Opinions, art, debate
To the person who sent in an anonymous message with an apology:
I’m so assimilated that I find the crowds of immigrant parents who crammed their elementary-school children into the ultra-expensive “STEM Kids Camp” on campus to be like aliens from another planet.
I mean, why move to America if you won’t let your kid have an American childhood? It’s the kind of childhood that creates the America you so wanted to join.
Economic anxieties should be resolved by adults and not farmed out tio children. The same goes for people who are very eager for their children to learn languages or to master musical instrument. Recognize that it’s your own desire and go for it. Leave the kid alone.
I’m reading a novel titled Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart. I knew he was Soviet the moment I saw the book cover. Vera, or Faith is a play on Nabokov’s Ada, or Ardor. Vera was Nabokov’s wife’s name. And the word vera means faith in Russian.
I decided to read the book because I’m curious about Soviet immigrants in America. Shteyngart is older than me, he was born in 1972 but he was brought to the US as a little boy. This means that his parents must have gone through hell to be allowed to leave the Soviet Union.
What I find shocking is that Shteyngart is very woke. Like Commie-pinko-prays-at-the- handmade-altar-of-Ilhan-Omar woke. Really out there. And he’s a Soviet Jew. Soviet Jews are all right-wingers. They were so beaten down in the USSR that they all have conniption fits at a whiff of wokedom. That’s the main difference between an American Jew and a Soviet Jew. The latter one is mega-MAGA while the former one is oy-vey-let’s-BLM-today.
Again, though, Soviet Jews are high-IQ. Maybe Shteyngart figured out that, what with being a white dude with a non-PC identity, he ran a snowflake’s chance in a real workplace to get published, so he faked himself up some lefty beliefs.
It’s also possible that the American education system managed to brainwash the dude so thoroughly.
Once again, I’m reading a book where the parent flies in Business class while his small child spends the 14-hour flight in Economy. This happens in reality. I know of people who do that. These are people I will never comprehend.
What’s wrong with everybody? Weird, weird people. I wouldn’t enjoy Business if I knew that my 10-year-old (the age of the character in the book) was cramped somewhere with strangers.
Then rich people wonder why their kids are such neurotics.
I’m really entertained by how easily our day-long meeting on Thursday avoided any left-wing topic. In the past, 80% of all time during such meetings was dedicated to aggressive left-wing propaganda, equity trainings, racial insults, mockery of men, etc.
And now it’s like people’s brains were wiped and a new program was installed. It’s extraordinary how easy it turned out to achieve this.
All the race-baiting, BLMing, #MeTooting – for most people it was simply opportunism and faddishness. All the damage that they caused was because they picked up a stupid fad they don’t even care about.
Because Ukraine is a sovereign nation, you stupid bastard. And Israel’s whole position is that Palestine is not a separate country. You claim that Palestine is part of your own country. Your relationship with parts of your own country is, by definition, different than a relationship between two separate warring nations. If Palestine is, indeed, a separate country, then recognize it already and leave us all be.
This was written by a Russian speaker:
People who are trying to pass this off as anything else are counting on their audience being made of clinical morons.
Here’s more:
“This should distract people from her own missing email, especially if the affair goes to the Olympic level. The point is making the Russian play a U.S. domestic issue. Say something like a critical infrastructure threat for the election to feel manic since both POTUS and VPOTUS have acknowledge the fact IC would speed up searching for evidence that is regrettably still unavailable.”
Either this Leonard Benardo dude is Russian, or the emails are fake. The whole idea that people exchange emails outlining their evil plans is stupid.
Can we please just stop doing the stupid thing already?
If you want to try the neoliberal lifestyle or discover that you are already living it, here are some fun suggestions. The underlying principles are easy: gamify, quantify, liquefy.
Here’s what you’ll need:
Take all these ingredients and design a game where you have to hit each of the components daily in a way that leaves you feeling so energetic you can’t fall asleep without a sleep remedy.
A new student service offers help to students who are “new parents, pregnant, or experiencing pregnancy-related conditions.” It’s a great idea to have such a service but I don’t understand why the description includes the word “or”. You can only experience pregnancy-related conditions if you are pregnant. There needs to be no “or”.
Yes, a small thing, but we are a university. One would hope we’d be more careful with language.
Happy August 1st, by the way! The summer is 2/3 done, which is always a relief.
The only enjoyable part of the day-long meeting was at the end, when we had a visit from a guy who was hired from the corporate world to improve enrollments. A great, positive, confident dude who told us how everything is great, he is making the enrollments grow, good things await us, “our product is good and we need to put our brand out there.”
In contrast with the Dean who starts every other sentence with “I’m not saying that…” and then proceeds to say exactly what he claims not to be saying, it was refreshing to hear from a guy who doesn’t equivocate or exhibit weasely attitudes.
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