From start to finish, “After the Hunt” sets its audience adrift on a sea of unmoored signifiers, flailing to keep up with all the arm-wavey gestures at “academia” and “bourgeois morality” and “ethics,” providing nothing beneath to hold it all together and indicate it knows what any of it means.
Laszlo Krasznahorkai wins the literature Nobel.
[T]he Academy praised the author’s unique writing style, such as his long sentences and unbroken paragraphs that stretch for pages, which have led critics to compare him to Franz Kafka and Herman Melville.
I’m also reminded of Kleist, who got there before these other guys.
Sara Kelany, an Italian MP, gets it said. And indeed Italy seems very close to banning the total-blackout burqa and niqab. In this they are joining many other countries who have decided it is uncivil and uncivilized.
******************
[MP Andrea] Delmastro said Italy had drawn inspiration from France, the first European country to introduce a full burqa ban in 2011. Since then, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland and several other countries in Europe and around the world have imposed full or partial bans.
*******************
Mona Eltahawy‘s definitive opinion piece.
Tensions over public shoreline access erupted into felony charges for a Narragansett resident of the town’s pricy Anawan Cliffs neighborhood, who is accused of allegedly menacing fishermen with a drone, hitting golf balls in their direction, taking their sweatshirts and then flashing a loaded firearm.
[The man] faces felony charges for assault and possession of a large-capacity magazine.
************************
Golf balls, drones, and guns -
Fun for everyone!
*************************
Enjoy!
*************************
Full article available here.
*************************

[A Florida boater,] frustrated by the wake [some] children were creating in the water near his vessel … [pointed a gun at them and said he would] “shoot them and watch them bleed out.”
Turns out to be very simple: You can repeatedly imprison/kill a large percentage of your female population until the only women you see on the streets are swathed head to toe in black, or you can decide that forcing an entire country to share your religious fanaticism is a bad idea.
One can’t help seeing the mordant grins on the faces of America’s fast-growing gun suicides as these people glance, on their way out, at one lucrative, self-congratulatory, and predictably failed effort to reduce gun suicides.
In 2016, The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention teamed up with the National Shooting Sports Foundation to reduce suicide by 20% by 2025. (“Firearms were the leading cause of suicide among males and females in 2022. The rate of firearm-related suicide among males increased 31% after reaching a low of 10.3 deaths per 100,000 in 2006 to 13.5 per 100,000 in 2022.” By 2024, we see a “staggering” suicide rise.)
This article provides the gory details, but the main thing you need to know is that there is rather… uh… a glaring gap between the interests of anti-suicide crusaders and gun sellers.
The now-ended project did succeed in generating money for the two groups; and of course it enabled their leaders to use phrases like scaled implementation.
A guy who barely survived the Montgomery AL shootout says “he came downtown because there were so many people out and he wanted to join the fun, but that night of fun turned into something he described as a ‘warzone’ that he’s thankful to have survived.”
And he does pose the question. About guns. The killers were fifteen, sixteen, years old, and it was so easy for the brainless shits to get guns.
‘More people died by gunfire in Alabama [in 2023] than in New York State, which has nearly four times Alabama’s population.’
It’s that ol self-killer instinct, folks. Wyoming has it too. Guns guns guns guns until everyone gets ten! AK47s, AR15s, give em out like candy until everyone kills everyone in a blitz and then the cops kill the killers.
But WHY, Wyoming? A la what Alabam?
Read Nietzsche! says WY. Look under N for Nihilism! says AL. Life’s worth shit down here says AL. Life sucks in the Sagebrush State says WY. Read Better Never To Have Been and then shut the fuck up or I’ll blow your head off.
The Epstein procuress Ghislaine
Is heard from again and again.
Her latest appeal?
Supremes say no deal.
Back to minim. security pen.
So what the heck, you’re welcome
Glad to have you with us
Even though you’re the biggest criminal in state history
You really ought to lead Iowa’s public schools!
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.
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