Families have struggled for the last few years with pandemic issues, and you’d think everyone would by now realize how important schools are to both parents and kids. We should be in agreement that we should provide more support to public schools and their staff, and not be trying to cheap out on an obviously indispensable service. That’s what we’ve been trying to do, though, and now it’s going to bite some communities in the butt. Teachers in Minneapolis went on strike yesterday.

Their demands are reasonable. They primarily seem to be about giving support staff a living wage.

The union wants Minneapolis Public Schools to raise the starting salary for educational support professionals from about $24,000 to $35,000. More than 1,500 educational support professionals work for the district, according to the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers. They help with transportation, language translation, one-on-one assistance for kids with special needs, and before- and after-school programs, among other things.

Union leaders are also seeking class-size caps, increased mental health support and “competitive salaries” for teachers, noting that their compensation lags many districts in the Twin Cities metro area. The average salary for Minneapolis Public Schools teachers is about $71,500, according to state data.

Let’s be fair and look at the other side’s situation.

At a news conference Tuesday afternoon, Minneapolis Superintendent Ed Graff said proposals from the union and district are “still very far apart.” The total cost of the union’s current proposals is “an additional $166 million annually above what we’ve already budgeted for,” he said.

I can believe that they did not budget adequate funds for the work they expected to be done, but that is not an excuse! That is a management problem, not a worker problem. When we had a contractor do some work on our house a few years ago, we did not have the option to tell him after he was done that “you did $10,000 worth of work, but we only budgeted $5,000 for the job”. That’s not how any of this works. It is the teacher’s job to teach, it is management’s job to fund the work they expect to be done.

I do have some sympathy for the school superintendent. It’s not easy to get support for schools because we’re coping with a 19th century solution to funding schools (property taxes) that promotes inequality and makes life most difficult for the poorest districts. However, the solution is to change the system, not to gouge cash out of the lowest-ranked workers.

The Russian convoy in Ukraine is fascinatingly horrifying. It just goes on and on, miles and miles of trucks slowly approaching their target, completely obvious to the satellites watching from above. I guess this is modern war, mostly the long tail of the supply chain delivering food, fuel, and ammo to the deadly beast at the head.

The question is…how effective is the cutting edge at the head? How vulnerable are the logistics of that supply chain? I don’t know. We’ll find out in the next few weeks, I suppose, at the expense of all the Ukrainian civilians fleeing.

Fuel trucks are exactly the sort of “soft targets” that the Ukrainians should be aiming to attack as they attempt to undermine the more sizable and powerful Russian army’s ability to fight, according to Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), an Army veteran who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq and visited Ukraine in recent weeks.

“You don’t hit the combat units. You don’t hit the tanks. You hit the fuel trucks, the ammunition trucks,” Crow said. “You cut off their supplies, and you also try to strike terror into the minds of the enemy.”

The sight of the stretch of Russian vehicles appears to be helping bolster public opinion toward providing more military aid. Government officials, once reluctant to escalate involvement in the conflict, are now talking about providing aircraft and additional munitions to help Ukraine resist the ongoing invasion.

“I call that 40-mile convoy, by the way, the biggest, fattest target in Ukraine,” retired Navy admiral James Stavridis, who previously led NATO forces as the supreme allied commander Europe, said on MSNBC. Put certain fighter jets “in the hands of the Ukrainians,” he added, “and watch that thing blow up.”

Please don’t. I want the war to end, but escalation won’t end it, it’ll set the whole region on fire. I don’t pretend to understand Russian tactics at all, but dangling that big, fat target out there, inviting the US and NATO to blow it up, might be one of Putin’s escape routes. It’s not his fault that his army is bogged down and his soldiers are getting killed, it’s the evil imperialist West ganging up on holy mother Russia, we must redouble our efforts and marshal all of our patriots to fight on…and keep Putin in power.

As it stands, what I’m seeing is overwhelming force being steadily applied with increasing intensity to pressure the Ukrainians into surrender. This isn’t a blitzkrieg, it’s Russia doing what has always worked for them: pouring raw manpower and resources into the conflict, burying the enemy without finesse. They might not be stoppable by Ukraine, although they will bleed the Russians badly. It’s a horror show on both sides. So let’s not ramp it up.

