I used to be a huge proponent of higher education, even taught college for a few years.
Now I advise people to choose a career path where 1) certification is required and 2) it's required to be onsite. A lot of these are blue-collar jobs (A/C repair/installation, plumber, electrician) and some come optionally with the ability to get a college degree. For example, RN/LPN you can choose a 1-2 year certification or a BSN (4-year degree) or get the 1-2 year certification first and then the degree later.
The goal is not to enter a field where you are competing with the entire world in a field that anyone can legally do. For example, I/T - where it's much cheaper to hire a slew of offshore Indians/Filipinos, etc. than 1 American with benefits, retirement, days off, health care, etc. There are laws against companies hiring foreigners over Americans, but Corporate America has ignored them for 25 years.
I fully agree with you, but after 30 or so years of swinging a hammer or crawling into crawlspaces, you’re still only 50 and may not be able to work like that. It’s a tough decision.
I know what you're saying. I climbed ladders for thirty years; tears up your hips, knees, and ankles. There's only one way out and that's to start your own small business. At least that's what I did. I saw the writing on the wall looking at the older guys around me, took what I learned, and went into business for myself 25 years ago. I'm 60 now and employ ten people. No business degree and no formal training, just the school of hard knocks. It can be done.
Don, hard knocks indeed, I am also 60 and own a business. I think of it - the blows - as unto a research and development budget. By that I mean, I keep trying and keep trying and keep failing, and it, that failure, keeps informing the next move and through 29 years of effort we have arrived at something that approximates knowledge and success.
One of the byproducts is, I hate human beings: a misanthropy begotten through experience. Hum, not unusual or unique I suspect.
As the revolutionary, disabled Tarzan in the real commie jungle of Nicaragua without a pension or any benefits, I've been facing the dilemma of surviving this WW3. I remember how a year ago God sent me to Substack where I've written and been singing and dancing to the history, err, my story ...
I agree that there needs to be a plan for a pivot at some point. To some degree, you can get to the point where you delegate a lot to the younger guys, but, unless you want to be the corporate part of the operation, you have to retire from it or hurt yourself.
In my household, I recognized that the physical work my husband did for all those early years that allowed me to be home with the babies would eventually be either a) too intense or b) boring after a few decades, and so I built a career that would support us once the kids are grown, that I can do until my last.
It has been a combination of luck, insight, and bull-headedness. I wasn’t going to let anyone *else* raise them, and that included people I love, because I could see the consequences of their approaches all around me.
And I looked around and marriages and had a lot of the same thoughts. I saw people getting stuck in their patterns and ideologies, to the detriment of their relationships. So I knew *that* wasn’t the way.
Then I discovered that if I just applied the principles of taking responsibility for myself and my own growth, of turning every moment when I could blame outward into an opportunity to improve myself along the same lines, both my parenting and my partnership would improve.
How many actually swing a hammer now? I got even my very-traditional husband to buy a Paslode when he was installing wooden wainscoting and ceiling. And that was 16 years ago.
Work smarter, not harder. I had three years in formal electronics technician/technology education, loved the work and the field. Still jumped at the opportunity to take a trade plumbing-gasfitting at the age of 42. I would rather have become an electrician (closer to my actual interest) but beggars can't be choosers. I had no trouble carrying my trade through to retirement at 65.
Absolutely no knock on viaveritasvita, but I've noticed that whenever you can do something that another person can't possibly do, that person tends to think it's easy for you, no matter how hard it actually is. If they can do it even a little, they realize how hard it is and how much time and effort you've put in to make it look easy.
Not to mention getting paid and not getting hurt from doing the job in the first place.
I mean, what does it matter to our car if it's me or the wife that replaces the lightbulb in the headlights? It's her that does it, for a simple reason: her hands fit in the extremely cramped space under hood behind the lights. My paws don't.
So she does that. On the other hand, she can't hoist the Husqvarna and cut down a tree with a 2' thick bole, to say nothing about splitting it or swinging the axe.
The one who can, does. The one who's best at it, shows and tells.
You got to have a lot of PhDs and other titles to not get that, I think?
Exactly. Working with your back works until your body gives out. And the fact of the matter is that consigning really bright kids to jobs as tradesmen underutilizes their natural gifts. The education system is broken, but that doesn't mean we throw out education. We need to fix the system. It's doable. It's just a matter of doing the work.
Please refer to me as Doctor Mrhounddog from now on. I have conferred the necessary degrees and pedigrees upon myself. I invented Mac & Cheese, and that Uno game. Yeah, that's tha ticket.
I'm so proud of our two grandsons. One is training to become a welder, the other a diesel mechanic. They will work hard but they will have their dignity.
I am of the same opinion. Last Tuesday, our boiler having decided not to work, and our customary HVAC provider offering us a many-day wait, we found another provider. Of the young man in charge I asked, "Are you a product of (local) North Penn VoTech?" as I had known a number of students going there, and encouraged them in that direction. "No," he replied, "a product of PennState"--which has rather a reputation for engineering. An ME in fact. So here is someone of engineering level study choosing to go into furnace repair. And the difference was apparent. You are so correct, Zero Social Credits, in the job-security-wisdom of "requiring personal presence on site" element. Another consideration---the overhead involved in maintaining a physical business location is eliminated. As a side note, "White Van Man".
I agree for the most part, but if you visit any construction site, you will not hear much if any English spoken. At least not in much of the country. One journeyman plumber supervising 10 “undocumented immigrants” isn’t a viable career path forward either.
"There are laws against companies hiring foreigners over Americans, but Corporate America has ignored them for 25 years."
No, corporations have been ignoring the law for more than 50 years. I started my career at Texas Instruments in Houston and the job ads were full of high requirement positions for ridiculously low wages. When no American was stupid enough to apply, the companies would say they couldn't find an American and hire a bunch of foreign engineers. Usually Indians.
There is no end to creative university degrees. My favorite, that I actually saw on a billboard, was a BA (I assume) in golf course management, from some state agricultural college, I think.
Often the better programmers score higher on type3 ADHD tests too, and that'll tend to lower the score they'll get for a degree where most of the marks are for turning up, chatting with lecturers and making it hand-ins flowery.
Once out in the "real world" measuring programmer ability and productivity is quite hard. Some programmers hand in stuff that passes the tests and works, and some go a bit further and program it to work for future tests and some program it in a way that will allow it to be maintainable
Some are starters, some are finishers, some like to just fix the minimum to lower retest, some can't leave something potentially imperfect.
