"It’s kind of hard to make a funny video about that. Like, ‘Yeah, they died. This is the end of the content.'"

"[Said the father, who] was burned out on social media and worried about disappointing people. He didn’t want to answer any more questions. Ultimately, he simply deleted TikTok from his phone and left the story unfinished. 'I mean, what do you think?' Dr. Clifford asked me. 'How would you have finished it?' He was finishing it now, I said. What did he want people to know? He paused and then said that he wanted to thank his followers for their support and tell them that he had given these octopuses his all. 'I think the obvious lesson is that they’re not good pets,' he said. 'They’re not durable pets, they’re not cheap pets, they’re not easy pets....'"

From "A Cautionary Tale of 408 Tentacles/One pet octopus suddenly became more than four dozen. They went viral. Then it all went south" (NYT).

To see the story of the little boy who loved octopuses and the dentist dad who made the boy's dream come true and displayed the the dream — while it lasted — go to the doctoktopus TikTok page: here. 

"With his death, the last of the Latin American Boom's great stars has gone."

I'm reading "Mario Vargas Llosa: Giant of Latin American literature dies at 89" (BBC).

His first novel, The Time of the Hero, was an indictment of corruption and abuse... based on the writer's own time as a teenager at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy, which he described in 1990 as "an extremely traumatic experience." His two years there made him see his country "as a violent society, filled with bitterness, made up of social, cultural, and racial factions in complete opposition". The school itself burnt 1,000 copies of the novel on its grounds, Vargas Llosa claimed.

His experimental second novel The Green House (1966) was set in the Peruvian desert and jungle, and described an alliance of pimps, missionaries and soldiers based around a brothel.

The two novels helped found the Latin American Boom literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The Boom was characterised by experimental and explicitly political works that reflected a continent in turmoil....

The Governor's mansion, after the fire.

The man arrested for the crime, Cody Balmer, 38, has confessed, the NYT reports.

It was a low-key sunrise....

... but we got out later in the day — to the Arb — and found the earliest of the flowering trees in bloom:

That last photo shows my hand steadying the delicate bloom of the Polish larch. The previous 3 photos are all of the magnolia. These are our magnolias. You don't need to tell me that your magnolias look different or that only your magnolias deserve the name magnolias. These are magnolias. 

AND: Talk about whatever you want in the comments.

"The failure to find a clear biomarker doesn’t mean that there is no biological basis for A.D.H.D.; most scientists I spoke to..."

"... agreed that the condition is produced by some combination of biological and environmental forces, though there is little consensus about the relative importance of each. But it does have certain implications for the field, including for the question of medication. If we’re no longer confident that A.D.H.D. has a purely biological basis, does it make sense that our go-to treatment is still rooted in biology?... Adderall, now the leading treatment for the disorder, is a type of amphetamine.... A significant part of the A.D.H.D. establishment does, in fact, promote the message that children and adolescents who resist medication don’t know what’s good for them...."

I'm reading "Have We Been Thinking About A.D.H.D. All Wrong? With diagnoses at a record high, some experts have begun to question our assumptions about the condition — and how to treat it" (NYT)(free-access link).

"He remember... the night he thought his hair would turn white listening to the sound of Russian guards battering prisoners with fists and metal piping..."

"... knowing it would be his turn in the morning. Or the feeling of constant hunger, and the terrible disappointment of waking from a dream in which he was eating his favourite meal. Or the Russian pop song Forever Young, Forever Drunk, which one commandant would play as he selected who to beat...."

From "I was a PoW in Russia — guards played pop music before beatings/Ukrainians released in prisoner swaps with Putin struggle to understand or even remember the horrors they experienced" (London Times).

And here's a YouTube link, if you want to listen to Forever Young, Forever Drunk, the song chosen to intensify the fear of torture.

"The Podcaster Asking You to Side With History’s Villains/Darryl Cooper is no scholar. But legions of fans — many on the right — can’t seem to resist what he presents as hidden truths."

A long NYT article. Free-access link: here.

I don't listen to Cooper's podcast, but I heard a lot about it on the recent Joe Rogan podcast — this one — with Dave Smith and Douglas Murray. Snippet:

SMITH: Darryl is incredibly knowledgeable.

MURRAY: He's not, he's, he's not... when he was offered to debate the current greatest living biographer of Churchill, he said, I can't because he knows much more than me and I admire his work and I've learned from it, but I can't possibly debate him....

ROGAN: Right. But you don't have to be able to debate people to have opinions on things....  That's not your thing.

The world gave "SNL" some great material and "SNL" did not squander the opportunity. Enjoy the near perfection of "The White POTUS."

Why it's not complete perfection: 1. You need to have watched Season 3 of "The White Lotus" to get most of the jokes, 2. The joke about the watch is bad. It was like the old "moron" jokes of the 1960s — e.g., why did the moron throw his watch across the room?/He wanted to see time fly — and the idea that Eric Trump is a moron isn't worth spending time on. 

Mom & Pop Accounting.

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"Worrying about amorphous dangers can be paralyzing. Instead, if you’re considering non-coöperation work, write up a plan..."

"... for the worst-case scenario—what you’ll do if you get fired or audited, or find yourself in legal trouble. Reach out to a lawyer and an accountant, or others who could help you navigate complicated decisions. Now is the time to clean up your life—your digital life and even, perhaps, your personal life. Dissidents describe a pattern: autocrats and their cronies use even the most minor personal scandal to undermine the credibility of activists and weaken their movements. 'You have to be a nun or a saint,' a prominent Venezuelan political activist, who asked not to be named, told us. 'If someone wants to find dirt on you, they will find it, so give them the least dirt possible.'... Another key strategy, ironically, is compliance—as in compliance with as many laws as possible. Tax laws. Traffic laws.... The price for those who stand directly in the way of Trump’s plans may indeed grow steeper in the coming months and years. But these early acts... point to a coherent vision of a just and compassionate society.... [Soviet dissidents] raised their glasses in the traditional toast: 'To the success of our hopeless cause.'..."

From "So You Want to Be a Dissident? A practical guide to courage in Trump’s age of fear" (The New Yorker).

Eric Lee's photograph of Gretchen Whitmer in the Oval Office is a sublime work of art.

 

From the golden eagle under the table in the lower left to George Washington's camel-toe pants to the 3 shades of blue in the too-tight clothing of the 3 human figures to the insane line-up of gold objects on the mantle to the now-iconic desperate gesture of hiding behind binders, the photograph is perfect.

Link to NYT page: here.

You're either there or you're not. You can't concoct a way to not be there when you are there. It's like the way a baby might think in the early stages of learning the game of peek-a-boo. It's reminiscent of thousands of photos of perps — walked in front of the press — trying to hide behind their collar.

It made me think of Magritte....

At the Saturday Night Café...

... you can write about whatever you like.

"Young people in the city are very boring now. I am only in my early 30s but the difference between 10 years ago is stark."

"When I was in my early 20s, you would go out and meet new people every bar you went to. Every night had a funny or interesting story. Contrast that with the Gen Zs you see out: they sit glued to their phones, are scared of speaking to new people, vape constantly, and are only interested in the latest viral tiktok they saw. If you are in New York and spend all your time hanging with other transplants from your same home city, scrolling your phone, and order delivery from a franchise for all your meals, why even live here? You can eat chick fil a and watch TikToks in any city in the US. Guess I'm getting old!"

Says Bud Weiser — if that really is your name — in the comments section of "Why Are These Clubs Closing? The Rent Is High, and the Alcohol Isn’t Flowing/The financial decline of some of the city’s most popular clubs has put a spotlight on the realities of nightlife" (NYT).

Agreeing with Bud is Clark:

The looming doom is creating main character energy.

I'm reading "Are You the Only One Who’s Broke? Or Is It ‘Money Dysmorphia’? The ‘boom boom’ aesthetic meets the gloom and doom of market turmoil" (NYT).

"Phone-eats-first type of food, whatever viral sweater is going around on TikTok, the new work bag," said Devin Walsh, 25, who lives in New York... listing the tempting purchases that flit across her Instagram, even, stubbornly, this past week.... [T]he draw toward prudence feels especially tricky for her generation because of the shared sense that they’re living under a cloud of incessant crisis.... "We’re more inclined to spend frivolously because of this looming main character energy of 'The world is going to end anyway,'" Ms. Walsh said....

In February, she splurged on hosting a Valentine’s Day party in her Hell’s Kitchen apartment, spending hundreds of dollars on heart-shaped sunglasses that she mounted to the wall to feel like a Sunglass Hut, a sink filled with alcohol and a new $150 heart-printed dress. “Was it a rational use of funds?” she said. “Maybe not.”...

Talk about the human phenomenon of plunging into irrational, extravagant pleasures in anticipation of swiftly arriving doom.

Bonus language topic: The word "doom" originally meant statute.

"He's much more self-aware than he lets on in public.... Everything I've ever not liked about him was — I swear to God — absent at least on this night with this guy...."

"I've had so many conversations with prominent people who are much less connected... And he mostly steered the conversation to: What do you think about this?... There were there were so many moments when I hit him with a joke or contradicted something and no problem.... I never felt I had to walk on eggshells around him.... I voted for Clinton and Obama, but I would never feel comfortable talking to them the way I was able to talk with Donald Trump.... I feel it's emblematic of why the Democrats are so unpopular these days.... My favorite part of the whole night was: We were standing in the Blow Job Room*... and he said 'You know, I've heard from a lot of people who really like that we're having this dinner — not all, but a lot.' And I said "Same — lot of people told me they loved it — but not all.' And we agreed. The people who don't even want us to talk: We don't like you. Don't talk? As opposed to what? Writing the same editorial for the millionth time and making 25-hour speeches into the wind?"

"Is there footage of this thing gasping for breath for two minutes before expiring? I need some light comedy before bed."

Says one commenter on "SC cop killer Mikal Mahdi chose upscale final meal before he was executed by firing squad" (NY Post).

And there is this, from Mahdi's lawyer: "Faced with barbaric and inhumane choices, Mikal Mahdi had chosen the lesser of the three evils.... Mikal chose the firing squad instead of being burned and mutilated in the electric chair, or suffering the lingering death on the lethal injection gurney."

Having given you 2 sides of the death penalty issue, I will take the liberty to turn the topic to grammar — the lawyer's grammar. You shouldn't say "the lesser of three evils." It's correct to say "the lesser of 2 evils," but "lesser" is used when there are only 2 things. If there are more than 2, you've got to use "least" — "the least of 3 evils."

That "the lesser of 2 evils" is a very common phrase and "the least/lesser of 3 evils" feels new is evidence of our tendency to see our choices as binary.

For the annals of Things I Asked Grok: