Harvard commencement: Conan O'Brien

(TYT Sports) Conan O'Brien FLIPS the script on Trump and turns him into a laughingstock

(Hook Global) "I'm confident": Comedian (and possible sell out) Conan O'Brien mocks Trump at Harvard event amid Trump versus School tussle

LA Fest of Books 2025: What happened?

WHAT HAPPENED?

Sexy Lothario and TV pothead Wilmer Valderrama full interview: "An American Story" @LA Times Festival of Books USC Book Fair 2025

Wilmer Valderrama interview: American Story

I was the sexy one on That '70s Show

(KCW Attractions) April 28, 2025: LA Times Festival of Books at USC (April 27, 2025) featured TV star Wilmer Valderrama. Who? He's a Hollywood man-about-town (who dated many incredible women to prove his prowess as a super sexy Latin heartthrob, who is now on about writing with an insightful discussion concerning his book, An American Story. Hear his inspiring journey and thoughts on his work. #AnAmericanStory

I'm the country's hottest poet.

We often hear said that "Los Angeles has no culture." That may be. But we do have the country's largest book festival.

Who knows who's doing all that reading, but we buy a lot of books and launch more careers than Nashville, Frisco, and even the Empire State, the Big Apple, where allegedly if one can make it there, one can make it anywhere.

How to boil down this mega literary festival full of authors, promoters, publishers, and poets?

The Poets Laureate of CA and LA

Poets Laureate Dana Gioia, Luis J. Rodriquez, LA Times Fest of Books '16

• The most stolen poetry book in the country: Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. by LA's first Poet Laureate Luis J. Rodriguez (2014)
• California Poet Laureate Dana Gioia (2015)

Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A.

Autopsy (Avan Jogia)

To boil down the whole two-day event on the USC campus near the heart of the city (DTLA), there was this former teenage heartthrob named Avan Jogia. His post-teen fans mobbed the Poetry Stage tent to marvel at his ability to write, express emotion, and cuss. It was hot. (It wasn't but if one loves a TV star and sees him in real life, dressed in suit, tie, and checkered Vans, hey, that's something. What is it? An opportunity to sell lots of copies of a personally autographed hardcover poetry book about the darker side, very Emo and slightly Goth, called Autopsy (of an Ex-Teen Heartthrob).

USC encourages responsible graffiti: It's lit

The annual Los Angeles Festival of Books on the USC campus (now in a kind of lockdown status requiring picture ID to enter) is here, hosted by the Los Angeles Times.

It is two full days of authors, book sales, literary performances, networking, seeing and being seen, getting published, and maybe even wrangling a book deal with a major publishing house.

Merriam-Webster: US's Most Trusted Dictionary

Don't count on it. There's nearly no money on anything but novels that get picked up and converted into something else by the Hollywood Machine, the dream of any serious writer eager to cash in rather than promote the art of communication and literature.

Books, books, read books on Venus and Mars!

There is also a religious section and a massive Buddhist organization giving out FREE sacred Buddhist texts and titles from both the back-to-basics historical Buddha-oriented Theravada tradition and the much larger Amitabha (a Cosmic Buddha) and Guanyin (Goddess of Compassion) emphasizing Mahayana school and its apocryphal writings. A lovely Muslim organization will have literature as in years past. Bring a book bag, enjoy food and live entertainment, and lots of schmoozing and walking around like a college coed. Info: Festival of Books

30 Years of Stories: The L.A. Times Festival of Books Returns

Modern "readers" prefer more pictures, manga, anime, and comics with easy emotional signaling

.

USC: Student Culture & Community

The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books is marking its 30th anniversary as it returns to USC’s University Park Campus all day on April 26-27, 2025. For three decades, this beloved event has brought together book lovers, authors, and storytellers to celebrate the written word. Join fellow book enthusiasts as USC welcomes the community to its campus for this annual event. Visit the L.A. Times Festival of Books at USC website

• Festival of Books 2025 » L.A. Times - Festival of Books
• L.A. Times Festival of Books | USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
• University of Southern California (USC), home of the Trojans and frat boys near the LA Memorial Coliseum
• University of Southern California (usc.edu)
• Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)
• Festival of Books; Ashley Wells, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Crystal Q. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Israel not to blame for its war crimes?

Wisdom Quarterly's new [honorary] Lebanese correspondent Mia Khalifa: Make love not war

Yeah, yeah, yeah, get it out of your system.

What?! That's crazy. Of course Israel is guilty and to blame for its state-sponsored terrorism, imperial Zionist war crimes, atrocities, crimes against humanity, and textbook genocide, which has a very exact definition.

What we mean is that maybe it isn't Israel and its revolting hypocrisy, calling itself "the most moral army in the world" because it throws a bomb on the roof 57 seconds before it throws it in the window of a civilian family's home to behead and maim the children inside and exterminate whole families living in overcrowded conditions, or its CIA-groomed Chicagoan Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, because it might be the USA (CIA, NSA, NSC, US Department of War, Pentagon, White House) directing them, funding them, prompting them, and backing them.

