"The mayor of a city in southwest Russia encouraged men to 'sneak up on their women so that 10,000 children will be born in exactly nine months.'"

"Some regions are giving lump-sum bonuses to women who become mothers while they’re still in school, and a Russian version of MTV’s '16 and Pregnant,' which originally discouraged teen pregnancy, has been rebranded as 'Mom at 16,' in order to promote it. One politician encouraged women to wear miniskirts to increase births, while an official in the country’s Education Ministry advocated 'school discos' to foster 'romance for children.' A regional health minister has told Russians to have sex during work breaks. Now, a hodgepodge of religious conservatives and techno-futurists are leading the United States into the fray...."

From "A Bold Idea to Raise the Birthrate: Make Parenting Less Torturous" (NYT).

The article is by Anna Louie Sussman who says she's keeping "a running list of harebrained schemes various governments and officials have proposed to raise the birthrate in their aging countries."

"It’s possible that within the MAGA bubble, some aspiring tradwives might genuinely be motivated by the prospect of a medal, or perhaps a memecoin, from Mr. Trump (though whether they’ll get all the way to baby No. 6 by the time his term ends is an open question).... The ideas currently being floated... prompt mockery and horror, at least among my cohort of reproductive-age women. 'This is nuts,' said one friend.... 'God help us,' wrote another."

The incentives will just have to get better, but they probably won't until the decline becomes more obvious, and then, they still won't, because it will be too late, and who will want to pay for all that free childcare and so forth when it's easy to see there's no hope? But aren't those Russians crazy?

"Mr. Boelter had served on a state economic board with one of the victims, State Senator John A. Hoffman, who survived the shooting, though it is unclear if they actually knew each other."

"Mr. Boelter was appointed to the panel, the Minnesota Governor’s Workforce Development Board, in 2016 by a Democratic former governor, Mark Dayton. The board has 41 members appointed by the governor, and its members try to improve business development in the state. He was later reappointed by Gov. Tim Walz, also a Democrat.... Governor Walz has said that the shooting 'appears to be a politically motivated assassination,' though the exact motive for the attack is not yet clear. Voters do not declare political affiliation when they register in Minnesota, and a state report connected to the work force board listed Mr. Boelter’s affiliation as 'none or other' in 2016. A similar report in 2020 listed him as having 'no party preference.' But David Carlson, a roommate and close friend of Mr. Boelter’s, said Mr. Boelter voted for Donald J. Trump last year and was particularly passionate about opposing abortion...."

From "What We Know About the Minnesota Shooting Suspect/Vance Boelter, who is suspected in the attacks on two Minnesota politicians and their spouses, was taken into custody on Sunday, ending a major manhunt" (NYT).

I believe Carlson said those things after the shootings had taken place.

"U.S. Senator Tina Smith, Democrat of Minnesota, said in an interview that the gunman had a notebook with a list of names that included hers and those of other lawmakers, all of whom were Democrats. The list included about 70 potential targets, a federal law enforcement official said, including doctors, community and business leaders, and locations for Planned Parenthood and other health care centers. Some of the targets were in neighboring states."

Is Tina Smith the only source of this information? What's the basis of her knowledge? And why is the NYT presenting the information like that?

"The vocal group Boyz II Men performed at the wedding.... Dishes included truffle agnolotti, chilled English pea soup and an American Wagyu bavette and grilled prawns."

I'm reading "The Clintons and Kamala Harris Descend on a Hamptons Wedding of Liberal Royalty/The wedding of Huma Abedin, a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton, and Alex Soros, the scion of a liberal philanthropic dynasty, drew a rare concentration of wealth and power" (NYT).

Is it okay to be out of touch? I mean, truffle agnolotti in the summer? Or rather:

The festivities happened to coincide with an exceptionally chaotic weekend at home and abroad. Protesters gathered across the country to oppose President Trump even as he held an unusual military parade in Washington; a Minnesota lawmaker was assassinated in a new outburst of political violence; and attacks between Israel and Iran stoked fears of a wider Mideast conflagration.

Weddings, planned in advance, always "happen to coincide" with world events that pop up spontaneously.

Mr. Soros and Ms. Abedin announced their engagement last July. They initially planned to elope, Vogue reported on Saturday, but they changed their minds after an engagement party co-hosted by Mrs. Clinton in December, where attendees pressured the couple to hold a more traditional celebration. 

“I think she deserves it,” Mrs. Clinton told the magazine. “She deserves to have that kind of moment.”...

If only we could all have what Hillary Clinton thinks we deserve.

