Sunrise.

"I realized that everything that I had heard about President Trump and everything I believed about him from the mainstream media was a lie. Everything."

"I discovered a self-effacing man of superior intelligence, of empathy and compassion, with an encyclopedic grasp of the issues — and in molecular detail — and, most of all, a near reckless courage to challenge vested interests and official orthodoxies. I found a man who cared deeply about transparency in government, who believed in protecting free speech more than anything, and the entire United States Constitution."

The theater of did he really catch it?

HOW DOES LUIS LARA KEEP DOING THIS?????? pic.twitter.com/kTT7iZZw0k

— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) September 12, 2026

Catching the sun.

Just now:

Earlier, in the dark:

"I am calling on the Smithsonian Institution to honor the Life and Legacy of George Washington, America’s Greatest Hero, with a five-year exhibition..."

"... at the National Museum of American History, beginning now, and continuing through, February 22, 2032, the 300th anniversary of Washington’s birth. I am also calling on the Smithsonian to erect a 30-foot 'Colossus statue' of the Father of Our Country outside the Museum, to replace the so-called 'Infinity' sculpture that stands there today. That strange modernist sculpture tells visitors nothing about America, inspires no one, and honors none of our Great American Heroes...."

Writes President Trump, at Truth Social.

Choose one:

Vote:

"What we really want to do is tell the story of the bus within the context of interior Alaska."

I'm watching the video "'Into the Wild’ bus display receives $300K federal grant" at Alaska News Source.

The bus has been kept indoors at the University of Alaska. "Now, the Museum of the North plans to put the bus into a free 24/7 outdoor display in the woods behind the building... along with an indoor exhibition featuring items from McCandless and art inspired by his journey."

ADDED: Before the bus was kept indoors, it was out in the wild where McCandless left it, and it became a dangerous tourist attraction. I blogged about that here, with video, 6 years ago. An official explained:

"We encourage people to enjoy Alaska’s wild areas safely, and we understand the hold this bus has had on the popular imagination. However, this is an abandoned and deteriorating vehicle that was requiring dangerous and costly rescue efforts, but more importantly, was costing some visitors their lives. I’m glad we found a safe, respectful and economical solution to this situation."

But something was lost, and now they're trying to get it back.  

I think his mother was protecting him. She's giving an official story. Now leave her boy alone.

That's what I think, reading: "Boy, 15, Drifted for Days on an Overturned Boat Before Rescue/The teenager survived in the Bering Sea off Alaska without food or water before a fishing vessel pulled him to safety, the Coast Guard said" (NYT gift link).

The ordeal began Friday morning when the teenager, Derek Parker Aghnaanga, set sail with his older brother, Sidney Kulowiyi, 35, to catch halibut, according to their mother, Vina Kulowiyi. 

Ms. Kulowiyi declined to comment but referred to a public Facebook post in which she gave a brief account of their journey and rescue. “He was never afraid the whole time,” she wrote.... “He lived on prayer,” she said.

Sunrise.

"The A.I. Kill Switch Act requires commercial-scale A.I.s to have a built-in 'kill' option."

"When I first heard of the bill, I envisioned a government employee’s finger hovering over a cartoonish red button reading 'KILL,' but my imagination outpaced the legislative text. Rather, the 'switch' would reside inside the labs — that is, at OpenAI, or Anthropic, or similar — with D.H.S. acting as an external monitor. If a threatening incident like the Hugging Face hack occurred, D.H.S. could issue a stop command and the researchers would be forced to comply...." 

Writes Stephen Witt, author of "The Thinking Machine," in "This Is Really Bad" (NYT gift link).

I think the kill switch looks something like this:

The Clancy holdout was the only nonwhite person on the jury, and he was a black man.

NEW: Lindsay Clancy juror Paula Devlin reveals on 'CBS Mornings' that the lone, male holdout juror who voted to find Clancy guilty of murdering her children was the *only* person of color -- a black man.

The 11 not-guilty jurors -- who hectored him for a week to cave -- were all… pic.twitter.com/5qirHNGCyx

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 11, 2026

Imagine how this man felt, how he feels now. The white people all ganged up on him, accused him of being inarticulate and incoherent, impermeable to reason. What a pressure cooker!

***

"Whoa. I have to sit with that for just a second" — Gayle King. Amazing that she was surprised by that. Weren't there pre-interviews to smoke things like that out? Or did they know, mean to suppress it, then realize they needed to get it out and chose Gayle King to perform the necessary theater? If so, she's an excellent actress! She really seems blindsided.

ADDED: Meanwhile, on Oprah's show, a black woman expresses the concern that black women who kill their children will not receive the same compassion that was shown to Lindsay Clancy:

"I’m real and these are my real beliefs. You could ask your xAI researchers about me if you hadn’t fired them."

Said Jacob Coxon, after Elon Musk wrote "Seems like a setup."

