‘Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid; 4-ANPP is a chemical intermediate used to illegally manufacture fentanyl; Alprazolam is a benzodiazepine better known by its brand name Xanax; Methocarbamol is a prescription muscle relaxant; and Quetiapine is an antipsychotic medication used to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder.’

Those five all at once, and this is ruled accident rather than suicide.

Even if we want to say she died from unknowing ingestion of fentanyl, doesn’t exposing yourself to the possibility of fatally tainted drugs suggest a suicidal degree of self-neglect?

‘[G]uns were present in the home, and … [rigid] religion, conspiracy theories, and an obsession with the end of society, were central.’

If true, witches’ brew.

*****************

Kind of interesting to think about … You’re a concerned uncle (like the guy who just testified to the stuff in my title), and you know those kids are being fucked up… OTOH it’s clear from the father’s employer’s statement (he was valued, respected; his “leadership and vision were integral”) that he was perfectly capable of acting normally in the world…

As a family member visiting occasionally from out of state, you perceive the armed paranoia and the miserable children, let’s say. But you also perceive great affluence – the American success story – and an absence of overt dysfunction in the home. Clearly, you’re not going to intervene in a dramatic way.

************

Will the defense try something like this? It was only a matter of time before the father – like Lindsay Clancy – instructed each of his kids to “Go to God” before murdering them, his wife, and himself. The oldest kid was the only one old enough to perceive this threat. He acted to take the parents out.

Prosecutor: So he killed everybody?

Terrified by what he had done, he just kept shooting…

***************

Or take it the other way. So thoroughly, so anxiously, had the son absorbed the father’s Armageddon lesson that he took it upon himself to transport the family to God.

Prosecution: Why didn’t he kill himself?

Good question.

Projectile Place, an Upscale Pennsylvania Community…

… boasts half a million dollar residences in close proximity to a gun range with late night shooting and automatic weapons.

Pock-marked parlors and bullet-rich carpeting complement the whirrbizzbang that makes PP a unique setting for the sound of freedom.

‘Arkansas has among the weakest gun laws in the country and has one of the highest rates of gun deaths in the nation. It has none of the most important laws in place. Despite the state’s high rate of violence, legislators acted in 2021 to dismantle the only remaining foundational gun law by repealing the concealed carry permitting requirement.’

And here are the hard-won rights Arkansas citizens have scored with their gun laws:

A 23 year old with a loaded FN FNX-45 .45 ACP handgun got pissed because he was barred from an Arkansas State University party. Pulled out the gun and threatened to kill the hosts.

The hip dark humor that’s supposed to help save you.

But it often fails.

Suppose they gave a farce and nobody came.

Ain’t gonna be any White House news coverage of The Greatest President in the History of Carbon-Based Life Forms.

Peter Baker explains:

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/09/21/business/trump-white-house-cnn-politico-msnow

***************

Wow. The news keeps coming. The North Korean News Agency has announced it will step into the breach. Can’t wait!

Gun, Laptop, and Videotape

A truly cosmic convergence in this my beloved country: At one of Philly’s trendiest, most expensive, outdoor cafes, a guy on the sidewalk shoved a big black gun in a diner’s face with one hand and took his laptop with the other. All of it was filmed.

The gun guy was arrested.

*****************

This one has everything – our affluent luxe leisure … SO luxe and leisured it forgets to add to the equation killers lining the luxe …

A sweet simple transaction. You give me the laptop or I kill you on this lovely late summer afternoon in front of these people sipping La Colombe. So Don DeLillo.

‘In France the burqa has been illegal since 2011, as have headscarves for under-16s in schools. Portugal brought in its own similar “burqa law” last month. Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Austria — all ban full face coverings.’

Another high-profile British columnist doesn’t get why her country continues to carry the black mark of the burqa. “Whenever I see them, I never, ever get over the way that I feel. I feel livid — ragingly angry — like I have to do something about it. But what?”

Just exactly what you are doing. Write angrily against it. Continue to despise “the insistent, malicious arguing for separate laws, separate schools, separate communities — for, essentially, ghettos. For the headscarf on female children and the ongoing, mendacious support for the burqa and the niqab, using our own liberalism as a weapon against us.”

Persist in pointing out that there’s nothing liberal about a state openly affiliating with – indeed subsidizing – an organization of cruel fanatics. “I would like us to stop giving tacit support to female oppression from the youngest age — if you have any doubts about agency, let me tell you: there is no way a child who cannot even read yet is able to choose a headscarf.”

“No one wants to curb the poisonous love-in with one of the most woman-hating ideologies on earth.” Actually, lots of people do. But they are afraid of being classed with the right wing. They haven’t noticed that the strongest opposition to the burqa in many of the countries the writer lists comes from the left.

Much of England remains in the look away look away position relative to the burqa. Sartre called what they’re doing bad faith. Liberal states that don’t want to be in bad faith ban the burqa.

England will get there eventually. Honest writers like Camilla Long help it on its way.

“There is a particular lethality and a particular impulsivity and a particular level of threat that occurs when a firearm is present, and right now in America we have more firearms than people.”

The Guardian looks at our exploding familicides.

“Every summer we went to Sardinia, to Italy, to Portofino,” Ms. Mugrabi said. “We went on lots of different yachts. Aspen. Miami. We went to St. Barts three times minimum, a year.”

She is the voice of America, the Kate Smith of our time.

Her $25 million Hamptons estate recently sold for 5.8 mill at auction. She refuses to leave it. God Bless America.

There’s UD’s cousin, Karen, to the left of the reporter.

She’s the woman in the blue tee. Starting at 1:40. SO PROUD.

Gardening in Kentucky

Police say Corey B. Ward pointed a handgun at people on College Street before officers found the weapon buried in mulch.

‘Researchers have created a mouse with a partly human brain’

Will be named “Lindsey” in honor of Lindsey Graham.

British Snark is Fun

Here is the earl on his Diana book, which he has called Swan Song: “At heart, this is a brother’s simple tribute to an extraordinary sister.” Mmm. And simply bound, very simply, into paginated form as a precious, simple keepsake that also functions as one of Penguin Random House’s lead titles for autumn and the run-in to Christmas. Favourite charming tribute from today’s serialisation in the Mail? Probably the bit when Diana drags Spencer for lunch in the London restaurant San Lorenzo to announce: “My husband is in love with his valet”. Nkay.

… [J]ust as it is possible to simply get up in the morning and decide not to post something on social media that makes you look like a complete shit, it is also possible to simply not do a whole book of this stuff.

************

Marina Hyde on Charles Spencer’s new book about Diana.

A brief back and forth with Elizabeth Bishop about the Closing of the Kennedy Center.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master

[The loss of art is quite another matter]

So many things seem filled with the intent

To be lost that their loss is no disaster

[Surely not “God Made the Firmament”?]

***********************************

[I lost a hall, a lovely one. And, vaster,

Oratorios are gone, their choral spent.

I miss them, and their loss is a disaster.]

Next Page »

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.
Notes of a Neophyte

Archives

Categories