"The center’s mixed messaging is incarnated in the Janus-faced facade of the tower whose eccentric cuts and grooves from some angles..."

"... can bring to mind the heroic architecture of Louis Kahn or a Noguchi sculpture. When sunlight after a rain turns the gray stone pink, the building can look like a beacon. But from other angles, it’s cold and forbidding. That’s a jarring vibe for a project whose most groundbreaking ambition is to reimagine the presidential library as a warm, welcoming community hub.... From the street the carved granite words from Selma are illegible, the lettering bunched together like Cheerios in a box. Standing just below it in Jackson Park, the tower looms like a castle keep, its mass and height in tension with the park’s pastoral beauty and origins...."

Writes the NYT architecture critic Michael Kimmelman, in "Obama Center’s Two Sides: A Lovely Park and a Forbidding Tower/In Chicago, the $850 million Obama Presidential Center aims to remake a neighborhood with a 19.3-acre community hub and a brooding 225-foot museum." (NYT).

Bill Maher lay in wait for Spencer Pratt, then suddenly sprang the trap: "Your wife... look I hate to put it this way, but what I remember about this story was huge tits...."

"What is the state of the tits? They're not what you would call huge but they were at one point. At one time they were okay. So what happened there?"

Yes, that's what Maher said to the man's face, 37 minutes into the interview, after some drinking.

I think Maher wanted to destroy Pratt and had that planned. Either Pratt loses his temper and struggles to respond or he displays a Dukakis-like coldness or Franken-like jocularity that would turn women against him.

But no:

Maher: "But so then she had breast reduction?"

Pratt: "Yes, she did.... So I don't think you respectfully would notice anything."

Maher: "I respectfully wouldn't comment...."

Pratt: "Well, you brought it up."

Touché. Maher blabbers — "Well, I just... I'm telling you..." — then jumps to his backup attack: "My history of you is like 2007 douchebag and then years of nothing?"

Anyway, I think Maher came in wanting to reduce Pratt to the nothing he believed he was — a washed up reality show star who's pissed that his own house burned down — but Pratt prevailed and I think by the end Maher either felt supportive or wanted to manufacture some last-minute evidence that he had backed the winner. 

"Condé Nast started the magazine as Glamour of Hollywood in 1939... but shortened its name when World War II reshaped the lives and ambitions of American women."

"It instead focused on 'the girl with a job,' which would guide coverage for decades. Its glossy pages contained fashion, beauty and sex tips but also coverage of abortion, sexual violence and women’s growing financial independence.... The magazine’s Women of the Year awards, introduced in 1990, became a cultural touchstone.... Those it recognized included Anita Hill... 'I don’t know very many magazines, neither Time nor Newsweek, that gave me that much interest,' Ms. Hill, now a professor at Brandeis University, said in an interview, adding that it had given her hope. It took a place like Glamour, she said, 'to understand what the moment could mean to women.' But like its peers, the magazine got pinched by the digital age...."

From "At Glamour, a Once-Mighty Magazine, a Skeleton Crew Churns Out Shopping Links/Job cuts at Glamour and a greater focus on posts with shopping tips offer one of the clearest examples of the waning reign of women’s magazines" (NYT).

Back in the 1970s, before I went to law school, I worked in a job that required me to read a lot of magazines, and I read all the mainstream women's magazines every month, so I know what Glamour was back then: The hippie era is over. The no-makeup look requires makeup. Here's how to transform your office outfit into a nighttime getup that will wow onlookers. Oh, to have had a blog! But back then, you just made jokes with co-workers. I considered Glamour horrendously outdated, but who knew it would take 50 more years to die? And it's not even completely dead yet. It's still squeezing dollars out of Amazon Affiliates links, like a one-person self-publishing writing operation in a remote outpost in the Midwest.

"You gained 14 pounds in one year!"

That's PRESENCE 🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/dxmRmKZchQ

— Baby News Network (@BabyNetworkNews) June 2, 2026

"[S]ocks and sandals were fully associated with nerd-dom, meaning that soon it was time for fashion... to embrace the twosome again."

"And so it did, with multiple brands, including Fendi, Miu Miu and Dior Men all showing sandals and socks on recent runways.... That this has happened at the same time that Gen Z has become increasingly vocal about its general discomfort with visible toes — the subject of multiple 'who let the dogs out' memes and Reddit threads — is probably not a coincidence. (Gen Z, after all, is the consumer group most brands are most eager to attract.) Whether that reaction is due, as some have posited, to a fear of fetishization — there are accounts on OnlyFans devoted solely to feet — or some other generational quirk, it’s a real thing."

From "Are We All Supposed to Wear Socks With Sandals Now? A teacher wonders about the etiquette rules of contemporary footwear" (NYT).

Complicated! I'd like to say wear socks and sandals in whatever combination expresses the youness of you, but as between the people who have publicly overembraced a supposed rule against socks with sandals and the people who are squicked out by the sight of toes, I'd like to skew toward the toe-haters. But make a good sock choice. Wear socks that say: I know what I'm doing.

And for you Roman Empire buffs: "ROMAN SOCKS AND SANDALS: FASHION OR FAUX PAS? In this article Mark Griffin explores the history of this unlikely pairing." ("'Udones' were made either of pieced together cloth or woollen yarn using a type of knitting called 'nalbinding' or something that looks similar to netting called 'sprang.'")

"Democrats really, really like Platner in Maine but the Republicans f***ing love him … if Maine wants an asshole with a Nazi tattoo on his chest, they get him."

Said John Fetterman, quoted in "Graham Platner 'sexted women.' Senior Democrats fear voters won’t care/Sexually explicit texts have piled pressure on the candidate for Maine. Long-serving party insiders say it’s a test of the tolerance for scandal" (London Times).

I'm getting my American news from The London Times this morning. For this post, I was charmed by the description of Fetterman as "the Democrats’ most unbiddable member in the upper chamber."

I think it's funny to call the Senate "the upper chamber," and I have to go talk with AI to get a handle on what "unbiddable" means. Once you see the root, "bid," as the "bid" in the phrase "do as you are bid," it's easy to see the meaning of "unbiddable." You can't tell Fetterman what to do.

I spend some time musing about the word "bid" — looked it up in the OED, read the very lengthy etymology, and scanned the quotes. Here's one from a 1984 book called "Country Voices," which is a collection of oral histories from rural England: "You didn't go to a funeral unless you were all in mourning, and you didn't go unless you were what they called ‘bid.' When anybody had died, there'd be a young man come round to bid you to the funeral..the joiner's lad."

Do you see why it would be the joiner's lad? And would you like that approach to funerals? You don't just decide for yourself should I go or not.

"This sort of match needs to be umpired by a man... you need a lot of strength to go against the crowd."

Said the tennis player Adolfo Daniel Vallejo, who is from Paraguay and who lost in the French Open to a French teenager.

Quoted in "Adolfo Daniel Vallejo fined $65,000 for sexist remarks at French Open/Paraguayan receives biggest fine in Roland Garros history after saying that his second-round defeat by Moise Kouame should have been umpired by a man" (London Times).

The female umpire, Ana Carvalho, in his view, did not succeed in controlling the noisy, distracting, partisan crowd.

Vallejo stands accused of sexism, but he was, it seems, accusing the spectators of sexism for not yielding to the authority of the female. 

"You’re f***ing crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this."

Said Trump, on the phone to Netanyahu last night, according to The London Times reports.

At the Monday Night Café…

 … you can talk about whatever you want.

Just as I was complaining that I'm weary of the topics in the news, I run across "Jeffrey Epstein’s Sperm May Have Survived Him."

I thought Hormuz and Platner and the slush fund and Jill Biden were getting tedious, and then I see, in The New York Times, "Jeffrey Epstein’s Sperm May Have Survived Him/Mr. Epstein banked his sperm several years before his death and said that if he died, it should be left in the control of his estate."

Why is this news?

"But it’s a familiar thought that new technologies lead to de-skilling, the erosion of capacities people used to cultivate."

"Socrates wasn’t wrong to worry that the widespread adoption of writing would take a toll on our powers of memory and attention...."

Writes the NYT Ethicist in "My Partner’s Dependence on Chatbots Is Becoming a Problem. How Do I Tell Him? One reason I love my partner is his sharp mind and critical thinking. Using A.I. for every decision is something I don’t understand."

"[O]ne risk in downloading deliberation to a machine is that your life will, in a certain sense, cease to be yours, because it won’t be your reasoning and judgment that guide it.... [And] your partner is degrading his relationships with real people.... It’s understandable that you’re feeling crowded out.... [H]e’s brought a third party to this two-person relationship, and it’s talking too much."

She's advised to just talk with him directly. She had to go to a third party — the NYT Ethicist — to figure that out. Why didn't she use her sharp, critical mind to get there — or somewhere! — on her own?

"It was now almost impossible for me to make a decision without getting A.I.’s opinion. By Friday evening, I was starting to worry that the interest in our house..."

