"But there could be many downsides to interfering with an activity as essential and mysterious as sleep...."

"'Sleep has its own universe, and we should better use that moment for what it’s good for,' [one neuroscientist said]... Dreams are not some barren landscape waiting to be populated,... they follow their own rules and presumably serve their own inexplicable aims. 'We should care about them, promote them, and nurture them, rather than trying to replace them,' [he] said.... [Another dream researcher] discussed the dangers of trying to 'colonize' sleep with what she called 'wake-centric values.' In her own life, she might prefer to learn from sleep than learn during sleep."

From "It’s Possible to Learn in Our Sleep. Should We? New research suggests that people can communicate and even practice skills while dreaming" (The New Yorker).

"Some time ago my older brother became obsessed with Korean skincare, which he discovered on TikTok."

"In his early fifties, he spends nearly all of his spare time on this app, imbibing a steady stream of drag queens, Democrats and women washing their faces. This formula had sufficiently influenced him to plan a trip to Seoul, where he wanted to get 'skin treatments that are illegal in the US.' Would I like to come with him, he wondered? If it isn’t clear by now, my brother is gay. So am I, but he’s better at it than I am...."

Writes Ben Kawaller, in "My gay brother and I went on a beauty trip to Korea. It hurt/At 41, Ben Kawaller crossed the globe for a skin treatment that’s illegal in the US. Was the pain — and the four-figure price tag — worth it?" (London Times).

A brief description of one procedure: "the general idea is they burn off your face and the one that grows back is nicer."

"One fashionista visibly shuddered when asked her opinion. 'It was terrible. Just awful,' she said."

"'I mean, who was the stylist for that movie?' she gasped, hand to heart. (For the record, it was Molly Rogers, who took over from her mentor, the legendary Patricia Field, mid-way through filming as Fields’s 'dance card was full' with other projects such as Emily in Paris). Perhaps the worst criticism was aimed at the outfits Streep agreed to tolerate for her role. 'They put her in a coat with couch pillow tassels on it! It was criminally ugly,' said one aghast attendee. 'I’ll never get over it.' Or, as Peter Davis, the editor-in-chief of Avenue magazine, said, laughing: 'They should rename it The Devil Wears Bad Clothes.' He went on: 'The fashion was awful but not so bad it was good, like Ab Fab, which the filmmakers should have rewatched for inspiration before rebooting this cheesy, tacky, and worst of all, boring movie.'"

From "Why billionaire fashionistas hate The Devil Wears Prada 2/At an exclusive soiree on Billionaires’ Row celebrating a private screening of the sequel, guests bemoan sequins, sofa-esque tassels and a ‘lousy script'" (London Times).

"I wasn't worried. I understand life. We live in a crazy world."

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"The aura is lowkey sinister. The landscaping is busted...."

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The Baselitz Tree.

I am inviting you to invert images today in honor of the recently deceased Georg Baselitz, who said, as I quoted below, "The hierarchy where the sky is at the top and the ground down below is in any case only an agreement, one we have all got used to, but one that we absolutely do not have to believe in."

"If you find out that an artist whose work you consume is a terrible person, and you still choose to consume it, are you a terrible person?"

Asks Will Leitch, in "The terrible Michael Jackson movie exposes a central cultural question. The film is indefensible. The impulse to see it is deeply human" (WaPo).

I don't know who wrote the headline, but I don't see Leitch attributing deep humanity to the millions of people who are seeing and loving "Michael" — which he and all the critics know "is a bad movie."

Those people who love "Michael" are, in Leitch's words, those who "generally don’t see mass culture as a moral issue, or a political one, or really as having much practical, tangible effect on their lives at all. They go to the movies, listen to music, watch television or read books, not to make some sort of statement about the world but to take a break from it. For most people, art and entertainment are just something that gets you out of the house for a while — and might even make you dance."

In short, they are the very opposite of deep. 

I would have liked to hear a sophisticated analysis of why it is deeply human to want to see Michael again, in his glory, without the ugliness of the accusations. It is deeply human to long for a return to feelings of joy and love that enveloped you when you were young. You're not a nitwit to want that.

"In contrast to the refined intellectualism and impersonal aesthetic of artists like Sol LeWitt and Donald Judd, he offered an art that reveled in raw emotion, extroverted brushwork..."

"... and a fierce engagement with the complexities of 20th-century German history.... Mr. Baselitz’s 'Hero' series of 1965 and 1966 — blocky figures in thick impasto stumbling through tormented landscapes — plunged the viewer into a nightmare vision of postwar Germany. No less disturbing were the woodsmen, hunters and cows of the 'Fracture' series, disassembled into horizontal strips and merged with the landscape. In a break with convention, Mr. Baselitz began turning the central images in his canvases upside down in the late 1960s.... 'The hierarchy where the sky is at the top and the ground down below is in any case only an agreement, one we have all got used to, but one that we absolutely do not have to believe in,' Mr. Baselitz told the critic and historian Walter Grasskamp in 1984."

From "Georg Baselitz, German Neo-Expressionist Painter, Dies at 88/Along with contemporaries like Anselm Kiefer, he mounted a frontal attack on Minimalism and Conceptualism, the dominant 'cool' styles of the 1970s" (NYT).

Here's an example from the "Hero" series 

I wish Baselitz could have done the official portrait for... various political figures. But I will not say who because I'm chilled by the arrest of James Comey.

And here's an example from the "Fractures" series, totally inappropriate for an official portrait:

"We are not going to get into issues of catastrophe and extinction...."

"But we’re not going to get into that. We just are not going to have this whole thing explode for the world to view it."

Said Judge Gonzalez Rogers, quoted in "Is A.I. a Threat to Humanity? Not in This Trial. One of Elon Musk’s abiding fears is that A.I. could one day threaten humans. But the jurors deciding his suit against OpenAI probably won’t hear about it" (NYT).

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

And here's Meade's view of the duck:

"The Iran war must end with a decisive victory. And that victory can only be achieved in one of two ways..."

"Either Iran capitulates or the U.S. launches a final flurry of military strikes. Trump has given the regime every opportunity to sue for peace, and it has rejected his overtures. It is admirable that Trump is taking his time. He understands that what he is doing is important and cannot be rushed. But it is also true that he cannot declare victory until either Iran cries uncle — or he finishes the job."

Writes Marc A. Thiessen in "Trump is 14 days from decisive victory in Iran/The regime won’t deal and the blockade alone won't break it. Only military action will" (WaPo).

ADDED: Elsewhere in WaPo, there's "What will happen when the clock strikes 60 days on Trump’s war/Clinton's precedent will allow Trump to keep fighting Iran without congressional approval."

"Great king," says Trump, pointing at Charles. "The greatest king in my book."

After the King and Queen drive off, Trump says, "Great people. We need more people like that in our country. Really great people."

"Limiting food and water has been used to hasten death in people dying at home since long before it had a formal name."

"But to accelerate decline this way for people with advanced dementia, whether their deaths are imminent or not, is uncomfortable territory for many.... While some patients are late enough in their dementia as to be nonresponsive, others may still be enjoying and requesting food and may not remember writing a directive to withhold it. 'Which person do you listen to: the person who had capacity once and made this decision that they wouldn’t want to live this life, or the person with dementia, who may seem very, very happy with the life that they have?' asked Dr. Eric Widera, a professor of geriatric medicine at University of California, San Francisco...."

From "She Didn’t Want to Live With Advanced Dementia. So Why Was She Being Kept Alive? Some consider the regular feeding of late-stage dementia patients to be nonnegotiable. Others see it as extending life unnecessarily" (NYT).

The article cites a paper that presents the idea of minimal comfort feeding: "The nursing staff could provide small quantities of food and liquid if the patient signaled she wanted it, enough to keep her comfortable while still allowing her to die."

Billions of dollars and still no end date.

1. "The Iran war now has a price tag ($25 billion), but still no end date" (NPR).

2. "California high-speed rail price tag jumps to $231B, nearly seven times 2008 estimate" (Fox26News).

"King Charles tames Maga but Britain’s still in the doghouse."

That's the headline at the London Times. Subheadline: "While the monarch has gone down a storm with President Trump’s VIPs, his US visit seems to have done nothing to help Sir Keir Starmer."

I guess "gone down a storm" is a British expression. I'm going to assume it means something like: was a big sensation. Yeah, that's right. I checked with A.I. The American expression that's equally mystifying to an outsider would be: brought the house down.

Speaking of house...  in the doghouse seems to work in both countries.

Now, let me find the meat of this article:

"Mills attempted to blunt Platner’s momentum this spring by running ads bringing up controversy around deleted Reddit comments he made years ago downplaying the seriousness of sexual assault."

"Mills argued that Republicans would make 'mincemeat' out of Graham in a general election, given his Reddit comments, and that a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol, which he got covered up, will likely provide fodder for attacks."

From "Maine Gov. Janet Mills drops out of race to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins/The seat is critical to Democrats’ hopes of retaking the Senate. Graham Platner, an oyster farmer and Democrat, is likely to win the primary" (WaPo).

In the comments over there, somebody says "You can tell she's a Dem because she did the right thing" and somebody else says "How is quitting because you don’t have the money the 'right thing.' She did the 'only thing' she could have done."