"'It was a miracle for my brain. All the food noise was gone.' But when her husband of 20 years would ask her where she’d like to go for dinner..."

"'I’m like, "Here’s the problem, dear. I don’t care about food anymore, so it doesn’t matter where we go,"' she said. 'That part was very frustrating for him.'"

From "Is this the era of the GLP-1 divorce? Taken for weight loss, the drugs can dramatically change people’s marriages, for better and worse" (WaPo).

"But the weave seems to be getting weavier. An A.I.-assisted New York Times review of Mr. Trump’s comments..."

"... from speeches, rallies, social media, interviews and public meetings found significant changes since he began a run for president at age 69 in 2015, although not as much of a notable shift since 2024 when a similar review was conducted. Broadly speaking, the review concluded, Mr. Trump’s public communication is more vulgar, more uninhibited and less coherent than it was a decade ago...."

I'm reading "Threats, Gaffes and Men’s Posteriors: Trump’s Talk Gets Wilder/A Times review of the president’s public speeches finds that he is more profane, more absolutist, longer-winded and less coherent than he was in 2016" (NYT).

"How many individuals still live whose young lives were shaped by World War I?"

I asked, 14 years ago, in a blog post titled "Jacques Barzun has died... at the age of 104."

I landed there because I had the idea that people don't talk about decadence anymore, and Grok reminded me that Barzun had published "From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present" (commission earned) in 2000. 

That was a quarter century ago. How long past decadence do you need to get before decadence isn't even an issue? And then, what?

As for the question in the post title, pressured, Grok to came up with 300 to 500. There are super-centenarians in this world, though you never encounter them when you're just out and about. It would be cool if you did. 

Barzun was 9 and living in Paris in 1914, when the war broke out. He was one of the students who had to become teachers, teaching younger students when so many of the real teachers were drafted. He became deeply depressed, contemplated suicide, and — it seems like a solution — travelled to America. There he attended Columbia University, where he wrote a Ph.D. thesis in which he "attacked the popular notion of 'the French race.'"

"My dream of a beer winning the World Series finally came true!"

"Reflecting on the Second World War, Hannah Arendt suggested that totalitarianism takes root in societies where lots of people feel unnecessary or unwanted."

"After the 2016 election, it was common for the media to report on underemployed people in the Rust Belt who felt that they’d been cast aside. Today, manosphere ideology rages against a society that, allegedly, claims not to need men, and young people wonder whether there’s room for them in an A.I.-saturated workforce. Recently, even world-class mathematicians have felt the sting of redundancy. In a blog post titled 'The Mathocalypse,' the mathematician Scott Aaronson recounts what his nine-year-old son told his wife, the computer scientist Dana Moshkovitz: 'Mommy . . . I heard that a robot solved the math problem you worked on for your whole career!'"

From "Do You Feel Needed? Being necessary has never been more necessary—or more difficult," by Joshua Rothman in The New Yorker.

It's the last day of October.

Write about whatever you want.

"[M]y speech was not a critique of Arabs or Islam, but of Islamism... a toxic ideology conceived and promoted by the terrorist group, the Muslim Brotherhood.”

"Let’s see which reporters take the time to read this post and then correct their stories."

Writes RFK Jr., at great length, at X. 

He links to various reporters, and I don't think any of them have responded.

The Daily Wire and The Washington Examiner have, however, noted his post: here and here.

"The Senate race in Michigan... will test moderate and independent voters’ appetite for a combative brand of unalloyed progressivism."

"The party’s activist class believes Dr. El-Sayed’s success next week would establish a proof point that left-wing populism is a winning message, even in swing states. He has embraced an economic agenda that sharply attacks the billionaire class and taken a clear stance against Israel. Centrist Democrats fear that a potential El-Sayed triumph in an otherwise favorable climate for Democrats could be badly misinterpreted as a mandate."

That's how the NYT puts it in "The Most Important Race Shaping 2028 for Democrats Is Happening Now in Michigan/The fate of Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the progressive candidate in the race, will serve as a litmus test for the left’s potency heading into the next presidential contest."

