Sunrise — 7:27, 7:31.

"Right now, I’m in trouble because the Jewish community is upset. But I cannot express this enough: No matter what you read..."

"... about that show in Boston, you will never see quotation marks around anything I said. They don’t know what I said. It’s all hearsay.... The other night, I said something about Palestine in Boston and got misquoted all over the world... And I will not repeat what I said." 

Said Dave Chappelle, at a show in Raleigh, N.C., quoted in "Dave Chappelle Laments ‘Nightmare’ Facing Israelis and Palestinians/The comedian, whose remarks about the Israel-Hamas war last week made headlines, returned to the subject at a show in North Carolina" (NYT).

"South Park" lands a shot at Disney.

That's just a clip, 2-and-a-half minutes... and the way to watch the whole thing now is to subscribe to Paramount.

If suddenly called on to recite Shakespeare from memory, how would you do?

Judi Dench was on Graham Norton last night to push her new book about her life and work with Shakespeare. After making the point we quote Shakespeare daily without knowing it, this happened: pic.twitter.com/CIhP39b4Bs

— Justin Sherin (@wychstreet) October 27, 2023

L.A. guy finds it stressful to order a "scooped" bagel in NYC.

It's TikTok, so I'm making a page break because I don't want to hear complaints:

"So a couple of years ago, when I was doing some late-summer decluttering of my daughter’s bedroom..."

"... and had to figure out what to do with the dolls she’d outgrown, the answer came to me like a disembodied whisper: 'October’s almost here. Place them out on the lawn.'... Doll decor can be as uncomplicated as dumping a pile of tattered and disfigured dolls on your lawn, because few things are weirder than an unexplained pile of dolls... I suggest letting your own twisted whims serve as your guide. This year, for example, I’ve toyed with sticking several dolls in my shrubbery, limbs akimbo...."

From "The Cheapest, Easiest, Freakiest Halloween Decor Is a Bunch of Old Dolls" (NY Magazine).

Your old trash + your twisted whims = Halloween.

Sunrise — 7:23.

"The American Civil War began in 1861, and people were 'dealing with so much death and warfare in unprecedented ways'..."

"... [said Mandi Shepp, 38, Lily Dale’s former library director and an archives coordinator at the State University of New York at Fredonia]. Many turned to Spiritualism to help cope with the mass sense of loss.... 'Spiritualism offers this very nice, comfortable ideology that these sons that were lost in battle aren’t really gone forever,' she said. In the 1870s, Spiritualists and Freethinkers camped out in what would become Lily Dale during the summertime.... The pursuit of mediumship was particularly appealing to women because 'it was a way for them to create independent careers for themselves and have a job at a time where it wasn’t really seen as a thing you could do,' said Ms. Shepp. Since women were already seen as 'the religious center of their household,' becoming a medium was more socially acceptable than following other career paths. Giving readings in public also allowed for women to speak independently and in front of audiences...."

 
From "This Community Welcomes Mediums, but First You Have to Prove Yourself/A lawsuit against the nonprofit that runs Lily Dale, a New York haven for Spiritualists, has put a spotlight on the hamlet where residents believe death does not exist" (NYT).

"I believe that scripture, the Bible is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority."

Said Mike Johnson, orating just before taking the oath as Speaker of the House:

Transcript. 

Excerpt:

"The hoedown was to celebrate the closing of the harvest season and thrown by Shani Mink, 29, the flower farmer and D.J...."

"...  and also a food-systems educator and advocate, and Peter Treiber Jr., 35, an artist and [grower of] things like bergamot and asparagus on Long Island’s North Fork, where the humble potato farms that once dominated the area are increasingly crowded out by vineyards and the weekend escapes of Manhattanites. Many of the farmers were Manhattanites who had escaped themselves. The oyster farmer, Will Peckham, 31, for example, left a job in corporate finance in the city to start West Robins Oyster Company, a mollusk farm in Peconic Bay about seven years ago. 'I thought it would be a really easy switch, because I had been through this super-grueling desk job in New York... I never knew how hard it could be.'... Sitting on a hay bale was Sara Hyman, 32, who left a job in human resources in 2017 in the city to work at Amber Waves. She seemed to be growing melancholy.... She’d fallen in love with the oyster farmer, Mr. Peckham, but found that with two farmers’ salaries, they were struggling to make ends meet on Long Island. This was her last season on a farm, she said, for good.... She took solace that at least one-half of the couple would keep growing things: Mr. Peckham will remain farming his oysters."

From "They Fled City Jobs. Now, It’s Time for Farm Prom. A group of young urbanites gave up desk jobs to become farmers. They have earned the harvest party" (NYT).

I'm sure Peckham is doing humor. Right?

Didn't we boomers all have back-to-the-land fantasies (and experiences!) back in the day? And didn't the NYT covered our madness too?

"Last Saturday in a small foundry, a man in heat-resistant attire pulled down his gold-plated visor, turned on his plasma torch and sliced into the face of Robert E. Lee."

"The hollow bronze head glowed green and purple as the flame burned through layers of patina and wax. Drops of molten red metal cascaded to the ground."

I'm reading the New York Times version of the story of the melting down of the Charlottesville Robert E. Lee statue.

The Washington Post had its piece up first, with similar ornate prose — "dissolving into a sludge of glowing bronze.... a flash of bluish white light and orange sparks... seven long gashes into Lee’s severed head" — and I blogged it yesterday here. 

I avoid re-blogging something I've already blogged, but that precept doesn't save me from blogging the NYT piece, "The Most Controversial Statue in America Surrenders to the Furnace."  The WaPo article was written by reporters who observed the cutting and melting. The NYT's writer, Erin L. Thompson, also a first-hand witness, is a professor of art crime who has written a relevant book — "Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America's Public Monuments" (Amazon link/commission earned).

So, though I am loath to read any more prose featuring deep gashes and glowing globs, I'm interested in Thompson's take on the ethical problem of destroying a work of art. We're talking about a statue that was already removed from its original position of honor in a public space, that could be moved somewhere else, perhaps to private grounds, to a museum, or into storage. In this case, a choice was made to melt the statue — Robert E. Lee and his horse — with some idea of using the bronze to cast a new sculpture, conveying the anti-Robert E. Lee point of view.

The forest floor after the rain.

Talk about anything you like in the comments.

"Frances Bean Cobain, daughter of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, marries Riley Hawk, son of Tony Hawk, in ceremony officiated by R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe."

Metafilter discusses this event, saying things like: "The bride and groom are 31 and 30 respectively. You cannot fathom how old this headline makes me feel in my bones" and "My 46-year-old self, realizing that Frances is four years older than her father was when he died, is going to be sitting in the semi-dark this evening, listening to old albums and thinking about things."

What movie did I watch?

 

ADDED: Marcus Carman identified the actor: "That's Cornel Wilde."

That caused Yancey Ward to guess: "Well, if that is Cornel Wilde, then a clown makes me think 'Greatest Show on Earth.'"

Ha ha. Does that look like a circus setting? Does Wilde seem like a circus person there?

Then Quaestor got it right: "Leave Her to Heaven."

Think what you will about this movie, but here's my description: A woman marries a man because he looks like her father, and though she's incredibly beautiful, the new husband would rather sit around typing novels and go swimming with his much younger brother and sing folk songs with the hired man than have sex with his wife. It's not a comedy.

"SOMEWHERE IN THE U.S. SOUTH — It was a choice to melt down Robert E. Lee. But it would have been a choice to keep him intact, too."

"So the statue of the Confederate general that once stood in Charlottesville — the one that prompted the deadly 'Unite the Right' rally in 2017 — was now being cut into fragments and dropped into a furnace, dissolving into a sludge of glowing bronze.... With a flash of bluish white light and orange sparks, a trio of foundry workers carved seven long gashes into Lee’s severed head. 'It’s a better sculpture right now than it’s ever been,' one of the metal-casters said. 'We’re taking away what it meant for some people and transforming it.'"

