Yes, remember link enciclopedias? Good times. First, I used the Google link collector, and that was the most convenient one. Then Google discontinued it, and I moved to Feedly. It was not remotely as useful as the Google Reader but still functional.

Since then, however, technology moved on. I’m not even sure if Feedly exists anymore, for I haven’t accessed it in years. Its functions have been completely overtaken by X. And yes, Elon Musk’s positions on several very important issues are moronic and aggravating. And his personality is even more so. But he provides a crucial service with X. The pre-Elon Twitter didn’t provide it, at least not for people interested in what’s happening in Ukraine. Russian propaganda bots figured out the pre-Elon Twitter moderation policy and would destroy every pro-Ukrainian account in sight with complaints that we made them feel “unsafe.” It was a nightmare to keep getting shut down. On FB, it’s still the reign of Russian propagandists, which is why I’m never there.

In any case, the only website I read regularly outside of X is David Cole’s column on Takimag. For those who don’t know, Cole is a hilarious anti-MAGA, anti-Elon conservative. I’d read a grocery list by him, to be honest, because he’s really out there funny. From him, I know that Karen Bass was actually the more conservative among the candidates for LA mayor. The rest were even more bizarre.

So that’s it for link enciclopedias, unfortunately.

In the USSR, nobody ever said we had censorship, although obviously we had extremely restrictive censorship. It wasn’t only that there were many, many things you weren’t allowed to say. There were also things everybody was obligated to say on very regular occasions.

However, it was never openly accepted that we had censorship. To the contrary, saying that there was censorship was censored. Meaning, punished. The official narrative was that we had the greatest freedom on the planet to speak openly about anything.

What was prohibited was “saying untruths” or “spreading disinformation”.

“It’s not censorship we support but fact-checking” is the standard narrative of many authoritarian regimes. Watching Americans replay these tired Soviet arguments with the enthusiasm of recent converts is boring.

Now that we finally know who came up with the idea, we can all calm down.

All of us also deserve a lifelong supply of free ice-cream, excellent weather always, and to live forever. And world peace!

This is not a defense of Musk. This is a defense of adults not talking like 6-year-olds.

Our priest is very sick (please pray for Fr Andrew, he’s amazing), so he retired on January 1st. We have a prospective priest coming on a visit, and get this. He’s Ukrainian, currently residing in Toronto. Of course, the parish is eager to roll out me to make Fr Dmytro feel more welcome.

This is the first time ever the parish would have a priest who is originally Orthodox, not a convert. There’s nothing wrong with converts, of course, but I would like the experience of somebody who was always Orthodox.

Imagine a scientific advance that puts an end to sexism, racism, homophobia, and domestic violence. It also makes national borders even more porous. What can such an invention possibly be?

John Marrs’ psychological thriller The One gives an answer. A DNA test is invented that pairs people who are genetically matched to be perfect romantic partners. DNA doesn’t recognize racial or ethnic differences, and even matches two heterosexual people or people with an enormous age difference. You only have one perfect match in the whole world, and a DNA match test can help you locate that person. National governments then have to oblige and facilitate immigration for couples eager to be united with their one perfect match. Heteros have to make themselves gay if they are so matched. Marriages break up if the spouses aren’t genetically matched.

Of course, humans are more complicated than sciencey attempts to sort them neatly, and all manner of shady dealings and mysterious behavior begins. The One is a bestselling thriller that deserves its popularity. Well-intentioned efforts to use science to make humans much more predictable and controlled always end badly. The book is clumsy in its closing chapters but the premise is good and worth exploring.

Here’s an example of why I keep saying that Joyce Maynard is incapable of any degree of self-awareness.

After rehoming the two girls she carelessly adopted from Africa, Maynard felt guilty. She’d have to be a psychopath not to. A few months after getting rid of the girls, she badgered her boyfriend, a lawyer, into helping a man who had failed medical school to force the medical board to let him practice medicine. The failed wannabe doctor was from… Africa.

Maynard was so dedicated into inflicting this unqualified man on American patients that she became a sort of a legal secretary, helping her boyfriend build an Affirmative Action case to get the African an undeserved MD diploma. This took place in California, and you can imagine the depths of the man’s incompetence if even there the medical board refused to give in to the badgering or even spend much time hearing the case.

One doesn’t need to be Sigmund Freud to realize that Maynard’s extensive efforts to turn a woefully incompetent man from rural Nigeria into an American doctor constituted an attempt to make up for the damage she’d done to two African girls.

Maynard, of course, is stoically deaf to the knocks of an insight that is languishing of neglect at her doorstep. Not for her is the task of wondering, “why do I do these things? Why do I feel this?” The spectacle of a mind so unclouded by the realization that there might be a why is an awe-inspiring sight. I’m addicted to Maynard’s memoirs because it’s hard to believe she is for real.

She’s now 71, and I really hope she writes one more memoir. Her political beliefs would make a great topic. People like these saddle us with incompetent firefighters and unqualified doctors and yell at us to shut up when we protest. It’s highly instructive to observe how their brains work.

Many men don’t know that when a woman complains that a man doesn’t take initiative, what she really wants is for him to do exactly what she wants, with zero deviations, and with the greatest enthusiasm. The word “initiative” – and this is true across cultures and generations – on a woman’s lips invariably means “enthusiastic obedience.” Lack of initiative simply stands for “less than enthusiastic obedience.”

I will give am example from Joyce Maynard’s memoir, and I’m sorry, people, but she’s such a perfect illustration of so many things that I just can’t quit talking about her.

At age 60, Maynard finally married the man of her dreams and immediately proceeded to badger him about his spending, his hobbies, his daily habits, and his friends. She, and I quote, “mocked him mercilessly” for being part of an all-male club and getting together with buddies to play music around a campfire.

And do you know what Maynard’s main complaint about the husband was? That he wouldn’t take initiative. The fellow took plenty of initiative but she hated the initiative he took. What she wanted was the exact opposite of initiative. She want dog-like loyalty and obedience. Her pet name for him was “my guard dog”, and it’s a testament to the man’s forbearance that he didn’t call her “my yappy bitch” in return.

I can’t count the times I heard a female acquaintance complain that “he doesn’t take initiative.” To these complaints I invariably reply, “let’s imagine you come home today and discover that he took initiative by knocking down the wall between the living and the dining room. Great, right? Initiative!” After which it is immediately revealed that no, that’s not what she meant about initiative.

I promise I’ll get off the subject of Maynard eventually but it’s just too much fun at this point. I can’t help myself.

I’m asking people please to come up with an alternative explanation for why little girls are used in these ads because this is too disturbing to contemplate.

“Climate change” is the same kind of neoliberal austerity justification as the BLM. Budget cuts to firefighting and cleaning the forest floor are justified by saying that it’s useless to spend money on them anyway. It’s all climate change. There’s nothing the government can do.

Instead of providing services to the public, the government is now in the business of finding explanations for why providing services would be wrong, useless, immoral.

There’s no difference between claiming that a hurricane was unleashed on New Orleans a punishment for homosexuality and claiming that Pacific Palisades burned as punishment for climate change.

I know that some people will be tempted to inform me virtuously that climate change is real as if it being real justified defunding fire departments instead of giving them more funding. For such people, the reality of climate change presupposes the profound immorality of doing anything to counteract that thing they say is very real and definitely exists. Their “climate change is real” is the equivalent of a Muslim’s “Allah illallah.” It’s a statement of faith that doesn’t necessitate anything other than being made on regular occasions.