The perfect is the enemy of the good enough, but often only perfect is good enough.
In my experience a lot of the hard stuff that got exported and out-sourced abroad is being taken back in house as delays and rework caused more expense.
So in short never try and predict the market and if you enjoy programming and IT go do it, you don't necessarily need a degree but knowing the few combinations of algorithm's and data structures and especially the bits of mathematics (set theory, combinatorics predicate calculus) does make a better programmer.
I completely cannot do anything useful with the notation for predicate calculus, but knowing a little about being able to prove something WOULD work for all inputs made my programming vastly better, the same with set theory and normalisation, but my databases (which is vastly more of an art than the maths would suggest) are robust. I think it's very import to tinker on something unimportant then learn the maths behind it then redo it properly, and tinker in as many different areas as possible, it's often one areas solution
Mind you a 4 year degree could easily be done in 6 months if taught intensely so a lot of the problem is that universities are not very productive teachers.
A "full stack" programmer will be 100++ times more productive than the man on the street so Throwing 25 people at a problem especially code will just make a mess of most IT problems.
Of course there is lower skill boilerplate, but that is mostly automated or AI is making a lot of headway. Also those foreign programmers are also now solving local IT problems in their own language.
More programmers just means more problems can be solved!
Mind you i did build my own water-cooled PC, so I guess i can be a plumber as well.
A wonderful take-down of 'Doctor' Gay, who not only fails to think critically but doesn't even have enough sense to try to hide her plagiarism. I remember my father once wanted an academic research career but, as he put it, "the '60s ruined academic science", so he went into industry, where he turned his wrath toward "the effing DA". I need to dig deeper, but I wonder if the left wokeism that dominates higher learning is a remnant of the '60s or whether this crap cycles every 50 years or so.
I red-pilled hard during the plandemic, and one of the hard pills I swallowed was the realization that my belief in the academic system to provide mobility and security was grossly wrong. The letters in my degrees are longer than my last name (and I have a moderately long surname) and I am still a professor in a public university, but I no longer believe in the value of higher education to create critical thinkers. I am encouraging (and will help to support) my two college-graduate kids get certifications and licenses in practical, tangible, portable jobs that will foot bills and provide satisfaction. After 40+ years training pharmacy and doctoral students, and after protesting vaccine mandates, DEI, and general mediocrity, I've been told by my betters I am 'poison' and am pretty much shackled in doing much of anything other than sit on useless committees. I am using this year to feather my nest and plan my exit so I can write my stories, expand my organic garden, grow and process medicinal herbs, and sell eggs and chickens. The good news? My philanthropy to ANY academic institution, including mine (UNC, UM system, Harvard, JHU) has dwindled to ZERO. Not a penny more. If enough of us decline giving, they will feel the pinch.
"The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive." is a great quote. So Hallelujah to that. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/how-diversity-narrows-the-mind
And they've now successfully brainwashed two consecutive generations of young Americans with ideas which do not work. The rest of us now have to contend with workplaces full of toxic wokeness spread by coworkers who do not work.
They "work" as long as it's only a small minority of people doing it.
But when EVERYBODY tries to live at everyone else's expense NO ONE can.
The problem is that it looks superficially productive (emoluments / time-effort) and will this entice more people into it. Of course when you look at the bigger picture this is a negative sum game and wealth destroying as the "productivity" (ability to counter shortages) of the economy is lowered.
Not to be a Debbie Downer, but do you really believe Claudine Gay is the first domino in a chain that will fundamentally change woke Ivy League institutions? Not a chance. She’ll be allowed to “step down” to “spend more time with her family” or some other PR BS reason, the Harvard Corporation will say a few nice things and everyone will move on. Their next president may be marginally less woke, but he or she (or xim or whatever) won’t change a thing. Oh, they might tinker at the edges, let a few administrators go, but DIE and race based admissions will continue; billions of dollars in their endowment is plenty to weather the storm, the “brand” will survive.
she is not the first domino, just a highly visible one. the first domino was the ability to start mocking these people. the second was "those who pay" waking up and starting to put the hurt on the universities by saying "i'm not funding this garbage." ms gay is not even a cause, she's a symptom. the huge rise against and discrediting of her is a sign that the societal immune system is kicking in. woke has survived as an ableine paradox. as the gaslighting ends, it will change faster than many seem to suspect. it was never popular outside of some small circles.
I agree. BUT imo I think we will divide into little California's and Florida's, at first, before the progressive puritans realize they don't have to use a poop map to navigate Ocean Drive in Miami but do on Van Ness Ave in San Francisco.
there will be bastions that go through one more round of rarefication as they sequester themselves and pursue some sort of fully recursive ideological singularity, but they are going to find themselves ever more isolated and the absurdity of the positions they will need to adopt to sustain the some form of dissonance dodging internal coherence will push past exotic into outright self-parody.
the whole thing has crossed lines of unpopularity and ridiculousness from which it cannot recover.
too many saw, too many laughed, and the impervious integument was pierced.
this is just mop up now. will take time, but the outcome is already forgone.
If only we could help people to connect, let's say, the complete hypocrisy of the way the upper crust in Martha's Vineyard "welcomed" the illegals and the complete lawlessness of allowing 730k illegals to enter our country since October.
I'm still having a hard time with that amongst my liberal friends/colleagues.
I always suggest a sponsorship program whereby open-borders people take in 5 illegal immigrants and are responsible for their housing, food, clothing, education, and healthcare, and are also liable for any crimes they might commit. People balk at that for some reason.
No. I just don't have a choice. Some are family as well.
I'm still close enough with a few of my friends in college to give them shit. But I've also lost several friends during covid. They could not handle the truth:
Yes, migration to hopefully less crazy & tyrannical places. CA just continues to devolve - now instead of Amber Alerts they’re imposing Ebony Alerts in 2024 for the missing person of color! I kid you not- true.
