Trump said the US is not obligated to help Ukraine, arguing that the country is thousands of miles away and across the ocean, and therefore America does not have to be involved. He also claimed that former Biden had been sidelined in decisions regarding support for Kyiv. pic.twitter.com/bLL05R0Rgk

— KyivPost (@KyivPost) March 16, 2026

Actually, Tel Aviv is about a thousand miles farther away from Washington DC than Kyiv. I don’t remember the distance between DC and Tehran but it’s definitely farther away than even Tel Aviv.

This isn’t about knowledge of geography. Obviously, it’s fine not to know the mileage. But Kyiv lies farther away than Tel Aviv in Trump’s imagination. He perceives Middle Eastern problems as something close and European ones as being far away. You can’t successfully put an end to mass migration from a world that you inhabit imaginatively. We don’t have leadership that perceives America as Western and originating in Europe.

David Borenstein, director of Mr. Nobody Against Putin with a powerful message:

"When oligarchs take over the media and control how we can produce it and consume it, we all face a moral choice. But luckily, even a nobody is more powerful than you think" pic.twitter.com/PBJALDTCjP

— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) March 16, 2026

My contempt for these pseudo-rebellious, sniveling pieces of ridiculous liberal trash is so deep that it will probably land me in hell. But I can’t help it. I truly despise them.

I haven’t watched this vomit-inducing documentary and I’m not planning to do it at any point.

Except for the affect, this is 100% me in the workplace. I’ve never seen myself so accurately represented:

PSA for the guys. If you’ve never seen this it’s a real thing I have literally seen this happen live and in action. pic.twitter.com/JdRPBG3scr

— Gryphon (@Gryph911) March 13, 2026

Unlike this woman, I thrive on this shit. Moreover, I can’t work any other way.

I’m not saying any of this as a recommendation. Neural pathways are what they are. But I am definitely happy nobody is filming me as I work because they’d have vertigo within minutes.

This way of being is neither good not bad if it works for you (which for the woman in the video it clearly doesn’t).

We have a program for our most gifted students. It’s funded by a billionaire and provides a full-ride scholarship to the crème de la crème of our students, the tiny minority of our best and brightest.

The program had existed for a long time before the billionaire got involved. And it was going great. But once the billionaire started funding it, we have to do things his way. And he’s very woke. Meaning that he wants us to admit more black students into the program.

The director of the gifted program is desperate. He put in paperwork to drop the grade requirements for the gifted program below the non-gifted programs. I’m weeping over the sheer hilarity of this.

OK, it’s not really funny. But what can you do if not laugh?

An adult illegal migrant is enrolled in a Virginia high school. He’s been sexually assaulting schoolgirls there, some as young as 13 years of age. The public school system is refusing to do anything about it. The prosecutor doesn’t want him jailed. The county sheriff is refusing to honor ICE’s order of deportation against the rapey illegal. He is currently in jail thanks solely to Judge Dipti Pidikiti-Smith who refused the prosecutor’s request to release the criminal on bail. Once he is released, the public school system is promising to let him back in, even though he is an adult.

More details here.

The result of all this is that everybody who has any other option at all with remove their children from public schools. Which is the whole point. People who care about their children will have to take a financial hit. It will be harder for them to join or remain in the middle class.

Taking a week completely off work really helped. I’m mega energized and see my way forward clearly. I volunteered to teach outside my program after my sabbatical, which has been a long-standing dream. I hope to go into International Studies or something related to Political Science. They have courses on the books that I can adapt completely to my needs without going through the ridiculously lengthy and onerous process of opening a new course.

I also volunteered as a reviewer for two new journals and found an edited volume I want to contribute to.

All of this happened since this morning. Breaks are good.

To complete yearly merit reporting, I used to have to write two mini-essays on how I promoted DEI goals in the past year. Now I have to write three. A new one was added this year. This is just my own merit reporting. Three DEI essays for only me.

This, of course, is one of many activities that require oaths of loyalty to DEI. I have to write a DEI statement when requesting permission to hire. We are no longer allowed to ask candidates to provide DEI statements. But nobody took away my obligation to write one for every single position. I have to write a DEI statement whenever I propose to convert a temporary instructorship into a permanent one, open a new course, add a general education designation to a course, support a colleague’s promotion. I could go on and on.

I was recently reproached by a reader for not caring about some anti-DEI measure in Florida. I want to give that person the benefit of the doubt. They probably don’t know what we have to deal with pretty much daily. This can’t be eradicated peace-meal. There’s too much of it. You ban the requirement for candidates to provide DEI oaths, and it all comes back from the side of the hirer where you can’t have a search committee without a DEI apparatchik on it. None of this is covered in the press because it’s assumed as a default. Any challenge to this default is screamed down as an outrage.

I know my answer to this but I’m curious about what others think: when I was a kid, my parents would have reflexively sided with the teacher if I misbehaved in school. What’s changed and why? https://t.co/m4EMvW3ZPy

— Robert Pondiscio (@rpondiscio) March 15, 2026

The market. The market changed. Obedient, nose-to-the-grindstone, rote workers are no longer necessary. The only chance to make good money and have a decent standard of living lies in developing a very strong personality that does not require outside discipline.

Our children either learn to self-regulate and self-discipline, or they’ll be guinea pigs for cruel experiments.

I’ll never understand why immigrants are so obsessed with seeking out people from their own country of origin. The priest’s wife pleaded with me to sit at the table with Russian-speaking parishioners. I did, and it was not pleasant. They are lovely people, I’m sure, but I have nothing in common with them. I don’t understand their jokes, I have no idea what they are saying. I sat there, silent and bored. Finally, an Anglo parishioner sat down next to me, and within seconds we were hooting with laughter over jicama and Honduras.

The temperature here is in the eighties Fahrenheit. Overnight, it will drop to below freezing. On Wednesday it will be back up to high eighties.

The new priest is having trouble adapting to the temperature swings. He’s having hypertensive episodes. A local doctor prescribed him something for them but when the priest went to collect the prescription, it turned out to be for an antidepressant.

“I’m not depressed,” the priest tried to explain to the doctor. “I’m religious. I’m a servant of God. Depression is an impossibility for me. I want something for my blood pressure, that’s all.”

It hasn’t worked so far.