Opinions, art, debate
I ran across a group of online diabetics who insist that their doctors tell them to eat a high-carb diet. People have a tendency to hear exactly what they want, so I don’t believe their protestations of how their doctors tell them to stuff their faces with bananas and cereal. Even small children know that diabetics can’t eat carbs, so pretending that this is a huge revelation is strange.
My diabetic breakfast is pictured below:
After observing the happenings at my university, I now understand how the 2008 crisis could happen. My question was always, they had to know. They had to know the model was unsustainable and was going to blow up soon. Why didn’t they do anything?
Today I know. People will hold on to the last, decaying remnants of what’s familiar and comforting. They’ll close their eyes to reality. They’ll deny the evidence of their own senses. They’ll stick their heads into the sand and ignore everything in order to pretend that the status quo can be preserved forever.
The link to the review is here, and yes, my friends, the review is as neoliberal as those books seem to be. You can catch a glimpse of how a brain that has been marinated in neoliberalism works. Although I do understand that “works” is too generous a word to apply to the linked piece of writing.
The author of the review doesn’t really review anything. She retells the plot in a scatty manner of somebody who interrupted her reading after every two pages to check the much more enticing goings on in her social media accounts. What the reviewer thinks of the books or what connection she sees between them other than that their heroines go on dates is never explained.
Only at the end of the article does she venture into something akin to reviewing. Here is the entirety of that part of the piece:
“YOLO” is the last phrase to appear on the last page of this book — and lo, you doth only live the very once. You might as well write like it. This book swings big. The ball arcs toward Gehenna, and Kemp’s hyper narrator Naruto-runs off the page, trying kawaiily to get under it. Here, at last, is someone doing something new.
Do you understand what this paragraph means? Neither do I. I have read the review and have no idea what the reviewer wants to say or why she even bothered. Neoliberalism always devolves into utter meaninglessness. Meaningless books, relationships, lives. It’s all as bleak and tawdry as these novels and the person writing about them.
Are you his best friend, too? Have the rest of his friends also become acquaintances? The reason why I ask is that the romantic relationship between the two of you has collapsed because you wanted him more than he did you, so the relationship was unequal. (Of course, the he/she may be completely swapped in your situation).
Another question is, are you still in love with this person? Meaning, are you really friends or an unwanted ex-lover clinging to a situation and a person being clung to?
If the relationship is still unequal, I think the right thing to do is to find a reason why the situation of being rejected is something that you seek. Once you figure out why “continuously rejected by the only person who matters” is your go-to scenario, the scenario will go away and you’ll move on to something better without even noticing.
I’m not suggesting any drastic measures like dropping this person immediately because if this is a situation that you need, you’ll re-engineer it in some other form. Instead, I suggest thinking about other situations in your life when you felt like you did when this person refused to move in. And other situations where you felt like you do at the realization that you’ll remain all alone if you cut this person out.
It’s always best to find the reason instead of forcing yourself into something. The way you know you found your answer is when the situation falls away painlessly and casually.
I’m sorry, I know everybody is tired of my university drama but I have to share the argument in favor of eliminating physics and Chinese that is advanced by our Chancellor:
Somehow, we are able to comprehend the elimination of jobs occupied by milk delivery men, typewriter repair technicians or elevator operators. It is far more difficult to embrace the contemporary analog. Yet, in our daily living, it is increasingly difficult to avoid self-checkout, and half of people shopping in the grocery store aisles are fulfilling online orders. The elimination of some positions, the creation of new ones, restructuring or making organizational changes should not, by default, be understood as a sign of financial trouble.
Yes, physics is totally the equivalent of home milk delivery. And speaking Chinese has been phased out by the disappearance of Chinese speakers from the planet. They must have left it for another galaxy together with milkmen.
Speaking of which, I believe that home deliveries of fresh milk straight from a cow were a wonderful thing. So there’s nothing much to celebrate in the loss of that custom.
The funny thing, though, is that I’ve heard these arguments from my Dean delivered verbatim. This is cultish behavior at its scariest. One intellectually impoverished dude comes up with an analogy between physics and typewriter repair and then a bunch of people with PhDs eagerly repeat this extraordinary piece of silliness. Honestly, what grade would you give to a freshman student who’d come up with such an analogy? It’s embarrassing.
This is complete bonk:
The truth is the exact opposite. Love is the best fuel to propel you to incredible victories. There’s nothing like falling in love to give you a qualitative leap in every aspect of your life.
Both N and I were a complete mess on every level the day before we met. But our passion for each other propelled the kind of growth in all areas that would have never happened otherwise.
If you are betrayed and disappointed by a group of people, what do you do? What is your coping mechanism?
Mine is that I tell the story to several people in a row. Not at once because it’s the repetition of the story that helps. I understand that this is a very female way to cope. What do men do?
I wept, people. And now you have to:
Look at me. I’m a Malibu Liberal.
I believe in climate justice. Can you believe I actually said those words?! I’ve posted those words. I’ve whispered them into quartz. I ate kelp-based protein and offset my flights to Tulum through an app made by annoying Stanford kids. I composted at scale. I did all of the things.
Our home was solar-powered, LEED-certified, AND tastefully non-invasive—except for the footprint, which was enormous. But it was *intentional*. And even though it cost a fortune, I STILL did all of the things. We marched. We meditated. I once cried over a Greta Thunberg speech in my Range Rover outside Nobu. But nature doesn’t care about ANY of that. It just burns—helped along, of course, by decades of political incompetence.
And when it burned, the city sent not one, not two, but THREE lesbian fire chiefs with not a single hose between them. Look, DEI is important, I get that. But not when the hillside’s ON FIRE. The mayor showed up three days later from Africa, only to take a selfie and mispronounce “Malibu.” And I’m all for representation, but that [REDACTED].
We lost EVERYTHING! And when we tried to rebuild, we met the final boss: Democrat bureaucracy. Six months for a soil report. A year for coastal variances. Our rebuild “disrespected the ridgeline.” Whatever that means. I met with the Architectural Review Board while on mushrooms and I still don’t know if that meeting was real.
Our contractor was approved, then unapproved, then deported. We got a violation for sandbagging our own driveway. We’ve spent $120,000 just to *not* live in our house. I asked a councilwoman for help. She sent me back a workbook titled ‘Rethinking Home’ and a notice from the county asking us not to disturb owl mating zones while our lives are literally ash.
So fuck it.
Fuck the permits.
Fuck the endangered sand beetle.
Fuck the Architectural Review Board.
Fuck the Democrats.
Where is my MAGA hat.
[True Story]https://x.com/frandalorian/status/1909230004430688655?t=wQ1qSpBwv8TTztB_kEv_-A&s=19
Yesterday we had an open forum for several of the programs that are being cut. The administration is continuing its underhanded tricks. A room that was assigned for the event was way too small for the number of people who came. It was also extremely hot. More than half of the attendees had to stand packed very close together, sweating and barely able to see anything behind the backs of other standing attendees. The whole event was a fire hazard and a safety hazard of great proportions.
These conditions are particularly onerous for older colleagues who have health issues. And that’s precisely the point. These are people who are the most familiar with the programs in which they have worked for 20-30 years. Their perspective carries the most weight. The administration was trying to force them to leave before they could speak.
Many people still spoke and said many important things but I could see that it was physically taxing for quite a few colleagues.
It’s quite outrageous that one single administrator is causing all this damage to buff up his CV and the rest of the administration is obediently carrying out his every wish.
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