"I just started punching it in the head as hard as I could. And he had let go and and then grabbed me again. And the second time that he let go and grabbed me..."

"... he had drug me underneath the water. And he like shook my leg around.... Whenever he let go, I had started running up. And I had gotten up out of the water."

From "Florida teen saves herself from alligator that dragged her underwater: ‘I just started punching'" (NY Post).

"To celebrate our fifth anniversary, my college boyfriend and I went to Spain— we broke up a few weeks later."

"He’d booked the hotel without checking if it was within walkable distance of Barcelona Center (it wasn’t), and our room had two single beds. The room reservation wasn’t the cause of the breakup, but it didn’t help. Two years later, I was in Spain again. This time, lying on a hammock in an Ibizan Airbnb with a two-month situationship. We’d booked the trip just over a month after our first date; but, under the setting Ibizan sun, my once-exciting prospective lover was a cold and grumpy disappointment. When it ended, again, just weeks later, I blamed the vacation for our ultimate demise. I swore off Spain as a romantically cursed destination...."

Writes Laura Pitcher, in "How to Survive the Couples Trip" (The Cut).

She got the new boyfriend out in the sun and he became a cold and grumpy disappointment. Better to find out sooner than later. Sounds like vacationing speeds things up.

"From Edison films catalog: Four young ladies, in their nightgowns, are having a romp. One of the pillows gets torn, and the feathers fly all over the room...1897."

Found in the Library of Congress collection at YouTube when I was looking for some film of Annie Oakley, to use in the previous post. I did find an Annie Oakley clip — from 1894 — but I just didn't think it was interesting enough. But here.

Maybe you think that's more interesting than 4 young ladies, in their nightgowns, having a romp in 1897." To me, it's more interesting that, in the first decade of movie-making, the idea of girls pillow-fighting came up. Filming a famous performer is obviously something you'd want to do. 

"Five Catholic saints are on the list, including Elizabeth Ann Seton.... However, there is not a single female athlete, unless you count sharpshooter Annie Oakley."

From "Who’ll be in Trump’s hero garden? There are a few surprises. The list of nearly 250 includes the famous, the obscure and, in some cases, the intentionally controversial" (WaPo)(free-access link).

Young and old... good luck and bad...

Screen grab from the sidebar at The Guardian. The stories are here — "Gus pulled the arrow out of his head by himself and immediately went to see his mother, who was vacuuming inside... He kept saying, 'Mom, am I dying? Am I going to leave you? I don’t want to leave you yet'" — and here — "It is with great sadness that we can confirm our icon of humanity and powerhouse of positivity Fauja Singh has passed away in India."

"Trump is 47 and Woods is 49, making this a surprisingly age-appropriate celebrity pairing."

I'm reading "Tiger Woods and Vanessa Trump: MAGA Dating Drama, Explained" (Intelligencer).

I wonder what else they're not doing wrong.

"Brooker says it reminds him of the orcas who have recently been spotted wearing salmon on their heads like a hat — a behaviour last reported in the '70s."

From "Chimps are sticking grass and sticks in their butts, seemingly as a fashion trend/The new phenomenon appears to be a fresh spin on an old fad of wearing grass in the ear" (CBC).

ADDED: This story made me ask ChatGPT "What is the origin and history of the phrase 'Your ass is grass'?" It couldn't pinpoint the origin, but this part of the answer was amusingly AI:

🔹 Linguistic Features:

• Ass: A longstanding vulgar slang term for a person, especially in a demeaning or aggressive context.

• Grass: Used metaphorically here as something easily cut down, disposable, or unresisting.

"Democrats and a union representing Education Department workers warned of dire consequences."

From the New York Times article...

I made that screen grab because I thought the choice of photograph was tragicomic. I'm just going to assume — I can't tell from the caption — that the building houses the Department of Education. It's poetic — no? — the dying sunlight, the leafless trees. It says... dire consequences.

