Opinions, art, debate
No, not all women are prostitutes. Become worthy of sex? Lady, are you mental? What if he loses his job, becomes sick, becomes disabled? You’ll drop him? In that case, it should go both ways. If you are pregnant, breastfeeding, unwell, have a bad hair day, he should feel free to sleep with other women?
What a pathetic, impoverished reality such people inhabit. She must have never felt any actual physical desire or loved anybody.
Our saga regarding the department secretary is unfolding. The Dean decided to do something nice for me and assigned me a secretary he poached from elsewhere. And I’m supposed to be getting her for 5 days a week instead of 3 like the current secretary. I’m sure he’s trying to be nice but, dude, I was looking for a couple of months of freedom to go to the bloody toilet without having to announce where I’m going to anybody.
This move deprives English and PoliSci to benefit me because those departments are led by sweet, quiet women while mine is led by me who makes the most atrocious stink about everything. I didn’t save French )whose director got hired and is getting promoted this year thanks to me) by sighing sadly in the corner.
There is great irony in all of this.
I tried Grok for the first time yesterday and, yes, it’s enormously better than ChatGPT or Copilot. I don’t mean anything ideological. In terms of basic practicality, it’s better.
My only question for AI is: what are the current bestsellers / new releases / upcoming releases in Spain / Mexico / Chile, etc. Not translations but originals, literary fiction only. ChatGPT failed this task most dramatically every time I asked. It kept giving me endless translations of Coleen Hoover and insisted that it’s just not possible to isolate the Spanish-language originals. It invented non-existent books. It was such a hassle that I gave up.
Grok, on the other hand, provided great lists of exactly what I asked and avoided adding mountains of unnecessary explanations. It took me 5 minutes to find a new book by a Colombian writer that I’m already loving. I also asked it a couple of vocabulary questions, and also received great, clear answers with zero ideology. The results are better organized visually. The tone is a lot less obnoxious.
Great job, Elon Musk. This shit actually works.
There are now incels, crunchy moms, yoga pant moms, lookmaxxers, groypers, personal growth entrepreneurs, vision coaches, trans flag activists, MRAs, BLMers, and “decolonize everything” leftists everywhere. It’s extraordinary. You find them in Guatemala, Germany, Spain, Ukraine, Chile, Russia. Countries can be at war with each other but they have all these American-style groups, speaking in calques from English. They don’t try to create their own language, rituals, memes, and grievances. No, the point is to follow the American example without departing an inch from the model.
True dominance is being able to impose your culture on everyone without even trying.
Can anybody tell her that this business idea isn’t new? And that it’s considered the oldest profession in human history?
I had two public appearances today, in different parts of town. The second one was scheduled back to back with a stupid meeting on campus and involved me bringing several heavy props to illustrate my performance. The pay is excellent and I love the audience, so I couldn’t say no.
In the midst of all this and it being the first week of class, one thing I didn’t do was prepare for the stupid meeting. The degree to which I didn’t prepare was at the level of an F minus student. I run in 15 minutes late and everybody is in the midst of flinging the most egregious accusations at each other.
“Your tenure isn’t even real! Your department rejected your tenure case. The Dean had to ram it through because everybody knows you are litigious!”
“Yeah? Like we don’t know that you have fewer publications than your own graduate student!”
“At least, I have a graduate student!”
At this point, everybody turns to me, who is the chair of the bloody subcommittee and somebody says, “Professor, what do you think about policy 1RtGH-33/2? We need your take because we are getting very bogged down in these personal accusations.”
Of course, I never heard of this policy and had not the slightest idea it even existed. I tried to wing it which went pathetically badly. People stared at me in shock but then the fake tenure guy started screaming insults again so that was a good distraction.
Tomorrow is looking equally crazy. We have a department party. And I have two farewell parties, all on one day. And I’m teaching. So yeah, fun.
In the years I’ve lived in this town (since 2009), I’ve made 5 friends. Is that too few? Is it an abnormally low number at my age? I don’t mean acquaintances. I have many of those. I mean actual friends. People who’ve seen me cry. People who call me to drive them to the doctor’s for a bad diagnosis. Real friends. People who call to ask how my mom’s second round of immunotherapy that she started yesterday went or to share that they had a fight with the husband or a falling out with a sister.
Out of those five, two moved out of state. One more told me yesterday she’s also moving out of state. And I don’t mean across the river to Missouri kind of out of state. I mean, New Jersey, Florida, and Baltimore.
One more friend became politically radicalized and doesn’t want to be friends anymore.
So what I’m saying is that you, people, are my friends. Nobody knows me as well as you do aside from my husband, sister and one remaining friend.
One thing these conservative thinkers I’m reading have in common is that they write beautifully. I love Zygmunt Bauman but his writing is not enjoyable. In contrast, it took me a week to get through a 13-page article by Oakeshott because it was so well-written that I wanted to stop and savor it.
This allegation was invented by a dude called Guy Sorman. He later took it back when presented with evidence that this was a rumor entirely of his making.
I suggest people Google Sorman before repeating his completely unverified claims. He’s a globalist fanatic who despised Foucault’s early opposition to neoliberalism.
Foucault was absolutely promiscuous with young Tunisian guys but this whole thing about him having sex in cemeteries with 8-year-olds came from one envious competitor.
This is a great illustration to Oakeshott’s point about general rules of conduct:
I could have made everybody’s life at work less pleasant by heating borscht in a shared microwave and eating pickled cabbage in the office. But I don’t do it, much as I love these foods.
It’s not about people not eating ethnic foods. Eat them, of course. We all love our ethnic foods. I’m positively crazy about mine. But we are all happier if we keep the particularly ethnic components away from shared spaces.
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