Said "R., 18, is an incoming college freshman from Colorado who got a deep neck-lift and rhinoplasty," quoted in "Three People on Why They Wanted New Faces" (NYT gift link).
That realization "Wow, this feels like the real me" is so "Twilight Zone."
August 11, 2026
"Now, I’m 13 days post-op. Only one of my friends has been negative about it."
"Before the surgery, he said, 'It’s weird to me that you’d do this, because you’re someone who preaches embracing who you are.' The confusing thing is that he’s very 'black pill,' which is a trend that says you need to be beautiful in order to get a job or find a soul mate. I hate black pill, because it’s pushing the narrative that hurt me as a little girl: that looks are the only things that matter.... Maybe I’m contributing to that narrative by getting this procedure. But I looked in the mirror after my surgery, and I thought, Wow, this feels like the real me. It sucks that I have to change a part of me to truly like myself."
Said "R., 18, is an incoming college freshman from Colorado who got a deep neck-lift and rhinoplasty," quoted in "Three People on Why They Wanted New Faces" (NYT gift link).
Said "R., 18, is an incoming college freshman from Colorado who got a deep neck-lift and rhinoplasty," quoted in "Three People on Why They Wanted New Faces" (NYT gift link).
"Zuckerberg acknowledged 'a risk that an imbalance of power between individuals and government leads to a loss of freedom or totalitarian state.'"
"His solution was to create superintelligence which ensured that users were responsible for deciding the model’s values, not the developer. He said there should be 'a fully private mode for personal agents where even Meta or any other service provider cannot see or grant access to your information.'"
"That's as strange as it gets."
I’ll take “things I’ve never seen before” for 500 please. pic.twitter.com/gWVQkBDV2b
— Michaela Bennett (@MichaelaB_22) August 11, 2026
Fish swallows golf ball.
The London Times reports: "Charl Schwartzel of South Africa had to take a one-stroke penalty after his attempt on the 134-yard par-three 7th at Trump Bedminster ended up in the water, and was swiftly swooped upon by a resident fish."
August 10, 2026
"These days I am a middle-aged man who works the door at a bar in Chicago that is reasonably popular with the youths, and I am routinely flummoxed..."
"... by the sartorial flotsam that comes packing itself in. The other night a guy came in with a shoulder-length butt cut and his T-shirt tucked into his jeans. 'Now there’s a dork,' I thought. I could’ve clocked him from down the block. But no. An hour later I went outside, and he was making out in the alley with a six-foot freaking supermodel — and she was goth. Or at least she was dressed like what I consider to be a goth; nowadays I don’t even know..... Why is everybody under the age of 30 these days dressed like an actual lunatic?... The subcultures of my youth were a sort of surrogate extended family. In a society jettisoning the type of organizations and communities that stitched it together over the 20th century, finding someone or a group of someones who were the same thing as you served as a bulwark against the fracturing sense of atomization. Making up a subculture every couple of months basically does the opposite, keeping you permanently aloof from the kids around you. I mean, half these things barely sound like groups of anything. What the hell is a performative matcha boy — some guy who drinks a thing? How’s that going to be your tribe?"
Writes Thomas Morton, in "Gen Z-ers Dress Like They’ve Never Worn Clothes Before" (NYT gift link)(lots of photos at the link).
#1 reason for blogging this story: It used my favorite word, "flummox."
"I'm not sure why WaPo covered this, but ignored trump wearing a wig that is styled like his mother's hair during her last year of life."
That's the top-rated comment (by far) on the WaPo article, "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she’s freezing her eggs/The Democratic congresswoman, 36, said she made the decision to undergo the fertility procedure to 'feel more in control of my life'" (gift link).
I was trying to figure out whether and how to blog the AOC story. I saw her video yesterday:
I haven't seen such a display of political abdominal flesh since the days of LBJ and his gall bladder surgery:AOC is starting her journey for freezing her eggs!
— Winter (@LeftyWinter) August 9, 2026
Sharing her doing the shot.
"Don't be weird about this even though I know you all will be".
She knows the internet so well. pic.twitter.com/2ywzN8R5d9
Still wondering how to blog that. But what's all this about Trump and his wig?
"It recounts an immigrant’s life story, told by a Mexican construction worker who toiled, prospered, became an American citizen..."
"... and brought up American children, including a son lost in Afghanistan. 'They were raised to believe in this country,' he sings, heaving a sigh that speaks volumes before continuing, 'that I barely recognize now.' Widowed and alone, all too aware of brutal immigration arrests, he’s going back to his long-ago Mexican hometown."
That's a description of the song "Volver a Celaya," by Steve Earle and Los Lobo, in "9 Songs We’re Talking About This Week/Karol G returns, Steve Earle and Los Lobos link up and Temper City climbs the charts" (NYT gift link).
That's a description of the song "Volver a Celaya," by Steve Earle and Los Lobo, in "9 Songs We’re Talking About This Week/Karol G returns, Steve Earle and Los Lobos link up and Temper City climbs the charts" (NYT gift link).
"Hobbies have helped Kimura feel more secure and find her voice, partly because many of her hobbies end with a finished product..."