Send the Ukrainians the matériel they need to hold out and fight back themselves, but please no, don’t engage the Russians directly. That’s how this turns into WWIII.

I say that even while I’m hoping Ukraine wins and the Russian army has to retreat back home.

Another thing I don’t understand. If Putin is “denazifying” Ukraine, and hopes to bring the nation back into the embrace of the Russian empire, why is he bombing civilians who are running away? Why put land mines in the “humanitarian corridors” that are intended to allow civilians to evacuate? He’s sowing the seeds of a prolonged rebellion, even if his gigantic convoy manages to secure the capitol.

I know. War never makes sense.

It’s easy. Pander to the editors’ opinions. Say you’re a liberal, but moan about how conservative viewpoints are suppressed on college campuses. Declare that controversial opinions are silenced. Say you want debate, you love debate, but gosh, those liberal campuses stifle the free and open discussion of ideas. That’s what Emma Camp accomplished, getting fluff called I Came to College Eager to Debate. I Found Self-Censorship Instead.. Pure conservative click bait. She announces several times that she’s a liberal, but she interned with FIRE, the organization funded almost entirely by rich conservatives.

But, you might argue, she’s going to defend her position with evidence, right? Surely she’ll get her ducks in a row and present lots of evidence that you can’t talk freely on college campuses anymore. So let’s take a look at her evidence anecdotes.

First up: office hours.

Each week, I seek out the office hours of a philosophy department professor willing to discuss with me complex ethical questions raised by her course on gender and sexuality. We keep our voices lowered, as if someone might overhear us.

Hushed voices and anxious looks dictate so many conversations on campus at the University of Virginia, where I’m finishing up my senior year.

Oh no! They weren’t shouting their discussion loudly so that everyone in the hallway could also hear them! Help, help, I’m being oppressed!

But wait, every week she is getting together with a professor to talk about ethics. How is this censorship?

This is a running theme. Speaking quietly in a one-on-one conversation is bad.

A friend lowers her voice to lament the ostracizing of a student who said something well-meaning but mildly offensive during a student club’s diversity training.

What “ostracizing”? Talk about that, if it happened, not this vague “lowers her voice” stuff.

Another friend shuts his bedroom door when I mention a lecture defending Thomas Jefferson from contemporary criticism. His roommate might hear us, he explains.

Yes? You’re talking about Thomas Jefferson on the UVa campus. You’re discussing, again in very vague terms, “contemporary criticism”. Maybe his roommate is tired of the subject? Maybe they want to study?

I went to college to learn from my professors and peers. I welcomed an environment that champions intellectual diversity and rigorous disagreement. Instead, my college experience has been defined by strict ideological conformity. Students of all political persuasions hold back — in class discussions, in friendly conversations, on social media — from saying what we really think. Even as a liberal who has attended abortion rights protests and written about standing up to racism, I sometimes feel afraid to fully speak my mind.

It’s called normal human behavior. People rarely just shout out their opinions in a typical social environment — they ease into the discussion. Sometimes you’re at a party and you don’t want to get in a fight with anyone, so you self-censor a bit, you hold back, you change the topic to something less argumentative. This is entirely ordinary, and is not a sign of a massive conspiracy to silence you.

Yeah, Ms Camp, we know, you’re a liberal interning with a conservative organization. Which side of the abortion rights protest were you on? You didn’t say. Also, you like to cite your bona fides in large strokes, but what, for instance, was your opinion of the “contemporary criticism” of Jefferson? What were you talking about with your ethics professor that compelled you to lower your voice? You seem to be remarkably shy about stating those opinions, even when you’ve got the NY Times bully pulpit. Why?

But wait — we’re about to get one paragraph of “data”.

In the classroom, backlash for unpopular opinions is so commonplace that many students have stopped voicing them, sometimes fearing lower grades if they don’t censor themselves. According to a 2021 survey administered by College Pulse of over 37,000 students at 159 colleges, 80 percent of students self-censor at least some of the time. Forty-eight percent of undergraduate students described themselves as “somewhat uncomfortable” or “very uncomfortable” with expressing their views on a controversial topic during classroom discussions. At U.Va., 57 percent of those surveyed feel that way.

Jesus. What did I just say? People self-censor all the time. I have to struggle to get students to express their uncontroversial views on uncontroversial topics all the time. Those statistics are meaningless.

When the data doesn’t help, fall back on the oppression of poor Emma Camp.

When a class discussion goes poorly for me, I can tell. During a feminist theory class in my sophomore year, I said that non-Indian women can criticize suttee, a historical practice of ritual suicide by Indian widows. This idea seems acceptable for academic discussion, but to many of my classmates, it was objectionable.

The room felt tense. I saw people shift in their seats. Someone got angry, and then everyone seemed to get angry. After the professor tried to move the discussion along, I still felt uneasy. I became a little less likely to speak up again and a little less trusting of my own thoughts.

I was shaken, but also determined to not silence myself. Still, the disdain of my fellow students stuck with me. I was a welcomed member of the group — and then I wasn’t.

Whoa, the idea that widows shouldn’t have to set themselves on fire at a funeral is too controversial for a feminist theory class? I do not believe it. This sounds exactly like the kind of thing that would make for a good discussion in such a class — the conflict between cultural values and individual autonomy. I think there’s more to it than she admits.

And then…her terrible, terrible punishment. Some people shifted in their seats. Someone disagreed angrily with her. Did Emma Camp want a debate or not? You know, that’s what happens in a debate — people might disagree strongly with you.

It’s not just Ms Camp. She has a Republican friend!

The consequences for saying something outside the norm can be steep. I met Stephen Wiecek at our debate club. He’s an outgoing, formidable first-year debater who often stays after meetings to help clean up. He’s also conservative. At U.Va., where only 9 percent of students surveyed described themselves as a “strong Republican” or “weak Republican,” that puts him in the minority.

He told me that he has often “straight-up lied” about his beliefs to avoid conflict. Sometimes it’s at a party, sometimes it’s at an a cappella rehearsal, and sometimes it’s in the classroom. When politics comes up, “I just kind of go into survival mode,” he said. “I tense up a lot more, because I’ve got to think very carefully about how I word things. It’s very anxiety inducing.”

Damn. A college student forced to “think very carefully.” Waily, waily, waily! What have we come to now? He can’t talk — loudly, no doubt — about his Republican views at an a cappella rehearsal!

We also have to acknowledge that the Republican party has literally gone mad over the years. He ought to be a little reluctant to publicly associate himself with a hate group, don’t you think?

The worst is yet to come.

This anxiety affects not just conservatives. I spoke with Abby Sacks, a progressive fourth-year student. She said she experienced a “pile-on” during a class discussion about sexism in media. She disagreed with her professor, who she said called “Captain Marvel” a feminist film. Ms. Sacks commented that she felt the film emphasized the title character’s physical strength instead of her internal conflict and emotions. She said this seemed to frustrate her professor.

Her classmates noticed. “It was just a succession of people, one after each other, each vehemently disagreeing with me,” she told me.

Her freely expressed opinion about a movie in a class “seemed to frustrate her professor”. Seemed. I don’t know what that means. Is it that he mildly disagreed with her? That he didn’t instantly conform to one student’s opinion? But I thought Ms Camp didn’t want ideological uniformity! And then, again for someone who is so desirous of debate, she is dismayed that a lot of people disagreed with her.

OK, then she talks about what she has done about this oppressive atmosphere.

I protested a university policy about the size of signs allowed on dorm room doors by mounting a large sign of the First Amendment. It was removed by the university. In response, I worked with administrators to create a less restrictive policy.

This is fairly weak tea here. The university did adjust it’s policy on signs on doors, “after signs posted on Lawn room doors last fall containing profanity such as “F—ck UVA,” as well as criticism of the University’s history of enslavement and inaccessibility, prompted calls for removal by some alumni and community members.” Policing profanity is one thing, but criticizing their history of enslavement is another. So why did Emma Camp post the First Amendment, which very few people would disagree with? Post something about your “contemporary criticism” of Thomas Jefferson instead. Make it fit within the limits of allowed signage. Force the university to dismantle it on the basis of the content, rather than just the dimensions. The university does have a legitimate interest in preventing the accumulation of ugly clutter.

