Religious people in major religions are much better suited to adapting to fluidity than those who don’t belong to a religious tradition. The Mormon colleagues I know, for instance, keep having to move a lot because that’s what academic lives are like. But wherever they go, they have an instant circle of new friends who share their basic beliefs, bring food, offer baby-sitting, and organize their social life. 

The greatest hardship of a fluid life is loneliness and isolation. But religious people have that problem solved. From outdated, old-fashioned weirdos, they might just turn into the pioneers of successful fluid living. Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option may lose relevance even before the actual book is published.

I just met my new best friend:

Sweet. Mother. Of. Sweetness. 

I don’t want to sound insensitive but if I wait for a break between mass murders and acts of terror to share this, it will become quite irrelevant.

In the end, I relied on my sister’s sage advice in my choice of daycare. 

“Choose for yourself,” she said. “The baby will be happy in the place that makes you happy.”

She is absolutely right. Klara is a barometer of my emotional states and will stay that way until the first separation crisis at 3. You should see how happy she is at grocery stores if you have any doubts. Whatever I feel about a person, Klara enacts directly and loudly. I hope people don’t start catching up any time soon because it might be embarrassing. 

The “solid” daycare happens to be located next to the cemetery. Which obviously puts me in a dark mood. So I chose the daycare that is located in the opposite direction. 

If I don’t have a heart attack in the first 8 weeks, the rest will be easier.

This shooting seems to be taking place where the 1972 massacre of the Israeli Olympic team occurred. Let’s hope it’s nothing but an eerie coincidence. 

I hope Germans will not start with their usual idiotic attempts to conceal what happened. 

“People just started dropping for a mysterious reason. Maybe they had spontaneous heart attacks.”

Just heard a fascinating new expression on the news: “the non-indigenous populations of Germany that are not entirely culturally integrated.” This deserves some sort of an award.

If it’s between Kaine and the other two dudes nobody knows, I’d rather she chose Kaine. He is at least vaguely recognizable to those of us who obsess about news, if to no one else. 

What Republicans always did better than Democrats was optimism. Their anti-apocaliptic, “you can do it!”, power-of-positivity stance was their most attractive quality that contrasted favorably with the Democrats’ tendency towards doom and gloom. 

Since this election, this is no longer true. The gloominess of Trump’s acceptance speech was as bad as that of any environmentalist fanatic. And his “you are powerless without me as your Big Government” was very jarring for what was supposed to be a convention of people who believe in pulling themselves up.

Everybody knows that crime rates are down. So I wish this information stopped being delivered so pompously on every corner.

A school forbids clapping and substitutes it with silent cheering. Maybe it’s best to tie children down and forbid them to move altogether to please neurotic adults.

[Russian] South Korea’s defecation park. It blew my mind! There are many photos so it doesn’t matter that much if you don’t speak Russian. 

Melania’s speechwriter makes it clear that Melania knew the speech was plagiarized. Maybe Melania isn’t that dumb and simply wanted to hurt her jerk of an owner.

How to ask a new employer for a flexible schedule. My advice is simply not to. Start working, make yourself into a superstar, and you’ll have all you need. People who want to be special cookies before doing anything for the company only annoy everybody. 

If one abandons research because of such innocuous little things, one was never going to be a research anyway. Were these over sensitive neurotics raised on “silent cheers”?

God, I hate these self-pitying, guilt-tripping mommies. Just don’t do any of this shit if it’s so damn onerous but stop being such a victim already. The kids will grow up and read this article. How will it make them feel to know that Mom whined to all the world about how much she hated doing a few things for them?

Republican senators are lazy and ineffective to a scary degree. They will lecture people on the value of hard work and bootstrapping but will refuse to do a lick of work for years. 

Another insane kerfuffle at Yale. People seem to think that depicting slavery is the same as approving of it. It’s ridiculous beyond words. 

No, robots will not leave us unemployed. A good and necessary post.

“GOP is the party of new ideas!” the RNC chair announces.

“Finally!” I think. “Maybe he, at least, will tell us what they are.”

“We must stop Hillary!” he chirps happily and goes into a litany of anti-Hillary jingles. The plan to talk about new ideas has been swiftly forgotten.