HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The End of College as We Know It: AI is wreaking havoc in universities, but higher ed’s woes long predate ChatGPT.

What’s the matter with universities? Syracuse missed its 2026 enrollment target and may run a $30 million deficit. Minnesota is cutting its budget by $225 million over two years. Tulsa is slashing tuition by more than half. Colleges enroll 4.2% fewer undergraduates than last year. Cornell, Yale, Vanderbilt and Washington University in St. Louis put out plans—not radical enough, if you ask me—to reimagine the university. Wossamotta U?

Colleges are known for left-leaning professors, speech suppression, bizarre courses—Occidental College taught “The Unbearable Whiteness of Barbie”—and easy grading more than critical thinking, judgment and problem solving. It’s easy to blame artificial intelligence, but problems run deeper. . . .

According to Gallup, in 2013, 70% of Americans said college was very important. Today it’s only 31%. If universities don’t change, more than a few will implode, while others will wither away over decades. AI and alternative forms of learning are already rising. Something radical is needed to stop the decay of our once great universities. Who will step up?

Who indeed? The link above is supposed to be a free link, but in case it doesn’t work for you, you can read the whole article here, too. And you should.

WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T MENTION THE JIHAD: Basil Fawlty, Mad Bomber? John Cleese Reported to Counterterror Cops.

ON SUNDAYS I RUN A PROMO POST FOR (MOSTLY) INDIE AUTHORS:  Book Promo And Vignettes By Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

Turns out the email has been doing very weird things, including at least one totally inappropriate automated response. I didn’t notice because we were doing a dance of houses (between houses, more like.) If you’ve sent something to the promo and been ignored, please send again.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST:

Falcon 9 flew more missions in ONE YEAR than the entire Space Shuttle program flew in 30 years

• The entire Shuttle fleet:
135 missions from 1981–2011

• Falcon 9 in 2025 alone:
165 launches

SpaceX exceeded the Shuttle program’s entire lifetime mission count by 30 launches in… pic.twitter.com/xUjhOexVpQ

— X Freeze (@XFreeze) October 3, 2026

F— THE POLLS, GET OUT AND VOTE LIKE IT’S YOUR LAST CHANCE TO!  California governor’s races sees another massive swing as nail-biting new poll released.

AN AMAZING WEEK, IN A WORLD GETTING INCREASINGLY CRAZIER:   My Week in Review: Heroes in the Cockpit, Burnham Flying Us Into the Ground. A week of extraordinary courage in the air and suicidal complacency in government, on borders, on borrowing and on energy security.

Don’t tell me I’m wrong to call Europe uncivilized, either.

AS IF COMMIE MAMDANI KNOWS SQUAT ABOUT DIGNITY:   Socialist Mayor Mamdani: Government’s Job Is to Deliver ‘Whatever You Need’ for a Dignified Life.

TALARICO. LIKE ALMOST ALL DEMS IN COMPETITIVE RACES, IS RUNNING A SMOKE & MIRRORS CAMPAIGN; RE-CYCL;ING OLD CAMPAIGN RALLY FOOTAGE NEEDS TO BE RECOGNIZED:  It Turns Out That Talarico’s ‘Latest’ High-Profile Campaign Stop Is From February.

Sorry I refuse to believe Texas will consider electing this homunculus.

GOOD GUYS DOING GOOD:  U.S. Troops Help Capture Narcos In Ecuador.

SIBERIA. KEEP IT IN SIBERIA:  One Dead, Nearly 200 Hospitalized in Siberian Pneumonic Plague Outbreak.

IF HE HAD A SMIDGE OF HONESTY IN HIM, THIS WOULD MEAN BANNING ALL CHINESE COMPANIES, THE ONLY ONES STILL PRACTICING SLAVERY:  Gavin Newsom Signs New Law Requiring Companies To Disclose Historical Ties To Slavery.

PLEASE PAY ATTENTION:  If you want to see the GRANITE Act pass, and get foreign censors the hell off of America’s Internet, now is the time to take any and all action you feel appropriate. Call your reps, write an op-ed, tell your friends – literally anything.

Our first amendment rights shouldn’t be subjected to the freakish fits of the uncivilized of Europe and the world at large. Let them rot in tyranny, but preserve the basic civil rights of our people.

YES, GAS IS EXPENSIVE:  But there are fixes already being worked out for that. Meanwhile not voting against the democrats gets you this:  Hello, America! The Midterm Elections are a Month Away. Here’s what Chuck Schumer and the Democrats have planned.

THEY CRAVE POWER LIKE A MISER CRAVES WEALTH:  Those who are attracted to power are the ones least capable of using it wisely.

YOU KNOW, SINCE I’M THEIR FAVORITE SNACK, I’D BE ALL FOR THIS:  Since my original post below got a bit of traction, I’ve been doing a bit of research with Grok on the costs of completely eliminating mosquitoes that attack humans using gene drives. Bottom line is, this would probably save 2/3rds to 3/4ths of the money we currently spend for only partly effective insecticide based control methods in the United States, but would totally eliminate mosquitoes rather than just cutting back on them. For those tuning in late, gene drive involves the release of male mosquitoes that generally only have male descendants; the “gene drive” part uses advanced techniques so that instead of half of the offspring inheriting this property, almost all or all do. Eventually the population disappears for lack of female mosquitoes.  Again for those tuning in for the first time, most mosquito species don’t attack human beings; there are 3500 species of mosquitoes worldwide but only a couple hundred, most of them invasive, are of interest because they bite humans and spread disease, not to mention just raw discomfort and an inability to stay outdoors without covering yourself in DEET. The rest we don’t care about. Also, only female mosquitoes bite humans; the males do not, so releasing males doesn’t itself add disease carriers to the environment.

STOP PANDERING TO INVADERS:  Gavin Newsom signs Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha into law as new California state holidays.

NO KIDDING! THIS IS MY SHOCKED FACE. IT COULDN’T BE MORE SHOCKED:  HHS: Biden Admin’s Office Of Refugee Resettlement Was A Fraud-Fueled ‘Smuggling Operation’ For Alien Children.

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE GRAFT BEHIND THE CURTAIN:  Amazing. These researchers found that there’s a spike in Bitcoin activity around the time foreign aid money goes out. Somewhere between 2 and 6 cents of every dollar of World Bank foreign aid disbursements got siphoned off into crypto wallets:

A BIG WIN FOR BOLSONARO:

🚨BREAKING: Flávio Bolsonaro has officially WON the first round of the Brazilian Presidential Elections, with millions more votes than communist tyrant Lula

The polls got it horribly wrong.

CHANGE is coming to Brazil! 🇧🇷 pic.twitter.com/yrCEN2DgKl

— Inevitable West (@Inevitablewest) October 5, 2026

It's possible, but the huge popular wave in favor of the Bolsonaro movement across Brazil will make that kind of flagrantly anti-democratic behavior more difficult.

But the STF has been shameless and without limits, so I put nothing past them. I'm sure they're plotting.

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 5, 2026

Weird:

Americans were literally financing movements intended to destroy their way of life. https://t.co/AVMlQ4C0Xy

— The Drunk Republican (@DrunkRepub) October 5, 2026

UPDATE (From Ed): MMGA?

Looking at this map, how long until Trump demands regime change in Mexico?

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 4, 2026

IT WAS A VERY WEIRD WEEKEND, SO FORGIVE ME FOR NOT BRINGING YOU YOUR MEME FIX TILL NOW:  Fall Into Memes.

USA TODAY BRINGS COMMON SENSE: The ‘Cornell 7’ haven’t been charged. The mob doesn’t care: What’s most troubling in the Cornell University rape allegations is that onlookers have already made up their minds about who is to blame. “The pictures of these young men who have not been charged, not been adjudicated, are being plastered all over the internet. I think people are reporting this story inaccurately. I think they are reporting it unfairly. And while this is something that we have to take very seriously, there is no way, according to her statement in 2024, that any prosecutor would have brought this court case.”

The important part is activating the Dems’ psychotic women base between now and election day.

OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.

SINGULARLY UNGRATEFUL: Supermassive black holes ‘kill’ their host galaxies using plasma jets as their murder weapons.

RETATRUTIDE: Ozempic Rival Delivers 25% Weight Loss at Highest Dose in Phase 3 Trial.

FIGHT THE POWER:

The people of Brazil are SWARMING the streets as Flavio Bolsonaro currently leads against the man who threw his father in jail.

What we are witnessing in South America is the total rejection of Communist tyrants and the embrace of freedom. pic.twitter.com/R1McEBwDnq

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 4, 2026