Crane rise.

Trump articulates a nuanced position about Bill Maher.

"Bill Maher’s ratings are so low that it is hard to believe his show can continue. In many ways it’s SAD because, in actuality, I like him. Republicans should stop using him as a sounding board, however. It makes them look sooo weak and foolish!"

Link to Truth Social.

I think he's reacting to the Republican enthusiasm for this recent Maher outburst:

Madonna is confused about why she's here at all and nonexplains the joke about her ass, but she'd like to say thanks for whatever this is.

Madonna was great in the early days the VMA awards, so it was nice to see her perform live:

Speaking of confusion, I see no distinction between what she was doing back in the 80s and what these performers who look like her are trying to do now. Maybe that's the point she's making here. 

Who is he talking about?!

Pod Save America says if the stakes are high enough, you can use the word 'F*ggot'

"Do I think it's great if a boss calls an employee a 'f*ggot? The stakes are too high.
There's not a gay guy from Austin to underneath the docks in Provincetown who wouldn't be happily called a… pic.twitter.com/gw5289GEoi

— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) September 27, 2026

I had to look it up.

The NYT had this: "‘She’s One of Us’: Mary Peltola’s Bumpy Rise to Political Power/Ms. Peltola, the Democratic Senate candidate in Alaska, has complicated politics: She is pro-gun, pro-oil and pro-gas — but also pro-environment and especially pro-fish" (gift link).

And Jonathan Chait wrote this about the NYT piece in: "Another Female Democrat Is Mean, Apparently/A New York Times report on Representative Mary Peltola’s management is revealing—about her younger employees’ self-regard" (The Atlantic)(gift link).

The story does contain one bona fide example of improper behavior—an allegation that she sometimes used the slur faggot. Four former staff members report directly hearing her use the word. If true, it certainly reflects poorly on her. The Peltola campaign denied that she’d used the slur....

So that's the foundation for the crude joking in the podcast. He's talking about Mary Peltola.

"The spot is the latest in a series of pro-Trump ads funded by public money."

"Some ethics experts have argued that the Trump administration is violating federal laws banning the use of taxpayer dollars for propaganda, and the ads have drawn criticism from both parties. The most recent ad, one expert argued, is a more flagrant violation given its prior use in the political arena."

I'm reading "A Trump 2024 Campaign Ad Returns, Now Brought to You by the Government/The ad, which ethics experts said could violate federal law, shows Mr. Trump vowing to 'expel the warmongers' from the government and fight the 'deep state,' even as he wages a war with Iran" (NYT).

Trump posted the ad at Truth Social, here. 

Fetterman knows how to play viral media. I say he did this — deadpan — on purpose.

Well played, Senator!

"They would jam Voice of America, but my dad would wake up like in the middle of the night. He wanted to know what's happening out there."

"And he would sit there and listen to that quietly. And I remember as a kid, I asked dad, 'What are you listening to in the middle of the night?' And he goes, 'Shh, don't let neighbors hear us. This is Voice of America. We're not allowed to listen to it.' Wow. So, you had to keep it secret.... They would jam it during the day, but at night time, they didn't think anybody would wake up at 3:00 in the morning and sit there and listen to it.... I would then start also waking up and listening, and it would be just standard American thing: Give me your tired, your hungry, your poor.... There's a Statue of Liberty waiting to greet you if you come to the United States. And he would always say, 'You know this this would be something that I would love you to experience.' And my mom hated that because she was afraid that we'll get in trouble and so she didn't want to even talk about this. So, if I drew a picture as a kid, I would draw a picture of Statue of Liberty. And she would like, 'Don't do that. Don't let anybody see this. We'll get in trouble.'..."

It's Yakov Smirnoff, on Joe Rogan!

I'm cuing it up to the beginning of his story of leaving the Soviet Union:

Sunrise.

"What has happened to colour in movies? Was there a meeting in which it was decided that the visual medium of film should now be as visually depressing as possible?"

"That instead of rich greens, cheering pinks and passionate reds, today’s cinema palette should be muted pastels and smudgy browns, as if a horrid grey film now covered all camera lenses? What movie could possibly have prompted this torrent of rhetorical questions?"

From "I’m so sorry, this new Sense and Sensibility is simply dull/Daisy Edgar-Jones is lovely as Elinor Dashwood, but why mute the joyful comedy of Jane Austen’s funniest book?" (London Times).

Compare the color in the 1995 version of "Sense and Sensibility":

"I knew the risks were rising. The American basketball star Brittney Griner had been detained days before the invasion..."

"... the latest example of the Kremlin stockpiling foreign prisoners to secure diplomatic leverage. But the censorship laws hadn’t yet been applied to foreign journalists, and I felt a responsibility to continue working in the country if I could. I started taking short trips back to Russia. The importance of the work, and the sense of covering history in the making, made me feel alive. The door to cell No 40 slammed shut. I heard the clank of metal keys in the lock behind me, the deadbolt sliding into place with two noisy turns...."

