Clarissa's Blog

I gave a talk today about Ukrainian independence. I’m now invited as a living witness of historic events, imagine that. I even recently got a request to talk about my memory of Holodomor but I looked really crap that day, so it’s understandable.

During today’s talk, though, I ended up having to excise several of the best parts of the talk. They are based on anecdotes involving my father, and every time I would get to a story like this, I would feel tears choking me. So I edited on the fly.

I finished 20 minutes earlier, and the mangled talk wasn’t nearly as good as usual.

I have another public appearance on Tuesday, and I really hope I manage to hold myself together. I don’t want to become known as a weepy speaker who has fits of hysteria during talks.

18 months into the war, and Biden finally deigned to mention that “sending money to Ukraine” is a figure of speech for replenishing the American weaponry supplies while sending old and outdated weapons to Ukraine. It’s extremely good for the US economy, it’s extremely good for the US military, and nobody would be doing it if it weren’t so.

I’m glad he finally said it but why did it have to take so long?

What is the difference between an athlete and a diplomat?

An athlete is thinking how to win while a diplomat is thinking whether to win or to lose.

Knowing how to win is great. But knowing how to lose strategically is a lot better.

All you need to do to understand why people vote for Trump is to sit at an anti-racist meeting of the kind we were forced to attend at work. Even the black faculty were insulted because we were all collectively treated with the nastiness and the derision of the highest order.

We have absolutely no means to respond in kind to these terrible people who mistreat and humiliate us. The only thing that gets to them (although who knows why) is Trump. So people vote for Trump. That doesn’t stop the horrible people but at least they get upset.

I hereby fully and completely disavow any changes to the interface and any suppression of comments conducted by WordPress. I understand that the word “disavow” has been rendered comical by the endless demands that Trump disavow “white supremacists” (which he did just as endlessly and seemingly to no avail), but I can’t think of a better one.

It’s not me, people! I don’t even know what you are talking about because nothing changed in my WP app.

People have started leaving likes and emojis on work-related emails, and this is creeping me out. It’s OK not to react to my emails at all. It doesn’t prey on my mind or anything.

By the way, only oldsters do that. So it’s not cool or anything.

The only way to make Russia de-escalate is…

… to escalate. Russia is terrified of strength. When Russia is met with decisive, strong action, Russia…

… weasels out.

Don’t want to “walk into WW3”? Stop trying to outweasel Russia and let Ukraine finally eliminate the Russian threat.

Yesterday’s “anti-racist” speaker was very predictable, except for one thing. He said we should oppose “hate” towards people based on their race, ethnicity, immigration status (all expected) and national origin (very unexpected).

Race activists don’t use the term “nation”. They are open-border, so nations are not something that should even exist, let alone be respected. So why the sudden interest in the nation?

To figure out what the activist actually meant I used my habitual strategy of deciphering the code language of these Soviet-inspired apparatchiks. Whatever they say, the truth is the exact opposite. A woman is a man. Black Lives Matter is a wave of excess mortality for black people. Discrimination is preference. And so on.

So what’s this national origin that isn’t connected with any actual nation? It’s been on the news a lot in the past 10 days, so we can all figure out what it is.

It’s all completely nuts yet also quite predictable.

I know it’s a tense moment on the world stage and everybody is on pins and needles waiting to see what happens but I discovered something called goat milk kefir and ohmigod, I’ve been in an excellent mood all day, the bastard is so smooth.

Sorry, I had to share.

Now back to the regularly scheduled drama of world news.