"It received more than 211,000 views and 20,000 likes. 'A really large flood of people said they were in the same position … and that it was refreshing to see someone be so open because they thought they were alone,' she said. 'The biggest comment that I got was that I gave them a new lease of life, like they were really contemplating things, they felt really, really, really poorly about themselves.' Drunyte explained that after school she gave into being 'a wee bit of a recluse,' feeling that her efforts to socialise were futile. After university, she moved home and worked hybrid jobs. She posts 'day in the life' videos of her doing errands, hikes or solo trips to lochside lodges...."
From "The latest TikTok trend for Gen Z? Admitting you have no friends/Behind the perfect skin routine, delicious meal for one and spotless flat, popular 'living alone diaries' highlight a loneliness epidemic" (London Times).
June 8, 2026
"The problem with putting in a reflecting pool? The darn thing reflects. When the light off the Reflecting Pool bounced up onto Lincoln's face, it looked as if a flashlight had been held up under his chin."
Wrote Sarah Vowell, back in 2005, in her very entertaining book "Assassination Vacation," which I recently reread. The link goes to an excerpt of the book at the NPR website. There's also audio of Vowell reading her text, which she does extremely well.
Here's more context:
"[Daniel Chester] French obsessed for years about how to sculpt Lincoln's peculiar face, fretting and reading and thinking before committing to the brooding, seated philosopher in the memorial. He received the commission in 1913. So by the time the memorial was finally dedicated nine years later, the sculptor was a little pent up worrying how his work would come off. Hoping to celebrate, French looked upon the final installation with horror. The problem with putting in a reflecting pool? The darn thing reflects.
"In 1968, Janet Malcolm visited a new showroom for high-end furniture that was, she wrote, among 'the most beautiful and interesting' in New York."
"The venue was designed by Warren Platner, an architect who himself designed furniture; Donald Trump would later acquire a set of his chairs, and sounded gratified when, during an interview in 2010, a reporter from the Times recognized them. Platner’s son, Bronson, went into law, in Maine; his son Graham studied at Hotchkiss, a tony boarding school in Connecticut, though he hated it, skipped classes, and was quickly kicked out. Graham transferred to a different private school closer to home, where he starred in a production of 'My Fair Lady.' He played Henry Higgins, the haughty phonetician who teaches a lower-class flower girl to speak proper...."
Those are the opening lines of an essay by Jon Allsop titled "The Changing Face of 'Authenticity' in Politics/What Graham Platner’s scandal-plagued Senate run says about a tired cliché" (The New Yorker).
Here's how Platner entered the political arena, last summer:
Allsop ponders "authenticity":
"Please! I traveled all the way to Wisconsin!... Listen, we traveled all the way to Wisconsin for this interview"
Wouldn't it have been funny if the all-the-way-to-Wisconsin plea had worked? Oh, yeah, poor you, going to Wisconsin, let me sit back down and yammer on with you, because you endured the ordeal of coming to Wisconsin.News companies know women like this are tanking their ratings. If one of these Sunday broadcasts brought in a non ideological White Man their ratings would double. However, they still choose to loose money, just to promote the views of the ownership. Trump is right. pic.twitter.com/Un33VHNqro
— Nate P. Hall (@Nate_PHall) June 8, 2026
ADDED: I love the set with the hay bales and tractors. I was hoping Welker and Trump would jump up and do his old "Green Acres" routine:
How can Spencer Pratt put a happy face on his loss in California?
That might not be your question, but it was mine. It's the first thing I typed when I opened up Grok to explore how I felt about what happened.
Tell me what you think. Grok talked about spinning — "turn a loss into content, troll the establishment, and keep the spotlight... he's wired for this exact kind of spotlight-reality spin."
Okay. That's justified by the way I framed my question. But I had 2 other things in mind.
First, if he'd won he'd actually need to make good on his promises. He'd have to confront reality on the ground and facing lots of opposition. He wanted to round people up and institutionalize them. How would that have worked? This way, he can just keep pointing to the dream of a beautiful LA that might have been.
Second, his own mother said she wanted him to lose... for the sake of his wife and children:
"It's more expensive than any car I ever bought, but I can't drive around in my face."
Said Rosie O'Donnell, about the facelift she'd always said she'd never get.
Everyone can see it looks phenomenal. But don't try this with your local surgeon. What she got is "very expensive."
Is it okay to look like privilege?
The proposed rule would impose "a narrow, culturally specific understanding of family" that "privileges a dominant cultural framework over the lived realities of communities of color and global Christians."
I'm reading "Presbyterian Church faces revolt after proposing clergy must be in monogamous relationships — and critics blame white privilege" (NY Post).
The headline is miswritten. The rule doesn't require a relationship. Clergy can still be single. They just can't have more than one partners. It seems that clergy can have sequential sexual relationships — with no commitment at all — as long as they follow a one-at-a-time approach.
The Presbyterians on both sides of this controversy are relying on progressivism. Opponents tap into racial critique — that "lived realities" discourse.
Proponents deploy feminist critique. They're "arguing that the practice of polyamory or polygamy can create 'power imbalances, emotional harm, and spiritual confusion,' particularly for women, children, and historically marginalized persons."
