"That [burned Limoges] City Hall is at the epicenter of generations of struggle. It's not connected to how I fancy croissants and brie..."

"... and red wine but all I can find now is kebab in a shop blaring rap.... We should be alert to how the history of struggle is obscured by the reactionary and racist commodification of nostalgia and tourism."

"Whereas clowns were naive idiots, bouffons savagely undermined the people in power."

"They were doing something important: using biting and at times cruel humor to undermine systemic injustice. It’s what satirists have done throughout history.... Ali G is a white imbecile—a delusional cultural appropriator—who steals the fashion and lyrics from his favorite gangsta rap and dancehall idols, from Compton to Kingston.... Like a good bouffon, he undermines that establishment—not the culture he loves and borrows from.... Each of my characters has a specific mechanism to encourage people to drop their guards and show what they really believe, prejudices and all. Borat, an antisemitic journalist, exposes Jew hatred, xeno­phobia, sexism, and casual racism. Erran Morad, a stereotype of a tough-guy Israeli commando—'I’ve been in 14 terror attacks,' he says in my new movie Ali G: Who Iz I?, 'and started two'—exposes Islamophobia.... Ali G works on another level. He’s not extreme—he’s just extremely dumb. But his absurd questions lead powerful people to underestimate him and answer in earnest, revealing their own biases...."

Writes Sacha Baron Cohen, in "Why Satire Is No Laughing Matter" (Time). 

According to Baron Cohen, the "bouffon" is a "tradition dated back to 11th century France, where societal outcasts—gay people, heretics, those with deformities—would be let back into their villages once a year to put on shows viciously mocking the ruling class."

I noticed that Time essay because of "What to Know About ‘Ali G: Who Iz I?’ Sacha Baron Cohen has revived his fictional wannabe rapper in a new movie that will be in theaters for just this weekend. Here’s what to know" (NYT).

Here's an excerpt from that (showing why Baron Cohen is highly motivated to justify his continuation of the Ali G character):

"A few years ago, I had the rather rudimentary realization that my aversion to being cold was causing me to shrink my life to fit within the walls of my apartment during winter."

"I’d decline invitations, measuring the worthiness of an activity by its proximity to a thermostat. When I realized being cold is not an emergency — it’s just discomfort, and discomfort can be tolerated — I got a better winter coat and stopped dreading February so much.

I'm reading "Outside Chance/We’ve plunged fully into fall, complete with cozy scarves and puffy vests. Why not venture into the woods?" — by Melissa Kirsch, who draws a distinction between being "outdoorsy" and "outsidey."

The movie I'd like to see is "My Dinner with Robert."

I'm picturing a "My Dinner with Andre" style conversation in a restaurant, and it's Billy Corgan and Robert Smith.

My dream is inspired by something Corgan said in the Popcast podcast at "Billy Corgan Unloads After a Lifetime of 'Mocking, Bullying, Laughing'" (NYT)(audio and transcript):

[W]e were told at some point in the early 2000s that those types of songs with those types of themes were no longer relevant, and off they went. That it was too complicated. The Cure had the same problem. I’ve been friends with Robert [Smith] for many years, and we would sit there somewhere in the early 2000s over a Chinese meal and lament, like, what the hell happened? This emotionally resonant music just seems like it’s been shoved aside by sociopathic influencers with kind of one-note music.... When they sold out alternative ethos for pop domination — in essence, celebrating Rihanna as an alternative star and wiping Siouxsie [Sioux] off the map — that to me was the great betrayal of the alternative ethos. So suddenly all the things that make alternative music so beautiful — the messiness, the dissonance, the out-of-tune guitars — it was like, nah, that’s just too messy. We don’t have time for that anymore. I started literally comparing the guitar in interviews to the saxophone....

There they are, Corgan and Smith in a Chinese restaurant, puzzling out what the hell happened. It's the Wally/Andre situation. There was an art form. It was vital and they were in the center of it, and where are they now? What happened? 

Sunrise, Part 2.

Sunrise, Part 1.

"Testosterone levels have dropped worldwide by as much as fifty per cent since the nineteen-seventies..."

"... a decrease associated with the rising prevalence of obesity, because excess fat tissue decreases the production of testosterone and its binding proteins.... The Trump Administration draws a sharp distinction in legitimacy between the use of hormone therapy in the case of transgender-affirming care versus in cisgender-affirming care.... 'The trans population I take care of—a fair number of them aren’t looking to become something different than the gender they feel they are,' [endocrinologist Brad] Anawalt told me. 'They’re not looking to become supermen or superwomen.' This was a provocative suggestion: that transgender care, by offering harmony between a body and an identity, is, in a sense, naturalizing, whereas TRT used to compensate for insecurity and enhance masculinity might be the more unnatural intervention...."

