If you want absolute, irrefutable proof of the stagnation of western culture, consider that in about seven weeks' time, the release of Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough" will be closer in time to the Hindenburg disaster than to the present day.

Incredible to write this editorial and not mention that Kirk got his start by compiling a professor watchlist

The piece suggests that the provincial post-secondary review might have some answers to this problem. But the idea of growing universities to meet the obviously huge wave of young Albertans wanting university was *specifically* excluded from the review's mandate.

Nothing is going to improve in Canadian higher education until the political class accepts that we need to make it better rather than cheaper. How will we know they have accepted it? When they are prepared to put institutions ahead of voters and raise tuition.

If you're not familiar with QAnon conspiracy dogwhistles, then you won't know that Stephen Miller just rattled off a bunch of them in a row, including "I am the storm" and "Light out of darkness." While these sound like dumb cliches on the surface, they're coded messages to Q cult adherents.

Unlike AWS, Azure, & Google, Oracle is going into debt to build AI data centers for OpenAI’s projected 20x growth by 2030. Feels like past tech bubbles from railroads to the dot-com era where many lost money but society got lasting infrastructure. Hopefully, we get power generation infrastructure.

Yes. It's also why they go after university programs on gender/sexuality studies before anything else.

Annoyed I have to wait until Tuesday to read the new MacEwan.

More thinking from Australia on international student caps. Note the difference with Canada, where because the government has "done something" the problem is "solved" and therefore does not require more government attention.

Tom Homan to join Harvard’s Institute of Politics

Tom Homan took a bag of cash from an undercover FBI agent the right way. by Ezra Klein

I don't watch American football so I have never seen a tush push play but it seems to me obvious that it must be a holdover from rugby and therefore part of America's glorious anglo-European heritage and thus welcomed by all red staters, yes?

You’ll be shocked to hear that their recommendation is not limiting the circumstances in which AI is deployed, but rather accepting the inevitability it will occasionally have catastrophic effects.

Doing politics the right way.

Total Expenditures on Tertiary Institutions as a % of GDP, select OECD countries 2005-2022. Canada and the US have been slowly decending to European levels of expenditure for the last fifteen years.

this charlie kirk deification is some of the weirdest shit i have ever seen

It is insanity that this hugely consequential news — whether Trump’s EO vomit tirade about H1Bs applies to current visa holders — is sourced *anonymously*! No one will go on record to clarify the new rules!? www.politico.com/news/2025/09...

People keep talking about tech firms in relation to the H1-B $100k fee but it’s gonna really sink universities.

Slava!

Looking good.

In most countries, AI cannot help admissions processes at all. Only in places where admissions are so convoluted as to be incomprehensible can AI make a difference. IOW, outside the US, this use case is more or less nil.

This might be about Kirk, though, no?

OK, really niche specific question to US HE folks. If a university declares on its tax form that it has given $1M to a foreign charity's US arm as a "Donor-Advised Find Distribution", how should one interpret this? A planned donation revoked by the donor and asked to be sent to the charity instead?

The feds should disallow any provincial legislation that shields provincial politicians from being sued for the laws they pass. A strict federal policy that provincial politicians are not above the law would encounter zero public pushback, even in AB and QC.

Welcome back to the Fifteen. Away from the American chaos, there are big stories all around the world: Baha'i students banned from studuing in Iran, big higher education overhauls in China and Morocco and some interesting program models from South Korea.

MakushitaTanji forgot he had a bout today and missed it, so he takes a no show loss. news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/a95...

Where the separate divisions of ANTIFA landed on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944:

But I keep hearing how one semester of college brainwashes students into being completely flaming liberals.

Dems don't understand. Sargent is right. You have to attack Disney/ABC. You have to threaten Disney/ABC. You have to tell them they will be punished. You have to describe the punishment. You have to go on Stephanopolous and tell him he should be ashamed and resign.

Who could’ve predicted this, other than every single critical data studies scholar, who’ve been highlighting data bias issues for years and years? Given this previous knowledge, it’s criminal that this technology has been deployed at scale. A triumph of willful ignorance and wishful thinking.

I forget who said it (Marina Hyde maybe?) first but like them, I am much less enraged by the approaching end of civilization than I am by the fact that the people destroying it are such absolute losers.

Asked ChatGPT to categorize some data it just produced for me, and got this mournful piece of existentialism back. Thanks ChatGPT!

these people are genuinely idiots

Wanna learn about right wing hired reform? Don’t tune in to @chronicle.com which is airing well understood and highly exposed ideas. Learn about Argentina with @alexusherhesa.bsky.social podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t...

if Jimmy Kimmel's political humor is too hot for you to handle, I'm not sure "snowflake" even cuts it as a term of derision for the level of fragility you've achieved

We are moving closer and closer to a situation where this is an unconstitutional government that need not be obeyed.

It's like the fuckers never even watched Andor.

I think at some point the Democrats are going to have to talk about what kinds of penalties they are going to impose on organizations and companies that bend the knee to fascists. What revenge they will take. And what kind of steps they will take to prevent this shit from happening again.

On the one side you have liars, bullies, thugs, kelptocrats, racists, hate-mongers and - if given half a chance - genocidaires. On the other, you have some people who can be annoying in EDI sessions. If you think those two sides are morally equivalent, you're not a serious person.

Are we including Red MAGA hats?

“A democratic society needs people in Ezra Klein’s position to treat Charlie Kirk’s anti-democracy stances as disqualifying, rather than pretend they’re just another policy opinion…” @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social w/an excellent critique of Kirk hagiography www.arcdigital.media/p/ezra-klein...

The remarks weren’t “about Charlie Kirk,” they were about how this administration is using Kirk’s death as an excuse to shut down critics … and they responded by proving him completely correct.

This story is totally bananas. I know some Canadian student unions that have had some crazy election scandals, but this is like the worst of Concordia, Carleton and TMU, in their worst years, combined.

i really, really fucking loathe "steelmanning" as a concept. it is not my job to make the best possible version of your argument for you if oppose you, if i oppose you, i intend to attack both your shitty ideas *and* the shitty way in which you present them, because fuck you, that's why.

Much tougher. Americas-pink, MENA-brown, and SAE/Japan/Korea/Australia-blue would all podium for me, but not sure in which order.

Meduza examines a scandal in the Z-blogosphere that may conceal a power struggle over the crowdfunding that keeps soldiers equipped on the battlefield. Whatever the reality, argues journalist Ivan Filippov, it's a cause for celebration among opponents of Russia's war. meduza.io/en/feature/2...

But what if they are "doing politics right"?

Remember when Dimestore Pat Bucahnan was hot with youth? Time flies.

“Las becas Benito Juárez de educación media superior registran un incremento marginal del 0.2%. En la educación superior, el panorama es mixto: mientras que Jóvenes Escribiendo el Futuro crece un 0.2 %, el Programa de Becas Elisa Acuña disminuye un 1.3%” educacion.nexos.com.mx/tendencias-y...

I had some thoughts about people saying that "debate me bro" trolling is somehow the height of democratic discourse.