Kraken Releases Itself

[O]ne of the largest United States-based cryptocurrency exchanges [is closing] its San Francisco-based headquarters. 

Kraken CEO Jesse Powell retweeted an announcement stating that the exchange will close its global headquarters at 548 Market Street, in the center of San Francisco.

Our cities’ current terrible lawlessness is destroying/driving out not only businesses (big and small), but the public realm itself, so crucial to democratic life.

Wotta shocker.

Proud Boys Leader Admits

Plan to Storm Capitol

Pink Floyd Returns for Ukraine
“Judge Jackson, can you define…

.. first black woman on the United States Supreme Court?”

Yes.

With imperiled Finland and Sweden possibly joining NATO, UD finds herself thinking of that final scene in the film …

“Witness.” The vicious hysteria of one actor escalates, and draws the witness of all. Shamed, confronted, it escalates still more, terrifying the innocent.

Will Russia back down? Its neighbors are not waiting to find out. This is NATO’s moment.

Finland, a European Union member state, shares a 1,300-km (810-mile) border with Russia. [Its foreign minister] said Russia’s invasion had shown that Russia is willing to take increasing risks in its military operations, can quickly mobilise more than 100,000 soldiers against a neighbouring country, and has mooted more openly than before the possible use of its nuclear and biological weapons.

‘United Nations suspends Russia from human rights body over Ukraine’

Hot off the press.

‘“The work of the investment office over the years has been a huge compliment to the school’s efforts to run a modest budget surplus and to the generous support from alumni and friends,” former Dean of the Yale School of Management Ted Snyder wrote to the [Yale Daily] News.’ 

The school will be directing one billion dollars in the coming years to faculty spelling lessons.

Dispatch from Al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri issued two statements yesterday, one in praise of pro-hijab activists in India, and the other in praise of child bride legislators in Tennessee.

All praise to the noble veiling women of India who defy the law to assert their modesty!

All praise to the noble Tom Leatherwood who has freed the men of Tennessee to marry infant girls if that is their wish!

We are currently advising Brother Leatherwood on the framing, introduction, and passage of female genital removal legislation, for what man of piety would marry a baby with a clitoris?

Qualified Strip Club Shooting Attorney.

It’s a whole new world. A whole new field of law to study – Strip Club Shooting Law.

Not strip club law; strip club shooting law.

One club in Atlanta is a real killing field. Several others in the city are much like it.

The Human Animal.

At Yale.

La Kid Wakes Up to Sunny Skies and LOTS of construction cranes in…
… Dublin.
Another American False Flag Operation
The “pope” condemns the Bucha “massacre.”
“What I’ve learned from my ten years of plagiarizing.”

“As I depart WNYC and the Gothamist, I want to share with you lessons I’ve learned from my ten (amazing!) years of plagiarizing articles.

First: You can get away with it! After having me on the staff for ten years, they found four plagiarized pieces only six months ago, and nothing much happened. In fact, I was reassigned to “mentor staff members.” LOLOL.

Second: You can only get away with it for so long before you do have to sue. Recently, a squad of people has been investigating everything I’ve (let’s go with “I’ve”) written over a decade, which is so unfair because I’ve been plagiarizing all that time! So I’m slapping New York Public Radio with a lawsuit for racism.

Wish me luck!”

“The last Hungarian of world-historical significance was Zsa Zsa Gabor.”

In the wake of Orban’s massive victory, Les UDs have been going at it hammer and goulash on whether they should give a shit. If you read UD, you know where she stands: Countries determined to shrink to nothingness should be allowed to do so. Hungary’s population can’t even manage ten million (Orban’s efforts to get Hungarians to reproduce are going nowhere — too drunk to get it up.), and many of those are actively trying to kill themselves.

The smartest have left — Hungary is brain-drain central. Maybe these people noticed that the country had one world-class university and it threw it out. To thunderous applause from its suicidal populace.

The UN estimates a population of only 6.4 million by the end of the century.

“Can you name one famous Hungarian dissident?” UD asked Mr UD – a Pole, and a political scientist extremely well-versed in the region. Long pause. “K-Konrad?” “You can’t even remember his first name?” No. “And I don’t want to upset you, but he died in 2019.”

“Hungary is becoming the center of the intellectual far-right world…”

“Oooh, scary. Karlovich, Vermeule… the freak show freaks in Nyíregyháza!”

Mr UD looked pissed.

“Look,” said I. “The national anthem of modern Hungary is I GOTTA BE ME. Until it invades the Rhineland, Hungary, like all other countries, has a right to drill down to its essence – hyper-conservative, rabidly anti-intellectual, antisemitic, radically insular – and be that thing. The upside for us is that we can safely ignore it forever. Hell, it seems to be ignoring itself. If you want to visit faded post-imperialism, go to Vienna.”

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

Update: Hungary is also a big loser in the kleptocracy sweepstakes, with the EU proceeding toward possibly stripping it of the billions of dollars for public works projects that Orban has long been siphoning off for his oligarchs.

Can’t believe anyone’s still bothering to cover this sort of thing.

Just the blah quotidian of American life. In a few years (as UD has said elsewhere), no one’s going to bother writing this sort of thing up.

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

Just as routine: Eternal vigilance in the state of Tennessee.

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

Update: The LA Times seems to think we’re shocked.

[T]he same day that this horrific shooting rocked Sacramento, at least 95 other shootings took place across the nation.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Another 95 shootings — claiming 36 more lives and injuring 95 more people — just on this one Sunday in April…

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

Well shut ma mouth. If a country has a trillion legal and illegal guns – they’re starting to find rocket launchers, by the way – all over the place, turns out desperate, pathetic, and evil people will use them.

Ain’t nothin you can do either. California has oodles of gun control laws. Lots of other countries with good gun control laws indeed have much less slaughter; but ’round here, see, the cat’s out of the bag. All them guns! Guns here are a household appliance you reach for whenever there’s an itch to kill yourself or others.

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

America is deeply hopelessly gunny. I don’t say we shouldn’t have stronger gun control laws. We should. But at this point in the obsequies I don’t think we should expect much.

Locking up your mad gunnies won’t help much either. Your bigtime mass killers are psycho – they either kill themselves when they’re done or happily toddle off to life in prison. Your enraged ex-hubby is unlikely to let thoughts of jail interrupt his big moment. Depraved people who let their toddlers chance upon one of the ten loaded guns around the house and kill themselves and a sibling or two are too addled even to know what the phrase “criminal justice” means.

Gunnies – in neighborhoods, in legislatures – love guns and love violence and seem to regard all the pop pop pop pop everywhere as somehow charismatic. Like the heroin addict who salivates at the very sight of a needle, gunnies light up like the fourth of July at the sight of a gun.

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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