She also wrote opinion pieces for the school paper.

As a columnist for the university paper, I implored students to embrace free expression. In response, I lost friends and faced a Twitter pile-on. I have been brave. And yet, without support, the activism of a few students like me changes little.

Her student paper op-eds read a lot like this NY Times op-ed. “I’m a LIBERAL! Free Speech! Liberals are too authoritarian!” Etc., etc., etc. I can fully understand why she lost friends and faced dissent — they’re just too insipid and clichéd and unaware, and a lot too self-centered. Her opinions were an empty embrace of buzzwords, and her examples of deplorable oppression were, as in this article, tepid and puerile. I predict a great future for her on the writing staff of some conservative news organization, like The Daily Caller or The Blaze or…no, she probably won’t stoop to The Epoch Times or InfoWars. She needs a place where declaiming her liberalness carries some counterfactual weight.

You know, like the NY Times.

Among the many things Ted Cruz would like everyone to forget is this tweet from this fall:

Right-wing media were orgasming over a Russian army recruitment ad which portrayed Russian soldiers as these manly masculine macho dudes, and were contrasting that with the tolerant, diverse American army. The word “woke” got thrown around a lot, in a disparaging way. A lot of Republicans weren’t embarrassed to show off their authoritarian views at that time.

Unfortunately, nothing has really changed. Now Ted Cruz is simultaneously saying we need to get tough on Russia, and blaming the Ukraine war on Biden.

A truly Russian-style government would have Cruz arrested instantly for criticizing the Maximum Leader. I don’t think he (and I) want to replicate Russian militarism.

Soon to be oligarchs without yachts, I hope. The sanctions might be beginning to sting.

BBC understands that some oligarchs sanctioned by the European Union are “shocked” to find their debit cards no longer function, and they are now relying on using cash from safes.

The French acted quickly on Wednesday when customs officers noticed that Mr Sechin’s 88-metre “Amore Vero” – which translates as “true love” – was “taking steps to sail off urgently”.

It arrived in in the Mediterranean port of La Ciotat in January and had been due to stay there while being repaired until 1 April.

In Hamburg shipyard authorities seized Mr Usmanov’s 156-metre ‘Dilbar’, the world’s largest motor yacht by gross tonnage, according to Forbes magazine.

Seizing half-billion dollar yachts seems like a fair cop to me. Take ’em all. Although I don’t know what you can do with a seized yacht; they’re rather useless luxuries, expensive to maintain. The lack of utility is the only thing preventing me for getting letters of marque and embarking on a pirate’s life.

Texas Republican Rep. Lance Gooden is expected to roll out a measure Monday that would allow private U.S. citizens to seize yachts, planes or other property belonging to sanctioned Russian citizens amid Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Gooden would do it with legislation requiring President Biden to issue letters of marque and reprisal, an enumerated power of Congress mentioned in Article 1 of the Constitution, which were routinely used during the War of 1812 for Americans to seize property on behalf of the U.S. government, but have not been issued since.

“Putin and his inner circle still have yachts and planes sitting in harbors and airports all over the world,” Gooden told Fox News Digital. “The United States must use every tool at our disposal to seize them and hold Russia accountable for the disgusting invasion of Ukraine. The oligarchs who enabled this crisis are a good place to start.”

Uh, question. I’m see the word “oligarch” all over the place, and it only seems to be applied to Russians. But this is not what “oligarch” means, and it has no obligate connection to Russia.

Oligarchy (from Greek ὀλιγαρχία (oligarkhía); from ὀλίγος (olígos) ‘few’, and ἄρχω (arkho) ‘to rule or to command’)[1][2][3] is a form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people. These people may or may not be distinguished by one or several characteristics, such as nobility, fame, wealth, education, or corporate, religious, political, or military control.

I’m all for privateers boarding and taking over yachts (preferable debarking the passengers and crew safely somewhere), but I don’t like that everyone seems to think it’s specifically a Russian thing. America has oligarchs.

