"Don't know that I will/But until I can find me/A girl who'll stay and/Won't play games behind me/I'll be what I am/A solitary man."

Meade chose the old Neil Diamond song as the soundtrack for one of this morning's sunrise videos:

Out on the walk, we'd been talking about Neil Diamond, because we'd met a dog named "Sunny," that got Meade singing the old Bobby Hebb song "Sunny," and I brought up Bobby Goldsboro's "Honey," and that led to a search for another example of rhyming names that were in song titles. He said "Sherry," and I said "Cherry Cherry," and I reminisced about how I did not like Neil Diamond when I first heard him. "Solitary Man" came out in 1966 — my favorite year for music — and it just felt too old for me. I was 15. Talking about it this morning, I said that these days he'd be called an "incel," part of the "manosphere."

Anyway, watching that video, I glommed onto the words "A girl who... won't play games behind me." I wondered if Neil was the source of the "no games" concept.

"Her doctor insists her current body mass index of 25.7, barely above normal, indicates a healthy size and discourages her interest in obesity drugs."

"'He said: "You’re fine, you’re absolutely fine. Don’t worry about it,"' she said. Still, hanging reproachfully in her closet are clothes she wore 30 years ago and wants to wear again. 'I don’t want to look like my mother or my grandmother,' she said. Yet researchers have reported for years that older people who are overweight or obese, with a higher B.M.I., live longer than those with a normal body mass index. I shared this apparently little-known finding with Ms. Ganster. 'You made my day,' she said. Known as the obesity paradox, this relationship upends a message Americans have heard for decades: that obesity increases the risk of heart disease and stroke, Type 2 diabetes, a number of cancers and other potentially lethal illnesses. It does indeed, for the young and middle-aged...."

From "Why a Little Extra Weight May Benefit Older People/Even in the age of obesity drugs, researchers say many don’t need to shed pounds" (NYT)(all NYT links are gift links).

There's a bit of a disconnect in that story. The woman was obviously concerned with how she looks not her likelihood of dying from one of the famously lethal illnesses. It wasn't the cancer/heart attack personified and laughing at her ghoulishly. It was clothes from 30 years ago, still hanging in her closet, that, personified, were reproaching her. If only you would try harder, you'd be the person who fit inside us, way back when, but no, you just won't do it!

It might help her to know it's healthier to relax into this new form, with a 25.7 BMI, just over the line from normal, which tops out at 24.9. She's better off not losing that last 10 or 15 pounds. Isn't she?

"4 reasons to eat dark chocolate every day, according to science."

That's a Washington Post article — gift link — that Meade sent me just now.

I was all: I saw that yesterday and already had a long discussion with Grok about it. Here are my 6 prompts:

1. why is dark chocolate better than milk chocolate?

2. so everything that's in dark chocolate is also in milk chocolate, it's just that there's ALSO something else in milk chocolate: milk. So what's the problem? If I had a tiny shot of milk along with my dark chocolate, they'd be the same, right? 

"On Reddit, commenters wondered what, exactly, the newly free-standing maybes referred to. And do eight words really need four periods?"

"Some, on Instagram, wrote off the rebrand as corporate word salad. Others jokingly offered their own alternatives. 'Maybe we are born with it. Maybe not. Maybelline,' Tracy Silagi, a freelance brand copywriter, suggested on LinkedIn. Another user, on TikTok, presented a more Shakespearean spin: 'Maybe or not maybe, that is the Maybelline.'"

I'm reading "What’s. The Deal. With Maybelline’s. New Slogan. An attempt to update one of the most famous tag lines in marketing history left many consumers scratching their heads" (NYT).

Here's the ad in question:

I think the ad people were just endlessly fascinated by the happenstance of the first 5 letters of the company's name spelling the word "maybe."

"James Talarico and Adam Hamilton... draw on the Hebrew scripture, especially Micah 6:8..."

"... where the prophet says the Lord requires us 'to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.' They draw, too, on the New Testament: the parable of the Good Samaritan and the Sermon on the Mount; on the two great commandments to love God and to love your neighbor; and Matthew 25, where Jesus says that whatever we did for the least of these we did for him. There are Christians all across America who may not agree with Talarico and Hamilton on every issue but who are deeply grateful these men won, because they offer an ethic and a disposition profoundly different from those of MAGA world. The senators-elect from Texas and Kansas believe that statecraft is soulcraft, that words should heal rather than wound, and that mercy is not weakness. They take seriously Isaiah’s invitation: 'Come now, and let us reason together.'"

