At the Thursday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

"Bob wrote 'Mr. Tambourine Man' one night in my house in Berkeley Heights, N.J., sitting with my portable typewriter at my white Formica breakfast bar..."

"... in a swirl of chain-lit Camels cigarette smoke, his bony, long-nailed fingers tapping the words out on my stolen canary-colored Saturday Evening Post copy paper... Marvin Gaye sang 'Can I Get A Witness'’ from the six-foot speakers of my hi-fi in the room next to where he was, with Bob getting up from the typewriter each time the record finished in order to put the needle back at the start.”

Said Al Aronowitz, quoted in "Bob Dylan’s Draft of Lyrics, Once Tossed in Trash, Sells for $500,000/Two pages of lyrics, written in the kitchen of a pioneering rock ‘n’ roll journalist, offer glimpses into the Nobel Prize-winning musician’s writing process" (NYT).

Imagine writing one song while listening to another song — quite intentionally and through 6-foot speakers.

Alexinomia.

"People who feel it most severely might avoid addressing anyone by their name under any circumstance. For others, alexinomia is strongest around those they are closest to. For example, I don’t have trouble with most names, but when my sister and I are alone together, saying her name can feel odd and embarrassing, as if I’m spilling a secret, even though I’ve been saying her name for nearly 25 years. Some people can’t bring themselves to say the name of their wife or boyfriend or best friend—it can feel too vulnerable, too formal, or too plain awkward."

From "Please Don’t Make Me Say My Boyfriend’s Name/Why calling loved ones by their name is strangely awkward" (The Atlantic).

I feel this, though not severely. I'm glad to know, speaking of names, that there's a name for it — alexinomia.

I think part of the problem here comes from having been exposed to those people who excessively say the name of the person they're talking with — e.g., parents, teachers, and readers of "How to Win Friends and Influence People."

Headline for another unread column.

"Donald Trump's war on DEI is not about 'merit.'"

That's a piece in Salon by Amanda Marcotte.

I didn't read the column. The headline made me feel as though I'd already read it 100 times. But I did prompt Grok:"Make the argument that the dismantling of DEI is racist" and "Make the argument that the real racists are those who make the argument that the dismantling of DEI is racist."

There's an authenticity to getting robotic things from a real robot. If it's going to be automatic, I'd like a crisp 7- or 8-point list.

Maybe it's not automatic. Maybe I'm being unfair to Amanda Marcotte. But how many chances to surprise do you get in this world?

"From the way I’ve set this up, you might assume there are two possibilities: either we are indeed at the start of a new conservative era — the Conservative Golden Age — or

"... we’re still within the New Liberal Era, and Trump’s win in 2024 won’t be enough to terminate it once we look back a few decades from now. It’s still an open question. If two consecutive Eisenhower terms weren’t enough to interrupt the Long Liberal Era, and likewise for Clinton and the Long Conservative Era, then in principle, liberalism could survive two non-consecutive terms for Trump.I actually think there are four possibilities.... Scenario 1 — Conservative Golden Age.... The easiest route to Scenario 2 — The New Liberal Era is Still Alive, Baby! — would be if Trump mismanages some sort of crisis.... Scenario 3 — Stalemate.... Finally, Scenario 4 — Off the Charts — means that the liberal/conservative axis, as I’ve depicted it in the chart, will cease to represent American politics well. Maybe it’s centrist oligarchs and technocrats against a horseshoe theory coalition of the populist left and right.... Then, there are some darker scenarios...."

I'm reading Nate Silver's "Are we entering a Conservative Golden Age? Or will the vibe soon shift back to the left?"

Headline for an unread column.

"What It Means That No Republican Is Acting on the Pete Hegseth Allegations."

The piece is by Bret Stephens, and I did not read it. I think the answer is obvious, I'm pretty sure Stephens will not give the obvious answer, and I am not bound by protocol to sit through this sermon.

Jacques Audiard, Sean Baker, Brady Corbet, Coralie Fargeat, and James Mangold.

