Sunrise — 7:09, 7:18.

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"'He’s hot as shit, you must acquit' demanded one woman online, while others wrote: 'Free Luigi!'..."

"Among the viral posts on Twitter is a photograph of a woman privately messaging Mangione after his arrest, which has been viewed more than 3.2 million times. 'Baby, I know you don’t know me, but I will be praying for your entire exoneration and freedom from this point forward. In exchange, I’m begging you to start an Only Fans account,' she wrote. 'Fan cams' worshipping the 'Gen Z assassin' have also appeared on TikTok, with users uploading musical montages featuring images of him shirtless and smiling.... The reaction to the murder has forced American authorities to remind the public that 'this killer was not a hero'.... Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania... said... 'In America, we do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint....'" 

From "'The hot assassin': how the internet became obsessed with Luigi Mangione/The 26-year-old charged with the murder of Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealthcare chief executive, has found support among social media users" (London Times).

Americans approve of Trump handling of the transition to the presidency.

According to a new CNN poll.

New CNN poll shows that Americans have confidence in Trump's ability to solve virtually every issue facing our country, and more confidence in America's future today than they've had in over 3 years.

Trump broke the mainstream media. Incredible. pic.twitter.com/taZncCJyNb

— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) December 11, 2024

"'The Mod Squad' was one of the first prime-time series to acknowledge the hippie counterculture and an early example of multiracial casting."

"It centered on three hippies in trouble with the law, who avoid jail time by joining the police department and working undercover. Mr. Cole was cast as Pete Cochran, a wealthy kid who was kicked out of his parents’ house for stealing a car. [Clarence Williams III] played Linc Hayes, and [Peggy] Lipton played Julie Barnes.... In his 2018 memoir, 'I Played the White Guy,' Mr. Cole described turning down the role, because he did not want to play a character who ratted on troubled teenagers. 'It sounds stupid, and I hope it never gets on air,' Mr. Cole recalled yelling the show’s producer, Aaron Spelling, during the audition. But his attitude was exactly what Mr. Spelling was looking for in Pete Cochran, he said. Ms. Lipton died in 2019, and Mr. Williams died in 2021...."

From "Michael Cole, ‘Mod Squad’ Actor, Dies at 84/Mr. Cole, who played the wealthy Pete Cochran, had been the last of the show’s three stars still living" (NYT).

I remember the opening — where "Julie Barnes" gets out of breath trying to keep up with "Pete" and "Linc" who seem to need to lug her along on their hippie-busting venture — but I don't remember watching the show...

"He’s a good-looking guy. He looked really, very handsome last night. Some people look better in person? He looked great. He looked really nice, and I told him that."

Who said it? And who did he say it about?

"A bankruptcy judge on Tuesday rejected a bid by The Onion’s parent company to buy Alex Jones’ far-right media empire, including the website Infowars..."

"... ruling that the auction process was unfair. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez said after a two-day hearing that The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, had not submitted the best bid and was wrongly named the winner of an auction last month by a court-appointed trustee.... Jones went live from a studio soon after the ruling and told viewers: 'We can celebrate the judge doing the right thing.' He had previously referred to the sale process as 'auction fraud' and a 'fraudulent sale.' Onion CEO Ben Collins said in a statement on X that the company... would 'continue to seek a path towards purchasing InfoWars in the coming weeks.' 'It is part of our larger mission to make a better, funnier internet, regardless of the outcome of this case,' he said...."

NBC News reports.

"It was an announcement made amid a swirl of tabloid speculation: Kimberly Guilfoyle, a loyalist of President-elect Donald J. Trump and — more pointedly..."

"... the fiancée of his son Donald Jr. had been named ambassador to Greece. The timing of the move — early Tuesday evening — would have been unremarkable except for what preceded it: rumors that the president-elect’s eldest son was dating a socialite, Bettina Anderson. The new relationship was seemingly documented in a series of photos published earlier on Tuesday by the British tabloid The Daily Mail, which described them as 'incontrovertible proof the soon-to-be First Son has moved on' with a 'stunning '"it girl."'"

From "Amid Rumors of a Breakup, Kimberly Guilfoyle Is Appointed Ambassador to Greece/The announcement came as Donald Trump Jr. has been seen with the socialite Bettina Anderson in Florida" (NYT).

Don and Kimberly got engaged 4 years ago. I don't trust long engagements! What's supposed to be going on? Either you're getting married or you are not. Don't live in limbo. Are you testing commitment... by being half-committed?

"During the Cold War, we classified entire areas of physics and took them out of the research community—entire branches of physics went dark..."

"... and didn’t proceed. If we decide we need to, we’re going to do the same thing to the math underneath AI."

Said Marc Andreessen, on the podcast "Honestly with Bari Weiss."

Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) says he attended “absolutely horrifying” meetings where Biden’s government vowed to take “complete control” over AI technology:

“They basically said AI is going to be a game of 2 or 3 big companies working closely with the government… We’re going to… pic.twitter.com/REjkfgJkyV

— Honestly with Bari Weiss (@thehonestlypod) December 10, 2024

Here's a transcript of the entire podcast. Excerpt, giving context to the quote above:

The vantage point at 6:53 — 25 minutes before sunrise.

The clouds were heavy so I thought I'd better get out there early, because that's when it was likely to be interesting, if it was going to be interesting. And that's how I ended up with such a dark "sunrise" picture today. There was no sense waiting out the 25 minutes until the "official" sunrise time. It was 24°. I ran back to the car and that was that.

***

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"Even when he's lying out of his teeth, he's lying in an authentic way."

Says Ben Wikler, chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, in what is my favorite moment of his long interaction with Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show": 

"People can smell authenticity. They can feel it. And I think Trump is a disaster for the country. It's very clear he does not think before he talks. He just says it. And there is something that draws people towards him about that. Even when he's lying out of his teeth, he's lying in an authentic way."

I really do think that what people like about Trump is that they feel that he's saying what he thinks. Some of the things he thinks are not precisely true. They may be exaggerations or simplifications or things he's heard people saying — "They're eating the pets" — but we're seeing his thoughts. It's authentic in a way "that draws people towards him."

I also liked when Stewart said to Wikler, "It’s like wrestling a bear. You’re a giant man with a golden tongue" (at 9:54).

"It was a pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada."

"I look forward to seeing the Governor again soon so that we may continue our in depth talks on Tariffs and Trade, the results of which will be truly spectacular for all! DJT"

That's DJT, on Truth Social.

Out of all of "Instagram’s Favorite New Yorker Cartoons in 2024," one stands out as not funny in the way it was thought to be funny back when it was shared.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The New Yorker Cartoons (@newyorkercartoons)

That's from August 21. 

You can check out all of The New Yorker's most shared cartoons here.

There's also this, from July 22, the day after Biden dropped out:

"Along with three quarters of a million other people, I’m a member of r/AmIOverreacting, a forum on Reddit devoted to the problem of potentially freaking out too much...."

"If anything, r/AmIOverreacting is a kind of reactivity buffer zone—a place where reactions can be mediated, and so slowed down. In that sense, it’s part of a larger, society-wide effort.... Mindfulness is another way of managing one’s reactivity. Broadly speaking, mindful minds seek to replace the question “Am I overreacting?” with the neutral observation that, yes, a reaction is happening. In the pre-baby mindfulness workshop I attended, our instructor told us to imagine our emotions as locomotives. 'You can watch the train leave the station without getting on board,' she said. She encouraged us to react to our reactions with nonjudgmental attention...."

Writes Joshua Rothman, in "Are You Overreacting? How to survive when provocations are a natural—and inescapable—part of life" (The New Yorker).

"García Márquez did not want Hollywood to make a movie from his book... because he could not picture English-speaking actors playing the Buendías..."

"... the family at the center of the novel. Nor could he see the epic story being squeezed into two hours — or three, or four, for that matter. And then there was the issue of magical realism... Onscreen... [t]he visual effects used to create such images in the past tipped at times into fantasy or horror, or just looked silly.... But in the decade since García Márquez died, much has changed... For one, the streaming giant could make a big-budget adaptation of the novel in Spanish... [and] could also make a series, not a film, giving the plot more room to stretch out. Finally, it could film it in the author’s native Colombia, with mostly Colombian actors.... The author’s family said yes, and the first season, made up of eight hourlong episodes, airs on Dec. 11. The second is in progress. García, the author’s son, said the family had agreed in part because they felt a series could produce 'the sensation of having experienced 100 years of life,' which is a hallmark of the book...."

From "How Netflix Made Magic Look Real in ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’/The series, which will be released this week, adapts the novel for the screen for the first time. Even the author didn’t think it was possible" (NYT). That's a free-access link, so you can see the stills and video, along with passages from the much-loved book.

I hope the series is great, and I'd love to see more of the great long novels done as a series with many episodes.

"[Luigi Mangione] followed a variety of accounts befitting a typically online young man — self-help gurus like Andrew Huberman, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and 'heterodox' thinkers..."

"... such as Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, as well as Joe Rogan. His strongest interest by far is in the work of Tim Urban, a writer and illustrator popular with tech types who publishes science explainers and anti-woke political writing about how polarization is bad and rationalism can save the world. There was one prominent exception to his innocuous online trail, though. Early this year, he favorably reviewed the book-length manifesto of Theodore Kaczynski, a fellow math whiz better known as the Unabomber, who killed and maimed people he believed had ruined the world with technology. 'It’s easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies,' he wrote. 'But it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out.' Mangione then quoted a 'take I found online that I think is interesting,' which ended by saying '"violence never solved anything" is a statement uttered by cowards and predators.' The manifesto found on Mangione is said to have stated 'these parasites had it coming.'"

From "What We Know About the UnitedHealthcare CEO Murder Suspect/An elite son is charged in the killing that also struck at corporate America" (NY Magazine).

Sunrise — 7:04.

Talk about whatever you want in the comments. And support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

Also seen this morning: a bald eagle: