But I agree that anyone pursuing that line should be very careful and aware of just how and where they will obtain a satisfactory income. It should have been obvious to more parents and students that “free tuition” loans were a grift the schools soaked up with ever greater governmental generosity.

From the standpoint of my engineerng education, there is little that I might have avoided for greater exposure to “liberal arts” classes in some form; perhaps a quantitative chemistry class and a duel semester for geology. But as a retiree my interests have shifted towards political and historical information, even as haphazard as I am acquiring that exposure.

Imaginos1892 says:July 16, 2026 at 12:56 pm
We don’t see our own culture because to us, “That’s just how life is.” The way fish don’t see water. We only see the different. The exotic. Even when it’s toxic and destructive.

Our culture is expressed in the Declaration Of Independence and the Constitution. A society in which the government, and other authorities, are the property of the people, rather than the people being property of the elitists. That’s why nobody else understands our culture, and how it sets us apart from all the rest. Far too many here don’t understand it either, because they can’t see it.
———————————
Under capitalism, man exploits man.
Under communism, it’s the other way around.

Not for much longer.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/basket-weavers-monday-july-20-2026

Earlier this month, NPR quietly reported some more very encouraging education news, headlined, “Under a new federal rule, colleges must leave grads better off or lose financial aid.”
…
According to PBS, what’s left of the Department of Education is rolling out a new accountability test for colleges called, simply, the “do no harm” test. The concept is so straightforward it probably gave several university administrators a spontaneous eye-twitch: If graduates from an undergraduate program don’t earn more money than people who never went to college at all, that program gets cut off from federal student loans.
…
Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent said, “If a program cannot show that it leaves its graduates financially better off than if they had never enrolled, it should not be underwritten by federal taxpayers.”

Notice that phrase: federal taxpayers. Not “free college.” Because there is no such thing as “free college.” There is only “college paid for by other people who didn’t get to go to college, because they were busy working to pay for your college.” Every time a politician promises “free college,” what they actually mean is, “We are going to take money from the guy who fixes your plumbing and give it to the university so they can build a new diversity center with its own rock-climbing wall.”
…
Remember: The new DOE rule isn’t about education grants. They’re not charitable gifts funding fun, artsy, explorative degrees that even Lee Ann Scotto Adams admitted lack practical value. No, this is about loans for a degree. A loan repaid over 30 years at about triple the original face value. A loan from private investors, guaranteed by taxpayers— who, with the investors, presumably agreed to this arrangement expecting the degrees to generate enough income to pay off the loans.
…

Translation: We know our graduates are broke, but they feel really good about themselves while they are broke. Or in plainer English: young skulls full of mush who don’t know anything are easily tricked into taking out vast loans for an education that sounds good in the course catalog and is rumored on campus to feature an easy-A, which accommodates a weeknight partying schedule.

But understanding any of that reality would end the grift.
…
The Department of Education estimated that about 18% of undergraduate certificate programs would fail the earnings test, with cosmetology and the previously mentioned somatic body work (which doesn’t even produce a massage license) leading the pack. Among more traditional four-year degrees, degrees with failing marks include theater, music, and studio art. Even prestigious schools like The Juilliard School and the New England Conservatory have programs predicted to fail.

The media frame here is predictable: Trump is destroying the arts. But the reframing stat is right there in the open. The test follows basic conservative principles. And the threshold for passing this test is incredibly low. In many states, graduates would only need to earn between $30,000 and $41,000 a year to pass.
…
Still, the reaction gap is staggering. Instead of asking, “Why are we charging students tens of thousands of dollars for degrees that don’t even qualify them for a position at Buc-ee’s brisket counter?”, the overpaid academic establishment is asking, “How dare you measure our success with money?”

Simple. Because it’s not your money. It’s ours.

The “do no harm” rule is a massive paradigm shift. It exposes the higher-education grift for what it is: a system designed to transfer wealth from the working class to the academic class, while leaving the goofy students themselves saddled with debt they can never repay.

Democrats want taxpayers to forgive student loans. The DOE just showed everyone why the programs shouldn’t even exist in the first place.

More like this, please. Faster.

I enjoyed Nolan’s first film, “Memento,” as a clever take on the inability to form long-term memories.

I haven’t seen “The Odyssey” or “Oppenheimer” yet but I have hated just about all his other films.

Not for politics, but because the writing was so absurd and pretentious. The plots don’t make sense beyond being self-advertisements for Nolan’s cleverness. See:

–The Critical Drinker, “The Dark Knight Rises Makes No Sense”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUDYaNVHpPU

Nolan is a superb filmmaking technician, but otherwise, he seems to have little ability to convey heart, humor or entertainment.

Heath Ledger’s “Joker” being an exception but I give most credit to Ledger’s epic performance.

That narrator’s overall claim is that the Odyssey is a moral education of the soul in line with Plato’s Republic.

I sure distrust this kind of intellectual reduction.

Part One is supposed to be about the source, Homer’s The Odyssey, but nope, only slightly and more about feminist imaginations.

I did not listen to the other podcasts in the series which cover the Nolan film.

A C-5 is 248 ft long and 223 ft wide – a bit smaller than the object in question but reasonably close. The parking lot for the Cheyenne Mountain Complex is about halfway up the mountain which (assuming they were walking in from parking) would place the object about 5000 ft away. The panels on a C-5 would not be easily identifiable from that distance. The first time you see a standing lenticular cloud it seems unnatural and even otherworldly – I know it did to me. Knowledgeable observers who are confident in what they’ve seen often describe details that wouldn’t be normally visible from the distance and angle of observation. Does that mean it wasn’t was what they think it was? Of course not, but it doesn’t mean it was either. Standing lenticular clouds have been routinely reported as UFO’s by lots of people. BTW, they dissipate as rapidly as they form.

I’m not saying he would do it; I’m saying I can imagine that he might. I hope you’re right and you certainly may be.