"This disaster was an ideological choice. If states are the laboratories of democracy, cities had become its meth labs."

"San Francisco spent the covid era limiting the tools and tactics available to law enforcement. In 2019, it became the first major U.S. city to ban police from using facial recognition technology. The 8-1 vote was a knee-jerk response to an innovation that has since become a ubiquitous feature on phones and in airports and office lobbies. Aaron Peskin, the city supervisor who sponsored the bill, said the city had an 'outsize responsibility to regulate the excesses of technology' because San Francisco was viewed as the headquarters of U.S. innovation. The posturing led to an outsize increase in the crime rate and an outsize population exodus from the Bay Area."

I'm reading "Why is Trump backing off San Francisco? These results. Democrat Daniel Lurie is using technology to make the city safe again" (WaPo).

"CNN really heralds the world of Twitter and social networks and interactivity. During the Persian Gulf War, you had a live war for the first time..."

"... without commercial breaks. You’d see bombs dropping and people screaming and fire engines roaring. Everything is immediate. It’s the world we live in today. He’s the father of that world."

Said Ken Auletta, "a Turner biographer and media writer for the New Yorker,' quoted in "Ted Turner, cable TV visionary who created CNN, dies at 87/His sprawling legacy encompassed conservation, philanthropy and professional sports, and his bellicosity and bravado earned him the nickname 'Mouth of the South'" (WaPo).

He's the father of the world we live in today, but I bet you're gearing up to inform me that he was married to Jane Fonda.

"The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against The New York Times on Tuesday..."

"... claiming that the paper had engaged in 'unlawful employment practices' and had discriminated against a white male employee who did not get a sought-after promotion.... The complaint quotes from Times diversity and inclusion reports in recent years, including a 2021 'Call to Action' that set a goal of increasing the number of Black and Latino employees. The reports 'detailed N.Y.T.’s express efforts to make employment decisions on the basis of race and sex to achieve its desired demographic goals,' the complaint says. 'A decrease in the percentage of White male employees (whether new hires, existing employees or those in leadership, as appropriate) was a necessary consequence for the N.Y.T. to achieve these results.'..."

The New York Times examines litigation brought against it, in "U.S. Sues The New York Times, Claiming Discrimination Against a White Man/The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said the paper had engaged in 'unlawful employment practices' against the man, who did not get a sought-after promotion."

"According to the complaint, the complainant was interviewed for the job but was not selected for a panel interview. 'The four candidates advanced to the panel interview stage matched the race and/or sex characteristics N.Y.T. sought to increase in its leadership,' the complaint says. According to the complaint, the final pool of candidates consisted of 'a white woman, a Black man, an Asian female and a multiracial female.'..."

What do you think is more likely?

There was something wrong with that one white male employee who didn't advance to the panel interview.

That one man exemplifies how many white men have fared at the NYT and elsewhere over the years.

 

pollcode.com free polls

Stop motion animation that's so good it's actually more than you might want in one dose.

ニャッキの伊藤有壱さんにお声掛け頂き、コマ撮りの展覧会に一作家として参加しています。私はコマ撮り分野ではない場所から活動をはじめて、デザインの視点でのコマ撮りに取り組んできましたが、今回初めてコマ撮り界の本丸の方々とご一緒でき嬉しいです。今6年目のマッチ撮影素材等を展示しています pic.twitter.com/Ng1VkRKRwE

— okazakitomohiro (@oo_kk_aa) May 6, 2026

What do we think of this vivid A.I.-generated Spencer Pratt ad?

Oh my God. This is GREAT.

SPENCER PRATT Campaign Ad for Mayor. pic.twitter.com/G81H6c0QJx

— Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) May 6, 2026

Watch the video first, then pick the opinion that's closest to yours:

Brilliant use of A.I. to convey a rock-solid message.

Gets your attention and makes a great point.

Excellent but devolves into physical violence that distracted me from the message.

Garish. Sick. I hate A.I., violence against specific people, whiteface on a black woman. Terrible.

 

pollcode.com free polls

"When [Grok] produced a 'corrected' version of my face, unrecognisable yet eerily similar to every airbrushed influencer..."

"... I closed my laptop and laughed. In my thirties I have enough context and confidence to know I don’t need to remodel my face like it’s a damp two-bed riddled with asbestos. But at 16 I’m not so sure I would have found it funny. I might have taken it as a blueprint, a glimpse of how I was supposed to look, and chased it down into the rabbit hole."

Writes Lydia Veljanovski, in "The new rise of female looksmaxxing/I tried AI apps suggesting surgery and rating young women who want to be 'Staceys'" (London Times).

