At the Saturday Night Café...

... you can talk all night.

(No sunrise photo today — too much rain.)

"A transcript leaked to The Guardian ­revealed that he had called [a 'Britain's Got Talent' contestant] a 'c***' and said about another 'she thinks you want to f*** her, but you don’t.'"

From "HarperCollins severs all ties with David Walliams/The publisher said it would no longer represent the author and Little Britain star’s back catalogue after allegations that he had harassed female staff members" (London Times).

According to the industry magazine The Bookseller, which first reported the decision, Walliams’s titles will gradually be phased out from bookshops and e-book stores. It is not known whether the rights to his work have reverted to Walliams with the opportunity for them to be picked up by another publisher....

"HarperCollins takes employee wellbeing extremely seriously...."

The highest rated comment: "If we're going on the principle that authors have to be nice people, then that rules out Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, Mario Vargas Llosa. Has Harper Collins really thought this through? Nobody is forced to buy or read books by Walliams or any of these more substantial but no doubt unpleasant authors."

ADDED: I'd never heard of him, but I see, at Wikipedia, that his books are children's books:

"But on the fourth day, Berg somehow veered off what he described as a poorly marked trail and ended up in a swamp."

"He fell, drenching his clothes, bag and food. His hiking boots fell off, but he was able to recover them. His phone, however, disappeared. 'It was like quicksand,' he said. Berg would spend the next 11 days frantically trying to find help, surviving on his small supply of freeze-dried food and drinking 'the most disgusting water that you could imagine.' Back home, his wife, Debbie, grew increasingly frightened as the days passed without word. 'Am I going to be a widow now?' she recalled thinking as her mind wandered to all the possible dangers on the island, including wolves and moose."

From "For 11 days, a lost hiker shouted for help. Then two kayakers appeared" (WaPo gift link).

The island was Isle Royale.

Berg — Craig Berg — was a 70-year-old man who thought that, with his phone and its mapping app, he was properly equipped. If you're trusting your phone for everything, it should not be possible for it to "disappear."

"Following a 19-month effort by President Donald Trump to take control of the arts center, its board voted to close the building Tuesday..."

"... as Trump, who has demanded his name be added to the institution, threatened to cancel a more than $250 million renovation. The president said Wednesday that without his intervention the building could be 'ripped down.'"

I'm reading "What Washington lost when the Kennedy Center closed/We asked Washington Post readers to share memories of the storied arts hub. Hundreds responded" (gift link so you can see the selected memories).

WaPo wants you to know it's fake... but you've got to see this, got to get it imprinted on your fragile brain.

(Obtained by Ann Althouse)

Yes, I too am exposing it and searing it on whatever brains may be within my range. You've got to inure yourself, not jump at everything, not jump at anything, really,  anymore.

WaPo offers future tricksters a tip: "Most likely, the high-resolution image came first... with the blurry version perhaps created by someone trying to get rid of the AI watermark....."

"It's unclear where the name Rose Bean originated from... however Gaga has a large rose down her spine..."

"... that she got to commemorate her performance of 'La Vie En Rose' in the film 'A Star is Born.' The middle name Bean may have been inspired by singer/activist Carl Bean -- whom her hit 'I Was Born This Way' pulled inspo from."

From "Lady Gaga & Michael Polansky/We Have a Baby Girl... Name Revealed" (TMZ).

Well, that's nice. I'm not named after my mother's tattoo. Are you?

I'm only reading TMZ because "CARROT TOP/HOSPITALIZED AFTER ATTEMPTED SUICIDE." Not seeing any reason. I hope he's okay. He's been treated unfairly over the years by people who think it's funny to say he's not funny.

Joe Rogan took issue with those people last year when Carrot Top appeared on the podcast:

"Other people may have other ideas, and I don’t think there’s necessarily an institution position. But I think it’s compelling. It’s very clear."

Said Richard Kurin, a Smithsonian scholar, quoted in "Two Centuries On, Smithsonian Connects Jefferson’s Hair to Hemings’s Children/A new book describes how cutting-edge genomics techniques yielded 'extraordinary proof' that Thomas Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings" (NYT gift link).

Kurin — a cultural anthropologist — worked with "a team of researchers" who "used cutting-edge techniques." The "team" involved "archaeologists, genealogists, molecular geneticists and historians, stretching across multiple changes in Smithsonian leadership." 