• 

  Lebanese War Correspondent Mia K. is skeptical

  But Israel is committing war crimes, right? Yes, of course. To say Israel is not to "blame" is not to say war crimes are not being committed or that they are not being committed by Jewish Zionist war criminals. It is only to point out that just as one would not blame, for example, a Mafioso, an Italian thug, for killing, maiming, threatening, and other horrors without pointing to the boss who sent him, the Godfather. Who is the Godfather here scheming with Israel, AIPAC, worldwide Zionists? It is the CIA, Pentagon, and U.S. War Machine. It's been going on for so long, with other aiders and abettors like the UK and EU and other "client states," that Israel would try to go on even if we pulled out. But could they succeed with our for-profit military-industrial complex arming, diplomatically covering, and planning attacks, not to mention sending in U.S. ships, spy planes, secret technologies, DARPA weapons, and countless billions to promote American imperialism and the setting up of military bases and networks. What is the U.S. endgame? Ask the CIA or Scott Ritter or a whistleblower.

• Former CIA Chief Panetta calls Israel's mass detonation of pagers a form of 'terrorism'

Endgame (Scott Ritter)

It would explain why we as the peace movement and antiwar protesters are able to make no headway in bringing about peace by pointing out war criminal Netanyahu's actions, poking holes in Zionist Israeli propaganda, psyops, and blatant lies anyone should be able to see through.

Some will not accept this suggestion because there really are bloodthirsty Zionist Jews out to build an empire by carving out all the nearby countries -- Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and of course Mandatory Palestine.

• Buddhistdoor: View Israel and Iran pursuing peace amid conflict [except neither Israel nor the US want peace, it's just an act in preparation for war and imperial conquest]

Of course there's U.S. collusion - Scott Ritter

Do non-Jewish people (Gentiles and the hated "Arabs") know that the nonstate of Israel expanded its settler colonial project (territory) by stealing land from neighboring countries? What we call beloved Gaza -- formerly the largest open-air prison in the world, now a crime scene -- was Egypt. In the 1967 "Six Day War," Israel just stole it, like Putin's Russia just deciding Ukraine belongs to the Soviet Union (USSR) and we're what's left of that union so what's yours is mine and what's mine is none of your business; ergo, the US State Department can put out a new map of the world ASAP.

Why this is not such a crazy idea. What group, if any, is driving the USA? Does a group exercise undue influence on the White House (Jared, Doug, Monica, Laura, Henry, and too many staffers to mention), on the State Department, on the Pentagon, on Washington DC, on the press, on Hollywood, on Wall Street, on the university system, on the public imagination? Has one group arisen to decide -- or at least pretend to decide because maybe it's being used as the proxy, the scapegoat, the avantgarde, the frontline face of a spearhead into the geopolitical Middle East.

• Israel on brink of full-scale Ukraine-like invasion (boots on the ground) of a rival country it says it has a right to bomb and attack, take over and annex (e.g., Golan Heights)
• US/Israel's red button device blasts hit [scary enemy] Hezbollah at critical moment officials say
• NOT IN OUR NAME: ifnotnowmovement.org
• Jewish Voice for Peace (jvp.org)
• Code Pink: Women for Peace
• American Veterans for Peace
• IDF veterans: breakingthesilence.org.il
• شرش | Shoresh | שר”ש (@shoresh_us) • Anti-Zionist Jews
• American Civil Liberties Union
• Orthodox Jews Against Israel (nkusa.org)

Are we barking up the wrong tree? It's really DC

There are a lot of good Jewish people who are not Zionists, not American and European imperialists, who oppose genocide, who do not defend biblical nonsense that says, in essence, "God is our real estate agent." But many more are silent. And worst of all, there's a sizable segment that speaks for the whole. Some people defend Israel no matter what it does. Some lie for it no matter how egregious the lies.

Judaism is not Zionism, many agree.

It isn't little Israel acting on its own. That's clear. Many governments are aiding and abetting it, to ensure their steady supply of arms from Israel and American arms dealers. Some can't afford to be without them in times that are artificially kept unsteady and unpredictable by the US of A with enemies everywhere.

Today Japan shot at a Russian jet that it says crossed over the line into its airspace. Will Russia retaliate? Scandinavian countries want to join NATO for fear Russian may have to expand to oppose the forces being aligned against it, as evidenced by the US Proxy-War on Russia in Ukraine.

Well, 2 standards are probably better than 1

Today a show on KPFK (Health & Wellness Mix, 90.7 FM Los Angeles, 1:00-2:00 pm, Sept. 23, 2024) had such clarity on the real movers and shakers for war: It's us in the sense of US (the United States). Israel is an arm of our hegemony.

A group is willing to fight "Arabs" (Middle Easterners), so we're only to happy to provide the guns, targets, PR, diplomatic cover in the UN, illegal weapons (cluster bombs), covert support (CIA, NSA, etc. black budget projects), Congress-approved bombs and official-budget allocations, dual-citizenship fighters (US citizen-Israeli in a foreign army with allegiance to a foreign power)

• Amy Goodman, DemocracyNow.org; CNN Channel 18 (video); Analyst Scott Ritter via Thao Nhi, 0/23/24; Shauna Schwartz, Ashley Wells, Sheldon S., Pfc. Sandoval, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly EDITORIAL

The #1 party school in the USA is UC...

Should we study tonight? - Why?! There's a great party we can go to instead! Woo!!!

Benny "Stud" Hill approaches a couple of birds
on the beach but is startled by clicking camera.

Why do we need to party? We do not. But college kids, that's a different story. "There's a time and a place for everything," and that place is college. Campus life is built around it. It's practically what the U.S. university system is all about -- socialization and normalization of heavy drinking to get by, to socialize, to speak up, to let loose and drop the stifling inhibitions beaten into us.

Lost Connections (Johann Hari)

Whatever the case, party status is a big consideration for most college students selecting a college, though most will just follow someone to the other person's choice of school, so terrified are we to be alone or set off on an uncharted course. This party obsession has terrible side-effects, but they seem par for the course. Welcome to adulthood. Welcome to the workplace on the first day of your life sentence.

Why do we crave "partying"? It is the only relief we have ever known to the disease of craving (tanha). It is at best a temporary fix that too often slides into habituation, obsession, and even addiction. This "partying" may be defined as self-soothing through one or all of the senses:

• tongue and tastes,
• eye and pleasing sights,
• body and pleasurable sensations,
• nose and scents,
• ear and engaging sounds,
• mind and fantasies.

It seems to mean getting high and tight, but it is more than drunkenness, prescription pill popping, smoking, and dabbling in fentanyl laced street drugs. Sex is partying. Dancing is partying. Getting out of our heads surrounded by fellow distraction-mates, aka fast "friends," is partying. Sunday night rolls around, Monday looms, what to do? Climb on and off the carousel?

"If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are a PEACE, you are living in the present"

- Lao Tzu (Taoism)

Queen of the party: Hawk Tuah Girl Haliey

Which University of California campus is it?

Students on UCSB campus mill about like stoned beach zombies (Al Seib/Los Angeles Times)

.

The fictional lives of coeds (HBO)

Southern California - This California university, home of many Nobel laureates, tops the 2025 party school list. Is it Chico State? It's always Chico State. No. San Diego? It must be San Diego! No. Spartan Trojans of USC? Bubbly Bruins of UCLA? Shroomin saps of Santa Cruz? Are they dropping acid at UC Berkeley? Meth at Stanford?

(LA Times) A California university that’s home to Nobel laureates has also gained the distinction of being the top party school in the United States, according to a recent Niche ranking.

UC Santa Barbara [home of incels and that shooter] takes the top spot on a list of party schools in the U.S. for 2025, released by Niche, an education research and ranking site.

• Expect applications to skyrocket as the top 10% of California students eligible to access the UC system -- by their hard work, historical exclusion, natural academic or sports talents, or willingness to do endless homework and participate in boring school activities -- being sick and tired of living like goody-two-shoes, finally have a chance to break free and underage-drink to excess to deal with social awkwardness, clinical anxiety, and trying to finally be part of the app-based campus hookup culture they've heard so much about.

White privilege is off the charts as is our fragility

To calculate the rankings, Niche — which uses a database of nearly 500,000 student college reviews — factored in:

• student surveys on the party scene,
• access to bars,
• athletics grade,
• Greek (sorority/fraternity) life grade, and
• access to restaurants.

Yes, we always wanted to learn to party!

Reviews from current and former students [confessing about their and their peers' drug use] describe the university as “combining academic rigor with a laid-back coastal lifestyle” and praised the “vibrant student community.”

More than half a dozen Nobel Prize winners in economics, physics, and chemistry — including David Card, Alan J. Heeger, Herbert Kroemer, and Shuji Nakamura — have taught at UC Santa Barbara over the years.

“I used to be an over-the-top party guy but living in Santa Barbara/Isla Vista helped me form new healthy outdoor habits while learning out how to be more responsible,” one student wrote.

We'll worry about consequences later. Party time!

“There are so many activities you can partake in around town and on campus that is not partying... It is literally heaven on earth for an 18–21-year-old as long as you don’t overdo it.”

But one person, who described him/herself as the parent of an alum, rated the university only two stars, complaining that students “party all day.”

• Declining or advancing? In 2015 The Princeton Review ranked it third on its list of top party schools

Spring Break Rager

Chasing the Scream: Truth...

