Opinions, art, debate
One can have weak dopamine receptors, aggressive tendencies, a strong narcissistic component, extreme introversion, hyperactivity, etc. We are born with these things. But we can do something positive and productive with them. Or not.
I have all the above-listed things. Mentioning them to me as a criticism is a waste of time. Of course, I’m aggressive and narcissistic. I wouldn’t be a great teacher and a strong leader without them.
Go away, stupid bastard. Go away, go away, go away.
Why these pieces of crap keep haunting my Academia profile is a mystery. I only write for normal people with developed intellects.
On a positive note, yesterday I was approached by a student who is visiting from Ukraine and who was stunned to see the author of one of the textbooks they use in class right here on our otherwise not famous campus.
Some years ago I wrote about this mega liberal family I know that put their kid in an Evangelical school during COVID. The mother was an executive at some huge agricultural concern, and COVID lockdowns were preventing her from traveling for work. These are very wealthy people who live in a veritable mansion. The executive mother was filling my Facebook thread with the most BLMish posts imaginable. Her attitude to the Evangelical school was that it was an arrangement of convenience, and the silly religious stuff had to be tolerated until public schools reopened. “Ha ha, it’s hilarious that I, of all people, should have a kid who prays every evening and insists we say grace at meals,” she would post regularly.
But her little girl is the most headstrong child I know besides my own. If there was going to be an ideological battle between her and the mom, my bets were on the kid.
By the time the girl went to second grade, the mother found Jesus. I can’t begin to describe how unexpected it was to see her suddenly start posting updates from her Bible Study group and pictures of the family on their way to church. This used to be the most liberal person you could imagine. She went on to have two more kids, left her big agricultural concern, and started her own business that fights Big Ag and provides support to small agricultural producers. She’s still as effective as ever, and from what I can gather, now makes even more money.
Trump eliminated disparate impact!
I wrote about disparate impact here. Also here.
Put that in your pipe and suck on it, LBJ.
I wrote 58,724 words of my book since October 2, 2023. Of course, I also wrote articles and book chapters in that time. But oh, this goes so slowly.
Today I wrote about the experience economy (as in, selling experiences instead of physical products.) Tomorrow, I’m scheduled to do the bit about the peculiar nature of Mexican homophobia. On Friday, I’m writing about Calderonian jealousy. And yes, it’s all connected.
I didn’t know I was part of a trend among the “well-heeled” but I clearly am.
I can’t criticize the trend because N is extremely happy. He says it feels like he’s on a permanent paid vacation. And he has the exact same number of friends and contacts with co-workers as he had before working remotely, which is zero. It’s been 4 years (since early COVID), and seeing the absolute joy this is giving him is irresistible. Of course, this means I’m now doomed to going daily to the office even when I stop being department Chair but it’s still worth it.
Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is boasting on the front page of The Wall Street Journal that, “Ukraine will not legally recognize the occupation of Crimea. There’s nothing to talk about here.” This statement is very harmful to the Peace Negotiations with Russia in that Crimea was lost years ago under the auspices of President Barack Hussein Obama, and is not even a point of discussion. Nobody is asking Zelenskyy to recognize Crimea as Russian Territory but, if he wants Crimea, why didn’t they fight for it eleven years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired?
https://x.com/TrumpDailyPosts/status/1915079714806411650?t=9jyYOiCkaiBSqodO725uMA&s=19
Trump is not wrong. Letting Russia keep the Crimea without Ukraine officially recognizing this as legal would be a good solution. And yes, the Crimea was ceded without much effort to retain it 11 years ago. There is a cluster of reasons and bad mistakes that led to that situation. Obama is a big part of the reason but so are many Ukrainian decisions since 1991. And, of course, the terrible mishandling of the Cold War where Russia was rewarded with money and more nukes for the depredations of the USSR was the initial cause of all the current tragedy.
There is no way out of this mess without recognizing that the Cold War win was pissed away and turned into a huge loss.
Between 1992 and the early 2000s, the United States provided over $20 billion in aid to post-Soviet Russia. The Cold War is the only war where the presumed winner paid reparations to the loser without requiring any concessions, a Nuremberg-type trial, disarmament, or ideological cleansing. Even today the US is still paying the reparations in the form of military aid to Ukraine. There’s no end in sight now that Russia has its sights on the Baltics and beyond.
Contrast this to how Germany was (very deservedly) treated after losing WWII. Yes, there was the Marshall Plan but only after Nuremberg, de-ideologization, executions of the complicit, and the splitting in two.
What kind of a win is it when you get absolutely nothing and end up on the hook for endless cash infusions? What kind of a win entails the opponent still financing every regime hostile to you around the world?
I don’t know if it’s true but everywhere in the world where this was tried, the results were bad. The only people who are motivated to have children by cash payouts are lumpen ghetto dwellers. They waste the money on stupid shit immediately, and those surplus kids can’t be integrated into society. This often leads to the need for permanent war to get rid of them. Russia is a great example. The cash payouts did not remove the need to bring in millions of Central Asians because that’s not how things work.
It’s a very liberal idea that any problem needs to have money thrown at it. In reality, many (not all but many) issues can’t be solved with money. Most of the high birthrate countries are extremely poor and very dysfunctional. We need to concentrate not on quantity but on quality.
Nobody does. I will repeat once again that 30 years of grievous mishandling of the results of the Cold War by every US administration since 1990 cannot be undone in a month or a year. Especially since nobody has the guts to say what actually happened: the US, which supposedly won the Cold War, behaved like a defeated foe paying tribute to the assumed loser of the conflict.
Economically, ideologically, politically and militarily, the US behaved like it lost the Cold War. Now we are seeing the results. When a culture despises itself, the result is always bad.
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