The nation’s top intelligence officer said on Friday that the persistent danger of Russian cyberattacks today was akin to the warnings the United States had of stepped-up terror threats ahead of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

This has now become completely comical. People are embarrassing themselves all over the place and not even noticing.

The analyst is trying to convince me to teach Klara Russian.

“This will help her feel more comfortable with people from other cultures!” he says.

“I don’t care about that, though,” I explain.

“She will grow up to be more tolerant!”

“I don’t care about that either.”

“Her academic achievement will be a lot higher if she speaks another language.”

“She’s a genius already, so whatever.”

“She will be able to read Russian literature in the original!”

“I think the literature is worthless and the culture is crap.”

“She’ll feel really superior to other kids if she can speak an exotic language.”

“Hah! OK, now you are talking. I’ll start teaching her today.”

When Russia invaded Ukraine, killed thousands of people, and created a million of internal refugees in Ukraine, the rare person who tried to mention these events in public was sternly exhorted to abstain from promoting the Cold War rhetoric. People would positively ooze contempt and superiority for the poor fools they considered to be in the grip of Cold War mentality.

These same people are today indulging in the most outlandish feats of Cold War rhetoric over trivial, childish things that most definitely didn’t result in the deaths of thousands and a displacement of a million. Nobody seems to claim these childish things resulted in anything at all. But somehow, Cold War rhetoric is now very much ok.

Klara went to a birthday party today, and yet again I was stunned at how great American kids are. One 7-year-old boy played kitchen with Klara, and he was so kind and gentle and understanding with her that it was amazing. He never pushed her or tried to take toys away from her or tried hurting her in any way. I know this boy’s mom. She’s a single mother and she hasn’t had an easy life. In my country, a boy, and especially a single mother’s son, wouldn’t be like this.

And it isn’t just this one kid. All of the kids there were great. I let them take Klara to the other side of a humongous, overgrown backyard where it looked like they were admiring a neighbor’s huge dog and going on slides and swings. It was far and I couldn’t even see what they were doing but I wasn’t worried because I know these kids and I know they will take good care of a little one.

Another observation is that there was a 3-year-old girl there who reminded me of me as a kid. She was clearly very happy playing alone for several hours. She made no effort to approach other kids, didn’t even look at them. There was a piñata, a playground, water squirters, puppet theater, but the girl had no interest in any of it. She was clearly craving solitude. I’m now not discussing what had been done to make her this way but she was a copy of me in my childhood and of N still. Yet N and I didn’t create her. We created a child who was only happy if she could run around with a crowd of kids. We just can’t get over the irony of us having a sociable child.

This was the best kid birthday party I’ve ever been to. Klara’s birthday party was good but it was in February. And it’s not the same without outdoor summer activities.

My newfound love for white clothing is defeated by my tendency to let food and drink plop out of my mouth the second I begin eating or drinking.

And the best quote of all:

Republicans in Congress spend their time fulminating not about the assault on American sovereignty, but about the private text messages of an F.B.I. agent investigating that attack.

Sovereignty. Now all of a sudden they are all into sovereignty. Sovereignty without borders.

Clowns.

The following seems to have been written completely seriously:

Don’t forget that Mr. Mueller has already secured guilty pleas showing ties between Mr. Trump’s campaign and the Russian government, including from one foreign-policy adviser to the campaign who lied to authorities about his communications with a professor who offered damaging information on Mrs. Clinton — a professor he knew was linked to Russian officials.

The dash is needed to avoid a third “who” in this ridiculous sentence.

Russian officials attacked American democracy in 2016, and the intelligence community has warned us that they’re coming back for more. But Mr. Trump seems incapable of perceiving the threat.

And he’s not alone.

Today I finally started reading “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” to Klara. I always wondered what it was about but it’s not like I’d sit there and read it to myself.

It’s a great story but we didn’t get far because at the very beginning Grinch shares that he doesn’t like loud noises.

“I don’t like loud noises also too!” Klara said. “They hurt my ears.” After that, there was no explaining to her that Grinch was supposed to be a negative character. Especially since I also hate loud noises. (Sensitivity to light and sound seems to run in the family).

I just realized that I never had a relationship with a man who didn’t have a disinterested, distant, cold and cruel mother. I know why I chose them. I’m terrified of hovering mothers-in-law. I can’t even deal with the idea of it, so I run towards the exact opposite. But what do they see in me? I’m not distant, cold, or cruel but I’m not a nurturing woman. I don’t mother adult men.

I never met my mother-in-law. I saw her once on Skype and received one email from her once. That’s it. She’s never seen her granddaughter. She’s that indifferent. I feel bad for Klara and for N, but I myself, as a separate person, love it.

I think people should stop reading Twitter. Or at least dramatically reduce its usage. It has no redeeming features and no good uses whatsoever. The short form reduces complex issues to blatant idiocy. All of the massively popular tweets I have read – all of them, 100% – were manipulative, dishonest and idiotic. It brings more stupidity to the world. FB and Instagram often maintain the existing stupidity but Twitter makes more of it.

People who spend a lot of time on Twitter evoke an abject, bone-chilling terror in me. I like Facebookers because they want to connect. I like Instagramers because they want to be creative. I like LinkedIners because they want to succeed. I like bloggers because they are quixotically idealistic. I have no feelings about Snapchatters because I have no idea what they do. But passionate Twitterers simply scare me.