"Unfortunately, I must submit my resignation, effective June 30, 2026. My husband, Abraham, has recently been diagnosed with an extremely rare form of bone cancer."

Writes Tulsi Gabbard, reported at The NY Post.

"A Democratic House candidate in Texas who said she wanted to turn a local immigrant detention center into a facility to imprison and castrate 'American Zionists'..."

"... has Democrats scrambling to distance the party from her and accusing Republicans of behind-the-scenes interference in the race. The contest is happening in a congressional district that Texas lawmakers redrew last year to favor Republicans but that Democrats think can still be won as President Donald Trump’s approval rating plunges. The candidate, Maureen Galindo, finished first among four in the March Democratic primary and is competing in Tuesday’s runoff.... In an Instagram post on Thursday, she said that she 'never said I want Jews in internment camps' but did want to imprison 'billionaire American Zionists' for 'funding genocidal prison systems.'... On May 13, Galindo wrote on Instagram that if elected to Congress, she would write a bill to declare that Zionism is antisemitic, and she would convert an ICE detention center located in her district into a prison with a 'castration processing center' for 'American Zionists' and former ICE officers. She has said she is not antisemitic...."

From "Texas runoff roiled by shadowy spending and a call to imprison 'American Zionists'/Incendiary comments by Maureen Galindo, a Democratic House candidate in Texas, prompted condemnation from Democrats, who accused the GOP of propping her up" (WaPo).

"They put this man on a lot of money."

Notes a TikTokker who calls herself coinbucket, and who might look like George Washington:

"I'm so happy with the title of this book. I was going to title it 'The Testicles of an Old Sparrow in Winter.'"

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A post shared by David Sedaris (@davidsedarisbooks)

The book is out on May 26th, and I buy every David Sedaris book and listen to it about a thousand times, so whatever it turns out to be, I highly recommend it.

The title, after all the fuss about "testicles" (the word), turns out to be "The Land and Its People" (commission earned).

"But when you said the mental is the problem in drugs — 'cause the people don't want to be down there."

"My daughter is schizophrenic and she's on crystal meth — so that hit home — so if you're going to do that, you got my vote.... 'cause Karen Bass is not doing shhhh. Absolutely nothing."

"The Amish Are Falling in Love With AI/Cars and TVs might be banned, but some sects are all-in on ChatGPT."

That's the headline at Intelligencer.

[T]here’s no such thing as a single Amish approach to technology.... Daniel is a minister in his church and has played a role in the congregation’s collective decisions to interdict smartphones and social media but to allow e-bikes, flip phones, solar-generated electricity, and religiously curated internet access. “I don’t want to paint a picture that we’re pushing for new technology and we don’t have respect for our traditions and our values,” he tells me....

As far as I can tell, they see generative AI as just another thing computers do. “A computer’s a machine that you tell to do the right thing,” Daniel tells me.

"Among the early regulars was a group from the Second City comic troupe, including Don Novello, John Belushi and Bill Murray. They downed beer and coffee..."

"... and marveled at Mr. Sianis’s kind but firm handling of first-timers who expected his tiny grill to turn out anything other than cheeseburgers...."

I'm reading "Sam Sianis, ‘Cheezborger’-Flipping Owner of Chicago’s Billy Goat Tavern, Dies at 91/His dive bar became famous thanks to Mike Royko’s columns, a baseball curse and a 'Saturday Night Live' skit" (NYT).

"The phrase 'cheezborger cheezborger' entered the pop-culture lexicon and made the Billy Goat and Mr. Sianis a tourist attraction. During the summer of 1978, at the inaugural ChicagoFest festival on Navy Pier, Mr. Sianis set up a booth where he and Mr. Belushi recreated his quirky grill for thousands of fans."

My best Bigfoot imitation.

A Trump defender "could point to a prior president, maybe there was a Nixon thing here, maybe there was a Carter thing here, a Clinton thing here, a couple of Obama things here...."

"And they'll say, aha, here's this is analogous or this is analogous or this is analogous. And then they expand and extend and move way beyond that precedent. But then when challenged on it, they can go back and say, well, Clinton did X or Obama did Y. Now two things are true at once. Number one, Clinton often did X or Obama often did do Y.... That doesn't excuse Donald Trump at all. And it doesn't mean that... what Donald Trump is doing is the same level of wrongness. It can be more wrongness. But what he does tactically and what he tries to do legally, which often doesn't fly, but what often flies tactically, especially with his base, is he's constantly pulling from these prior examples that are scattered all throughout modern American history.... [I]f you're an administration that is pulling all of the wrongdoing from say five previous administrations, putting it under one administration and then amplifying all of it, then you do have an issue.... But guys, political fandom should be over, let's not do this, okay?"

Said David French in the new episode of "Advisory Opinions," "All the Things Wrong with Trump’s Billion-Dollar Fund."

The whole discussion there is very good, examining many legal issues and precedents. I'm just selecting that one thing, which is something I've observed again and again. It's not Trump's way to say it stops with me, I see what's wrong, and I'm going to set us straight and get back to what is soundly legal and in line with the intent of the Framers. That might seem to fit his slogan "Make American Great Again," but that's not what he does. He's in the middle of a big fight, and he's going tit for tat and beyond. He's one of those guys who say "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."

Of course, that's Obama's line — "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun" — but he was paraphrasing the Sean Connery character in "The Untouchables":

: 

"Here's how you get him. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way!"

Pelvic theology.

I'm noticing that striking and hilarious phrase for the first time as I encounter this essay in the NYT: "Pope Leo Chooses Social Justice Over Pelvic Theology."

This is by David Gibson, director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University, and I assume the headline represents his opinion, not something Leo is doing openly, using those words.

Let's read:

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can talk all night.

"[A]n army of fans [are] now competing to produce the catchiest and most outrageous videos supporting [Spencer Pratt's] campaign."

"They share and cross-promote a seemingly endless stream of computer-generated clips boosting Mr. Pratt and bashing his opponents with depictions of Los Angeles as a dirty, dangerous wasteland. One released on Sunday depicts women at a fitness studio confiding to one another that they secretly plan to vote for Mr. Pratt.... [T]he A.I. videos often venture into offensive territory. In the Batman clip boosting Mr. Pratt, Mr. Newsom’s likeness makes a crude sexual remark, and the phony Ms. Harris drinks out of a bottle of cheap liquor...."

From "A.I. Videos Help Reality TV Antagonist Break Through in L.A. Mayor’s Race/Supporters have created A.I. videos to boost the mayoral campaign of Spencer Pratt, the former MTV star. Some videos have gone viral, but it’s not clear whether they will yield votes" (NYT).

The phrase "the phony Ms. Harris" genuinely confused me. For a second there, I thought the NYT was calling Kamala Harris — the real Kamala Harris — phony. No, they were using the word "phony" to mean A.I.-generated.

"Reliable polling is hard to find in Cuba. A recent survey by a Cuban news website, El Toque, which gathered over 40,000 answers..."

"...found that about 56 percent of Cubans who reside in the island, and nearly 70 percent of those abroad, would support a military intervention by the U.S. While the results of the survey — which gathered answers from voluntary participants — could not be considered as a representative poll, its findings likely did reflect the exhaustion of many Cubans, said Prof. Michael J. Bustamante, a professor of history and chair in Cuban and Cuban American Studies at the University of Miami. 'I don’t think it means that Cubans relish the idea of a foreign power coming in and fixing their problems,' Professor Bustamante said. 'But I think people are at such a level of exasperation, desperation, they’ll take help for from wherever they can get it.' Raúl Cardoso, a 70-year-old Cuban retiree, said whatever the U.S. decision, they should just hurry up and take it. 'If they are going to go in, they should come in,' Mr. Cardoso said. 'And if not, they should stop talking so much.'"

From "In Blackout-Hit Cuba, Word of U.S. Castro Indictment Spreads Slowly/While many Cubans were divided over the legitimacy of the U.S. charging Raúl Castro with murder, the hope for developments that might ease their suffering is widespread" (NYT).

"If I do attend, I get killed. If I don't attend, I get killed. By the fake news, of course, I'm talking about."

Trump has his own way of talking.

Reporter: Are you attending your son’s wedding?

Trump: He’d like me to go. I’m going to try. I said, this is not good timing for me. I have a thing called Iran and other things. He’s a person I’ve known for a long time. pic.twitter.com/lGdjvU7oD0

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 21, 2026

You'd think that after 3 assassination attempts, he's eschew the murder metaphor, but no. He's not going to say "I'll be harshly criticized," like a typical high official. He's going to say "I get killed." Not even "I'll get killed." Present tense: "I get killed."

He also calls his son "a person I’ve known for a long time."

By the way, I've seen man bellies that look like pregnancies, but the protruding navel is really too much, especially right next to the President's head. Where's the dignity?!

For more of the video and an explanation of the event, see "WATCH: Trump, Zeldin announce looser rule on refrigerant greenhouse gases" (PBS). The belly is not Zeldin's.

"Pease Park's giant troll sculpture burned to the ground after early morning fire."

The Austin-American Statesman reports.

In happier times:

ADDED: Back in 2022, another troll by the same sculptor was burned to nothing: "'Damaged beyond repair': police investigate after WA troll sculpture set on fire/Blaze destroys one of six Giants of Mandurah by Danish artist Thomas Dambo with arson squad examining cause" (The Guardian)(WA = Western Australia).

AND: My son Chris, who lives in Austin, photographed the Pease Park troll last year:

Some mornings the algorithm goes deep and delightful.

1. "Talking to your liberal friends about having kids":