I told my Ukrainian instructor that the Ukrainians I meet today are the polar opposite of the Ukrainians I left in 1998. They are so enthusiastic, resourceful, self-reliant and just plain happy that I never thought it would be possible to effectuate such a change within a single lifetime.

It’s becoming very clear why Russians who didn’t change in this positive direction are so angry. They want to destroy what they can’t themselves be to avoid seeing daily reminders that a different kind of life is possible.

Participating in online events with Ukrainians who are in Ukraine (and usually in very harsh circumstances) is like being plugged into an energy source. People are luminous with a sense of purpose. I can’t support them emotionally because they are so full of life power that I invariably become a recipient of support. I talked to this older guy who escaped from Donetsk in 2014 and then from Bucha in 2022. You’ve heard about Bucha. This is a guy who’s seen terrible things. And he’s not only not crushed by it all but he radiates strength, capacity and purposefulness. A man in his late fifties, with a very middle-aged physique, soft-spoken and kind of shy but there’s such strength and tranquility at his core that it’s mesmerizing.

Gosh, I remember young people in the peaceful nineties who were so pathetic, miserable and incapable of using any opportunities that came their way. And then they were all transformed.

I asked the Ukrainian instructor how it happened, and she says this is the power of nationalism. People discovered their national consciousness, and it lit them up from inside.

I would never believe it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes.

My native city of Kharkiv is right on the border with Russia. Russian missiles can reach it in under a minute, and it’s been suffering constant shelling.

But as the school year approaches, Kharkovites are dedicated to sending their children to school in person. Dozens of classes were built in the large, spacious subway stations of the city. Children deserve not to be stuck in front of screens and have that be called “education”.

I went out with my Ukrainian instructor yesterday. When I told her about COVID lockdowns, she laughed gently. “That wouldn’t work with Ukrainians,” she said. “Nobody tells us what we can do.”

I keep wondering why we locked our kids up to stare at screens and unravel mentally over the sniffles while other people are trying to organize real education for their kids under bomb raids.

The subway classrooms will be finished in time for the first day of class on September 1st. Knowing Russians, they’ll probably do a particularly massive air raid on that day. In the most recent Russian air raids, Ukrainian anti-missile forces take down 99% of the missiles before they reach their target.

What I always wonder is what happened to people who loudly advocated some conspiracy theory and left in a huff when I made fun of it? Like those folks who read too much Glenn Greenwald and were certain there was no war in Ukraine because something, something, old photos, Zelensky in uniform, something, something. Now that it’s clear there is, in fact, a war, why don’t they grow a pair, come back and say, “hey, turns out I was wrong. I trusted bad sources and got caught, sorry”?

I enjoy saying “I was wrong”. To me people who want to pretend that they are infallible know-it-alls are a mystery. Don’t they understand how sad and childish they look?

In the first 8 days of the semester, the students have behaved about a million times more maturely, responsibly and seriously than professors.

I honestly have to say that never in my career have I seen such amounts of poutiness, eccentricity boarding on anti-sociality, fussiness about non-existent health dangers and outright weirdness among colleagues.

I go into the classroom to take a break from the childishness with 18-year-olds who actually want to work.

Yeah, I also hate it how Biden let BLM rioters run rampant through the streets for months, looting, bullying, robbing and destroying. That woke bastard.

Pope Francis said there is a “very strong, organized, reactionary attitude” in the U.S. Catholic church, that is “backwards” and has led the church to replace faith with “ideology,” according to a new transcript of the comments released Monday. . . “I want to remind these people that backwardness is useless, and they must understand that there’s a correct evolution in the understanding of questions of faith and morals,” he said. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pope-francis-says-reactionary-u-s-catholic-church-has-replaced-faith-with-ideology/

Erm… OK. “A correct evolution in church doctrine” is an interesting concept. I say “interesting” to avoid being disrespectful. If it weren’t the Pope speaking, I’d say it’s ignorant to the point of childishness.

The Pope also decided it’s a great idea to praise the more genocidal among the Russian emperors and chirp excitedly about “The great Russian culture”.

The Catholic Church will survive this individual but, in the meantime, my greatest condolences to go to our Catholic friends.

The precarious existence of late modernity is truly tragic. Its foundational myths are promoted by the cultural industry as a liberating opportunity for a nomadic individual who is

a) a citizen of the world (that is, deprived of any real citizenship),

b) can live anywhere (that is, is deprived of a real home),

c) not rooted anywhere (that is, deprived of a chance to take root),

d) free from “oppressive” family bonds (i.e., lacking in resources to form a family),

e) has an open mind (that is, lacks his own cultural identity and, therefore, “is open” to all those ideas that the consumer system will want to impose on him).

Diego Fusaro, The New Erotic Order

Australians are now making pre-programmed single-use drones out of cardboard.

These drones were used yesterday to attack Moscow. They can fly for up to 120 km carrying up to 3 kg of explosives.

They ship stacked flat and then you assemble them by hand in minutes.

This is a huge transformation in our understanding of contemporary warfare.

Prigozhin’s troll farm hired large numbers of people to pose as Americans on social media. These fake Americans posted pro-Russian comments, trying to sway public opinion.

But it’s not easy to pose as an American. You need a nuanced understanding of American realities and a great knowledge of the English language. This is why job applicants had to write an essay describing their lives as typical Americans.

Here is one such essay:

Prigozhin is dead but troll farms go on churning out this kind of brilliance.

Elizabeth Taylor wrote before the sexual revolution, and as a result her understanding of sexuality is a lot less prim, prudish and mechanistic than ours. Her writing is the polar opposite of crude but she still conveys a whole philosophy of sexuality that is wider, deeper and greater than whatever we ended up with after the 1960s.

There’s a short story in the collection titled mischievously, if a tad blasphemously, “For Thine Is the Power” that explains the whole mechanics of overheated, unloved women making #MeTootie accusations. Obviously, nobody called them that then but the phenomenon always existed. The story appears to be Taylor’s first ever published work, and it’s incredible to see such a mature portrayal of sexual confusion from a beginning writer.

Then there’s a story of another overexcited young woman who imagines that her 7-year-old student is trying to seduce her. There are no crude, physiological descriptions but the story makes it very clear what creates the unhealthy dynamic and where it can lead.