October 22nd, 2026
Burger King: Home of the…

… Glocker!

October 21st, 2026
Why should UD’s high school be any different?

Cuz it’s in super-affluent Bethesda? That doesn’t keep its vicinity from being all shot up. The four people involved will turn out to be (I predict) Walter Johnson students representing warring gangs, or hey maybe a few guys had a bit of an argument over lunch and they took it and their guns (you don’t think WJ students carry weapons?) outside, where they had at it.

If I’m right, it’s so disgusting that WJ administrators, who will turn out to know about some of these shits, allowed them to continue to attend the school.

October 21st, 2026
The Tennessee Titans…

… bring out the big guns!

October 20th, 2026
Gifting a Gun to your Troubled 16-year-old Son.

How clever.

October 18th, 2026
Oral Stage, United States

Adorable.

October 14th, 2026
‘Police said they seized the handgun Wilder allegedly used, along with four additional firearms, magazines and ammunition.’

Good ol’ Myrtle Beach.

UD will never understand how people carry on their person five guns, magazines, and ammo. Or more! How do you do it? Is weaponry falling off of you as you walk? Do you sound all metallic?

October 4th, 2026
‘Arizona allows private gun sales without background checks or record-keeping, which makes it even easier for traffickers to source weapons without getting caught.’

16 year old high school students in Arizona sell guns to the nice men in Sinaloa.

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

For El Flaco, 18, the path to gun dealing began shortly after he started high school. He was 14.

Owning a gun, he said, was extremely common among fellow students at his high school. Boys posted photographs of themselves posing with pistols on Instagram and TikTok. Some brought the firearms to school, leaving them locked inside their cars during class and flaunting them after school, he said. Sometimes they brought them into school, he said.

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

From the NYT reporter in the comments section:

One of the most striking things I encountered while reporting the story was just how deeply embedded gun culture is in Arizona, and how much it shapes and influences these teenagers’ choices, along with the sheer availability of firearms and how easily they can obtain high-caliber weapons, through both legal and illegal means.

September 30th, 2026
What’s your zoo like when you have the highest crime rate in the United States?

Just ask Memphis.

September 30th, 2026
The American Toy Store

When they tell you your kid has to get off a car (there he is in red), you pull out your gun and threaten to kill them.

September 28th, 2026
Senile School Shooter Leaves Teacher in Critical Condition

The last time this happened, the shooter was six years old. Now a shooter more than twice that age has gone and done it again.

Given this latest shooter’s advanced age, I doubt the story will get much play. An armed six year old would-be murderer is much more newsworthy than an armed thirteen year old would-be murderer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Abby_Zwerner

https://abcnews.com/US/13-year-custody-allegedly-shooting-middle-school-teacher/story?id=136820476

September 27th, 2026
“Can’t remember the last time we’ve had this many people shot at one time.”

Yeah, usually they’re, like, successive. Over a few days.

September 26th, 2026
Sweet! A big gun for…

… a little boy!

September 25th, 2026
“You hear about it almost every day,” [a student in the class] said. “People that are angry, shooting at whoever and taking their anger out on the world.”

‘Fear brings people to the [firearms use] classroom, and the course gives them new reasons to be afraid.’

Basic Pistol.

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

It’s how you get Billings Man.

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

From comments on the article:

I don’t think I should be eating in Olive Garden and some young guy comes in with a semi on his belt.

I own guns and brought my son up to be comfortable around guns. … One day a year ago, in a terrible state of despondency, he used one of them to take his life. I have struggled to understand whether I had a role in his suicide.

Guns are not designed to protect you. They’re designed to kill you.

September 24th, 2026
“I go downstairs to the first level, and I just hear this big ‘boom,'” one woman said. “And I don’t think anything of it because I freakin’ live in America, but then I see this guy dive behind this car.”

The Voice of America.

September 22nd, 2026
‘“Guns are killing our kids,” [Zack] Terakedis said.’

Gee, even in Montana they’re failing to see the adorableness of people dandling Second Amendment doodads on their knees.

Parents in Billings are all ooh ooh cuz a nut across the street from their kids’ elementary school stomps about heavily armed in front of his house. Montana being Montana the dude – even though once a felon! – is free to finger his guns in public. And I dunno why, but even that state’s gun lovers are scared shitless by a totally dangerous asshole aiming large weapons at their kids’ school all day.

They’re demanding someone official do something – but they’re the ones who voted to have the country’s worst gun laws. So enjoy.

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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