Is anybody on here watching Squid Game 2? I really identify with the main character who’s standing in front of a crowd, yelling “People, don’t play with neoliberalism. I’ll win but you won’t. Stop and go home!’ And people roar, “No, we want to play! This is winnable!”

Ian Smith’s memoir of the handover of Rhodesia to Soviet-backed Mugabe is a depressing account. It also strikes a little too close to home to read about a naively pro-Western country being handed over by Kissinger and Co to Russians and their North Korean toadies. Maybe I should have waited to read the book to avoid being haunted by the similarities.

After reading Bitter Harvest, I’m not sure to what extent there actually was a Cold War. The British and the Americans seemed hell-bent on handing large swatches of the world into Soviet control. But at least I now have an answer to a question that puzzled me for years. The USSR I grew up in was mismanaged, bumbling and inept. Having physically eliminated most people with well-functioning brains and terrorized the rest into submission, it was led by geriatric morons who couldn’t tell their ass from their elbow even in their better years. How, then, could a country of glorified mediocrity end up controlling half of the world?

Well, now I know. Everything was done by the supposed opponents of the Soviets to strengthen the Soviet cause.

Ian Smith’s book is very long and extremely detailed. Often, it’s a little too detailed, making it hard to follow all the intricacies of the Rhodesian political scene. It’s a commonplace that history is written by the winners. Yet, even though Smith lost every single battle, from huge to minuscule, in his efforts to keep his country livable, his opponents have no defensible position. There’s no narrative of why Mugabe was a better leader than Smith and why the entire free world needed to work so hard to install Mugabe as Zimbabwe’s dictator.

I regularly try to read something about Africa. This, of course, lies on the very periphery of my interests, and time is scarce. Still, I believe one could do worse than acquire at least some basic knowledge about the continent. What I find paradoxical, however, is that our reigning system of morality finds me, a person who only wants to read about Africa out of sporadic curiosity and have nothing else to do with it, to be superior to Smith who loved it, understood it, belonged to it and wanted to make it better. We have accepted that the apartheid of “us here and Africans way over there” is superior to Smith’s belief that apartheid was wrong. He’s the bugbear, the evil racist, and we are good and virtuous.

Talking about poetry, which of the two translations of a snippet from The Odyssey do you prefer?

I’m in the Wilson camp because “a complicated man” is bolder, clearer and more exciting than the clunky “man of twists and turns.” I like that Wilson isn’t trying to fake an ancient Greek mood and makes it clear she’s doing a modern translation.

As a translator, I like making the text my own, going as far out there as possible. Translation is not for the meek or those lacking in perspective.

Today Klara treated me to an animated half-hour disquisition on baseball, replete with terms like outfielder and second base, and I’ll never get over having a completely American child.

I understood not a word of the talk but I did experience paroxysms of cuteness attacks.

On today’s show I finally looked like myself, and viewers mentioned that I look like an actress from the movie American Pie. I don’t know the movie or Hollywood actresses. Can anybody link or post a picture of whoever in that movie looks like me? I’m trying to figure out if this was a compliment or a criticism.

And by the way, what a stupid fad to call actresses actors. So dumb.

Watch me in 10 minutes live when I talk about AI, and I promise it’s the last video this year.

I don’t know how widely it’s reported in the US but 38 people died, and it’s a tragedy:

Azerbaijan Airlines plane shot down by Russian missile

The crash of the Azerbaijan Airlines plane was caused by a Russian surface-to-air missile, Euronews reports, citing sources within the Azerbaijani government.

The Russians shot the civilian airplane and then refused to let it land. Heroic pilots still kept it up in the air for 500 km, begging be allowed to land but nobody cared.

In short, if you need to visit the Eastern Hemisphere, don’t fly over Russia.

YouTube is sabotaging my views on the pro-Trump channel. The count rolls back right in front of my eyes.

Bastards.

Also, for some reason a weirdly Moscovite accent infected my speech patterns in this video. So even the people who aren’t watching but are listening will have a weird experience.

Please know that I’m not normally like this.

P.S. And of course, the very first ad YouTube shows in this video is for weight loss. I look so weirdly inflated that I’m thinking I should have spoken about Bidenomics and not immigration.

Everything went wrong with yesterday’s taping. I couldn’t use the prefab backdrop, I had to sit very uncomfortably with the mic constantly slipping away. The lighting was the absolute worst. On the positive side, I now know how I’ll look at the age of 70. On the negative side, I now know I’ll look hideous. Usually, when I’m recording I get distracted by how phenomenal I look but this time I was distracted by the exact opposite.

I’m supposed to have another taping tomorrow, so let’s hope that one will be more normal.

Here’s the hideous video and please still click and leave likes to support me in this newly embraced role of Mrs Uglypants.