Sunrise — 6:49, 7:00, 7:09, 7:13.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"Morante is a genius, a being born to make beauty dream; a revolutionary, a complete artist, pure feeling, brave, master of a prodigious technique and a dazzling capacity for inspiration."

Wrote Antonio Lorca, a bullfighting critic, quoted in a London Times article about Morante's sudden retirement, "Spain’s top matador bids farewell — with a snip of his scissors/After a dramatic final fight, the torero retires as bullfighting faces growing scrutiny and declining support among younger Spaniards."

Spain’s leading matador has stunned the bullfighting world by staging an unexpected farewell, symbolically cutting off his ponytail in the ring after a “historic” performance.... His departure marks the end of a unique career whose “classicism” and “mysticism” often exhausted critics’ superlatives....

Is it surprising that there is still bullfighting in Spain?

"It was a garbage truck the size of a whale."

Says Alec Baldwin, on Instagram, endeavoring to explain why he crashed his car into a tree. Apparently, he was "cut off" by the biggest garbage truck he'd ever seen. "To avoid hitting him, I hit a tree." 

ABC has the story: "Alec Baldwin crashes car into a tree in East Hampton: Authorities/Alec Baldwin is okay after he crashed his car into a tree, authorities said." ("He went on [Instagram] and said that a 'garbage truck the size of a whale' cut him off on the road").

Had you thought about the relative size of a whale and a garbage truck?

Thanks to Chris for asking ChatGPT for that visualization. And for this alternative, from Gemini:

It reminds me of the time LBJ saw a portrait of himself and said "That's the ugliest thing I ever saw."

Trump on Truth Social: "Time Magazine wrote a relatively good story about me, but the picture may be the Worst of All Time. They 'disappeared' my hair, and then had something floating on top of my head that looked like a floating crown, but an extremely small one. Really weird! I never liked taking pictures from underneath angles, but this is a super bad picture, and deserves to be called out. What are they doing, and why?"

Quoted in "President Trump accuses Time magazine of deliberately using the worst photo ‘of all time’ on a cover praising his peace deal" (NY Post).

As for that LBJ portrait, you can see it at "The Presidential Portrait That Was the ‘Ugliest Thing’ L.B.J. Ever Saw" (Smithsonian).

As for Trump's question, "What are they doing, and why?" I think he answered it, they were going for an artistic effect — "a floating crown, but an extremely small one."

"3D tracking of Max Muncy's 404-foot 'grounded into double play.'"

3D tracking of Max Muncy's 404-foot "grounded into double play" pic.twitter.com/xWSIvyWb7S

— David Adler (@_dadler) October 14, 2025

Live action — and don't miss the look on Frelick's face at 0:21:

WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!?!?! #NLCS pic.twitter.com/x7BbmJ6hzX

— MLB (@MLB) October 14, 2025

A New Day.

"I checked in on BlueSky to see how people there are reacting to the release of the Israeli hostages, and it’s the eeriest thing."

"It’s not trending. There’s no mention of it on the 'Explore' tab. I started scrolling the feed and went through hundreds of posts without seeing a single one that mentioned it. Instead, it’s all posts about Mamdani, John Oliver’s new episode criticizing Bari Weiss and Jamie Reed, the “No Kings” protest apparently happening this weekend, Taylor Swift, the Epstein Files, complaints about anti-vaxxers, and snarky takes insisting that Antifa doesn’t exist. That's it. It’s honestly blowing my mind...."

Writes Colin Wright, at X — via Instapundit.

I signed up for BlueSky so I could do a search over there. My search word, "hostages." This was the main thing that came up:

 

I also saw things like "Now release the Epstein file hostages" and "How about the US releasing all the hostages that ICE has recently taken?"

A very dark sunrise — 6:37, 6:57.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"[H]e expands his various blog posts and articles on the subject into an over-all theory of 'why everything suddenly got worse and what to do about it'...."

