “Biden” I mean the collective Biden and not the actual individual. It’s boring to write “the Biden administration” in every sentence).

Great love has a way of seeming both miraculous and inevitable. After my brother was born, all the years I’d been without him seemed impossible. I felt like he’d always been a part of me, waiting in the wings to make his appearance. That kind of love, it alters the past as well as the future.

Madelaine Lucas, Thirst for Salt

Sometimes I truly wonder if people are OK in their heads:

There’s a screed making rounds on social media by a childless woman who says it’s great to have no children at 37 because you can sleep in every day and leave the house at a moment’s notice whenever you want.

What struck me in this statement isn’t the issue of childlessness. I didn’t have a living child at 37 either. But I couldn’t sleep in every day and go wherever the fancy struck me because I had a job. Don’t people without small children usually have jobs? Who is that person who sleeps late every day at the age of 37? Don’t you have things to do? OK, so you don’t have children but you’ve got to have something. Where is it that you can even go at a moment’s notice? Shopping? With what money if you don’t have a job?

It’s really weird that people who are not at all young have these strange fantasies of life filled with doing nothing. Not being able to hang around aimlessly and not following your whims because you have responsibilities is normal. And it’s not in the least unpleasant. It doesn’t bother me that I have to go to my job every day and that I can’t leave the office until the workday is over. Or that I have to get up early to pack Klara’s lunch box and make her breakfast. I love it.

Not having a life structured by routines arising from responsibilities leads to depression and anxiety. There’s no doubt that the author of the screed is on some form of psych meds. Not because she’s childless but because her understanding of happiness is the opposite of what makes humans happy. “I need to be free from everything that constitutes life” leads to dark places. People have been sold the fantasy that aimless, shiftless, uprooted existences are the ultimate in joy but when they engineer such lives for themselves, the joy doesn’t come. And it’s not surprising.

Tomorrow we’ll have record cold weather for this time of year in our region. I mean, it will be +25°C, so still hot but for the last day of August around here it’s about 20 degrees Celsius lower than we usually get.

I’ve never seen so much summertime outside as I have this year. Leaves and grass haven’t burned out like they always do, so it actually looks pretty.