"I feel most Muslim when I am stunned by a moment of clarity within my own contradictions."

Writes Hanif Abdurraqub, in "Zohran Mamdani and Mahmoud Khalil Are in on the Joke/What it feels like to laugh when the world expects you to disappear" (The New Yorker).

Beyond whatever disconnects may exist in my faith practice, I still feel deeply connected to the ummah—the body, the community—and the responsibilities that this connection carries. A Hadith that I love, and which underpins many of my actions, states that “the believers in their mutual kindness, compassion, and sympathy are just like one body. When one of the limbs suffers, the whole body responds to it with wakefulness and fever.”...

I have been talking with my Muslim friends about the specific brand of Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiment that has recently arisen—or re-arisen, depending on how one chooses to look at it—in America. In New York City, Zohran Mamdani... will almost certainly....

At the Potato Café...

... you can talk all night.

"Last year, by some estimates, Ukraine’s factories turned out more than three million drones...."

"The drones that I examined were remarkably simple: a lightweight square frame, four propellers, a video camera, a battery-powered motor, and room for a bomb. The attack drones, known as F.P.V.s, for 'first-person view,' are guided by an operator watching a video screen that shows what the drone is seeing; other members of the unit monitor feeds from reconnaissance drones.... The Russians are terrorizing the Ukrainians with drone attacks of their own. Towns and hamlets have been largely pulverized along the front lines and for miles beyond; even American air defenses are mostly useless, because setting them up invites an immediate Russian attack. Iranian-made Shahed drones, capable of carrying large warheads long distances, have pummelled Kyiv and other cities with hundreds of strikes. Under the constant threat of attack, the Ukrainians have found it difficult to supply their front lines, and evacuation is sometimes impossible. The prevalence of drones appears to have given the advantage to the defense. Along the seven-hundred-mile front, soldiers on both sides are huddled in fortified trenches, separated by a no man’s land known as the 'gray zone.' With drones circling day and night, surprise attack is impossible, movement suicidal. If soldiers venture out, they are attacked immediately by drones or artillery...."

Writes Dexter Filkins, in "Is the U.S. Ready for the Next War With global conflicts increasingly shaped by drones and A.I., the American military risks losing its dominance" (The New Yorker).

"For 35 years, Bill Dilworth tended a Manhattan loft filled with dirt, otherwise known as 'The New York Earth Room,' a monumental artwork by Walter De Maria.... 280,000 pounds of dark, chocolaty soil, about two feet deep..."

"... on the second floor of an early artists’ co-op in a former manufacturing building on Wooster Street, in the heart of SoHo. It was installed in 1977, in what used to be the Heiner Friedrich Gallery, and it was intended to be temporary, a three-month-long exhibit.... [T]he artists who colonized the building and the area have mostly moved on, and the neighborhood, like the city itself, has evolved. 'That’s what makes the Earth Room so radical,' Mr. Dilworth said.... 'It’s here, and it remains the same.'... He watered and raked the soil, plucking the odd weed or mushroom. (The mushrooms were edible, and delicious, by Mr. Dilworth’s account.)... 'I found the art world to be something that doesn’t appeal to me.... This is about as close as I’m comfortable getting to it. But making art has been vital to me always. So how do you make art and not be in the art world? This job allows me to stay tuned to my own art-making — just by the freedom of thought and all that.'"

From "Bill Dilworth, Caretaker of ‘The New York Earth Room,’ Is Dead at 70/For decades, he tended a SoHo loft filled with dirt, made by the conceptual artist Walter De Maria. People made pilgrimages to see it — and Mr. Dilworth, its magnetic steward" (NYT).

"I made every decision," says Joe Biden, but how would he know, and how could his statement ease our doubts?

The NYT reports on its 10-minute interview with Biden and tells us that "Mr. Biden said that he had orally granted all the pardons and commutations issued at the end of his term, calling President Trump and other Republicans 'liars' for claiming his aides had used an autopen to do so without his authorization."

