Reader NG brought a link about Lindy West and her story of confronting an online troll.

I have to say, I’m so shocked by the article that I’m on the verge of throwing up. This is one of the most horrifying and disgusting stories I have ever encountered. The idea this Lindy West person proposes is that women are obligated to mother, nurture and emotionally service even those men who insult, abuse, and persecute them.

The story goes as follows: the Lindy person is viciously assaulted by an online troll, begins to service him emotionally in a pathetic and abject way, troll finds happiness and gets “a new girlfriend” (like a new car or a new box of trash bags), forgives the Lindy person for not starting to service him sooner, and doesn’t bash her any more. Of course, there are crowds of other trolls out there, and the question remains as to whether the Lindy person will have enough titties to feed them all with the milk of female servitude.

The most unbelievable thing is that the Lindy person identifies as a “feminist” in the very first sentence of her bizarre screed. I’ve seen all kinds of strange definitions of feminism but for the Lindy person it seems to mean “rolling yourself out like a carpet for everybody to walk over.”

Hey, Lindy person! You are a person. You are not an enormous tit filled with understanding and compassion. The world won’t end if you don’t feed parts of yourself to every passing freak. You are setting a horrible example to other female persons because you are adding one more voice to an already enormous chorus that tells them that their only goal in life is to suckle and nurture needy men.

What would really help Ukraine right now is a serious weakening of sanctions against Iran. I read that Khamenei is making some conciliatory noises. This might be a good moment to be nice to Iran.

If that were to happen, oil prices would drop some more, and the Russians might even come to their senses somewhat. Russians only manage to behave like normal people when oil is at less than $15 per barrel.

Long-term, of course, the only way to prevent Russia from being a constant source of instability on the planet would be to make oil irrelevant. Solar and wind are the answer to this problem.

It is kind of ridiculous that so much should depend on stupid oil.

A great post that finally made it clear to me why there is so much discussion of the extraordinarily boring story of Brian Williams and the helicopter:

And, finally, there’s the mainstream media itself, which is obsessed with this story out of sheer narcissism — it’s a story about us! it’s about what we do! As long as some people are paying attention to the press, the press is going to bask in the attention and engage in endless chin-scratching about media ethics.

This is just a small excerpt but do read the whole thing. The Brian Williams  story is the royal wedding of 2015, an attempt to distract everyone from the stuff that actually matters.

The number of bizarre ideas for why the US shouldn’t give defensive weaponry to Ukraine is growing. The silliest one I’ve heard so far goes like this:

Ukrainians don’t know how to use this weaponry. So Americans will have to go to Ukraine to train them. And while they will be conducting the training at the front line (because it totally makes sense to bring weapons to the front line before teaching people how to use them), Russians will kidnap them (but thank you for recognizing that it’s not a civil war that Ukraine is fighting.) And how will the US then get these Americans back? Obviously, the only way would be to start an all out – war with Russia. The next step is a nuclear annihilation of the entire planet.

Yes, people actually come up with this sort of crap.

What nobody seems to get is that Russia will or will not start a war with whomever for reasons entirely of its own. Ukrainians have learned this lesson already. Georgians learned it back in 2008.

It will be a great breakthrough if everybody just gets this through their thick skulls: what the Russians are doing is not about you. So any fear of antagonizing them or making them angry is futile. This fear gives you an illusion of control where you’ve got none.

Sorry, people, there have been no posts today. I’m at a dinner theater performance.

Food, theater, a new Michael Kors dress, and my husband’s company. That’s a formula for happiness.

As happens every year, I get upset after leaving the accountant ‘ s office and start ranting about the unfairness of the effective tax rate of 26%.

“Remember, though, that part of this money will go to sending weapons to Ukraine,” N says.

And it really helps.

Of course, the money will help my people to kill N’s people but he repudiated Russia and I have assigned him the status of an honorary Ukrainian.

“I hate going to the accountant!” N exclaims. “I hate it when people rummage in my intimate stuff!”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I’ve been going to a gynecologist for the past 20 years. It’s hard for me to share the outrage.”

Here is an absolutely hilarious post from some brainless twat who is torn between the realization that one needs to be an educated, broad-minded individual to make any money today and the terror of education and broad-mindedness:

Your daughter loves literature, and wants to study it at the college level. You know that if she goes to an elite school, they’re going to turn her into a poststructuralist ideologue, and either rob her of her passion for truth and beauty, or corrupt it through ideological re-education. But you also know that if she goes to a “marginal” school, there will be a significant opportunity cost in terms of career advancement and status.

This fellow is a spiritual brother of Scott Walker whose impotent attempts to castrate higher education have made so many people laugh recently. Even the most dense folks realize that you can’t remain parochial, terrified of the world and stupid if you want to be financially successful. But the need to let go of parochialism and stupidity makes them wriggle in pain.

My Ukrainian friend and I got an email from a gentleman with a Ukrainian last name. The gentleman in question is a professor close by and he was happy to discover two more Russian-speakers in the area.

“Let’s meet and get to know each other!” the gentleman suggested. “You are the only two Russian-speakers I have discovered for miles around.”

We were also very happy to have been found by the Russian-speaking gentleman.

“Yes, that’s a great idea,” my friend responded in her email. “Let’s definitely get together.”

“OK, let me forward this conversation to my wife,” the Russian-speaking gentleman responded, “she manages our social life and she will set something up.”

And at that point, both I and my Ukrainian friend immediately lost all interest in the gentleman.

“He could have turned out to be a Putinoid, so it’s better that way,” the Ukrainian friend said.

Nothing is more hopeless than trying to create a Russian-speaking immigrant community. Everybody is beyond nuts.

Université Laval, Canada’s oldest educational institution, is phasing out Spanish. The French-speaking university has a very good and prestigious program in Hispanic Studies but it’s being destroyed.

I don’t know what excuse is being used to do this. There is no economic crisis in Quebec. Quebec is about to explode because of the insane amounts of money in the province. Economically, the province couldn’t be doing better.  

Of course, there is a possibility of the McGill University scenario repeating itself here: the department might have just imploded because of internal dramas. Canadian Hispanism is notoriously fractious and mafia-like.