Quoted in "AI researcher who warned of ‘disaster’ is now a target of the right/Critics accuse Jacob Coxon of being a plant after he warned of looming 'disaster'" (WaPo)

Coxon is the person we were talking about yesterday, in that post about the belief that A.I. might end the world in the next 10 years. I've updated that post with a video about how instantly Coxon's post went viral, boosted by Bernie Sanders and various high-level Democrats.

Now, reading WaPo, I see that video is part of what's now being disparaged as right-wing targeting. Does WaPo acknowledge what came from Bernie and the Democrats? It interviews Coxon, who is paraphrased saying "he didn’t work with any organizations to promote his announcement before posting it on X."

Loopholes may be found in the words "work," "organizations," and "before." Did he do something other than "work"? Did he work with individuals, e.g. Bernie Sanders, rather than organizations? Did he work with organizations/individuals after he posted? I don't know. I just see the weasel words, WaPo.

I hate to see this issue turn into a left/right face off! Reminds me of climate change. So unhelpful. 

ADDED: From the WaPo article: "[Coxon] faced accusations, with little evidence, from people on the political right claiming that he was a plant meant to scare lawmakers into clamping down on the industry." With little evidence? That means there is evidence, or they'd have used their favorite anti-right-wing phrase, "without evidence."

"Mr. Vance’s scripted, more traditional political delivery cut a sharp contrast with the freewheeling and improvisational style of Mr. Trump."

"In fact, it was Mr. Vance’s unscripted response to the protester, who unfurled Mexican and Palestinian flags, that appeared to most energize the crowd. 'My friend, if you love Mexico so much, get your ass over there,' the vice president said, sending the crowd roaring. 'I’ll buy you the plane ticket.'"

From "Vance, Eying 2028, Relishes the Spotlight at Trump’s Convention/The vice president, widely seen as a potential White House candidate, sought to use his speech in Dallas to show a more personal side to the MAGA faithful" (NYT gift link).

"Look, I was in a bar once, and a guy suddenly comes over and starts shouting, 'I’m going to break your f***ing face.'"

"Now in a situation like this, an intelligent guy, a guy like your husband, Tina, is not what I need. I need my guy Keith here. Know what he did with that crazy guy? He BROKE HIS WRIST LIKE A TWIG."

Said Donald Trump, explaining why he had bodyguards, to Tina Brown, on September 10, 2001.

Quoted in "Tina Brown: what Donald Trump said to me the night before 9/11/The night before, the magazine editor was at a fashion show chatting to the future president. The next morning came the horror of the Twin Towers, writes the commentator in an article first published in her Fresh Hell newsletter" (London Times).

Lots more at the link, ending with this summary of 9/11, which I think is the conventional wisdom: "That single moment of terror that brought us together splintered rapidly. We’ve institutionalized distrust and suspicion; we’ve cultivated paranoia. Paradoxically, perhaps, that period of outraged unification led inevitably to the seemingly insuperable partisan divide we now find ourselves facing. Not long after 9/11, Facebook was born, then YouTube and Instagram, and, at first, it felt as if these might become community-making phenomena, safe spaces. Instead, as the iterations of social media pile up and the voices on them multiply, we live in a cacophony of chaos. Celebrity culture, far from fading, has become the only culture we know, its ultimate expression now incinerating the White House."

It is the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks.

That's my photograph, taken in the evening, in 2007, when a low cloud kept the memorial lights from projecting upward and the light spread horizontally.

The quarter-century mark feels important — I was 50 when it happened, I'm 75 now — but I will repeat what I said in 2022: "I don't like terrorists squatting on the calendar, forcing us into darkness every 365 days. We must honor the dead? But if we truly ordered our life around honoring the dead, every day of the year would be a somber day of commemoration. Instead, we have a scattering of death days on the American calendar. Why those and not others? What interests are served by keeping those horrendous events fresh in our mind and not others?"

There is always a low cloud keeping us from seeing the full picture. 

Sunrise.

Open thread in the comments.

"There's something about when [women who don't have kids] get past the reproductive age that they get like very invested in politics."

"It's, like, you don't even have a world to protect. You don't have children. So you don't have a world to make better for the children. And you got maybe 20 years left, right?... You'll be 77/78 years old and you'll probably be basically dead.... So why are you so invested in all the other people's problems of the world when your life is a fucking mess? Because you've infantilized the world. You've turned the culture into your children and that's why they're scolding. That's the scolding aspect that you get... And... from men that don't have children. They get older, they get a there's a scolding political aspect of it. They never had children. Instead of just, like, having opinions on things and being able to debate your opinions of why you think that way, there's a scolding of people who disagree...."

A theory of gender politics, from Joe Rogan.

The idea seems to be that women — not all women, but most — are natural scolds, and if they don't have children to scold, they're going to range freely, looking for adults to scold.