"Enshittification unfolds in three phases: first, a company is 'good to users,' Doctorow writes, drawing people in droves... with the promise of connection or convenience. Second, with that mass audience consolidated, the company is 'good to business customers,' compromising some of its features so that the most lucrative clients, usually advertisers, can thrive on the platform. This second phase is the point at which, say, our Facebook feeds fill with ads and posts from brands. Third, the company turns the user experience into 'a giant pile of shit,' making the platform worse for users and businesses alike in order to further enrich the company’s owners and executives. Facebook’s feed, now choked with A.I.-generated garbage and short-form videos, is well into the third act of enshittification...."

From "The Age of Enshittification/In a new book, the technology critic Cory Doctorow expands on a coinage that has become bleakly relevant, in Silicon Valley and beyond" (The New Yorker).

Marc Maron's last podcast.

More than a decade ago, I sat down with @MarcMaron in his garage to tape something new called a podcast. This time, he came to me to record his last episode.

We talked about the power of conviction, decency in an age of division, and the true story of America. I’ll miss Marc’s… pic.twitter.com/kM3sAgtjF0

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 13, 2025

Podscribe has the full transcript with audio, so you can poke around looking for something of interest. 

For Maron's end-of-podcast thoughts, you need to listen to the second-to-last episode, here. This is his real sign off:

"As time went on I made movies for an audience of one, Diane Keaton. I never read a single review of my work..."

"... and cared only what Keaton had to say about it. If she liked it, I counted the film as an artistic success. If she was less than enthusiastic, I tried to use her criticism to reedit and come away with something she felt better about. By then we were living together and I was seeing the world through her eyes.... For all her shyness and self-effacing personality, she was totally secure in her own aesthetic judgment. Whether she was criticizing a movie of mine or a play of Shakespeare’s, she held both to the same standard. If she felt Shakespeare had gone wrong—it didn’t matter who or how many sang his praises, it was her own feeling that she went with, and she didn’t hesitate to put the knock on the Bard...."

Writes Woody Allen, remembering Diane Keaton (Free Press).

There's also this, about bulimia:

"Yes, she’s pregnant. Yes, it’s his. And yes — if you must know how they conceived — in Greenstone’s words, 'we birds’d and we bees’d.'"

From "He’s gay. She’s straight. They’re happily married./A new crop of couples are making content about their mixed-orientation marriages, divorced from sexual attraction but not love" (WaPo).

"You know, I'm being a little cute — I don't think there's anything going to get me in heaven."

PETER DOOCY: "You talked about how you hoped to end the war in Ukraine because it might help you get into heaven. How does this help? Does this help?"

PRESIDENT TRUMP: "You know, I'm being a little cute — I don't think there's anything going to get me in heaven." pic.twitter.com/dcY0J1p4zt

— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 13, 2025

"He maneuvered each rib with a drill, bending it until one side snapped in what’s called a greenstick fracture."

"From there, he instructed the patient to strap into a corset for two months, until the ribs fused together in a new position. The result was a waistline reduction of nine centimeters, or three and a half inches."

From "Plastic Surgery Comes for the Waist/A drastic new procedure, which inflicts tiny fractures to the ribs, emerges at the forefront of body modification" (NYT).

President Trump Delivers Remarks to The Knesset.

"And I love Israel. I'm with you all the way. You will be bigger, better, stronger, and more loving than ever before."

"The remaining 13 living hostages in Gaza have been transferred into the hands of the Red Cross, the Israeli military said in a statement."

 The NYT reports, 51 minutes ago, in its excellent live coverage.

45 minutes ago: "As Trump makes his way through the Knesset to give his address, it is clearly a friendly crowd, even among many in the Israeli opposition. In the audience, some are wearing red MAGA-style baseball caps, emblazoned with the words, 'TRUMP THE PEACE PRESIDENT.' The question now is whether, in his speech, Trump casts the war as over — words that Netanyahu and members of his coalition have refused to utter."

7 minutes ago: "The Egyptian government just announced that both Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, will participate in a high-level regional summit about Gaza being convened later today in Egypt."