Sunrise.

Open thread.

"The present looks more like Wolfe’s 1976 than we care to admit. The engine of the ’70s was the failure of the ’60s."

"Fast-forward: The years from roughly 2016 through the early 2020s were America’s most feverishly political stretch in generations. On one flank stood a populist insurgency; on the other, the Great Awokening. Both failed to build the transformed society their rhetoric advertised. What does thwarted revolutionary energy do when it has nowhere durable to go? As it did after 1968, it goes toward the one realm that still seems transformable: the self. It splinters into private quests for meaning.... On the left in the late ’70s, disillusion flowed into the New Age. Today, it flows into 'self-care'.... It flows into astrology... and into the witch with the imagined power to 'hex' President Donald Trump.... The right in the ’70s had the cult of fitness. MAHA, the manosphere and Silicon Valley have looksmaxxing and testosterone infusions, ice baths and the carnivore diet, along with the tech billionaire Bryan Johnson spending millions to reverse his own aging and streaming his bloodwork to the world. It is the body as a project to be perfected, but with the promise cranked up from fitness to immortality...."

Writes Ryan Zickgraf, in "Tom Wolfe’s ‘Me Decade’: Still going strong 50 years later/The peerless social critic skewered a culture of self-absorption much like today's" (WaPo gift link).

And here's the August 1976 New York Magazine essay by Tom Wolfe, "The 'Me' Decade and the Third Great Awakening."

"You have an ambassador that has cachet, and the Italians like that. They like that [they’re] important enough to us that you’re going to come into our town, on your big boat..."

"... and pay respect to us and have us in your home. That’s what I hear from people."

Tilman Fertitta, Trump's ambassador to Italy, quoted in "Trump’s ambassador to Italy is flaunting his wealth, and it’s dividing Italians/With a net worth of $11.1 billion, Tilman Fertitta, a great-grandson of Sicilian immigrants, is one of the wealthiest people ever to be a U.S. ambassador" (WaPo gift link). 

WaPo explains: "Italy has perhaps a different relationship with wealth than other European countries such as Britain, where aspiration can be viewed as a personality flaw. This is the land where Gucci and Versace helped define loud luxury, and where the political cult of billionaire playboy Silvio Berlusconi once reigned. But even here, the Italian elite can see American-style displays of wealth as violations of good taste. And while some on the political left have happily sipped champagne on his yacht, others have sharply criticized the tour."

Fertitta offers advice about how to deal with Trump: "What I’ve said is, 'You don’t want to get in a verbal volleyball match with Donald Trump; because he’s relentless, and he’s going to win." And: "If he’s not giving you a hard time, then you’re not worth the time of day."

"As we see a rise in fascism, there is a direct correlation with thinness to make women take up less space."

So said the actress Hannah Einbinder:

Hollywood actress Hannah Einbinder blames “fascism” for women wanting to be slim.

“As we see a rise in fascism, there is a direct correlation with thinness to make women take up less space.” pic.twitter.com/0VTlRFqe2e

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) August 30, 2026

Of course, she's getting trashed on X. She's "trending." That's why I saw it. I don't really know her, but I see she's highly praised for her role in "Hacks," and also that she's the daughter of Laraine Newman.

Anyway, it's cheap and easy to go after an actress who expresses any opinion that seems to require intelligence and background knowledge. I would prefer to isolate what she said and explore the various issues there:

1. There's a broad, casual use of the word "fascism" that's like the way Seinfeld used "Nazi" in "The Soup Nazi." You can argue that the word should be used more precisely, but it doesn't mean the person who's using it broadly is a fool.

2.  Correlation is not causation, and she only said "correlation." She intensified it with "direct" — "There is a direct correlation" — but Einbinder was clever enough to protect herself with the first-rate weasel word "correlation."

3. Did the actual historical fascists idealize female thinness? I don't think so. 

"For prospects rising through the Milwaukee Brewers’ farm system, and even established veterans on a rehab assignment, wearing lederhosen is a rite of passage."

"No, this isn’t some elaborate rookie hazing prank... it’s the result of Friday’s theme night at High-A Wisconsin, one in which the team normally known as the Timber Rattlers becomes the Brats as part of Bratoberfest, a play on Germany’s iconic Oktoberfest, while also paying homage to the state that’s home to one of the highest concentrations of residents with German ancestry. It just so happened that Abner Uribe, the Brewers’ flame-throwing reliever who is working his way back from a flexor strain, was in town on his rehab assignment...."

The NYT picks up the best Milwaukee Brewers story of the day: "Brewers’ Abner Uribe delights fans in ‘Brats’ lederhosen uniform during minor-league rehab."

Humiliating? Or is it wonderful... bratoberfestive!

I could watch the Green Bay Packers exhibition game, women’s college volleyball, the team with the best record in baseball the Milwaukee Brewers, the Winn-Dixie 250, high school football, WWE SmackDown, or…Abner Uribe in lederhosen. You tell me… pic.twitter.com/lZWfgdxMLi

— Steve Palec (@stevepalec) August 29, 2026

ADDED: I have a bit of a tags quandary for this post. I don't like tag proliferation, but this isn't the first appearance of lederhosen on this blog. It's the fourth. See them all here. But all the other times, I was able to use my well-loved tag "men in shorts." But this baseball take on lederhosen avoids the baseball travesty of shorts — White Sox, 1976 — and sticks with traditional knickers. As I've said before, I like the knickers and wish all the players would wear them and not those pajama-looking long pants, but I'm still not making a tag for knickers. But if I did, I'd have 12 "knickers" posts now. 

Let me highlight the best of those old "knickers" posts. I remembered that the Young Rascals wore knickers. I found this 1926 song with the lyric: "Knickers and trousers, baggy and wide/Nobody knows who's walking inside!" I said that David Brooks: "expatiated about the good old days when men like George Washington displayed their thighs in tight silk knickers."

And, in 2008, before I got together with Meade and started watching baseball again, there were TVs outside State Street Brats just as The Backstreet Boys were singing the national anthem to open the World Series. I blogged: "The players look like hell! When did they stop wearing stockings and knickers? Those long pants look like pajamas."

And there was Meade, the first commenter: "I must be smoking too much blog. I hallucinated." Because the video looked like this:



Key word linking the end of this post to the beginning: brats.

"Greg began cautiously. His first video was just him reading out loud a newspaper article about a Florida woman..."

"... who had accidentally burned down America’s fifth‑oldest tree by smoking meth underneath it. After he read it, he said to the camera, 'Isn’t that crazy?' 'The video got 10 or 12 views,' Greg told me, 'and a comment: "You look like you’ve been smoking meth."'"

I'm reading "He Was a Top Lawn Care Influencer on YouTube. Then Everything Went Haywire. Many people think Greg Chism is a freak — or worse. He says he was just following the incentives of the platform" (NYT gift link).

Read the whole amazing story of a man ruined by YouTube. It's adapted from a new book called "The Castle: Adventures in a World of Unraveling Men" (commission earned). The author is Jon Ronson.

Sunrise.

"An 1888 ordinance from the British colonial government precipitated the need for coffins. The traditional Ga practice..."

"... had been to bury relatives beneath the floor of the family home, to keep the dead close by. But British officials, concerned about hygiene, mandated the use of wooden coffins for burial in designated cemeteries. Some have suggested that fantasy coffins allowed Ghanaians to celebrate their lives and achievements while complying with the law...."

From "6 Feet Under in Art Coffins That Are Over the Top/Elaborate coffins, produced by Ghanaian artisans, are the centerpieces of funerals that celebrate the life of the deceased and get them to the afterlife in style" (NYT gift link)(lots of photos of fantasy coffins).

"For Ga families, finding a fitting design, whether a book for a teacher or a truck with a squeeze-bulb horn for a mechanic, can be a complex and emotional process.... In 2020, a coffin in the shape of a circumcised penis, which was publicized on social media, was rumored to have been made for a sex worker and was widely seen as disrespectful. In fact, it was made to honor a traditional wanzam, similar to a Jewish mohel — someone who performs male circumcisions...."

"There are no federal regulations requiring disclosure of payments for political support on social media, and only a few states have such rules."

"That allows influencers, in most instances, to endorse candidates for a fee without ever disclosing those payments in their posts. Creators say some campaigns have even asked them to actively conceal the fact that they’re being compensated, making it impossible to know what’s genuine support — and what is pay-for-play. In most cases, the only way a viewer would know an influencer is being paid would be to search a candidate’s campaign finance reports, as The New York Times did to discover the payments. Even then, such compensation is regularly obscured by funneling the payments through middlemen...."

From "Influencers Have a Lot to Say About Politics. Many Are Quietly Paid for It. Their videos have proliferated on social media, but the payments are frequently hidden from viewers" (NYT gift link).

Ugh. I already scroll right by anyone who's just talking at the camera in support of a candidate. But to think it's a paid ad sleazily evading disclosure and not just volunteer nitwit!

A tall woman and her short man fiancé don't appreciate Fox News making them a topic for discussion...

... replete with the most cliché tall/short witticisms.

"We Who Are Captivated by the Utmost Beauty of Everything We Know and Shed Tears as We Were Monstrously Touched by the Mystery of the Beauty" and other works...

