The preeminent German poet-philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe famously described architecture as “frozen music,” opining that “the state of mind produced by architecture is similar to the effect of music.” Over 150 years later, Frank Zappa—a somewhat less august personage, perhaps, but nevertheless prescient—reframed Goethe’s meditation on the corporeal and the ethereal: “Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance space is sculpted into something,” Zappa professed. One wonders what type of music might be frozen in the bold volumes and interwoven planes of the Jamaican pleasure dome created by Grammy-winning celebrity DJ and producer Thomas Wesley Pentz, better known as Diplo. 

[C]itations matter the most, and if you look at the ranking systems, it’s all right there. The Times Higher Education world-university rankings, U.S. News — look at whichever you want, and somewhere between like 30 percent and 60 percent of those rankings are based on citations. Citations are so easy to game. So people are setting up citation cartels: “Yes, we will get all of our other clients to cite you, and nobody will notice because we’re doing it in this algorithmic, mixed-up way.” Eventually, people do notice, but it’s the insistence on citations as the coin of the realm that all of this comes from.

The whole je ne sais quoi of Idaho finds espression in Michael Neil, proud son of the Gem State. After a passerby witnessed Neil accidently shoot himself inside his car, she called 911. Neil, carrying multiple felonies for, among other things, beating up nurses during a recent hospital stay, lied to police… Something about a man “in a red hat” who shot at him…

Legally unable to possess guns, Neil was found to be carrying in his car (who knows what weaponry he keeps at home):

Ruger 9mm handgun

Sig Sauer 10mm

(‘The Ruger had been reported stolen in Idaho Falls in 2021, while the Sig Sauer was reported stolen in Rexburg earlier in 2023, according to the affidavit.’)

“Ghost gun” replica of a Glock, no serial number

Precision X15 AR-15 style rifle

Remington 12-gauge shotgun

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The real magic of Idaho is in the mugshot, where the freest state in the union shows you what it looks like when the police let you dress any way you want for the camera!

Yes, yes, there should be gaping holes in the fabric. But this isn’t Hollywood, man. It’s real.

Real Idaho.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13438055/Iranians-CELEBRATE-death-Presdent-Raisi-victims-torturous-regime-loved-ones-dancing-drinking-toast-fatal-helicopter-crash.html

Engraving: “That’ll teach her

to wear her hijab correctly next time.”

[Idaho’s total abortion restrictions have] sent physicians fleeing the state for fear of jail time and losing their medical licenses and contributed to Sandpoint’s Bonner General Hospital closing its labor and delivery ward to leave 50,000 people in the region without obstetrical care… [One politician,] an abortion abolitionist, … believes the procedure should be treated as murder and punished with jail time or even the death penalty. [This state senator] tried to remove the rape and incest exception from the state’s total abortion ban, calling rape “an opportunity to have a child.”

 As the University of California at Davis’s vice chancellor for DEI explained, “In these searches, it is the candidate’s diversity statement that is considered first; only those who submit persuasive and inspiring statements can advance for complete consideration.” In one faculty search at University of California at Berkeley, around 75 percent of applicants were screened out of consideration — irrespective of criteria such as teaching ability and research skills. Small wonder that many applicants engage in what Daniel Sargent, a history professor at UC Berkeley, calls “performative dishonesty.”

#BREAKING: Iranian president missing in helicopter crash on Azerbaijan border, presumed dead

… But … if you read this blog with any care, are you really surprised that a university sorority is being used as a cover for drug dealing?

True, VCU’s dainty prescription drug ladies don’t get anywhere near the mafia-level drugs and guns activity of the frat gangs of San Diego State, busted in the now-legendary Operation Sudden Fall. But as UD has pointed out a lot on this blog, you’d have to be an idiot not to see that frats and sororities are PERFECT operation centers for drug conspiracies. Clean-cut college kids who wash cars to raise money for St Jude’s! Earnest, physically attractive seekers after knowledge! Oh, you kids! All those hyper-secret events and insider signals and slogans – so cute! You wouldn’t want to put the closed cult thing together with the clean-cut moral cover thing and arrive at any conclusions…

Senator Josh Hawley and Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker have announced that this September they will visit the Islamic Republic of Iran to learn more about that country’s drone technology.

The men, friends and political allies, will be escorted to selected surveillance sites by President Ebrahim Raisi of the Combatant Clergy party.

“The intention is to gather information about Iran’s innovative use of drones to police its female population,” said a spokesman from Hawley’s Senate office. Under its new Chastity Law, the Islamic Republic beats and jails any woman found not wearing a hijab and loose-fitting, full-body-covering, clothing. The drone system allows the government access to any location girls and women may congregate – schools, libraries, restaurants, city streets, parks, public and private transportation, and the home – and facilitates immediate detention and beating on the ground by Morality Police.

“The applications here at home are extensive,” said Hawley’s representative, “in particular in regard to fertile white women who may be attending college and then entering the work force instead of becoming impregnated. It’s amazing to think we’re living in a time where we can keep daily tabs on non-reproductive citizens in order to identify them, counsel them, and offer them relevant incentives and disincentives. But first the Senator and Mr Butker need to know more about the technology.”

“I don’t quite understand how we can be paying people who aren’t on the payroll or paying an invoice without checking it and how we can have care being delivered and not know they are under-delivering,” [said a Kent County councillor].

 15 percent fewer U.S. medical-school graduates applied to Kentucky residency programs in the 2023-24 academic year, part of a trend related to states’ strong anti-abortion laws enacted after the federal right to abortion was abolished… In OB-GYN programs, there was an even sharper 23% decline… Kentucky hospitals are already dealing with an “acute shortage” of health care workers, with nearly 13,000 job vacancies in hospitals at the end of 2022…  [M]ore than half of Kentucky’s 120 counties didn’t have a single OB-GYN specialist in 2022-23…

“You wouldn’t come if you’re a young woman and know that if something happens to you, you might die because they aren’t gonna let you get the health care you need,” [explained one local pediatrician.]

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It’s already one of our very worst states, without adding a health system composed of the dumbest, most desperate MDs in America… or forget MDs… Kentucky will offer its populace their pick of degree mill grads from Dagestan and Irkutsk.

Soon to be Attorney General under the next Trump presidency.

Spawn of Franco Fanboy goes down.

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Bozell’s father submitted a letter to the court in which he … questioned prosecutors’ motives for seeking a terrorism enhancement.

“I have remained silent for the past 3 1/2 years because I didn’t want to tip the apple cart of justice,” he wrote. “But given what I saw in the trial, and more importantly learning about this terrorism enhancement, I no longer can. I believe there is more at play here.”

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Indeed there is, indeed there is. It is the hand of God. Praise Him.