You know, Jeff Bezos bought a yacht to accompany his super-yacht. His super-yacht is so big that he pressured a Dutch city to dismantle a historic bridge so he can get it out of the shipyard.

The Amazon founder’s 417-foot-long, three-masted ship that cost’s roughly $500 million is under construction in the Netherlands, but the pleasure boat will be too tall to pass under Rotterdam’s landmark Koningshaven Bridge, which has a 130-foot clearance, according to the NL Times, which cited Dutch-language outlet Rijnmond.

As a work-around, the megabillionaire and the boatmaker Oceano reportedly asked Rotterdam officials to temporarily dismantle the iconic bridge, and pledged to reimburse the city for expenses.

Taking apart and reassembling the middle section of the bridge known locally as “De Hef” was expected to take more than two weeks, the paper said. Rotterdam officials touted Bezos’ pet project as a revenue generator.

The citizens of Rotterdam have suggested an entirely inappropriate response.

The city has not yet signed off on any bridge construction, but according to Jalopnik, some aggrieved residents are ready to take matters into their own hands. “Rotterdam was built from the rubble by Rotterdammers and we don’t just take it apart for the phallus symbol of a megalomaniac billionaire. Not without a fight,” reads a Facebook post calling for protesters to throw their old eggs at the boat as it sails by (per Jalopnik’s translation.)

No. Just no. This is a terrible idea. Don’t throw rotten eggs at the boat. Instead, organize boarding parties, storm the dock, take control of the boat, throw the crew overboard, and set sail for the South Pacific. If Bezos is aboard at the time, even better: make him walk the plank.

No pity for oligarchs!

Newspaper editors must relish this situation. There is so much blood.

There are unknown numbers of dead — hundreds, the newspapers say, while also stating that many are uncounted in the chaos — and a million people displaced, bridges and roads and towns destroyed, and the Russian army rumbles slowly forward.

Just over 1 million people have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion began, according to data from the U.N. refugee agency — an exodus that is set to become Europe’s worst humanitarian crisis this century. That figure already matches the number of refugees who were displaced from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan in 2015. The International Criminal Court has opened an investigation into possible war crimes in Ukraine, the intergovernmental organization’s prosecutor said in a statement.

It wasn’t that long ago that I’d open up the news in the morning to see graphs and tallies of how many died the slow death of COVID-19. Now I open the news to see the stories of sudden gory deaths, explosions, and families fleeing the onslaught. It is not an improvement, world. Especially since the pandemic continues, it’s just been bumped from top billing.

I have no idea how the war is going in Ukraine — it seems to be turning into a hard slog of urban warfare, with Putin committed to saving face by throwing everything he’s got at a couple of cities. He has turned his vicious elite Chechen units on the country. I’m going to take solace in the little victories, at least.

That bearded guy to the right is Magomed Tushaev, a monster who committed atrocities against LGBT people. He’s dead now.

A despotic general who ruthlessly rounded up and killed LGBT+ people in an act that became known as the “gay purge” has been killed in the fighting in Ukraine.

Magomed Tushayev, who was a military boss under the command of hardman Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, was killed in fighting at the Hostomel Airport, a key Russian target not far northwest of Kyiv.

Tushayev previously led the 141 motorised regiment of the Checnyan National Guard and his death was confirmed by a spokesperson for Ukrainian president Vlodomyr Zelensky.

Anti-LGBT+ purges were first reported in the southern Russian republic back in 2017 and reportedly involved kidnappings, torture and extrajudicial killings.

Under the leadership of the infamous Kadyrov, who recently said Vlaidimir Putin needed harsher tactics in Ukraine, Tushayev was key in the persecution of LGBT+ people.

Am I a bad person if I say, “Good!”?

It’s a worrying sign for the Russians that generals are getting killed. Usually it’s just the grunts on the front.

