Timothy Snyder, Marci Shore, and Jason Stanley are getting the hell out. Canada ho!
Like perifascist Hungary, we are beginning to experience a brain drain, mes petites.
Timothy Snyder, Marci Shore, and Jason Stanley are getting the hell out. Canada ho!
Like perifascist Hungary, we are beginning to experience a brain drain, mes petites.
Corporate larcenist Ira Rennert, this blog’s favorite vile billionaire, found himself in court one day (he often finds himself there), and his lawyer demanded (begged the judge) that jurors be kept from viewing his massively obscene Long Island spread. One look and they’d hand him the death sentence.
UD gets rage at the trashy super rich. Especially now, with so many of them acting out, rage is fine, perfectly fine. Boycott whatever they sell. Rage against them in print. Organize groups to shout and hold signs in front of their headquarters. But retail theft? Really? Talk about trashy. What a disgusting thing to do.
Business Insider chats with the well-heeled Whole Foods thieves and duly collects all the bullshit they say by way of justification, and it’s the same bullshit the ill-heeled thieves who show up on Facebook reels getting arrested in front of Target say. The world is full of asshole police and billionaires and traffic cops and tax collectors and meth dealers all of them cheats out to get me so fuck em the least I can do is steal their goods if they’re in business or spit in their face if they’re cops. I’m a sovereign citizen no laws exist no laws apply to me the world’s rigged against me fuck you all.
Well, this is the way you get San Francisco, if that’s what you want.
“Why doesn’t Jeffrey Goldberg disclose to readers in his stories that he is a registered Democrat?,” [Donald Trump] Jr. tweeted on Tuesday afternoon. “His wife also worked for Hillary Clinton and has donated nearly $25k to Democrats.”
****************************
… “Great question, Don. Why did Pete Hegseth share classified military intelligence with a registered Democrat in an unsecured Signal chat?”
… “[T]op Cabinet officials added a registered Democrat to their war plan chat on an unsecured app?”
… “So the Trump administration is talking about classified information on a commercial app on their private phones — and they added a registered democrat to the conversation without noticing it?”
An official from a Mississippi gun group flatly states that restrictive laws have no effect on injuries and deaths from firearms. She doesn’t give a shit that states with gun control rank highest on safety, while states like hers, Mississippi, with virtually no gun control, rate – er – dead last (except for White Power Wonderland Idaho).
I think when your state, for decades, ranks last or almost last on all measures of education, health, and welfare, a weird inversion sets in, and your abject failure becomes a point of pride. Ole Miss did it again! No other state has our sweet synergy of ignorance, paranoia, and hoplophilia. Y’all come down, y’hear?
The morning sun lights up the late March greening of UD’s forest.


That’s the top of the MARC commuter train, whizzing through a ravine at the end of UD‘s woods.
Well. You get what you vote for.
But lookee here. Their House of Delegates just went up against the know-nothings that run most of the state, and voted down a bill that would have made it easy to exempt your kids from most vaccinations.
Maybe the delegates took a gander at New Mexico, where kids are suffering, and in some cases dying, of measles. Do they know that NM is officially one of the dumbest states in the country? Would they rather not get on board that train?
****************
And meanwhile: Take a bow, Texas!
RIP Baby’s — but at least they got to shoot people with lots of guns before they had to close.
‘While over 800 IDF soldiers have fallen in battle, a minister in the Israeli government is dancing to the tunes of ‘We Will Die and Not Enlist’ and ‘We Do Not Believe in the Rule of the Heretics.’ This is not a mistake – it is policy. Goldknopf and Netanyahu’s government openly promote the draft-dodging scheme while reservists collapse under their fifth and sixth rounds of deployment.”‘
Sickening but not surprising. Israel has allowed – subsidized! – vile fanatics in its midst, and for the life of me I don’t know how they can possibly overcome them.
UD and her buddy Ellen were doing one of those get there just when it opens and get all the art to yourselves things when, in one of the atria, we happened on a wedding.

A spectacular creekside house built by “world-renowned translators of the works of Søren Kierkegaard” is asking $850,000, which probably means you’ll pay less than that. You can hear the creek from the house.
[It’s] constructed with native limestone, is on 2 acres, and has more than 4,323 square feet. Natural light pours through large windows on the main floor, which has an open floor plan and a walk-out deck. The lower level has stone floors and opens onto a patio.
There are three full kitchens, five fireplaces (a mixture of decorative, wood-burning and gas), a sauna and a hot tub. It contains at least four full bedrooms, along with other versatile rooms.
Northfield (site of St Olaf College) isn’t that far from St Paul/Minneapolis, so urban life is also available…
**********************
Zillow, OTOH, currently lists petite chez UD for over a million, which tells you all you need to know about location, location, location.
In the wake of New Mexico’s latest bloodbath, the governor notes that the “legislature will adjourn today without having a passed a single bill to address juvenile crime or ban assault weapons. Their inaction is appalling and unacceptable.”
The mayor of Las Cruces NM gets points for honesty, as one of those obviously mass murder generating events generates mass murder in her crime-ridden city. Collect a crowd of very young idiots at some idiotic illegal event involving cars and alcohol, and watch the bullets fly.
The violent crime rate [in NM] was twice the national average in 2023, according to the Council of State Governments Justice Center… By August of 2024, violent crime in [Las Cruces] was up 46 percent compared to the same period in 2023.
*****************
Sure you want the skinny on America’s dumbest, grungiest, state? Go here if you dare.
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