I'm reading the list of movie directors nominated for an Academy Award — the nominations were announced a few minutes ago — and I don't recognize any of the names.

I even care about one of the movies — the one about Bob Dylan — though I haven't gone out to see it, not yet at least. But I have to recognize that I don't care about present-day movie directors. They're not these giants of the culture like they were in past decades, not to me anyway. I cared when David Lynch died, and I never even particularly liked his movies. But he was an important cultural figure, and I felt interested and reverent about that. Maybe it's me, and I'm getting not just old but very old. 

What do you think? Have we lost something? Is there any way back? Or should we not even want to go back — back to that era of giants. I know Francis Ford Coppola had a movie this year. He's one of the giants, one of the names that used to come up time and again in the nomination lists. But he's not there this year, nor was he expected. Nobody liked his magnum opus. Hollywood is not growing giants anymore, and it has no use for magna opera.

Show Redditors finding a happy place to escape from Trump.

 

Link. Who would have thought, back when GWB was the hated devil, that he would one day provide solace to those who were agonizing over a far more hateful devil?

I like this picture someone put up. Do you see who it is? At first, I thought: LBJ??!? But he's too short:

"[T]hese criminal networks have extended their operations far beyond drug trafficking and human smuggling. They are now embedded in a wide swath of the legal economy..."

"... from avocado farming to the country’s billion-dollar tourism industry, making it hard to be absolutely sure that American companies are isolated from cartel activities. 'This has come up in previous administrations across the political spectrum and from members of Congress who have wanted to do it,' said Samantha Sultoon, a senior adviser on sanctions policy and threat finance in the Trump and Biden administrations. 'But no one has done it because they have looked at what the implications would be on trade, economic and financial relationships between Mexico and the United States.'..."

From "How Labeling Cartels ‘Terrorists’ Could Hurt the U.S. Economy Isolating U.S. companies from cartel activities could be almost impossible given that the criminal groups operate in sectors like agriculture and tourism, leaving some American businesses vulnerable to sanctions" (NYT).

"But no one has done it"... until Trump. I wonder how many of Trump's innovations are things the others have thought of but rejected. 

"Almost impossible" — that makes me think of this part of Trump's inaugural speech:

Lake Mendota — 3:26 p.m.

It was still too cold (and windy) to go out for the sunrise, but it had warmed up nicely by mid-afternoon. Just look at that. Toasty! Mid-20s — the same supposedly bone-chilling cold that drove the inauguration ceremony indoors. 

"They said, 'Sir, would you like to pardon everybody including yourself?' I said, 'I'm not going to pardon anybody. We didn't do anything wrong!'"

"And we had people that suffered, they're incredible patriots. We had people that suffered. We had Bannon put in jail, we had Peter Navarro put in jail. You had people that suffered, and far worse than that, they have lost their fortunes and whatever their nest egg — paying it to lawyers. People have said they wouldn't have even taken a pardon. This guy went around giving everyone pardons. And, you know, the funny thing (maybe the sad thing) is he didn't give himself a pardon — and if you look at it, it all had to do with him."

Said Trump, in a clip from an interview with Sean Hannity that will air tonight. Video at link.

"I’m not looking to hurt Russia. I love the Russian people, and always had a very good relationship with President Putin..."

"... and this despite the Radical Left’s Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX. We must never forget that Russia helped us win the Second World War, losing almost 60,000,000 lives in the process. All of that being said, I’m going to do Russia, whose Economy is failing, and President Putin, a very big FAVOR. Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE. If we don’t make a 'deal,' and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries. Let’s get this war, which never would have started if I were President, over with! We can do it the easy way, or the hard way - and the easy way is always better. It’s time to 'MAKE A DEAL.' NO MORE LIVES SHOULD BE LOST!!!"

Writes President Trump, at Truth Social.

That made me want to quote this passage from Trump's inaugural address:

JD Vance enters the Oval Office for the first time.