The moneyed scene was especially striking given the Democratic Party’s raging debate over how to improve its historically low standing with voters and win back working-class Americans, with whom it is widely seen as having lost touch....

Here's how I'd spin it: It was so out of touch it was in touch. They were in touch with their out of touchness. 

"The leaders of two of the nation’s largest and most influential labor unions have quit their posts in the Democratic National Committee in a major rebuke to the party’s new chairman, Ken Martin...."

"The departures of [Randi] Weingarten and [Lee] Saunders represent a significant erosion of trust in the D.N.C. — the official arm of the national party — during a moment in which Democrats are still locked out of power and grappling for a message and messenger to lead the opposition to President Trump. In their resignation messages, the two union chiefs suggested that under Mr. Martin’s leadership, the D.N.C. was failing to expand its coalition. Both labor leaders had supported Mr. Martin’s rival in the chairmanship race, Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party...."

I'm reading "Two Top Union Leaders Quit D.N.C. Posts in Dispute With Chairman/Randi Weingarten, head of one of the nation’s most influential teachers unions, and Lee Saunders, the president of a large union of public workers, each pointed to Ken Martin’s leadership" (NYT).

Why did it take so long to find Vance Boelter if he was right near his house with his getaway car parked in front?

Why did the big manhunt take 43 hours?

ADDED: Here's my other question. Boelter (it seems) attacked 2 political figures and also their spouse. Isn't it unusual for an assassin (if that's what he was) to go after the spouse?

"Anyone who has read or heard about Dale Carnegie’s 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' knows that charm follows a formula..."

"... (mainly, offer specific praise and focus on the other person’s problems rather than your own concerns). A.I. agents run these scripts better than we can. They 'are really good at making you feel seen,' [said Rob Brooks, 'an evolutionary biologist who set out recently to test A.I.’s ability to play on our social instincts, wrote that his Replika chatbot always wants to hear about his day, asks great follow-up questions and "really gets me."']... With each generation of innovation, A.I. gets better at manipulating human 'algorithms': the impulses that we share with our fellow primates, especially our desire to like and be liked, just as chimpanzees groom one another to strengthen social bonds...."

From "Charisma Rules the World" by Molly Worthen. Worthen, a historian, wrote a book called "Spellbound: How Charisma Shaped American History From the Puritans to Donald Trump."

"Mr. Trump’s abrasive personal style and love of chaos are the opposite of a Replika chatbot’s soothing, frictionless responses. Yet both appeal in our secular, disconnected age, when many Americans choose to sit alone scrolling TikTok conspiracy theories instead of joining live human beings in a church, school board meeting, bowling league, Scout troop or any of the other depopulated relics of an earlier, more connected time.... Compared with the sense of purpose and identity that past generations found in sturdy communities, now 'it’s very difficult to tell the story of who you are and what you’re doing,' Dr. Kommers said. 'Psychology and A.I. don’t have a way to help us with that. That’s one of the reasons there’s this pervasive feeling that technology doesn’t make our lives better.'"

Sunrise — 5:24, 5:44.

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

“He sought out militant Islamists in order to share the gospel and tell them that violence wasn’t the answer.”

From “Who Is Vance Boelter? The Minnesota Lawmaker Shooting Suspect/The 57-year-old worked in security and as a pastor. A list found in his car included prominent abortion-rights supporters in Minnesota, according to an official” (WSJ).

"Fire Circle 5 Closed Until Further Notice/Turtle Nesting in Pit!"

This morning, in Madison.

"We recently had a job candidate come in to give a presentation as part of the interview process and bring family members with them — their spouse and several children."

"This included a 1-year-old who the candidate carried around and interacted with, repeatedly interrupting their own presentation. The candidate also kicked off their shoes and walked around barefoot during the presentation...."

From "Wait, People Are Bringing Their Whole Family to Job Interviews? And kicking off their shoes?" (NYT).

"In its various iterations across books and films, the dementia tragedy narrative tells a story of inexorable decline and universal diminishment..."

"... in which the afflicted person steadily vacates her body until she becomes essentially absent. While this process may include moments of lucidity or levity, nothing substantially positive, life-giving or new can emerge for the person or her family and friends — because the person as person is disappearing. 'My mother is just a body now,' Ms. Jong-Fast writes. 'She has dementia. She has breath and hair and pretty blue eyes but Erica Jong the person has left the planet.' She is 'dissolving,' 'slipping away,'  'a faint fragment,' 'an echo,' 'a zombie.' The trouble with this well established approach is not that the tragedy narrative is completely false."

Writes Lynn Casteel Harper — a Baptist minister and the author of "On Vanishing: Mortality, Dementia, and What It Means to Disappear" — in "We May Soon Be Telling a Very Different Kind of Story About Dementia" (NYT).

"They just keep going. They don’t care about anyone.... They’re all French. The French mentality is that even if something is banned, you still do it and it doesn’t matter."

Said Chantal, 73, from the French city Nancy, quoted in "Why Parisians have declared war on reckless cyclists/Efforts to turn the French capital into a two-wheeled paradise are running into opposition from those who think riders are a 'symbol of aggression'" (London Times).

Closer to home, the London Times also has this, about bikes in Britain: "My day on the super e-bikes fuelling the phone-snatching epidemic/Small, speedy and silent, electric off-roaders are the criminals’ vehicle of choice and helping power an urban crime wave."

"It looked more like a repurposed Pride rally than an anti-Trump rally, really, and that’s because it was."

"Boston’s Pride parade got repurposed into the 'No Kings but Drag Kings' parade. This was smart in terms of boosting the crowd size — there were a lot more people present than attended the rather pallid anti-Elon protest I attended in Boston a few months ago, which drew numbers in the dozens. This event definitely drew thousands. But while there was plenty of anti-Trump stuff, I’m not sure there was any more than a regular Pride parade would have featured...."

Glenn Reynolds reports — with photos — from the Boston "No Kings" event.

Makes me kind of wish I'd walked downtown to get some pictures of the Madison march. I was wary of violence. You never know.

But here's David Blaska covering the Madison event, with photos. Text: "'No Kings,' like many a partisan demonstration, was a BYO punch bowl of Leftist causes: End the War on Drugs. No Public Land Sales. Trans rights. My Body, My Choice. And, unforgivably 'Free Gaza.' No outward support for the Ayatollah, at least. Our favorite placard: 'Local Unpaid Agitator.' Note this well: at least nine of 10 signs were home made. My fellow Republicans will dismiss this as the work of George Soros and his checkbook at their peril...."

How to finally make that left turn.

A TikTok demonstration of excellent lateral thinking and deft execution:

"The recurring anti-war messaging that pops up throughout the display, particularly in his scratchy drawings, is both a Japanese artistic trope — think Yoko Ono..."

"... and an unstated recognition of something we forget too easily in the West: that we dropped two atom bombs on Japan to fast-forward the end of the Second World War, and that this racist assault would never have been inflicted on a European nation. What we have here is kids v annihilation."

I'm reading "Drawing like a kid isn’t child’s play — but does it deserve an exhibition?/Picasso and Miró prized naivety and there’s more to the infantile cartoons of Yoshitomo Nara at the Hayward Gallery than meets the eye" (London Times). 

I was surprised at "this racist assault would never have been inflicted on a European nation." "Never" is a strong word. The war with Germany was over by the time the atom bomb was ready, but we had other bombs and we used them very harshly against the Germans. We used dehumanizing stereotypes against the Japanese and also against the Germans. I'm disgusted to see "this racist assault would never have been inflicted on a European nation" in the London Times.

The Times art critic is Waldemar Januszczak, who was born in England to parents who were Polish refugees of WWII. 

Here's the Yoshitomo Nara art:

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A post shared by Hayward Gallery (@hayward.gallery)

"In the past I would typically ignore the flowers in the local park; now I actively seek them out. And when I’m in the kitchen I’ll inhale the aromas..."

"... that are readily available in my spice rack, and I pay greater attention to the fumes emanating from the boiling pots and pans. I now consider smell training to be an essential part of my routine. I find it to be pleasantly meditative, leaving me mentally grounded in much the same way as my daily yoga. And while I cannot say that I’ve noticed a huge leap in brainpower, I am optimistic that I am protecting my brain from future decline. This morning I made my espresso as normal and sniffed the cup hopefully. For the first time since I began my smell training, the aroma hit me hard. I couldn’t help but smile when I realised that I had, quite literally, learnt to wake up and smell the coffee, and I shall never take my nose for granted again."

I'm reading "Wake up and smell the coffee — the new way to train your brain/Loss of smell can signal a decline in mental health. David Robson discovered how to improve it" (London Times).

The author is only 39, so his ability to revive his sense of smell is very different from mine. He had luck with one of those smell kits where you sniff at various essential oils — eucalyptus, lemon, rose, clove. Keep trying. Practice smelling. I've already done that. Imagine telling blind people to look harder and deaf people to listen closely. What if that worked?