HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: New rankings score colleges on merit, academic rigor, free speech: New university rankings from the City Journal highlight a growing divide between institutions that prioritize affordability and academic standards and those that maintain higher costs and politicized agendas.

BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY: Big is no longer beautiful and body positivity is officially over: Amy Schumer lost a ton of weight and scrubbed her Instagram of all traces of her former overweight self. “All the body positivity bullshit was just that: bullshit. No one wants to be obese. No one even wants to be chubby with arm dangles.”

Everything is a lie, until reality asserts itself.

INSURRECTION:

For eight years under Obama and four Obama lite years the same people now shrieking about “the sanctity of civilian control” and “the military can’t be political” treated the Pentagon like their personal progressive playground.

They shoved mandatory DEI struggle sessions down…

— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) November 19, 2025

YES:

They are an infinitesimally small minority whose voice is being deliberately and wildly amplified by nefarious money in a specific effort to cause people just like you to feel just like you do.

Please do not fall for this. https://t.co/WD51l4odGN

— Cynical Publius (@CynicalPublius) November 19, 2025

I’M INCREASINGLY SUPPORTIVE OF SIMPLY ABOLISHING LEGAL NONPROFIT STATUS ENTIRELY: You Have No Idea Just How Much Money Government Pours Into Nonprofits.

POISON, POISON EVERYWHERE.

ICYMI: MY BODYGUARD: A report from my high-security appearance at USD Law School last night.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: How AI anxiety threatens a new age of progress.

If the tech world hadn’t blown its reputation and public trust through awful behavior over the last couple of decades, it would be doing much better here. The 2005 public would be much more supportive.

ASIDE FROM THAT, WHAT HAVE THE ROMANS DONE FOR US?

Elon reduced the cost of launch to orbit by ~90%, mainstreamed electric cars, and gave a paralyzed man the ability to control a computer with his mind. It’s a total mystery why investors keep betting on him. https://t.co/LtMD3o2WtA

— Hunter Ash (@ArtemisConsort) November 17, 2025

THE OLD MAN OF ASIA: China’s Demographics Problem Grows: Male-female imbalance a factor.

LARRY SUMMERS WAS A CLINTON INTIMATE AFTER ALL: As Summers Sought Clandestine Relationship With Woman He Called a Mentee, Epstein Was His ‘Wing Man.’

VITAMIN D UPDATE: Low Vitamin D Levels Strongly Linked to Depression.

YOU CAN’T LIVE AND LET LIVE WITH PEOPLE WHO WANT YOU DEAD:

City College in NYC hosted an interfaith event and it went super great: pic.twitter.com/cd6Mjweajz

— Karol Markowicz (@karol) November 18, 2025

This is the equivalent of white students waving nooses in the face of black students on campus.

Would Oxford allow that? https://t.co/HUtnRLU7XB

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) November 18, 2025

INSURRECTION!

Putting "international law" above the U.S. Constitution and American laws is insurrection, actually. https://t.co/wbE3KBzIoy

— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) November 18, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Because I love you and want you to be happy.

THE NEW SPACE RACE: Chinese astronauts to get replacement spacecraft after debris strike leaves them without a ride home.

MY BODYGUARD: A report from my high-security appearance at USD Law School last night.

METFORMIN UPDATE: A Common Diabetes Drug Is Linked to ‘Exceptional Longevity’ in Women.

21ST CENTURY QUESTIONS: Whither Matrons?

Our society needs matriarchs and patriarchs, or matrons and father figures, if you prefer. Young people are floundering, incompetent, badly educated, possessing few skills, and trained to see everyone born before them as stupid old boomers. What used to be a “generation gap” is now a yawning chasm.

Because of our non-parenting of the past two-three generations, the hierarchy has been inverted. We older people with experience are cast as the dummies, the stupid olds, who don’t know as much as a 20 year old. It’s pure inversion (remember, inversion is the basis of Cluster B/narcissistic/devil thinking).

This means that not only are young people ill-educated in politeness, decent dress, basic human communication skills, along with not knowing arithmetic and not achieving an adult reading level—they’re also hostile to the idea that they don’t know something, or that an older person can be a help to them.

None of this happened by accident.

MAYBE NOMINATE WOMEN WHO AREN’T AWFUL? “Maybe it would be better to ask this other question, my question: When will we ever get to evaluate a female presidential candidate as just another presidential candidate? We’ve been nudged too many times to pick the woman because she is a woman. It makes people wary. I mean, really, why was Kamala Harris foisted on us? So, yeah, she got ‘whomped.'”

WHATEVER THE PROBLEM, SOCIALISM IS ALWAYS WHAT’S TOUTED AS THE SOLUTION: AI-touting technocrats sell socialism as the solution.

TO BE FAIR, THE ALTIMA — THOUGH A PRETTY GOOD CAR — IS OBSOLETE. Nissan’s New Plug-In Hybrid Sedan Makes the Altima Look Obsolete.

WELL, GOOD: The Explosion of New ‘Non-Traditional’ Gun Owners Should End the Gun Control Debate Forever.

I’M NOT SURPRISED THAT EATING MEAT EASES DEPRESSION: Keto diet associated with reduced depressive symptoms, anxiety results remain mixed.

THE RELUCTANCE, I THINK, IS THAT THE “INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY” IS WOUND THROUGH AND THROUGH WHAT WAS GOING ON:

Real Talk? Why do you think successive Presidents have not wanted to open the Epstein Files as completely as they're able to? I understand there's legality involved that prevents all of it coming out. But you'd think Biden wouldn't have liked to protect Trump, nor Trump, Clinton.

— vbspurs (@vbspurs) November 17, 2025

Related: Matt Taibbi: The Epstein Circus Will Shatter Our Last Delusions: Do we want to know how the world really works, or is it too disgusting to countenance?

Democratic Party hysteria over this issue is obviously absurd because “all of the Epstein files” could have been released over the last four years. There must be reasons why the last administration didn’t take that step, and there should be scandal in MAGA-world if those reasons overlap at all with the Trump administration’s. Between Epstein’s own hysterical rants about Trump in the newly released documents (he sounds like Kathy Griffin in some of the emails) and the blue party’s seeming entanglement with Epstein from the Clintons to Larry Summers to Reid Hoffman, it’s hard to imagine where that overlap might be, unless it involves major corporate names and/or overseas relationships. Some of that is suggested in Plaskett’s story. . . . Such realizations make for a wince-hard moment for the whole American population, which may have to adjust its estimation of our politicians down from totally corrupt if all these files are released. As was the case with the Russiagate documents, these releases continue an education in the rotten way things really work in this country that I suspect both parties will quickly regret voting to serve up.

Like I said.