A walk in the woods.

Late afternoon, yesterday.

"Pete Hegseth gets an 'A' PLUS, PLUS, PLUS for his defense against a disgruntled, angry, defeated, former Congressman, Thomas Massie, a TOTAL LOSER!"

Signed "President DJT" at Truth Social.

Here's the entire press conference, 25 minutes long:

"Well, uh, good morning. I'll get right to it. What one disgruntled and defeated congressman is attempting is not oversight and it's not accountability. It's a political spectacle, a personal manifesto driven by ego and resentment. Time for one man's final days in Congress to try to do damage to this president, this country, and most irresponsibly the warriors who defend it. It's a farce, and it's a stunt, and everybody knows it.

"Shere Hite? Even those who remember her influential book 'The Hite Report,' a crowdsourced account of female sexuality..."

"... published 50 years ago [last] month, are not 100 percent sure how to pronounce her first name: like Sherry but without the 'y.'... The original 'Hite Report' was compiled from around 3,000 responses to anonymous survey questions printed in 'rainbow ink on pastel-colored scrap paper and offcuts of old Bingo cards' and adorned — prefiguring Instagram — 'with love hearts, cupid bows and arrows, and starbursts.' Were her returns questioned for statistical bias toward the dissatisfied? Sure. But it’s not like that white-coated Harvard-Yale study about women over 40 having less than a 2 percent chance of marrying, so loudly trumpeted in Newsweek in 1986, held up to scrutiny. Published first by Macmillan, 'The Hite Report' was perhaps the peak in a wave of literature exploring women’s libido that included Nancy Friday’s 'My Secret Garden' (1973), a collection of increasingly outré fantasies; and 'The Sensuous Woman' (1969), by 'J,' a.k.a Terry Garrity, which was more on the Cosmopolitan man-pleasing, Saran Wrap continuum.... Hite’s book was reviewed in these pages by Erica Jong, whose novel 'Fear of Flying” was itself a sensation...."

I'm reading "50 Years Later, a Hit Book on Women’s Sexuality Deserves Some Love/Its author became a pop culture celebrity, and sometimes punchline, but 'The Hite Report' helped make way for frank discussions about pleasure" (NYT).

I like to blog articles about "The Hite Report," because I was part of the crowd in that crowd source, one of the 3,000 respondents, though I don't remember any strange rainbow-ink printing or "love hearts." It was a normal multi-page stapled xerox. I think!

"After the death of his wife, Diana, the retired Notre Dame professor and poet John Matthias wrote a long letter to friends and family. "

"He detailed the uniquely devastating circumstances of his wife’s decline, as well as the events that led to his own disorienting commitment to a psychiatric ward. He was surprised to learn that a colleague had submitted the letter for consideration to a major national publication, which published it...."

Writes Stephen P. Neary who animated the story, at the NYT.

That's a gift link, so please don't miss the beautifully drawn animation called "Living With a Visionary."

"It’s easy to assume that we sit at the pinnacle of human knowledge and achievement. Zettabytes of information are just a click away..."

"... we jet halfway across the world in hours; we talk to anyone, anywhere, all while satellites circle the globe, DNA is sequenced and spliced and small packets of electrochemical energy hum with power at our disposal. And yet archaeology consistently turns up hints of ancient accomplishments, buried for centuries. Just this year, researchers have discovered poisons used by early Homo sapiens, wooden tools carved by early hominins, well-engineered Maya plazas, terraces and other architectural feats and a centuries-old board game...."

From "How Did Greek Fire Work? And 6 Other Lost Inventions" (NYT)(a gift link, like all NYT links now).

I think I'm seeing "zettabytes" for the first time. What is a zettabyte?

"I felt completely alienated from the other students and underappreciated in general."

"Recently I came upon a programme I saved for a 1956 run of Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt at the Playhouse’s West Balcony Theatre in Pasadena. I remember desperately wanting to play Peer Gynt, but I was cast in two small parts: 'slave' and 'ugly boy'.... Besides [me and Gene Hackman], the people at the Playhouse were all beautiful. These tall, perfect blond guys like Robert Redford, 'walking surfboards,' as the actor and screenwriter Buck Henry used to say, the kind of guys who’d get cast on Bonanza. They were always wearing fake guns in holsters in the hallway at school, and they would practise drawing their weapons. That was a leading man. We were character actors, and that was just fine with us. To be frank, we were snobs...."

Writes Dustin Hoffman, in "Dustin Hoffman: Duvall, Hackman and our wild 1960s in New York/In 1958, a terrified Hoffman arrived in Manhattan to try and make it as an actor. In an extract from his new memoir, he recounts a thrilling decade of odd jobs, partying with Robert Duvall and sleeping on Gene Hackman’s kitchen floor" (London Times).

Sunrise.

Asked about UFOs, Trump raves about handsome pilots.

