If I had one wish One dream I knew would come true I’d want to speak to all the people of the world I’d get up there, I’d get up there on that platform First I’d sing a song or two you know I would Then I’ll tell you what I’d do I’d talk to the people and I’d say “It’s a rough rough world, it’s a tough tough world Well, you know And things don’t always, things don’t always go the way we plan But there’s one thing, one thing we all have in common And it’s something everyone can understand All over the world sing along
I just want you to hurt like I do I just want you to hurt like I do I just want you to hurt like I do Honest I do, honest I do, honest I do”
On DEI and its current inevitable dismantling: Human beings tend to learn by making glaringly obvious mistakes and then backtracking from them. UD doesn’t know why this is. In principle, advanced societies should feature people who anticipate that many procedural paths are in error, and these people would therefore avoid these paths.
One crucial, all-American pitfall on this particular path involves our national tendency to overdo. We can’t leave well-enough alone; we seem compelled to pile on to whatever idea we’ve got hold of, until it’s not just a policy or a program anymore — it’s a calling, an obsession, a nasty insistency.
Anyone with even modest brains should have known that imposed DEI regimes were disasters waiting to happen, but, lemming-like, our universities went there. Now we must pick up the lemmings from the bottom of the cliff, dust them off, and encourage them not to find another way to rush the cliff.
[S]cam culture thrives amid the insecurity our health care system creates! One thing alternative medicine does is make people feel like their needs are being seen and addressed, even if they’re being addressed in bogus ways. There’s a direct link between people’s disgust with the health care system and the dangerous rise of R.F.K. Jr.
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[S]ince when did a troubled young American man need a coherent political theory to start shooting?
An occasional UD feature, tipping our hat to people who cleared his path to victory.
In an Instagram story that went viral this week, Julia Alekseyeva, an assistant professor of English and media studies [at U Penn], appears to refer to Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old Penn grad, as the “icon we all need and deserve.”
You know, cuz U Penn was the school what made Mangione what he is today.
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If killing CEOs is so important to Julia Alekseyeva, why doesn’t she do it herself? The woman certainly presents herself as a badass feminist. But oh no: She stands around waiting for a MAN to do the deed.
For the future, she needs to read Valerie Solanas, who, like Alekseyeva’s MAN, wrote a famous manifesto and killed important people she didn’t like, and unlike Luigi was a woman.
Or… well… typical woman! She tried to kill three people but the little flibbertigibbet fucked it up and only managed to injure Andy Warhol. But she was a woman. And she had guts!
Cowardice advances the cause of women not one bit.
... You may see a shooter You may see a shooter Across a crowded room And somehow you know ... You're watching with stealth ... Hey this guy! He slaughtered The head of U. Health!
Sat there with my buddies Burghers of Altoona Munching on McGriddles Inside a crowded room And then in a flash As strange as it sounds I looked at his eyebrows My heart set to pound!
Who can explain it? Who can tell you why? Fools give you reasons Wise men never try. Some McDonald's breakfast When you find Mangione Chewing on his hash browns Across a crowded room Then call 911 And capture your man Or all through his life he Will slaughter again
Once you have found him Never let him go Once you have found him Never let him go!
Muddy the waters is a nice way to put it. Y’all keep trying to parse this politically, but Mangione warnt even into his big boy pants before he killed a guy so stop flattering him. Could barely eke out three pages of ooh manifesto ooh and so far it sounds like Patty Hearst circa Symbionese Liberation Army. He is 26 years old, and his experience of the world encompasses private school, hikes in Hawaii, and computer games. When the police cornered him he reacted with the Moro Reflex. And minutes ago baby had a BIG tantrum.
I grant that he is radically handsome with the bright set of chompers you’d expect of his demographic, but killing someone in NYC (in itself a banality) and completing a pre-writing exercise falls short of Antonio Gramsci. Better to understand him with a typically bogus but let’s go with it anyway psychiatric diagnosis: Post-traumatic Embitterment Disorder. Onset was when he tried to take a surfing class but his bad back screwed it up. Since then his chronic pain has him gunning for the American health care industry.
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The writer and cultural historian Mark Harris, posting on Bluesky, described Mr. Mangione as “a very recognizable type of young male ideology tourist” — a “This Explains Everything addict” untethered to a coherent belief system.
[Mangione] called for the banning of “custom pornstar pocket pussies being sold in [Japanese] Don Quixote grocery stores.” He wanted the return of traditional Japanese culture, including karate, and an emphasis on athletics in school. In other posts he called for [American] porn to be regulated “no less than alcohol, cigarettes, and travel.”
