So Hillary won Nevada. I’m very glad.

MSNBC is alternating between “it’s not a real victory” and “imagine how much damage losing would have done to Hillary’s campaign.” There’s nothing she can do to win with them, and it’s not because they are ideologically closer to Bernie or respond better to his campaign. It’s simply because you can squeeze out more coverage from a Bernie win.

As a Russian writer once said to his colleague, “Gosh, it’s such a relief to know you are being a blackguard because you are getting paid for it. I was afraid your heart was in it but if it’s just for money, that’s better.”

The Angel in the House is the famous model of 19th century femininity that positioned a woman as angelically self-sacrificing and completely dedicated to the needs of her family members. The Angel always smiled, never complained, and lived for the sake of her husband and children. She could never allow herself to criticize the husband because her submission to him was supposed to be complete.

Today, many women believe that the greatest goal of feminism was to turn them from Angels in the House into Angels Outside the House. They enact exactly the same kind of self-sacrificing, never complaining, completely submissive femininity and believe that, by virtue of having a job and making money, they have achieved a qualitatively different state of being than their 19th – century sisters. And of course, they feel great resentment because combining the roles of a graceful domestic angel with no needs of her own and of a breadwinner is a pretty lousy gig.

Examples of this resentment abound. The most recent one I’ve seen is an article titled “Having It All Kinda Sucks.” The article’s author rants and raves about feminism that, as she believes, made her life completely sucky. She had a baby a month ago and has worked every day since delivery because money is needed to keep her husband’s business afloat. As she runs around, popping stitches, working and trying to take care of the baby, the worthless gigolo of the husband appears in the kitchen to inquire what the plan is for dinner. After which, the woman drops everything and, without any objection, rushes to fix him dinner.

Of course, if such a fellow surfaced in my general vicinity, he’d soon know that the plan for dinner is to rip out his liver and feed it to coyotes. But that’s because I understand that the goal of feminism is not to give jobs to Stepford wives but to recognize women as fully human, valuable and important. The ecstatic tales of “look how I sacrifice my every need to those of my family” are not about feminism, irrespective of whether the person sharing them receives a paycheck or not.

Recently, there has been a bout of eager linking and retweeting of a study that supposedly demonstrated that female coders were discriminated against because of their gender even when their code was good.

Of course, the actual study demonstrated absolutely nothing of the kind. It showed that coders were judged more harshly whenever they revealed any gender. In the multiple reposts, however, the results of the study were perverted beyond all recognition.

The gleeful reposting of this study was engaged in by people who loudly claim to oppose discrimination. In reality, though, they have such a profound need to inhabit the world where women are victimized that they will invent that world and service this fantasy by falsifying all information that comes their way.

This is the most pernicious kind of sexism because it’s entirely unconscious and masks behind what looks and feels like sincere concern for women. If you try to tell these folks that they are the source of the discrimination they so loudly decry, they will get extremely offended and never believe you.

In Russia, several history teachers got into trouble for presenting to students “a negative image of Stalin.” They are now angrily denounced in the press and hounded at work for mentioning in class that Stalin’s regime incarcerated many people. The teachers are accused of having been bribed by the EU to conduct this anti-Stalin propaganda.

We ordered a professional photo session for the baby (very expensive but totally worth it), and now when we show it to people, they invariably exclaim, “Oh, so the baby is beautiful!” Apparently, my photography was making everybody think the baby is ugly.

Of course, Obama is doing the right thing in going to Cuba. Let’s remember the sequence of events. Putin made a play for Cuba and the Latin American countries that are in thrall to Cuba as part of his plan to restore the post-WWII division of the planet into spheres of influence. Russians sank quite a bit of money into buying the favor of Cubans and Co.

The US responded with a masterful stoke that would make us all proud if we were capable of feeling anything but guilt and disaffection about any and all of our actions in the world arena. By offering a rapprochement to Cuba, the US left Putin out in the cold, feeling like an idiot who paid up and got nothing in return. And believe me, this stung.

Of course, Putin didn’t give up. He pondered, regrouped, and once again made a play for Cubans. This time, he used the dumbo Pope and the goon Goondiayev to lay a claim to Cuba as a Russian playground.

Would it make sense to just sit stupidly by and let Putin do this? Remember, he responds aggressively to any show of passivity. You encourage him in this way, and he goes and bombs somebody. So it’s a great thing that Obama is going to Cuba. What’s going to make a bigger splash, this or a visit from some stupid Goondiayev?

As for going to Scalia’s funeral, that’s just silly. Even if you think the fellow was the second coming of Benjamin Franklin, he’s now dead. He doesn’t care who goes where and when. All these symbolic gestures are without any practical value for anybody but the immediate family. I prefer our elected leaders to fulfill their duty to the living and not run around chasing corpses.

People keep asking me why I don’t try to publish my non-academic writing on more popular websites or print media. The answer is that the world is full of freaks, and I have zero interest in allowing them any access to my life.

An example. A professor of musicology wrote a beautiful post on his experience of teaching opera music to prison inmates. Immediately, a crowd of overeager hysterics descended on him to chide the professor, in a tone of fake outrage, for his racism, colonialism and un-Americanness  (the professor emigrated to the US from Italy 20 years ago.) The fellow patiently and kindly responded to the outlandish accusations by freaks who never did anything for inmates yet felt entitled to scold the professor for sharing his knowledge with prisoners.

I’m not endowed with the same kind of patience as this professor and prefer to avoid the freaks altogether. So I never publish anywhere where freaks might lurk.

Here is the musicologist’s post and the comments.

Few myths are more hilarious than the belief that there is some sort of taboo placed on mental illness: “Far from being taboo, talking about mental illness, being mentally ill, is highly fashionable. People actively seek out a diagnosis of mental sickness.”

The secret lives of Tumblr teens.

“The University of Portland has launched a “Speak Up” webpage that encourages students to report “incidents of discomfort” to its Public Safety department. “We ask members of our community to SPEAK UP and report alleged incidents of discrimination and incidents of discomfort regarding observed or experienced interactions of intolerance,” the university states on the webpage.” And now consider how many bureaucrats will be needed to sort these discomfort complaints and you’ll know why tuition is skyrocketing. But are students or parents protesting? No? Then let them have it.

The sexual misery of the Arab world.

Bernie-splaining to black voters.

The precarious history of “Las Meninas.”

California is changing, and not in a good way.

Another idealistic young woman murdered by an asylum seeker in Europe.

The Clintons are in no way to blame for the growth in mass incarceration.

What made the American 1990s so great.

I don’t understand the drama over the access to the San Bernardino killer’s iPhone. If she were alive, it would make every sense to discuss her right to privacy. But she’s dead, she doesn’t exist. What doesn’t exist can’t have rights or privacy.

In general, I find the insistence of some cultures on the necrophiliac investment of the dead with the same importance as the living to be disturbing.