I’m in the final stretches of writing Neoliberal Love. I can imagine the time when I’ll be done. I will finally lay neoliberalism to rest. What will my next obsession be? It’s a whole world out there, and I’ll be able to start torturing everybody with some completely new topic.

I have no idea how you can be a Professor of English and start your talk with the words “in today’s challenging times”. Or be a Professor of Journalism and start yours with “our job is to amplify voices.”

It’s 7:40 pm, I’ve been at work for exactly 12 hours straight, and these are the indignities to which I am subjected.

The union leadership revealed that the administration’s goal for my faculty isn’t to get rid of us but to make us teach in English. They do want to get rid of the physics profs but us they are desperate to keep. Because we can teach in English outside of the discipline. Specifically, they need crowds of people to teach about globalization. Physicists are not as useful for that purpose as, for example, I am.

Now I understand why the Dean keeps giving this weird speech about how tying your identity to teaching within your discipline is a psychological hangup.

If these absolute losers had said what they really wanted from the start, I would have participated happily. I’m really into teaching outside of the discipline and in English. But they started doing underhanded shenanigans to get us into a place where I, for one, actually wanted to be. This is deeply stupid behavior. They are stupid people.

Also, the problem here is this industrial-level management. If the Dean managed to talk to me like a human being in all the years we’ve worked closely together, he’d know that he doesn’t have to extort me into teaching about globalization. I’d be his greatest fan if he heard me all the times I tried to talk to him about research and made me a normal, honest offer. I’m pretty certain I’ve actually mentioned to him how much I love teaching my only course in English.

It’s totally like a dude you like grabbing you and throwing you on the ground when you would have agreed willingly.

Does not all the world know that when in autumn the Bismarcks of the world, or they who are bigger than Bismarcks, meet at this or that delicious haunt of salubrity, the affairs of the world are then settled in little conclaves, with greater ease, rapidity, and certainty than in large parliaments or the dull chambers of public offices?

Anthony Trollope, The Prime Minister

Delicious haunt of salubrity! Isn’t the English language absolutely amazing? The depths of sarcasm in that one tiny turn of phrase are exotically pleasing.

What a joy to be reading such stellar prose.

The taping went very well. I mentioned neoliberalism at least 63 times which means great success to me. Somebody smart in the comments said that what the US is experiencing has a very perestroika-era vibe. And yes, that’s true. I remember back in Kharkiv in an open-air market I once bought a copy of Nabokov’s Lolita, a beautiful new edition. I walked down the street, pressing it to my chest, incredulous that you could actually buy a book like that. It’s the same feeling as walking today with my new copy of Curtis Yarvin’s Unqualified Reservations that came out as a book this year.

The feeling of freedom, new possibilities is very similar.

Not only do I have a day packed with meetings and events until 7:30 pm today, I will also be speaking on the Romanenko show at 10 am CT. The topic is “Trump’s Revolution through the Eyes of Americans.”

Please watch and leave likes. The outfit is due to the fact that I’m giving awards later today and meeting award sponsors at a banquet.

This is dire lunacy, not a dire wolf. This animal was not brought back from extinction. It’s a poor, gene-edited freak created for no purpose other than advertisement for gene editing. This animal will have no habitat and no community. He’s a lone circus freak, manufactured by horrible people whose ultimate goal is to do the same kind of experimentation on humans.

This should be illegal.

I just can’t catch a break. For once, I decided to take the flu vaccine and it turns out to give you the bloody flu:

A large-scale prospective cohort study from the Cleveland Clinic has delivered a shocking verdict on this year’s influenza vaccine: not only was it ineffective, but it was also associated with increased risk of infection. Led by Dr. Nabin Shrestha, the study tracked over 53,000 employees during the 2024–2025 respiratory viral season to assess whether the influenza vaccine offered protection against laboratory-confirmed influenza infections. The results raise serious questions about this season’s flu vaccine and the broader assumptions behind annual mandates.

https://www.trialsitenews.com/a/landmark-cleveland-clinic-study-finds-flu-vaccine-ineffectiveand-possibly-harmfulfor-working-adults-in-2024-2025-season-84b3b608

I did wonder why all the people at work were suddenly getting the actual flu.

I was one of the judges at a graduate research showcase today. All research projects were great. There was a police officer from Indiana who studies the use of drones in policing and a doctor from Tanzania who does research on antibiotic resistance.

And then there was a guy who does linguistics. It’s not what is called linguistics anywhere else on the planet but in North America linguistics is a whole other thing.

“14,29% of subjects in my study said they prefer this method of language learning,” said the graduate researcher meaningfully.

“And how many people total did you have in the study?” I asked.

“Seven!” reported the researcher happily.

I had to pinch my thigh so hard to avoid laughing that I now have a bruise.

I will never fully understand Americans. On the one hand, it’s utterly unacceptable to ask any questions relating to money. OK, I figure, private information isn’t a good subject of inquiry, fine. But now I’m discovering that it’s considered perfectly fine to ask what kind of surgery one got and keep insisting even after one makes it clear that this is an unwelcome question.

Why is it even an interesting subject? People my age will always have something going on health wise. (Except one reader of this blog who enjoys extreme good health, and how wonderful that is). There’s always optometrist exams, or that old sports injury that’s acting up. All sorts of stuff.

People have been really pushy, including some people I’ve talked to half a dozen times in my whole life.