February 25th, 2025
Sing it: Monday lockdown, Tuesday lockdown, Wednesday and Thursday lockdown…

Friday for a change a little more lockdown…

February 24th, 2025
‘Nobody—I mean nobody—could have ever seen this coming.’

Sorry. Her widower has told anyone who will listen that she had severe, longstanding, mental illness marked in particular by profound clinical depression. I’m sure it’s true that no one was capable of imagining she’d shoot bullets directly into the heads of her four children; but just as surely her husband, and her close friends like you, were aware that she manifested the perfect confluence of symptoms for suicide/attempted suicide. Anyone with eyes in her head would have taken one look at the loaded weapons in that house and tried to remove them.

I hear you. In Wyoming, even with no weapons inside, she only needed to stroll to the sidewalk in front of her house and ask any of the passersby dripping with Destroyer Carbines if she could borrow one for a sec. But this unusual behavior might at least have tipped off her two older daughters that mommy was really losing it now and they should flee.

UD‘s sick, in this blood-soaked country, of people, post-massacre of the innocents, looking everywhere — nasty mysterious God, the lethal difficulty of childrearing — but at the fucking guns.

February 24th, 2025
‘[T]he city went a full week without a reported homicide before the most recent string of killings.’

A full week!

February 20th, 2025
‘McKinney was drinking heavily and had been upset by … noise from … four-wheelers, prompting him to fire [his Ruger 10-22 rifle] into the air.’

And, you know, he hit this and that.

February 20th, 2025
‘Authorities have said they later found 47 weapons, including the gun, and more than 26,000 rounds of ammunition at Ferguson’s home.’

He was president of the North Orange County Bar Association (“Join us on Wednesday, October 23rd @ 5PM, at Madero 1899 (formerly Matador) in Downtown Fullerton for an in depth look at Restraining Orders.”), and his face still shines proudly from their Past Presidents webpage. Drinks like a fish. Took one of the 47 and shot his wife to death while watching Breaking Bad. Still a judge pulling down a salary but for some reason they’ve taken him off the bench.

February 19th, 2025
Wouldn’t want to leave UD’s own ‘thesda out of the fun!!

According to police radio transmissions, a caller reported around 10 a.m. that a group of roughly 20 kids were fighting on the street in front of Chase Avenue Urban Park before they heard one gunshot, after which the group scattered… [A video shows]  two male teenagers fighting one another while other male teenagers watch. Other members of the group join the fight and begin yelling and hitting one another. As the group continues to fight, the teens move into the street. At one point during the fight, one person can be heard yelling to others to back up and another can be heard saying “it’s loaded.” A gunshot is heard, but isn’t seen on the video, and the group scatters.

Happened a couple of hours ago.

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

Update: The mob with at least one gun fired was largely made up of students from Bethesda Chevy Chase high school – a school that used to have a good reputation.

Update: Shooters arrested. Meanwhile, parents able to afford private school withdraw their kids from armed-gang-location BCC.

February 19th, 2025
Guns à Gogo! Spring Break Version.

It’s coming! Are you ready? Are you getting excited?

Now that Spring Break is all about guns, beach towns across America are mustering troops and building beach-adjacent jail cells (not kidding), plus preparing to reroute traffic, close beaches, charge $150 for parking, etc etc etc.

When even dinky Presidents Day has ’em shooting up a storm, y’all know that a whole week of Spring Breakoutthebullets is gonna be a challenge. The really big venues, like Miami Beach, have released a bunch of slick ads the last couple of years featuring younguns looking at the camera and wondering why everyone hates them and their Rugers. Even ultimate trash location Panama Beach is starting to say whoa.

February 19th, 2025
Guns à Gogo! A regular UD series.

With his bullet-size-matters black shirt and his firepower ever-ready, this resident of a pleasant, planned community in Florida chats with the police as he enters, handcuffed, one of their cars.

They picked him up because his obnoxious honking at a guy in front of him in a parking lot – a guy who was simply waiting while someone pulled out of a spot – drew the guy out of his car. In a casual, polite way, the guy asked if the honker would be patient and stop honking at him. All of this was captured on security cameras.

The honker pulled out his handgun and aimed it right at the guy’s face. While screaming unspecified “vulgar” things.

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

I think the big-bullet guy is this dude. Retired to Florida for sun and gun.

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

February 17th, 2025
God, Guns, and the Godswerve

Welp, the last of her kids that Tranyelle Harshman shot in the head (after which Harshman killed herself) has now, after suffering for a few days, died.

Tranyelle, notoriously mentally unbalanced, killed all four of them pointblank with a handy household gun that her family saw no reason to take out of the house despite her madness. “Though his wife had been undergoing treatment for her fragile mental state for several years, she hadn’t been able to move past it, [her husband] said.”

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

No, hubby up and took a temporary job in California, leaving Tranyelle alone in their rather isolated Wyoming house – just her, her insanity, four little kids, and a Glock.

A Glock? Whatever. Maybe she used an AK-47 and really blasted the babies’ brains out. Why haven’t the authorities identified the firearm?

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

Welp again: This is BIG news, and outlets all over the country have what to say about it, but virtually no one – and absolutely no one in gunny, astoundingly suicidal, Wyoming, has anything to say about a quadruple familicide made easy peasy with unlocked loaded guns fully available to a maniac.

Let us look at how our fellow Americans are rendering this event. “Olivia gained her angel wings yesterday,” announced the family at number four’s demise and OH MY. There are easy and hard ways to gain them, I guess, and God decided Olivia would do it the hard way, absorbing an agonizing slug from her own mother, and then laboring under a swollen bloody brain for days until her heart collapsed.

God wanted you for an angel. You, your sister, your other sister, and your other sister. And your mother?