Gato - Flippin Jersey is on to the malodorous stench, as this will not change much at high cost brainwashing mills. Because there's a bigger picture than "woke" which runs far deeper, and has been going on far longer. Subversion, inversion, perversion and conversion of institutions and government can take generations. The "brand" invasion will not be abandoned overnight because of a minor setback, which will be swept under the rug. When elite sociopaths are providing the corporate and endowment trust funding for education, government agencies, judges and politicians, its an all you can eat buffet of Whores d'Oeuvres Mr. Mulder. https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/free-for-me-but-not-for-thee/comment/45697320
I think you are misinterpreting this as a failed meritocracy, when in fact it is a successful sociopathocracy. The sociopathic personality type enjoys and takes pride in cheating and takes pleasure in successfully deceiving others. Everything about the current system of elite colleges encourages this from the admissions to the classroom, but especially the admissions. Parents assist in faking their child's admissions portfolio by bullying coaches and teachers, pushing children into hobbies and fields they have no interest in, or directly creating fake club membership or test scores as was famously exposed in some court cases.
The students then learn to cheat their way through the college system itself. A co-worker of my wife who went to an elite school bragged about how she had gotten a copy of the professor's file of previously submitted essays and used them to pass. She was proud of it. I noticed that Gay's stolen acknowledgement was from a paper published just a year or two before her own. She didn't even try to hide her tracks by using something more obscure. Why would she? She was showing the kind of verve and initiative in cheating that they prefer.
Why are these preferred and selected for traits? When they want an FBI agent like Peter Strzok, do they want someone who will follow some internal moral compass, or rather do they want someone who will gleefully follow orders to run a shadow coup? Note that he ended his career ensconced in academia as an example to students of a job well done. When they are looking for an FDA regulator, do they want someone who will fulfill the mission of the FDA to protect the public from bad drugs and tainted foods? Or do they want someone who will take the bribe of a pharma board position and shut their mouth?
Obviously, I could go on and on with this for every government agency. It is obvious that they prefer and reward people of low moral quality and who are willing to lie and cheat to advance themselves. Those are the fodder of a totalitarian system. The government funded university system has adjusted to comply with the demands of the modern institutions of our society. Many of the people involved are well aware of how they got their own jobs, hence their defense of Gay.
One final thought I would leave you with is to imagine the psychological burden of being a person raised to honesty and moral integrity in the midst of a cohort of budding sociopaths. That is the hellscape naive parents send their children into thinking they are buying a first class education (of 90% A grades.) Instead, their young adult will have to sink or swim with the sociopaths.
"The only crime is getting caught" is axiomatic truth. So is the corollary:
"And then only if you're actually convicted"
Sad, but true.
Of course, behaving that way is a choice. It is when the negative consequences of choosing to behave that way are removed (or even worse, rewarding the behaviour) that it becomes a societal problem.
zufp..... thanks for the effort that was a long post, and I thought it was very intelligent. It’s a slightly different argument, and I’ve ever heard before and rather convincing.
When I was doing my PhD in Physics we’d often hear the phrase “the Battle between the Theorists and Empiricists”. It became more of a phrase to say “those that test stuff and those that don’t”. In science both types of work have their place but in recent decades you see the rise of “testing by computer” as if it is the same as actual testing and measuring.
Because of this you get a slippery slope of assumptions becoming facts and ideas that are nonsense in the real world being hypothecated into seemingly real things. The power of suggestion and gaslighting is huge.
All because someone weak willed made the mistake of taking a ranting Theorist at his word. And then more weak willed people (and possibly simps) kept it going.
Huxley had a great quote: the great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
Well when you exist without verifiable facts you can come up with all sorts of nonsense. Sadly politicians and other institutions give these people money and then the damage spreads to society and real people.
That was the very first thing which popped into my head. Fictional models produced by rabid ideologs starting from a pre-determined result and working backwards to construct a false logic which will support that desired result. Then offered up as incontrovertible proof of man-made global warming.
And this is how they justify coming for our gas stoves. 🤡🌍
When I worked in the defense industry on the Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis team in Aerosol Sciences, we used to joke, "The model is correct. Its reality that has it wrong."
At least we knew models only _stood in for something else_ and not Truth.
I have always been a bit embarrassed for the ivy leaguers for their glaring lack of common sense. Give me a good plumber ANY DAY over an academic scholar!
I read an article about a blue collar guy who became a prof at a prestigious university. The president of the U held a function at his home. Blue collar guy uses one of the toilets in the mansion and sees a note explaining that the toilet is not quite working properly. Helpfully, the president attached detailed instructions on how to get it to work--"jiggle the handle 10-12 times, wait 5-7 seconds, jiggle handle again 5-7 times, wait for sound of water filling tank to end, now flush!"
Blue collar guy lifted tank top, saw something came unattached...attached it...problem solved.
That usually is the little buoy that lifts the lever that shuts the water off when the cistern is topped up that has come unstuck a little, blocking the outlet to the bowl from the cistern.
I know because I have done that very thing at more than one friend's house/apartment.
But academics rarely have any real life experience/knowledge, not even people in STEM-fields do.
Spoke to one guy today in fact. He was in a hurry. His car told him the battery in his electronic key needed replacing.
So he was driving to the mechanic's to have them do it, because he don't know how to.
I think we can start consider "IQ2 debunked because this guy is in Mensa.
If the president cannot be held to a higher standard and gets a free pass when it comes to plagiarism, what does that mean for her students? Will they also get free passes? Is it OK for them to plagiarize their work as well? Asking for a friend.
Me too. One lesson I've learned well since 2020 is that my kids will go to university to grow up and have some fun if they want but they will only be studying a degree that gives them a practical skill when they leave. Otherwise plumbing! Dentist, nurse, engineer and accounting. No doctors though. Done with those for a while 😂
"just how bereft of ethics or integrity can one be?"
When I got to this line, I was reminded that at more than one university, professors who taught medical ethics were fired for speaking out against vaccine mandates as unethical.
As usual, you are more optimistic than I am, Gato. I predict Gay survives no matter what comes out in the next few months. If it is found she eats puppies for breakfast, that will also be defended.
My grandfather had a favourite saying, "There are none so blind as those who will not see". (Often paired with comments pertaining to equine proximity to dihydrogen oxide.)
Its highly improbable that the superior beings who elevated Ms. Gay to her current honourable estate allow themselves to take of notice trivialities like scholarly ineptitude or middle school level plagiarism. Those minor sins, when evaluated against Ms. Gay's numerous appropriately ticked checkboxes are simply irrelevant.
..."failed upward power-fools."...ya mean the brain dead intellectuals that are the only ones who see themselves as smarter than the herd?
