"Gavin Newsom’s decision to empty his state’s death row is a truly remarkable moment in the US’s death penalty history."

"Not only will it free hundreds of people from the threat of execution, but coming from a politician seemingly looking to run for the presidency, it sends an important signal that America’s attachment to capital punishment is weakening, and opposing the death penalty is no longer a third rail in US politics."

Writes Austin Sarat, in "We’ve just seen a transformative moment in America’s death penalty history/Gavin Newsom’s decision to empty California’s death row saves hundreds of lives and signals a national shift" (The Guardian).

"The Tesla Cybertruck, a product that exists at the curious intersection of low-emissions global responsibility and red-pilled macho Trumpism, is done."

"Elon Musk says production will wind down around the middle of next year to make way for the future Cybercab, a putatively autonomous vehicle of much more conventional shape. Announced with a prototype in 2019, the truck became available for the 2023 model year, a timeframe that approximately parallels Musk’s public-image collapse, as he went from 'huckster with genuinely big ideas who is nonetheless annoying' to 'danger to the republic.' Everything about the Cybertruck was designed to provoke.... Like much in the Trumpist world, its styling was a smirking asshole’s answer to an actual, reasonable point of debate...."

From "So Long, Cybertruck" (New York Magazine).

"Stephen Miller to Replace Susie Wiles as Trump’s Chief of Staff."

The NYT reports.

Ms. Wiles’s departure and the ascent of Mr. Miller will fundamentally shift the circle of advisers around Mr. Trump as the White House absorbs the shock of the midterm elections.... The Republican wipeout has inflamed tensions within the administration, as officials brace for congressional investigations by Democrats and further turnover in the West Wing and the cabinet.... After the elections, Mr. Trump made it clear to some advisers that he was unhappy with Ms. Wiles and his political team, who persuaded him to sign off on his super PAC spending $400 million to help Republicans in the midterms....

As for Miller:

Stephen Miller, a deputy chief of staff, has been the architect of some of the most radical domestic policies in Trump’s second term, particularly on immigration. He has also served as a fiery surrogate for the president’s most divisive moves. Earlier this year, as Trump publicly toyed with the idea of invading Greenland, Miller laid out a vision of American imperialism in which the United States could freely overthrow national governments and take foreign territory and resources so long as it was deemed in the national interest.

"After careful consideration, we have reached the difficult decision that our publishing model is no longer sustainable."

Say the editors of Salon, in "Goodbye from Salon/It has been an extraordinary privilege."

It seems to me Salon had a gigantic head start in on line magazine. Why didn't it take advantage of that?

Thirty-one years is a remarkable run, but what matters most is what happened during those years: the journalism, the ideas, the voices, the conversations and the community that grew around them. Salon helped demonstrate what digital journalism could be and could become.

Helped demonstrate... how? By negative example? Why aren't you out in front, where you started? Who outdid you and why? 

"A federal judge late Thursday halted construction on President Donald Trump’s planned 250-foot-tall triumphal arch..."

"... siding with military veterans and local government officials who had urged her to stop the project. U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan blocked work on the arch for two weeks while the court considers challenges to its legality. Three Vietnam War veterans, a historic preservationist, the D.C. government and the Commonwealth of Virginia sued to halt construction.... Chutkan also criticized the Trump administration’s arguments, writing that officials’ recent assertion that the arch was necessary for national security was 'belated and unsupported.' And she mocked the administration’s central claim that Congress authorized Trump’s arch a century ago, when lawmakers approved a somewhat similar project that was never built."

The Washington Post reports in "Judge halts Trump’s arch after federal panel approves it/U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan blocked the planned 250-foot project, which opponents say is illegal and needs to be approved by the current Congress."

Trump needs to think through what he wants to do on his way out. It's crushingly clear that building the arch should not be one of those things. Finish the ballroom and do it well and in time to throw some dignified events before your term is up, but let the arch go. Leave it as an idea of something that could be done. If it's really worth doing, it will happen later. If it doesn't, it wasn't. 

The Criterion Channel is featuring Nicolas Cage this month, and though I've watched a few Nicolas Cage movies over the years, I'd never really...

... asked myself what is Nicolas Cage trying to do with his acting? It's extreme overacting but obviously a choice. Take a look:

"When we started working on Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson’s first scene in the hotel room, I did what I’d done when I had my 'first feel' as a teen-ager."

"I awkwardly and abruptly put my hand on Anne’s bra-covered breast, with absolutely no finesse or passion, without even making eye contact with her. Anne’s response was incredible: without missing a beat, she looked down at the sweater in her hands, noticed a stain, and paid it all of her attention, rubbing the fabric together and fussing with it, while I continued to hold her breast in my paw like a paralyzed animal. It was so funny that I had to walk away, trying to avoid bursting into laughter. That was the worst thing you could do: break character. I started knocking my head against the wall in an attempt to collect myself. Don’t break! Don’t break! Mike interpreted it as an artistic choice, and it cracked him up. When Mike was laughing, I felt he loved the character I was trying to create. It was the only time I knew I was doing something he was happy with....."

Writes Dustin Hoffman, in "Surviving 'The Graduate'/It was the film that made me famous. On set, all I could think about was how I was failing" (The New Yorker).

Most of the essay is about Hoffman and Nichols each coming to realize that Hoffman represented Nichols. That explains why Nichols chose Hoffman — when the character in the book was a tall blond WASP — and why he was so hostile to him. 

Anyway, I liked this part about Mike Nichols's wigs: "He had a collection of incredible wigs that started with what his fantasy hair would look like freshly cut; on each successive day, the wig would be a little longer, until it was time for a 'haircut.' Then he’d start the wig cycle again from the beginning."

"It came down hard: a 915-pound black drone with 12 rotors mounted on six arms, carrying a coffin-shaped capsule. "

"As soon as the rotors went quiet, he crawled to it.... 'I just held on,' he said, 'and off we went.'... SkyFall says it designed both the drone and its capsule specifically to evacuate the wounded. It built the capsule around a certified medical stretcher, and the drone can carry up to 330 pounds at speeds of up to 65 mph.... 'Twenty minutes and that’s it,' his commander told him. Asked whether he was up for it, [he] did not hesitate. 'Of course I agree... How could I not?... It could be shot down. It could crash.... But it’s a chance. Either you rot in that bunker, or you have a chance to get out.'"

From "In Ukraine, drones are death. Now they are rescuers, too. The new technology is making previously impossible evacuations possible, but they aren’t without risk" (WaPo)(gift link).

"Voters want normal people in charge, and they took their wrath out on otherwise normal Republicans who refused to push back..."

"... against the lunacy, corruption and incompetence within the G.O.P. Republicans have spent years warning that a party unwilling to confront its radicals will be defined by them. They meant the Democrats, and pointed in particular at the democratic socialists working to take over the Democratic Party from the inside.Now that warning applies to the G.O.P. The weirdo right will not stop in its attempt to take over the Republican Party, and party leadership must resist it or watch a group that openly declares its contempt for conservatism do to the G.O.P. what the democratic socialists are trying to do to the Democrats.... If Republicans want those voters back, the party’s leaders, beginning with the man who wants to lead it in 2028, will have to reject the demands of the weirdo right.... Until the G.O.P. rejects the weird, the fringe and the grievance hustlers, Democrats will happily remind voters whom the G.O.P. keeps around."

Writes Erick Erickson, in "I’m a Republican. We Have Let Too Many Weirdos Into Our Party" (NYT).

The top-rated comment over there (by a lot):

"And let's just be really honest. The Democratic Party in the weeks leading up to this election? Deeply unpopular."

"Our polling showed only 28% of voters were satisfied with the party. My colleague put it this way, the only people less popular than President Trump are Democrats. So did you win this election? Or did he lose it and you were just a receptacle and all these candidates you recruited were a receptacle for the fury?"

Said the NYT interviewer, Michael Barbaro, talking to Chuck Schumer on today's episode of "The Daily," "Chuck Schumer on Governing With (Or Without) Trump" (audio with transcript at Podscribe).

Schumer's answer is, as you will have predicted, evasive. What can he say? Yeah, Michael, I'm a receptacle. I'm a trashcan, a regular spittoon, a toilet, if you will.

How insulting is it to call a human being a "receptacle" of this or that? I see that T.S. Eliot wrote: "The poet’s mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together."

