Nut Meg > Recent Status Updates

I'm usually ok with descriptions of violence, but page after page detailing the destruction of libraries and willful burning of books has me shook

Omg I know this is the tip of the iceberg and yet it just staggers the mind that this woman is actually going to get even worse as the story goes on. The emotional manipulation is awe inspiring

He's trying so hard to make "freedom of the university" a thing (like freedom of the press), but it is the least catchy phrase ever

"The university is one of the key layers (along with the press) in the overall structure of the nation and broadly designed to advance the quest for better understanding and truth, a hallmark of American ethos. Not just part of the fourth branch, universities represent a fifth branch, as essential as the press to our collective life and success."

"Over the course of the twentieth century, the press, or mass media, moved increasingly toward the center in American public life. Before that it was more part of the contentious extremes- partisan, extreme in opinions, inflammatory, what was known as 'yellow journalism'."

We embrace free speech "because of our interest I a higher value or end - we want to expand our understanding, our knowledge, our truth, and our capacities to engage in that pursuit."

"To be a saint is the exception; to be upright is the rule. Err, falter, sin, but be upright. To commit the least possible sin is the law for man. To live entirely without sin is the dream of an angel. Everything on this earth is subject to sin. Sin is like gravity."

"Journalism must inform us of what it can know now. The scholar can take longer and go deeper." Love this idea of Journalism and Academia being 2 sides of the same coin

"I am sorry the translator had not a better English dictionary" omg she's savage

Omg it's page after page of her calling out his shitty translations and showing receipts. She publicly humiliated France's premier intellectual. No wonder he was furious when this was published.

"The charm arising from the tones of English blank verse cannot be felt by a foreigner, who is so far from being acquainted with the pronunciation of our language, that he often mistakes the signification of the most common words" cold shade, especially considering how essential multilingualism was to the 18th century European intelligentsia

Pretty bold to argue that Shakespeare's work is superior to any of the ancient Greeks because English folklore was full of better superstitions lol

"The vulgar call all animals that are not natives of their own country, monsters, however beautiful they may be"

Saying Voltaire's "translations often, his criticisms still oftener, prove he did not perfectly understand the words of the author and therefore it is certain he could not enter into his meaning" is some cold 18th century shade. She accused the most respected intellectual in Europe of not not knowing English well enough to know what he's talking about.

Opens up with a little casual racism, but I've seen worse

The Association to Aid Scientific Research by Women, founded in 1897, shut down in 1932 because apparently"the objects for which this association has worked for thirty-five years have been achieved, since women are given opportunities in Scientific Research on an equality with men." They must be rolling in their graves now...

"Ambition's debt is paid" damn what a line

I knew it, the second they said she wasn't drinking I knew she was pregnant

"The characteristic intellectual failure of the critic of power is a lack of understanding of the limitations under which power is exercised. His characteristic moral failure lies in an excessive concern with his own purity: but purity of a sort is easily had where responsibilities are not assumed."

"When power resorts to knowledge, as it increasingly must, it looks not for intellect, considered as a freely speculative and critical function, but for expertise, for something that will serve its needs."

"As soon as the inherited notion of learning as a leisure-class activity is discarded, the style of education it represented also falls under question...Academic and scholastic, instead of being titles of honor, are becoming terms of reproach."

95 pages to go, let's see if I can do it by midnight

"Until 1830, most teachers had been men...opponents of women teachers were still to be heard in many communities, but they were often easily silenced when it was pointed out that women teachers could be paid one third or one half as much as men."

"The belief in mass education was not founded primarily upon a passion for the development of mind, or upon pride in learning and culture for their own sakes, but rather upon the supposed political and economic benefits of education."

"There is a type of alienation which is simply personal, which arises from the education and in some cases the personal culture of the expert. He is out of place. He is not the right kind of man, he would not be sought after as a companion if his services weren't needed."

"Whereas business had been an instrument of religious discipline, one of the various means of serving God, religious discipline now became an instrument in business, a way of using God to a worldly end."

Dialog isn't really her strong suit, but I've seen worse. The kids are actually pretty realistic

Omg Sam you little psycho, I love it.