"I'm not too much of a believer, but I sat in the Oval Office, first term and a little bit second term, meeting with Air Force pilots that are really good, solid people. These are not people that you would say are conspiracy theorists. They don't even know what it means. But they're great, great pilots. Young, handsome. They have beautiful, nice flat tops. I'd like to have a haircut just like them. They look perfect, like Tom Cruise. … They're thin, you know, very thin and very everything. And… they're the real deal. And they've told me things that are very strange."

Quoted in "10 takeaways from Trump's 60 Minutes interview: Why GOP lost the midterms, what went wrong on immigration and more" (CBS).

I just want to know if the aliens are good-looking. And which A-list celebrity they most resemble. I'm on a Nicolas Cage kick this month, so I hope they look like Nicolas Cage....

"One of his favourite places to meet women was said to have been Golden Bridge, an elite Kundalini yoga studio..."

"Brand swiftly became a favourite with the instructor, Tej Kaur Khalsa, a distinctive-looking elderly woman who wore a turban and white, flowing dresses.... Monique Reymond [attended a class and remembers] the crowd of students went silent with anticipation as Khalsa took to the stage.... 'And the first words out of Tej’s mouth were, "Does anybody have a hair tie for Russell?"' she said. Reymond remembered the class frantically searching their handbags to be the one to present Brand with the hair tie. 'Russell Brand’s hair was contained. Russell Brand — I don’t know that he was contained,' she added, describing how Brand frequently became involved with women in the class. 'He was sharp and funny and there were many people that responded to that. There were other people who did not and found the whole thing to be really disturbing. There were people who found it upsetting that Tej would allow someone to use her class as a dating app.'"

From "Inside Russell Brand’s Hollywood bubble, where nobody could say no/His fame soared after he married one of the world’s biggest pop stars, but former insiders reveal a world of tantrums, sexual excess and troubling rumours" (London Times).

UPDATE: "Russell Brand jailed for ten years for rape and sexual assaults — as it happened/The judge criticised the actor’s ‘staggering arrogance’ as he was sentenced for one rape and three sexual assaults" (London Times):

Donald Trump on "60 Minutes."

Here's Douthat's "10 takeaways from Trump's 60 Minutes interview: Why GOP lost the midterms, what went wrong on immigration and more" (CBS).

"But what has felt particularly foreign was how much she had shared with the chatbot, and how much she had kept from them."

"Bowen had always shared every detail of her life, no matter how small: the arguments with her roommates, what she ate for dinner. Before the chatbot appeared to wedge itself between them, such an important decision about her medication would have undoubtedly come up. 'Once she had ChatGPT,' Qun said, 'she didn’t talk to us as much.'"

From "She Trusted ChatGPT With Her Medication Decisions. It Cost Her Everything. The chatbot helped a woman taper off a lifesaving drug and hide the plan from her doctors" (NYT).

"First dubbed the 'Cry Baby' pedal, Casher also recorded a demo for instrument stores showcasing how to use the pedal..."

"... as well as an accompanying single. Both the pedal and the single failed to catch on with the music-playing public upon release in 1967. However, Frank Zappa, who used the wah-wah pedal in 1966 when Casher sat in with the Mothers of Invention, gifted a pedal to Jimi Hendrix, solidifying the wah-wah's place in music history soon after...."

From "DEL CASHER, GUITARIST WHO INVENTED THE WAH-WAH PEDAL, DEAD AT 88/Musician and inventor who played with artists like Elvis Presley, Gene Autry, and Frank Zappa died Oct. 1 after cancer battle" (Rolling Stone).

"What happened today?"

ADDED: The video identifies itself as "Made with AI/Sounds or visuals were altered or fully generated." Mental note: Everything good is fake.

ALSO: I tested my "Everything good is fake" hypothesis on Grok, and it told me that's "too strong," because "Real versions of those moments still happen all the time; they’re just harder to find in the algorithm because they tend to be messier, less optimized, and less consistently produced. The AI ones are often cleaner, more consistent, and engineered to hit the emotional beats efficiently."

That made me think of how fiction works on us — I was recently entranced by the first 9 minutes of the movie "Moonstruck." I realized that I was invested in the story and the characters in a deep way. Everything was so clear and effective. So strategic. That's fiction. Of course, it's fake.

Sunrise.

Rob Sand... the new governor of Iowa... the ex-model.

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"I am pleased to announce that the Great Dana White, a violent Fighter and Warrior, has been offered the job of Press Secretary of the United States."

Wrote President Trump, quoted in "UFC’s Dana White says he will meet Trump on Monday to discuss press secretary offer/Trump’s previous press secretary, Katie Zacharia, left the role in October after just five days on the job" (NBC).

Violent!

I think first of physical force, and it seemed like a crazy word choice, but on consulting the OED, I see that there are a number of "senses relating to strength or severity" including "Of speech or writing: indicative or expressive of strong emotion (now esp. anger, hatred, etc.); fervent, impassioned." And: "Of a person, a person's disposition or support for a cause, etc.: passionate; vehement; characterized by or exhibiting a lack of moderation in action or conduct."

And perhaps that's exactly what Trump wants in a person who will speak for him to the press. If he wants a "Fighter and Warrior," why not someone who conveys strong emotion — vehement, passionate emotion?