It seems that no one wants to get caught invoking tradition. History is that place where persons were marginalized. It's something to be undone.
***
I love the stock photo the Post chose to illustrate this story. It's like an ad for fabric softener:
Which one is supposed to be the Presbyterian clergyperson?
June 7, 2026
"Because it was raining, I got a little bit angry at them. I was not happy with them. But we had a good time."
Said Trump, quoted at the end of "Trump walks out of 'Meet the Press' interview when challenged over false claims/When pressed by host Kristen Welker, the president cited no evidence for claims about Jan. 6 and elections he said were 'rigged'" (WaPo)(gift link).
I was watching that live, but I fell asleep. I heard the loud rain that was adding stress and discontinuity to the interchange, but I'm sorry I missed witnessing the big falling out as it happened. It's easy to catch up:
"He read 'Moby-Dick' at 9. He could devour 400-page books in an hour. He had a photographic memory."
"As an after-dinner party game, he liked to recite 'Paradise Lost,' starting from any line a tipsy guest chose."
"Do you think Bari Weiss needs to be removed?"/"Oh, gosh, yes. Look, she’s a lovely person. And her Free Press organization that she founded has been very successful. But television’s not her thing."
"This is like somebody walking up to me and saying, 'There’s a 747, there are 400 people on it, we need you to fly it to Paris.' I’m going to decline because I don’t have a clue. And it would have been so much better if Bari Weiss had been offered this job and said, 'Oh, that’s not for me, I don’t know how to do that.'"
That's Scott Pelley, answering a question in "The Interview/Scott Pelley on the Bari Weiss Era and His Last Days at '60 Minutes'" (NYT).
That's Scott Pelley, answering a question in "The Interview/Scott Pelley on the Bari Weiss Era and His Last Days at '60 Minutes'" (NYT).
Here's the entire interview (with a transcript at YouTube):
"In the White House, there is a system for dealing with a president who rarely sleeps. The staff take it in shifts so they get a nap..."
"... even if he doesn’t. Donald Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles starts early and stays on until early to mid-evening. Then it’s over to her deputy Dan Scavino, a true Trump old-timer — they met when 16-year-old Scavino was selected to caddie for him — to do the graveyard shift.... [T]he shifts are about being around to help, aid and occasionally advise, rather than blocking. Still, journalists and lobbyists study Trump’s schedule for when best to try to get him alone. A former aide says the best times to call are first thing in the morning or late evening, but he’s such a night owl that some enterprising hacks have got through at 3am. In the morning, his team wakes and checks Truth Social for what Trump has posted — often a mix of AI memes, criticism of his enemies or his latest views on a war — and any likely fallout. His record is 160 posts in one night. Some come via his adviser Natalie Harp, nicknamed the 'Human Printer' for giving the president stacks of positive press cuttings, others from the man himself...."
Writes Katie Balls, in "Donald Trump at 80: is refusing to act his age his secret weapon?/The president is still known to work 12-hour days and post all night as he enters his ninth decade" (London Times).
Genuine Trump quote: "You know, I’m not a big sleeper. I like three hours, four hours. I toss, I turn, I beep-de-beep, I want to find out what’s going on."
Writes Katie Balls, in "Donald Trump at 80: is refusing to act his age his secret weapon?/The president is still known to work 12-hour days and post all night as he enters his ninth decade" (London Times).
I wondered if there are some kind of barracks or hotel-like areas in the White House. I think not. That means Susie and Dan are most likely curling up on a sofa in their office. How old is Susie Wiles? Isn't it dangerous to be this sleep deprived? But Trump sets the tone, and he seems to be all about conquering sleep, the thief of life.
Live feed of the filling of the Reflecting Pool.
AND: I just made a tag for "Reflecting Pool" and added it to old posts in the archive. The oldest post is striking. It dates back to the Obama administration, September 26, 2012:
Why did the bird cross the road? For dark and unknowable reasons?
Yesterday, we were talking about Arthur Miller's aphorism: "Glamour is a bird that for dark and largely unknowable reasons decides to light on this branch rather than another."
My reaction: "Birds don't have dark reasons." You might have read that as if I were saying, birds are, in fact, thoroughly virtuous. I should have allowed for darkness, at least, in some birds. What about Poe's "Raven" or the albatross in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"? But it was more a matter of choosing to talk only about the possible dark side of birds, because that's all Miller brought up.
If the Glamour bird's motivations are unknowable, how does Miller know they are dark? Maybe Miller thought of that question and threw "largely" into the sentence as a quick fix. I don't know much about the mind of Miller, but I read it to think: I don't know much about the mind of the bird, but I do know this: The one called Glamour has dark reasons.
In the comments tcrosse said, "Why did the chicken cross the road? For some dark reason?"
We thought that was a very funny line and laughed about it before we went out for the sunrise. Driving home in the sun, we saw an odd bird standing in the road, then 2 birds. The light side of birds was demanding attention. Baby sandhill cranes just had to cross the road.
Why? No reasons at all. Never any reason.
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