"A $9,000 leather moto is not the outerwear of a man faithfully going home to his wife and kids after a long day of architecting the AI revolution."

"That’s a man in a midlife crisis with an active Raya profile and a Harley in the garage. If someone had consulted me years ago, I’d have said Huang is clearly someone who drinks wine with his mistress in the middle of the day. (The Times uncovered a 2023 photo of Jensen appearing to do exactly that at a luncheon in Shanghai with Alice.)"

I'm reading "17 Ways to Think About Nvidia’s Jensen Huang Mess" (New York Magazine)(gift link).

Lots more at the link, but what's Raya? Here's a Reddit discussion of it, where the top comment is: 

"Why would you fire the manager when you just won the World Series?"

Said Angus King, the independent Senator from Maine, who caucuses with the Democrats, quoted in "Van Hollen Says He Will Challenge Schumer for Senate Majority Leader/Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland has emerged as a favorite of Democrats seeking an alternative to Senator Chuck Schumer, who says he has the votes to win" (NYT).

“Chuck has outlined an aggressive plan for the new Democratic majority, which is directly responsive to the message we heard from the voters, and he has the experience and unique mastery of the Senate process to make it happen,” Mr. King said.

Aggressive, but maybe not aggressive enough. I'm sure many Republicans are standing back, watching, hoping Democrats will overplay their hand. I know I've mixed up the metaphor now, but give me credit for not trying to stretch this out into a euchre/Uecker joke.

Why is Talarico saying this and what does it mean — especially the comparison to LBJ?

James Talarico: "The American people cannot wait two years for change so we must work with President Trump. If President Trump wants the same plaques, and portraits, and busts as LBJ, we can help make that a reality. We should make the final two years of his presidency the most… pic.twitter.com/PRHYau8oeD

— Bulwark Clips (@BulwarkClips) November 12, 2026

"The American people cannot wait two years for change so we must work with President Trump. If President Trump wants the same plaques, and portraits, and busts as LBJ, we can help make that a reality. We should make the final two years of his presidency the most productive of any presidency in American history."

I hear that as: We should humor Trump where we can.... and that is where it has to do with his screwy ego. We did it with Lyndon Baines Johnson, and we can do it here.

Sunrise.

"The ouster of Huang is portentous for the alliance between the Trump administration and the so-called 'tech right,' or the leaders of Silicon Valley’s recent conservative inflection."

"Huang himself did not do much political giving or display overt partisan leanings. But he was a leader of the tech billionaire class’s political push, which included crafting a grow-at-all-costs A.I. agenda that the billionaires argued was good for the U.S. (and was certainly good for Nvidia.)"

Writes Theodore Schleifer, in "Live Updates: Jensen Huang Resigns From Nvidia After Affairs/The longtime head of the chip-making colossus admitted to an affair with a woman identified as a spy for China. He was also said to have had a relationship with an executive who reported to him" (NYT).

And here's today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, recorded before the resignation: "What Jensen Huang’s Potential Ouster Could Mean for A.I./ Nvidia’s board is considering firing Jensen Huang after revelations that he had affairs with an executive who reports to him and a woman who U.S. officials say is a Chinese spy."

"'I had the courage to believe in Mississippi,' Mr. Colom said at the Tougaloo College chapel, where Fannie Lou Hamer and Medgar Evers once spoke."

"Before his speech, his supporters danced and embraced. One of them declared, 'Thank the Lord, we did it.'... During the campaign, Mr. Colom... did not often dwell on the historic implications of his candidacy, but [he] took time on Wednesday to talk about the legacy he would now continue in Washington. Mississippi was the first state to send a Black person to Congress, Hiram Revels, who joined the Senate in 1870. He was followed by Blanche Bruce in 1875, who was born in slavery in 1841. Mr. Bruce was replaced by a white former Confederate soldier who disavowed the ideals of racial equality and ushered in segregationist policies...."

From "Scott Colom, a Democrat, Wins Mississippi Senate Seat in Historic Upset/Mr. Colom, a prosecutor, will be the first Black senator elected from Mississippi since the post-Civil War Reconstruction period" (NYT).

It should be noted that Colom graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School.

"It's been a desperate search in the overnight hours."

UPDATE: "Live Updates: At Least 8 Dead in Brooklyn Building Collapse, as Crews Scour Rubble" (NYT).

"Lying in the scanner, I concentrated on a sequence of seemingly random images projected onto a screen a few feet from my eyes...."

"Pictures of traffic lights, cars, airplanes and trees were meant to elicit a 'boring' response from my amygdala (which governs fight-or-flight responses). Images of grotesque A.I.-generated faces or people making threatening gestures were meant to excite that part of my brain. In art school, I was taught to read images deliberately and slowly in the same way we might read and critique bits of literature or morsels of philosophy. In the fMRI machine, however, an image is just a visual stimulus to elicit a neurological response. On my second day of scanning, I learned that my amygdala is highly responsive to a certain type of 'boring' image: pictures of small airplanes against a big sky. This rattled me. Amy Kuceyeski, the radiology professor running this experiment, did not know that in my work as an artist, I spend enormous amounts of time tracking and photographing drones, satellites and aircraft. I felt like my mind had been read, that a machine had reached into my subconscious to unearth something deep, private and intimate about my professional life and personal interests...."

Writes Trevor Paglen, in "I Saw the Future of Mind-Reading" (NYT).

"The lesson in the Jensen Huang scandal... middle-aged men need to slow down with testosterone replacement therapy..."

"Feel the TRT oozing..."

Goodbye to Judge Posner.

