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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1j1ye6n30no

(Non pay wall link)

Tragic end.

I feel bad for the dude - honestly a hearty laugh is all I want when people violate social norms like this and show us how frankly evil our institutions can be.

Sure I can blame the dude for every lie told but it only permeates my life several levels deep … the association of someone like Arday and my life only really touches when the walks start crumbling down.

What gets me mad is the institutions.

It’s their fault! Every step of the way someone, anyone, could have stepped in and stopped folly.

But things snowball and here we are.

I don’t even know what I’m supposed to learn from this, and I don’t know how I can help make the world a better place than I left it. People used to change the world I feel like, and I’m only changing the people around me … which is something!

I’m 100% reading the biography about this.

Ah, I didn't see your comment before I posted. Let me move mine down here:

No news yet on cause of death, so it may be he was indeed as ill as he claimed to be, or he killed himself. If I'm really being cynical and horrible, this could have been a 'cry for help' (divert attention from the charges and make him into a victim) attempt that worked too well and he wasn't found in time to be saved*.

Either way, his death will be treated as the martyrdom of a scholar who was hounded and persecuted just for being black. All the plagiarism and other fantastic claims will be swept under the carpet, and it will be Professor Arday Died For Your Sins, Systemic Racism.

Arday faked so much in his life and about his life, it's hard to know what the truth of his death is, until we get more information. But it will divide into two camps: "see, he was innocent all along and racists killed him" versus "this is sad but he did do the things he was accused of doing" and camp A will be heard more, and disseminated more, than camp B.

*In case you think I'm simply being awful for the sake of awfulness, I have a family member who likes rewriting history so they were the victim of general abusiveness growing up, including fake accusations of inappropriate sexual contact by another family member **, and whose stock response to any mild 'here's how to get out of the situation you are in' advice that required them to do something other than wallow in self-pity was to turn on the waterworks and whimper about 'yes I know I'm a nuisance and a bother and you're right to hate me and want me dead'. They did two 'cry for help' attempts that were carefully calibrated not to be fatal and are now getting their 'I am a martyr and a victim' badge burnished.

** I know it's fake because I was on the premises at the alleged times this happened and unless it was done in another dimension to the one we inhabit, it didn't happen. I know this is often a claim for such accusations: "oh the accused could never have done it" but it was completely not in character for the accused person and, as I said, I was around while alleged events happened and would have seen or heard what they claimed, and I didn't see or hear it.

i think it would be funny if he somehow faked his death as well. but i assume whoever has reported this has confirmed with the police/coroner/hospital

I don't know why you'd assume that after all the other fantastical lies the press repeated about him uncritically and without any evidence. Why would they start fact checking now?