Meantime in Canada, my 14-year-old niece reports the following:

The kid is a passionate reader but the school is doing everything to nip that in the bud. It’s also doing everything to make kids detest the gay, the trans, and the indigenous.

The experts are getting more and more expert-like. Their expertise lies in fields nobody has been able to locate but that makes the whole thing more fun.

My university is organizing a writing retreat for “BIPOC” [pronounced “bye, poke”] academics. Because, apparently, non-white people can’t write worth a shit when they know that whites are present somewhere in the building.

I’ve been told for years that, since I am a woman, I shouldn’t be able to write, speak, think, and express ideas around men. I’ve also been repeatedly told that it’s not possible for students to like my teaching because I’m an immigrant and speak with an accent. I haven’t paid any attention and have been speaking, writing, publishing, and teaching as much as I choose to. I feel compassion for people who are still paying attention to this silly victim talk.

That’s the entirety of the Biden administration foreign policy. Wake up, people. It’s been like this the entire time and you are only noticing right now.

I’m taken aback by the childish surprise over something that’s been obvious for years. The US political establishment is suffering from extreme senility that has nothing to do with Biden’s health issues. It’s like that Apple ad I posted yesterday. There are no new ideas, no vision. The goal is to preserve the status quo at any cost in order to pretend that nothing is happening and we can hobble on fussing about pronouns and other inane minutiae.

I found myself at Walmart at 10 pm last Saturday. It was filled with pijama-clad teenagers. They were walking around, playing ball, eating, sitting on the floor. It was like a very large sleepover party. Is Walmart a regular hangout for teenagers or is this a local thing?

The following expressions are stupid and should not be used:

• multipolar (in political contexts)
• Global South
• color revolutions
• settler colonialism
• -phobia (outside of a psychiatrist’s office)

It’s embarrassing to employ such language unironically.

Also, it’s time to retire the expression “teaching critical thinking” because it has come to mean “raising mindless drones who stupidly repeat slogans.”

And “work-life balance.” Somebody make that one go away already.

What other words and expressions should take a rest for a while or forever?

Did you see the new iPad ad? It’s as ugly as the minds of the techie overlords but very honest.

This is a good article but it presupposes that the White House is under a sincere delusion that these strikes would have a negative impact on energy markets. That is not the case. Such level of almost childish ignorance does not exist in Washington. The effort to protect Russian oil refineries from Ukrainian strikes is not economic or energy-related.

We have a much, much deeper problem than “Biden doesn’t understand energy markets.”

For the 3 people on here who understand Russian, I want to share this wonderful joke:

Everything about it is priceless and absolutely untranslatable.

This is why I’ll never be successful on Twitter. I can’t come up with anything pithy and funny on the spot. N can. He’s amazing at this kind of thing but he doesn’t share his gift with the world.

I apologize to the people who don’t understand the language.

Hmm, I don’t know. I heard that “America” is a word that triggers many victims as badly as “boys.” And “scouting” is offensive to Native Americans. Or Mexicans, I’m not sure. Plus, the new name doesn’t reference either African Americans or Palestinians, and we all know that silence is violence.

So maybe its best to rebrand into not having a name at all because whatever it is should probably be cancelled anyway.