Awwww….

https://www.wnem.com/2026/06/09/flint-man-arrested-after-troopers-find-gun-baby-stroller

A Question that Answers Itself

And the panel of wusses who recently went through the motions of taking it seriously as an interrogative couldn’t help but conclude shucks yeah I guess…

For twenty years, the academy’s position on the incineration of – for instance – literary study has been just like this.

And now – God knows why they suddenly got the thought in their head – there’s something to see here.

‘Police found Jordan Victor Arcoren and arrested him for reckless discharge of a firearm, loaded firearm in possession while intoxicated and assault with bodily fluids-sliming.’

Assault with body fluids-sliming. A new one on me.

‘[T]he northern part of California … has both the state’s highest rates of suicide and highest rates of gun ownership. In Shasta county, three-quarters of the people who died by suicide in 2024 were men, and nearly every one of them used a firearm.’

Our gunniest, suicidiest states are Wyoming, Montana, Alaska – all of them packed with macho men who drink divorce and depress til they can’t take it no more; and when a big ol’ gun gapes inches away from them hell why not.

Shasta, CA and its region have double the suicide rate of the rest of that state, and it’s the same old thing – mucho machos, and drink/divorce/depression with a side of Sig Sauer. Not much to be done, cuz they won’t let you take their guns away, and they certainly won’t talk to a psychiatrist.

“MY STUDENTS CAN’T READ”

This just in: Instructional technology makes you illiterate. Warmblooded actual human beings teaching you in small tech-free classes make you literate.

“[Two people in two different cars] engaged in a running gun battle on Highway 61.”

An obscure little article describes daily life in Sang Rouge Louisiana, where gun battles between speeding cars make driving hazardous.

Latter-Day Plaints

Blame it on the musical.

While the Pentagon is perfectly happy to retain the even-freakier Pentecostals on its new list of officially recognized faiths, it has decided that Joseph Smith’s peeps – the nation’s first polyamorists – are too fucking weird for prime time. The official LDS Churchmen (ain’t no Churchwomen) are complaining.

‘Rapid bursts of gunfire sent festivalgoers screaming and running for cover between golf carts and food trucks.’

The fate of the festival in the land of four hundred and fifty million guns.

‘About 70% of Metrobus riders skip the fares.’

Wotta world.

‘Jackson gave a tearful apology in the courtroom, saying she didn’t know why she did what she did. …She said that whenever someone asked her for financial help, she gave it to them, and she feels as if she has a “savior complex.”’

Curious sort of savior. Because she stole over a million dollars from a big federal grant, the government went ahead and killed it. The most vulnerable Native Americans in Arkansas – drug addicts and suicidal depressives and impoverished widows – will now just have to do the best they can on their own.

So fuck her and her tears and her I dunno and her I took all the money because I’m Jesus. She’s going to jail for four years (no parole) and has to pay it all back.

‘In honor of Ferdinand’s 90th birthday in September, the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Mass., has opened a comprehensive exhibition for all ages featuring, among other memorabilia, Leaf’s manuscript, Lawson’s original pencil sketches and pen-and-ink drawings, some of the 60-plus foreign-language editions of the book, the various adaptations and the Spanish-style musical suite commissioned by the Minnesota Orchestra in 1998.’

UD thanks her Garrett Park neighbors for linking me to this NYT story about Ferdinand the Bull. Its author, Munro Leaf, lived and died in UD’s house. UD knew his wife, Margaret.

Whenever I introduce a new element to the garden, I find myself hoping that it’s in line with the spirit of Ferdinand, as Leaf conceived him.

Antidisestablishmentrumpianism

The directive has gone out: The name must be removed from all Kennedy Center communications.

‘[T]he very wealthy experience financial precariousness in ways that are almost impossible for the rest of us to process: $800,000, after tax, becomes a negligible amount. And while pleading poverty when you are, by any normal standards, completely rolling in it, is usually enough to shut off the spigot of public sympathy, Belle Burden still somehow comes out of it wronged, a woman with no idea who she was married to.’

UD loves her some literary scandal. Hold tight.

The New Yorker article detailing Belle Burden’s murkiness about money is here.

THE SACRED ART OF CASH FLOW

One of the many people just arrested for massive insider trading wrote a financial advice column for Orthodox Jews.

‘“Although I don’t condone heating up fish in the microwave because I can see why everyone would be upset, I don’t think it warrants pulling a firearm,” [one Myrtle Beach resident] said.’

Many are the reasons Americans need firearms.

Next Page »

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

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