Gay men are finally joining the fight against the new gay conversion therapy of genderism. A new book by Gareth Roberts titled Gay Shame: The Rise of Gender Ideology and the New Homophobia is out this week, and those who already read it say it’s funny and on point. Here’s a little snippet I saw on social media:

Lesbians have been in the fight for years but gay men were silent, not as individuals but as a public voice and a political force. But it’s finally changing, and that’s great. We need their talent, humor, and rage to bring us all back to sanity.

From the anti-Semitic fury that has engulfed the Left to the explosion of Hitler worship on the Right, it is clear that chthonic horror has chosen this moment to come close and peek at us through cracks in the civilized order.

We have so many new parishioners that the first part of confession today was done collectively.

“Ah, assembly line confession,” joked a parishioner who recently converted from some branch of Protestantism.

At a work event today, a middle-aged IT dude approached me to ask where I’m from.

From Ukraine, I said.

Oh! he exclaimed. I have a colleague who’s also from Russia.

I honestly don’t know what else needs to happen.

Klara went to the school book fair and out of all the books on offer chose N’s favorite childhood novel The Last of the Mohicans by Fenimore Cooper. We read a lot of Fenimore Cooper in the USSR.

It’s the genes, people. He never mentioned the book to her. When N saw the purchase

When N saw the purchase, he was touched to tears. It is a powerful feeling to have a little mini-me discover the same books you liked as a child.

N immediately decided to buy all books in the series but when he went on Amazon, he saw this cover for the first instalment:

The novel is set in 1740, so we laughed for an hour.

One age-related change I notice is that now all of a sudden there is such thing as getting too much sleep. It feels like being hungover without a drop of alcohol.

I never thought this was even a thing.

Many people at church are related but even after several years of attending I’m still discovering people’s family relationships. It’s impossible to guess, for example, that two parishioners are mother and daughter or father and son if I never see them talking to each other. They never sit at the same table or acknowledge each other in any way.

There is an older couple who loves me and Klara. We’ve even vacationed together. They always smother Klara with hugs whenever they see her. I thought they were lonely but then I discovered that their two grandchildren attend church every Sunday. One is Klara’s age. But I never see them anywhere around each other. It’s very mystifying. These are not cold people if you judge by how they relate to us. But in their own families, it’s all kind of unusual. One woman went on and on about how a parishioner who was diagnosed with cervical cancer is stupid and deserves the diagnosis. I was shocked but then I discovered the cancer patient is her daughter. My own mother is very capable of such thoughts but she wouldn’t make them public. And she’d be plastered to my side the entire time we are church.

Here’s the article at the fancy Ukrainian portal. It can be Google Translated but then the extent of my suffering over the insufficiency of my language skills will not be understood.

I think the article is the first time that the expression “the bottom quintile” was ever used in Ukrainian.

I promised something smart today, and here goes.

It’s the end of the academic year. It’s very busy. Year-end reporting, hiring, grading, meetings, contracts. I also have my translation and now my newfound career as a Ukrainian author in addition to an intense research career I already have.

It’s a lot.

Because this is an exceptionally busy time, I switched to a 4-day work week. I now take Thursdays off. And of course, I don’t do a lick of work on weekends. When the university makes me attend something on a weekend, I take half a day off on Wednesday to compensate.

I don’t switch to a 4-day work week in spite of it being busy. I do it because it’s busy. You can’t run a marathon when you are overloaded. When you are overscheduled and overworked, you need to switch to a sprint model. In that model, you must sit idle most of the time, then switch on for an intense, short push, and then switch off again to preserve energy.

You are burned out and exhausted because you are trying to do a marathon at the exact time when you are most depleted.

Once the busy season ends, I’ll go back to my normal schedule and won’t take any days off during the week. Because that’s when a marathon is appropriate.

An exceptionally busy time is when you need the most rest and many long, slow walks among lilacs in bloom.

Birthday celebrations ended on a high note of waiting out a tornado warning in a church basement. We couldn’t get any more authentic if we tried.

The bored voices Midwesteners use to say the word “tornado” are a great contrast to the reaction one gets from people in other regions.