"[W]hat surprised me most was that nearly all of Lucy’s co-workers and former mortuary classmates are women, specifically young women in their twenties and thirties."

"'There were only three guys in our class and one of them was a trans man. There were a lot of queer people,' she explains. I’d assumed she would be a quirky outlier in a class of gaunt, poorly socialized men, but as a tattooed lesbian with a warm Midwestern disposition, Lucy actually represents a growing majority. A quiet changeover has taken place in mortuary science—one largely obscured by the shroud separating the death industry from polite society. Over the past four decades, female enrollment in mortuary programs has grown from five percent to roughly 75 percent of recent graduating classes. As a journalist who came up during the peak of girlbossery, I’d been pitched all manner of 'female first' stories—'Would you like to interview Chobani’s first female yogurt sommelier?'—but this felt more substantial than a corporate puff piece. So why this generational shift? And why now?"

From "Keeping Up Appearances/The women taking over the funeral industry" (LA Review of Books).

Is this about... makeup?

"Democrats were far more enthusiastic about taking the poll than Republicans were. Registered Democrats were more than twice as likely as registered Republicans...."

"After 2020, many polls, including The Post’s, adopted additional methods to guard against the threat of nonresponse bias, leveraging voter files with extensive information on past turnout and demographics to help ensure more representative samples. Polls also began weighting samples based on which candidate voters supported in the previous presidential election. Studies found this was effective in reducing errors in 2024, although polls still underestimated Trump’s support.... 'The partisan enthusiasm gap likely explains the disconnect between Democratic and Republican willingness to respond,' said Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, which co-sponsored the poll. 'With an unpopular president, inflation, a war that Trump voters never asked for, the lack of GOP enthusiasm is not surprising. Are Republican voters this late in the election cycle feeling so down about their party’s chances that they just don’t want to talk about it?'"

I'm reading "We polled Kansas. Democrats wanted to talk. Republicans, not so much. The Post is publishing results of its Kansas Senate poll in the interest of transparency and to highlight the challenges the poll faced" (WaPo)(gift link).

Sounds like Rozell wants to put the gloomiest face on Republicans. I can think of other reasons why Republicans might not want to talk to pollsters. Anyway, I'm skeptical about pollsters. Is "poll" even the right word, once it becomes a game of "leveraging" and "weighting"?

Big questions?

I'm reading "The Brutal Harvard Class That Suddenly Everyone Wants to Take/It’s an ungodly amount of reading and no easy A. So why are freshmen lining up to get into Humanities 10?" (Wall Street Journal).

The philosophy professor posed big questions to the 90 students gathered in Boylston Hall: “Why did Austen create such an unlikable heroine?” she asked. “Why read novels at all?” And finally, as the 75-minute lecture ended, “What will become of Emma—and what will become of you?” 

The students burst into applause.

Big questions? I'd say small questions.

I'd ask — instead of "Why read novels at all?" — why go to college to read a novel and to listen to a professor comment on the likability of characters and whether we identify with them. That sounds like a local reading group that barely gets off the ground. 

That reminds me. Last night I dreamed I was a law professor again.

"I knew nothing about any other candidates on the ballot except for me and the incumbent. That is all I have ever known about. I am not interested in tricking voters."

Said Mary Peltola, quoted in "Midterm Elections Live Updates: Peltola Says She Didn’t Know About Alaska Ballot Stacking Plan/As Republican anger grew over the plot, Mary Peltola, the Democratic candidate for Senate, said she had no knowledge of any effort aimed at 'tricking voters'" (NYT).

It sounds like she's engaging with us as a human being....

I'm always being real. pic.twitter.com/4C95rfFNCl

— Elizabeth Holmes (@ElizabethHolmes) September 7, 2026

Brewers at the Packers game.

MORE:

THE CHAMPS ARE HERE @Brewers https://t.co/WGUpDjmxdG

— Green Bay Packers (@packers) October 30, 2026

SAUSAGE RACE AT LAMBEAU FIELD!!!!! OH MY GOD THIS NIGHT IS AWESOME https://t.co/87rDiXSSlQ

— Big B (@bigpackers4x) October 30, 2026

After that Lambeau Leap, how is Sal Frelick?

"I'M GOOD." https://t.co/JvTgIeR5vv pic.twitter.com/w6fLjdFnLU

— Talkin' Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) October 27, 2026

The Voice Guy.

"I'm still standing — no muscles, no tendons — nobody know how I do it."

Sunrise.

The first picture looks out over the lake at 8:03, 33 minutes after sunrise. The second picture — which has the lake in the background (you can see if you look closely) — was taken at 8:11. The sunrise time was 7:36 [NO: It was 7:24]. We were out there in time for it, and I have a photo, but the view was somewhat duller. Do these details matter? They matter a bit to me, 7+ years into something I call The Sunrise Project. What are the rules, if any?

"Democrats don’t have an easy road ahead. But, paradoxically, the better they do in 2026, the more likely they are to ignore their party’s weaknesses with working-class and rural voters."

"Those weaknesses led to Trump winning the 2024 election, but they are likely to fade from the party’s memory as Democrats, buoyed by the fool’s gold of midterms success, attempt to placate an energized left. Celebration is easy; confronting underlying problems is hard. Thus, when Republicans get shellacked on Nov. 3, expect Democrats to see the result as an enthusiastic endorsement of the party rather than a repudiation of the GOP — a far more plausible explanation...."

Writes Ruy Teixeira, in "How a ‘blue wave’ ultimately could cripple the Democratic Party/Midterms success could blind Democrats to problems for 2028 and beyond" (WaPo)(gift link).

Sunrise in the woods.

The radio announcers were much better — I know, Meade put them on some of the time — but they screw up the not-quite-live TV coverage.

Love how this dude spoils the live coverage because he's listening on the radio, running 10 seconds ahead of the TV broadcast. https://t.co/uAG3ZhQfFK

— Ryan Nantell (@RyanNantell) October 29, 2026

"What the f–k does it look like I’m up to? I’m being an oyster farmer," said Graham Platner.

Quoted in "Accused rapist Graham Platner is pissed as ever after crashing out of Maine Senate race: 'Who the f–k are you weirdos'" (NY Post).

The Post pressured Platner to say how he felt about his life now and collected remarks like "It just seems to be, like, life, man" and "It goes the way it always goes, friend" and "People from away have no idea what it is we do for a living."

They won't let him melt back into obscurity. The word "rapist" in the headline feels lowly and mean. I'd have to look it up. I'll just publish this and click the "Graham Platner" link to to remember what that was all about... back when it mattered. Now, there's this other guy being the Graham Platner to Maine's Susan Collins. Don't know a thing about him. The details of midterm elections in states other than my own are not something I like to get tangled up in. I'll be glad when the 2026 election day is over and we can get back to endlessly mulling over presidential candidates. 

"At one point [Mary Peltola] required her staff to feed her family's pet chameleon, which is named Meatball, which only ate crickets."

"At one point, they had to feed Meatball in her congressional office when she was in Congress, and these live crickets escaped, and staff had to recapture them. So that was an example where they felt this was beneath their duties or somewhat demeaning of employees.... So one of the employees Mary Peltola fired in August was her campaign manager, a woman named Elisa Rios. I began talking to Elisa Rios, and she told me a pretty incredible story about what really happened with Dan J. Sullivan and the role Democrats played in his candidacy...."

I'm listening to today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "A Plan for Two Dans: How Democrats Manipulated Alaska’s Ballot/An investigation by The New York Times looked at how two people named Dan Sullivan ended up on the ballot for the Senate."

The underlying NYT story was the subject of a blog post yesterday, but that one did not have crickets, and I can't miss a good opportunity to bring out my "insect politics" tag.

I mean, have you ever heard of insect politics? They're very... brutal. No compassion, no compromise. We can't trust the insect....

A word to the wise politician: After you've demeaned someone by forcing them to scuttle about capturing crickets, don't fire them, not before the election. Better yet: Don't keep your pets in the office, especially not if they — or their food — creeps people out or smells like hell. That is, if you must keep a pet in your office and you are a politician, make it a dog. There are lots of dogs kept in the offices of congresspersons. Dogs are the official pet of politics. They signal that you are human and normal. You might need that. Trump haters love to tell us he's lacking a dog. And Nixon saved his skin by mentioning his dog named Checkers, Bill Clinton procured a dog (Buddy) to offset his cat (Socks), and Obama ostentatiously acquired the dog Bo. The dog is the animal if you want to be a politician.

Have you ever heard of dog politics? They're very friendly. No brutality, no live crickets. 

Random lady not random at all.

I am now being told that this is Miz's fiancee

— Carter Lowe (@cjlowehoops) October 29, 2026

Context:

The trees at sunrise.

And here's Meade's view of the sunrise....

"In the summer of 2025, a staffer for Mary Peltola, the Alaska Democrat who was eyeing a run for Senate, received unusual instructions from top campaign aides: Find as many people named Dan Sullivan in Alaska as you can."

"The staffer complied, combing through voter records to produce a list of Dan Sullivans from across the state.... Dan S. Sullivan is the name of the state’s Republican senator. And if the Peltola campaign or its allies could track down and persuade another Dan Sullivan to run for Senate, the confusion could cost the senator crucial votes on the state’s unusual, four-person ballot.... This spring, a retired teacher from a tiny fishing village along the Alaska Panhandle, reachable only by air and sea, announced his candidacy for Senate. His name was Dan J. Sullivan. The Peltola campaign has repeatedly denied any involvement in his candidacy. But The Times has found, based on interviews and text messages, along with documents prepared for a potential lawsuit against the campaign, that not only did Ms. Peltola’s team work with people trying to recruit Mr. Sullivan to run for Senate, but the effort was much broader. The group worked to coax other would-be spoilers into the race, to dilute the incumbent’s support and help catapult the Democrat to victory...."

The NYT exposes Peltola, in "Inside Democrats’ Secret Effort to Stack Alaska’s Ballot/Operatives aligned with Mary Peltola, the Democratic nominee for Senate, spent months recruiting candidates to peel votes from Senator Dan Sullivan, the Republican." 

That's a gift link. It's a long article, so check it out, especially if you're inclined to think the NYT is always just trying to help Democrats.