Sunrise — 5:38.

"President Biden said in a statement that he has received, and accepted, an invitation from CNN for a debate on June 27."

"'Over to you, Donald. As you said: anywhere, any time, any place,' he wrote. Mr. Trump told Fox News Digital that he 'will be there' and is 'looking forward to being in beautiful Atlanta.' CNN confirmed the date in a statement and said the debate would be hosted in its Atlanta studios, in a crucial swing state, with no audience. Moderators will be announced later."

The NYT reports.

That's brand-new breaking news. It came out just as I was about to put up this TikTok of President Biden challenging Trump to a debate (as if Trump hadn't been saying — for months — "anywhere, any time, any place" to Biden).

Let's talk about the unusually red portrait of King Charles and whether his flinch, as he unveiled it, revealed a horror of the thing.

I like this longer clip. I'd seen the short clips on Twitter, which make it seem as though Charles was seeing it for the first time and giving an unfiltered negative reaction. But here, you get to see him interacting with the artist, Jonathan Yeo, and there's discussion of slight differences since the last time Charles saw it. "You fiddled away, didn't you, up here, somewhere," Charles says, wiggling his fingers toward the head area.

I love that little smile she gets when she sees the opening and how many openings she sees.

She’s way above the average member of Congress in how she questions a witness. Most give speeches or ask prepared questions without an ability to follow up. VP? https://t.co/DBAKc0GYMw

— Randy Barnett (@RandyEBarnett) May 15, 2024

"Eight TikTok creators sued the U.S. government Tuesday to block the recently passed law..."

"In the filing... the group says that the law... 'promises to shutter a discrete medium of communication that has become part of American life, prohibiting Petitioners from creating and disseminating expressive material with their chosen editor and publisher,' the lawsuit says.... One of the creators on the most recent suit is Brian Firebaugh, a rancher in Texas. According to the filing, Firebaugh earns income from the TikTok Creator Fund and from selling products promoted on the app. 'Without access to TikTok, Firebaugh would need to get a different job and pay for daycare instead of raising his son at home,' the lawsuit says. 'If you ban TikTok, you ban my way of life'...."

CNBC reports.

Here are Firebaugh's TikTok videos. Here's his new video, saying, while running, "I don't do this. I never get political on my account" — then, interrupting himself and singsonging — "I'm suing Biden."

"She acknowledges being the beneficiary of a previous generation’s progressivism... It’s the crazy activism she’s against — you know, the 'fringe' stuff."

"By fringe, she means trans. She’s peeved that some trans women are trying to redefine feminism in ways that seem to her to be anti-woman, resents that lesbians risk being erased by trendy all-purpose queerness and fears that as a married lesbian mother she will have her own rights swept away by anti-trans backlash.... I was, of course, eager to read good gossip about The Times. The best nugget: After Bowles started dating... Bari Weiss... she says an editor [exclaimed]... 'She’s a Nazi.'... Her most serious charge is that the editor thought her story ideas weren’t as good after that. The obvious question is whether her heterodox turn has conferred much benefit when it comes to ideas. The ones on display here seem pretty shopworn. I recall admiring a sharp-elbowed profile of the psychologist and anti-identity politics commentator Jordan Peterson that Bowles wrote early in her Times tenure. Nothing in this book hits that level.... [T]he book’s central fallacy is that idiocy on the left requires moving to the right. It doesn’t...."

Writes Laura Kipnis, in The New York Times. She's reviewing the new book by Nellie Bowles, "Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches From the Wrong Side of History" (commission earned).

Should I read this book? It's 7 hours by audiobook. I'll try. Kipnis warns me that Bowles is trying to be the new Tom Wolfe, but she's not as good as Wolfe (and neither is Kipnis): "where Wolfe was a precision-guided stiletto, Bowles is more of a dull blade, ridiculing her former colleagues by saddling them with laughably vacuous thoughts and dreams — their 'beautiful vision of the role of journalism for such a beautiful time,' for instance."

What about in that "sharp-elbowed profile" of Peterson? Was she closer to Wolfe back then? I blogged it at the time — here, in 2018. Bowles wrote:

"Perhaps Judge Juan Merchan has been sobered by the defense mistrial motion he prompted last week."

"The judge foolishly allowed Manhattan prosecutors to elicit graphic testimony from porn star Stormy Daniels about a 2006 sexual encounter she claims to have had with Donald Trump. That testimony was irrelevant to the sole question in the trial, which is whether Trump fraudulently falsified his financial records in 2017. On that matter, Daniels has no knowledge; thus, her testimony was offered solely to inflame the jury against the defendant. Whatever the reason, the latest ploy by District Attorney Alvin Bragg was too much, even for the complaisant Merchan...."

Writes Andrew C. McCarthy in "Alvin Bragg again tries an underhanded tactic against Trump" (NY Post).

IN THE COMMENTS: Wince writes: "I still think Merchan is apt to surprise everyone by granting a directed verdict that extricates himself and the state from this unethical debacle, while avoiding an increasingly likely hung jury or outright defense verdict in Trump’s favor."

I've been wondering, which of the following 2 options is better for Trump and his supporters, going forward: Merchan grants a directed verdict, or the jury acquits. Again, consider only those 2 option and not others, and now tell me which is preferable for Trump opponents.

I'm not suggesting those are the 2 most likely options. I'm just asking who benefits politically from a directed verdict for Trump. Of course, at the point of deciding whether to grant a directed verdict, the judge doesn't know what the jury will do, and the judge should not take into account who will benefit politically (or whether he will be accused of doing so). 

Will people feel more confident in the judicial system if the judge grants a directed verdict or if the case goes to the jury? 

AND: Also in the comments: Mr Wibble answers my question: "His opponents benefit more from a directed verdict than from an acquittal. The former allows them to continue to claim that he's guilty but was only let go because of technical errors, with Bragg taking the brunt of the blame, whereas the latter would be seen as a repudiation by the public."

At the Tuesday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you like.

"How do we in New York reconcile the decisions of law by members of our highest court that seem disconnected with the factual realities around rape and power differentials..."

"... that lead to sexual abuse in the workplace? After this Weinstein decision, how do we give faith to victims that the system can work to hold sexual abusers like Weinstein accountable?"

Asks Cyrus R. Vance Jr. in "What It Takes to Keep Harvey Weinstein, and Men Like Him, Behind Bars" (NYT)(free access link). Vance was the Manhattan D.A. who prosecuted Weinstein.

"Michael Cohen is now explicitly testifying that the invoices he was sending, which he has sought to tie to Trump, were false documents."

"He is going over the monthly invoices he created, which described him as having been paid for 'services rendered,' and testifying that they were false records. He stresses they weren’t valid legal fees, but 'reimbursements.' Michael Cohen confirms that in response to the false invoices, he received 11 checks in 2017 totaling $420,000...."

Here's a gift link to the NYT's live coverage of the Trump trial.

"[V]arious ax-grinders want to use Biden’s struggles to push the party toward their positions. Critics of Israel have fixated..."

"... on the problems created by encampments at elite universities. And it is true that the news media’s intense coverage of an issue that splits the Democratic coalition and unites the Republican coalition hurts Biden and helps Trump. But that does not accurately reflect the nature of Biden’s polling deficit. The Harvard youth poll found Israel-Palestine at the bottom of young voters’ concerns.... Overall, the public continues to sympathize with Israel over the Palestinians by a margin of 41 percent to 22 percent.... [S]iding with the unpopular protesters would not address the source of Biden’s unpopularity. Another, more traditional form of ax-grinding came recently from Mark Penn in a Times op-ed. Penn... a key strategist for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign... [has a] long-standing fixation... [on moving] to the center across the board.... In reality, taxing the rich and corporations is Biden’s most popular issue.... The economy is still healthy, and the anti-Israel protests might — might — die down. But the trajectory remains grim...."

Writes Jonathan Chait, in "No, Your Pet Issue Is Not Making Biden Lose/It’s inflation, not Israel or class warfare" (New York Magazine).

"This is all so unbelievable. It seems like a big joke. But the damage being done to America is a tragedy."

Writes Juan Williams in "Get ready to see Trump go to jail" (The Hill).

Nice use of the passive voice! Who's doing the damaging??!!

"Researchers are unsure... but theories include that it is a playful manifestation of the mammals’ curiosity, a social fad or..."

"... the intentional targeting of what they perceive as competitors for their favourite prey, the local bluefin tuna."

From "Yacht sinks after latest incident involving orcas in strait of Gibraltar/Vessel measuring 15 metres in length sank after encounter with the animals, Spain’s maritime rescue service reports" (The Guardian). 

Also: "Experts believe them to involve a subpopulation of about 15 individuals given the designation 'Gladis.'"

From last year in The Guardian: "The orca uprising: whales are ramming boats – but are they inspired by revenge, grief or memory?" That's a much more interesting article....

Kamala Harris says sometimes "You need to kick that fucking door down."

Here's the whole context, "Vice President Harris Remarks at APAICS Summit Vice President Kamala Harris sat down for a conversation with comedian and actor Jimmy O. Yang during the National Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies leadership summit in Washington, DC. She spoke about breaking down barriers and the importance of democracy. The vice president also spoke on women’s reproductive rights and gun control."

It's a bland occasion and the topics are routine, so the occurrence of "fucking" comes as a surprise. It gets attention. But it made me think of 3 things, in this order:

At this point, they're only asking you to suffer physically for the sake of the environment.

But you really ought to take that shower in "warm or room-temperature water — or even cold water"

I'm reading, "Why you should embrace using cold water, almost all the time/Heating water gobbles energy, leading to higher utility bills and more planet-warming emissions" in The Washington Post.

If I keep the house at 62° or lower all winter, may I still take the hot bath I think need to restore heat to my inner core? Or will the failure to take cold showers count as a sin henceforward? 

Look at the backhanded treatment of baths:

Instead of taking long hot showers or baths that can dehydrate your skin, dermatologists recommend showers of no more than 10 minutes, using warm or room-temperature water — or even cold water — which is less drying to skin.

They can't time limit a bath. Unlike a shower, the water usage is complete at the point when you get in (unless you stay in so long you need to reheat it with new water). But maybe you know the number of minutes it takes to fill your bath, so you could take a "10 minute" bath. Would that fill your bathtub? I ask Siri to set my timer to 15 minutes, and of course, I use hot water. Maybe I should only fill the bath 2/3 of the way — with room-temperature water — for the planet. I'd rather take a 3-minute shower and have it hot.

Taking away our hot showers and baths? It feels as if you want to deprive us of the most basic pleasures of living in the modern world.

Sunrise — 5:35, 5:40, 5:41, 5:46.

Write about whatever you like in the comments, but yes, those are insects in the last photo.