"[B]reast reduction and implant-removal procedures have surpassed enlargements for the first time. This is amid a cultural shift away from 'exaggerated curves'..."

"... to a smaller, lighter, more 'delicate' shape, aka 'ballerina boobs,' also known as 'yoga tits.' Well, this is all great to know. I look forward to hearing this kind of talk applied to male appendages.... But may I also say that I suspect much of this might be a load of balls? Could the well-endowed women who are having reductions simply be sick of having back pain and two grooves on their shoulders like a workman’s ditch? Could the women having their implants removed simply have realised it’s hard to get clothes to fit and they don’t want to hoik two silicone jellyfish everywhere with them that may at some point leak?"

Writes Carol Midgley, in "Now is no time to have a voluminous bosom (and M&S won’t measure you)/It turns out that big ones are over and the ‘ballerina boob’ is in" (London Times).

I like that word "hoik." It has an interesting array of meanings. According to Wiktionary:

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"Mr. DeCock hasn’t left New York in as long as he can remember. He barely even goes to Brooklyn."

"'Everything I do is in the neighborhood,' he said.... What Mr. DeCock doesn’t do, he said, is buy clothes or shop for much of anything, including groceries. He does not drink coffee at home. His fridge is empty.... Mr. DeCock... stopped cooking after the pandemic, when he admitted to himself that he was terrible at it. Now, he goes out for almost every meal — although he often skips lunch or dinner without noticing. He might run across the street for an order of the $27 seitan scaloppine at his favorite vegan restaurant, or walk a few blocks to a Mexican restaurant, where he’ll order the vegetarian enchiladas for $24.50. When Mr. DeCock is home and not working or sleeping, he’s often watching television. His big splurge is cable, his Spectrum bill is $250 a month. He also pays for Netflix, $19.99 a month, and Hulu, $18.99 a month. A Colorado native, Mr. DeCock sometimes misses nature, so he compensates by watching reality television shows about people who have to survive in the wilderness."

I'm reading "Affording New York/How a Hairdresser and Painter Lives on $70,000 a Year in Chelsea" (NYT). The 750 square foot studio apartment, in the Hotel Chelsea, costs $2700 a month.

"Affording New York" is a series. I love seeing how people express who they are by how they economize. This is the case of someone who's really splurging on food and television and making it work by harshly scrimping on travel and anything that might be shopped for. Gerald DeCock, 67, lives in a great part of town and he just stays put, getting the most out of that precise place. It's not just money he saves.  He saves a lot of time by avoiding all shopping and staying off the subway and every other form of transportation. Frankly, this way of life is appealing quite aside from the question of making it fit $70,000 a year. 

"I’m a professional liberal... and even I don’t think I could tell you what liberalism’s vision is, or who its leaders are, at this moment."

"In some way, liberalism never really recovered from the Obama era — when it had this grand victory in electing America’s first Black president; when it had this thoughtful, deliberate and, frankly, quite popular liberal leader. Then it ended in Donald Trump’s being elected — not once but twice. But here’s the thing: Donald Trump is not working out. He is not making people want more of what he is...."

Writes Ezra Klein, in "The Book That Changed How I Think About Liberalism" (NYT).

Klein is reading books looking for the answer. The book referred to in the title is "The Lost History of Liberalism," and here's the interview he does with the author, Helena Rosenblatt. There's a lot of talk about the historical meaning of the word "liberal," which hasn't got much to do with the predicament of the Democratic Party in recent years. What was "this grand victory" for liberalism in electing Obama? Klein only refers to Obama's race and demeanor! 

"[T]he administration is raising the question of whether allowing transgender women to enroll at a women’s college — and providing access to 'women-only' spaces such as bathrooms, dormitories and locker rooms — violates civil rights protections for women...."

"Smith [College], one of the nation’s largest women’s schools with about 2,500 students, has been admitting transgender students since 2015, along with several other top women’s colleges. The issue became a lightning rod at women’s colleges after a transgender applicant was denied acceptance to Smith in 2013 because her gender identity did not match her financial aid forms. Since then, most women’s colleges updated their admissions policies to welcome transgender applicants. One notable exception has been Sweet Briar College in central Virginia, which does not admit transgender students and helps students in transition transfer to another college...."

From "The Trump administration is investigating Smith College over admitting transgender students" (NYT).

These schools became incapable of freely choosing their own policy after "The issue became a lightning rod" in 2013. If this Trump investigation ends up forcing Smith to exclude transgender women, it will only be forced to do what it originally wanted to do. Obviously, there's a big difference between being forced by social and political pressure and being forced by the government. It's not as though the inclusion of transgender women was required by the government... not that it didn't try. It did. In the Biden years.

The new chore is the pre-chore chore of making chores seem fun.

I'm reading the WaPo article titled "The secret to making chores so fun that you look forward to them/Strategies such as a points system, timed challenges and even 'the poop rule' can lend some excitement to mundane tasks such as decluttering or mopping the floor" (gift link).

 

And the secret to making headlines so fun you have to clip is to include bait like "the poop rule." But I will go in there to save you from the temptation and give you more time for brainwashing yourself into the enjoyment of chores that, if done, will actually benefit you. 

"The poop rule" is: "When decluttering, ask yourself, 'If this item was covered in poop, would I still keep it?'"

That's a little harsh. I prefer the rule: If your friend were decluttering and wanted to deaccession this item, would you add it to your collection of stuff?

Anyway... I made that a gift link so the pay wall wouldn't factor into your experience of temptation to click. Otherwise it's sour grapes: I couldn't get past the paywall anyway. No, you can get it, but can you resist? There might be a useful tip or 2. 

"They said garage bands are coming back with kids, which is kind of means nature is healing."

From a Joe Rogan conversation that starts here:

From the transcript, which blends the voices of the 4 interlocutors: "It's so sad that rock is dead.... We were talking about that. Yeah, it's all queefy now. When was the last time.... Where's the new rock bands? The new Zeppelin... It used to be the biggest part of music. Rolling Stones, AC/DC.... It used to be the biggest part of music was rock and roll. What the fuck? That's kind of crazy.... What happened to rock? What happened to rock? Who are the biggest? They said garage bands are coming back with kids, which kind of means nature is healing. Yeah, that's a good sign.Yeah, kids are tired of playing video games. Want something real. But the thing about that that doesn't make sense about rock music is everybody still loves it, right? Everybody still plays covers. Oasis is doing giant arenas all over the place. I took acid at that Oasis concert...."

And that last line changes the topic. Too bad! I wanted to hear more about the return of garage bands and why that's a sign of health, but then I understand the argument. I just wanted to spend more time on it and on Joe Rogan, it seems they take every opportunity to get back onto drugs. 

"Trump to deport hundreds of bison from Montana."

That's a headline at the London Times.

Subheadline: "The American Prairie Foundation has had its license to graze conservation herds of bison on federal pastures revoked by the Department of the Interior."

From the text: "The Department of the Interior, which has a bison as its logo, has revoked the licence of a rewilding charity trying to restore the natural splendour of the 'American Serengeti,' the eco-diverse range of grasslands home to wolves, pronghorns, grizzly bears and mountain lions.... Doug Burgum, the secretary of the interior, who owns a ranch in neighbouring North Dakota, has favoured the arguments of cattle farmers eager to graze their cow herds on cheap federal lands instead...."

"What a welcome and much-needed reminder of a President who valued art, beauty, and decency. A glaring contrast to the garish, self-serving chaos of the current one."

Says one commenter at the NYT article "The Audacity of Art at the Obama Presidential Center/Barack and Michelle Obama commissioned 30 artists to create work for their campus, which starts visitor previews next week on the South Side of Chicago."

That's a gift link so you can see the photos of the artwork inside the building, which I think is quite good, and so you can gaze at the "View from the Sky Room" photograph that shows a view from the building, looking out through one of the letters of the text from an Obama speech that you can attempt to read if you stand on the ground and gaze upward at the building.

The view from the Sky Room is garish chaos, but the chaos seems designed to give ordinary citizens a place to play, that is, it's not trying to look good, it's trying to offer what can be used. Included in the play equipment is an N.B.A.-size basketball court and a "sledding hill." We'll see how much freewheeling tomfoolery unfolds in this space. The message is casual playfulness for the people, and it is in distinct contrast to the design ideas Trump has been imposing on the White House and elsewhere. His message is grandeur and elegance.

"Across China, hilltops are dotted with wind turbines, and long rows of them span many miles in western deserts."

"Ultrahigh-voltage power lines carry electricity thousands of miles to the energy-hungry factories along China’s coast. Last year, China installed three times as much wind power capacity as the rest of the world combined, even as its turbine exports jumped. The global industry’s center of gravity has shifted decisively: All of the world’s six largest wind turbine manufacturers are Chinese, displacing once-dominant European firms and companies like General Electric...."

I'm reading "As Oil Prices Stay High, China Doubles Down on Wind Power/An industrial policy of subsidies and import restrictions laid the foundations for China to become almost as dominant in wind turbines as in solar panels" (NYT).

Do you wish we were more dominant in wind power, with more hilltops are dotted with wind turbines? Do we want long rows spanning many miles?