"A lot of people have a misconception that the Boomers are drinking less... It’s not because the Boomers are drinking less, it’s because there are less Boomers."

Said Jon Phillips, a Sonoma County wine manufacturer, quoted in "California winery owner gives hottest take yet on why industry is dying" (NY Post).

Why wouldn't the next generation step up as consumers of wine?

“[Boomers] were the people that were really responsible for joining wine clubs and Gen X that came after Boomers just weren’t really into wine to the same level that the Boomers were into wine,” [Phillips] said.

Gen X never wants to do anything. Phillips is waiting for Millennials and Gen Zs to mature into the wine-drinking way of life. I guess I should hope he's disappointed. 

"It begins with one — one frog...."

 

I found the Portland Frog Brigade via this NY Post column, "Dems ditched American heroes for adults in frog suits and tiresome De Niro — all we can do is pity them."

The frog suits made me think of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals," #6: "A good tactic is one your people enjoy." 

But the column says we should pity these people. It quotes Rep. Maxine Dexter of Oregon:

"Tonight I defy Trump and his authoritarian project by standing in joyful, radical, peaceful resistance with the Portland Frog Brigade. We answered with frog costumes, dancing, singing and joy when Trump wanted us to cower in fear."

I did think frogs were a right-wing mascot — I'm thinking Pepe the Frog — but it's 10 years since Pepe's heyday and people of all persuasions are entitled to a frog of their own. I think the hippie vibe is a good move — costumes, dancing, singing, joy. 

"For almost the entirety of her married life, she has had to answer questions about her husband’s action."

"She has supported him throughout. There is no reason for her to have to suffer this last indignity. She has nothing to do with it. It is infuriating. She is a global icon, a trailblazer for women. It is heartbreaking that she has to do this."

Said Patti Solis Doyle, a former top aide to Hillary Clinton, quoted in "For Hillary Clinton, an Epstein Deposition Is the Latest ‘Stand by Your Man’ Moment/The former first lady, senator and secretary of state had no dealings with Jeffrey Epstein but is once again under pressure to answer for the actions and relationships of her husband" (NYT).

Should "a trailblazer for women" vouch for a man who has abused women? But maybe what Hillary knows is that no abuse was involved within Bill's relationship to Jeffrey.

Mr. Clinton had a relationship with Mr. Epstein years before Mr. Epstein’s sex crimes conviction. The former president took four trips on Mr. Epstein’s private jet in 2002 and 2003 and appears in photographs in the files released by the Justice Department. But Mrs. Clinton did not. She has said that she “cannot recall ever speaking to Epstein,” and that she met Ghislaine Maxwell, his longtime associate, only a few times. During the period when Mr. Clinton was building the Clinton Global Initiative and interacting with Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell, Mrs. Clinton “was busy being a U.S. senator,” said Ms. Doyle, who worked for her at the time. “She was not involved.”

I wonder if the members of Congress will be satisfied with the assertion that to be a member of Congress is to be too busy to get into mischief. 

Sunrise — 6:28, 6:36, 6:45, 6:51.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

With 4 Supreme Court Justices in attendance at the SOTU, Trump called the tariff opinion "unfortunate" and "disappointing."

He didn't condemn the Court or even say it got the law wrong. Here's the transcript (NYT). You can see that he accepts the Court's role in saying what the law is, and he's processed the loss and has moved on to finding new ways to win:

"The first duty in life is that we all strike a pose... I struck a pose, I put a mask on, and at times my face grew into it, becoming someone I couldn't even recognize.""

Two-faced California Governor Gavin Newsom says that he's been wearing a "mask" for years.

NEWSOM: "I put a mask on, and at times my face grew into it…"

What a strange, little man. pic.twitter.com/HawZxCDqk6

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 25, 2026

Newsom attributes the line —"The first duty in life is that we all strike a pose, and the second duty no one's really figured out" — to Oscar Wilde.  

Did Oscar Wilde say that? In "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young." he said, "The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered." 

"Strike a pose" is Madonna:

But who doesn't mix up Oscar Wilde and Madonna?

"These people are crazy, I’m telling you. They’re crazy. Amazing. Terrible. Boy, oh boy."

From the SOTU transcript (NYT): "All Democrats, every single one of them, voted against these really important and very necessary massive tax cuts. They wanted large-scale tax increases to hurt the people instead.... Countries that were ripping us off for decades are now paying us hundreds of billions of dollars.... Everybody knows it. Even Democrats know it. They just don’t want to say it.... As we speak, Democrats in this chamber have cut off all funding for the Department of Homeland Security. It’s all cut off — it’s all cut off.... They have closed the agency responsible for protecting Americans from terrorists and murderers.... We have no money because of the Democrats.... All voters must show proof of citizenship... and this should be an easy one and by the way it’s polling at 89 percent including Democrats, 89 percent.... Both Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly agree on the policy.... And the reason they don’t want to do it.... They want to cheat..... But surely we can all agree no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents’ will.... These people are crazy, I’m telling you. They’re crazy. Amazing. Terrible. Boy, oh boy.... Democrats are destroying our country....  Dangerous repeat offenders continue to be released by pro-crime Democrat politicians again and again...."

