On the subject of May-December (or February-August, in this particular case) romances that everybody likes to ponder, a terrible thing happened to one such couple.

Vicente (45) and Fernanda (28) have been driving around Asia, making videos to post online. They’ve been doing that for 5 years, so this bastard Vicente started dragging Fernanda around, milking her for content, while she was a 23-year-old child. He couldn’t post videos of himself because nobody would be interested, so he needed to use a young cute girl for this purpose.

Vicente and Fernanda were making their way through India on motorcycle. Vicente clearly had no interest in providing safety or comfort to poor dumb Fernanda. As a result, Fernanda was gang-raped by 7 criminals in India. The horrible Vicente saw a fresh opportunity to make money and immediately posted a video, sharing details of Fernanda’s rape. Thankfully, Indian police had him take down the video, but what a bastard.

Kindle’s text-to-speech is now so good that Audible will soon go out of existence. It’s interesting how developing tech is destroying a large revenue stream within the same company.

Has anyone watched True Detective: Night Country? I loved seasons 1 and 2, and didn’t like season 3 much.

Does anybody recommend?

Currently, we are watching Inventing Anna because Julia Garner is very talented and the outfits are pretty, which makes up for how horrid everything else about this show is. As an additional bonus, I erupt in long passionate screeds whenever the dude who poses as a woman appears on screen. Why it is always the manliest-looking dudes who try to pull this con is a mystery.

Aside from “rights”, the words that we have to start stepping away from are consent, choice, and freedom.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with these words per se. But we have turned them into idols. No other consideration is allowed or even occurs when something is claimed to be a result of “a freely consented choice that is everybody’s right.” 

None of these things are absolutes because nobody can even define them. What’s a free choice? What is it free of? Self-awareness is extremely rare. Today I think I freely consented and tomorrow I feel differently. Who’s to say what’s more freely chosen, yesterday’s enthusiasm or today’s repentance?

We had the whole #MeToo quagmire because first they consented, and then they un-consented, or they consented to one part but not the other, and we are sitting there, parsing who chose what at which point. As Juan Manuel de Prada correctly said, we are so stuck on “free choice” that we aren’t even asking why people are leading these weird, miserable lifestyles at all. The whole set-up is wrong. Remember the Mattress Girl who consented to anal sex with a random dude because she thought this activity, which she clearly didn’t enjoy, was going to get her a boyfriend? She un-consented and destroyed his life when he refused to provide the payment she expected for this unpleasant act.  There’s so much wrong here, aside from how anybody expressed consent. Why can’t she openly say she wants a boyfriend? Why is he finagling an unwanted sex act out of a clearly desperate young woman? Why are they both using sex as a substitute for every other form of communication?

The deification of consent has already given us transed grade-schoolers and is leading us straight to the legalization of pedophilia. This is not to say we should abolish consent. It simply shouldn’t be the only category of analysis.

Social media are filled with stories of adult detransers who are sharing absolute horrors about the mutilation inflicted on them. And every time, there’s a chorus of, “but you wanted this. You chose this. You consented. So what’s the problem?” There’s a 30yo man who had his penis cut off. This is a terrible tragedy. He’s devastated. But people are chirping on and on about how he chose it himself as if they weren’t choosing the most bizarre things themselves during COVID out of artificially stoked anxiety and politically induced ignorance.

Humans are not hyper-rational creatures who are always calculating the most optimal choices. We aren’t robots. We are emotional, fallible, easily led astray, often confused. Life is a lot more complicated than a series of calculated free choices.

Immigration is now the biggest concern for American voters, standing at 28%. 

All of 3% say racism is a top concern, with 2% citing healthcare.

Of course, we could have 100% of voters say they want less immigration, yet nothing will come of it, and instead we’ll hear endless prattle about racism.

To the scrooge who downvoted the previous post: for once, I managed to brag in a somewhat elegant way, and you crapped all over it, you old curmudgeon.

In Ukraine, the National Taras Shevchenko Prize is a lot more prestigious than the International Taras Shevchenko Prize. Which is exactly as it should be in a functioning nation-state. I have been awarded the less prestigious one. For now.

I’ve been translating more poetry from Ukrainian, and I’m convinced that the publisher should let their translator go and pick me. For one, I’m free. And I’m great at rhyming.

But most importantly, their translator has no feel for the English language. “Mercurial” does not mean “poisonous” because this word points to a different aspect of mercury than its capacity to poison.

Obviously, I’m not saying it to the publisher because I don’t want to deprive anybody if paid work with my leisurely endeavors.

The chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer of Columbia University’s medical school, Alade McKen, plagiarized extensively in his doctoral dissertation, lifting entire pages of material, without attribution, from sources that include Wikipedia.

https://freebeacon.com/campus/columbia-university-hospital-dei-chief-is-serial-plagiarist-complaint-alleges/

There are pages and pages of copy-pasted material at the link, plagiarized from over 30 sources in addition to Wikipedia.

I’m now wondering if there are any diversity people at all who actually wrote their own dissertations. Of course, they won’t have to plagiarize in the future because now they can simply use AI to generate woke word soup for them. This is our last chance to catch them in the act.

Obviously, in this age bracket, younger woman – older man is enormously more acceptable. A 45-year-old woman automatically deprives a younger man of children. A 45-year-old man deprives a younger woman of nothing.

If, on the other hand, he’s 50 and she’s 65, that’s perfectly fine, especially since women live longer anyway.

I looked at the comments to the tweet and the overpowering need of many people to say “it’s none of my business” is even more interesting a phenomenon than age difference. It reminds me of an old Soviet joke about two friends having an animated discussion in the street. A stranger stops next to them, listens for a few minutes, exclaims, “Fuck you both!” and leaves. I guess now such people migrated to social media.