From "Is the Military Low-T? New data suggest that a quarter of American servicemen may have low testosterone. That doesn’t mean what Pete Hegseth thinks it does" (The New Yorker).

A gentle non-dispute about the whereabouts of toys.

As “Winnie-the-Pooh” turns 100, Britain is renewing calls for the original stuffed bear and his friends to return from the New York Public Library. The library has resisted requests, citing the toys’ age and popularity. Oh, bother! https://t.co/hMAhdlFRpO https://t.co/wTquTiQL7q

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 15, 2026

Response from the British Embassy in Washington:

The Kiffness succinctly sums up American politics.

The last time we noticed The Kiffness, he was riffing on Trump's "They're eating the dogs." He's South African and said he's non-partisan. He's got a special rapport with cats.

Sunrise.

Just the 2 of us.

"Interacting with the horses 'helps us attune to energy, ours and theirs, and seems to create a sense of safety — not just in the head, but centered, felt, and grounded in the body....'"

I'm reading "6 Horse-Centered Retreats That Go Beyond Trail RidesI/n new programs, interactions with horses go beyond riding to meditation, yoga and therapy that practitioners say can help restore life balance" (NYT).

Top-rated comment over there: "You can go to all these wildly expensive resorts and the actual horse encounters are extra? Go to a stable somewhere and volunteer to muck out stalls."

Yeah, take a workation. Oh, no, I can't use "workation" to mean a vacation that consists of doing some romantic form of work like operating a horse-drawn plow or candlemaking or pottery. That particular portmanteau is already being used to mean continuing to do your regular work remotely, in some nice vacation spot.

Meanwhile, there are these elaborate fantasy vacations. Go to the link and see photographs of people lying down while a horse more or less kisses them. I can't imagine going all the way to, say, Indonesia, to submit to the ministrations of a horse. It's presented as therapeutic, but there you'd be, expecting luxury and spirituality, surrounded by other people with the same expectations and dependent on a business that strives to give you what you paid for. 

"You might have wondered, as I did, whether it’s even possible to authentically recreate such a famous experiment."

"'Stanford Prison Experiment' has become a cultural shorthand for sinister power dynamics. As a participant, wouldn’t you know how things turned out last time? Wouldn’t you try, equipped with the knowledge that cameras were capturing your every move for millions of viewers, to make things not turn out that way?"

I'm reading "This landmark experiment was horrifying. Why is Netflix performing it again? The Stanford Prison Experiment has been rebirthed for your viewing, uh, pleasure" (WaPo)(gift link).

"The Justice Department charged two former FBI officials with lying to Congress about an investigation around a laptop belonging to former president Joe Biden’s son Hunter."

WaPo reports (gift link).

In 2020, Floris and Benavides briefed Republican lawmakers about the laptop as part of a congressional investigation into Hunter Biden. Sen. Chuck Grassley (Iowa), then the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, claimed that the FBI officials gave that briefing as a way to frame the investigation as Russian disinformation....

"The Horse-drawn Carriage in New York City is a quintessential New York experience. So sad that, for political reasons, we will see it go!"

 Said President Trump, quoted in "New York City Passes Horse Carriage Ban, Ending a Central Park Tradition/A passenger’s death in June became the impetus for the City Council to ban the practice, but the bill will likely face a court challenge before being implemented in 2028" (NYT).

I don't see the "political reasons." It seems as though the ban is precisely about the subject of the ban, the safety and ethics of using horses this way in New York City. Weighing the pros and cons produces a difference of opinion and one side had the power and therefore got its way. I see no basis for saying there was something "political" as if the real dispute was about something else.

Was it "a quintessential New York experience"? Yeah, it probably was. Best seen from a distance though. Did I ever do it? Yeah, once. In the 1970s. Not recommended. 

"The thing that you learn as an older person too, is that you really don’t love that many things. You think you do, but you don’t."

"You find that out when it’s too late. By that point you have passed up so many of the great things that you wish you had and you accumulated all this stuff that is absolutely worthless."

Said Isaac Mizrahi, quoted in "A New Guide on the Endless Quest for Personal Style/A new book from the RealReal, the secondhand designer retailer, has ideas for how to develop taste that is your own" (NYT).