As we gathered for our meeting at the White House yesterday, JD Vance mentioned to us that he had never before visited the Oval Office. I told him and President Trump that I HAD to capture the moment on video. Only in America can a hardworking young man from Appalachia rise from… pic.twitter.com/H4aHOyyfVt

— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) January 22, 2025

"I tend to think the search for authenticity in a new country is rooted in a desire for something we find missing at home."

"To live almost anywhere in the United States is to be surrounded by brand names. The supposedly authentic foreign experience is perhaps a sense of life untainted by the influence of global brands. Traveling abroad, we may find it only natural to dismiss anything else as less than the 'real' version of whichever country we’re visiting. Yet brands like KFC or McDonald’s are just as ingrained in the fabric of everyday life in Dublin, Paris or Tokyo as a given pub, bistro or noodle shop.... Fast food is indigenous to a world made by capitalism, you could say.... But step inside. Order something. Try speaking with the customers. You might even leave with a better understanding of how they live, what they struggle with and what they hope for themselves. In other words, by going to the most generic restaurant, you can learn what makes a place unique."

Writes Alex C. Park, in "Want an Authentic Travel Experience? Try McDonald’s. It’s a much realer version of the supposed authenticity we so often seek" (NYT).

"She was spotted carrying books including The Iliad, a classic saga of male rage and refusal to accept defeat, on the campaign trail."

From "Who Is JD Vance’s Wife? Second Lady Usha Vance, Former Democrat, Steals the Inauguration Spotlight/Just after his swearing-in, Donald Trump joked that he 'would have chosen' Usha as VP—'the only one smarter than' JD Vance" (Vanity Fair).

A classic saga of male rage and refusal to accept defeat — that amused me. The boundaries of the manosphere are vast.

They say don't judge a book by its cover, but apparently it's fine to judge a person by the visible cover of any book they happen to be carrying. Remember back in May 2008 when candidate Barack Obama was photographed carrying "The Post-American World" by Fareed Zakaria? The NYT had just reviewed the book and said:

Zakaria’s is not another exercise in declinism. His point is not the demise of Gulliver, but the "rise of the rest.”...  The real problem, Zakaria argues, is the rise of China.... Authoritarian modernization just hums along. The Party’s message reads "Enrich yourselves, but leave the driving to us,” and most of 1.3 billion Chinese seem happy to comply — and to consume. With power safely lodged in the Politburo, China does not conform to the historical pattern of "first rich, then rowdy,” which led to Tokyo’s and Berlin’s imperialist careers.....

How did we read his reading? 

"Society doesn’t allow women of color to be vulnerable at work. When you’re a first, you don’t get the benefit of the doubt."

"I want to be clear: I do not regret my decision to keep my life private while in office. This piece is no apology, it’s an explanation. An explanation of who I am, what I’ve been through, and what it’s like to come from where I come from and sit in the public eye.... From the beginning of my time as press secretary, I navigated the typically choppy waters of American politics.... And I have also trudged through thick, thick grief... For more than 18 months, I drove up to New York every weekend I could to see my mom.... As present as I was in organizing my mom’s [cancer] care, I still tried to maintain a sense of privacy when I visited her. I’d wear big sunglasses, a mask, and no makeup. Unable to help herself, my mom had already bragged about me to anyone who would listen. Yet the weight of it all felt like too much. I am used to heaviness.... But I was losing my grip. I told my mom I wanted to move to New York so I could help her full-time. 'You are not quitting your job,' she said.... Quitting the administration would hurt her more than my full-time caretaking would help....."

Writes Karine Jean-Pierre, in "Karine Jean-Pierre, President Biden’s Barrier-Breaking Press Secretary, Reveals Some Truths About Her Job/'I have kept details about my private life under lock and key,' she writes for Vanity Fair. 'Society doesn’t allow women of color to be vulnerable at work'" (Vanity Fair)(the mother's cancer was cured).

AND: Here's the new press secretary, who also faces the challenge of convincing you that her selection was merit-based: