"I just don't get it. I mean, everybody says, if we're on the moon, we can get to Mars. I don't want to go there either."

"There's nothing out there — except other rocks. Let's fix the shitshow here on Earth."

Said Bill Maher in the monologue of last Friday's episode of "Real Time."

Later in the show, breaking up 2 panelists who were brawling with each other about the democracy in Hungary, Maher butted in to say, "How about that moon?"

A panelist smiled and said, "We can agree on the moon."

Maher: "Well, I don't know if we can agree on the moon. I like — who doesn't like? — the moon. To look at it. From here.

"We want a full house cleaning. Get the garbage out of here. These jerks are destroying Congress, for the American people and for all of us who came here to do good work."

Said an unnamed House Democrat, quoted in "Swalwell scandal threatens cascade of House expulsion votes" (Axios).

But: "Many rank-and-file House members are territorial about their prerogatives and terrified of the precedent it would set to expel someone on the basis of allegations that haven't been fully adjudicated — even when they are highly unsavory."

"Lauren Sánchez Bezos... and [Jeff] Bezos do everything together. On a typical day, the newlyweds wake up around 6 in their new, roughly $230 million compound on Indian Creek..."

"... an exclusive private island in Miami.... They don’t touch their phones. Instead, they begin each day by listing 10 things they’re grateful for — and they can’t repeat what they named the day before. From there, the couple drink their morning coffee in a sunroom and watch the sun rise: hers from a mug that reads 'Woke Up Sexy as Hell Again,' his from one she got him that spells HUNK in symbols from the periodic table. They play pickleball. Six days a week, they work out for an hour with a private trainer. 'He looks good, doesn’t he?' Mrs. Sánchez Bezos said of her new husband, in an interview in Miami in January. She slow-nodded, repeating, 'He looks good.'"

For some reason the NYT has a long article about Lauren Sánchez Bezos. It's called, inanely, "Someone Has to Be Happy. Why Not Lauren Sánchez Bezos? As half of an unfathomably powerful couple, Mrs. Sánchez Bezos seems to have influenced the uber-rich to stop apologizing, and start enjoying themselves."

I skimmed most of the article, but I'm blogging it because I can't imagine someone with all the money drinking coffee from a mug that says "Woke Up Sexy as Hell Again" and making her husband drink from a cup marked "HUNK." And, sorry, I just don't believe "they begin each day by listing 10 things they’re grateful for" — whether they allow themselves to repeat items or not. Supposedly, you wake up sexy, and then you do the 10-things list, which is more like a New Age religion substitute, and just not sexy at all, even if you're listing things like I'm thankful I'm so sexy, I'm thankful my husband is sexy, I'm thankful I wake up sexy, I'm thankful I know how to derive multiple thankfulness items from the concept that I am sexy, I'm thankful for the sexiness with which I woke up yesterday, I'm thankful for pickleball, I'm thankful my husband is the third richest man in the world, I'm thankful for the New York Times, I'm thankful for our unfathomable power, and I'm thankful to have reached #10 on our daily thankfulness list.

"So, there you have it, the meeting went well, most points were agreed to, but the only point that really mattered, NUCLEAR, was not."

"Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz."

Writes Trump at Truth Social.

"At some point, we will reach an 'ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO IN, ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO OUT' basis, but Iran has not allowed that to happen by merely saying, 'There may be a mine out there somewhere,' that nobody knows about but them. THIS IS WORLD EXTORTION....

Tim Dillon explains Melania's Epstein speech.

I like the detail in the interpretation of the line, "Donald and I were invited to the same parties as Epstein from time to time since overlapping in social circles is common in New York City and Palm Beach."

Dillon translates: "Here's what she's telling you: We are rich.... I'm wealthy and I'm attractive. Many of you aren't either one of those things.

"[A]s Vice President JD Vance took a podium in Pakistan and said no deal had been reached had been reached to end the war in Iran... President Trump... was surrounded by people, but Mr. Trump was somehow an isolated figure...."

"People mostly circulated around him, checking in with updates and then leaving again. For the most part, Mr. Trump sat and impassively watched blood and saliva sprayed out from the fighters beating each other silly in front of him...."

Writes Katie Rogers, "Trump Was Watching a U.F.C. Fight in Miami While Iran Talks Collapsed On his way to Florida, President Trump said it did not matter to him if a deal with Iran was reached or not: 'We win, regardless,' he said" (NYT).

Blood and saliva — I've got tags for both of those.

Trump was "surrounded." People "circulated around him." When you're a star, you can't grab what orbits around you:

"O."

Love how he stopped for the "OH"...if you're from Baltimore, you understand.

— Sҽαɳ 🇺🇸⚓️ (@doc_1029) April 12, 2026

"I worked in a warehouse. It's where I felt so free. Then HR saw that video and terminated me."

I was good. I was great. I was busy moving freight. But I wanted to be funny, now the trucks will have to wait. I miss that icy freezer. I know that must sound odd, but now the smoke has cleared and my testicles  have thawed. I used to pick up pallets and I used to lift them high. It used to lift my spirits up. I felt like I could fly....

That's Blake Porter, via this Metafilter post by CrunchyFrog.

I enjoyed that. It was sweet and quirky, and I felt for the guy (even though I also think employers do need some rules about making your own videos at work, especially if you're working with heavy equipment like forklifts).

But it also got me wondering about Metafilter. I remember years ago, it had hot debate about political and social issues, but now it seems that everyone has agreed amongst themselves only to talk about sweet little quirky things and to be really nice to each other. It's a gentle pleasant atmosphere, but what the hell happened? What sapped all the vigor out of the place? If you go over there now, you'll see a post about what Isaac Asimov wrote about "1984" in 1980, how Jhumpa Lahiri is finding "quivering energy" in the works of Thomas Hardy, the rescue of a sea turtle, a walk to see (hear?) a sound sculpture, a bird that has relearned an old birdsong, a cat in a library, what rock art might be saying about Tasmanian tigers, etc. etc. 

Attempting to use Grok to explore my wonderment, I encountered the word "cozification." My search based on that word might have led me down various sweet quirky paths, but in the interest of keeping myself sharp and fast-moving, I decided to end this post with this screen shot (from Urban Dictionary) which I deem found art:

A gently fogged up sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"In a stunning political reversal, prominent supporters of Rep. Eric Swalwell’s campaign for California governor withdrew their support Friday..."

"... after the congressmember denied allegations that he sexually assaulted a woman twice, including when she worked for him. Swalwell was among the leading Democrats in the race to replace outgoing Gov. Gavin Newsom. But in just hours, he saw his most prominent supporters - including U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff and powerful labor unions - drop their endorsements and call for his exit from the race.... This turmoil in the race came after the San Francisco Chronicle reported Friday that a woman said Swalwell sexually assaulted her in 2019 and 2024.... Uncorroborated and nonspecific rumors that Swalwell behaved inappropriately with female staffers have circulated on social media for weeks, but the Chronicle’s story is the first reported account of someone making a direct accusation...."

I'm reading "Allies yank support for Swalwell’s California governor run after sexual assault allegations" (AP).

"But as the show gassed on, it also started to feel like zealotry porn: There were only so many fingers you could watch chopped off, only so many gouged-out eyes."

"After a while, the red robes started to look more like cringe cosplay than a pointed protest symbol. When the series finale aired last year, I didn’t bother watching, especially after reading that the titular handmaid, June, never reunites with the daughter she’s spent the entire series trying to rescue.And now we learn why: Because without that loose end, there could be no 'Testaments.' Our new protagonist is June’s teenage daughter, Agnes, who is being raised by a wealthy Gilead family and trained to become a perfect upper-class Gilead wife. Daily, she and the other 'plums' get on a big purple bus and go to the weirdest finishing school in suburban Maryland. Mostly they spend their days learning needlepoint and flower arranging, but sometimes they break up the monotony by ecstatically cheering while watching a petty criminal lose his hand to a buzz saw...."

From "A 'Handmaid’s Tale' sequel answers questions the original forgot to ask/'The Testaments' extends the authoritarian thought experiment that began with Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel by turning focus to the enforcers" (WaPo).

Yikes. Zealotry porn. Are there really so many people who feel drawn to observe bloody amputations? And then they think the show is criticizing other people, not them. Are they titillated... by the amputations and by seeing how terrible those other people are?

Anyway... Daily, she and the other 'plums' get on a big purple bus... sounds like something in a song by Prince. I racked my brain, but all I could think of was "The bus came by and I got on, that's when it all began..."

And, yeah, it's "racked my brain," not "wracked my brain." The rack is a torture device.

"Iran has been unable to open the Strait of Hormuz to more shipping traffic because it cannot locate all of the mines it laid in the waterway and lacks the capability to remove them..."

"... according to U.S. officials. The development is one reason Iran has not been able to quickly comply with the Trump administration’s admonitions to let more traffic pass through the strait. It is also potentially a complicating factor as Iranian negotiators and a U.S. delegation led by Vice President JD Vance meet in Pakistan this weekend for peace talks...."

The NYT reports.

"Bartz recently put some of her own writing into Ace, an A.I. checker, and was startled when the program labeled her work as 82 percent A.I.-generated."

"The program then offered her a solution: 'Would you like to humanize your text?' When Bartz wrote about her experience on Substack, dozens of writers chimed in. 'I guess that’s what happens when your books were stolen to program A.I.,' the novelist Rene Denfeld commented, noting that an A.I. detection program had also falsely determined some of her writing to be A.I.-generated.... [W]ith the many ways A.I. is seeping into book creation, from research to editing to composing sentences, there is confusion over which forms of A.I. use cross a line — and a heightened fear that A.I. writing can, and will, steal past professional editors...."

Writes Alexandra Alter, in "Where Does Publishing’s A.I. Problem Leave Authors and Readers? Major publishing houses risk unwittingly putting out books generated with A.I. tools. Authors and readers are frustrated, nervous and grasping for solutions" (NYT).

Which U.S. First Ladies have received the cruelest treatment in the press (and in public conversation)? Especially which ones were disrespected as, essentially, whores?

I asked Grok. Answer after the jump. The easiest guess as to who came in first is the correct answer, so see if you know who came in second:

Bedeviled.

 

This is found art — wordplay that appears by chance.

I was doing a word search in the OED, looking up "bedevil," because it had come up in an article I just blogged. The NYT writer crafted this sentence: "Was [Trump] upset that [Melania] had single-handedly thrust this story that had so bedeviled him back onto front pages around the globe?" (Don't get me started on "thrust" and "globe.")

That blog post ends with a quote from Lord Byron, and I see the OED entry for "bedevil" also has a quote from Lord Byron — worrying about critics of "my poor, gentle, unresisting Muse, whom they have already so be-deviled with their ungodly ribaldry."

I like the word bedevil. It's vivid, perhaps too vivid. Are we to picture devils? Does anyone think of Jeffrey Epstein as literally The Devil? I know JD Vance seems to think the UFOs are devils — "I don’t think they’re aliens, I think they’re demons anyway, but that’s a longer discussion."

Have I been casually summoning up The Devil over the years by using this word that I like? Checking the 22-year blog archive, I see I've quoted it a few times and I've used it twice. Both times came in 2014. Once, in July, on the topic of ObamaCare:

"[Eric] Stewart came up with the idea for the song after his wife, to whom he had been married for eight years at that point, asked him why he did not say 'I love you' more often to her."

"Stewart said, 'I had this crazy idea in my mind that repeating those words would somehow degrade the meaning, so I told her, "Well, if I say every day 'I love you, darling, I love you, blah, blah, blah,' it's not gonna mean anything eventually." That statement led me to try to figure out another way of saying it, and the result was that I chose to say "I'm not in love with you," while subtly giving all the reasons throughout the song why I could never let go of this relationship.'"

From the Wikipedia article, "I'm Not in Love."

Researched this morning because the song Meade chose for his sunrise video got me thinking about lyrics that say the opposite of the meaning the singer conveys: