"Olympic rowers will compete in a river inhabited by hundreds of saltwater crocodiles...."

"Rowers already using the river have procedures for reporting crocodile sightings and working around the animals, while local authorities work with crocodile managers…. One crocodile farmer told nine.com.au that the crocodiles in the Fitzroy River would be manageable as the water temperature would be too low and 'make them lethargic.'"

"River crawling with crocodiles is approved as Olympic rowing venue The Fitzroy in Queensland, Australia, will host the rowing and canoe sprint events at Brisbane 2032, despite concerns from other nations" (London Times).

Crocodile farmer? I had to ask AI. I'm told it's mainly the production of what is a luxury leather — something like 40,000 skins a year — and there's also the "meat-and-tourism business."

"Dating older women wasn’t a conscious decision — it was more a symptom of success in the dating market overall..."

"... than any particular urge to see someone ten or more years my senior. Being tall, combined with being one of the last Gen Z men to have read a book, meant I was very successful, especially on Hinge.... I would go on two or more dates a week from the apps. My Hinge age range... was set from 18 to 40. But despite my open-mindedness, the dating app algorithm rarely showed me anyone beyond 30 and my dates from Hinge were almost exclusively 22-year-old trainee lawyers who went to Oxford. So I met most of the older women outside dating apps.... The biggest difference is perhaps that older women are more relaxed. I don’t have to worry about them behaving like the 22-year-old lawyer who untucked my shirt and escorted me around Uniqlo until I 'looked sufficiently left-wing'...."

From "I’m 24 and I date older women: ‘In bed, age brings simplicity’/No-strings sex, real-life hook-ups and grown-up conversation — Jack Davey has discovered the joys of dating women in their thirties and forties. So is there no going back to girlfriends of his own age?" (London Times).

Uniqlo is just a store. I looked around at their Instagram. When I got to this, it renewed my mournfulness over the death of Peter Max:

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A post shared by UNIQLO Global (@uniqlo)

Feel-good dog story of the day.

Nash, the golden retriever, had his big chance to be hailed the best guard dog when an intruder broke into his family’s home – but instead, the 4-year-old thought the man was a friend and brought him some toys to play with. pic.twitter.com/6LROw5EcAn

— CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil (@CBSEveningNews) September 17, 2026

"A billion dollars worth of Mets in left field and none of them could pick it up."

“A billion dollars worth of Mets in left field and none of them could catch that ball” - Kevin Brown pic.twitter.com/rQcjceGPop

— Keith McPherson (@Keith_McPherson) September 17, 2026

"It’s the least they could do... We’re already paying money to suffer. We’re not going to Hyrox and then going, 'That was great.'"

"To add additional contamination to that suffering is not something that we are paying for.... Everyone could physically see that there was feces on her leg, but no one said anything.... It was just, like, business as normal."

Said Joe Ho, one of the athletes who competed in the Beijing Hyrox, quoted in "Hyrox Athletes Are Refunded After Competitor Soiled Herself/The athlete, who went on to win, kept going after the incident at a global fitness event in Beijing, leading to an uproar" (NYT gift link).

[Joanna] Wietrzyk, an elite Hyrox athlete from Australia, had visible feces running down her legs as she did burpee broad jumps and weighted lunges at the National Speed Skating Oval in Beijing, alongside more than 100 fellow competitors — many of whom would need to pass through the same stations and use the same weights....

"His 'cosmic jumper,' a young man in bell bottoms traversing the globe in giant strides, became an emblem of modern youth, eager to explore the far reaches of inner and outer space."

"Barefoot and surrounded by puffy clouds and chubby birds, the jumper appeared on the 10-cent stamp commissioned for Expo ’74, the conservation-themed World’s Fair in Seattle. In 'The Universe of Peter Max,' a memoir published in 2013, he wrote: 'My cosmic art subjects were always euphoric: Himalayan sages levitating under a shower of flowers beside snowcapped mountain peaks; faces and flowers exploding into a symmetrical cosmic butterfly; mirrored lakes and waters with a cascade of stars and planets; flowers in perpetual states of organic growth, begetting blossoms. My inspiration came from the new youth movement in America and in return spoke to it.'"

From "Peter Max, Trippy Artist of Counterculture Era and Beyond, Dies at 88/With work that breathed the spirit of the 1960s, he became fabulously wealthy from licensing his paintings and posters in all their euphoric Day-Glo glory" (NYT gift link).

Things were so much more colorful when we were young in the 60s, and Peter Max was a big part of it.

Look around at all the gray, white, and black and remember when everything was over-the-top colorful. Mourn the loss of everything that was Peter Max. RIP.

"On the cusp of mating season, the antlers were signaling to other reindeer: 'Ladies, I am ready to reproduce,' and 'Gentlemen, step aside.'"

"He posed in profile before striding down the far side of the slope, leaving us to revise our view of reindeer: not holiday mascots, but bosses of the tundra."

From "Where the Reindeer Roam: Trekking 67 Miles in Arctic Sweden/On a hike along the Kungsleden Trail, or 'king’s trail,' in Swedish Lapland, a writer encounters majestic animals, challenging terrain and communal moments of sheer wonder" (NYT gift link (with nice pics)).

"I assaulted a police officer? Is that what it says? I don’t have my glasses. Oh my God. What a mess. I don’t remember any of it."

Said Layne Lundeen, quoted in "I don’t remember a thing, claims ‘air rage’ passenger duct-taped to seat/The 67-year-old, who was vice-president of a real estate firm, was flying first class before allegedly coming out with racial slurs and vulgar language" (London Times).

According to another passenger, Lundeen became "belligerent, making derogatory remarks to the staff of American Airlines and other passengers, racial slurs, vulgar language, very offensive to the women," and a former law enforcement officer said his friend "immediately knew that action had to be taken" and "got up right away and jumped in the seat right next to the passenger and began working on restraining him in order to keep the situation contained."

I don't want to go all Clancy-juror on you, but I feel sorry for this guy.

IN THE COMMENTS: Saint Croix said: "I hate to say it, but People magazine seems to have the scoop on this."

Sunrise.

Swimming with LBJ.

My son Chris sends that passage from "Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream" (by Doris Kearns Godwin (commission earned)).

Chris is reading biographies of all the U.S. Presidents, as you may remember from earlier posts. Someone emailed asking for a list of all the books in that project, and, though I don't do everything you might ask, I did do this. 

First, Chris sent a photo of his bookshelf:

"He seeks to unsettle and entertain; after all, an alternative pronunciation of his alter ego’s name, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, is 'Mischief Egotistical.'"

I'm reading "An Indigenous Painter Sees a Vermeer, and the Sparks Fly/For a new show at the Frick Collection, Kent Monkman imagines what Indigenous people see when they see fur trappers, General Custer and even Jeff Bezos" (NYT gift link)

"How Many People Support Trump but Don’t Want to Admit It?"

Asks Thomas B. Edsall, in the NYT (gift link).

Oh! Ha ha. I thought this was a new article.

Seemed to go along with today's episode of The Daily, "48 Days Until the Midterms: Is a Blue Wave Coming?" (gift link)[based on "A ‘Blue Wave’ May Be Building, but How High? A Times/Siena national poll suggests Republicans are reeling. Can they come back by depicting Democrats as too far to the left?].

But now I see that Edsall piece was published on May 11, 2016.

Ha ha ha. I guess we found out.

Edsall ends with: "[T]he simple fact that Trump has beaten the odds so far means that it is not beyond the realm of possibility that he could beat them again. If he does take the White House, much, if not all, of his margin of victory will come from voters too ashamed to acknowledge publicly how they intend to cast their vote."

"Singapore will pay people to read in a government initiative aimed at mitigating the superficiality of online content and..."

"... encouraging 'curious minds, deep thinkers and informed citizen.' The city state has launched a programme called ReadSG under which people are encouraged to log their daily reading on an app in return for virtual 'coins,' redeemable for cash. The idea is inspired by the goal of walking 10,000 steps a day.... The sums of money in play are small and no one is going to get rich from reading in Singapore, although its organisers hope that the 'gamification' element and the rewards offered by the programme will motivate participants.... Someone who logged 15 minutes a day for a year would be entitled to S$7.30 (£4.25)."

I'm reading "The city that pays people to put down the phone and read a book Singapore is seeking to turn the page on ‘doomscrolling’ with a system in which readers can log their progress in exchange for cash" (London Times).

So... get off your phone... get on your phone... which is it?

"When I first came up with the title, I looked on the internet to see if it already existed, and found one book on Amazon called 'The History of Concrete'..."

"... which turned out to be just an empty book that was a place to store your valuables. I thought that was really funny—not even the most determined thief would have the courage to open a book with a title that boring...."

Says John Wilson, interviewed in "John Wilson’s Poetry of the Mundane/The director of 'The History of Concrete' discusses the value of comedy, nimbys, and making films out of both found moments and the rules that govern the Hallmark Channel" (The New Yorker).

Wilson, the genius behind my favorite TV show, "How To with John Wilson," explains his method: "I start the day by going out and filming potholes. I know that there’s a pothole somewhere about to give any day now, so I’ll go and do that. But then I’ll probably get bored, so I’ll go into a store nearby and see what’s going on there. And then I’ll tell them what I’m doing and see if they have anything to add. A lot of the time, the farther away you get from the subject matter, and the more you have someone from outside of that universe talk about it, the more interesting it gets, and the more illuminated the metaphor becomes."

And by the way, that's how I stumbled into the "Girl in Gold Boots" trailer, blogged in the previous post — "Just stumbled into the greatest movie trailer I have ever seen." I was looking for a DVD set of the HBO show "How To with John Wilson" so I could point non-HBO people to it. Didn't find it, found something else, which is nicely Wilsonesque. 

"History of Concrete" might be a bit hard to find in theaters, but it is playing at Cinematheque here at UW on October 1st. 

Just stumbled into the greatest movie trailer I have ever seen.

From 1968, one of my favorite years, comes "the exciting story of vibrant unpredictable youth searching for the answers that torment their generation":

If it's answers that torment you, stick with the questions.

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

It was raining this morning, and I stayed in, so that lovely picture is from Meade.