… we Americans have followed the modern history of the British monarchy with confusion (why does it still exist?) and amazement (did King George really let the Romanovs be shot to bits?).

While we’re vaguely aware that the current Norwegian royal family is just as stuffed with morons and degenerates as the British, we’re less interested because, I mean, history… But the fact is, we remain baffled by the behavior and also the continued existence of The Crown.

*****************

The Guardian has a nice insider’s take on it all, from which maybe we can learn. Let’s see…

The royal family’s defenders claim that they were once the country’s moral anchor. That was rarely, if ever, true. But the Epstein files reveal where entitlement without restraint, and privilege without responsibility, can lead.

Yeah but if it was never true… And if – call it regal evolution – descends ultimately to Andrew (and hey it can always descend lower!), then why…

Public anger is brewing against the monarchy – a keystone of a political order in urgent need of radical reconstruction, along with the electoral system and the upper house. It would seem absurd for the prime minister to ask Mr Mountbatten-Windsor to give evidence to US lawmakers, but not to MPs. The monarchy is not accountable to parliament. Commons rules bar “reflections” on the royals, rendering meaningful debate taboo. In 2011 David Cameron relinquished MPs’ oldest check on royal power: control of the purse. His government replaced annual scrutiny of palace finances with an automatic transfer of crown estate revenues.

Um. Seems to be going in the wrong direction, what?

… fraud.

Or uh make that Thirty Under Thirty, its exclusive compilation of the most amazing young entrepreneurs.

Already four of the thirty have gone to jail or are on their way. Stay tuned for more!

Hard to see how you beat Monica Cannon-Grant’s achievements.

A ‘thesda tale from UD’s neck of the woods…

Yesterday a woman in a $2.3 million house exited her three-car garage in a black Porsche Cayenne ($100,000 – $190,000 value) to defend her right to the house, in which she’d been squatting for nine months.

In her defense, she pointed out the house lacked a no trespassing sign.

“We need to post one of those in front of our place pronto,” UD advised Mr UD. “A big one.”

That’s only a half dozen. She couldn’t think of a few more? Religion? Sexual preference? Body shape? (Moving toward a dozen here… Hold on. Lemme think.). Physical disability gets us to ten, but I’d love to get to twelve…

Age and genetic information. Tada!

… cabins, but here in America we come right out with it.

At a Miami nightclub called Vichy… I mean Vendome! … some of the country’s highest profile fascists ordered up a Nazi rap song the other night and sang and saluted along with it. A fine time was had by all, plus they’re getting a lot of attention.

As for UD – meh. Millions of people love fascism in one or another of its forms, and she’s having trouble being scandalized by singing Hitlers.

More thunderingly obvious truths are offered about McMansion Melancholia, this time in the Washington Post… Study after study demonstrates that, if your pointless excess rooms function to hold your pointless excess purchases, you are likely to be unhappy about it.

Gazing at the shit-stashes all about you, you may find yourself toppling over into larger terrains of sadness… As in … ah, the pointlessness of it all!

UD has already described the nothingness of her aunt and uncle’s Potomac MD McMansion, a house intended mostly for status display.

Which display certainly worked, because they were robbed of their jewelry more than once.

Veteran UD readers know what to make of people who, like the Wizard of Oz and Harold Hill the Music Man, are always tossing around advanced degrees. They are almost invariably con men.

They’re way proud of their Nobel winner, but he ain’t around. Wouldn‘t live in his home country if you paid him.

Pretty much no one’s around. No one under thirty. Shitty economy, and the joint’s run by a weirdo at once hyper-puritan and heavy into fuckywucky cuz the birth rate’s pathetic plus everyone’s leaving.

All very odd. Very malsain.

Harvard president Larry Summers will be known to posterity as an executor of a will left by the captain of the Lolita Express.

David Brooks need only have mentioned, in his NYT piece dismissing people interested in the Jeffrey Epstein story as stupid conspiracy theorists, that he himself attended a smallish dinner at which Epstein was present.

This, however, would have unburnished his highly burnished self-presentation as a moral exemplar.

And this U Arkansas poli sci prof has a lot of them – or so it’s claimed. It’s claimed she simply made up a whole interview with an Iranian political activist (the person making the claim is, uh, the political activist); it’s claimed she engaged in research fraud in her dissertation (Cambridge, which published it, is investigating). As head of a mideast studies unit on campus, she called for the destruction of terrorist state Israel, which the university seems to have felt fell a bit short of the sort of official statement they had in mind when they appointed her.

After a video posted of Mr. Summers teaching a class Tuesday, Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, commented online that “it’s not normal for a professor to start a class discussing how they ‘regret’ being best buddies with a child sex trafficker.”

*****************************

One of his students comments:

“It’s incredibly easy — maybe one of the easiest things in the world — to not have a long-standing relation with maybe the world’s most notorious pedophile and human trafficker,” Anna J. Guerrini ’29 said. “I think it’s disgusting that he was asking for advice from another man on how to cheat on his wife and how to best win the affection of this woman.”

Other amenities include a lower-level theater that seats nine and has upholstered walls; a main-floor fitness room with a steam room and a sauna with a Himalayan salt wall; an upstairs lounge with a coffee bar, three built-in workstations and terrace access; a wine display room with a backlit onyx wall and lounge …