Sunrise on a rainy day.

"The French have a phrase for it: 'un engrenage,' a vicious spiral. That’s what France is in."

"Several crises have been long in the making; each now threatens to accelerate the others. The first is a crisis of liberal democracy. Polls suggest that the far right may take power in the presidential election next spring. The second is a crisis of fiscal mismanagement. France’s public debt has reached a record $4 trillion... The third is a crisis of youth disaffection. French students, protesting.... Mr. Macron deserves some of the blame for the mess. So does the opposition, from the far-left France Unbowed to Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally...."

Writes Mujtaba Rahman, "the managing director for Europe at Eurasia Group, a political risk research and consulting firm," in "France Is No Longer in Control of Its Destiny" (NYT).

"Trump cancels Hegseth’s plan to live-stream Fort Hood shooter’s execution/The decision is a rebuke of the defense secretary, who has remained in the president’s good graces through numerous controversies."

The headline at WaPo.

Good!

Here's Trump's Truth Social Post:

Why we're rooting for Cleveland to win the American League Championship Series.

We like the idea of the Edmund Fitzgerald World Series. It's like a "subway series," but the geographic link is the Great Lakes:

An important update on the Edmund Fitzgerald World Series because we're not serious journalists 😂 @mikegolicjr | @golic | @JonCarroll03 | @Johnubacon https://t.co/kfUpM1rEOy

— The Golics (@thegolics) October 13, 2026

"The university decided to halt parties at fraternity houses, he said, because Cornell doesn’t 'have the full ability to be confident that what goes on in those houses is safe...."

"The pause, he added, was also a chance to 'take a step and carefully study' the issue of banning fraternities altogether, a step some have called for. Addressing a speaker who supported such a ban, Dr. Kotlikoff said he had just spoken with alumni who said that 'their sorority and fraternity experience was a very important part of their life at Cornell.' 'If at the end of the day, the fraternities cannot exist in a safe environment, and we can’t be convinced that they can be safe, then we should make that decision,' he said."

From "Cornell’s President Grilled by Faculty Senate Over Handling of Crisis/Ahead of a vote on a resolution of no confidence in Michael I. Kotlikoff, some faculty members said they were not swayed by steps he announced on Tuesday, including banning fraternity parties" (NYT).

"Mr. Vance, who just published a book about his conversion to Catholicism, has for weeks been road-testing unfounded, innuendo-based salvos against Mr. Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian."

"At the Republicans’ midterm convention in Dallas last month, the vice president suggested that Mr. Talarico’s past statements supporting transgender children were evidence of inappropriate behavior. 'A guy that age who is so obsessed and focused on transgender children, I don’t know about you, but I never want to see that guy’s web browser history,' Mr. Vance said. People in the crowd gasped and murmured. Some clapped. Mr. Vance has defended those comments. 'I think typically people who say stuff like that tend to have some pretty unusual search histories,' he said a day later. Mr. Talarico, who has said he has a longtime girlfriend, has largely ignored the vice president’s insinuations...."

From "Vance’s Talarico Attacks Show His Penchant for Personal Broadsides/At a rally in Texas, the vice president suggested the Democratic Senate nominee is gay, a comment criticized as homophobic" (NYT).

"You're telling me somebody wrote this — in 2026 — for SNL?"

“You can’t write those jokes — I have a master’s degree in creative writing” pic.twitter.com/vuU3B98sCn

— Douglass Mackey (@douglassmackey) October 15, 2026

Things to do on a rainy night in Wisconsin.

With rain in the forecast & the chance to clinch, the Brewers are hosting tonight’s watch party inside American Family Field. Tickets aren’t free anymore. They’re $15 and include a $10 food/bev credit, plus a $1 MLB service fee. Parking lots open at 4:30. Gates open at 5:30

— Sam Kraemer (@SamKraemerTV) October 15, 2026

Compare the fans in L.A.

"You want your Republican opponent locked up?"

