At the Sunrise Café...

... you can talk all night.

"[A]n army of fans [are] now competing to produce the catchiest and most outrageous videos supporting [Spencer Pratt's] campaign."

"They share and cross-promote a seemingly endless stream of computer-generated clips boosting Mr. Pratt and bashing his opponents with depictions of Los Angeles as a dirty, dangerous wasteland. One released on Sunday depicts women at a fitness studio confiding to one another that they secretly plan to vote for Mr. Pratt.... [T]he A.I. videos often venture into offensive territory. In the Batman clip boosting Mr. Pratt, Mr. Newsom’s likeness makes a crude sexual remark, and the phony Ms. Harris drinks out of a bottle of cheap liquor...."

From "A.I. Videos Help Reality TV Antagonist Break Through in L.A. Mayor’s Race/Supporters have created A.I. videos to boost the mayoral campaign of Spencer Pratt, the former MTV star. Some videos have gone viral, but it’s not clear whether they will yield votes" (NYT).

The phrase "the phony Ms. Harris" genuinely confused me. For a second there, I thought the NYT was calling Kamala Harris — the real Kamala Harris — phony. No, they were using the word "phony" to mean A.I.-generated.

"Reliable polling is hard to find in Cuba. A recent survey by a Cuban news website, El Toque, which gathered over 40,000 answers..."

"...found that about 56 percent of Cubans who reside in the island, and nearly 70 percent of those abroad, would support a military intervention by the U.S. While the results of the survey — which gathered answers from voluntary participants — could not be considered as a representative poll, its findings likely did reflect the exhaustion of many Cubans, said Prof. Michael J. Bustamante, a professor of history and chair in Cuban and Cuban American Studies at the University of Miami. 'I don’t think it means that Cubans relish the idea of a foreign power coming in and fixing their problems,' Professor Bustamante said. 'But I think people are at such a level of exasperation, desperation, they’ll take help for from wherever they can get it.' Raúl Cardoso, a 70-year-old Cuban retiree, said whatever the U.S. decision, they should just hurry up and take it. 'If they are going to go in, they should come in,' Mr. Cardoso said. 'And if not, they should stop talking so much.'"

From "In Blackout-Hit Cuba, Word of U.S. Castro Indictment Spreads Slowly/While many Cubans were divided over the legitimacy of the U.S. charging Raúl Castro with murder, the hope for developments that might ease their suffering is widespread" (NYT).

"If I do attend, I get killed. If I don't attend, I get killed. By the fake news, of course, I'm talking about."

Trump has his own way of talking.

Reporter: Are you attending your son’s wedding?

Trump: He’d like me to go. I’m going to try. I said, this is not good timing for me. I have a thing called Iran and other things. He’s a person I’ve known for a long time. pic.twitter.com/lGdjvU7oD0

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 21, 2026

You'd think that after 3 assassination attempts, he's eschew the murder metaphor, but no. He's not going to say "I'll be harshly criticized," like a typical high official. He's going to say "I get killed." Not even "I'll get killed." Present tense: "I get killed."

He also calls his son "a person I’ve known for a long time."

By the way, I've seen man bellies that look like pregnancies, but the protruding navel is really too much, especially right next to the President's head. Where's the dignity?!

For more of the video and an explanation of the event, see "WATCH: Trump, Zeldin announce looser rule on refrigerant greenhouse gases" (PBS). The belly is not Zeldin's.

"Pease Park's giant troll sculpture burned to the ground after early morning fire."

The Austin-American Statesman reports.

In happier times:

ADDED: Back in 2022, another troll by the same sculptor was burned to nothing: "'Damaged beyond repair': police investigate after WA troll sculpture set on fire/Blaze destroys one of six Giants of Mandurah by Danish artist Thomas Dambo with arson squad examining cause" (The Guardian)(WA = Western Australia).

AND: My son Chris, who lives in Austin, photographed the Pease Park troll last year:

Some mornings the algorithm goes deep and delightful.

1. "Talking to your liberal friends about having kids":

A broiler sunrise..

I asked Meade how he chose that song for the soundtrack and he said he was just looking for something "lively."

I said that song has great lyrics and regretted that we only get the first verse because my favorite line is the second line of verse 2: "The Coolerator was crammed with TV dinners and ginger ale."

I love the slogan: "The Air Conditioned Refrigerator."

Here are all the lyrics to the Chuck Berry song. Verse 1: A teenage wedding. Verse 2: They have an apartment. Verse 3: They play music and have sex. Verse 4: They get a car, a "souped-up jitney."

"Everybody started telling her it was wrong and racist to do that. And then she said it was just a joke, and then she took down the doll."

Said one 14-year-old student, quoted in "Fla. teacher allegedly hanged doll of black child by neck to get her students' 'attention': 'It was wrong and racist'" (NY Post).

The teacher — with the fateful name Karen Savage — was fired.

We're told Savage "snatched the [black] doll from a student and, when 'nobody was paying attention,' hanged it from the television."

My question: Why was there a doll in a middle school class? And: Was she hanging it up to put it out of reach or hanging it as symbolic lynching?

"In recent months, the original owners have moved to reclaim much of the business, acquiring roughly 140 locations with a plan to 're-Hooterize' the brand."

"The effort is led by Neil Kiefer, who was once the founders’ lawyer and is now the chief executive. He aims to return Hooters to what he described as its core identity — a casual place with a family-friendly vibe. 'There’s a lot to clean up,' Kiefer, 74, said in an interview. Under private equity control, Kiefer argued, the franchise operators leaned into more overtly sexual marketing, notably a 2021 decision to introduce uniforms that resembled underwear. 'We’re getting back to what makes us a beach-themed restaurant as opposed to a girlie bar,' Kiefer said."

From "Hooters Says Bring the Kids/The chain known for skimpy uniforms and 'bikini nights' is trying to change its image. Hooters onesie, anyone?" (NYT).

"Do I really want a fifth person in my house? Not really. Do I, rather, want to feel as if I were the kind of mother who could handle another child..."

"... even though I know, thanks to the COVID years, that I’m likely not? Wanting to feel like you can do it is, it goes without saying, a stupid reason to have a kid. I remember telling a friend who was appalled at my desire for a third that I craved a repeat of that big explosion of Technicolor feeling that came with a new baby.... Our society is designed to enable and reward parenthood for some women and guarantees a thriving existence for basically no children. The work we do to fight these systems is reproductive labor even when there’s not a single baby in your house. So, really, the question I need to ask myself is not Who was that phantom baby? What might our life have been? It’s Who am I, now? And what can I do for the people who are already here?"

Writes Lydia Kiesling, in "Yearning for a Third/Did I really need another baby for my family to be complete?" (New York Magazine).

That's how the essay ends — with commitment to a cold left-wing platitude and italicized wistfulness about the life she decided the "systems" had denied to her. 

The author calls herself away from the question "Who was that phantom baby?" That felt so sad to me.

I don't know if this really connects, but what swirled up in my mind was the last thing Andre said in "My Dinner with Andre": "People hold on to these images: father, mother, husband, wife, again for the same reason: because they seem to provide some firm ground. But there’s no wife there. What does that mean, a wife? A husband? A son? A baby holds your hands and then suddenly there’s this huge man lifting you off the ground, and then he’s gone. Where’s that son?"

"...people hold on to these images: father, mother, husband, wife, again for the same reason: ’cause they seem to provide some firm ground. But there’s no wife there. What does that mean, a wife? A husband? A son? A baby holds your hands and then suddenly there’s this huge man lifting you off the ground, and then he’s gone. Where’s that son?"

Meade: "Super bloggable, no?" Me: "trying to find an inroad/the photo is overwhelming emotionally"

That's the text conversation here in Meadhouse after I send this to Meade:

 

The eagle — encrusted in gold and seemingly headless — launches into flight, away from us.

