Only an extraordinarily rich and powerful country can afford to play these games.

Is everybody reading the Twitter files?

I’m most fascinated by the hubris of the former Twitter operatives who thought it was up to them to be the arbiters of Good and Bad.

I’m even more interested in their extraordinary pettiness and parochialism. The people they thought merited censorship weren’t warlords, dictators or terrorists. They were Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Chaya Raichik, Dan Bongino, and Charlie Kirk.

You’ve got this enormous power, and you use it to. . . hassle the Libs of Tik Tok account? Shadowban Charlie Kirk? I thought the only person who took Charlie Kirk very seriously was Charlie Kirk.

And Jay Bhattacharya? The nerdy Stanford prof? You are really scraping the barrel if you think he’s a baddie in need of suppression.

I won’t even talk about Dan Bongino because, honestly.

This is all so incredibly… small. These people were censored over very insignificant transgressions. You’ve got all this power and you unleash it against Charlie Kirk? How do you not feel completely pathetic after that? These Twitter operatives sound like they had the mental age of 11.

Klara informed me that when she grows up she’ll be the second best mommy in the world.

Because I’m the best, got it?

I won’t lie, it feels good.

A notorious arms dealer known under the nickname Merchant of Death, arrested on terrorism charges for providing anti-aircraft missiles to FARC and finally convicted in New York for a lifetime of running guns to every dictator in the world has been. . . released.

If you’ve seen the movie Lord of War with Nicholas Cage, this dude was the inspiration for the main character.

Just think about it, folks. A Russian gunrunner. Sent back to Russia. Just when Russia is scrambling to buy weapons illegally around the world.

And why was he released? Why was he sent to Russia to help Putin buy weapons on the black market?

This was all done so that Russians would release some American druggie they arrested some time ago.

Nah, you’ll say. Nobody cares about a random druggie to this degree.

Well, this druggie also has a whole soup of favored identities. The Biden administration is now filling the airwaves with a litany of her identities while the Merchant of Death is on his way to resume his profession.

If you are a literary person and a Spanish-speaker, please drop everything and read Carlos Granés’ Delirio americano: una historia cultural y política de América Latina.

Granés is not only exceptionally erudite with a vast knowledge of Latin American avant-garde, he also has a knack for a subtle yet deadly takedown like nobody else. This is literary criticism as a form of art. The book is funny, sarcastic, knowledgeable, and anti-woke. There are no sacred cows for this author, and he’s especially bored with wounded identities that are in vogue today. He also has fascinating insights into who invented wounded identities and why.

I’m only on page 127 but I’ll write in more detail when I finish.

I definitely need a break from teaching. I noticed that when N plays with Klara, he has a large repertoire of games. And I always somehow end up playing the same game where I’m a teacher and Klara and her toys are students. Yesterday, we started playing mommies and also ended up in the same game of teacher and students. I’m very bored with that game because we’ve been playing it for years. But my brain is fried, and I can’t snap out of it.

I know, people will tell me to try board games. And I have but guess what? Every board game turns into a game about a teacher and students playing a board game.

Ah, well, it looks like with the attention of his Moscow handlers turned elsewhere, the Commie president of Peru Pedro Castillo has been ousted from office.

I spent some time with a Peruvian relative over the Thanksgiving break and she was telling me about how bad Castillo has been for the country. Now it looks like he tried to conduct a coup and was thrown out as a result.

Is it possible that Latin America is finally learning something?

Probably not but it’s still good to see Peru free of Castillo.

Now I’ve really seen everything. Russian children are standing in front of Orthodox holy icons and singing about the joys of a nuclear war that will deliver a strike on Washington. In the song, a nuclear war is something fun, cute, and homey.

In the USSR, we were afraid of a nuclear war. It was never presented as something desirable. It was never glorified. We always knew that we wouldn’t start it because that was the most evil thing to do.

Children, holy icons… and a glorification of a nuclear war. I’ve now seen it all but I’d like to unsee it.

Why are people saying that Twitter has lost its advertisers? I have ads from Amazon, Samsung, Nintendo, Dr Pepper, Walmart, etc in my feed. If anything, I’d say I’m getting more ads than ever.

Twitter has a better ad algorithm than YouTube which always shows me ads for the exact things I purchased the day before. I wonder if ad buyers are aware that YouTube wastes their money on reaching out to those who already made a purchase.

Tomorrow I will go into the classroom for the last time until 2024. Yes, twenty-four.

I bunched my teaching into the Fall of this year and the spring of 2024 to give myself a break from teaching.

As I always say, the only thing I love more than teaching is not teaching.

Let the break begin.