"... giving her a feeling of accomplishment. Unlike the women in previous generations in her family, whose lives were centered on marriage and raising children, she feels empowered to pursue the activities that bring her happiness. 'I feel like I can design my future,' she said. As for romantic relationships, Kimura said she’s not closed off to dating indefinitely. 'I just don’t feel like I’m in such a rush anymore.'"
"The Korean supergroup BTS has pulled its blockbuster album 'Arirang' from Grammy Awards consideration, in protest..."
"... of the new Asian Pop Music Performance category....The Recording Academy has been cooking up new categories for years. It started out with 28 in 1959. We’re up to 100 now.... Some reflect true genres and discrete markets. But most are the malignant offspring of the record business’s historical segregation, which divided Black and white artists into separate genres and markets, even if they were playing sonically similar music.... After a song from 'K-Pop Demon Hunters' won big this year, Asian Pop was created...."
Writes Dan Charnas, a professor at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYT, in "Pop Music Is the Problem" (NYT gift link).
Here's how I'd frame the question: Why don't the Grammys have a category called White Pop Music?
There are 2 directions to go with that question. You could say it's white supremacy or you could say it's anti-racism.
August 9, 2026
RIP Beth.
The London Times tells us: "Grassley is not the first member of Congress to develop a strong attachment to a piece of machinery. John Boehner, a former Speaker of the House, appears frequently with his lawn mower. The senator John Kennedy has a cross trainer in his garage that he has named Margaret, 'after Margaret Thatcher because both kick butt.' His wife, Becky, 'won’t let me bring Margaret in the house,' he said, in a video posted this year. So he uses Margaret in his garage and then lifts weights, watched over, metaphorically speaking, by his Iron Lady companion."It’s a sad day at Grassley household…. For my 34 years and 15 yrs before that at my mother in law’s home Beth has worked dependably….
— Chuck Grassley (@ChuckGrassley) August 8, 2026
It's just by chance — and consistent blogging methodology — that Margaret Thatcher came up twice today. The earlier post is about her plan to send coca-eating moths to Peru.
"Is that Peter Thiel’s boy with that Ohio charisma he’s got? That guy. I think we’ve had enough of him."
"The last thing that he said that made any sense was 'Hillbilly Elegy,' after he said that Donald Trump had no business being president of anything. That was the last time he made sense, and then he decided to suck up to power."
Said Abdul El-Sayed, quoted in "Vance rips Michigan’s ‘crazy’ El-Sayed: would be a ‘terrible senator'" (NY Post).
Said Abdul El-Sayed, quoted in "Vance rips Michigan’s ‘crazy’ El-Sayed: would be a ‘terrible senator'" (NY Post).
"Margaret Thatcher’s government spent £100,000 on a top-secret plan to 'bomb' Peru with voraciously hungry moths in a radical attempt to destroy cocaine crops."
The London Times reports.
The method is relatively cheap and simple. From what is known of Eloria [noyesi] it might be thought of as a ‘smart bomb’ with a very short range."...
"The moth is indigenous to Peru and is highly host-specific to the coca bush. There is no evidence of it feeding on other plants … Its use as a control agent could, therefore, be concealed."
I wonder what else has been going on in the use of tiny animals in warfare. I found this, at the History website: "Bugs of War: How Insects Have Been Weaponized Throughout History/For millennia, six-legged soldiers have been conscripted to torment enemies."
At the end of the 2nd century, the Roman emperor Septimius Severus was on his way to wresting control of Mesopotamia from the local monarchs.... As the Roman legions advanced on the desert stronghold of Hatra.... The defenders crafted earthenware bombshells loaded with scorpions.... As Severus’s men reached the walls of Hatra, scorpion bombs rained down....
More recently:
During the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong dug a network of underground tunnels allowing them to decide when and where to fight.... Feeling his way through a dank passage, [an American] “tunnel rat” might overlook a trip wire and have a load of scorpions rain down from a hidden cavity in the roof. The Viet Cong also conscripted the Asian giant honeybee.... Soldiers gingerly relocated colonies to trails used by the Americans and then attached a small, explosive charge.... For their part, the U.S. military funded a research program to devise an apparatus to spray the Vietnamese enemy with the alarm pheromone of bees, thereby converting the local insects into fierce allies.... But the “weapon” was never deployed....
AND: Wikipedia has an article, "Entomological warfare."
Entomological warfare (EW) is a type of biological warfare that uses insects to interrupt supply lines by damaging crops, or to directly harm enemy combatants and civilian populations. There have been several programs which have attempted to institute this methodology; however, there has been limited application of entomological warfare against military or civilian targets, Japan being the only state known to have verifiably implemented the method against another state, namely the Chinese during World War II. However, EW was used more widely in antiquity, in order to repel sieges or cause economic harm to states. Research into EW was conducted during both World War II and the Cold War by numerous states such as the Soviet Union, United States, Germany and Canada. There have also been suggestions that it could be implemented by non-state actors in a form of bioterrorism. Under the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention of 1972, use of insects to administer agents or toxins for hostile purposes is deemed to be against international law.
A poster from 1942:
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