Let's see what the particular example of corruption this is — this, the worst example ever. There's never even ever been anything like this. Do you know what example this one is? There have been reactions of horror to so many things Trump has done, but "corruption" is a key hint, suggesting a money grab, and yes, you guessed right, didn't you?

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

Out of the blue, Spotify decided to celebrate my first day of Spotify with the news of the first song I ever played there.

And it's something that's a complete mystery to me. I can't remember ever hearing of it. Can't think of a reason I'd have stumbled across it and gone to Spotify to start up with it so I could hear this thing. Is Spotify pulling my leg?

I asked Grok what the hell it was and got: "'Chatty Cats' is likely some super-obscure or random kids'/background track that got logged as your very first play. It's extremely common for Spotify's 'first song ever' to be something you don't recognize at all." 

"So, we were just talking about this wild crime spree that happened this weekend in Austin.... they stole cars and stole guns and switched cars and they shot at like 10 different locations...."

"They shot multiple people.... &ou were saying that the reason why they had a hard time catching them is because they had Flock cameras in Austin, but then they shut those cameras off for political reasons...."

Said Joe Rogan, inviting Mark Andreeson to talk about Flock, which applies AI to info from municipal cameras to find cars for the police. Andreeson is a big investor in Flock.

 

Andreeson: "It's used all over the country. It solves crimes every day. We get reports on carjackings with kids in the back seat and their lives get saved because they track them down. So a lot of towns and cities have this and they love it. In cities like Austin with the intense politics, they run into backlash on privacy and surveillance concerns. And so Austin had Flock and then turned it off. And as a consequence, they were not able to find these guys for several days. And then what happened — the late breaking news today is these guys drove into some adjacent town up against Austin and Flock was live in that town. And so Flock tagged them the minute they drove into that town and then they caught the guys. Subsequent to that, the mayor and your chief of police gave a press conference and said, 'We really need to rethink this,' because it's crazy to have the ability to solve crimes and stop crimes and not be able to use it...."

"I'm reading this crazy article in The New Yorker...."

I wrote, in June 2025. 

I can't believe I need to take this guy seriously enough to worry about him, but The New Yorker wants me to feel that I do. ... I see I've written about Yarvin before. Did I take him seriously or was he even funnier last time?... The one old post... is about a NYT interview with him. So his visibility to me has solely been a consequence of elite liberal media telling me to worry about him.... It was liberal media asserting that he's important to conservatives. Is he?!

This morning, I'm seeing that "crazy article" won an award: "The New Yorker’s Ava Kofman Wins a 2026 National Magazine Award/The prize, for a Profile of the far-right blogger Curtis Yarvin...."

To report the winning Profile, Kofman delved deeply into the writings of Yarvin, who popularized the concept of being “red-pilled”—a riff on a scene in “The Matrix”—and turned it into a rallying cry among conservatives. A former tech designer, Yarvin has advocated for “the liquidation of democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law,” and called for the establishment of an American monarchy, arguing in 2011 that Donald Trump is “biologically suited” to reign as king....

I still can't believe I need to take this guy seriously enough to worry about him, so please nudge me if I'm languishing in blissful complacency.

"Mr. Frank was also known for championing gay rights, civil rights and women’s rights. He did so by force of personality and by example."

"He insisted that his male partner be invited to all events to which the spouses of other representatives were invited. In 2012, at age 72, he married Jim Ready and became the first sitting member of Congress to wed someone of the same sex. He also worked quietly behind the scenes to advance his causes. In one of many examples, according to his memoir, 'Frank: A Life in Politics From the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage' (2015), he helped persuade President Bill Clinton not to appoint Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia as secretary of state because of his track record of homophobia...."

From "Barney Frank, Gay Pioneer and Liberal Stalwart in Congress, Dies at 86/Often voted the 'brainiest,' 'funniest' and 'most eloquent' member of the House, he was also the first to come out voluntarily and helped normalize being openly gay in public office" (NYT).