At the parking lot, we were blocked dead by a huge snow plough driven by a pair of Cubans who have been in the country for 10 days, don’t speak a word of English, had never seen snow before, but already have a job driving the snow plough.

I had to look at two dozen photos of the Cubans posing against the snowstorm with their wives before I could drive out. I love Cubans. It was a very pleasant encounter. For them, too, I’m sure, because who else around here speaks Spanish?

I read 5 pages of a kids book to Klara and in those 5 pages I found:

• A girl who has two “moms” whose sexual preference is transmitted genetically;
• The idea that a boy who offers an unwanted friendship to a girl is exercising force (that’s the word that was used. Force). That the boy had no way of knowing the girl didn’t want to be friends is unimportant;
• The idea that the only way for a boy not to be accused of exercising force against girls is for him to read their non-verbal clues;
• The idea that boys need to be superhumanly sensitive to girls’ moods while the girls need to show no sensitivity to boys’ feelings.

A few minutes in, and I’m already pissed off in the extreme.

I don’t know how to put images into comments but this is from a young parishioner at my church. Not an online personality but a real young dude I know in RL. I snipped off identifying information because he’s a private person:

A hard-working young man. A graduate of my department. Recently married. Speaks several languages. Orthodox, very religious.

Every single time I talk to MAGAs either in RL or online, I hear how angry they are about the US bombing Iran. This is why I’m very puzzled by the suggestion that MAGAs want the US to invade other countries.

There’s a WSJ article (paywalled, unfortunately) which explains why the Trump “peace plan” for Ukraine sucks so badly. Guess who’s back and is drawing up these insane “deals” on behalf of the administration?

Yes, it’s Jared Kushner. This is all about siphoning even more money to stupid Kushner.

It’s Trump’s administration 1 all over again. We haven’t even been able to get rid of Kushner since then. Like he hasn’t done enough damage already.

But at least Trump is publishing boisterous tweets. That should be enough, right?

Maybe I shouldn’t see any more news until Christmas.

An acquaintance’s son couldn’t get paired up until past 40. Finally, he managed to find a woman. She announced from the start that she’s willing to give birth but other than that she’s not planning to do anything. She doesn’t cook or clean, even on the most basic level. She’s not getting a job. But yes, she did give birth to two children and now believes that her duty to the family is complete.

There’s only one place (that I know of) in North America where this story raises no eyebrows because the shortage of women interested in marriage is acute.

And the obligatory yearly picture of the first snow of the season is here:

I’ve been feeling very Christmassy since Thanksgiving, and today’s unexpected snow helps solidify the feeling. Yesterday we did our Christmas tradition of going to the movies. I wore green, Klara wore pink, and we saw Wicked 2. I liked the sequel a lot more than the first part. The music is very unimpressive in the sequel but Wicked 2 is a lot less didactic than the original. Even Hollywood seems tired of wokeness.

Merry Christmas season, everybody!

To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY. Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2025

The airspace over… Venezuela??

Erm, what?

Costco has all but admitted, in its own oblique earnings-call language, that one of the main functions of their membership fee model is to keep out the riffraff. https://t.co/05af41Ci4g

— Zarathustra (@zarathustra5150) November 27, 2025

For the first two years of N’s local job, we refused his company’s offer of a free Sam’s Club membership. It seemed very unnecessary because all the exact same stuff is available at Walmart across the road from Sam’s. Nobody was kind enough to explain. Then we figured it out.

The new priest texted me to ask if there is gender propaganda in public schools in Illinois.

I’m a little baffled by the magnitude of the task of how to compress it all into a text message.

This is a poem that is assigned to my 16-year-old niece in Canada:

Ugly, outdated, and plain weird is what it is.

The Barbie drama of women over the age of eighty is incomprehensible to today’s teenagers. Why the neuroses of great- grandmas are being inflicted on the young is never explained.