The publication isn't a scholarly article or academic book. It's a book for the general audience, "History By a Hair," published by Crown. And we're told that "one Hemings descendant who had given a sample in 2015 asked to withdraw her participation, saying she was dismayed that the book was appearing before a related article had been published in a scientific journal."

Sunrise.

"I didn’t have any doubts. As I tried to explain different possible theories during deliberation, I kept getting cut off as if I had doubts based on the evidence present."

"Based on all the physical evidence, key witnesses, and what the prosecution presents, I thought it was enough proof that she [Clancy] knew exactly what she was doing and planned."

Said Michael P. Desronvil, quoted in "Holdout juror in Lindsay Clancy mistrial, Michael P. Desronvil, speaks out for first time after intense backlash" (NY Post).

Desronvil reportedly believes he’s been “targeted” by the media over the mistrial because he’s a staunch Republican on a jury panel he claimed was mostly leftist “activists,” according to YouTuber Ray Marcel, who posted a video to his channel “Fugitive TV” on Tuesday....

4 videos, arranged in order from wholesome to surreal.

How kids act when teachers do normal things:

"It may have a large proportion of its brain made up of human cells, but none of its behavior is made up of human behavior."

Said Madeline Lancaster, a developmental neurobiologist, quoted in "These Mice Have Partly Human Brains/The animals may help reveal the causes of brain disease in people and point the way to treatments. But researchers already are calling for new ethical guidelines" (NYT gift link).

What counts as "human behavior"? It says: "The human cells were still immature, [the] team found, resembling the neurons inside the brain of a third-trimester fetus. But they still managed to connect with the mouse brain, becoming active as the mice went about their lives. The researchers filmed the movements of the mice, finding only subtle differences from ordinary mice."

You're observing a creature with the body of a mouse. What could it do that would make you say it's exhibiting human behavior (especially if you had an interest in producing mice that could be used in research)? When would you say, no, this is human enough that ethics require us to abandon them as test mice?

Maybe put a little mirror in the cage and see if it gazes at itself philosophically or practices dance steps. 

Today's sunrise, from 3 vantage points.

Video by Meade:

"What I do is nothing more than a shampoo away from being nothing."

Said Kenneth Battelle, "the first celebrity stylist" (known for doing the hair of, among many others, First Lady Jackie Kennedy).

The quote appears in the obituary of another celebrity hairdresser: "Brad Johns, Celebrity Colorist Known for His 'Buttery Chunks,' Dies at 70/He made blonde highlights a fashion sensation. But when he shared details about his relationship with Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, he ran into trouble" (NYT gift link).

"Buttery chunks" is good. Have a name for your something more than nothing. And why be modest like Kenneth? Why not be prideful?

"I’m really proud that I made hair buttery instead of ashy. I brought these words to hair color: butter, caramel, cinnamon. These words made people smile, and so they would come to me, asking for chunks, chunks, chunks. I made highlights that weren’t these teeny-weeny capellinis, but big golden chunks, like a child at the beach would have." 

When you think of hair, why not think of eating? Even though people hate hair in their food and food in their hair.

A word about his parents (he grew up poor):

"To reach Kennecott, about seven hours east of Anchorage, you’ll need to take a long drive on paved highways followed by a 59-mile foray on a remote gravel road with no gas stations."

From "After the Gold Rush: 5 Ghost Towns to Explore This Fall/These mostly abandoned wilderness outposts, resplendent in their solitude, invite curious visitors to imagine what life was like during the boom times" (NYT gift link).

I don't know, what do you do for vacation? This appeals to me, and I almost never go anywhere.

"ironically by dressing down they probably thought you're insanely rich."

A commenter — at TikTok — explains how a guy in a T-shirt, jeans, and Sketchers was able to go undercover, uninvited, to Fashion Week events and even got seated in the middle of the front row.

"I see myself as a ranger in the African bush. You go out and see where the lions are, except they’re tiny and right in front of you."

Said Benedikt Pleyer, third-place winner, quoted in "Microscopic Videos That Show the Invisible Wonders Around Us/The winners of this year’s Nikon Small World in Motion competition showcase the wiggly, feathery, undulating beauty of invisible life" (NYT gift link).