In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

I woke up this morning for some reason with the name Krafft-Ebing hangng in my thoughts like a tune that won't go away. I don't think I'd thought of that name in years. Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902), an Austrian psychiatrist, was a pioneer of the modern notion of sexuality, so in the context of recent events, it probably shouldn't be a surprise that he'd pop up that way. Let's just do a quick review of recent news stories. On Monday , Aidan Maese-Czeropski, the former Democratic aide best known for being filmed on the receiving end of a backdoor sex romp in a Senate hearing room in 2023, is finally speaking out about the scandal that cost him his job and prompted him to flee the country. The Washington Free Beacon exclusively reported in February that Maese-Czeropski had moved to Australia to launch a new career as an independent sex worker who posts pornographic photos and videos on the internet. This week the disgraced Democrat, who was a l...

I'm going back to Harvard, because as usual, the media, alt, legacy, or otherwise. is playing its annual game of extending spring break into Memorial Day, at which point they can check out for summer vacation. The two big stories this week are "Who will be the next pope?" and "Is Trump trying to ease Hegseth out?" which don't have answers and don't require mental effort -- and that comes after a weekend of evergreen bromides saying nice things about Easter. Things likely won't pick up until October. But I found a piece at the Harvard Crimson that illustrates how Ivy students are insidiously brainwashed into believing the system that's selected them is good because, after all, it selected them in a highly selective, meritoratic process. This is also at the heart of David Brooks's endorsement of the Ivies in Bobos in Paradise . The system is meritocratic because, after all, it selected David Brooks. Just look at him! The Ivy student bod...

In an illustration of Glenn Reynolds's thought processes, he posts a link to Matt Taibbi's substack , which is behind a paywall, that contains another link to a David Brooks column in the New York Times , which is also behind a paywall. All the Times will let me see beyond the paywall is Brooks's title, "What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal." Anyone who's able to get past both paywalls just like that is probably subscribed to a good deal else besides The New York Times and Matt Taibbi's substack -- for starters, maybe The Atlantic and The Wall Street Journal, which means they're likely paying hundreds of dollars a year, or maybe expensing it, to get material that's not worth that kind of money. And at least it used to be blogger etiquette not to link to items behind paywalls. But that's Glenn Reynolds and Salem Media these days. Taibbi quotes a single paragraph from Brooks: We l...

Minnesota state employee Dylan Bryan Adams, 33, was allegedly caught on camera keying multiple Teslas. pic.twitter.com/s5GlRbkhqo — The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) April 19, 2025 A week ago , I noted a pecullair demographic pattern among the great majority of perpetrators alleged to have damaged Tesla vehicles or sabotaged Tesla dealerships in protest of Elon Musk's involvement with the Trump administration, namely that they tend either to be members of the "bobo" managerial-professional class, or they tend to be transsexual or queer-identifying males. In that post, I cited one member of the 500 Queer Scientists organization and three prosperous members of the bourgeois bohemian class. A month ago, on March 21, I cited four trans-identifying males charged with arson against Tesla dealerships in Oregon, Colorado, and South Carolina. The bobos consistently vandalize individual Tesla vehicles, while the trans guys consistently set dealerships on fire. Three ne...

According to The Daily Beast , Harvard academics have warned they will be forced to euthanize animals used for medical research because of Donald Trump’s $2.2 billion funding freeze. This is disingenuous. According to this site, Animals are typically killed once an experiment is over so that their tissues and organs can be examined, although it is not unusual for animals to be used in multiple experiments over many years. If the lab animals are going to be euthanized no matter what, why the fuss? The answer is fairly clear, Harvard wants to portray the Trump administration as being cruel to animals, when the Harvard researchers are routinely cruel to animals no matter what, just as long as they get their money. Cutting off their money sounds like it would actually benefit future generations of lab animals. But this is an indication of how seriously Harvard takes the current threats from the Trump administration. On top of threats to revoke Harvard's tax-exempt...

I've noted here that a feature of Trump's strategy is to take away multiple legs of any stool on which a problem sits. The Harvard problem -- which is shorthand for the uber-endowed prestigious university problem in general -- sits on multiple stools, each with multiple legs. The international student problem is one of those stools, and Trump is busily taking away several legs of that stool. One leg of this stool is the cash cow that international students represent to US universities. According to Karin Fischer, who covers international education for the Chronicle of Higher Education , Typically, international students and out-of-state students pay more than students who go to college in their own home states, sometimes two or three times as much. International students may also pay special fees for things like visa processing and English language exams. . . . about 80% of international students pay their own way, whether from their own families or by borrowing mo...

Over the past several weeks, there's been growing tension between Harvard and the Trump administration, culminating as of yesterday in an additional discontinuance of $2.7 million in federal grants beyond an already frozen $2.2 billion. The Trump administration itemized its complaints last Friday in a letter to President Garber and the board chair , according to the Harvard Crimson : [T]he Trump administration delivered a longer and more focused set of demands than the ones they had shared two weeks earlier, asking Harvard to derecognize pro-Palestine student groups, audit its academic programs for viewpoint diversity, and expel students involved in an altercation at a 2023 pro-Palestine protest on the Harvard Business School campus. It also asked Harvard to reform its admissions process for international students to screen for students “supportive of terrorism and anti-Semitism” — and immediately report international students to federal authorities if they break Univ...