Pure retardium? That is pure genius. Explains everything about the left and even some of the right.
Thomas Sewell...this guy is the best for explaining the things that the left always murkifies and tries to dumb down.
Too bad that almost half the country is now in love with the fascist left. It's mostly the younger crowd who have yet to learn an extremely hard lesson in the treachery and slavery angendized by these terrorists.
.."failed upward power-fools."...ya mean the brain dead intellectuals that are the only ones who see themselves as smarter than the herd? Nurse Dee says, "Dunning-Kruger effect".
A brilliant piece. I taught at the university level for 34 years and watched as it became intellectually bankrupt. At one time I thought a background steeped in the humanities was the best gift someone could give himself.
But I have one very large issue with you, Gato. Jennifer Pritzker can call himself anything he likes, including Jennifer. But he's still a dude. Please don't fall for the nonsense of using his feminine pronouns, which I see you did here. To do so is to accept his imaginary view of himself and to cave in to the transgender upending of reality. He is not a woman. I am. And to say he is a woman is an insult to all of us who come to womanhood honestly.
And another member of this scumbag family is the governor of Illinois. Why any human population remains in Illinois is hard to fathom. What a complete and utter wasteland.
My beloved son, wife and my grandchildren reside in Illinois - not their home state, and not in Chicago, and would very much like for me to relocate there to be closer to them. I just can't do it. Am I a horrible mother and grandmother? Yes. For not being able to convince them to LEAVE that awful state!!!!
In Gay’s field, isn’t the dissertation more like taking a test than providing new ideas? Her “plagiarism” was really just her showing that she know the right/acceptable answers to the questions.
Unless donors start pulling money again, she isn’t going to be fired. The business of Harvard is to pretend like they are the premiere, unassailable academic institution in the country. Giving into whining from the right wing hurts them far more than not acknowledging a mistake.
There hasn't really been anything new in the humanities since before oh say the 5th century or so. 99.9% of it no matter the origin is simply same old same old, using different words and images.
I mean, Foucault could seem revolutionary only because the majority of his following never read de Sade or Rousseau, and they in turn only look new if... and so on back to Ancient Greece, Babylon, Egypt et cetera.
A career in humanities is largely repackaging and rebranding old goods and update the language used by the salesman.
I say that as a refuge from academia and with a background in the humanities, which I think of as "the inanities" nowadays, disgusted as I am with the total lack of intellectual honesty on display all over the western world.
My dad was on staff at a prestigious university, though in a department constantly underfunded. I always felt at home on a university campus. Now I recoil at the stench. James Lindsay and his cohorts purposefully plagiarized Mein Kampf and submitted it to a female journal as part of their Grievance Studies romp. They were attempting to show the absurdity of academia, but like the movie The Producers, they were taken all too seriously by the fools. https://www.timesofisrael.com/duped-academic-journal-publishes-rewrite-of-mein-kampf-as-feminist-manifesto/
I used to be a huge proponent of higher education, even taught college for a few years.
Now I advise people to choose a career path where 1) certification is required and 2) it's required to be onsite. A lot of these are blue-collar jobs (A/C repair/installation, plumber, electrician) and some come optionally with the ability to get a college degree. For example, RN/LPN you can choose a 1-2 year certification or a BSN (4-year degree) or get the 1-2 year certification first and then the degree later.
The goal is not to enter a field where you are competing with the entire world in a field that anyone can legally do. For example, I/T - where it's much cheaper to hire a slew of offshore Indians/Filipinos, etc. than 1 American with benefits, retirement, days off, health care, etc. There are laws against companies hiring foreigners over Americans, but Corporate America has ignored them for 25 years.
I fully agree with you, but after 30 or so years of swinging a hammer or crawling into crawlspaces, you’re still only 50 and may not be able to work like that. It’s a tough decision.
I know what you're saying. I climbed ladders for thirty years; tears up your hips, knees, and ankles. There's only one way out and that's to start your own small business. At least that's what I did. I saw the writing on the wall looking at the older guys around me, took what I learned, and went into business for myself 25 years ago. I'm 60 now and employ ten people. No business degree and no formal training, just the school of hard knocks. It can be done.
Don, hard knocks indeed, I am also 60 and own a business. I think of it - the blows - as unto a research and development budget. By that I mean, I keep trying and keep trying and keep failing, and it, that failure, keeps informing the next move and through 29 years of effort we have arrived at something that approximates knowledge and success.
One of the byproducts is, I hate human beings: a misanthropy begotten through experience. Hum, not unusual or unique I suspect.
Haha, I used to be a people person until stupid people ruined it for me. 🤣
Yes. See Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Aww. Some humans are very cool. So cool, even cats like them
I know what you're talking about, my friend!
https://liborsoural.substack.com/p/c-o-o-l-n-e-s-s
https://liborsoural.substack.com/p/the-a-t-o-m-d-e-m-i-g-o-d-s
https://liborsoural.substack.com/p/vulgardote
https://liborsoural.substack.com/p/the-paranoid-critical-transformation
https://liborsoural.substack.com/p/beggars-banquet
https://liborsoural.substack.com/p/no-lives-matter-minus-tomcat-smacdonald
As the revolutionary, disabled Tarzan in the real commie jungle of Nicaragua without a pension or any benefits, I've been facing the dilemma of surviving this WW3. I remember how a year ago God sent me to Substack where I've written and been singing and dancing to the history, err, my story ...
Yet I still have no sympathy for the Devil!
https://liborsoural.substack.com/p/emmanuel
https://liborsoural.substack.com/p/lazarus-john-11145
https://liborsoural.substack.com/p/lilith-and-libor
https://liborsoural.substack.com/p/numb-not
I agree that there needs to be a plan for a pivot at some point. To some degree, you can get to the point where you delegate a lot to the younger guys, but, unless you want to be the corporate part of the operation, you have to retire from it or hurt yourself.
In my household, I recognized that the physical work my husband did for all those early years that allowed me to be home with the babies would eventually be either a) too intense or b) boring after a few decades, and so I built a career that would support us once the kids are grown, that I can do until my last.
Thanks for raising your own children, AND for thinking about your husband.
It has been a combination of luck, insight, and bull-headedness. I wasn’t going to let anyone *else* raise them, and that included people I love, because I could see the consequences of their approaches all around me.