NYT obituary: "Judge Richard A. Posner Has Died. His Influence in Law Was Beyond Compare. He was the most-cited legal scholar of the latter half of the 20th century and an unapologetic iconoclast, favoring pragmatism over judicial tradition. He was 87."

Judge Posner’s admirers said he had no real competition in the annals of American jurisprudence. They regarded him as a superb writer, with a limpid, conversational style and a sure command of tone. He wrote with self-confidence and authority, qualities his critics said were not always entirely deserved. Most important, in a field that overvalues tradition and formalism, he was known as a brilliantly original iconoclast....

Judge Posner called his approach to judging pragmatic. His critics called it lawless. “I pay very little attention to legal rules, statutes, constitutional provisions,” Judge Posner said in a 2017 interview. “A case is just a dispute. The first thing you do is ask yourself — forget about the law — what is a sensible resolution of this dispute?”

He was among the leading figures in the movement to analyze legal problems using economics. In looking to social utility rather than abstract moral values like fairness or equality, he gained a reputation as a cold, calculating conservative. He was just 33 when he published “Economic Analysis of Law,” a tour de force that helped establish the field....

I have so many posts with the "Posner" tag in my 22-year archive. It would take a long time just to cherry-pick the best things. Click the tag and scroll to find many fascinating quotes from Posner collected over all those years. For example, what he said when somebody asked him, "In what ways, if any, does it make sense to speak of the study of law as the study of legal science?"

But I will cherry-pick one thing that's very special to me, from April 2005. It's about blogging:

Sunrise.

"The pubic hair had been among the more notorious items in Wynd’s collection for over a decade."

"According to a 2016 account of the museum, the hair was originally sent to Wynd by a woman who claimed to have shaved Brand at a Camden Town salon. The donation was accompanied by a handwritten letter explaining that she thought the collector would appreciate the unusual souvenir.... Opened in 2014... Wynd’s museum is modeled after the traditional Wunderkammer, or cabinet of curiosities, and houses an eclectic assortment of macabre artifacts, natural history specimens and celebrity memorabilia."

From "Russell Brand’s Pubic Hair Removed From London Museum After Rape Conviction, Curator Says/‘I Have No Desire to Hear His Name Again'" (Variety).

It calls to mind this scene from one of my favorite movies, "Slacker":

"Biden, 83, was accompanied by former first lady Jill Biden to a ceremony where their son, Hunter Biden, accepted the Gold Medal for Outstanding Contribution for Public Discourse."

"Demonstrators and spectators gathered outside the venue during the event hosted by the College Historical Society (HIST). As Biden departed, some people stepped forward and threw objects."

From "Joe Biden swarmed by protesters during surprise Dublin visit to support Hunter/Chaos broke out near the event attended by Biden and his family" (Independent).

This is bloggable because:

1. A Gold Medal for Outstanding Contribution for Public Discourse!

2. For Hunter!

3. Is he really "their son"? 

4. People threw objects at Joe Biden? Why? What exactly was their beef?

5. The throwing of objects is public discourse, but it doesn't deserve the gold medal.

6. I'm happy to see Joe is well enough to travel to Dublin, but it heightens my skepticism about why he's avoiding doing interviews about this new book he wrote/"wrote."

"Editing’s just a more relentless and specific form of reading in which you read a book more closely than any sane person would ever think of doing."

Said Gary Fisketjon, quoted in "Gary Fisketjon Has Died. He Edited Ellis, Tartt, McInerney and McCarthy. A champion of slow, methodical editing and long working relationships with writers, he was regarded as one of the best of his generation. He was 72" (NYT).

Remember Vintage Contemporaries?

Less expensive than hardback editions but with an eye-catching design palette that captured the 1980s zeitgeist, Vintage Contemporaries allowed Mr. Fisketjon to take risks on new authors and resurrect the careers of respected but underselling midcareer writers, like Raymond Carver and Thomas McGuane.... 

Mr. Fisketjon developed a reputation for methodical editing and close personal relationships with his writers. Armed with a green pen, he would go slowly, reading just five pages an hour, covering each with a spider web of notes, suggestions and cuts....

"The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game."

"The man is not 'taking' and the woman is not 'giving.' No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is."

So wrote Erica Jong, in "Fear of Flying," quoted by Kat Rosenfield, in "What the Cornell 7 Texts Reveal" (The Free Press). 

Just over 50 years later, albeit less articulately, another young woman expressed similar sentiments—in a series of disjointed, typo-laden text messages, following a now-infamous incident of drunken, drug-fueled group sex at a Cornell University fraternity house.

“I think we all have a soul bond now cause very few people can say they’ve had an experience like that,” she wrote in one message. In another: “i don’t think we should feel any shame for the part. our body our choice asf”—asf being shorthand for the emphatic as fuck.

The delusion/hope of "a soul bond" is just about the opposite of Jong's "zipless fuck." It's a desire for deep attachment. It's the something more that wrecks the purity Jong envisioned.

"The judiciary should not be abused to politicize a structure designed to unite our nation.... We will continue making the case for this beautiful and fitting monument...."

Said a White House spokesman, quoted in "Kennedys sue to block Trump's arch, arguing it would cast shadow on JFK's grave" (BBC).

I don't know about the legal arguments but:

1. The monument is already political, and its hard to see how it can ever rise above its political origin.

2. Even if it is "designed to unite our nation," which I doubt, it's obviously not uniting us, and it's hard to see how it ever could.

3. It's not "beautiful and fitting" to me and to a lot of us Americans, and it shouldn't be built until there is far more consensus and desire for this immense thing in such a conspicuous and hallowed place.