For the longest time, I found it hard to write on a regular basis and produce as much research as I wanted to. I worked on the problem, and I’m happy to report that I have conquered it completely. I’m now very productive in research, I publish, I feel good about my effectiveness as a publishing scholar, it’s all good.

The problem I now have is reading. I don’t read nearly as intensely as I would like to. (I mean reading for scholarship, not for fun.) This will sound crazy but reading feels like an indulgence and a form of laziness. My new challenge is to eradicate this feeling and read as happily and consistently as I write.

I’m also against forcing kids to share. The only productive way of teaching anything is by example. If you don’t want your kid to grow up to be a greedy, materialistic person, let him observe you sharing and enjoying the process. 

I don’t teach Klara to share. Instead, I teach her the difference between “ours” and “not ours.” It was hard the first couple of times but now she knows that if I say “this ball is not ours”, she can’t take it. 

Overall, I think it’s not a good idea to try to get kids to carry burdens that are too heavy even for us as adults. 

The article on Antifa in the New York Times is yet another example of lazy, careless reporting. The first time I heard about Antifa was 12-13 years ago. It was a youth group whose members dressed in black, covered their faces, and violently attacked “fascists.” Fascists, of course, were anybody they didn’t like. Or were told to not like. 

Antifa was created by the government in order to channel youthful energies into getting the young people to provide strongarming services for free. 

I’ll let you guess the government of which country I’m talking about.

We are the last generations that remember non-liquid life and we need to push back against the children of fluidity. 

Which is what I’m obsessively doing in my work. 

Tonight I had a taste of how other parents (aka poor miserable buggers) live. Klara woke up at 4 am, and I ended up doing the exercise routine I had planned for the gym all over the house until 6 am. This is something that has happened all of 4 times in her entire life. Normally, she sleeps 12-13 hours straight at night. 

Conclusion: being other parents stinks. 

This is by my favorite cartoonist:

More on the same subject:

Think about whenever it looks like somebody has a really perfect life on Facebook or Instagram.

Since I’m doing links today, here’s a really good one for academics. Organize mini-retreats for yourself during the semester!

I’ll definitely be doing mini-retreats. They sound like a fantastic idea. They can be combined with at-home mini-spas (bubble bath, mask, aromatherapy.)

Zygmunt Bauman wrote about the persistent erosion of skills of sociability in the service of liquid capital. This article on “ghosting” is a perfect example of the prissy, self-righteous defense of subservience to capital by way of gloomy misanthropy. The really funny thing is that I’m sure the author sees herself as ultra progressive.

The institution of the “Barack Obama Day” in Illinois is beyond bizarre. I was born and grew up in a totalitarian state, and naming shit after people, especially people who are still alive, creeps me out. I can see naming a street where an artist lived it was born after them. But only after they pass away and stay passed away for a while. There’s no way of knowing whether the artist’s work will survive the rest of time otherwise.

If we are talking about a historic figure of once-in-generations proportions, like Martin Luther King Jr for instance, I can see it but again, only after they died, and it’s got to be a tragic, violent death, too. 

Any naming after people outside of these conventions smacks of personality worship and is unhealthy. I love Obama but eww to Obama Day. 

I’m hiding from the news, switching the channel over to anodyne Law & Order and Shark Tank reruns, unsubscribing from newspapers, forgetting the talk radio because I’m afraid I will also start enjoying the spectacle. I plugged back in during the Scaramucci debacle and you know what? I enjoyed it. It was fun. And I hated seeing myself enjoy it. It’s degrading. As entertaining and energizing it is, it’s not worth selling my soul to the orange monkey. 

It’s so, so easy to get seduced by the monkey. Let it colonize your brain, your attention span, your concept of what constitutes politics or news or public life. But any engagement with the troll is feeding the troll. The troll feeds on attention, be it positive or negative. I don’t want to be troll’s dinner.