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

It’s the Godswerve. A lunatic with a gun bloodies up the house and — cue angels.

Exactly like gun-fanatic madman Olin Johnson, who took one of his billion household firearms and blew his wife and himself away.

Immediately after the bloodbath, his Mormon community invited everyone to a celebration of his life, asking that they bring “goodies to share” and “warm memories.”

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

Or think of Andrew Humiston, 15 year old massacrist – killed 5! family members and only missed a sixth because she played dead – who took one of his father’s conveniently located guns to kill everybody. What was God on about, letting Andrew stalk and slay one screaming pleading family member after another? Why did the rest of the Humiston family lovingly note, in everybody’s obit, that they are survived by their murderer?

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

All of these atrocity-reactions are best seen as bizarre subcultural self-comfortings, communities of people absolutely insistent on looking away from the carnage and swerving pronto to the angelic order. UD doesn’t begrudge them whatever all is forgiven God works in mysterious ways thing gets them through it; but how can the rest of us, how can a whole country bleeding from guns, play along? The focus has to be on the idiocy and negligence that put those death-dealers in the hands of maniacs.

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

Update: So many other examples.

“Going berserk with guns has become an American way of life.”

February 14th, 2025
‘It should be screamed that if you are mentally compromised guns need to be gone.’

Finally, on one obscure Facebook comment thread, UD encounters one – and so far only one – statement of the obvious. (Background here.)

Okay, further down the thread, here’s another:

If he knew of her horrible ptsd and depression why was there a gun she could get to?

Hey – getting somewhere. Here are others:

Sad the hubby knew of her mental illnesses, yet she had access to a gun.

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

Why a gun in the home?

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

 [S]aying his wife battled PTSD, post-partum depression, and general depression. Yet access to a gun was allowed! Lord!

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

Still, comments in all FB threads I’ve looked at are overwhelmingly

  1. Let God have the burden.
  2. Post-partum’s a bummer.

February 13th, 2025
‘Michael Tolbert was the first person charged under [Michigan’s] safe storage law after his 2-year-old daughter Skye McBride was critically injured after she shot herself in the face. Tolbert of Flint is accused of first-degree child abuse, lying to police and seven weapons charges, including failing to safely store his gun. He … faces up to 15 years in prison.’

Finally some states are prosecuting people for unlocked guns.

A not guilty plea was entered … on behalf of Tolbert, who also faces one count each of being a felon in possession of a firearm, being a felon in possession of ammunition, lying to a peace officer in a violent crime investigation and four counts of felony firearm.

That is, the law’s also a good way to suss out criminals.

February 12th, 2025
‘[Tranyelle] Harshman’s husband Cliff Harshman told Cowboy State Daily that his wife had been receiving treatment for severe mental health issues, including PTSD and postpartum depression.’

But hey that ain’t no reason to put the guns away.

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

[The mother’s ex-husband] said he had been fighting for full custody [of their two children] after his divorce of about four years ago.

Pity he didn’t get it. Did the mother’s current husband inform him of her severe mental health issues?

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

It’s strange to me, but maybe I’m strange… in American terms. It’s strange to me, as I monitor responses to this hideous event (via various forms of social media), that no one has remarked in any way on this madwoman’s access to guns.

I mean, start with this: Two of the children would have had at least a fighting chance if the murderer had access only to knives or rope, or had to drown them… The two babies of course had no chance at all, no matter the method; but the 7 and 9 year olds might have had time to fight back or to flee if the method had been anything other than an instantaneous and crushingly lethal bullet. We don’t yet know what kind of gun she used, but there are plenty of weapons that would just wipe out the lives of these children in milliseconds, with one shot. Bang bang get the bigger ones first (one of them is currently clinging to life), and then it’s merely a matter of infants in their beds.

The murderer’s husband was apparently out of town, and though he knew his wife to be severely mentally ill, with generalized clinical depression plus post-partum depression…

Ecoute: Can it really be that the only thing Americans have to say about this event is God rest all of their souls? I mean, that sentiment, in different forms, is pretty much it as far as commentary goes. Quite a few people write variations on I know God has a plan, but at the moment it’s extremely hard to figure out what. No one even says Suicidal/homicidal psychotics shouldn’t be around guns. They don’t even venture that far.

Think of Naomi Judd’s suicide. She had longstanding, flagrant, self-destructive, mental illness. Am I really the only person who thinks it’s shocking that she had a loaded gun in her bedroom? Why is it strange to wonder why a 15 year old mass murderer had access to the gun that enabled him to execute five members of his family?

February 9th, 2025
‘“It shouldn’t be like this,” [a New Orleans resident] told The Trace. “Nowhere in America should it be normal that you see a group of like three to four soldiers in fatigues with a long rifle on every corner of the street.”’

Ah cmon wheres yalls sense of fun.

February 9th, 2025
‘You go to sleep, and your white noise is the gunshots.’

You sleep, and the white noise is gunshots... That’s fucking poetic.

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

How I stay young!

Willie Ann, 81 … has a routine for gunshots. She reaches for her cane, tries to rush toward a carpeted floor near her bed and gently lies down on her right side, where her arthritis does not flare up. When the shooting stops, she reaches for the top of the bed and hoists herself up.

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

And remember: Always have more than one sofa.

During drive-by shootings, neighbors wedge themselves between sofas.

February 7th, 2025
‘Orange police went to the club and found blood and spent shell casings near the door, which was closed and locked.’

Not only did no one at a New Haven area abattoir report a bloody shooting there to the police; even the owners are refusing to talk to authorities.

UD is aware that she needs to adjust her brain cells — Guns are everywhere and shootings boringly routine. Why report them. Why be surprised when no one reports them.

« Previous PageNext 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

Archives

Categories