Misty is not the first cat in my life. I already had a relationship with a cat but I never share that story because even now, 30 years later, I feel horrible about it.

In Ukraine, I lived in a large apartment building, like we all did. There were many stray animals back then. Crowds of stray animals. Inside the entrance of my apartment building, there lived a stray cat. Every time I’d come home from the university, the cat would follow me to my apartment and I’d feed her and play with her. She always wanted to leave and insisted I let her out once she was done playing.

We had regular blackouts. Can you imagine a blackout in a big city? It’s fucking scary. I’d have to go up to the fourth floor in complete darkness, unlock the door and go inside, every time fearing that there would be a rapist hiding somewhere on the staircase. 1990s, and the crime situation was not great.

Once, I climbed up to my apartment in the dark, unlocked the door with shaking hands, but when I tried to close it behind me, it wouldn’t close. Like somebody had put a foot in to prevent it from closing. Yes, I should have remembered the cat. But I was terrified and not thinking straight. So I started pulling the door against the imaginary rapist I thought was trying to force his way in. I persevered until the poor cat who had followed me upstairs as usual in hopes of food and a cuddle managed to make a sound.

The cat was fine. She didn’t die or anything. But she never wanted to come near me after that.

The funny thing is that I was married at that time. Not to N, obviously. Strangely, it never occurred to anybody that my husband who was living on the money I was making that entire time could walk me home in the dark.

Toronto City councilor Shelley Carroll announces they have renamed a park

‘Ethennonnhawahstihnen’ park

She says residents must learn to pronounce the new park name to be “held accountable” with “first peoples”

This is not satire pic.twitter.com/cqf9D07vXQ

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) February 6, 2026

That’s exactly what I tell students about the need to learn to pronounce my last name. “Nobody passes the course without pronouncing it correctly. On the first try,” I say.

I do it to gauge their level of language competence. If they laugh at the joke, I know their Spanish is good. Obviously, I don’t really care how they pronounce it as long as nobody tries addressing me by my first name. If they do, I stare at them morosely until they desist from this strange endeavor. Usually, they settle on “profe”, and that’s perfectly fine.

Yet another scam in higher education is “dual-credit courses.” High school students take classes in their high schools and for some incomprehensible reasons these classes are supposed to count towards both high school and college completion. Which is nuts on every possible level.

I’ve been sent a bunch of high-school “syllabi” that I’m supposed to evaluate and say to which of my courses they correspond. It’s a total joke because these are not real college-level syllabi, nor are they supposed to be. All they have is “learning objectives” and diversity statements. There’s nothing about actual material covered. To me, Spanish 101 covers conjugation in the present, object pronouns, verbs like gustar, comparisons and preterite of regular verbs. Everything else is not Spanish 101. I don’t care what “culturally relevant and inclusive projects” they do in high school. If you can’t conjugate in the present and use object pronouns, you haven’t completed Spanish 101 and are not ready to go into 102.

All of this crap exists to pander to parents. They want a shortcut which does not exist. But we are supposed to pretend that it does, and it’s annoying.

The cat is now used to me playing with her in the evenings. If I’m slow on the uptake, she pretends to play by chasing an imaginary toy, flipping on her back and pretending to hold the toy with her paws. Then she stares at me meaningfully as if to say, “do you get it now? Playtime, lady. Chop chop and look spry.”

Outside of playtime, she wants to lie on me and stare into my eyes. If I’m holding a book, she tries to swap it away with her paw. I don’t know why everybody says that cats are aloof and want alone time. This cat doesn’t want any alone time. She wants to be with people all the time.

I almost never go on Facebook but today I did because I wanted to see if people were saying anything about the new construction project here in town. While a was doing that, the cat jumped on me (I swear, this cat is friendlier and needier than most dogs) and I pressed something that sent out “friend requests” to a whole bunch of complete strangers. Now they are all accepting these friend requests. And I still don’t know anything about the construction project.

I hate Facebook and everything about it. But maybe I should post something so that all those people I accidentally harassed at least get something out of it.

I went from being annoyed by students’ grammar and spelling mistakes to loving them as evidence that, at least, they are writing their own papers.

It’s the same with social media. Any sign of humanity in posts is highly appreciated.

When did transgenderism become a working-class fad?

It’s very shocking to see how eagerly the working people embraced it even though they have zero financial means to buy even a sliver of freedom from its worst consequences.

I once visited  the iconic Blue Bar of the Algonquin Hotel in NYC. It was really cool.

And really blue.

Guess how it’s been remodeled? I don’t even want to post the photo. But I will because everybody needs to know about this atrocity.

This is the Blue Bar now:

It looks like an oversized airport vending machine. The marble counter, the chairs, everything is hideous.

All it lacks is a couple of art pieces by Feliza Bursztyn.

In the US academia is becoming unviable outside the R1 environment. And soon it will be unviable outside the ultra-elite tier of R1s. The UK is in a similar situation. The few European institutions in the global/Anglo R1 game are holding up for now, but it’s scary. pic.twitter.com/c3pWX3QvE0

— Enzo Rossi (@enzoreds) February 7, 2026

Yes.

As I said the other day, it’s so sweet and quaint when people denounce general education requirements in college as if anybody outside of a shrinking elite will ever get a chance of experiencing them. Or anything like what we understand as college.

A small group of people will go to university as it was historically conceived. They’ll live the life of the mind and their inner world will have enough depth to sustain it.

The rest of college education will consist of screen-dependent, emotionally dysregulated people with a bouquet of identity labels and diagnoses being trained by their class equals to spend even more time staring at screens.

Here’s more evidence of the wall being built between the small elite and the proles:

File this under: LONG OVERDUE

The @DeptWar is formally ending ALL Professional Military Education, fellowships, and certificate programs with Harvard University.

Harvard is woke; The War Department is not. pic.twitter.com/0kpsvivtsQ

— Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (@SecWar) February 6, 2026

Why does progressivism hate libertarianism so much? They have a lot in common. Open borders, freedom of migration, unconstrained freedom for capital, no policing, no nation-state, no army, no war on drugs. So many affinities, yet progressives detest libertarians.

The reason, I believe, is that libertarians support all these things on principle. They don’t see themselves as morally superior. And for progressives, moral superiority is the entirety of the game. Libertarians spoil the whole deal for progressives. If you can be for all these things and not constantly point out to everybody how exceptionally virtuous you are, then why do progressives do it so much? Like a woman with Botox, fillers and hair extensions who despises a naturally pretty woman, progressives hate libertarians for giving the game away.