Clarissa's Blog

The Javelins, by the way, are already in Ukraine. Ukrainian troops will start learning to use them the day after tomorrow. The Russians are livid and threatening with bloodshed. But they can’t really do anything.

These are the same Javelins that President Obama totally, utterly, and completely refused to send to Ukraine. These are the Javelins that couldn’t have possibly be sent to Ukraine because there’d be horrible consequences of some unspecified kind.

And so they are already in Ukraine, ready to be used by Ukrainian troops. They were sent by the US. Ukrainians are over the moon.

Of course, you are not likely to hear much about it on this side of the ocean because. . . well, we all know why.

Is there anything one absolutely for sure needs to experience, do, or see in Seattle? I’m going in a couple of weeks.

I already know about the Pike Place Market.

When you achieve major goals in life, it’s very difficult not to send intensely petty emails to all those who told you that you could never do something, who vehemently pronounced that it just wasn’t possible for someone like you.

True. I still have vindictive feelings towards that advisor who laughed at me when I said I wanted to do a PhD in Spanish because, she said, as an immigrant I should set my sights on something practical that would lead to a job. The same person forbade me to register for a course on Don Quijote because it was “at an entirely different level than where you are.” Of course, I immediately registered and got an A in the course. And next year I’ll be teaching it.

This is a very weird article about millennial parenting. It has nothing to say about the relationship between parent and child and only talks about the relationship between parent and Google or Facebook.

Here is what an honest job ad for am academic position looks like.

A really great article about a successful penis transplant.

NYTimes finally publishes a great editorial on opioid overprescription.

The field guide to consent. In the spirit of diversity and inclusion, I want to point out that I know of at least couple dozen cultures in the world that would find this guide absolutely hilarious.

Trump is making rich people at Harvard suffer in unspecified ways.

Great insights on the legacy of socialist states.

If that’s not corruption, then I don’t know what is:

Chancellor Carlo Montemagno’s daughter and son-in-law were hired for university jobs created for them, that they never formally applied for and that were never advertised, documents show.
While the chancellor proposes campus-wide cuts, his daughter, Melissa Germain, and her husband, Jeffrey Germain, began working in newly created positions.

By the way, this Chancellor is the fellow who is planning to hire unpaid professors. Cute, eh?

Of course, being a 46-year-old graduate student of English in Nebraska must be a huge blow to a person’s mental health but, gosh, with this kind of allies, who needs enemies?

Russian Twitter bots tried to swing general election for Jeremy Corbyn

Robot accounts rooted for Labour and attacked Tories

How not surprising. For the corrupt neoliberal oligarchy that uses Russia as its base of operations, Corbyn is a gift from heaven. This is all obvious to the point of boredom.

What I do find funny is how the same people outside the UK rant about the way Trump was helped out during the election by Russia while simultaneously supporting Corbyn.

A lot more is at stake right now, and in the next election, Russians will work to promote Corbyn much more actively. I’m curious to see how many brave anti-Trump resisters will help them do that.