And I looked around and marriages and had a lot of the same thoughts. I saw people getting stuck in their patterns and ideologies, to the detriment of their relationships. So I knew *that* wasn’t the way.
Then I discovered that if I just applied the principles of taking responsibility for myself and my own growth, of turning every moment when I could blame outward into an opportunity to improve myself along the same lines, both my parenting and my partnership would improve.
Sarah T I need to adopt your approach.
Marriage is a lifetime partnership
🔥
I'm 55 and pretty healthy, but I feel it every day. I've moved from house framing to remodel carpentry, and soon to design and drafting.
How many actually swing a hammer now? I got even my very-traditional husband to buy a Paslode when he was installing wooden wainscoting and ceiling. And that was 16 years ago.
Haha, I have nine boys and I tell them all, "Clothes don't make the man, tools do."
Work smarter, not harder. I had three years in formal electronics technician/technology education, loved the work and the field. Still jumped at the opportunity to take a trade plumbing-gasfitting at the age of 42. I would rather have become an electrician (closer to my actual interest) but beggars can't be choosers. I had no trouble carrying my trade through to retirement at 65.
I think FR meant it figuratively. It's hard work no matter what.
Absolutely no knock on viaveritasvita, but I've noticed that whenever you can do something that another person can't possibly do, that person tends to think it's easy for you, no matter how hard it actually is. If they can do it even a little, they realize how hard it is and how much time and effort you've put in to make it look easy.
Isn't it like this (or ought to be)?
The main point is getting the job done.
Corollary to that is getting it done well.
Not to mention getting paid and not getting hurt from doing the job in the first place.
I mean, what does it matter to our car if it's me or the wife that replaces the lightbulb in the headlights? It's her that does it, for a simple reason: her hands fit in the extremely cramped space under hood behind the lights. My paws don't.
So she does that. On the other hand, she can't hoist the Husqvarna and cut down a tree with a 2' thick bole, to say nothing about splitting it or swinging the axe.
The one who can, does. The one who's best at it, shows and tells.
You got to have a lot of PhDs and other titles to not get that, I think?
Exactly. Working with your back works until your body gives out. And the fact of the matter is that consigning really bright kids to jobs as tradesmen underutilizes their natural gifts. The education system is broken, but that doesn't mean we throw out education. We need to fix the system. It's doable. It's just a matter of doing the work.
We need a few Dean's to stand up and call this bullshit out for what it is.
We always need a few good people. People matter. They aren’t fungible.
Please refer to me as Doctor Mrhounddog from now on. I have conferred the necessary degrees and pedigrees upon myself. I invented Mac & Cheese, and that Uno game. Yeah, that's tha ticket.
Are you into your 3rd two finger whisky pours?
I gave up the devil juice 11 years ago. Now I just do hard drugs and breathe straight oxygen.
I'm so proud of our two grandsons. One is training to become a welder, the other a diesel mechanic. They will work hard but they will have their dignity.
And a paycheque!
And no debt.
I am of the same opinion. Last Tuesday, our boiler having decided not to work, and our customary HVAC provider offering us a many-day wait, we found another provider. Of the young man in charge I asked, "Are you a product of (local) North Penn VoTech?" as I had known a number of students going there, and encouraged them in that direction. "No," he replied, "a product of PennState"--which has rather a reputation for engineering. An ME in fact. So here is someone of engineering level study choosing to go into furnace repair. And the difference was apparent. You are so correct, Zero Social Credits, in the job-security-wisdom of "requiring personal presence on site" element. Another consideration---the overhead involved in maintaining a physical business location is eliminated. As a side note, "White Van Man".
I think the "degrees" of the future will go back to the past:
To be well rounded.
Being versatile is a bulwark against obsolescence. AI will eventually destroy the bureaucratic class.
I agree for the most part, but if you visit any construction site, you will not hear much if any English spoken. At least not in much of the country. One journeyman plumber supervising 10 “undocumented immigrants” isn’t a viable career path forward either.
US has brought in loads of Filipinos to fill hospitals and nursing homes (even before the plandemic).
Great people.
You are right on the money.
"There are laws against companies hiring foreigners over Americans, but Corporate America has ignored them for 25 years."
No, corporations have been ignoring the law for more than 50 years. I started my career at Texas Instruments in Houston and the job ads were full of high requirement positions for ridiculously low wages. When no American was stupid enough to apply, the companies would say they couldn't find an American and hire a bunch of foreign engineers. Usually Indians.
There is no end to creative university degrees. My favorite, that I actually saw on a billboard, was a BA (I assume) in golf course management, from some state agricultural college, I think.
Here's something I wrote on the subject.
And let's not forget that "The times, they are a'changing". Liberal arts colleges are not in ascendence, they are crashing.
https://sezwhom.substack.com/p/i-did-it-my-way
Programmers are generally poorly fungible.
Often the better programmers score higher on type3 ADHD tests too, and that'll tend to lower the score they'll get for a degree where most of the marks are for turning up, chatting with lecturers and making it hand-ins flowery.
Once out in the "real world" measuring programmer ability and productivity is quite hard. Some programmers hand in stuff that passes the tests and works, and some go a bit further and program it to work for future tests and some program it in a way that will allow it to be maintainable
Some are starters, some are finishers, some like to just fix the minimum to lower retest, some can't leave something potentially imperfect.
The perfect is the enemy of the good enough, but often only perfect is good enough.
In my experience a lot of the hard stuff that got exported and out-sourced abroad is being taken back in house as delays and rework caused more expense.
So in short never try and predict the market and if you enjoy programming and IT go do it, you don't necessarily need a degree but knowing the few combinations of algorithm's and data structures and especially the bits of mathematics (set theory, combinatorics predicate calculus) does make a better programmer.
I completely cannot do anything useful with the notation for predicate calculus, but knowing a little about being able to prove something WOULD work for all inputs made my programming vastly better, the same with set theory and normalisation, but my databases (which is vastly more of an art than the maths would suggest) are robust. I think it's very import to tinker on something unimportant then learn the maths behind it then redo it properly, and tinker in as many different areas as possible, it's often one areas solution
Mind you a 4 year degree could easily be done in 6 months if taught intensely so a lot of the problem is that universities are not very productive teachers.
A "full stack" programmer will be 100++ times more productive than the man on the street so Throwing 25 people at a problem especially code will just make a mess of most IT problems.
Of course there is lower skill boilerplate, but that is mostly automated or AI is making a lot of headway. Also those foreign programmers are also now solving local IT problems in their own language.
More programmers just means more problems can be solved!
Mind you i did build my own water-cooled PC, so I guess i can be a plumber as well.
A wonderful take-down of 'Doctor' Gay, who not only fails to think critically but doesn't even have enough sense to try to hide her plagiarism. I remember my father once wanted an academic research career but, as he put it, "the '60s ruined academic science", so he went into industry, where he turned his wrath toward "the effing DA". I need to dig deeper, but I wonder if the left wokeism that dominates higher learning is a remnant of the '60s or whether this crap cycles every 50 years or so.
I red-pilled hard during the plandemic, and one of the hard pills I swallowed was the realization that my belief in the academic system to provide mobility and security was grossly wrong. The letters in my degrees are longer than my last name (and I have a moderately long surname) and I am still a professor in a public university, but I no longer believe in the value of higher education to create critical thinkers. I am encouraging (and will help to support) my two college-graduate kids get certifications and licenses in practical, tangible, portable jobs that will foot bills and provide satisfaction. After 40+ years training pharmacy and doctoral students, and after protesting vaccine mandates, DEI, and general mediocrity, I've been told by my betters I am 'poison' and am pretty much shackled in doing much of anything other than sit on useless committees. I am using this year to feather my nest and plan my exit so I can write my stories, expand my organic garden, grow and process medicinal herbs, and sell eggs and chickens. The good news? My philanthropy to ANY academic institution, including mine (UNC, UM system, Harvard, JHU) has dwindled to ZERO. Not a penny more. If enough of us decline giving, they will feel the pinch.
"The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive." is a great quote. So Hallelujah to that. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/how-diversity-narrows-the-mind
Merry Christmas.
And they've now successfully brainwashed two consecutive generations of young Americans with ideas which do not work. The rest of us now have to contend with workplaces full of toxic wokeness spread by coworkers who do not work.
They "work" as long as it's only a small minority of people doing it.
But when EVERYBODY tries to live at everyone else's expense NO ONE can.
The problem is that it looks superficially productive (emoluments / time-effort) and will this entice more people into it. Of course when you look at the bigger picture this is a negative sum game and wealth destroying as the "productivity" (ability to counter shortages) of the economy is lowered.
Not to be a Debbie Downer, but do you really believe Claudine Gay is the first domino in a chain that will fundamentally change woke Ivy League institutions? Not a chance. She’ll be allowed to “step down” to “spend more time with her family” or some other PR BS reason, the Harvard Corporation will say a few nice things and everyone will move on. Their next president may be marginally less woke, but he or she (or xim or whatever) won’t change a thing. Oh, they might tinker at the edges, let a few administrators go, but DIE and race based admissions will continue; billions of dollars in their endowment is plenty to weather the storm, the “brand” will survive.
she is not the first domino, just a highly visible one. the first domino was the ability to start mocking these people. the second was "those who pay" waking up and starting to put the hurt on the universities by saying "i'm not funding this garbage." ms gay is not even a cause, she's a symptom. the huge rise against and discrediting of her is a sign that the societal immune system is kicking in. woke has survived as an ableine paradox. as the gaslighting ends, it will change faster than many seem to suspect. it was never popular outside of some small circles.
I agree. BUT imo I think we will divide into little California's and Florida's, at first, before the progressive puritans realize they don't have to use a poop map to navigate Ocean Drive in Miami but do on Van Ness Ave in San Francisco.
That's going to take a little time.
indeed.
there will be bastions that go through one more round of rarefication as they sequester themselves and pursue some sort of fully recursive ideological singularity, but they are going to find themselves ever more isolated and the absurdity of the positions they will need to adopt to sustain the some form of dissonance dodging internal coherence will push past exotic into outright self-parody.
the whole thing has crossed lines of unpopularity and ridiculousness from which it cannot recover.
too many saw, too many laughed, and the impervious integument was pierced.
this is just mop up now. will take time, but the outcome is already forgone.
Yeah. I hear you.
If only we could help people to connect, let's say, the complete hypocrisy of the way the upper crust in Martha's Vineyard "welcomed" the illegals and the complete lawlessness of allowing 730k illegals to enter our country since October.
I'm still having a hard time with that amongst my liberal friends/colleagues.
Asking: "So how many of them are you willing to put up and pay for?" really drives it home.
Kills the mood, of course. Will get you hateful glares and baleful stares.
I always suggest a sponsorship program whereby open-borders people take in 5 illegal immigrants and are responsible for their housing, food, clothing, education, and healthcare, and are also liable for any crimes they might commit. People balk at that for some reason.
How many is too many? works as well
Ryan G, you dare speak of these things with the indoctrinated, wow! I am silent, too cowardly or more likely tired.
No. I just don't have a choice. Some are family as well.
I'm still close enough with a few of my friends in college to give them shit. But I've also lost several friends during covid. They could not handle the truth:
That what happened was WRONG.
oh well
Hope so. People still defend Barry and Killary.
Yes, migration to hopefully less crazy & tyrannical places. CA just continues to devolve - now instead of Amber Alerts they’re imposing Ebony Alerts in 2024 for the missing person of color! I kid you not- true.
Geez Louise. It so bizarre to me that I have friends I've known my entire adult life who have bought into this rancid racism.
I'm so happy I left my home state for Florida.
CA is lost.
Gato - Flippin Jersey is on to the malodorous stench, as this will not change much at high cost brainwashing mills. Because there's a bigger picture than "woke" which runs far deeper, and has been going on far longer. Subversion, inversion, perversion and conversion of institutions and government can take generations. The "brand" invasion will not be abandoned overnight because of a minor setback, which will be swept under the rug. When elite sociopaths are providing the corporate and endowment trust funding for education, government agencies, judges and politicians, its an all you can eat buffet of Whores d'Oeuvres Mr. Mulder. https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/free-for-me-but-not-for-thee/comment/45697320
Sure hope you are right.
[edit: Abilene? I was confused, but grateful you had provided the link. ]
When you see someone like Gay there you wonder how and why she got there.
Sociopaths employ the incompetent to create a barrier of dependents who will defend them.
So who is she defending?
At my institution, when they’re forced out, it’s to “return to their first love, teaching.”
