The host of our Airbnb apartment in Madrid is a very gay, very sweet gentleman in his sixties.

“Are you a Vox supporter ?” I ask, noticing his wristband.

He searches my face for signs of contempt. Vox is right of center and its supporters are denounced as fascists, Nazis, and hateful bigots. Finding no sign of shock in my face, the host lights up and narrates his whole political trajectory.

He’s for Vox because mass migration is turning Spain into a third-world country. “It’s easy to destroy what we have but we’ll never get it back afterwards. I love my country. Is that a bad thing? Socialists, they lie. That’s all they do. I decided I won’t be lied to again.”

Once he sees that I listen with interest and respect, he’s touched to tears and hugs me effusively, stunning N who didn’t understand the subject of our discussion and the resulting emotional scene.

The flight was hellish, people. Klara vomited copiously at the beginning of the 8-hour flight and then again at the end. By that time, we had no clothes for her to change into in our carry-on luggage. N took off his T-shirt and Klara used it as a dress. But N was left half-naked and not looking forward to presenting himself like that to the Spanish customs officers.

Thankfully, N always brings a heavy denim jacket, so he wore it with no shirt underneath. It was hot, so he kept unbuttoning it. So I’m standing there, with a half-naked man and a vomit-plastered child who is lecturing me on the differences between vomit, puke, throw up and barf, our Airbnb will not be available for the next 9 hours, and I’m thinking that only yesterday I was almost a YouTube star, and now this.

The screen on my flight to Madrid was pre-set to look like this:

It knows something.

The Russian writer Dmitry Bykov, who is the only significant literary talent Russia produced since Solzhenitsyn, says that Putin is famous for achieving the exact opposite of what he planned.

He wanted Russia to be one of the world leaders but it’s now more despised than ever.

He wanted to dominate Chechnya, and as a result Chechnya dominates Russia. The notorious videos of Chechens whipping and raping Russian soldiers at the front with complete impunity are only one of the many manifestations of this phenomenon.

Putin wanted Ukrainians to like and respect Russians again but instead he awakened such a wave of hatred and contempt for everything Russian that not even the most radical among Ukrainian nationalists ever wanted.

He’s an old, bumbling loser, and seeing him as anything else can only stem from ignorance.

Without the word “students”, it’s impossible to guess if they are left- or right-wing pouters.  Weak, sulky, infantile and self-pitying, they are the mirror image of each other.

The most unexpected thing with my show is that all the comments are mega complimentary and sweet. Usually, with a large anonymous viewership, one should prepare for mega-tons of abuse. I saw things that viewers write to the host, and they are often not pretty. All I got, though, is “brilliant, talented, where can I buy the book by this amazing intellectual?”

The war on homophobic traffic signs is proceeding apace in LA:

When people ask me if Ukrainians can go woke, I always say that no, they can’t because they have a sense of humor.

A sense of humor is urgently needed here in the US.

I don’t know about rich people, but mental health and intelligence both love quiet. People who are all right in their heads don’t need to drown out with din the unbearable affects that gush out of them like geysers. And if they have interesting thoughts they want to concentrate on, they’ll have no need of filling an inner vacuum with noise.

That is, indeed, an excellent ad. And an absolutely brilliant political strategy to take away and appropriate the American flag at a time when the opponents are increasingly embracing Berkeley-style pouting about “evil America”.