Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"When asked if Trump was the 79-year-old man in question, White House spokesperson Kush Desai did not say no...."

From TNR.

"He was much less stoked to be assigned by Tina Brown, then editor of The New Yorker, to profile Mr. Trump in 1997."

"Observing him over several months on construction sites, in his Trump Tower office and on a private plane, Mr. Singer concluded that Mr. Trump, in the period before he became a reality TV star, was a man 'who had aspired to and achieved the ultimate luxury, an existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul.' 'That profile,' [said David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker], 'got everything about Trump 20 years before he ran for president: the vanity, the casual cruelty, the outsized selfishness. It was all there.'... [After a NYT piece mentioned it], Mr. Trump wrote a letter to the editor attacking Mr. Singer as 'not born with great writing ability.' Mr. Singer sent a mock thank you to Mr. Trump for the publicity, which apparently bumped his book higher on the Amazon book charts. He also enclosed a check for $37.82, 'a small token of my enormous gratitude,' he wrote. Mr. Trump returned the letter with an all-caps note at the bottom, reading, in part, 'MARK — YOU ARE A TOTAL LOSER.' Mr. Trump also cashed the $37.82 check, Mr. Singer later said. Mr. Singer framed a photocopy of it for his apartment."

From "Mark Singer, Longtime Writer for The New Yorker, Dies at 75/He joined the magazine’s staff at 23. Among the subjects of his profiles were the magician Ricky Jay and a pre-politics Donald Trump" (NYT).

I'm sorry to hear that Mark Singer has died. You can click on my tag "Mark Singer" to see how he's come up here over the years. What a distinction to have Trump's "YOU ARE A TOTAL LOSER" in your NYT obituary. To continue the all-caps — RIP.

UPDATE: Upon publishing, I clicked my tag. I'm sorry to say that Trump is in every post.

"Supreme Court says Rastafarian can’t sue prison officials over shorn dreadlocks."

WaPo reports. 

This is a complicated case, written by Justice Gorsuch, for a 6-person majority, in Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety. It's about limits on Congress's power to impose conditions as it exercises its Spending Power. The statute is the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, and I assume most of us feel empathy for a Rastafarian prisoner who experiences a routine prison haircutting. The federal statute is designed to relieve prisoners of substantial burdens on their religion (unless the strict scrutiny standard is met). The problem is the scope of Congress's power.

Let's look at the Gorsuch opinion:

"What is clear is that the majority today forecloses future reliance on Sosa and shuts the courthouse doors to almost any claimed violation of international law under the [Alien Tort Statute]."

"That includes torture. See, e.g., Filartiga v. Pena-Irala, 630 F. 2d 876, 878 (CA2 1980) (ATS suit brought by plaintiff alleging that his son had been kidnapped and tortured to death in retaliation for the plaintiff’s political beliefs). It includes forced labor. See, e.g., Licea v. Curacao Drydock Co., 584 F. Supp. 2d 1355, 1359 (SD Fla. 2008) (ATS suit alleging that the defendant trafficked Cubans to Curacao, held them in captivity, and forced them to work repairing ships and oil platforms). It also includes perhaps the most universally condemned crime in the modern era: genocide. See, e.g., Kadic v. Karadzic, 70 F. 3d 232, 236–237 (CA2 1995) (ATS suit alleging 'brutal acts of rape, forced prostitution, forced impregnation, torture, and summary execution, carried out by Bosnian-Serb military forces as part of a genocidal campaign'). 'Like the pirates of the 18th century,' whose conduct so concerned Blackstone and the First Congress, 'today’s torturers, slave traders, and perpetrators of genocide are "hostis humani generis, an enemy of all mankind."' Nestlé, 593 U. S., at 647 (opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J.). As to each of these offenses, as to each of these enemies of mankind, the majority decides that there is simply no way that a suit could possibly proceed without offending Congress. Noticeably absent from the majority’s analysis is any evidence that Congress would be offended by these suits. Of course, there may be reasons why allowing an individual ATS suit to proceed would be unwise. That possibility, however, should be addressed on a case-by-case basis...."

Writes Justice Ketanji-Brown Jackson, dissenting in Cisco Systems v. Doe, announced this morning.

"Readin' the classics and pickin' up plastics: Litterature."

I'm a big fan of volunteer litter picker uppers, and why wouldn't it entail reading the classics? 12 more episodes: here.

"In the lawsuit... Rana claimed he was drugged and made a sex slave by Hajdini, who also allegedly made racist claims about him and his wife."

"The most infamous line from the suit was Rana’s claim that Hajdini stripped off her top and said, 'I bet your little Asian, fish head wife doesn’t have these cannons.' JPMorgan and Hajdini have said from that jump that Rana’s allegations are entirely made up. Both defendants argue that Rana should be forced to either stay in state court — or that the suit be dismissed for good, and that he pay legal fees. Hajdini, who has filed a counterclaim alleging Rana defamed her, said her defamation allegation should be argued out before Rana is allowed to file in any new court."

From "The surprising reason JPMorgan lawyers don’t want Chirayu Rana to drop his bombshell ‘sex slave’ lawsuit" (NY Post).

How does that quote even exist? No one would say that, but no one making up a quote should make up something that no one would say. "Fishwife" is a standard expression, but "fish head wife" isn't. And I'll just stop there. It's so ludicrous that it's incomprehensible as a made up quote.

ADDED: "Fishwife" is a standard expression... it has a Wikipedia article:

"I want to acknowledge that the conversation that RFK is trying to have and that we’re having here is not theoretical for me, anyway. And here I’m going to shake my Lexapro."

Says the host of the NYT "Daily" podcast, Michael Barbaro, in yesterday's episode, "R.F.K. Jr.’s Newest Mission: Getting Us Off Antidepressants/The process of 'deprescribing,' in which a doctor helps a patient taper off a psychiatric medication, is now being considered in the development of federal health policy."

I’ve been on Lexapro, an anti-anxiety medication, for at least a decade. It was prescribed by a psychiatrist, but then just became part of my relationship with my general practitioner. I just get it renewed. And I’ve not really been asked to think about how long I should be on it. And now suddenly having this conversation with you is making me ask that question. How long am I supposed to be on it? What would happen if I stopped taking it? Would all the white noise of anxiety that made me want to go on Lexapro, would that return? Or 10 years later, have I outgrown that and I just don’t it because I’ve never tried to taper myself off this to find out who I would be if I weren’t me on Lexapro?...

The guest on the episode, Ellen Barry, asks Barbaro, "what did you conclude about stopping?"

Michael Barbaro: "Me? I don’t that I’ve ever gotten far enough along in the conversation with myself to stop.... It was just an accepted fact in my conversation with the doctor that I was on it, and then I’d probably still be on it for as long as I’m going to be on it.... But now I’m asking myself the question of, are we all infantilizing ourselves in the face of medicine? Should I be asking this question myself? Why should I be waiting for a doctor to ask it? It’s getting a little existential now."

If Michael Barbaro, a man whose whole career is about being thoughtful about miscellaneous things, is only thinking of these questions as he's in the middle of doing his podcast on the subject, what hope is there for the millions of Americans who take these medications as a matter of endless routine?

"Sex’s history, its forms, and its uses all turn out to be far stranger and more various than biologists had imagined...."

"Lixing Sun... a biologist at Central Washington University, begins his story with a protozoan called Tetrahymena thermophila. T. thermophila are tiny—just a twentieth of a millimetre long—yet can reproduce two different ways: by splitting themselves in half or, when they’re starving, by engaging in a kind of proto-sex called conjugation, in which two cells briefly fuse and swap genetic material. The protozoa come in seven distinct 'mating types,' which means that there are twenty-one possible pairings... The common white-button mushroom... comes in eighteen mating types, the fairy inkcap mushroom a hundred and forty-three, and the split-gill mushroom an astonishing twenty-three thousand three hundred and twenty-eight. In organisms that reproduce via the union of types—this group also includes yeasts and slime molds—partners are functionally equivalent and the exchange of genetic material is symmetrical, an arrangement called isogamy. The way Sun tells it, the shift from isogamy to sex as we know it began with a cheat. Some 'crafty' creature figured out a way to game the system by skimping on its reproductive contribution. A two-sided scramble ensued. On the one hand, an edge could be gained by pumping out ever smaller, nimbler gametes; on the other, there was an advantage to be had in manufacturing fewer, larger gametes for the small fry to vie for. Eventually, Sun writes, 'a minor size gap' turned into an 'uncrossable divide.' The 'go-smallers' evolved into sperm-makers; the 'go-largers' into egg-bearers...."

From "What’s the Point of Sex, Anyway? The world’s life-forms reproduce sexually in a bewildering variety of ways, even though scientists still aren’t sure why they bother" (The New Yorker).

"As a Frida Kahlo portrait glared protectively at me over Madonna’s shoulder, we talked past, present, future, prayer, dicks, nutritional yeast, and more…"

Writes Mel Ottenberg, introducing "The Madonna Interview" in Interview Magazine.

EXCERPT:

OTTENBERG: When was the last time you confessed?

MADONNA: Well, every song on this record is—not every song. Some are just joy. “Love Sensation” is just joy. But a lot of the songs here are confessional.

OTTENBERG: What about the last time you confessed in a church?

MADONNA: Oh, that’s been a while.

OTTENBERG: Do you have a relationship with organized religion?

MADONNA: Well, I was raised a Catholic and I’m a cultural Catholic.

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

We think that's our favorite heron — "Mike" — in photo #3.

"I remember one of the first things my parents would say about Americans when we immigrated to America, was that they always seemed so unhappy..."

"... despite the fact that they were so much richer than us. We were living on government cheese for a time, and my parents and other Russians would say: Oni ot zhira besyatsa. Which translates very vaguely as: They’re wild with their own fat. They’re so juicy and fat, and yet they don’t know what to do with it. Just enjoy the fat. But sometimes this greater meaning combines with this egotistical impulse to have more and more and more. And to not die is one of those almost Protestant extensions of everything. And striving. Why should the striving ever end?"

Said Gary Shteyngart, in his interview with Ezra Klein, the "I" in the headline "I Keep Telling People We’re Living in This Dystopian Novel" (NYT). The novel is Shteyngart's "Super Sad True Love Story" (commission earned).

"And beneath the bluster, Trump’s limited view of the American Revolution is very familiar..."

"... it reflects, like so much else about him, the mainstream culture of the Cold War era, when museums and films did indeed tell a relentlessly upbeat story of American accomplishment — in vivid contrast to the plodding drudgery of communism. The leftist radicals of the 1960s and 1970s dissented noisily from this cosy view, but the majority accepted it unquestioningly. Since then a more extreme view has taken root: those who see the revolution not as the start of an unfinished project but as a fixed source of authority, a 250-year-old set of final answers. But as the US blows out its birthday candles, does it still have the capacity it once had for political renewal, while retaining its founding principles? It is always easier to start revolutions than to end them. This is why so many Americans have believed theirs was superior to others: it had been brought to an elegant conclusion by the constitution of 1787. Americans, it seemed, had escaped the spirals of radicalism and authoritarianism that beset France, or Latin American republics...."

From "Happy birthday USA. But is America’s revolution unravelling? When the USA turned 200, the nation came together as one. Fifty years on, what are the chances of the same thing happening under Donald Trump? A special series from The Sunday Times Magazine is dedicated to the 250th anniversary of the USA."

That's the London Times. The view from the losing side.

Every woman is some man's daughter.

Link.

The pro-algae crowd...

More footage from the liberal ‘Pro-Algae protest” that took place in Washington DC

Liberals cheer for algae growth at The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to spite Donald Trump cleaning the area

Imagine this being your life…. I know what we’re all thinking, what are the… pic.twitter.com/i1Fo6Su8oQ

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) June 21, 2026

... and the rubber rippers...

🚨 NEW: Fox’s Peter Doocy just asked Jeanine Pirro if ABC’s Jonathan Karl is in trouble after President Trump called him out for ‘sticking his hand in the Reflecting Pool trying to rip the rubber off the surface.’

Doocy: “Judge, is he in trouble?”

Pirro: “If you damage,… pic.twitter.com/zfaK2TJHHz

— TV News Now (@TVNewsNow) June 21, 2026

Fishing.

There's more than one way.