BREAKING: NYC to eliminate gifted + talented classes over the next 5 yrs, major change and likely BdB's last big decision as mayor. Kids now enrolled in gifted programs will stay in them, but there will be no more separate gifted classes for incoming kidshttps://t.co/WjcaBmBWmp
Is everybody sufficiently caught up in how this game is played or do I need to explain?
Instead of developing your gifted kids who will expect a decent compensation for their work when they grow up, who will be mouthy, opinionated, and know words like “democracy, human rights, freedom, and constitution,” it’s easier to use gifted kids from somewhere else where people are more obedient and grateful for whatever they are given.
Inventing “anti-racism” was truly a stroke of genius on the part of the adepts of Milton Friedman. Turns out Americans will adopt every austerity measure in existence if you tell them it’s “anti-racist.”
I took my mother who is visiting from Canada to the groceries store, and she almost collapsed when she saw the prices. In Canada, inflation is hidden behind smaller packaging but here prices are proudly staring down at us from a mountaintop.
What a child – whether a girl or a boy – hears when you say something like this is “you never had to be born, I wish you didn’t exist, you are a burden I don’t want.”
“Children” isn’t an abstract concept to a child. It’s a direct reference to him or her.
Making an adult feel good about her life choices isn’t worth hurting a child. If you are neurotic, find a specialist, get treated, and stop expecting the world to dance around your neurosis. Children don’t need “a counter narrative.” They need love and to be left in peace by unhealthy adults. The way to make sure a child is happy with her life choices as an adult is to love her today and avoid turning her into a training ground for her counternarratives.
By the way, I have a friend who never married or had children. Unlike the psycho doctor I just quoted, my friend is intensely fine with her life choices and it doesn’t occur to her to use children to make herself feel better.
And it’s not just this subject. “Not everybody needs to go to college.” Absolutely true. But when you say that to an actual kid, what he hears is “you are stupid and I don’t love you.”
“Why would you cry about something so silly?” Your inner life is unimportant and I don’t love you.
“Your Dad always does this annoying thing.” You are annoying and I don’t love you.
Before anybody says that you can’t always control every little thing you say, no you can’t. Instead of treating symptoms, address the problem at its root.
I left work to sit in my car with AC on full blast and read my book. The office is a fire-pit from hell because nobody can manage to remember how disgustingly hot it can get in October, so there’s no AC.
I’m so into the book I’m reading, it took a lot of willpower not to flake out on my meetings to read it. It’s 681 pages, so basically paradise. Also – stay out of my way, literary snobs – it’s by Jonathan Franzen, and I don’t care what anybody thinks. It’s massively enjoyable. More Anglo authors should write like Franzen. Simple, unadorned, direct writing with no annoying postmodern flourishes.
I spoke to a woman with a brilliant career who says she constantly feels guilty for taking time away from her kids to work.
I feel guilty about many things. Many, many things. But not this one. I’m a much better mother because I have a career. I’m not saying everybody is like me or that I’m a better mother than anybody. What I do know is that I – me, myself, not another person – would be a much, much worse mother if I didn’t work. I’m too much for any kid to bear without spreading the burden. Getting 100% of me would be a punishment. I’d leave no space for her to develop and grow into her own person. I’m intense. Most people are a lot more mellow, and that’s good.
Today, for instance, there was a slight change in Klara’s school schedule. She has to go into a different door, basically. I became completely nuts about it. Wrote six emails to everybody at school and deleted them because it was insane behavior. Asked N to take her and went to work because I was creating unnecessary drama over nothing. At work, I was distracted by a lecture on neoliberalism in Chile, and it got better. But imagine if there were no lecture on neoliberalism. I’d drive the poor kid bonkers.
I do feel guilty when I send her to the park with her Dad and stay reading at home. Which is stupid because they both love it. But a mother’s guilt is an irrational force.
And that’s how it’s been since 2016. They publish incredible garbage. People believe it. Then, there’s a retraction nobody ever sees because people don’t reread last week’s news. The lies become common knowledge.
Trump mocked a disabled reporter! He said Nazis are fine people! An officer was murdered with a fire extinguisher! 900,000 kids hospitalized with COVID! Russia collusion! White boys set a black girl’s hair on fire! A Yale student called the police on a black student who was sleeping in the common room!
Tiny-letter retractions are never noticed. Bamboozled people get more and more invested into the lies with every repetition. I said it myself, so it must be true!
Texas passed a bill that criminalizes abortion. The Hunter Biden laptop story has been debunked. Trump confessed to sexual assault on tape. COVID is very dangerous to children. Floridians aren’t getting vaccinated. A perfectly healthy 22-year old who weighed 400 pounds died of COVID. Fully vaccinated people died but it could be worse.
N discovered a Russian-language podcaster who’s saying everything I’ve been saying on this blog for the better part of a decade about the nation-state, neoliberalism, globalism, etc. Now whenever I come home he happily shares with me things like, “there is a massive wealth transfer from the middle classes to the transnational global elite, and it’s being achieved through, among other things, the COVID policies!”
I’m sharing this so that people understand that I’m not a broken record in my private life like I am on the blog. It’s possible to live with me and never hear about this stuff. Just in case anybody is worrying how the poor guy lives with somebody who can’t quit preaching about these things.
I don’t preach to captive audiences. Only to the people who freely choose to come to the blog or not each day.
And no, I’m not planning on listening to the podcaster in question. I hate wasting time on hearing stuff I already know.
To word it slightly differently, the US government transferred $2,5 trillion of taxpayer money to private corporations using COVID as a pretext.
Repeat after me: this is the largest wealth redistribution in a long time that robs everybody to give to the fabulously rich. And each of your excited squeaks about the importance of masks, vaccines, lockdowns, etc is assisting this robbery.
We advertised our big event in the university digest that sends out a list of daily events on campus. But it’s easy to get lost in the digest. It’s long and boring. Nobody will notice my event in it among so many others. What to do?
Another problem is that the digest only advertises your event the day of, and not in advance. It’s usually too late to plan an appearance once the information is published.
How to solve these problems?
Easy.
I sent the notification to the digest with a wrong date. Instead of Thursday I put Wednesday. When the digest came out, I said, “Oops! Can we please have a retraction?”
The digest sent an additional email dedicated solely to my event and correcting the date. As a result, everybody noticed it. And it all happened today, which is the day before. Exactly like I wanted.
I’m starting to think I might be an immoral person.