So he's using the word "liars" without knowing if people are lying. It makes me want to just call him a liar and be done with it. If the aides were using the autopen somewhere outside of his presence, how would he necessarily know what they were doing? He's saying trust me — trust me or else I'll call you a liar.

The article continues: "'I made every decision,' Mr. Biden said in a phone interview on Thursday, asserting that he had his staff use an autopen replicating his signature on the clemency warrants because 'we’re talking about a whole lot of people.'"

How does he know he made every decision? We're not liars if we simply doubt that he had the mental capacity to know what was going on. What sort of decision-making was it? Am I a liar if I presume he did nothing more than rubber-stamp whatever was recommended by the staff?

"I think it’s going to require a little bit less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in fetal positions. And it’s going to require Democrats to just toughen up."

Said — guess who? — Barack Obama.

This is another one of those statements to fundraisers that you weren't supposed to hear, but they manage to leak out somehow.

In this case, the statement was "exclusively obtained by CNN."

The reputedly amiable but often crabby ex-President also said: "You know, don’t tell me you’re a Democrat, but you’re kind of disappointed right now, so you’re not doing anything. No, now is exactly the time that you get in there and do something. Don’t say that you care deeply about free speech and then you’re quiet. No, you stand up for free speech when it’s hard. When somebody says something that you don’t like, but you still say, 'You know what, that person has the right to speak.' … What’s needed now is courage."

What have they got that I ain't got? 

Obama's remarks made me think of this "printed, foldable card that can fit right into your ID badge holder" given out by the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, developed by the Office of Social Impact and Belonging:

"Camp Mystic’s leader got a ‘life threatening’ flood alert. They evacuated an hour later."

"Much of what made the camp special also put it at heightened risk as the river rose to record levels, a [Washington] Post investigation found."

That's a free-access link.

Excerpt: "As the water encroached, the teenage counselors, cut off from others, were left to make frantic life-and-death decisions. They began rousting girls from their cabins, the younger campers screaming or crying as they waited for help or were ushered to higher ground. Dick Eastland, 70, and other staffers eventually realized that the Bubble Inn and Twins cabins, which held the littlest girls — some as young as 8 — were in the most danger, Eastland Jr. said. A swirling eddy of water had formed from two directions...."

"Kids: They’re pint-size spies. They’re little data processors, soaking things up and spitting them back, until one day they’ve grokked enough to knock you into the gutter."

Writes Dwight Garner, in "The Future Looks Dark, but Familiar, in Gary Shteyngart’s New Book/'Vera, or Faith' follows a 10-year-old girl navigating family drama and a dystopian America" (NYT).

1. Garner, the name, is not a "garner (the word!)" spotting, within the logic of the Althouse blog.

2. "One day they’ve grokked enough" might be one of the last appearances of "grok," the verb, in this Musk-permeated word.

3. I just finished reading "Vera, or Faith" last night. That's why I'm reading a review of it this morning. The quote I pulled from the review was chosen because of that "grokked."

4. About that dystopia — to quote the book — "[T]he states are having their constitutional conventions. And these conventions will decide whether to give an 'enhanced vote'... counting for five-thirds of a regular vote to so-called 'exceptional Americans,' those who landed on the shores of our continent before or during the Revolutionary War but were exceptional enough not to arrive in chains."

5. Lots of novels use that child as pint-size spy idea, don't they? I think of "What Maisie Knew" and "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time." You can think of more. Or ask Grok. But whether the character is a child or not, many novels make their plot out a character gradually putting clues together and figuring something out. The thing to be figured out may not be an interesting story at all — who killed X, who is X's father/mother, why did X leave town all these many years ago. The story is the unlocking of the mystery. But to make the central character a child is to blend this mystery-solving with the mystery-solving that is every child's life: What do words mean? What are adults doing? Where do I fit into all this?

6. "Vera, or Faith" (commission earned).