Fat Tuesday

Yesterday, having been super busy with my grant application to the Swedish Research Council, I discovered that I had (once again!) forgotten to inform the students about their afternoon class on information literacy with the university library. Last time that happened, not a single student showed up despite that the activity was in their schedule. Fearing that the same thing would happen again and that it would further strain my relationship with the library staff, I scrambled to come up with a solution. Recognizing that today would be Fat Tuesday, I saw an immediate opportunity, namely to promise every student that attended the class a “semla”. And sure enough, 15 students did indeed show up so today I went over to Maxi during the break and picked up the batch above.

Otherwise, with Donald Trump in the White House, the question one wakes up to is always, what fresh hell do we have today? Be it new trade wars, cuts to HIV-treatment in Africa or Lech Wałęsa having to write a letter to express his "horror and distaste" at how Trump is treating Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Yesterday, I perhaps made it sound like I agree with what Trump is doing with regard to Ukraine so perhaps I should clarify that I do not. However, as I wrote two weeks ago, it is also clear that Ukraine can never “win” this war, if winning is defined as pushing Russia back behind its 1991 borders by military means, without risking a global conflagration. And after hundred-thousands of deaths, an open-ended war of attrition is not an option. So, something simply had to be done.