You Could Have It

~ Clarissa ~ 4 Comments

The Right is everything that isn’t a tiny number of very rigid (and very fantastical) beliefs that define the Left. We are truly diverse. We have open-border libertarians, the “reduce all immigration to zero” crowd, and everybody in-between. And this is only one issue. We are just as seeking, enquiring, and rowdy on all others.

Nobody on our side calls others out for using the “wrong” terminology. There is no terminology. Everybody invents their own, experiments with language, plays word games. Nothing is off-limits. No idea is too scary to read, think about, and discuss. Nobody gains in-group points by denouncing others for not being ideologically pure enough.

And there’s humor. We make jokes, and nothing is too sacred to chuckle over. There’s always something happening, always something to think about. Nobody is reciting dogma. Nobody conducts witch hunts over wrong pronouns.

If you are not one of us yet, imagine, only imagine, saying whatever occurs to you, letting your thoughts roam freely, and abandoning all these mantras of “sex work is work” or “trans women are women.” You could have this freedom, too.

Hardware and Software

~ Clarissa ~ Leave a comment

Both hardware and software are necessary to make a computer run. IQ is crucial to do high-level scientific research. But IQ alone is utterly insufficient. You need to take your high IQ to school and study for a very long time. And then study some more. You are utterly useless for science until you’ve downloaded software in the form of learning onto your brain.

Why am explaining this boring and obvious fact? Because I’m reading a novel Notes on Infinity by Austin Taylor, and she seems blissfully unaware that major scientific discoveries aren’t made by college sophomores. Harvard professors don’t beg said sophomores to join their research labs. Nobody expects them to do any research or to publish solo scientific articles before finishing their second year of college.

It annoys me when people pretend that intelligence is not genetic and inborn. It annoys me as much when people pretend that high IQ means you can be instantly successful in any field without having to learn.

DOJ Is Being Embarrassing

~ Clarissa ~ 9 Comments

I don’t like this, I don’t support this, I think it’s pathetic and ridiculous:

What’s next, suing people for cocktails named “Sex on the Beach” and “Bahama Mama” because they hurt the feelings of the asexuals and the infertile? The DOJ shouldn’t be in the business of policing names of beverages. We already have a party that protects hurt fee-fees. We don’t need another one.

This is very embarrassing.

Informational Hygiene

~ Clarissa ~ 6 Comments

Please, people, be very careful with your news consumption. Exercise informational hygiene. There are many dishonest operators who publish fakes. Here’s one:

This story is a complete lie:

“We’ve investigated it,” Carvalho said during a news conference, “and all the reports that came back was that no such event happened.”

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-06-10/la-ice-protests-truth-vs-fiction

Immoral

~ Clarissa ~ 5 Comments

This is, of course, very unevenly distributed. Where I live, Uber drivers abound, and all are locals. Janitors, cleaners, waitresses – local. The idea that you can get rid of all of them because there are migrants you can underpay is so immoral, I have no idea how people openly express it without skipping a beat. I’ve lived here for many years, I know some of the janitors, the small local farmers, the cleaners, etc. I know their names, their stories. How can I want to get rid of them because somebody else can be underpaid and exploited?

I also could never understand why people who think it’s OK to throw a janitor out of his job and replace him with a below-minimum-wage migrant are so certain the same thing can’t be done to them.

This is all so immoral and stupid it’s unbelievable people openly say this crap.

Stepping up to the Plate

~ Clarissa ~ 4 Comments

Klara’s summer camp teacher says she has to come to the game because she’s their star batter (I hope it’s the right spelling because I’m clueless), and the team will lose without her.

I have somehow produced a mega sociable, monolingual baseball player. Tears of joy are choking me.

I was literally certain until yesterday that “homerun” was from American football.

She even has a “stepping up to the plate is…” with her own special song.

My husband and I grew up in the USSR, and it’s 100% guaranteed that nobody ever stepped up to the plate in our genealogical tree.

I’m With the Stoner

~ Clarissa ~ 13 Comments

I’m on the side of the stoner dude. He won’t let himself be guilt-tripped by the standard slogans, which means he’s already mostly on our side:

What Should I Have Done Differently?

~ Clarissa ~ 7 Comments

What exactly did I do wrong that I never have any chance to talk about literature with anyone?

Everything else worked out in my life, including the stuff that seemed fantastical when I first decided upon it. But I didn’t manage to arrange things so that I could talk about literature. With people, I mean.

I’m a professor of literature. I spend most of my day reading literature in several languages, thinking about it, writing about it – but I don’t have interlocutors.

I’ve been participating in an online book club, and every meeting shows me how invigorating and precious I find an opportunity to talk about literature. It’s online, though, so not quite real.

What should I have done differently?

Seeing Color

~ Clarissa ~ 4 Comments

I already shared this old Soviet joke but the previous post makes it newly relevant.

An American spy trained for five grueling years to be deployed with a covert mission to the USSR. He learned the language to perfection, studied how people dress, walk, move. Finally, he’s ready for the mission. He crosses into the USSR and finds his way to a tiny Ukrainian village. An old grandma is walking along the street.

“Good morning, babcia,” addresses her the spy in perfect Ukrainian.

“Good morning to you, too, American spy,” says the babcia.

“But how? How did you know I was an American spy??” asks the stunned American spy.

“Because you are a Negro, son,” explains the babcia.

We Are Much Paler

~ Clarissa ~ 14 Comments

Is this a bloody parody, or something?

I don’t know where that is but it’s clearly very much to the South from Ukraine.

Ukrainians are much paler, women don’t wear burqas, and men are either at the front or rescuing victims instead of running around in droves like weirdo bunnies.

Neither the architecture nor the climate track either. Also, people have cars. And coffee makers, laptops, and all other attributes of civilization. Kharkiv is a large European city, with coffee shops, restaurants, cathedrals, universities.

It’s like when I first started working here at my current university, and department Chair asked me to wear “whatever you normally wear in Ukraine for our cultural event.” I said I was wearing exactly that. “But it looks like normal clothes,” the Chair observed.