This is bunch of bullshit.

I went to college in the south. I pledged a fraternity that was full of conservatives and 30 years later I’m in a chat group with many of my fraternity brothers.

I never heard any of them say anything like the Young Republicans. Then or now. pic.twitter.com/oKQpx0P1sG

— Turnbull (@cturnbull1968) October 16, 2025

It’s like these people are dense on purpose. Of course, 30 years ago the culture of destroying people for hurty words did not exist. Thirty years ago, you didn’t need to fight for years to have a college course title include the word “civilization.” Thirty years ago, nobody knew that water is racist and good morning is sexist. Which is why thirty years ago, people didn’t use prohibited words to establish trust. They had other mechanisms.

The very same individuals who inflicted this dysfunction on everybody are now self-righteously informing us that they didn’t have to defend themselves from it. Right you are you, didn’t, fellows. Because it didn’t exist before you made it a thing.

I keep exploring what airlines see as diabetic food. Aer Lingus believes that diabetics are crazy about rice. I got rice three ways on this flight: regular rice in a sweet sauce, fancy rice, and rice cakes. I now travel with a collection of snacks because I’m already prepared for this strange understanding of diabetic-friendly.

Do the airlines think one asks for a diabetic meal with the hopes of being given diabetes?

I live in my tiny town that is quiet, sleepy, and filled with families whose schedules are dominated by biological rhythms of small children. I forget what’s out there.

The JFK airport is a futuristic nightmare. Huge construction projects are happening everywhere. Terminals are spaced out and organized in the most human-hating manner possible. My Iberia flight was cancelled, and I’ve been rebooked on a line called Aer Lingus that departs from the most hellish terminal in this already grim airport. Only the Trudeau airport in Montreal can bungle up security like JFK’s Terminal 7, creating the kind of lines that make people burst out in laughter the first time they see them. Surely, nobody expects us to stand here for two hours? passengers think. Surely not?

Instead of a direct flight to Madrid, I’m being rerouted through Ireland. It’s the story of my life to get rerouted through Ireland. Well, at least it’s an opportunity to discover what Aer Lingus is. Who ever knew that such a thing even existed?

There’s a raging scandal going on regarding Taylor Swift’s latest album. A significant portion of the population thinks Swift is some sort of an intellectual and is emotionally invested into her lyrics. Which, I know, but most people have the intelligence of a fruit fly, so Swift’s lyrics sound profound to them.

In any case, Swift wrote a song in which she expressed a desire to have kids with her fiance. And now overripe but unplucked fans are throwing the most entertaining tantrums. Here’s one example:

The ones on TikTok and Instagram are funnier but I can’t link those.

Of course, I understand why these fans feel betrayed. Swift exploited their loneliness to project the image of being a lonely, rejected female, just like they are. Then she took the money fans gave her and invested it into looking marriageable at 35. She can also finance all sorts of reproductive technologies for herself. Of course, all the women who listened to her and thought, “see? There’s nothing wrong with being single and unmarried at 35, if the biggest pop star in the world is doing it” feel like dupes.

Don’t get married if you don’t want to but don’t trawl through song lyrics in search of validation. Taylor Swift isn’t a receptionist who validates your life success ticket. Enjoy the music but don’t turn an artist into your idol. The

My flight to Spain was cancelled but it’s OK, I’m rebooked, it will be fine. The observation I want to make is that I’ve been mulling around the JFK airport and the airport hotel, and it’s become clear to me that immigration levels in this country are utterly unsustainable.

There needs to be an immediate pause in any form of immigration until those who are already here get absorbed. People take a long time to integrate. They don’t know how things work in the new country. Unless they are surrounded by the overwhelming majority of locals who model the accepted behavior, they’ll never find out and the existing behavioral models of gentility, politeness and kindness that make America America will disappear. I had no idea how to behave as an American either when I first arrived. It took years to absorb the norms.

For the first time in all my years in America, the orderly disembarkation from a flight yesterday was broken by people unwilling to wait for their turn, trampling over passengers in front of them, shoving aside elderly passengers. Not in an aggressive way but with a beaming smile of people who sincerely have no idea that this is not how things are done. Women in hijabs and saris were waving American passports and acting in ways no native-born American would act. A Dominican guy driving everybody up a wall, conducting a conversation over loudspeaker on a small airport shuttle. A Colombian woman cutting into the front of the line and becoming aggressive when the receptionist explained that you have to wait for your turn. Native-borns are too polite to say anything to stop this behavior, so they suffer stoically, which feels very symbolic of the entire situation.

Wow, friends, I found the saucer picture!

I was pregnant with Kara here. And I’ve gone back to my natural hair color since then. Everything else is also very different. But I actually wore that dress yesterday. That didn’t change.

Here’s what happened. My university decided to close my department. I received order number four to put in paperwork to close the French program. And the German. And Chinese. As all preceding times, I ignored the order.

We were slated to be eliminated together with another department. That department is now gone. Mine remains in place and undamaged. We haven’t lost any languages, nobody was let go, no changes at all were made.

I have a strategy that I won’t reveal for now because I’m still playing it. I will continue playing it, and the department will be undamaged, for as long as I’m department Chair. My second term ends on June 30, 2026, and our statutes don’t allow for a third term. Not that I want a third term because I’m tired. But it’s kind of shocking that I kept French alive after all the faculty in French retired and the administration was raring to cancel it. Instead I actually managed to hire into the program in the midst of a hiring freeze.

This academic year we are proceeding exactly as always, with all the languages and programs intact, and people who know the situation keep asking, “BUT HOW IS IT POSSIBLE??”

The Chair of the other department slated for closing played a different strategy and lost. He went for immediate gratification, and that’s never going to lead to success.

I will now serve out my term calmly without any unnecessary upheaval. After that, it’s out of my hands.

Roca Barea’s book Fracasología, a title that I’d translate as The Science of Being a Loser, talks about the tendency of Spanish intellectuals to see their own country as perennially defective, backwards, and third-rate.

The historian is right. It’s been like this in Spain for at least 300 years. What bothers me, though, is that her book is written from the same loserish perspective. She goes on and on about how France “ain’t all that” and how nobody in France sees the country’s gigantic mistakes as reasons to feel inferior. However, here are no intellectuals in France obsessed with proving that Spain also “ain’t all that.” Once you start obsessing over your competition with people who don’t notice your existence, you’ve already lost.

Another issue is that Spain’s sovereignty today is not under threat from France and Great Britain, Roca Barea’s biggest bugbears. Exactly zero of Spain’s many problems are caused by these countries. I fully support the goal of strengthening Spain’s (and everybody else’s nationalism). And I’m definitely in favor of rescuing history from raging liberalism. But the lure of defeatism and loserishness need to be avoided. Not only by Spaniards but by all of this. Let’s stop apologizing and start doing.

I’m boarding one of my many planes over the next two days, so I’ll continue after I land in North Carolina.

OK, it’s not that many. It’s only three planes total. But still.

Please, everybody, don’t disappear. People tend to disappear from the blog when I travel which leaves me lonely given that i don’t hang out with others when I travel.

I only know what Longhouse is in the conservative context, so when Kara told me they learned about the longhouse at school, I was puzzled.

Zohran: "A key reason we have to make the bus free is it reduces assauIts" pic.twitter.com/Wmmuv8TOWs

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) October 16, 2025

Yes, and providing everybody a free prostitute reduces rape.

People who are willing to vote for this greasy mutant deserve everything that’s coming to them.