UD plays online robots (and gives herself only sixty seconds per move). She’s wondering when/if all of the new Scrabble words will actually be added…

She’s especially excited about OK and ZEN. It’s about time!

Read this.

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As sexual violence against American women grabs the headlines, it’s important to remember what much of the rest of the world looks like.

[Mona] Eltahawy … attributes [violent hatred of women in the Muslim world] to “a toxic mix of religion and culture”. And to this I would add the political oppression and stasis that enabled these structures to become de facto governance, where entrenched tribal allegiances, pre-Islamic mores and social tradition trumped weak political culture. A general retardation that extends not just to women but to every aspect of personal freedom and civic rights.

That benighted world is watching, which makes it all the more important that women here shed light on what happened to them when they became a focus of male hatred.

State Sen. Martha Hennessey (D) wrote on Facebook Friday that she was sexually assaulted in front of “a dozen” classmates more than 40 years ago as a student at Dartmouth College.

… Fellow New Hampshire lawmaker U.S. Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (D), thanked Hennessey in a post, telling WMUR that the “Me Too” movement was encouraging women like her and Hennessey to come forward. Kuster, according to the outlet, came forward in 2016 about being sexually assaulted at Dartmouth when she was a student in 1979.

LOL. A New Yorker writer does a cruel takedown of Brett Kavanaugh’s bizarre boy-world just down the street from UD‘s house – Georgetown Preparatory School.

In 1990, seven years after Kavanaugh graduated, four students were expelled from the school for participating in a hazing ritual called “butting.” According to the Washington Post, which reported on the fallout from the expulsions, in the ritual, “a student is held down while another student places his naked buttocks close to the victim’s face.” One of the students, whose father was an alumnus, filed a lawsuit with his parents contesting his expulsion, arguing that he and his classmates had taken the fall for a common practice at the school. [A] county judge rejected the lawsuit…

Step aside, priests-abusing-little-boys scandal; make room for the head-up-everyone-else’s-ass scandal…

… jump to the New York Times, so UD now feels comfortable passing them along to you. (She saw them yesterday in the New York Post, but…) Unlike routine professor-mischief allegations, these are so lurid and extensive as to paint – in the words of the NYT – an entire “academic underworld” of sex and drugs, operating out of the offices of lots of professors.

A sample of office etiquette, John Jay College-style:

[One student said a professor there] poured her straight whiskey during a meeting in his office, locked the door and performed oral sex on her.

Without wanting to sound a prude, I will say that this seems pretty irregular to ol’ UD…

…drops.

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[His Yale roommate] said that he never witnessed Kavanaugh engage in any sexual misconduct, but did recall him being “frequently, incoherently drunk.” He described [Deborah] Ramirez as a vulnerable outsider. “Is it believable that she was alone with a wolfy group of guys who thought it was funny to sexually torment a girl like Debbie? Yeah, definitely. Is it believable that Kavanaugh was one of them? Yes.”

This rings so true to ol’ UD — the terrible coincidence of sophisticated entitled men and a clueless female innocent. Whatever else the truth and falsity of the charges against Kavanaugh, this statement, which goes to the cruelty and danger of men in certain kinds of groups, rings true.

‘If you’re like me, contact your local Dawoodi Bohra chapter.’

Sponsored by Twitter.

There will be a national referendum on the question as well. Expect the Swiss to vote in favor of a country-wide ban by a similarly comfortable margin.

As the enterprise collapses, photographers vie to see who can take the most compelling shot of a virtually empty stadium.

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Go here for the glorious history of Colorado State University’s brand new empty stadium.

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UD thanks John.

… agriculture. Ahem!”

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[About Christine Ford, Senator Mitch McConnell recently said:] “We’re going to plow right through this.” Plow right through this, meaning, we’re going to plow right through this woman’s, you know, accusations and she’s, you know, presumably, if she does testify, it’s going to be her trauma and her — it’s going to be a very emotional kind of presentation.

Lisa Lerer, New York Times

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UPDATE: Schumer can’t resist opening his remarks today with the same quotation.

And why is it so popular to hit McConnell on the terminology? Because, uh…

Royal wench! She made great Caesar lay his sword to bed. He plowed her, and she cropped.

Taraf Alasiri kicks off a now-viral facial equality movement in Saudi Arabia. Much like Iran’s My Stealthy Freedom, Solidarity with Taraf features Saudi women photographing themselves unveiled and writing about personal freedom.

Two women in burqas who were refused entry to London’s Ritz hotel expressed serious annoyance.

But the hotel has a dress code and the code includes people who refuse to show their faces. End of story.

A curious writer, Daphne Merkin. She repeatedly gets into trouble by writing high-profile journalism white-washing besmirched family and friends. Back in ’09, she wrote a notorious New York Times column down-playing her brother’s involvement in the Bernard Madoff scheme and up-playing the responsibility of people dumb enough to invest with said brother and his partner in crime Bernie.

Times readers who realized the connection [between Merkin and her brother] protested that the newspaper had given Ezra Merkin’s sister a platform to make what they saw as a veiled defense of his conduct without coming clean about the depth of his involvement.

Since her piece was written, her brother has been successfully sued for hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in payback to people he and Madoff destroyed. Tragically, Merkin has had to sell his entire Rothko collection. And he continues to be sued for hundreds of millions of dollars more, so he has to be eyeing his other collections.

Now Daphne Merkin has done it again, for her friend Woody Allen. Her New York magazine article attacking those who have attacked Allen’s behavior is as hopelessly corrupted by personal interest as was her piece about Madoff.

UD has got to tip her hat to Merkin, however. How the hell does she keep doing it? Ian Buruma had to resign. Merkin’s no doubt putting finishing touches on her 10,000-word profile of unfairly maligned Harvey Weinstein.

… which he proudly lists on his web page, but neither that long-ago spoof award nor many bright red flags since then have attracted the attention of serious scientists to his methods (Fold six retractions into seven retractions; mix briskly.).

Now, as the Cornell paper reports, things are on the boil for Professor Wansink. Once Cornell has concluded its review of his research, it will call a … Wansink Conference, announcing its results.

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Mix all thirteen retractions together and… voila!

Retraite Forcé avec Urgence.

When everybody’s got a gun, every day is a massacre. Cuz we all have problems to solve, and guns solve problems. That’s why everybody’s got a gun.

Now, women have kind of been a holdout, in that although they own pretty much as many guns as men, they have seemed reluctant to use them to kill everyone.

But just down the road from UD‘s own Port Deposit, Maryland, where her grandfather owned a department store, a woman took out her … whatever … AR-15? … and blew everyone away today.

Thursday’s incident was the third mass shooting in the past 24 hours.