... can be seen at "Yayoi Kusama: A Life in Pictures/Whether making dot-covered sculptures or wild performance pieces, the Japanese artist grabbed critical and popular acclaim" (NYT gift link).

Kusama's "death at age 97 was announced on Thursday."

"In 2022 he claimed credit for organizing a notorious dinner for Mr. Trump and Mr. West that also included the white supremacist Nick Fuentes."

"(Mr. Yiannopoulos claimed the meeting was an ambush, meant to 'make Trump’s life miserable.') Two years later, Mr. Yiannopoulos joined [Kanye] West’s exploratory campaign for president. Mr. Yiannopoulos, who was openly gay and often said he was attracted to Mr. Trump, announced in 2017 that he had been married to a man who is a U.S. citizen, but never revealed the full identity of that person. He later claimed that he was 'ex-gay,' and had 'demoted' his husband to the role of 'housemate.'"

From "Milo Yiannopoulos, a Right-Wing Provocateur, Is Arrested by ICE/Mr. Yiannopoulos, a prominent early supporter of President Trump, was detained at the New Orleans airport. The Trump administration publicized his arrest and shared a mug shot" (NYT gift link).

• Is there some kind of idea that if you're not sexually attracted to your spouse you're not married anymore?! Good luck in divorce court.

• Here's the 2022 NYT article about the "notorious dinner": "Trump’s Latest Dinner Guest: Nick Fuentes, White Supremacist/The former president’s table for four at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday also included Kanye West, whose antisemitic statements have made him an entertainment-industry outcast."

• Being a prankster may cause you to imagine that the rules don't apply to you, but no one really thinks they don't. 

"[A] vocal group of male commenters have used the [Lindsay Clancy] case to create a sounding board for their resentment of women...."

"Hugh Anthony, who has 66,000 followers, has taken aim at 'modern-day feminists' who are 'satanic freaks … masking [alleged murder] behind psychosis.' Another man brags about dumping a woman because she empathised too much with Clancy’s postpartum psychosis. 'I can’t ignore or gamble my future children,' it reads, to the tune of 2,800 likes. Yet another, from Collin Rugg, a bloviating X provocateur with 2.8 million followers, claims that men are taking their wives’ support of Clancy to divorce court. He shared a video of an attorney who said he would help male clients strip ex-wives of their visitation rights based on their views about the case.... [Men] are whipped into a froth by manosphere types leveraging a tragedy against all women. [Women] are crassly using that tragedy to show the systemic brokenness of marriage and motherhood, bending the facts around their feelings.... Both sides of this tawdry tit-for-tat are incapable of making this catastrophe about anything other than themselves."

Writes Poppy Sowerby, in "Men and women are falling out over Lindsay Clancy. It’s sick/Content creators have hijacked a tragic murder trial and turned it into an ugly proxy war over gender politics" (London Times).

"On July 5, Pamela Guillen, 40, reportedly suffered a severe subdural haematoma and brain compression after hitting her head multiple times on the X2’s headrest during the [roller coaster] ride."

"She began vomiting and lost consciousness before being rushed to the hospital... Surgeons removed part of her skull to relieve pressure on her brain. She regained consciousness two weeks after the ride and has since had to relearn how to walk and talk.... Six days later Naomi Greer-Wilkinson suffered a traumatic brain injury after riding the X2. Greer-Wilkinson, a 25-year-old from Los Angeles... remains in a coma, connected to a ventilator and feeding tube.... Christopher Hawley, 22, died in June 2022 after hitting his head multiple times against the back of the seat while riding the X2. After finishing the ride, he fell to the ground and became unconscious. When doctors treating Hawley removed part of his skull, they found his brain was so swollen it was bulging out of an opening they made to relieve the pressure...."

From "Two women suffered brain injuries after rollercoaster rides/The X2 rollercoaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain, California, is marketed for the 'ultimate daredevil'" (London Times).

"The United States of America has just entered into an Agreement with the Country of Venezuela on, THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY!"

"At my direction, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, working closely with Highly Respected Interim President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez, and, through a partnership with private business, have secured majority U.S. control of more than 65 BILLION BARRELS of proven Oil Reserves in Venezuela, at no cost to the American Taxpayer. This Historic Transaction MORE THAN DOUBLES American Oil Reserves, greatly increases our Oil Supply, and will substantially lower Gas Prices for all Americans, long into the future, while helping to continue to set Venezuela on a course toward Tremendous Success and Great Prosperity."

Writes Trump, at Truth Social.

Here's the NYT story: "Trump Says U.S. Has Deal for Control of Large Share of Venezuela’s Oil/The president said an agreement between the countries covered more than 65 billion barrels of reserves. A U.S. official said it would involve a partnership with a private company."

Sunrise.