Angie Nixon: "They're spreading lies about me saying I want to abolish prisons... Why would I want to do that when I want [Ashley Moody] locked up and jailed." CNN: "You want your Republican opponent locked up?" Angie Nixon: "Yeah basically. I absolutely want that to happen." https://t.co/KkfiWKhIi6

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 14, 2026

"Do you think do you think are you are you insinuating that somehow I was lying?!"

HOLD THE PRESS: NBC holds Abdul El-Sayed’s feet to the fire on his family’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. He CLEARLY panicked and lashed out at the reporter. NBC: “When people ask you a question, they do expect the truth.” EL-SAYED (flustered): “Are you insinuating that somehow I was lying?!” This is so good. He’s panicking and his lies are catching up to him. A rare act of journalism from NBC News.

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 14, 2026

"We always said we would only return to Girls if there was a specific story we were burning to tell."

"I’ve missed these characters, but for a long time I couldn’t quite picture them in the present day. Then, right around my 40th birthday, they started talking to me in the shower.”

Said Lena Dunham, quoted in "Girls is coming back — bring on Hannah, the uber-competitive Brooklyn mum/Lena Dunham has announced a five-episode coda for her hit show, a decade after it ended. The absence of Adam Driver’s character aside, it may just work" (London Times).

 

ADDED: At the London Times, I clicked on a link to "We love Lena Dunham and Tracey Emin — but, once, we loved to hate them/The violent derision that first greeted the American writer and the YBA from Margate shows us that they got it right." That referred to "Tracey Emin’s big, flashy retrospective at Tate Modern," and I'm telling you this because it took me to one of the most absurd headlines I've ever seen:

"Everything we saved and left rough is controlled — it’s what we really want. Our research... is based on real and true architecture."

"To us, there is no skin in architecture. We have just the bones, and we show everything that is important to be shown for the understanding of the building."

Said the architect/owner, quoted in "In Italy, a Townhouse Where Polished Gives Way to Ragged and Raw/An architect laid bare the imperfections of his home renovation to fully reveal the building, and leave room for later inspiration" (NYT).

That's a gift link, so go over and see the pictures of what he did to the place. It had been "completely renovated in the 1970s." According to the architect, "It was beautiful and really bourgeois." I can see objecting to the "bourgeois," but where does that take you?

Sunrise.

"Do hawks and falcons look so fantastic rising and falling because they have the sky as background or would they look equally good flying through mud or a piece of corduroy."

Writes Anne Carson — who just won the Nobel Prize for Literature — in "Lecture on the History of Skywriting" (a chapter of the collection called "Wrong Norma" (commission earned)).

A Paris Review interviewer asked her, "Tell me about the 'wrongness' in the title of Wrong Norma." She answered: 

"It’s directional more than wearable."

Says NYT fashion reporter, Jacob Gallagher, quoting himself, in this article he writes: "Is Anyone Really Wearing a Bra as a Shirt? A trend that points nowhere" (NYT).

If it "points nowhere," how is it directional?

I think it's funny to talk of bras as pointing somewhere, given that some, but not all, bras are pointy.

Gallagher explains his position: "It expresses something, primarily, about how thin the models are. You look at these outfits and your only real takeaway is 'Well, gee, she’s skinny.' It’s doing that thing fashion often does — making us think about our own bodies and how they differ by comparison...."

So fashion is speaking to you, and what it's saying is you can't wear this. It's like a shopkeeper telling you you can't buy this mechanical bird. It's aggravating. 

"The subject of her citizenship became part of a larger cultural conversation in April this year..."

"...when The New York Times created a list of 'the 30 greatest living American songwriters.' Ms. Mitchell was not included. 'We elected not to steal that honor from Canada,' The Times wrote in an article about its selection process. (Just a month before, the Juno Awards, Canada’s equivalent to the Grammys, had honored Ms. Mitchell in Ontario with a lifetime achievement award.) The Times’s reasoning did not sit well with fans and cultural commentators who felt that she... should nevertheless have been included."

Says the New York Times, in "Joni Mitchell Is Now an American, After 60 Years of Living in the U.S./On Tuesday, she announced the news of her U.S. citizenship on social media with a video and a photo of herself at the ceremony."