I don't agree with this precise statement of what has happened to John Roberts, but, clearly something has happened.

Left: John Roberts after his nomination.

Right: John Roberts today.

It isn’t the aging that stands out.

You can see the extinguished husk of his soul.

This is a man that knows he sold out, and that the Court of John Roberts will be remembered as a stain on American History. pic.twitter.com/JzNfTCyv2D

— Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) (@adamscochran) February 25, 2026

What do you think?

What happened to John Roberts? Pick the best explanation.

He got older. This is what 71 looks like.

You're seeing the extinguished husk of his soul.

The Supreme Court has been a crushing ordeal.

The SOTU is a crushing ordeal. He'll light back up when he gets out of there.

Malaria!

 

pollcode.com free polls

Unique Way/True and Life.

My son Chris sends another photograph from New York City:

"The idea is that our ancestors evolved to associate the scent of alcohol with ripe, energy-rich fruit."

"In ancestral forests, faint whiffs of fermentation would have been a useful signal of easy calories. A taste for ethanol, at low concentrations, would therefore have given these early primates an evolutionary advantage. If the hypothesis is true, this helps explain our own fondness for the stuff. During years where fermented fruit is abundant, the chimpanzees of Ngogo, in the north of the national park, spend more time travelling to distant areas of their home territories than usual. It is tempting to think that the booze is making them more adventurous. However, Maro believes it is more to do with the sugar providing a burst of energy...."

From "Wild chimpanzees 'would fail human sobriety tests'/Chimps love naturally fermented fruit — so much so, they register alcohol levels that would get a human banned from operating heavy machinery" (London Times).

Trump delivered a very long SOTU last night. Did you watch? Really?

It was too late for me, but I watched. Until I didn't.

It's an unnecessary formality, very stiff and awkward, but Trump made it his own. Hunched over the lectern and with his hair coming unglued, he boasted of achievements and called out individuals in the audience, who were, in his view, either fantastic or horrible. We're in a grand struggle between good and evil, don't you know? I dropped out at some point because sleep had a greater claim on me, as it did on some members of the audience. But Trump was still fully inflated, and the video remains. But there's something about watching it live that keeps you going, and once it's dead, you don't really care, do you?

Sunrise — 6:28, 6:35, 6:45, 6:46.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"The Grapes of Wrath tortoise enters the chat."

Tubagoat writes, on the mildlyinfuriating subreddit, after ugly_duckling_5 — commenting on a post about a woman who gave an overlong answer to the question "How was your day?"  — said:

"I'm lost on talking about your day for 45 minutes. Reminds me of books where the author spends an entire chapter describing a wall."

Classy-girl-93 follows up: "At least the tortoise was going somewhere."

Was he, really? I was curious. I looked it up. From the full text:

How New York City really looks in the snow.

My son Chris happens to be sojourning in NYC in the midst of the big blizzard, which doesn't seem too overwhelming. 

He sends these pictures, which make things look more amusing than calamitous:

Hey, that's a cop car!

Gavin Newsom requests that we spare him our fake fucking outrage.

You didn’t give a shit about the President of the United States of America posting an ape video of President Obama or calling African nations shitholes — but you’re going to call me racist for talking about my lifelong struggle with dyslexia?

Spare me your fake fucking outrage,… https://t.co/ABNZJQJLcj

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) February 23, 2026

So Gavin's playing a major role in the normalization of "fuck." That's one of the ways he's like Trump. I'm starting a "Newsom is like Trump" tag. You'll see.

But I need to call attention to his use of the word "spare," which we were just talking about, here, 3 days ago, after the father of the gold-medal-winning figure skater said "I spared no money, no time." Compare that to Newsom's "Spare me your fake fucking outrage." "I spared no money" means I held no money back. And "Spare me your fake fucking outrage" means don't give me any of your FFO — hold it all back.

I've thought about it a lot, and "spare" is not a contronym (AKA a Janus word). It does not belong with the notorious "cleave" and the king of confusion "sanction."

"Man accidentally gains control of 7,000 robot vacuums."

"Sammy Azdoufal just wanted to steer his DJI Romo with a gaming controller" (Popular Science).

While building his own remote-control app, Sammy Azdoufal reportedly used an AI coding assistant to help reverse-engineer how the robot communicated with DJI’s remote cloud servers. But he soon discovered that the same credentials that allowed him to see and control his own device also provided access to live camera feeds, microphone audio, maps, and status data from nearly 7,000 other vacuums across 24 countries. The backend security bug effectively exposed an army of internet-connected robots that, in the wrong hands, could have turned into surveillance tools, all without their owners ever knowing. Luckily, Azdoufal chose not to exploit that....