When she sees her employer on the donor list for the Trump ballroom.
October 24, 2025
"It was cool, though, I mean, pshhwww, it's terrible...."
Said George Clooney, making some funny faces, about the Louvre heist.
"What if all of sports is ruined by this gambling thing?"
I said, revealing my level of engagement in sports, gambling, and the attendant legal issues.
Who are the greatest figures in world history who never got to watch TV? List them along with their (anachronistic) favorite show.
- Socrates - "The Twilight Zone"
- Cleopatra - "I Love Lucy"
- Leonardo da Vinci - "Cosmos"
- Joan of Arc - "M*A*S*H"
- Genghis Khan - "Vikings"
- William Shakespeare - "The West Wing"
- Queen Elizabeth I - "The Crown"
- Isaac Newton - "Breaking Bad"
- Mozart - "Glee"
- Abraham Lincoln - "The Andy Griffith Show"
- Socrates — The Good Place
- Cleopatra — Succession
- Leonardo da Vinci — Black Mirror
- Joan of Arc — Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Genghis Khan — Game of Thrones
- William Shakespeare — The Simpsons
- Marie Antoinette — RuPaul’s Drag Race
- Ludwig van Beethoven — Mozart in the Jungle
- Abraham Lincoln — The West Wing
"Putting up a tent does nothing but make people upset that they’ve come to a state dinner but they never get inside the White House. The only bathroom facilities..."
Gahl Hodges Burt, who was social secretary for three years under President Ronald Reagan, said that tearing down the East Wing to make space for the ballroom was an unfortunate necessity, and that change was overdue. Since the State Dining Room holds only 140 seated guests and the East Room has space for 200 at most, recent administrations have taken to erecting enormous tents on the South Lawn for ever larger state dinners. Ms. Burt, a board member of the White House Historical Association, added that larger spaces for East Wing offices are “very much needed.” The White House has said that office space is included in Mr. Trump’s plans for the ballroom.
October 23, 2025
Here's that crazy ad that Cuomo accidentally/"accidentally" released.
Background from The Guardian, "Cuomo condemned over racist AI ad depicting ‘criminals for Zohran Mamdani’/Official X accounts posts and then deletes AI-generated attack ad that prompts widespread denunciation."This is the wildest attack ad I’ve ever seen in politics. Andrew Cuomo pulling out all the stops. pic.twitter.com/rPQ77Z3bE7
— Stephen Taylor (@stephen_taylor) October 23, 2025
"Now in their fury and impotence, Democrats hit the streets—projecting onto their hated nemesis, Donald Trump, their own past preferences for kingly methods."
"I particularly like the line where you said Trumpism is seeking 'to amputate the higher elements of the human spirit — learning, compassion, science...'"
Said E.J. Dionne to David Brooks in "Trump Has a Religion. What Do Democrats Have? Mamdani might be working in Democrats’ favor. But what about 'No Kings'?" (NYT)(video of the whole conversation here, on YouTube) .
"If Democrats don’t reverse course, they may soon find themselves unable to win presidential elections."
Writes Brody Mullins, in "How Democrats Became the Party of the Well-to-Do" (NYT)(free-access link, because there are some good graphs that show how the class politics flipped).
"This is my nightmare."
Said David Sedaris, last night at the Overture Center, here in Madison.
Were you there? We were.
I had to worry about him a few times. Was it comic stage business when he made repetitive fussy little noises and then switched to humming to himself in a way that felt like desperate self-soothing as he searched for his place in his readings? He also spent a lot of time urging us to by another author's book — "Long Island Compromise" by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. He called her the female Philip Roth. Really? Maybe, but I got tired of hearing about her, and the bit that he read from her book wasn't as good as what he was reading us from his next book — "The Land and Its People."
Have these adults lost their sense of childlike wonder?
... but to a child it is a galloping dragon transporting them into the world of imagination you've lost the power to see!
"Apparently our three-year-old, who does not understand the concept of time, had told someone that she hadn’t bathed for five days..."
From "My daughter’s nursery reported us to social services/When bruises were found on our child’s shin it was just the start of a humiliating, harrowing experience" (London Times).
October 22, 2025
Sunrise and afternoon in the woods.
"The White House is demolishing the entirety of the East Wing..."
The NYT reports.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation warned that President Trump’s planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom would “overwhelm the White House itself,” which spans just 55,000 square feet. https://t.co/iRY6cgoK7c pic.twitter.com/zTfL9CsLqO
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 22, 2025