A fine fascist in the making – read further in the little pisher’s writings – whose trajectory was interrupted only by his fateful entry into the Altoona Pennsylvania McDonald’s.
From the left: Morning commuter train zips by. Bright sign is BLACK MARKET BISTRO, town restaurant. Sidewalk is brand new — just restored. Bright lower lights are the GP post office, where we pick up our mail. Continuing to the right, storage sheds for town equipment. Also picnic table, tennis courts.
Mangione verbally pushed back against two claims from prosecutors in court — first a claim that because Mangione was found with $8,000 in cash on him that he was trying to evade authorities.
An officer asked him to pull down his mask and recognized him as the suspect from the New York shooting. When an officer asked Mangione if he had been to New York recently, he “became quiet and started to shake.”
His grandfather owned a way-rightwing talk radio station; his cousin is the voice of Trump in the Maryland legislature. Luigi Mangione – the likely killer of the United Healthcare guy – has impeccable, historic, far-right, family credentials.
He seems to have peeled off from the family and acted from lefty motives, but ideologically it’s all a bit murky. Look what happened when les héritiers de Limbaugh attacked Mangione’s murderousness as clearly coming from/cheered on by the left.
[Ben] Shapiro and [Matt] Walsh harshly condemned liberals for cheering on the assassination in respective episodes of their eponymous podcasts, titled “The EVIL Revolutionary Left Cheers Murder!” and ” Why The Left Is Really Celebrating The Murder Of A CEO.”
But their followers disagreed with their criticisms and defended the left, arguing that they felt the same way about Thompson’s death …
“The fact that [M]att is trying to paint this as a left wing issue, when there’s clearly bipartisan celebrations going on, just goes to show how out of touch [wealthy] celebrities are, whether on the right or left, with regular everyday ordinary people,” one user said...
A third told Shapiro, “Just because ‘the left’ likes something doesn’t mean you have to instinctively hate it. Wake up and read the room bro.”
Disgustingly, portions of both left and right in this country seem pleased with what Mangione has done.
Luigi Mangione is in custody because a fast food employee in Altoona PA recognized his face from the pictures we’ve all been studying.
Once at the police station, the sources said, officers discovered Mangione had a gun similar to the one used in [Brian] Thompson’s killing, as well as a silencer and a fake New Jersey ID. The suspected gunman allegedly used a fake New Jersey ID when he checked into a Manhattan hostel last month.
Two senior law enforcement officials say Mangione had the name “Marc Rosario” on his fake NJ ID. Three sources familiar with the matter say the suspected gunman checked into the Upper West Side hostel using a fake NJ ID with the name “Marc Rosario.” Other fake IDs were found on Mangione Monday as well, investigators say.
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Kaczynski with good looks.
[Mangione is] an anti-capitalist Ivy League grad who liked online quotes from “Unabomber’’ Ted Kaczynski — and seethed in a manifesto, “These parasites had it coming.”
Tech whiz Luigi Mangione, 26, originally from Towson, Md., apparently hated the medical community because of how it treated his sick relative, sources said.
… Mangione was valedictorian of his 2016 high school graduating class at the Gilman School in Baltimore, where he played soccer, according to online sites. High school tuition at the all-boys school is nearly $40,000 a year.
He said at the time of graduation that he planned to seek a degree in artificial intelligence, focused on the areas of computer science and cognitive science at the University of Pennsylvania, according to an interview with the Baltimore Fishbowl.
The tech hotshot graduated cum laude from the private Ivy League institution in Philadelphia with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE), Computer and Information Science in 2020, according to his LinkedIn profile.
He also completed a Master of Science in Engineering (MSE), Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania, his profile states.
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Definitely the sort who thinks he can get away with murder.
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His parents own two country clubs, one of which, Turf Valley, UD and her sister drove around not long ago, after lunch in the area. He seems to share a grandfather with this Maryland politician. Very wealthy family.
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By the by: If you were his cousin – the politician – and you saw this all over the media —
wouldn’t you consider alerting the authorities? Did the guy’s enormous and apparently close-knit family cooperate?
[W]itnesses at the laundromat on Saturday said Coriz got into an argument with a male juvenile and two female juveniles over use of a washing machine, which escalated into a fight.
Navratilova nails it on the Sadeian sick boys of Iran, who elaborate upon their torture fantasies with each iteration of the beautifully named Chastity Bill.
And keep your eye on the Islamists who just took Syria. UD’s optimism about them is high; but they too may want to scrape clits off, force black robes on, forbid going outside, etc. etc.
Sure hope not! But wouldn’t be surprised if it’s in the cards.
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