But here we are. It’s been a rough decade — we had a terrible one-term president who appalled most of us with his incompetence and corruption, and seemed to inspire the authoritarians and racists and wanna-be fascists. One of our political parties tumbled down into outright insanity, which isn’t a good thing for a country run by a two-party system. We’re repeating the Gilded Age crap, with billionaires getting richer and richer. The ongoing climate crisis continues to be ignored by our capitalist overlords. Then layer a pandemic on top of all that that has killed a million Americans and triggered another million or so it flamboyant science denial, rapidly spread by the greed of the social network poombahs.

We should cry out like Job, I should think. But now we get a major land war in Europe to add to the world’s tribulations.

I have no idea how that war is going. One thing that has repelled me lately on the media are all the pundits, whether they have a cushy sinecure at some major newspaper or they are Joe Nobody, sitting in his car opining at a camera (oh, how I loathe those videos of middle-class, middle-aged white guys sitting in their cars talking at their phones) telling me which side is going to win. Worse is when they declare why their side is going to when. Near as I can tell, the Right thinks the Russians will conquer because they despise pronouns, while the Left thinks Ukraine will win because Zelensky is sexy. They don’t know. I don’t know. It’s a cacophony of pure noise that isn’t helping.

So, what I do know…

Russia is making a massive effort, throwing all kinds of soldiers and artillery and tanks at Kharkiv. They could win the military battle, it wouldn’t surprise me. Ukrainians are brave, but bravery doesn’t stop a bullet. I have no idea what the outcome of the war will be, other than pain and death and misery, and we’ll have to helplessly wait and see what happens. Isn’t that annoying? Big dramatic bloody events occur, and we here on the other side of the world have to wait.

I do know that Russia is losing the diplomatic war rather brutally. Suddenly, coalitions and alignments and nations that have been around for practically a lifetime are shifting! I haven’t seen this kind of transformation since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Finland is discussing joining NATO? Sweden is increasingly antagonistic to Russia? Ukraine has requested to join the EU, and some countries want to fast-track that application? It’s all happening so scary-fast. We’re racing towards a polarization and alignment of forces that we haven’t seen since the Cold War, and let me tell you, that’s not a good thing.

What I do find encouraging, though, is that the world was quick to react with open condemnation of Russia for invading a sovereign state and killing citizens. I just wish that the world had been equally damning when the US invaded a sovereign state and murdered hundreds of thousands of innocents — we can hope that what emerges out of this new world is an agreement that bullying smaller nations by powerful ones will no longer be tolerated.

Unless, of course, the bullying nation decides everyone needs a good scourging with nuclear fire.

And that’s all I know. Sit. Wait. Watch.

Hey, Job has sort of a happy ending, right? He loses his family, his health, and his security, but God gives him new kids at the end? It’s kind of warped that the Old Testament thinks families and kids are fungible, so I’m not going to take much consolation from that.

It’s easy, right? You could write it in BASIC and run it off the old Apple II in your closet. You just accept a text string from someone calling in, and you post it on a web page, and presto! Fame and money start rolling in.

Even Donald Trump could do it! Or think he could do it, because that man is delusional.

The rollout of Donald Trump’s social network has predictably been a disaster. Truth Social’s debut on Monday was marred by technical problems and a gigantic waiting list, while some people who actually were able to use the service complained of being “censored.”

Truth Social “has been almost entirely inaccessible in the first days of its grand debut because of technical glitches, a 13-hour outage and a 300,000-person waitlist,” The Washington Post wrote yesterday. Trump Media & Technology Group CEO Devin Nunes said on a Fox News show that Truth Social’s goal is to be “fully operational at least within the United States” by the end of March. The waiting list is now over 500,000.

I wonder how many of those half million are lookie-loos gawking at the train wreck, how many are reporters who figure they just have to report on this desperate ex-politician’s fantasy (they don’t, by the way), and how many are sincere followers of Trump AKA chucklefucks?

Of course he didn’t design this himself.

Truth Social was built using Mastodon open source software.

They just grabbed some existing software, plastered some graphics and revised some of the text messages, and called it good.

I have an account on Mastodon. I didn’t have to wait in line to get it, just found an instance that didn’t have the Donald on it, and started typing. Isn’t the point of Mastodon to have a decentralized distribution of servers, anyway?

Also, it’s a bit ironic to name the failing media site created by a politician known for constantly lying “truth”.