Hey, folks, Flynn – aka Putin’s little tame poodle – has resigned. 

This is a start. 

The most disgusting creatures ever. Worse than insects. 

A great interview about Trump with the historian Timothy Snyder. 

Elon Musk is in favor of UBI. Got to keep those proles out of sight. 

In case you are still unaware, gender differences in cognition don’t exist. 

Republican Jason Chaffetz echoes his party’s leader, Putin. 

Justin Trudeau is so eager to please Trump that he spits all over the Charter of Rights. Seriously, check it out. It’s shocking. 

Who the ef cares if Kellyanne Conway is needy or not. I don’t give a hoot about her psychological issues or lack thereof. She’s a lying sack of useless shit, that’s all I need to know about her. 

Cakes with reflective frosting are all the rage in Russia. Beautiful!

Jill Stein is a right-wing tool. 

Crazy architectural plans for Mississauga. This can seriously mess with addicts’ heads. 

The opioid epidemic is destroying Ohio. 

P.S. One more link on the insects. That it should come to this. For shame, Americans. For shame. 

The reason why people in the service professions adore me is that I lived in Canada for several years. And in Canada, being rude or superior towards waiters and store attendants is considered the worst thing ever. I remember how back at the Commencement ceremony at McGill, the Dean gave a talk about what it means to be Canadian, and the gist of the talk was that acting as a dick towards people in service jobs made you a pariah in Canada. And it’s true, treating service stuff like they are not there or like they are beneath you is simply not done.

Some of the guests yesterday did not believe that the food was from the local Indian buffet because the quality was massively superior to what they usually serve. The secret is that the people at the restaurant love me and went all out for me. They also adore Klara who’s been visiting since she was two months old. 

“Are you having people from your country or white people to your party?” asked the worker from the restaurant. 

Since everybody in my country is very white, I didn’t get the question. 

“It’s people from the university,” I said. 

“So white people,” he said. And explained, seeing my confused look, “Americans, I mean.”

Kids are the best. We had a group of kids between the ages of 3 and 9 at Klara’s party. They came up with a game where they’d be on a spaceship, exploring new planets. Our staircase would be the spaceship because it has a small gate for baby security. 

The kids arrived at a new planet (a.k.a. my reading room). The planet was called Klaraville and was ruled by Queen Klara. The kids gathered around Klara and pledged allegiance to her. She, of course, stared at them without having the slightest idea what they wanted but accepting the attention. The kids went on several space trips and reported back to the Queen every time. 

How they come up with such things I have no idea. 

We had an actual Indian buffet at home. Let’s see who can guess all the dishes!

I never got to try anything during the party; mostly because I had a new dress on and didn’t want to destroy it. 

For centuries, nothing was more meaningful or more defining than whether one was born to a noble family. One’s entire existence was influenced in every single aspect by the accident of birth into a certain social class. 

After WWI, the titles of European nobility started to lose their value. Save for a couple of Windsors or Borbons, the rest of the “nobles” accepted that their titles’ place was on the trash heap of history. I’m sure it wasn’t pleasant for the antiquated aristocrats to see how “nobodies” were stripping them of importance but that’s the march of history for you. 

Today the same is happening with citizenship. And people are just as unhappy that the accident of birth that used to give them so much good stuff is becoming meaningless. Like the nobles of 100 years ago, they can’t believe that the lottery win they thought they had gained just by being born in the right place is losing its value. 

Of course, their loss is somebody else’s gain. Just like 100 years ago. 

I’m having a very weird reading year, folks. Everything I read, in every genre and every language, turns out to be crap. Aside from Tayeb Salih’s wonderful novel, everything else has been quite bizarre. 

I never read Donna Tartt before, and sheesh, what a weird, weird novel. It’s like fantasy but without any magic. Completely implausible characters in utterly implausible situations doing and saying ridiculously implausible things. It isn’t hard to keep up the suspense when everybody is so completely implausible. 

Another problem with the novel is that characters are always drunk. Every page of the 560-page novel reminds the readers that everybody is drunk. I haven’t encountered so many drunk characters since I stopped watching Russian police procedurals. I felt by the end of it that I would never be able to look at an alcoholic beverage without intense boredom after reading this novel. 

There are positive sides to the novel, though. For one, it’s long. I bought another novel by Tartt, and it’s a cool 1,000 pages. This beautiful length is enough to excuse many things in my eyes. Also, The Secret History is very escapist and requires zero intellectual investment from the readers. It’s the perfect beach read. I’m not on the beach but I’m planning a beach vacation, so a beach novel makes sense. 

Tomorrow is Klara’s first birthday party! Fifteen adults and 8 kids are coming over. Of course, there’s no chance I could cook for such a crowd. I came up with a brilliant idea instead: I ordered a bunch of Indian food in buffet trays at the restaurant. Everybody will be happy because they all love this food. Kids are getting all sorts of kid snacks.

It’s summer here, and everybody will get to spend a lot of time outside. There will be games for kids and marshmallow roasting. I always thought American marshmallows were garbage but it turned out they are not to be eaten raw. When you roast them, they become amazing. Our marshmallows are sold ready-to-eat, so I never thought one needed to cook them. 

If the post on climate is not very clear, let me make it clearer. Remember Hillary’s emails? That’s how propaganda wars are won. Find a short, easy to remember phrase and repeat it millions of times. People like things they can recognize. If they recognize something, it must be true. Once your phrase becomes a slogan that everybody recognizes and that dominates the airwaves, you win. It doesn’t matter how empty of content the slogan is. It’s got to be simple. Hillary’s emails. Full stop. Nothing else. 

The second you make it a tiny bit complicated, you lose their attention and they’ve moved on to another round of Hillary’s emails.