I suspect the Times wants El-Sayed to lose. 

There's this quote from Matt Bennett, an executive vice president of the centrist Third Way think tank: "The danger is that the triumphal stuff coming from the left will take hold as a narrative that 2028ers believe. I think he will win despite — not because of — the fact that he has campaigned mostly to the left."

Which "narrative" is more true — because of or despite? Good luck with the "despite" side of that narrative flogging.

From the comments over there:

"There was the button that produced literature. And there were of course the buttons by which she communicated with her friends."

"The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for in the world.... The clumsy system of public gatherings had been long since abandoned.... Seated in her armchair she spoke, while they in their armchairs heard her, fairly well, and saw her, fairly well.... Her lecture, which lasted ten minutes, was well received.... Then she fed, talked to many friends, had a bath, talked again, and summoned her bed.... She made the room dark and slept; she awoke and made the room light; she ate and exchanged ideas with her friends, and listened to music and attended lectures; she make the room dark and slept.... And of course she had studied the civilization that had immediately preceded her own — the civilization that had mistaken the functions of the system, and had used it for bringing people to things, instead of for bringing things to people. Those funny old days, when men went for change of air instead of changing the air in their rooms!"

Wrote E.M. Forster, in 1909, in "The Machine Stops" (commission earned).

This was the book he wrote between "A Room with a View" and "Howards End," and it seems to presage the web, A.I., and social media. That seems odd, but my understanding is that he, like many others, was reacting to "A Modern Utopia" by H.G. Wells. 

Here's a book I read a while back, "The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's 1984." It tells the story:

"To wander aimlessly is very unswinging. Unhip."

Having a hundred thousand beers in Milwaukee.

one of the best moments in wisconsin sports history pic.twitter.com/C70YmB5dCZ

— Nick Whalen (@wha1en) October 30, 2026

This interview alone cements Jake Bauers and Sal Frelick as Milwaukee Legends 🚬🍻🍾#ThisIsMyCrew #WonOurWay pic.twitter.com/FCHFddXcWz

— Connor (@DTownCnnrBrown) October 31, 2026

Things got weird. https://t.co/e2SmSOvtIW

— John Egan (@BrewersRaptor) October 30, 2026

Darkness on the eve of election.

The view from Memeorandum — where I've gone for many years to see an overview of the day's talked about headlines — is a non-view: 

 Jamison Foser / Finding Gravity:

The New York Times invents a Democratic scandal while ignoring a new Trump rape allegation  —  America is four days out from the end of an election in which America's deeply unpopular fascist ruling party is trying to retain control of Congress.  The week began with yet another new rape allegation … 

Discussion: The Nation, Fox News, The Wrap and New York Times

RELATED:

 Greg Sargent / New Republic:

Inside Trump's Dark Plot to Keep Senate in GOP Hands Even If Dems Win  —  On Thursday night, the Republican governor of Alaska refused to commit to certifying the outcome in the Senate race if Democrat Mary Peltola wins.  Which means that if she does triumph, refusing to seat Peltola … 

Discussion: Political.org, Anchorage Daily News, The Federalist, Politico, Axios and Washington Examiner

 New York Times:
Justice Dept. Confirms Alaska Inquiry Even as Its Focus Remains Unclear

Discussion: Associated Press, Newsweek, Political.org, Eurasia Review, WJBK-TV, Alaska Public Media, The Hill, Mediaite, Fox News, The Daily Wire and The Guardian

It's a story of woeful blindness: the focus is unclear, the plot is dark, things that do not exist are seen, and things that exist are unseen.

This gets my favorite tag: "seen and unseen."

And, yes, I know: What the hell is "Finding Gravity"? I'll just say the NYT did a big investigation before publishing its story on the dirty-trick name-game in Alaska. If there's a "new rape allegation," maybe the Times is at the stage of doing an investigation. You can't seriously believe that every allegation of rape should be published immediately... and on the eve of elections. 

Sunrise.

"[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.