From "Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter in Russia, thought he was meeting a sourceInstead he was arrested for spying. In an exclusive extract from his prison diaries, he reveals how he survived — and won his freedom" (London Times).

The Harvest Moon at sunrise.

Also called the Corn Moon.

And did you see Saturn?

"To the people who insulted Ramses, please remember that our children may someday read your words or watch your videos."

"I don’t want them to search for this memory and find strangers calling their dad a deadbeat. Those are untrue judgments to leave behind about someone you have never met.... My husband is a father, a son, and a person deeply loved by people who know who he truly is. Our children need their dad. I hope and pray you reflect on what you have written."

Woman writes a very lengthy Substack piece laboriously defending her husband after he was mocked (hilariously) by the announcers at a Giants game.

She was caught on camera carrying a baby and a stack of 3 food containers, lumbering back to her seat:

Mom of the year pic.twitter.com/nUTgAhr0nr

— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) September 24, 2026

The announcers — Giants announcers Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper —call her "a true definition of a multi-tasking mother" and "an Olympic champion" and "Mom of the Year" — and then we see him grabbing the food and immediately digging into it — and the announcers say "She'll be the last one to eat too."

The clip went viral, with predictable on-line trashing of the man, and now we've got the woman, in another dimension of multi-tasking, writing "I’m the Mom in That Viral Giants Clip. Let Me Tell You About My Husband. You saw me carrying our baby and food. There was more happening in our family that night."

What else was happening that night? We're told the couple attended the ballgame in remembrance of a recently deceased friend. The woman was carrying a baby and food, but the man was "carrying" his grief: "The camera showed what I was carrying in my hands. It couldn’t show what he was carrying that night."

By the way, the announcers were great, in true baseball-announcer form, so friendly and affectionate, with exclamations like "Holy smokes!" "Oh, my goodness!" and "Bless her heart." I love this part of baseball on TV — the camera finds interesting people in the crowd, and the announcers have gentle fun with it. There's so much affection for the fans. And those fans all know they could be caught on camera at any point. They're part of the show. 

I'd recommend against going into social media to call more attention to yourself. It seems as if it was one more thing the woman had to do for the man.

ADDED: Ramses, now there's a name. Was he named after the Ramses who was Ozymandias, the "vast and trunkless legs of stone" in Shelley's poem? Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

"She’d done everything she thought men expected of women on the far right, so when the hatred came for Amy Dangerfield she felt so depressed she could barely stand."

"She’d moved from Australia to the United States in 2017 with a dream of spreading her internet-inspired beliefs: that women had driven men to madness through rejection and disrespect; that society needed strong men to survive...."

From "She helped lead a far-right internet movement. Then it turned on her. Inspired by female conservative influencers, Amy Dangerfield worked to become one of Nick Fuentes’s model 'groypettes.' A vicious fight left her grappling with the dark side of far-right fame" (WaPo)(gift link).

Influencer in-fighting. 

Sunrise.

“During the Obama administration they tapped the AP bureau’s phones and the phones of AP bureau reporters. They tapped their phones!

Said Atlantic writer James Kirchick on Bill Maher's show last night.

Maher chimed in: "Josh Earnest, he was in the Obama administration. He admitted it. He said: 'The White House has demonstrated our willingness to exclude Fox News from news making interviews.... He said: 'We're going to treat them like we treat an opponent.' This is exactly what I say about this country. Everybody’s like this is the worst thing in the world except when we do it. And then it’s always perfectly okay."

New York Times reporter Jonathan Swan just got a stunning reality check from both Bill Maher and author James Kirchick.

Swan was spiraling over President Trump barring CNN and MS NOW from the White House, until Kirchick reminded him of some of the Obama-era media scandals.… pic.twitter.com/GopA8f61qD

— Overton (@overton_news) September 26, 2026

"But critics argue the bare nails trend actually says something about class, the hamster wheel of beauty standards, and who gets to define what is considered tasteful."

"Nail art's historical and creative roots are linked back to black, Latino, and Asian communities and the suggestion that bare nails are now a sign of high status could stigmatise bold manicures, they say. 'That trend really promotes blankness and this kind of sameness and erasure of culture and identity that is so important to black and brown communities,' beauty journalist Kristina Rodulfo tells the BBC. 'They are often called elegant or tasteful, and these are often usually euphemisms that perpetuate white supremacist standards of beauty.'"

So it says at the BBC. 

Anyone who thinks the nails in that photo are unpolished must be the kind of person who thinks vanilla doesn't count as a flavor. But vanilla is a great flavor, and a thin coat of light pink nail polish is great way to paint your nails.

Anyway, if I prefer vanilla ice cream, it takes nothing away from your enjoyment of Rocky Road. If you want to be a maximalist, just be a maximalist. Don't try to bully minimalists into promoting the maximalist agenda. We're not "erasing" you! But maybe that's a hint about why people are drawn to maximalism: Is there a fear that unless you go big and bold and loud you might cease to exist? Quietness is not "blankness."