Dude, I’m so traumatized, I walk around dark as a storm cloud in May. Yes, Llosa was 89 but still. Did I mention that I met him in person? I mean, I know I did, but have I mentioned it recently? A hard-working person and a truly great writer, even if his personal life was very ridiculous (see HERE and also HERE. And HERE, as well).

My favorite by Vargas Llosa is The War of the End of the World. But it’s 772 pages of nightmarish, incandescent saga about a religious cult in Brazil. I also love The Green House but it’s very postmodern, and you need to be into South American postmodernism to get it.

I will probably use the writer’s death as an excuse to reread The War of the End of the World. This summer will be exactly 20 years since I read it, and I still shake with delight as I think of it.

Government-mandated conservative hires at elite universities is no way to shift the culture in your favor and will only breed resentment. The right was just starting to win the culture war and now is spectacularly overplaying its hand.

— Rikki Schlott (@RIKKISCHLOTT) April 15, 2025

Whose resentment and how come those people aren’t resentful already?

We are in an unequal war where one side goes scorched-earth at every opportunity while another is terrified of overplaying its hand before even beginning to play.

Is this why the Brits and the Germans went to war?

On page 3 of the book I’m reading, a pregnant woman buys for her baby “a crib sheet dotted with gender-neutral penguins.”

I tried to imagine a crib sheet with non-gender-neutral penguins, but my imagination failed me.

Now I’m left wondering about penguin genitals. Literature definitely makes one think. If not always in the way one hopes.

I should have stuck with Trollope.

I told this story before but I will repeat it in light of the Abrego García scandal.

In 2008-9 I was working as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Cornell University. My contract there was to end on May 15, 2009. My new contract at my current university was to start on August 15 of that same year. I was at that time a citizen of Canada, which means I can enter the US without a visa as a tourist.

In March of 2009, I started receiving phone calls from Homeland Security, telling me that I had to remove myself from the country on May 15 when my work contract expired. This meant I had to leave on May 15, then re-enter as a tourist (because I wanted to be with N who was working in Baltimore), then leave again and re-enter on August 15 under my new work contract. This was very inconvenient and entailed a lot of expense that I could ill-afford.

However, it was the law of the US. I respected the law and did everything legally. Left, came back, left again, and came back again. I could have easily disregarded these requirements and nobody would have hunted me around to deport me. But it would have been illegal. I don’t do illegal shit. I strongly believe that this is the only correct and moral attitude to life.

N lived for 2 years in the US on a visa that allowed him to reside but not work. He could have easily worked illegally and nobody would have known. He got requests galore for some off-the-books work. He didn’t even consider them and lived off his savings, spending everything he had managed to save. Yet between the two of us, it wasn’t even a question whether to accept work without the correct immigration status. We didn’t even discuss it, it was so obvious to both of us that we weren’t going to break the law. You know how much money he could have made in those two years? A lot. But it wasn’t even tempting because it would have been illegal.

My kid’s grade is undergoing some “very important comprehensive testing” this week. Or maybe next week, I’m not sure. No testing is remotely important to third graders. It’s the teacher who is being evaluated. She’s written several emails to the parents exhorting us to tell the kids not to worry. Of course, the best way to make a kid worry is to persecute her with pleas not to.

Imagine a friend coming up to you and opening with, “please, don’t worry, everything is fine. There’s really no reason to worry at all.” Immediately you’d know that something bad occurred and you need to start worrying.

I wish teachers learned not to outsource their drama to kids and parents.

BREAKING: In a shocking moment, President Bukele says he won't return Abrego Garcia, who was accidentally sent to El Salvador. "How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? Of course I'm not going to do it." pic.twitter.com/871ExyrjvM

— Really American 🇺🇸 (@ReallyAmerican1) April 14, 2025

I don’t understand this whole story at all. Did Abrego García enter the US illegally? Is he a citizen of El Salvador? Is he now back in his country and under its jurisdiction? Why isn’t it very obvious to everybody that entering a country illegally should constitute more than sufficient grounds for removal from its territory?

It is a myth that you can only learn another language to near-native fluency in early childhood. I’ve been teaching languages for over 30 years and have seen enough to say with certainty that it’s very much possible in adulthood. I never said or heard a word of Spanish until I was 23. I currently have a student who was forced to start learning Spanish at age 33 because her husband had to move to Colombia for professional reasons. We both speak like natives.

Language learning in adulthood has to do with one’s personality type. Have you noticed how I change my opinions dramatically on very big topics, read extremely widely, always come up with unexpected new interests, teach something very out there and new often, and shift my research interests like chess pieces? That’s why I learn languages easily.

In order to achieve fluency in another language, you need to be fine with the idea that there’s another way. One that is as good as yours or maybe even better. You need to have a higher than average need for change and stimulation.

At the same time, change is a heavy burden for a human brain. This is why I compensate my protean shifting in some areas with iron-clad rigidity in others. It’s downright comical how set in my ways I am in some things while keeping everybody dizzy with constant changes in others.

There’s neither sin nor virtue in any personality type. My facility with languages is not a sign of moral superiority. Or anything much except having a brain with weak dopamine receptors and figuring out how to use that to make money instead of perishing in a car crash.

But it’s definitely not age-related.

The guy who tried to burn down the house of the Governor of Pennsylvania is as beyond politics as the Moldovan kid who murdered his mom. People politicize this needlessly. Both criminals should absolutely be in jail but trying to figure out what their politics was is a waste of time. They are both clearly in the grip of something that utterly apolitical in nature.

Authorities said that Nikita Casap, 17, killed his parents in February in a plan to finance the assassination of US President Donald Trump and overthrow his government

Before anybody jumps to any conclusions, the little dude’s mom is called Tatiana. This is probably not remotely political at all.