That’s good news. N said that if there are no debates, he’s not voting at all, and I agree. If the candidates don’t respect us enough to debate, it’s not a real election.

People keep advancing ideas on why it went down so precipitously but that’s the wrong question to answer. It looks like the numbers went back to the norm. The interesting question is why it rose so dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s?

In my part of the world, the most notorious serial killers are from that era, too, so it’s not culture-specific.

“I’m putting money into a college fund for when you go to Yale,” I explain to Klara.

“I’m not going to Yale,” she says coolly.

“Where then? Harvard?” I quip.

“I’m going to the University of”Wherever-My-BFF-Goes”,” she responds.

What goes unsaid tends to become unthought, and eventually unthinkable.

Steve Sailer, Noticing (2024)

Wow, folks, I have truly arrived. I found a dude in Ukraine who plagiarized me. He Google-translated a passage into English and pasted it into his article. That’s so cute. I’m not even upset because it’s really too cute.

The way I found the plagiarist is funny, too. I’m reading his piece and thinking, “OK, sleeplessness is really getting to me. This paragraph sounds exactly like something I would say. I think I’m losing my mind.” Then finally I realize that it doesn’t sound like my paragraph. It is my paragraph. And my linguistic idiosyncrasies were actually preserved quite well in the English translation. 

Yes, actions have consequences. The collapse of the Western presence in Niger is a very big deal and will have profoundly negative consequences. The US is being perceived as traversing its weakest moment right now. We can repeat ad nauseam how successful our withdrawal from Afghanistan and the rest of our foreign policy is but these fairy tales aren’t persuading anybody else.

I now have almost weekly public appearance events in Ukraine where even at scholarly conferences nobody reads their talks. People simply speak, in normal language, about their subjects. I love this format because my brain is incapable of processing monotonously read texts. But it takes a very deep dive into the abysses of my intellect to speak smoothly and off the cuff in Ukrainian. What helps is that, because of the time difference, these talks usually take place in the middle of the night. That’s the time when defences are down, and one speaks almost directly from the subconscious. The fear of making mistakes disappears, and one speaks much better than usual. This is why I don’t ask to change the time of my talks.

8 pm.

I’m walking around the neighborhood, talking on my phone.

The conversation is fraught. I’m squeezing my key ring nervously. I’m wringing my hands.

Suddenly, a terrible sound shatters the suburban quiet. It’s as if a thousand angry cicadas broke out in a desperate screech.

I walk faster and faster, trying to escape from the sound but it follows me, getting stronger and stronger.

People stare at me from their porches. Passersby eye me curiously. “What’s happening?” yells my interlocutor on the phone. “What’s that noise?”

I break into a jog but the sound is faster. It surrounds me. There’s no escape.

Then suddenly I remember that on the previous day my husband put an alarm siren on my key ring to promote my personal safety.

For Mother’s Day, N organized a surprise visit to a local farm for a strawberry picking outing. The Ukrainian woman who is staying with us was in stitches. “I got to film it!” she kept exclaiming. “I’ve got to show it back home! American not only work for free in the fields. They pay to do it! Cultural differences!”

On the positive side, we finally tasted strawberries that I’m no way reminded us of plastic.

We have guests staying over, so yesterday I watched several episodes of a reality TV show where teams of regular people compete in physical activities, such as climbing, obstacle courses, jumping, etc.

The show routinely pits all-male teams against all-female ones. Every single time, women lose most abjectly. They don’t just lose, they are creamed. It’s painful to watch.

Anybody can predict this will happen because there are male and female sports for a reason. But everybody on the show behaves like this competition makes sense and enacts surprise every time women lose by a trillion points. I even had to explain to Klara why the result is predetermined. And that at her age, girls’ teams do often win against boys’ teams, which will end by 8th grade. And that this is OK because different bodies are made for different reasons.