"I just can't stand it when I see kids that are making $70,000 a year spending $28 for lunch. I mean, that's just stupid."

"Think about that in the context of that being put into an index fund making 8% to 10% a year for the next 50 years."

Said Kevin O'Leary, on "The Diary of a CEO" somewhat recently.

I'm only interested in that statement because Tim Dillon got so mad about it on his show the other day:

To Tim, O'Leary is saying, essentially, "They just want to push you into a form that is not human.... You are stupid and you are an idiot because you didn't go and make yourself a tuna sandwich or a turkey sandwich and bring it into work.... There used to be the days of the 3-martini lunch, people would spend two hours at Smith & Wollensky's getting bombed and having fun and enjoying their life. Now people eat a bowl of slop and they're not even allowed to do that. They don't even want them doing that...."

Half a century ago, I made one tenth of $70,000 working in a ridiculous job in NYC, so I guess, by O'Leary's standard, I'd have been a fool to pay $2.80 for a sandwich, which I think I did, not every day, but it probably felt like a splurge. Actually, turkey for making a sandwich at home was considered expensive.

"In the story, two interplanetary visitors are shocked to find that humans can use their meaty brains to think."

"'Thinking meat! You’re asking me to believe in thinking meat!' one says to another. 'Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat!' the other alien responds, adding: 'The meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?'"

From "To A.I. Executives, We’re All Just 'Meat Computers'/A term first used in philosophy and cognitive science circles has lately taken on a more ominous cast. Moo" (NYT).

The article is about the use of the term "meat computers" to refer to human beings. The story that's quoted, from 1991, by Terry Bisson, is "They’re Made Out of Meat."

"When I ask, rather too intrusively, what being locked-in feels like, she suggests I sit in a chair for three hours with my mouth taped up."

"If and when I get uncomfortable, I must not move. 'It sounds horrific, right?'"

From "Life with locked-in syndrome: ‘Despite everything, you are alive’/Matt Rudd has remarkable conversations with three Britons who, after life-changing accidents, have fully active minds but cannot move or speak, and can communicate only via the blink of an eye" (London Times).

"Over oysters and soft cheeses — things she wouldn’t be able to eat while pregnant — she raised a glass to her 'tribe' and the awesome strength of women."

I'm reading "They Started I.V.F., Then Split. Now Who Gets Custody of the Embryos? For 47-year-old Erin Millender, this will likely be her last chance to become a mother. Her husband no longer wants to have a child with her" (NYT).

That's a gift link, because you've got to read the details. I had a strong opinion based on the headline, but then my sympathy shifted, more than once, as I read the article. The story — the details about this particular woman and man — gets really complicated. 

"Secretary of State Marco Rubio said earlier that President Trump might deliver positive news about negotiations over the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran 'a little bit later today.'"

"He added that the world could learn 'over the next few hours' about progress on resolving the shipping crisis in the Strait of Hormuz and also about a 'process' on other major issues, including Iran’s nuclear program. Rubio, speaking at a news conference with his Indian counterpart in Delhi, said that 'significant progress, although not final progress,' had been made in negotiations."

The NYT reported 55 minutes ago.

15 hours ago, Trump posted this at Truth Social:

I wouldn't have blogged that Colbert-into-the-dumpster video, but with embedded within this somber theater of disapproval...

... I find the whole thing hilarious:

President Trump trolling will go down in the annals of history! @TheRicanMemes 🤣 pic.twitter.com/827Ww5cJUD

— Karli Bonne’ 🇺🇸 (@KarluskaP) May 23, 2026

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"We have been talking for more than an hour when I feel Paglia’s energy fading. Her answers get briefer; she struggles to focus."

"This brilliant mind has grown old. I feel I’ve stepped behind the Wizard of Oz’s curtain, but I wonder also whether her outspokenness was mainly an act. I mention her vile opinionated remark about Sinéad O’Connor deserving abuse and she says, 'I was doing my Oscar Wilde thing.' Paglia retired after almost 40 years, just before her college closed through lack of enrolment: no one wants an expensive arts degree that won’t lead to a high-paid job. Does she miss teaching? 'Absolutely. But one can’t go on.' Her arthritic knee is hell, but her bones are too brittle for a replacement op. A new generation of Sexual Personae fans write to her, asking her opinion on their work. Paglia thinks they are drawn by her enthusiasm, a rare trait in modern academia. 'It’s a terrible crime to have young people come to your classes and inject them with cynicism for the world.'"

Writes Janice Turner, in "Camille Paglia: 'The feminist establishment tried to dismiss me'/She was the notoriously outspoken academic who outraged feminists and attacked Madonna and Sinéad O’Connor. Now Camille Paglia’s book Sexual Personae is being reissued and she has a new generation of readers" (London Times).

"AJ Jasper, 40, has been struggling with anorexia for about 30 years. Three years ago, at a time when he was a healthy weight, he relapsed after purchasing GLP-1s..."

"... from various apps without ever seeing a doctor. Using multiple drugs at once, he dropped 50 pounds within three to four months. 'The apps make it frighteningly easy. It is like anorexic heroin to my brain chemistry,' said Jasper, a social worker in Chicago. This past winter, he went into triple organ failure — his kidneys, liver and heart were all affected — leaving him too weak to walk or even turn in bed at times...."

From "People with eating disorders are taking GLP-1s and doctors are alarmed/Providers said some patients with anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorders are taking GLP-1 drugs" (WaPo).

"This particular vehicle, a King Ranch edition that costs about $90,000, has more than 500 horsepower in its engine, a 'concert-quality' Bang & Olufsen sound system..."

"... two-tone paint trim and 34-inch Bridgestone tires. But it’s most notable feature is the nest resting on top of the front passenger-side tire where four robin chicks are maturing...."

I'm reading "A Ford Truck, Home to Newborn Robins, Is Stuck at a Kansas Car Dealer/Employees of a dealership in Olathe, Kan., found the nest, which is protected under federal law, on top of one of the truck’s tires" (NYT).

Just ordinary robins. And the $90,000 truck has a buyer. But the resolution is that the buyer will wait 4-6 weeks for the robins to leave the nest. 

"Check your luggage before you move," said Brad Pike, the mayor of Eagle, Idaho, and he meant check your luggage for RATS.

I'm reading, "In Idaho’s Suburbs, a Rat Invasion Tests the Limits of Small Government/Irrigation canals around Boise have served as a rat superhighway, bringing an infestation so serious that health officials have floated declaring a public emergency" (NYT).

Most fingers are pointing west, toward California.... Idaho has few native rat species.... Figuring out where they came from has been a popular, if unscientific, pastime in a region undergoing substantial growth and change, much of it driven by people leaving blue West Coast states for ultrared Idaho. Newcomers have brought dizzying change to Idaho. They’ve driven state politics further to the right, added to traffic woes and helped speed the replacement of farmland with subdivisions. Now rats?... 

Kaylee Byers, a public health professor at the University of British Columbia who studied the migration of the rodents in Vancouver, said... “Where you have people, you will have rats”.... The rodents, she added, “are a reflection of us.”

Top-rated comment at the NYT:

"Luminous," a reminder.

The NYT has a piece called "Luminous New Historical Fiction," so let's review the history of "luminous" on this blog.

I've said it all before, and I've summed it up before. So I will simply republish this post of mine from September 27, 2022:

But never in my sweet short life...

"This is not, as some of our detractors say, an attempt to erase history, but rather to kind of tell a fuller version of it by using the materials from the past that have caused a lot of pain."

Said Jalane Schmidt, a University of Virginia religious studies professor and co-founder of Swords into Plowshares, quoted in "How artists want to use a melted Robert E. Lee statue to heal a wounded city/The bronze ingots left over from a Confederate statue that once ignited violence will now be part of a new work of public art" (WaPo).

Here are 2 things that have been presented as tellings of a fuller version of our history:

I'd call the first one The Leaning Tower of Slinky. The second one seems inspired by the snack food Bugles.

Whatever you think of Robert E. Lee, his statue was a traditional realistic bronze representation of a man. These repurposing of the bronze will stick Charlottesville with sad ugly awful public art.

Trump and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week.

The top left corner of The NYT right now:

It's like a children's taunt: You act like you're so big but you're not.

"The trolls have a particular following in the United States, where Dambo has scattered them across 22 states, with plans to build them in the remaining 28."

"He was drawn to America’s 'big, wild spaces,' he said, adding, 'We don’t have anywhere you can get lost like that in Denmark.' In Breckenridge, Colo., one of the trolls drew such large crowds that it was relocated to a more out-of-the-way location. A troll that he created for the 2025 Burning Man festival now has a permanent home at Filoli, a historic property about 30 miles from San Francisco. And this week, one of Dambo’s trolls burned down in a park in Austin, Texas, the city’s Fire Department said...."

I'm reading "He’s Trolling Your Trash, and Turning It Into Art/Thomas Dambo built a global following by turning Denmark’s scrap into giant, hidden forest creatures. Now, the art world is finally letting him inside" (NYT)(gift link, for the photographs and because I focused on the part of the text that's about the arson in Austin but there are other angles on Dambo).

Speaking of Burning Man — Dambo built a troll that was at a Burning Man festival — I've been wondering if the burning of the Austin troll was influenced by the tradition of burning a large wooden sculptural figure — not Dambo's troll —  at Burning Man.

I bounced this theory off Grok, which noted that the burning at Burning Man is done according to a plan, presented as art, and drawing a crowd that experiences the fire as a ritual or celebration. The Austin troll burning happened without a ceremony or crowd or air of artiness. As far as we know. Unless it was some very elite and nihilist group of art lovers.

Grok, write a short short story in which the burning of the Austin troll WAS done by a small group of elite nihilists who absolutely believed in what they were doing as art.

Excerpt from the story: "The troll was too sincere. Eighteen feet of reclaimed wood and optimism, grinning like a simpleton at the joggers and children and civic-minded Austinites who posted heart emojis under her photos. Thomas Dambo had built her to remind people of recycling and wonder and other gentle lies. The Consortium found this unbearable. 'Sentiment is violence,' Elena whispered as they poured the accelerant...."