"... was a little too strong. We had nearly 20 viewings scheduled for the weekend. I confessed to the chatbot my anxiety that we had underpriced the home. It offered some needed reassurance, saying that by pricing low, I had stumbled into an 'accidental strategy' that could result in multiple offers. 'When you get 1,100 views and 91 saves, you haven’t just listed a house; you’ve started a localized "gold rush,"' it wrote.... I had started this experiment thinking that the chatbot would create a superpowered version of myself — combining my own judgment with its vast knowledge. But once I started relying on A.I., witnessing its know-it-all competency with basically everything, my shortcomings started to feel enormous and even risky. I had thought I was elevating my own skills. In reality, I was replacing them...."

From "I Tried to Sell My House With a Chatbot/Over five frantic days, I gambled my family’s life savings on a hunch that A.I. could outperform a real estate agent" (NYT)(gift link, because this is really useful).

The top-rated comment over there: "When we sold our house in Hawaii, the realtor was excited to get the listing, but provided little actual service. We did the market research to set the price (her opinion — 'Whatever you think'). We decided what preparation was needed to make the listing more attractive (her only real contribution was recommending a great local painter). We staged the house. We negotiated the counteroffer. And we paid a 6% real estate commission. Let the AI revolution roll through the real estate monopoly. Power to the People!"

"His alter ego on 'The Thick of It,' Stewart Pearson, was portrayed as a clownish figure who tries to push 'thought circles' on bewildered Tories and utters pablum like 'knowledge is porridge.'"

"The real Mr. Hilton became a larger-than-life figure, infamous among colleagues for walking the corridors of Downing Street shoeless and in shorts and proposing idiosyncratic ideas that made headlines, like using cloud-bursting technology to make Britain sunnier and abolishing maternity leave.... 'The actual policy proposal was to reduce the maternity to somewhere between six and four months; instead of the maximum yearlong leave in Britain, and to increase paternity leave, he said. 'A year is just way too long'.... By 2011, he became so widely known for his unconventional dress that American diplomats gave special instructions ahead of a visit from President Barack Obama. They said Mr. Hilton must either wear a suit or leave the building.... After being given a 'severe talking to,' she recalled, 'he did, in fact, put on proper clothes.' (Mr. Hilton remembered it differently. 'I think it was, "Yeah, you come to the meeting, you have to wear a suit." I was like, "Yeah, no, I don’t want to do that."') But it was Brexit, Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, that overshadowed Mr. Cameron’s tenure. Mr. Hilton was for it, and Mr. Cameron staked his career against it...."

From "He Was Satirized on British TV. Now He’s Trump’s Pick to Lead California. Steve Hilton grabbed headlines when he worked in conservative politics in Britain. His American political renaissance in the California governor’s race has bemused former British colleagues and rivals" (NYT).

"The German economy, once known for its efficiency, orderliness and stability, is in a terrible mess."

"It’s not just that the numbers are dire.... No, the worst of it is that our dynamic economy gave postwar Germany a sense of identity. For all our flaws, we had a country that functioned better than others...."

I'm reading "Germany Has Lost What It Did Best," a guest essay by Konstantin Richter, in the NYT.

"There is an active Bluetooth network labeled 'BOMB'..."

"... one self-identified passenger wrote on TikTok.... Another Reddit post of someone who claimed to be the spouse of a passenger similarly reported that the word in question was 'bomb' and that the device was a teenager's speaker. The flight eventually reboarded and landed in Palma de Mallorca at 3:47 p.m. local time on Sunday, about 9 and a half hours late."

NPR reports on a United flight that had to turn around. 

"Tennessee bars journalists from witnessing the intravenous line insertion process, the first major step of the lethal injection protocol."

"I noted the time we entered the chamber. After about seven minutes of searching for a vein, they were able to insert an IV into his right arm. Then, following protocol, they also tried to set an IV in his left arm. That failed, so they moved on to his left hand, poking him over and over again. Cycling through needles, the executioners communicated mostly through tense glances and head shakes.... About 30 minutes in, a doctor entered and... told the executioners to remove Mr. Carruthers’s socks and search for veins in his feet.... After that didn’t work, the doctor asked whether anyone in the room knew how to gain access to Mr. Carruthers’s jugular vein. Then, the doctor decided to attempt to establish a central line... puncturing the neck, chest or groin.... Eventually, the doctor said he was not able to set a central line.... By then, an hour had passed. Still, the execution team continued probing his body for another access point....The state’s constructed illusion of precision had collapsed, revealing something far more chaotic and brutal...."

Writes Maria DeLiberato, in "In a Tennessee Execution Chamber, I Saw Chaos" (NYT).

The chaos ended because the governor acted, delaying the execution for another year. It's already been a long time. Carruthers was sentenced to death in 1996.