I had a perfect day today and of course that includes buying books. For some reason, most of my haul is books in translation:

Did any important news occur? Does anybody have anything interesting to share?

This is my most recent exchange with N:

Yes, it’s always like that.

I’m on a nostalgic walk around Montreal, and here’s the building where I lived with my sister when we were both very young students:

Here is the very first classroom where I taught Beginner Spanish 1:

I was so terrified that my friend who was a large, burly Mexican guy had to carry me physically into the classroom. I’m not sure students learned much on that class but I learned an enormous lot.

And this is the bathroom where my very first Spanish instructor hid from me every morning because I badgered him with my incapacity to understand the differences between the imperfect and the preterite. Later, the burly Mexican dude explained it to me in two words on a bet. He won the bet and now I use his method to teach my own students. In any case, the bathroom used to be men’s but now it’s women’s and the men’s was moved where women’s used to be.

I apologize for sharing toilet art and, as compensation, here’s a photo of a beautiful Montreal skyscraper:

I couldn’t get into the room that was my office here at McGill because there’s construction in that area of our floor. I hovered around, scaring the construction worker who was there because this is very emotional and I surely look unhinged.

My mother is shopping for shoes. Suddenly she turns to me with a pained look.

“Please, I beg you, tell me honestly, am I dying?” she asks. “I don’t want to buy the shoes if it turns out I won’t live to wear them. That’s such a waste of money.”

“Well, we’ve got to bury you in something,” I answer.

Our humor is very dark. I wouldn’t make this joke to anybody who’s not one of us.

The social media are abuzz with the story of a guy who “swiped right two million times and only got one date.” They analyze his looks, prescription eye glasses, hobbies, and personal hygiene.

The only thing nobody seems to notice is the platform where it all happened. The guy was looking for dates on Tinder, a casual hookup app. Casual hookups are not interesting to women. Exactly like Ashley Madison, the cheater app, Tinder is full of bots. Very few actual women go there. These apps monetize the male need to believe that there are women who are men with vaginas.

Any woman, even if she’s massively obese, has very hairy legs or lacks an eye, meets much more demand for casual sex than she can possibly want. Women don’t need to make efforts to find casual sex. They need to make efforts to avoid it. A single woman’s entire life is fielding unnecessary, annoying offers.

We have all been brainwashed to the point that a well-meaning, nice dude wastes years of his life morosely swiping an app in hopes of finding something that doesn’t exist in nature. And there are no friends, family members or cultural products to tell him he’s chasing after a myth and it’s embarrassing.

A pregnant Georgia woman who was declared brain dead is being kept alive by ventilators because of the state’s law banning abortions, the woman’s mother says, telling local news that the family has no say in the matter. https://t.co/XHqbqCKv4g

— NBC News (@NBCNews) May 15, 2025

A normal mother would be on her knees to the people giving her grandchild a chance to survive. What’s wrong with people not to want to give the dead daughter’s progeny a chance at life? What about respecting the woman’s last wishes? She died while pregnant, which means that her wish was for the baby to be born. Doesn’t that matter to her own mom?

It’s 11 pm and I’m traveling but I’ve got half a mind to start calling people, waking them up, and demanding reassurances that if I had kicked the bucket during my very high-risk pregnancies, they wouldn’t have gotten rid of my children.

Why do so many students sign up for a beginner Spanish course taught online asynchronously? They could learn these basic language skills on an app and then take the free proficiency test, place out, and receive the course credit for free.

Under no scenario would I pay for such a course, especially with the existing technology.

We would never think to exclude any other population from a wedding. The elderly? The poor? A race? The very idea is absurd and offensive.

Yet we are all too comfortable excluding the children.

Why?

Think deeply about this. You will find a deeply uncomfortable truth. https://t.co/aya4V3EMUd

— Old Hollow Tree (@OldHollowTree) May 14, 2025

This cloying, stupid “inclusive” language has buried us all on its treacly flows. And it always leads to accusations of racism because that’s its only destination.

I’m very indifferent to the subject of weddings. Or any mass sociability events. But nothing will truly improve until we liberate our brains from the addiction to inclusive mentality and appeals to racism. People can’t even say whatever they want about an imaginary wedding without accusing some imaginary interlocutor of mwah rayceesm.

OK, but what did this professor respond? How does he explain the need to do these assignments without AI?

As for the “students complained” part, yes, students complain. They also breathe. How is this interesting?

Instead of this directionless moaning, people could talk about how they change their teaching as a result of AI. How did the professor change his assignments? What new learning goals did he formulate?

Yes, we’ll have to adjust our teaching in response to AI. Let’s maybe discuss that instead of expressing shock that reality exists.

I’ve already returned over 24,000 people with no right to be here.

And I won’t stop there.

— Keir Starmer (@Keir_Starmer) May 14, 2025

OK, now I believe he sniffed something. If only that substance were available twenty years ago.