People have criticized Leila Guerriero for being too kind and gentle in her treatment of Silvia Labayru. I find this criticism to be altogether unreasonable. To get a subject to disgorge a wealth of intimate details and confess to doing terrible things, you can’t approach them with self-righteousness and accusations. You have to establish a relationship of trust. You have to find something in them to like.

Guerriero cultivated her subject like a gardener tends to a rare and fragile flower. Throughout that time, she got to know Labayru. She met her husbands, her children, her friends. She participated in the daily life of her family. Unless you’re a total sociopath, you will feel a degree of closeness to a person you got to know so well. You will see their side of the story, and you will develop kindness and attachment towards them. All of this is clear from the structure and the tone of Guerriero’s book.

Still, as readers, we get to make up our own minds. Having read for five hours straight yesterday, I am now halfway through the book, and I have to say that my personal feelings towards Labayru are a lot less kind than those of Guerriero. The book would not be possible without Guerriero’s kind feelings towards her subject. I wouldn’t have any material to be able to make up my own mind. There is no need for me to accept the journalist’s perspective, even as I feel deep gratitude for the extraordinary amount of work she put into this project.

Silvia Labayru, the subject of Leila Guerriero’s investigative report La llamada, became a leftist domestic terrorist at the age of 18. Her organization, Montoneros, was like today’s Antifa. Hilariously, it was funded by the same people who fund Antifa today and for the same purpose.

Like most of revolutionaries everywhere, Labayru was a child of extraordinary privilege. The society she wanted to destroy was the one that gave her luxury, comfort, exotic travel, a high degree of material well-being, and amazing prospects. She told herself that she was motivated by a desire to help the underprivileged, but whenever she had to spend 15 minutes in the company of said underprivileged, she would realize that she found them disgusting, badly smelling, noisy, and very annoying.

What was it, then, that made such a young woman so angry that she would be willing to lay down her life to manifest her unhappiness? It becomes very clear what drove Labayru’s rage when you read about the family she comes from. Her father was a high-ranking officer in the military, but he and his wife were extremely liberal, even in today’s terms, in every aspect of their lives. Suffice it to say that Labayru’s mother was one of those abortion fetishists. We rarely talk about such women, but they most certainly exist. They get pregnant in order to have abortions and tell everybody about that. They derive some sort of a weird sexual enjoyment from both the abortion and from shocking others by these narratives. Since her very early childhood, Labayru was regaled with stories of her mother’s endless abortions. She started getting into the fetish herself, getting purposefully pregnant, and then aborting until her first husband put an end to the insanity and forced her to stop doing it.

La llamada (and my retelling of it for those who can’t read it) is valuable, in part, because it demonstrates to us what goes on in the wealthy families that produce domestic tourists. And it’s truly shocking.

Latin America has extraordinary investigative journalism, the best in the world. There are people who conduct amazing, meticulous investigations and publish 600-page books that are incredibly enjoyable to read.

I’m reading La llamada [The Call] by the Argentinian journalist Leila Guerriero, and it’s one of those books of investigative journalism that is not only fascinating to read but also has a definite literary quality. To write the book, Guerriero delved deep into the life of Silvia Labayru who, in the 1970s, belonged to a leftist domestic terrorist organization in Argentina called the Montoneros. Labayru was kidnapped by the military dictatorship and tortured, but she survived and now lives in Madrid. Guerriero spent years in weekly and often daily meetings with Labayru, hanging around, listening, participating in her daily life, trying to build a relationship and gain her subject’s trust.

Labayru’s story is complicated. She has been shunned by her fellow militants for a variety of reasons. As a former member of a terrorist organization, there are things that she doesn’t want to reveal or probably even remember. There is a lot that she and other militants remember differently. Often very differently. It is only because Guerriero put in an extraordinary amount of time, patience, and kindness that she managed to get all of these people to talk to her about their violent and often tragic past.

I will talk about the book itself and the fascinating things I learned from it later, but the point I want to make right now is that there is no aspect of what Guerriero created in this book that any form of artificial intelligence will ever be able to touch. The book is a product of a human relationship.

Guerriero is a very talented journalist. Her skill in organizing the narrative woven out of the testimonies of many different people is outstanding. The book is extremely easy to follow. Guerriero very wisely avoids making the story about herself. The only American journalist of this caliber is Sam Quinones. In Latin America there are many, and I’m overjoyed that I discovered a new one in Guerriero.

AI or no AI, we will absolutely need journalists, but these have to be people who don’t want to go down an easy path and just phone things in without putting in any effort. When you read Leila Guerriero’s book, you feel overpowered by the admiration for the professionalism of this journalist, who is so excellent at what she does.

You need to be an absolute psychopath to film something like this and publish it for clicks:

YouTuber Jesse Ridgway and his wife abort their child after finding out the baby had Down syndrome.

Ridgway cited that they chose to kill the baby after deciding that he and his wife didn't want to be inconvenienced with a child with Down syndrome.

"Things have been pretty dark… pic.twitter.com/NsloTi8dcq

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) June 4, 2026

Everything is for sale with these people. Everything is monetized. The guy is now monetizing the abortion with maniacal intensity. To describes himself as and his wife as “two people grieving the loss of their unborn child.” It’s downright scary how devoid of all decency and morality these mega popular influencers can be.

I’m reading a book on the Chinese education system because my husband really wants me to read it and discuss it with him. The book is very enlightening. Here is one quote:

Gregory Yao’s daughter was only five years old, but she was already taking eight classes a week, including math cram classes and the “early MBA,” which trained babies as young as four months in “six core areas,” including leadership and global vision, according to one provider.

I am irreducibly Western so I find this kind of thing to be hilarious.

In America we are raising our children for a different world. And we are absolutely right.

I pass the Jerry Seinfeld test, so I’m allowed.

Never thought I would quote Glenn Beck but the dude is completely correct here:

Candace Owens taking a "suspicious trip to Russia" is NOT the real story. It's only proof that Russia and Alexander Dugin's massive propaganda operation is working.

Dugin is right about what is happening to the West. It is evil. But that's the trap. His "solution" would destroy… pic.twitter.com/1s9wE3ooeg

— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) June 4, 2026

The good news is that as a result of Candace Owens and Co shilling so cloyingly for the Russians, many right-wingers are finally getting black-pilled on Russia and starting to figure out what is actually happening.

Let’s conduct a little test to see if people understand why these apparently insane stories are coming out of academia. Think back to this morning’s post about the academic awards lottery. What recent political events prompted this change in the way we are now going to manage student awards? There is reason behind every madness and there is a very clear reason behind this particular manifestation of lunacy. What is it? Who can guess?

Karmelo Anthony attorney Mike Howard is now asking the jury pool about current immigration policies in the US and whether they agree with them or not.

— MaryAnn Martinez (@MaryAnnreports) June 3, 2026

That the judge is allowing a political litmus test which is entirely unrelated to the actual court case under consideration is a very bad sign.

Our operational papers do not allow us to remain in the position of department chair for more than two terms. However, there are people who have been in that role for over 15 years because “nobody else wants to do it.” It’s not surprising that nobody feels like hurting a colleague’s feelings by trying to dislodge them from a job they held since before the Obama administration. Such people would have to go back to teaching and doing research but how do you come back after a couple of decades outside of these pursuits?

This is wrong, though, because look at me. I’m completely jaded and exhausted after only two terms. If I remained for an additional term, not only would it be undemocratic, it would also be completely impractical. I am of no use to the department any longer. With every new round of administrative madness, I just want to give up. And this is precisely why the administration so gladly grants exceptions to our two-terms-in-office rule.

Our Dean says this openly. “I’m supposed to be a historian but I haven’t taught or done any research for such a long time that I no longer remember anything,” he says. He is terrified of not being Dean any longer and that’s why he is very convenient to the higher-ups. “The provost is my boss. I have to do what my boss tells me or I will be out of a job,” he keeps saying. He’s tenured, so not having a job does not mean that he will be fired. It only means that he will have to become a regular professor and this is something he no longer knows how to do. I am grateful that he says this so openly.

The whole system is completely messed up because of this issue. Professors should rotate out of academic leadership jobs at regular intervals. But, again, it’s convenient to do it the way it’s currently done. Convenient to the administration, that is, but definitely not for faculty members or students.