So perhaps the Senator's mind is a receptacle to be filled up with the numberless feelings of the people — fury, etc. — and the various particles jitter about and recombine into some sort of legislative action. But what?

As with "dilettante" yesterday, I'm moved to search my blog archive for the word. Before today, it had come up 4 times — that's 4 times in 22+ years. The first 2 are quotes — from the NYT and Slate, respectively. Only ##3 and 4 are from me, and oddly enough, both name Hillary Clinton (though neither characterizes her as a receptacle. Here they are (click on the link for the context):

"He is my age. He sounded like I could have talked to him myself. He’s somebody normal, like me."

Said Tristan Waumsley, 35, of Richmond, Texas, "who voted straight Democratic at the state level for the first time in his life," quoted in "Fed Up With Politics and Struggle, Young Voters Rose Up/Young people powered Democratic candidates, joining global demands for generational change from a cohort weary of older people sitting on jobs and devouring resources" (NYT).

"He" = Talarico.

Though it felt unfamiliar to vote for Democrats, Mr. Waumsley said he was happy about his choice. But he emphasized that he was voting for the people, not the party, and that he would be watching them closely to make sure they followed through. 

"I really want to move on from what we currently have,” he said, “because what we have isn’t doing it."

A helpful graph:

Sunrise.

"Too bad the Senate has not yet approved the Sunshine Protection Act or, the I Don’t Want to Change My Clocks Anymore Act. It’s so dark outside..."

"... so early (Sunset was 5:06 P.M., and it was dark by 5:31 P.M. — Isn’t that ridiculous?). Just a few days ago it was so nice and sunny at this same time. In addition, everyone’s been running around changing their clocks all over the place. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of this prior to the Election because I didn’t want to have certain Senators lose their Race, in a landslide, but it is too bad they can’t get it done.... President DONALD J. TRUMP (at Truth Social)."

Now that the elections are over, he can concentrate on what really matters: the way it was nice and sunny a few days ago and now it's dark because the clocks reset. 

Yes, the clocks reset themselves. No one — not "everyone" — is "running around changing their clocks all over the place."

"Victories by moderates in competitive or Republican-leaning states and districts paved the way for large new Democratic majorities likely to be shaped by their priorities."

That's the subheadline for a NYT article titled "Moderate Democrats Increase Their Numbers, and Their Clout."

[T]he path to Democrats’ sweeping victory this week... was paved overwhelmingly by moderates who had spent months persuading voters in Republican-leaning states and competitive congressional districts that they could be trusted to govern and would deliver dissatisfied voters a practical alternative to President Trump.

Their success has fundamentally altered the balance of power among Democrats in Congress, handing Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the presumptive next speaker, and Senator Chuck Schumer, the would-be majority leader — both New York moderates viewed with disdain by the left — majorities built around lawmakers who campaigned not as left-wing heroes but as pragmatic populists.

"Rivera had never hiked before. He’d never been camping. For his trip across the United States, he chose the most direct route the map showed..."

"... which mostly meant walking on highway shoulders, drowning out the car traffic with his big headphones on.... 'You doing all right?' a law enforcement officer in Indiana asked. 'We got a call that you were pulling a cart and looked exhausted,' the officer continued. 'Just wanted to make sure you were all right.' 'Yeah, I’m good,' Rivera said. 'I’m walking across America.'... 'People are like, What are you doing?' Rivera said. 'What are you doing it for? When I tell them I’m walking across America — "Oh, what’s your reason?" You need to have a reason? I just want to be free. I’m just walking because I’m using my free will. That’s it.'"

From "He Felt Stuck in New York. So He Started Walking to California. A Bronx native who’d spent his whole life in the city left on foot in May" (NYT).

Here's his Instagram. Sample:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Chantz Mula (@yo.mula)

Pick another protein?!

If he wins, this has to go down as one of the best political ads of all time.

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 5, 2026

I made a "Scott Colom" tag, so that means I think he's going to win. But it's very close. See "A Viral Ad and a Trump Rally Visit Helped a Democrat Compete in Mississippi/Scott Colom, a Democrat, ran a viral ad and courted Republicans at a Trump rally before winning virtually the same number of votes as Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, a Republican" (NYT).