“College kids party, but UCSB is out of control,” the person wrote. One of the best-known party events is “Deltopia,” an unsanctioned spring break party that unfolds in April.

The party, made popular among UC Santa Barbara students who live in Isla Vista near the campus, was paused during the COVID-19 pandemic but resumed in 2022, resulting in multiple arrests and citations during the weekend-long event.

In 2014, more than 20,000 people were estimated to have attended Deltopia, which devolved into a riot resulting in dozens of injuries and more than 100 arrests.

Cruise ships ply coast of the three Californias

The UC Santa Barbara student association at the time issued a statement saying that “The ‘wild party’ stereotype and image exists because we, the students, allow it to exist.”

This year and last year, Santa Barbara County officials closed the beaches in Isla Vista in anticipation of Deltopia. Last year more than 150 people were issued citations, while 23 people were arrested. More

Personality/intelligence intertwine? Everything we know is wrong? Depression from moving?

• Audio Video Recorde (nestfinesse.com)
• Women's classic solid colour built in bra tank top
• Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Brittny Mejia, Aug. 24, 2024; Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Crystal Q. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Buddhist colleges in the USA: Soka U

Soka University of America

See Soka University photo gallery  (Niche)

Soka University of America (SUA) is a private, non-profit institution in Aliso Viejo, Orange County (next to Laguna Beach), Southern California.

It offers a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in liberal arts and a Master of Arts (M.A.) in educational leadership and societal change.

Each offers a unique curriculum that emphasizes leadership and contributive citizenship. SUA was founded on the Buddhist principles of peace, human rights, and the sanctity of life. The curriculum, however, is entirely secular.

• Soka University of America (Niche)

The study of sciences (STEM)

Undergraduates are required to study a non-native language and study abroad for a semester in a country where that language is spoken. (The cost of this is included in tuition).

Undergraduates with a family income below $90,000 and who have demonstrated financial need have their tuition covered by a combination of grants and scholarships from the university, federal and state governments, and private agencies.

SUA also offers generous needs-based aid to students whose household income is greater than $90,000 as well as scholarship opportunities that are not based on family income.

• Soka University of America (soka.edu)
• Soka University of America (Wikipedia)
• ADDRESS: 1 University Drive
• Aliso Viejo, California 92656
• PHONE: (949) 480-4000
• EMAIL: info@soka.edu

• What about the school's name? It is from the Soka Gakkai International Buddhist Movement
• Worship through chanting of Japanese mantra: Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō
• Institute of Buddhist Studies, Berkeley, California (1949)
• Shambhala founder Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche's Naropa University (1974)
• Taiwanese Buddhist Dharma Realm Buddhist University (1976)
• University of the West, Buddhist college, San Gabriel Valley (1990)
• Wat Phra Dhammakaya with Buddhist college in Azusa
• Maitripa College Tibetan Buddhist College of Oregon (2005)
• Won Institute of Graduate Studies Pennsylvania (2001)
• Ewam Buddhist Institute – located in Arlee, Montana
• Go vegan and supplement with Vitamin B12 to avoid deficiency and dementia (The Hearty Soul)
• Japanese mountain town is known for lacquerware — tradition goes back centuries
• Buddhist universities and colleges in the United States
• Soka.edu; Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Scott Ritter: Jimmy Dore Show (live)

Biden mimics Trump with border executive order! War whistleblower Scott Ritter’s passport seized

War expert Scott Ritter

(The Jimmy Dore Show) June 4, 2024, 3:10 PM: Who's Scott Ritter? He is practically the only honest voice on Israeli war crimes, genocide, and the American quagmire that is Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran in our secret proxy wars that continue even today. No one shall be allowed to criticize the American War Machine without consequences. Ritter's passport has been confiscated.

The government is looking for something to pin on him to shut him down to keep him from addressing a massive conference in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to dump the dollar (US greenback) and open up world trade to other currencies. The CIA and other militant agencies worked very hard to establish the dollar as the only currency that can be used to buy and sell oil. It was the world's reserve currencty, the "petrol dollar."

• #TheJimm1DoreShow
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Say NO to Genocide Joe! Morehouse College

Pres. Biden greeted by protesters at Morehouse College commencement

(Face the Nation) May 19, 2024: Some students and faculty at Morehouse College greeted Pres. Biden with a silent protest by wearing Palestinian scarves or the color of the flag as the president delivered the commencement at the all-male historically Black university. Nikole Killion reports.

ABOUT: "Face the Nation" is America's premier Sunday morning public affairs program. The broadcast is one of the longest-running news programs in the history of television, having debuted Nov. 7, 1954, on CBS. Every Sunday, "Face the Nation" moderator and CBS News senior foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan welcomes leaders, newsmakers, and experts to a lively round table discussion of current events and the latest news.