And here’s another illustration of what I’m saying. A middle-aged couple was banned from Airbnb because their adult daughter has un-PC political views. Today it’s parents, tomorrow it will be the neighbors who never talked to her at all:

Wasn’t it better when things were about profit extraction, pure and simple?

N found a job opening in his field at a large company in St Louis. Then it turned out that they require COVID vaccination from all applicants. Obviously, he won’t apply because his job consists of sitting at home alone in front of a computer. This requirement isn’t about health. It’s about showing fealty.

The funny thing is that in order to do what he does, you need to have a very high IQ and be capable of extraordinarily high level of complex thinking. You simply can’t be an obedient lemming and do this job. The company in question will wait for a long time for anybody to apply. Our geographic area isn’t rich in this kind of specialist to begin with. N’s current job stood vacant for 7 years because they simply couldn’t find a specialist. And looking for people in other states isn’t easy either. In the places where quants tend to live, salary expectations are in a different galaxy because the cost of living is very different. Neither can the job be outsourced overseas because there is only half a dozen universities in the world which train these particular specialists, and they are all in the US.

These are very rare skills that require constant updating. N takes classes at MIT, Stanford, Princeton, etc all the time. There’s literally not been a single day in a decade when he didn’t sit with textbooks, lectures and instructional videos after work. The vaccine-loyal company is losing an opportunity to hire a unique specialist over something utterly unnecessary. This isn’t capitalism. This is a complete perversion of capitalist thinking where the guiding principle should be, as Kevin O’Leary aptly puts it “to make MMMONNNEY.”

The Ukrainian student let me hold some Ukrainian money. Unexpectedly, it was a very powerful experience. I haven’t held it in my hands for 25 years. It is really strange to have a deep emotional response to holding money. The only reason why I didn’t start crying or babbling incoherently is because I’m ashamed of showing weakness in front of this very stoic and calm young person.

The thing is, when I left Ukraine, I really left. I completely disengaged myself, never went back. And then all of a sudden, it’s like plunging into a long-ago life that I thought was gone forever.

Yesterday, I was waiting for my new Ukrainian friend (the exchange student) at the entrance to the building where I work. She’s 19, so I guess I subconsciously felt younger although I didn’t verbalize it to myself. I dropped my backpack on the floor, climbed on a table, and sat there dangling my feet, chewing gum, and furiously texting on my phone.

At that moment, my secretary was coming downstairs on her way home from work. She saw me, and obviously I never comport myself that way at the office. I’m the kind of person who never gets called anything but “Professor” because I don’t invite familiarity. I’m usually kind of intimidating.

“Are you OK?” she asked, looking disturbed. “Do you need help?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” I said, chewing ferociously. “Waiting for a friend.”

“Oooh-kaaaay,” said the secretary staring at me like I was a total basket case and slowly backing away.

Then an Associate Dean came by and also offered help.

I’m starting to think I need to show the different facets of my personality more at work.

A colleague stops me after a meeting and exclaims, “I met your best friend Jo-Jo! We had such a nice conversation about you.”

“Lester,” I say, “I don’t have a friend called Jo-Jo. Nothing even close.”

“Really??” asks Lester. “That’s weird.”

Two weeks later, we have another meeting of the same committee.

After the meeting, I stop to chat with a colleague named Peter.

“Peter!” Lester exclaims when he sees us together. “I talked with your best friend Jo-Jo but I completely confused you and Clarissa!”

Peter and I stare at each other in amazement. He’s male, black, tall, and definitely not Ukrainian.

“How, Lester?” Peter and I ask. “How could you possibly confuse us?”

“Oh, it’s because you both wear a lot of pale blue,” says Lester who teaches painting. “You always look so similar.”

Can anybody put me out of my misery already and post a comment on the Ukrainian blog? It can be in any language. How great would it be to have comments in several different languages? Extremely great.

The url is https://ukrlit.art.blog/. Can you imagine how pathetic it feels to be the only commenter on your own blog?

They must have been really worried about the NATO expansion.

Here’s a second post on my Ukrainian blog. This one isn’t a book review but a personal story about how I learned to speak Ukrainian back in 1984.

I’ve been wondering why Ukrainian philosophers, thinkers and pundits are so much more interesting to listen to than the Western ones. They aren’t any smarter. They don’t have significantly higher IQs. They haven’t read anything others can’t access. Why, then, does everything they say feel fresh and important?

It’s simply because they are free. They let their thoughts roam far and wide, unconstrained by political correctness, politeness, fear of wounding sensibilities, and the need to be nice, egalitarian or inclusive.

For me, it’s not even about what they say, although it’s always very fruitful. It’s the feeling of freedom, the capacity to be ironic, and the unconstrained flight of ideas that I find hypnotic.

Today, I’m going to spend 2,5 hours at a mandatory meeting where we’ll discuss our feelings about the video of police brutality in Memphis and “how we can do a better job of serving communities of color in a society dominated by institutionalized white supremacy.” It is my deeply held belief that such meetings destroy the capacity to think profoundly and freely precisely among the people whose job it is to think.

“Come, let’s argue then,” said Prince Andrew, “You talk of schools,” he went on, crooking a finger, “education and so forth; that is, you want to raise him” (pointing to a peasant who passed by them taking off his cap) “from his animal condition and awaken in him spiritual needs, while it seems to me that animal happiness is the only happiness possible, and that is just what you want to deprive him of. I envy him, but you want to make him what I am, without giving him my means. Then you say, ‘lighten his toil.’ But as I see it, physical labor is as essential to him, as much a condition of his existence, as mental activity is to you or me. You can’t help thinking. I go to bed after two in the morning, thoughts come and I can’t sleep but toss about till dawn, because I think and can’t help thinking, just as he can’t help plowing and mowing; if he didn’t, he would go to the drink shop or fall ill. Just as I could not stand his terrible physical labor but should die of it in a week, so he could not stand my physical idleness, but would grow fat and die.

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace