A reporter at the Chronicle of Higher Ed offers a book-length interview with the curiouser and curiouser Dan Ariely – a Duke sociologist already outed as a likely research fraudster (sometimes with his buddy, the notorious F. Giro).
Ariely is now being … scrutinized because of his long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, a friendship he talks about with the same idiocy/evasion as his other buddy, none other than Prince Andrew himself!
Okay, merely an acquaintance. They had tea together in a palace. But read the whole Ariely interview to see what a smarter, slicker, Andrew would have said.
I think that we are developing very much a fear culture. I feel that given that I was in the Epstein files, I feel that I’m lucky that I’m a social scientist. If I were a physicist, I would just get the negative consequences. As a social scientist, I get to also learn something new about humanity. So every time somebody calls to wonder or to cancel or something, I have a discussion with them. And I try to understand what is going on. And my sense is that we are getting to be more of a culture that is driven by fear.
Driven by fear, or by disgust that amoral elites don’t give a shit about – or in the case of Andrew even seem to share – the vile sexual ethics of some of the super-rich? Fun as it is to receive lectures from Ariely about what cowards we are because we’re afraid to plagiarize or make stuff up or hang around with sick motherfuckers, UD thinks it’s better to keep the focus on people who plagiarize and make stuff up and hang around with sick motherfuckers.
Wowsa. Should definitely be giving squatting seminars.
Wouldn’t be a Bama statement without a nod in the direction of career management specialist Jesus Christ; and, when she was hired, UA Birmingham baseball coach Taylor Smartt made sure to thank the big guy for opening what turned out to be some amazing doors for her.
[F]our current players [said] Smartt would threaten to loosen their buttholes with her fingers.
“She told me countless times she would take me to the bathroom and loosen my asshole for me,” one of the players said.
In the long – uh – annals of twisted coaching (UD’s seen it all), this is a new one on me. I’ve written here, to be sure, about coaches who plunge students’ heads in toilet bowls and lock them in dark offices with no food or water for extended periods or pummel them with heavy objects blah blah. Digital anal abuse I’ll admit I’d not yet met, and I’ll further admit that I wonder about a God who would open a door and lead a person there.
At least the larger community of Birmingham is God-fearing.
***************
UD thanks Andrew.
TENDERLOIN CORNER STORE
SOLD METH OVER THE COUNTER
… but the source is Bloomberg, and it’s about a prominent member of the Sackler family having pled guilty to a felony she committed while addicted to the family brew. So it seems worth pursuing as other outlets pick it up… Cuz it casts a certain opiate spell…
As the Sackler family worked through a plan to pay $6.5 billion to resolve their liability over Purdue Pharma LP’s production of addictive opioids, the epidemic hit even closer to home.
Joss Sackler, the wife of former Purdue board member David Sackler, admitted deleting WhatsApp messages showing she was the intended recipient of a shipment of prescription drugs seized by US border agents in 2024. Sackler, who said she was addicted to opioids at the time, pleaded guilty to obstructing a federal grand jury investigation into the transaction.
“I am so truly sorry that when I was suffering from …”
If, as predicted, he suffers a crushing defeat, what will happen to all the state funds dedicated to keeping Hungarian women pregnant 24/7?
In 2012 and 2014, [HOA president Tara] Howie took plea deals in New Jersey for stealing $800,000 from wards in her care while working for a guardianship attorney. She was sentenced to a total of 9 years in prison.
Right now, she’s facing criminal charges in Orlando for stealing over $500 worth of merchandise from Target.
Plus she just stole all their homeowner fees! Shocker.
‘Hospice care is specifically for care in a person’s last weeks or months of life, sometimes six months or less. A tip off to investigators was finding patients who were enrolled in hospice care for multiple years, according to a DOJ spokesperson. The defendants allegedly transferred several patients between the three companies after six months to continually bill for services.’
Scathing Online Schoolmarm hastens to correct between, which should be among, since the writer is describing an action involving more than two people or things. But having done that, she will proceed to delectate the ghost hospice fraud story.
Spiritual Touch, ghost hospice — the language here is fantastic, as is the desperate problem of where to stash the pretend-dying to maintain payouts.
It’s like they’ve created a new mysterious Blue Zone, where, for reasons unknown, a group of 120 year olds keep on keepin on. Sardinia, Okinawa, Monterey Park Los Angeles County.
************
It brings to mind Donne’s magnificent sonnet:
Death, Be Not Allowed
BY JOHN DONNE
Death, be not allowed, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, long as they can pay me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; yet from thee no bucks do flow,
And so our almost-dead with thee don’t go.
Transfer their old bones; then, check’s delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And bogus death, O Death, doth pay us well
With dollars better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One fake hospice transfer past, we’re paid eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
A Collierville Middle School girl’s basketball coach was arrested on gun and drug charges… [The Memphis Tenn. coach is accused of] being a convicted felon in possession of a handgun; possession of cocaine with intent to manufacture, sell, or deliver; possession of a controlled substance with intent to manufacture, deliver, or sell; and possession of a firearm during a dangerous felony… Now, many are asking if the district did a background check before he started coaching in Collierville.
No shit.
[In a] deposition, [a DOGE staffer] was asked to apply his understanding of DEI to specific projects from which his department had pulled funding. In one example, he was asked why a documentary focused on female Holocaust survivors was characterized as DEI.
“It’s the gender-based story; that’s inherently discriminatory to focus on this specific group,” Fox stumbled. “It’s focusing on DEI principles, gender being one of them… specifically focused on Jewish cultures and amplifying the marginalized voices of the females in that culture.”
“It’s inherently related to DEI for those reasons,” he concluded.
‘Wellness residences’ generally optimize the built environment for long-term health, with a focus on things like air quality, water, light, acoustics, walkability and social connection.” …
The term longevity residences, however, refers to projects that take wellness a step further. They offer preventive and diagnostic health services such as biomarker testing, biological age assessment and AI-enhanced screenings. Other amenities sometimes include therapies such as hyperbaric oxygen, red-light therapy and cryotherapy. “In essence, they are bringing the programming of a longevity clinic or medical-wellness longevity resort home.” …
[One longevity development offers homes] in three design concepts, Embrace, Journey and Serene…
[Its amenities include] an Ammortal Chamber, a multimodular system combining red-light therapy, pulsed electromagnetic field therapy and molecular hydrogen inhalation. These treatments are designed to aid post-workout recovery, sharpen mental clarity and support overall well-being. Residents can also undergo DEXA scans to measure bone density, body fat, visceral fat and muscle mass, as well as VO2 max testing to evaluate aerobic capacity.
To assess joint health and physical power, the spa is equipped with VALD force plates and 3-D motion-capture technology that analyzes biomechanics and human movement. For sleep and relaxation, a HUSO sound-therapy system is also available, and homeowners can tap a medical concierge 24 hours a day...
[Other developments] offer therapies such as microbiome analysis, which is a molecular test of gut bacterial DNA used to optimize longevity. Stem cell procedures, in which a patient’s own cells are harvested and reinjected to stimulate collagen production, may also be offered.
[O]wners can [also] request on-demand services, such as red-light therapy panels and Normatec compression sleeves for the legs, arms and hips, which improve circulation and accelerate muscle recovery.
Velvaere, a development in Park City, Utah, which is already open, takes a similar approach. The 115 residences are outfitted with circadian-supportive lighting, filtered-water systems and smart-energy technology, along with dedicated wellness spaces that include infrared-light rooms, cold plunges, steam and massage areas...
[This] development has also partnered with the lifestyle robotics company Aescape to offer AI-powered massages, which scan the body with more than a million data points to deliver customized treatments, adjusting pressure levels, target areas and even music preferences…
[‘Ms UD, your music preference is My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama.’]
..The property will feature a dedicated wellness and longevity floor outfitted with a range of amenities, including contrast-therapy circuits—which pairs hot and cold treatments—infrared saunas, areas for AI massages, and stem cell therapy …
[B]iohacking-focused elements will extend into the residences themselves. Units will include low-toxicity paints and materials, hydrolyzed water filtration systems, and lighting strategies that support circadian rhythms and sleep.
The Well Bay Harbor Islands, Florida, where move-ins begin this spring, features residences outfitted with lymphatic drainage showers, red-light therapy, and air-purification systems. Residents and members will also have access to on-site Longevity Labs led by Dr. Frank Lipman, offering functional and preventive care, biomarker testing and IV therapies, among other treatments.
Sex, guns, and Hitler — Texas politics.
He hanged dogs; she shoots them. Both are sensual devils. The gothic fascination in watching them thrust their way through the world turns to horror and pity when their dark energy reveals itself as suicidal.
*************
MarkTwain Mullin, insane pugilist, replaces her.
*************
Fast-moving story.
The Chronicle of Higher Ed has a useful, confused article about Why It’s All Happening, especially to (largely male) academics. The author tosses his net in a variety of directions and catches some intriguing stuff (“gendered bullshit,” says one of his respondents), but UD thinks that a careful reading of the piece yields two dominant explanations, the first pithily summarized in my title by naughty and now dismissed from Yale Gelernter.
Call it the I’m an apeman
I’m an ape, apeman
Oh, I’m an apeman
theory, in which given freedom, privilege, privacy, money, whatever, a certain number of men will revert to Bill Belichick or Gene Lopwitz (“he had taken what he wanted.”). Aging wives with minds of their own represent, evolutionarily speaking, less stimulation than tractable teens, and if you think you can get away with it you’re maybe gonna go teenward.
That’s theory number one. Number two – I’ll call it Skank Sanctification – is associated with the man who was prez of GW when UD taught there, Stephen Trachtenberg, and also with Bard prez Leon Botstein. CHE quotes Trachtenberg:
Stephen J. Trachtenberg, who served as president of George Washington University from 1988 to 2007, is a hardened realist when it comes to [taking money and other goodies from people like Epstein].
“The people who have money are not always nice people,” he said in a recent interview.
During Trachtenberg’s tenure, the university’s endowment grew from $200 million to over $1 billion. As a fund raiser, Trachtenberg adopted the thinking of Cardinal Richard Cushing, who was the archbishop of Boston while Trachtenberg was an administrator at Boston University. Cushing told Trachtenberg: “You sanctify money with its use.”
Here the archbishop assures the university president that an alchemical cleansing of money takes place when the money is used for, say, legal payouts to victims of priests who rape children. The church has to date spent three sanctified billion on this.
A Jewish sanctification took place when Yeshiva University took Bernie Madoff’s money for its then president’s salary (one of the highest in the country) and other executive compensation. Trachtenberg has been a staunch defender of Yeshiva’s many not nice donors. Plus he made a heartfelt argument that GW shouldn’t rescind Bill Cosby’s honorary degree. He and similarly amoral Botstein model for their students a perfectly workable postmodern – and even pious – ethos: Ends, means, FUCK THAT.