My feed is filled with “hah, hah, they voted for Trump over the price of eggs and must be so disappointed right now.”

It’s quite an extraordinary thing. They invented the idea that people voted for Trump over the price of eggs because it’s comforting to see the opponent as a bunch of dumb hicks who don’t understand anything beyond the most primitive concerns. Then they repeated this utter fabrication so many times that they believed in it. Now they are at a stage of being shocked by the Trump voters suddenly abandoning the obsession with eggs, forgetting that this obsession is their own talking point.

It’s true that liberals don’t begin to understand conservatives. And they don’t try to learn.

Freud is having a field day.

She gave him an expensive receptacle to wash gently by hand and take care in her absence. But instead, the treasured receptacle has deep gouges.

Of course, if the gouges in the actual receptacle were deep enough, she wouldn’t give a crap about what the pan looks like during the visit. That’s why the gouges on the pan awaken such unpleasant emotions.

In short, the dude needs to gouge more effectively. Maybe stop gouging in front of a screen and gouge more with the actual girlfriend. Until he takes care of her properly, she’ll nitpick about the kitchen utensils.

In case people don’t know, I’m now into Chilean literature. My first article on a Chilean author came out a couple of months ago, and there will a chapter on Chile in my new book. Chile was “the laboratory of neoliberalism”, as one scholar said, and it’s ahead of other places in the development of a neoliberal sensibility. This makes the literature created by Chilean authors today absolutely delicious to me.

A few days ago, writer Paulina Flores published a novel titled The Next Time I See You, I’ll Kill You. I immediately read it, and it’s a neoliberal delight of a book. Its narrator, Javiera, is a 32-year-old illegal immigrant from Chile to Spain. She has no stable job, no documents, no husband or child, no place to live, and no hope of getting any of these things that she painfully wants. Instead, Javiera has a litany of left-wing slogans that she tries to use to find a way not to hate her life too much.

Javiera is so lonely that she falls madly in love with another illegal immigrant, Manuel from Peru. Manuel has a little harem of desperate women he beds after convincing them to embrace “polyamorous identity.” Javiera hates being one of several interchangeable receptacles for Manuel’s ejaculate but she tries to convince herself that polyamory is what will finally make her really free and really rebellious. In the meantime, she fantasizes about murdering Manuel’s other mistresses in hopes that, if they manage to stay alone for a bit, he will finally appreciate her and commit.

Even 10-15 years ago, Latin American women really knew how to not be such utter losers in amorous relationships. If they agreed to be mistresses, they at least expected to be put up in a place of their own and have their bills paid. Javiera and the rest of Manuel’s girlfriends have lost that skill. They sulk around, fully realizing that they hate this arrangement but are unable to find a way to explain to themselves why this newfound form of freedom is making them so miserable.

Javiera and her sex slave sisters are terrified of growing older. They fantasize about being little girls or teenagers because the realization that they are in their thirties and have achieved absolutely nothing is unbearable. Besides, there’s always a battalion of younger, fresher bodies for Manuel to use up and throw out after Javiera’s shift in the policule is terminated by her age.

The complete abjection of these poor stupid women is painful to observe. Two centuries of battling for women’s liberation to achieve this? The most oppressive patriarchal marriage is better than what Javiera has. In college we had to read a foundational short story of Latín American feminism where a woman feels horribly oppressed because the husband who gives her wealth, comfort, status and respect is not extremely sensitive. Even a quarter century ago I hated that story with such a passion that the professor complained about me being disruptive to the department Chair. He responded that I was the best student in the history of that department and if she couldn’t teach me, maybe she shouldn’t be teaching at all. But I digress.

In the intervening years, women have liberated themselves from the insensitive husband, wealth, status, and respect. Now Javiera and Co have an insensitive Manuel who barely notices when one of them dies and immediately proceeds to find another desperate mark. What a fantastic feminist achievement that is.

Romania is having a normal one:

Yes, you ready showed everybody, Romania. Nobody can outdo you in “wait, what?” news.

The reason why the university wants to get rid of full professors isn’t that they cost too much. It’s never really about money. People who have been with the university for many years are the keepers of institutional memory. Their knowledge stands in the way of change for the sake of change.

When the new Chancellor came in, he started saying, “Let’s introduce this new policy. It’s so obvious this is going to be a great change. I have no idea why this hasn’t been done yet.”

Older professors said, “It was done. These changes were introduced in 2010. They were catastrophic, and the current system was created to mend the damage.”

There were several things of this kind. Every time, older professors would say, “this was tried, it failed. If you start taking things apart, these will be the consequences, just like the last time this was tried.”

Get rid of the people with memory, and you can wreak any havoc you want, put it on your CV and move on, which is the whole play for this new Chancellor. He started interviewing for a new job a year after we hired him. Nobody else is stupid enough to take him but what his plan is has been clear from the start.

I lost an opportunity to appear on Ukrainian TV because people in Ukraine love communicating through FB Messenger which I never open. In the US, people always connect for comment or appearance through X but in Europe there’s a Facebook obsession, and I keep seeing messages long after they become relevant. I’ve lost publication opportunities (non-academic), appearances, and all because of this. Both from Ukraine and Spain.

Curtis Yarvin says that the Trump administration is fuffing up its historic chance by firing bureaucrats in cruel ways and shutting down scientific grants that mention things like “diverse cell cultures.”

A country needs both bureaucrats and scientists. There’s nowhere to find new ones if the existing ones are thrown out. Instead of antagonizing them, says Yarvin, the power that is here to stay instead of rage for a short spell and be swept away would make them loyal and loving. Things are bad on the job market for scholars, and gaining their loyalty by making things easier for them wouldn’t be hard. This opportunity is being pissed away because the inane goal of “saving money” is being pursued.

Yarvin wants a country, a nation-state. Trump kind of wants it but doesn’t really know how to get there. Musk doesn’t begin to understand the concept and most definitely doesn’t want it.

My own take is that country is not recoverable anyway because the way people feel in the world changed and doesn’t contain that concept anymore. Musk wins because his position is the most popular.

Yes, Pam Bondi did it on her own initiative. All on her very lonesome.

Dumb groupies waiting for the good tsar.

Let’s have fun with this, people.

Who can guess which was the first department at my university to get slated for elimination as unnecessary?

Let’s see how well you understand neoliberal bureaucrats.

Just to make it easier, it’s not mine.

I expressed myself regarding TPS visas many times. I very strongly believe that the TPS visa should not exist. I won’t repeat the whole story again but TPS is the absolute worst thing that happened to Central America in the past 30 years. Use the search function on this blog to find my posts about Salvadoran gangs and how they came into existence.

Regarding specifically Ukrainian refugees, I assume people are unaware that one of the most controversial policies of the Zelensky government is that it wants the countries who took in Ukrainian refugees to return them. Last year, a new ministry was created in Ukraine to look into ways of bringing back these refugees. Two days ago, a large sum was appropriated in the Ukrainian budget to support these policies. One of the main complaints about the Zelensky government in Ukraine is precisely that it’s too aggressive in trying to bring back the refugees. There’s endless talk that the government is exercising pressure on European allies to start revoking the refugee status. This is controversial in Ukraine but it’s a big subject of discussion.

There are two, I’d say, schools of thought in Ukraine regarding what to do about the population collapse that happened because of the war. One school of thought advocates bringing in millions of migrants from Asia. The competing school of thought wants to bring back the existing Ukrainians. This is debated hotly, and I’ve participated in many a discussion regarding whether to embrace the neoliberal theory of people as interchangeable widgets or not. Its the perennial neoliberals versus nationalists debate. Zelensky was originally elected because people thought he’d be more globalist and less nationalistic. And he disappointed many (and charmed many others) by moving rapidly and dramatically towards nationalism.

I hope this context helps people figure out the situation.