A friend’s daughter has a 3-year-old girl. The kid is adorable, and she’s been the smallest child at all the gatherings for a while. Everybodywas alwaysadmiring and praising her because she’s really a very remarkable child.

And then today Klara appeared on the scene, and a 3-month-old always beats a 3-year-old in terms of cuteness. After observing everyone make a fuss about the baby and listening to the endless, “OMG, look at the huge saliva bubbles she’s making, she’s the cutest, OMG, what a precious baby!”, the 3-year-old got into the middle of the room and desperately made the hugest saliva bubble anybody has ever seen.

But nobody appreciated her enormous saliva bubble. Instead, she was told to mind her manners and to stop trying to mock the baby.

I never understood the sadness of the growing kids who suddenly get a lot less attention and can’t figure out the reason. But it can’t be easy for them to realize that they are not the cutest and the most adorable any longer. Let’s remember to notice older children and try to understand their sadness.

Prepare yourselves, people! An attack of cuteness is coming. It’s almost here!

Talking about stuff, what’s the object you have owned the longest? Taking into account how many times I moved both long and short distance, I obviously haven’t managed to save a lot of things from my childhood. But I did preserve my most favorite childhood toy, this little plastic piglet that you see in the photo.

Of course, I had dolls, and some really beautiful ones, too. But there was no doll I loved like this cheap plastic piglet. I created a wardrobe for him that was fit for royalty. I took him everywhere with me, never slept without him.

I first got this toy on a trip to Kiev with my father when I was 5. A little over a year later, my baby sister decided to use him on her freshly sprouted teeth, which is how the piglet lost his nose. I’m not sure I have managed fully to forgive my sister for mutilating my toy even 34 years later. Of course, there’s a pickled apple she’s holding over my head for a little over quarter century, so we’re almost even.

It’s really funny that out of everything I owned and lost it’s a little plastic piglet costing 11 copeck in 1981 that would travel all the way across the globe, from one country to another, from one state to the next.

A baby bathtub thermometer comes in two colors:

1. A blue Mickey Mouse thermometer that must be intended for boys
2. A pink Minnie Mouse thermometer probably intended for girls

Their price differs, even though it’s essentially the same product:

My explanation for the price difference is that people are more likely to buy stuff for baby girls, so it’s possible to get them to pay more. Boy things, on the other hand, are in smaller demand, so you have to give them away more cheaply to make any sales. 

Are there any other explanations?

We have a tradition in my culture that when somebody gives you a receptacle filled with food, you can’t give it back empty. You have to fill it with candy or cookies or something of the kind. So I’m curious: is there a tradition like that in the US?

I will be returning a small slow cooker that a friend gave me filled with a chili a while ago. I will put my favorite Lindt chocolates in it. Will I have to explain why I’m doing that? Or will people understand?

I just heard that BBC cast Benedict Cumberbatch as Richard III. This is so wrong. Cumberbatch is a talented actor but it’s clear that the production where he stars as Richard will be very anti-Ricardian. His look doesn’t lend itself to anything else. Imagine, instead, if Colin Firth were cast as Richard. That would be an entirely different interpretation of the story.

I’m experiencing an intense attack of provincialism that manifests itself in a fear of traveling to Montréal in August with N and the six-month-old baby. I used to be such a big city person, and now I’m afraid of traffic, crowds, and sounds. Beware of moving to the provinces, people. They will eat your soul.

In the NYTimes today there is an article by the president of the American Enterprise Institute who argues that we should stop trying to educate people and instead should shuffle them around. This, of course, is entirely disingenuous. Geographical mobility only works to the advantage of highly educated high-earners. Chasing minimum-wage employment around the continent is a waste of time because the psychological, emotional, social, and financial consequences of long-distance moving will never be off-set by whatever paltry sums can potentially be earned as a result of such a move.

I find it hard to believe that the author of the article is so stupid that he doesn’t realize how devastating long-distance moving is to people who don’t have $100K incomes. He is probably very well-aware of it but is simply being a jerk.

The title of the book is actually When the Music’s Over but my title is better because it lets you know straightaway what the book is about. Peter Robinson is the author of a popular mystery series set in the UK but lately his books have been running out of steam. So Robinson decided to compensate for the absence of any kind of mystery or of an interesting plot with a desperate attempt to milk the Rotherham child rape scandal.

The author tries very hard to ensure that not a single prurient detail of sexual abuse of British girls by men of Pakistani origins remains outside of his novel. At the same time, he is careful to hammer the message that the homegrown British pervs are even worse home as often as he can. As a result, the novel has a weird disjointed structure and ends up being quite boring. Or maybe my disillusionment with the genre makes it seem that way.

I didn’t like it, in short. I don’t appreciate people trying to exploit Rotherham to make a quick buck. It feels distasteful to me.