Her first love is grifting. She’s the daughter of one of Haiti’s richest families.
😳
I hope she stays so we can see the racism hypocrisy everyday.
It's kinda happening now.
I think you are misinterpreting this as a failed meritocracy, when in fact it is a successful sociopathocracy. The sociopathic personality type enjoys and takes pride in cheating and takes pleasure in successfully deceiving others. Everything about the current system of elite colleges encourages this from the admissions to the classroom, but especially the admissions. Parents assist in faking their child's admissions portfolio by bullying coaches and teachers, pushing children into hobbies and fields they have no interest in, or directly creating fake club membership or test scores as was famously exposed in some court cases.
The students then learn to cheat their way through the college system itself. A co-worker of my wife who went to an elite school bragged about how she had gotten a copy of the professor's file of previously submitted essays and used them to pass. She was proud of it. I noticed that Gay's stolen acknowledgement was from a paper published just a year or two before her own. She didn't even try to hide her tracks by using something more obscure. Why would she? She was showing the kind of verve and initiative in cheating that they prefer.
Why are these preferred and selected for traits? When they want an FBI agent like Peter Strzok, do they want someone who will follow some internal moral compass, or rather do they want someone who will gleefully follow orders to run a shadow coup? Note that he ended his career ensconced in academia as an example to students of a job well done. When they are looking for an FDA regulator, do they want someone who will fulfill the mission of the FDA to protect the public from bad drugs and tainted foods? Or do they want someone who will take the bribe of a pharma board position and shut their mouth?
Obviously, I could go on and on with this for every government agency. It is obvious that they prefer and reward people of low moral quality and who are willing to lie and cheat to advance themselves. Those are the fodder of a totalitarian system. The government funded university system has adjusted to comply with the demands of the modern institutions of our society. Many of the people involved are well aware of how they got their own jobs, hence their defense of Gay.
One final thought I would leave you with is to imagine the psychological burden of being a person raised to honesty and moral integrity in the midst of a cohort of budding sociopaths. That is the hellscape naive parents send their children into thinking they are buying a first class education (of 90% A grades.) Instead, their young adult will have to sink or swim with the sociopaths.
"The only crime is getting caught" is axiomatic truth. So is the corollary:
"And then only if you're actually convicted"
Sad, but true.
Of course, behaving that way is a choice. It is when the negative consequences of choosing to behave that way are removed (or even worse, rewarding the behaviour) that it becomes a societal problem.
I’d just add that I think this very much applies to the military service academies as well.
From what we have seen in the last few years of the incredible moral flexibility of our top military leadership, I am, sadly, not at all surprised.
"this very much applies to the military service academies"
And THAT scares the hell out of me!
zufp..... thanks for the effort that was a long post, and I thought it was very intelligent. It’s a slightly different argument, and I’ve ever heard before and rather convincing.
When I was doing my PhD in Physics we’d often hear the phrase “the Battle between the Theorists and Empiricists”. It became more of a phrase to say “those that test stuff and those that don’t”. In science both types of work have their place but in recent decades you see the rise of “testing by computer” as if it is the same as actual testing and measuring.
Because of this you get a slippery slope of assumptions becoming facts and ideas that are nonsense in the real world being hypothecated into seemingly real things. The power of suggestion and gaslighting is huge.
All because someone weak willed made the mistake of taking a ranting Theorist at his word. And then more weak willed people (and possibly simps) kept it going.
Huxley had a great quote: the great tragedy of science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.
Well when you exist without verifiable facts you can come up with all sorts of nonsense. Sadly politicians and other institutions give these people money and then the damage spreads to society and real people.
Yup. Precision and accuracy have been conflated by THE SCIENCE.
They are not the same.
Example of precision and accuracy:
https://youtu.be/8BF95hdIuOg?si=D-hkaKdMmZLah978
You're a magician with links!
😏
Precisely why Gay refuses to release the dataset from the work she grifted into Stanford with.
Q.v. COVID "modelling"
And "climate change" models.
Exactly. Especially GCC models as you point out
That was the very first thing which popped into my head. Fictional models produced by rabid ideologs starting from a pre-determined result and working backwards to construct a false logic which will support that desired result. Then offered up as incontrovertible proof of man-made global warming.
And this is how they justify coming for our gas stoves. 🤡🌍
Yeah. Exactly but if you stretch the decimals out far enough the sheep think it must be accurate
My theory is 100% correct! Well, except for that tiny rounding error at the end...
Check Briggs' little discussion of modeling -
https://wmbriggs.substack.com/p/what-is-a-model
Ooh nice
pr even MMT (modun moneytree theeree)
When I worked in the defense industry on the Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis team in Aerosol Sciences, we used to joke, "The model is correct. Its reality that has it wrong."
At least we knew models only _stood in for something else_ and not Truth.
"All models are wrong; some are useful"
Kazackly.
"It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong."
- Richard P. Feynman
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/625767-it-doesn-t-matter-how-beautiful-your-theory-is-it-doesn-t
I have always been a bit embarrassed for the ivy leaguers for their glaring lack of common sense. Give me a good plumber ANY DAY over an academic scholar!
I read an article about a blue collar guy who became a prof at a prestigious university. The president of the U held a function at his home. Blue collar guy uses one of the toilets in the mansion and sees a note explaining that the toilet is not quite working properly. Helpfully, the president attached detailed instructions on how to get it to work--"jiggle the handle 10-12 times, wait 5-7 seconds, jiggle handle again 5-7 times, wait for sound of water filling tank to end, now flush!"
Blue collar guy lifted tank top, saw something came unattached...attached it...problem solved.
Lolol. This is totally "it". And you used "potty" humor.
Well done mate!
Potty humor...haha!
That usually is the little buoy that lifts the lever that shuts the water off when the cistern is topped up that has come unstuck a little, blocking the outlet to the bowl from the cistern.
I know because I have done that very thing at more than one friend's house/apartment.
But academics rarely have any real life experience/knowledge, not even people in STEM-fields do.
Spoke to one guy today in fact. He was in a hurry. His car told him the battery in his electronic key needed replacing.
So he was driving to the mechanic's to have them do it, because he don't know how to.
I think we can start consider "IQ2 debunked because this guy is in Mensa.
If you want to "measure" a man simply see if they can change out a doorknob.
We gave our old tow-mounted luggage rack to my brother in law, who has a BSs in Physics and Aeronautical Engineering.
