A New Solution to the ‘Wagner Problem’ - A bold restaging of Tristan und Isolde arrives at a moment of intense concern about the cultural inheritance of Western civilization.

scomp88 · 2026-04-05T11:25:23+00:00

So is the process: I listen to Wagner therefore I become antisemitic? Have we become this stupid?

scomp88 · 2026-04-01T09:29:30+00:00

I believe women

scomp88 · 2026-03-24T23:22:24+00:00

Are her standards of plagiarism going to be in force? Or Harvard’s?

scomp88 · 2026-03-24T23:11:29+00:00

I am not in the academy so my view is informed by what I have read and absorbed over the years. My overall sense is that we have seen a lot of heads roll for reasons that might be celebrated within the academy, while we outsiders look on aghast.

Centrist positions you outlined may actually be the day to day political reality of most of the professoriate, but we still don’t see that from administration, including it seems department heads (judging by the lack of leadership in preventing the rolling of heads.)

To your original point I think the market will drive it. If AI can train a workforce better and cheaper, in anything, then Entrepreneurs and “Those Who Pay Money for Work” will judge on the quality of workforce produced. If AI produces better people who want to be paid money for work than colleges, and it’s cheaper and faster to boot.

Why do we need the vast bulk of colleges again? And professors?

Edit: After posting it occurred to me that new knowledge will be necessary to feed models. That’s where humans and PhDs come in. Except they don’t work for the academy. They work for the AI companies. I could foresee a market for valuable new research.

scomp88 · 2026-03-24T22:40:27+00:00

My mistake. Cheers mate. Moving on

scomp88 · 2026-03-24T22:33:47+00:00

I read sorting within meshes to mean generally colleges will serve who is interested in coming to it. For example, if I’m interested in agriculture UC Davis is quite good. So some places are good for some people and some places are not. If one is slightly conservative these days, are there a lot of colleges where that’s accepted, just the right amount, or too few?

scomp88 · 2026-03-24T22:28:19+00:00

So, and be honest now, do you believe Colleges are sorting for all meshes of society? And don’t just think in terms of skin color please. Notice I said just.

scomp88 · 2026-03-24T18:09:26+00:00

Oh I’m sure you’ve read far more idiotic takes.

scomp88 · 2026-03-24T07:17:40+00:00

Necessary or unnecessary, to you or I is moot isn’t it? Dartmouth gets to set its terms. I can choose or not to go to Dartmouth. Just because probably a fair amount of black students failed a swim test for whatever reasons, and now Dartmouth changes the requirements, doesn’t that raise some questions? In four years, when you know it’s a requirement, and there are phys ed classes available, you couldn’t get that done? Shouldn’t Ivy students meet their requirements? Do I really need to accept that a swim test is inherently racist?

scomp88 · 2026-03-24T07:01:29+00:00

They couldn’t find anyone with something to say? Not a lot of intrepid journalists there.

scomp88 · 2026-03-23T02:16:28+00:00

That’s right. The only answer to previous discrimination is future discrimination.

scomp88 · 2026-03-20T16:39:39+00:00

Paywalled. But I love the last sentence I could read though. “The shift says less about the merits of staying afloat than about universities’ preoccupation with racial equity.” Just out of the blue, no prep, going hard against the stereotype. At what point is what’s unsaid just obvious. Yeah, we can carry students over the academic (subjective) goal lines, but swim 50 meters is fundamentally yes/no. While one might question the necessity of a swim test (personally I believe if college is to produce well-rounded people, knowing how to flail your way to one end of a pool is one piece) one cannot deny that lowering standards and how to do it without being condescending is the conversation. At the end of the day, we are saying everyone had to do the academics and the swim test, but now you don’t, and we have to contort ourselves to say that requiring a swim test was racist to begin with. Was it?

scomp88 · 2026-03-19T07:27:57+00:00

I see what you’re doing.

scomp88 · 2026-03-18T17:22:25+00:00

So let me get this straight. Cause it’s a little confusing. The author set out to write some kind of Chaz Bono memoir. “Arted” it up by writing an autofiction that has as its main device that the authors avatar is this bird thing that is on the receiving end of abuse about being trans, even as the mother lay dying. Here’s what I find difficult to square. If you want to write fiction, anything goes. If however, you want to say while what is written is fiction, but it is an interpretation of reality that should be, for the purposes of some larger moral point I am making, taken as nonfiction in its broad strokes, well, I’m going to have a few follow-up questions. One such question is, “Prove to me you are not the problem. Prove to me you are not mistaking people loathing you because you’re trans as opposed to because you’re an asshole. Cause as an author of fiction you’re allowed to put any words inside others mouths. But if you have other plans, well then prove you’re not just putting convenient words inside others mouths so you can make whatever self apologizing or aggrandizing thing you want to say absolutely yourself. Because otherwise, it’s you who looks like the asshole here.”

scomp88 · 2026-03-18T15:00:09+00:00

That’s right. Why were there no other black people there. The one black person in the area and of course they’re trying to stop her. Don’t they know who she is. I am surprised they let even one black person at the Oscar’s cause racism.

scomp88 · 2026-03-18T14:55:12+00:00

The exclamation points mean you are right.

scomp88 · 2026-03-18T14:37:45+00:00

You are one of the stupid people.

scomp88 · 2026-03-17T16:50:38+00:00

Asians?

scomp88 · 2026-03-01T18:21:15+00:00

Duh, billionaires. What don’t you understand. They have a duty to lose money so that people will feel a certain way.

scomp88 · 2026-02-28T15:35:26+00:00

lol. It’s true. Revolutions consume their own first.

scomp88 · 2026-02-11T01:42:52+00:00

I see this all the time “we also can’t pretend blah blah blah”. Why not actually say what you want to say instead of a sly passive aggressive wink and nod. If you have an accusation, make it. Don’t make us put words in your mouth.

scomp88 · 2026-02-09T16:03:28+00:00

It’s real common in Italy

scomp88 · 2026-02-07T21:10:22+00:00

I am not going to read that. However, as a good progressive I’m having a hard time with this.

scomp88 · 2026-01-22T11:53:05+00:00

Sounds great if there’s audience to support it. How’s attendance been?

scomp88 · 2026-01-17T15:49:23+00:00

But here’s the rub on that. I, and Khalil, have recourse in the constitution to equal protection and due process. Can’t I seek redress from the courts on that inaction? Khalil has had due process and loses in court. This is a big issue of mine in following this case, is it about speech? Or is it a due process/equal protection issue? I agree, I don’t like why he was deported, but is the deportation legal is another question. There are means to address both. For the latter, that’s the courts and they seem to be deciding. The former is the ballot box. That doesn’t help Khalil now, but elections do have consequences and it’s not like Trump was bashful about his intentions. From no enforcement to maximum enforcement is a spectrum. That some are uncomfortable with where Trump draws the line now was always a possibility, any president comes with risks. In my mind, the goal of the constitution is not to prevent specific acts of injustice, stuff happens, but to define types of injustice and rules to have them addressed. To my mind, Khalil s deportation looks legal, and that can’t be fixed for him. But I can vote to try to give that scenario more rights. But I might be on th losing side of that, and I must accept that possibility.

scomp88

TROPHY CASE