I’m sorry, I know everybody is tired of my university drama but I have to share the argument in favor of eliminating physics and Chinese that is advanced by our Chancellor:

Somehow, we are able to comprehend the elimination of jobs occupied by milk delivery men, typewriter repair technicians or elevator operators. It is far more difficult to embrace the contemporary analog. Yet, in our daily living, it is increasingly difficult to avoid self-checkout, and half of people shopping in the grocery store aisles are fulfilling online orders. The elimination of some positions, the creation of new ones, restructuring or making organizational changes should not, by default, be understood as a sign of financial trouble.

https://www.alestlelive.com/opinion/article_b3c4883a-c5b8-47c5-8643-29bede5eae41.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawJnUcFleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHgvuOB3V-z41Qpvgvwl2RONgEBXSPaawu9S3Oz09e0pJ7qxs2M_2LMaEnJpo_aem_fDP42CePxqsVk5CLALTHqg

Yes, physics is totally the equivalent of home milk delivery. And speaking Chinese has been phased out by the disappearance of Chinese speakers from the planet. They must have left it for another galaxy together with milkmen.

Speaking of which, I believe that home deliveries of fresh milk straight from a cow were a wonderful thing. So there’s nothing much to celebrate in the loss of that custom.

The funny thing, though, is that I’ve heard these arguments from my Dean delivered verbatim. This is cultish behavior at its scariest. One intellectually impoverished dude comes up with an analogy between physics and typewriter repair and then a bunch of people with PhDs eagerly repeat this extraordinary piece of silliness. Honestly, what grade would you give to a freshman student who’d come up with such an analogy? It’s embarrassing.

This is complete bonk:

bro to bro: you have to completely forget dating until you get your life together.

— LUI (@iamluisolivas) April 12, 2025

The truth is the exact opposite. Love is the best fuel to propel you to incredible victories. There’s nothing like falling in love to give you a qualitative leap in every aspect of your life.

Both N and I were a complete mess on every level the day before we met. But our passion for each other propelled the kind of growth in all areas that would have never happened otherwise.

If you are betrayed and disappointed by a group of people, what do you do? What is your coping mechanism?

Mine is that I tell the story to several people in a row. Not at once because it’s the repetition of the story that helps. I understand that this is a very female way to cope. What do men do?

I wept, people. And now you have to:

Look at me. I’m a Malibu Liberal.

I believe in climate justice. Can you believe I actually said those words?! I’ve posted those words. I’ve whispered them into quartz. I ate kelp-based protein and offset my flights to Tulum through an app made by annoying Stanford kids. I composted at scale. I did all of the things.

Our home was solar-powered, LEED-certified, AND tastefully non-invasive—except for the footprint, which was enormous. But it was *intentional*. And even though it cost a fortune, I STILL did all of the things. We marched. We meditated. I once cried over a Greta Thunberg speech in my Range Rover outside Nobu. But nature doesn’t care about ANY of that. It just burns—helped along, of course, by decades of political incompetence.

And when it burned, the city sent not one, not two, but THREE lesbian fire chiefs with not a single hose between them. Look, DEI is important, I get that. But not when the hillside’s ON FIRE. The mayor showed up three days later from Africa, only to take a selfie and mispronounce “Malibu.” And I’m all for representation, but that [REDACTED].

We lost EVERYTHING! And when we tried to rebuild, we met the final boss: Democrat bureaucracy. Six months for a soil report. A year for coastal variances. Our rebuild “disrespected the ridgeline.” Whatever that means. I met with the Architectural Review Board while on mushrooms and I still don’t know if that meeting was real.

Our contractor was approved, then unapproved, then deported. We got a violation for sandbagging our own driveway. We’ve spent $120,000 just to *not* live in our house. I asked a councilwoman for help. She sent me back a workbook titled ‘Rethinking Home’ and a notice from the county asking us not to disturb owl mating zones while our lives are literally ash.

So fuck it.
Fuck the permits.
Fuck the endangered sand beetle.
Fuck the Architectural Review Board.
Fuck the Democrats.
Where is my MAGA hat.

[True Story]

https://x.com/frandalorian/status/1909230004430688655?t=wQ1qSpBwv8TTztB_kEv_-A&s=19

Yesterday we had an open forum for several of the programs that are being cut. The administration is continuing its underhanded tricks. A room that was assigned for the event was way too small for the number of people who came. It was also extremely hot. More than half of the attendees had to stand packed very close together, sweating and barely able to see anything behind the backs of other standing attendees. The whole event was a fire hazard and a safety hazard of great proportions.

These conditions are particularly onerous for older colleagues who have health issues. And that’s precisely the point. These are people who are the most familiar with the programs in which they have worked for 20-30 years. Their perspective carries the most weight. The administration was trying to force them to leave before they could speak.

Many people still spoke and said many important things but I could see that it was physically taxing for quite a few colleagues.

It’s quite outrageous that one single administrator is causing all this damage to buff up his CV and the rest of the administration is obediently carrying out his every wish.

The Chancellor called the police to remove the union members who came to protest at his budget talk with small, hand painted signs. The signs were not threatening or insulting but they did make a gentle pun on his last name. I’ll link but I don’t promise the article wouldn’t be censored again.

This shows that he’s a very inexperienced administrator who is not ready for this role. A person who is fit to lead would have addressed the content of the signs with good humor and sweetness. He’d say, “guys, great pun. My own favorite pun on my last name is this…” That would have been more productive for him than turning protesters into martyrs.

Today, we had another, much larger protest, and many more people came with this exact sign. Because they now know that it gets to him.

Forget about my university and this particular Chancellor. The point is that if you want to have an impact, you can’t leak. You can’t leak emotionally. Practice, meditate, imagine that you are surrounding yourselves with high walls that conceal you from view.

If you are a teacher, an administration, or a supervisor of any kind, you cannot respond to people under your command emotionally. You lose all authority by doing that. Even to direct insults you can only respond with motherly or fatherly kindness. And it has to be completely genuine. People experience high levels of anxiety around a teacher or boss who comes off as uncertain and emotionally incontinent. They act out more because of this anxiety.

Also, one more important trick. If somebody sends you long, ranting complaints, never respond to them with more than three sentences.

Sentence 1 should be: Dear ABC, thank you for communicating your concerns / wishes / ideas.

Sentence 2: Unfortunately, I will not be able to implement these suggestions. (Or whatever is appropriate to the situation).

Sentence 3: I propose that you…. And briefly outline what you propose. Briefly being the operative word.

The most loserish thing you can do is to start writing a point-by-point rebuttal of the complaint, bickering over details. Or give explanations of why you do things you consider necessary. Whoever explains, loses. Forget the word “because.” “Because” will be your downfall as a figure of authority. 

I have talked down such a number of problem students, colleagues, and administrators over the years that I am absolutely certain that this is the only way. And you know what? The administrator with whom I had the most ferocious public confrontations (during COVID it was) later told me privately that he really respected how I never gave any reasons and was always very secure in my conviction of what I was doing. Since then, we became great allies on a different cause while still despising each other’s position on COVID. And I now see him imitate my “no, I will not be doing this, thank you” in our current struggle which is kind of really cute.

On every channel where I appear, women show up in the comments to say that my hair is too crazy and this prevents them from understanding my argument. Every channel!

I am yet to meet a single man who’d have any problem with my hair. It’s always women. And OK, I do have wild hair. I cut it as short as it’s ever been. I try to keep it less wild. But why is it such an issue?

I have always struggled with understanding the language and the rites of female communities. I was brought up mostly by men, and this is the result. Can anybody help? I’m sincerely stumped as to why it’s the hair and not absolutely anything else they could pick on. It doesn’t hurt my feelings or anything. But I feel that something is being communicated to me that I’m not managing to understand correctly.

Whatever you dislike about Trump, at least he’s not doing this:

One of the UK’s biggest police forces has temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to boost diversity, The Telegraph can disclose.

West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/09/west-yorkshire-police-blocks-white-applicants-diversity/

We would be in the same place or worse if Kamala won. And even now, there’s one election between us and this scenario. It’s a very sobering thought.

P.S. In the same vein, here are BBC journalists grilling Kemi Badenoch on why she hasn’t watched some dumb Netflix series. Badenoch tries to explain that she’s working, visiting constituencies, trying to make important things happen but the idiot journalists go on and on about a Netflix soap. It’s completely out there.

Kemi Badenoch torches BBC Breakfast: ‘I don’t need to watch Casualty to know what's going on in the NHS.’ 🔥

This is insane. The BBC are visibly offended that Kemi Badenoch *hasn't* watched the Netflix drama Adolescence.

I had to post the whole thing, it's utterly absurd. pic.twitter.com/sTr9ZJhCmQ

— Lee Harris (@addicted2newz) April 10, 2025

Shouldn’t the journalists be investigated for product placement practices? Is it now normal to do this kind of clearly corrupt stuff?

Badenoch is great, by the way. Hopefully, the next Prime Minister.

On a less entertaining note, three out of four student awardees sitting at my table had to take anti-anxiety meds to be able to go on stage to receive their awards. They weren’t expected to say anything, only walk across the stage and receive their certificates.

At the same time, my Ukrainian exchange students of the same age who spent the last three years hiding in bomb shelters don’t have anything remotely similar to these issues.

And I know exactly why. The Ukrainian students were never told that the option to freak out over little daily things to the point of needing to be medicated exists. The American students, though, were given this as the primary behavior model. These are all young women. It’s a highly impressionable cohort. If they grow up surrounded by endless manifestations of performative frailty, they accept it as a norm. These are patterns of behavior they perceive as normal.

What’s worse, young men are becoming increasingly coopted into this model of behavior as well. It starts as performative but after a while it becomes real. That’s how we end up with people who grew up in complete safety and comfort yet exhibit the symptoms of a very battered psyche.

This is the opposite of the “talking cure.” People talk themselves into having psychological dysfunction. The anxiety and the other symptoms they exhibit are completely real and very painful. But they are all caused by how we all collectively narrate to ourselves our encounters will small issues of daily life. We value emotional dysregulation so it proliferates. We don’t value resilience, so it fades.

The award ceremony yesterday had 160+ people in attendance. The show was stolen by a department head who climbed onstage to announce his awards and started with, “And the recipient of the Professor Peter Pratchett Memorial Award is…”

Half of the people in the audience gasped. We had all seen Peter on Monday when he bravely stood up to the Chancellor during the yearly budget meeting. Was Peter dead? Had the Chancellor done something to him?

“We established the Peter Pratchett Memorial Award because his great achievements…” droned on the department head.

“My boyfriend is supposed to be writing a test in Pratchett’s course on Friday,” a student sitting next to me chirped. “Is he really… I mean…”

Finally, the department head noticed people waving at him from the back of the room.

“Oh!” he said. “God. What did I say? I didn’t mean Peter Pratchett Memorial Award. I don’t know why I said that. Please don’t tell Peter or it will be my memorial. He’s fine! It’s Peter Pratchett Award, not memorial!”

“Please continue with your department’s awards,” said the Dean dripping with venom. A beautiful fantasy of great savings occasioned by a professor’s passing was being rudely snatched away.

“Yes, so. We are also happy to announce the Jim Lacey Memorial Award,” went on the flustered department head. “Wait, is he dead? Just a second, I want to make completely sure.”

He peered nearsightedlly at his brochure.

“Yes, this one is actually dead!” he announced triumphantly.