Writes Peter Wehner, in "A Good Night for the Christian Faith/A pair of victories may do much to help the Democratic Party—and even more for the evangelical world" (The Atlantic)(gift link).

"Statecraft is soulcraft" — is that a standard phrase? Apparently, it is. There's a 1984 George Will book called "Statecraft as Soulcraft: What Government Does." He says things like "I say statecraft is soulcraft. Just as all education is moral education because learning conditions conduct, most legislation is moral legislation because it conditions the action and the thought of the nation."

Will is not mentioned in the Atlantic article, and I'll take that as a sign that Will's idea caught on. Checking my 22-year archive — because I didn't remember ever seeing the phrase before and I felt sure if I ever saw it, I would blog about it — I had to laugh when I found a post titled "Soulcraft," from October 1, 2021:

I'm thinking about the game Monopoly this morning because...

... it's the subject of the New Yorker's "Catalogues" game, which I play every morning. There's some category with 7 items and you've got to put them in some kind of order. 

Seeing Mediterranean Avenue in the lowest position — low rent — on the Monopoly board motivated me to prompt Grok: "List the monopoly squares in order and make the argument that they express an opinion that is not politically correct. I'm especially interested in the racial meaning of 'Mediterranean' (which is put in a lowly position)."

Grok pointed me toward this 2021 Atlantic article by Mary Pilon: "The Prices on Your Monopoly Board Hold a Dark Secret/The property values of the popular game reflect a legacy of racism and inequality" (gift link). Excerpt:

Jesse Raiford, a realtor in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in the early 1930s and a fan of what players then called “the monopoly game,” affixed prices to the properties on his board to reflect the actual real-estate hierarchy at the time. And in Atlantic City, as in so much of the rest of the United States, that hierarchy reflects a bitter legacy of racism and residential segregation....

Pilon has a whole book: "The Monopolists/Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World's Favorite Board Game" (commission earned).

What board games have you been thinking about? Yesterday, I was thinking about chess, specifically the artwork called "Horses Running Endlessly," by Gabriel Orozco:

Sunrise.

"This isn’t another 9/11. This is a telecommunication outage."

Said Markwayne Mullin, the secretary of homeland security, quoted in "Live Updates: F.A.A. Declares a Rare Nationwide Ground Stop Markwayne Mullin, the secretary of homeland security, says Trump administration officials do not suspect foul play. He added that officials did not know the cause and said it would 'take some time' to restart airport operations" (NYT).

"There was no indication as of yet that this was a nefarious attack against us. It’s just a telecommunication outage as of right now."

ADDED: From that NYT live coverage: "Friday’s outage comes just a few days after the F.A.A. announced it would begin rolling out an artificial intelligence tool nationwide to help controllers avoid delays.... SMART, short for Strategic Management of Airspace, Routes and Trajectories was made by an A.I. company called ASI, or Air Space Intelligence, which won an $875 million contract for the program...."

"A $9,000 leather moto is not the outerwear of a man faithfully going home to his wife and kids after a long day of architecting the AI revolution."

"That’s a man in a midlife crisis with an active Raya profile and a Harley in the garage. If someone had consulted me years ago, I’d have said Huang is clearly someone who drinks wine with his mistress in the middle of the day. (The Times uncovered a 2023 photo of Jensen appearing to do exactly that at a luncheon in Shanghai with Alice.)"

I'm reading "17 Ways to Think About Nvidia’s Jensen Huang Mess" (New York Magazine)(gift link).

Lots more at the link, but what's Raya? Here's a Reddit discussion of it, where the top comment is: 

"Why would you fire the manager when you just won the World Series?"

Said Angus King, the independent Senator from Maine, who caucuses with the Democrats, quoted in "Van Hollen Says He Will Challenge Schumer for Senate Majority Leader/Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland has emerged as a favorite of Democrats seeking an alternative to Senator Chuck Schumer, who says he has the votes to win" (NYT).

“Chuck has outlined an aggressive plan for the new Democratic majority, which is directly responsive to the message we heard from the voters, and he has the experience and unique mastery of the Senate process to make it happen,” Mr. King said.

Aggressive, but maybe not aggressive enough. I'm sure many Republicans are standing back, watching, hoping Democrats will overplay their hand. I know I've mixed up the metaphor now, but give me credit for not trying to stretch this out into a euchre/Uecker joke.

Why is Talarico saying this and what does it mean — especially the comparison to LBJ?

James Talarico: "The American people cannot wait two years for change so we must work with President Trump. If President Trump wants the same plaques, and portraits, and busts as LBJ, we can help make that a reality. We should make the final two years of his presidency the most… pic.twitter.com/PRHYau8oeD

— Bulwark Clips (@BulwarkClips) November 12, 2026

"The American people cannot wait two years for change so we must work with President Trump. If President Trump wants the same plaques, and portraits, and busts as LBJ, we can help make that a reality. We should make the final two years of his presidency the most productive of any presidency in American history."

I hear that as: We should humor Trump where we can.... and that is where it has to do with his screwy ego. We did it with Lyndon Baines Johnson, and we can do it here.

Sunrise.

"The ouster of Huang is portentous for the alliance between the Trump administration and the so-called 'tech right,' or the leaders of Silicon Valley’s recent conservative inflection."

"Huang himself did not do much political giving or display overt partisan leanings. But he was a leader of the tech billionaire class’s political push, which included crafting a grow-at-all-costs A.I. agenda that the billionaires argued was good for the U.S. (and was certainly good for Nvidia.)"

Writes Theodore Schleifer, in "Live Updates: Jensen Huang Resigns From Nvidia After Affairs/The longtime head of the chip-making colossus admitted to an affair with a woman identified as a spy for China. He was also said to have had a relationship with an executive who reported to him" (NYT).

And here's today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, recorded before the resignation: "What Jensen Huang’s Potential Ouster Could Mean for A.I./ Nvidia’s board is considering firing Jensen Huang after revelations that he had affairs with an executive who reports to him and a woman who U.S. officials say is a Chinese spy."

"'I had the courage to believe in Mississippi,' Mr. Colom said at the Tougaloo College chapel, where Fannie Lou Hamer and Medgar Evers once spoke."

"Before his speech, his supporters danced and embraced. One of them declared, 'Thank the Lord, we did it.'... During the campaign, Mr. Colom... did not often dwell on the historic implications of his candidacy, but [he] took time on Wednesday to talk about the legacy he would now continue in Washington. Mississippi was the first state to send a Black person to Congress, Hiram Revels, who joined the Senate in 1870. He was followed by Blanche Bruce in 1875, who was born in slavery in 1841. Mr. Bruce was replaced by a white former Confederate soldier who disavowed the ideals of racial equality and ushered in segregationist policies...."

From "Scott Colom, a Democrat, Wins Mississippi Senate Seat in Historic Upset/Mr. Colom, a prosecutor, will be the first Black senator elected from Mississippi since the post-Civil War Reconstruction period" (NYT).

It should be noted that Colom graduated from the University of Wisconsin Law School.

"It's been a desperate search in the overnight hours."

UPDATE: "Live Updates: At Least 8 Dead in Brooklyn Building Collapse, as Crews Scour Rubble" (NYT).

"Lying in the scanner, I concentrated on a sequence of seemingly random images projected onto a screen a few feet from my eyes...."

"Pictures of traffic lights, cars, airplanes and trees were meant to elicit a 'boring' response from my amygdala (which governs fight-or-flight responses). Images of grotesque A.I.-generated faces or people making threatening gestures were meant to excite that part of my brain. In art school, I was taught to read images deliberately and slowly in the same way we might read and critique bits of literature or morsels of philosophy. In the fMRI machine, however, an image is just a visual stimulus to elicit a neurological response. On my second day of scanning, I learned that my amygdala is highly responsive to a certain type of 'boring' image: pictures of small airplanes against a big sky. This rattled me. Amy Kuceyeski, the radiology professor running this experiment, did not know that in my work as an artist, I spend enormous amounts of time tracking and photographing drones, satellites and aircraft. I felt like my mind had been read, that a machine had reached into my subconscious to unearth something deep, private and intimate about my professional life and personal interests...."

Writes Trevor Paglen, in "I Saw the Future of Mind-Reading" (NYT).