He had no idea what to do with the cotter pin I handed him for securing the rack. He'd literally not seen one before, I'm pretty sure.
He's a software developer in Bureau of Stats for some BigFedGov agency.
How illustrative
The plumber can fix the problem for a few hundred bucks while the academic scholar will suggest replacing the whole house.
The plumber can actually perform a needed service!
If the president cannot be held to a higher standard and gets a free pass when it comes to plagiarism, what does that mean for her students? Will they also get free passes? Is it OK for them to plagiarize their work as well? Asking for a friend.
Will the students get a free pass?
For some reason, that “Family Guy” meme of the security officer and the skin-color chart comes to mind.
Clearly, anyone who accuses Gay of plagiarism is a rayssis and must be sent to re-education camp. ;-)
Affirmative Action has been in place since 1960’s and is essentially race based cheating.
Well Gay was just releasing parentheses free of their chains from the white man's white paper!
Me too. One lesson I've learned well since 2020 is that my kids will go to university to grow up and have some fun if they want but they will only be studying a degree that gives them a practical skill when they leave. Otherwise plumbing! Dentist, nurse, engineer and accounting. No doctors though. Done with those for a while 😂
"just how bereft of ethics or integrity can one be?"
When I got to this line, I was reminded that at more than one university, professors who taught medical ethics were fired for speaking out against vaccine mandates as unethical.
What if it’s not supposed to work? What if it’s just a slow way to tear it all down?
What if it's to see if we're paying attention?
I think this is a likely motivation.
As usual, you are more optimistic than I am, Gato. I predict Gay survives no matter what comes out in the next few months. If it is found she eats puppies for breakfast, that will also be defended.
Well, yeah, because if she eats puppies for breakfast, that means she's friends with fauchi.
If she survives, so much the worse for Harvard. I gleefully await the collapse of higher ed.
The longer Gay stays the better for all to see race based discrimination via Affirmative Action.
My grandfather had a favourite saying, "There are none so blind as those who will not see". (Often paired with comments pertaining to equine proximity to dihydrogen oxide.)
Its highly improbable that the superior beings who elevated Ms. Gay to her current honourable estate allow themselves to take of notice trivialities like scholarly ineptitude or middle school level plagiarism. Those minor sins, when evaluated against Ms. Gay's numerous appropriately ticked checkboxes are simply irrelevant.
"Ms. Gay's numerous appropriately ticked checkboxes are simply irrelevant."
Unfortunately, those are the only qualifications she has.
Animal rights and PETA are so '90s. 😉
Because Fauci's beagles gave a green light.
..."failed upward power-fools."...ya mean the brain dead intellectuals that are the only ones who see themselves as smarter than the herd?
Pure retardium? That is pure genius. Explains everything about the left and even some of the right.
Thomas Sewell...this guy is the best for explaining the things that the left always murkifies and tries to dumb down.
Too bad that almost half the country is now in love with the fascist left. It's mostly the younger crowd who have yet to learn an extremely hard lesson in the treachery and slavery angendized by these terrorists.
.."failed upward power-fools."...ya mean the brain dead intellectuals that are the only ones who see themselves as smarter than the herd? Nurse Dee says, "Dunning-Kruger effect".
"retardium"
Inspired coinage.
Agree, Gato is indeed a genius.
My personal favorite: intellectual inbreeding
A brilliant piece. I taught at the university level for 34 years and watched as it became intellectually bankrupt. At one time I thought a background steeped in the humanities was the best gift someone could give himself.
But I have one very large issue with you, Gato. Jennifer Pritzker can call himself anything he likes, including Jennifer. But he's still a dude. Please don't fall for the nonsense of using his feminine pronouns, which I see you did here. To do so is to accept his imaginary view of himself and to cave in to the transgender upending of reality. He is not a woman. I am. And to say he is a woman is an insult to all of us who come to womanhood honestly.
i think you are, perhaps, confusing two pritzgers.
it's penny pritzger who sits on the harvard board and was involved in bringing in ms gay, not "jennifer" (nee james)
same family, but not same person.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Pritzker
In my defense, Jenny rhymes with Penny. My apologies for having misread, but when I see that last name, I freeze up.
it's a problematic lineage to be sure.
porky pritzger has been a horrifying governor.
Truly a family of monsters. [It would be helpful if the governor's name were Kenny, if only for the sake of rhyme.]
And another member of this scumbag family is the governor of Illinois. Why any human population remains in Illinois is hard to fathom. What a complete and utter wasteland.
A result of intellectual inbreeding maybe?
My beloved son, wife and my grandchildren reside in Illinois - not their home state, and not in Chicago, and would very much like for me to relocate there to be closer to them. I just can't do it. Am I a horrible mother and grandmother? Yes. For not being able to convince them to LEAVE that awful state!!!!
Penny Pritzker is the person mentioned
In Gay’s field, isn’t the dissertation more like taking a test than providing new ideas? Her “plagiarism” was really just her showing that she know the right/acceptable answers to the questions.
Unless donors start pulling money again, she isn’t going to be fired. The business of Harvard is to pretend like they are the premiere, unassailable academic institution in the country. Giving into whining from the right wing hurts them far more than not acknowledging a mistake.
True.
There hasn't really been anything new in the humanities since before oh say the 5th century or so. 99.9% of it no matter the origin is simply same old same old, using different words and images.
I mean, Foucault could seem revolutionary only because the majority of his following never read de Sade or Rousseau, and they in turn only look new if... and so on back to Ancient Greece, Babylon, Egypt et cetera.
A career in humanities is largely repackaging and rebranding old goods and update the language used by the salesman.
I say that as a refuge from academia and with a background in the humanities, which I think of as "the inanities" nowadays, disgusted as I am with the total lack of intellectual honesty on display all over the western world.
Just tax the freaking endowments. Please.
My dad was on staff at a prestigious university, though in a department constantly underfunded. I always felt at home on a university campus. Now I recoil at the stench. James Lindsay and his cohorts purposefully plagiarized Mein Kampf and submitted it to a female journal as part of their Grievance Studies romp. They were attempting to show the absurdity of academia, but like the movie The Producers, they were taken all too seriously by the fools. https://www.timesofisrael.com/duped-academic-journal-publishes-rewrite-of-mein-kampf-as-feminist-manifesto/