And just one more hilarious link. Have you heard about serotonin necklaces? If not, you are totally missing out.

Kenyon professor calls off original play about cultural insensitivity amid criticism that it’s culturally insensitive.

A bunch of bored, spoiled fools has turned on each other. I almost went to work for that place and I couldn’t be happier than I didn’t.

In the Spanish-language courses, 100% of students responded that the best thing about the courses was that I only spoke Spanish in class. I’m so so happy that they get it.

There is nothing more precious to a small child than mommy’s love and attention. It’s a simple survival mechanism. If mommy is looking at me, she’ll notice what I need and will provide it.

When a child sees that mommy’s gaze is persistently directed towards an object (eg a phone, a tablet, etc), the child begins to see that object as invested with mommy’s love. Mommy is holding it and / or looking at it, so if I hold it and / or look at it, I will finally hold mommy’s love. And so not being able to hold it / look at it creates extreme anxiety.

And this effect is present when you don’t even look at the phone or turn it on. There are people (and I’m one of them) who just like to hold it without turning it on. And so that’s a really bad idea, too, because the child still learns to think that this is something that is so important to mommy that she can’t let go of it. The child begins to feel desperate to take it away, to hold it, to connect with it as a way of connecting with Mommy.

I have already learned not to open the phone in front of Klara. Now I need to learn not to hold it in my hand.

There is this pernicious idea floating around that young academics who are looking for their first job need to negotiate to improve on the contract they are offered. It’s so ridiculous because, unlike many other industries, academia – in the Humanities especially – is not a job-seeker’s market. It’s the hirer’s market to an absolutely ridiculous degree. It’s delusional to pretend that it isn’t so. You can’t act is if there weren’t 300 people fighting for every position.

I feel so sad for this poor kid. He can’t possibly care about this kind of stuff but he has to fake it to please his idiot parents. Yes, of course, there are worse things that can happen to a kid. But this is never an isolated thing. It’s always a symptom that a child serves as a mirror to his parents. They don’t see him as a separate human being.

It’s absolutely amazing to me how many people are not even trying. I have no idea how they explain it to themselves and what kind of a vision of themselves is compatible with such an aggressive refusal to make the slightest effort.

When you admire somebody’s work as an academic, you want them to be decent human beings, too. Today I discovered that an academic I admire a lot is a really upright, honest and strong human being. And that makes me very happy.