Flowery prose in The Washington Post celebrating the destruction of a work of art — "Charlottesville’s Lee statue meets its end, in a 2,250-degree furnace Melted down in secret, the divisive Confederate monument will be turned into a new piece of public art."

"[O]n Saturday the museum went ahead with its plan in secret at this small Southern foundry, in a town and state The Washington Post agreed not to name because of participants’ fears of violence... They made arrangements for Lee to be melted down while they started collecting ideas from city residents for that new sculpture.... Some [of the witnesses to the melting] said the statue was being destroyed. Others called it a restoration. Depending on who you asked, the bronze was being reclaimed, disrupted, or redeemed to a higher purpose. It was a grim act of justice and a celebration all in one...."

"The welfare society is fundamentally a community, which is based on a mutual trust that we all contribute. All that is being seriously challenged by parallel societies."

Said Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, quoted in "Denmark Aims a Wrecking Ball at ‘Non-Western’ Neighborhoods/A government program is using demolition and relocation to remake neighborhoods with immigrants, poverty or crime" (NYT). 

The term "parallel societies" refers to "segregated enclaves where immigrants do not participate in the wider society or learn Danish, even as they benefit from the country’s generous welfare system."  

The government is getting rid of more than 4,000 public housing units.

"This simple two-by-two truthfulness matrix is a powerful tool for understanding politicians and how we react to them."

From "The Lies We Like: Voters Prefer Transparency to Honesty, but Should They?/We don’t have to start supporting honest people who transparently hold values we don’t share. But we do need to stop supporting transparent people whose commitment to honesty is lacking" by Robin Koerner (Foundation for Economic Education). 

The post was instigated by Lem, who commented on my last post — a post that got the tag "the blog has a theme today" — "Two posts a theme does not make." Now, there are 3.

You don't need to click through to the article to figure out that the person Koerner thinks we need to stop supporting is Trump. But whether you support Trump or not, it's useful to think about why we might like someone whose lies are transparent.

By the way, I see the words "Duplicity" and "Integrity," each on a corner of the matrix. But what words belong on the other 2 corners? "Boring" and "Exciting"? And too bad the words "Untruthful" and "Truthful" are misplaced in the vertical blue rectangle. That's confusing!

"Jamaal Bowman Charged With Setting Off False Fire Alarm/The congressman from New York set off the alarm in the Cannon House Office Building last month as Democrats were stalling for time to read a spending bill."

The NYT reports.

Mr. Bowman will plead guilty to the single false fire alarm charge, and has agreed to pay the maximum fine of $1,000.... Mr. Bowman was accused of intentionally pulling the alarm to cause a delay, but he claimed it was accidental.... 

“I am embarrassed to admit that I activated the fire alarm, mistakenly thinking it would open the door. I regret this and sincerely apologize for any confusion this caused,” Mr. Bowman said at the time. “But I want to be very clear: This was not me, in any way, trying to delay any vote. It was the exact opposite — I was trying urgently to get to a vote.”

I see the blog has a theme today: transparent lying.  

The ACLU sides with Trump: The gag order is unconstitutional.

 The Hill reports.

[U.S. district judge Tanya] Chutkan’s gag order, which is currently paused, bars Trump and his attorneys from speech that would “target” foreseeable witnesses, prosecutors in the case and court personnel....

The ACLU said the order is vague enough to violate Trump’s due process rights, contending he “cannot possibly know” what he is permitted to say.

“The entire order hinges on the meaning of the word ‘target,’” the ACLU wrote in its brief. “But that meaning is ambiguous, and fails to provide the fair warning that the Constitution demands, especially when, as here, it concerns a prior restraint on speech.”

The civil liberties group also contended the order is overly broad in violation of Trump’s First Amendment rights, saying it could prevent him from speaking about key points in the campaign, including the results of the 2020 presidential election and the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Boldface added (to highlight First Amendment doctrine). 

This is the D.C. federal court case, but there's also a gag order in the civil fraud trial in state court in New York. Trump has been fined twice for violating the state court gag order, and Trump took the stand in in that case yesterday.

The state court judge, Arthur Engoron, questioned Trump about his saying there is a “very partisan judge with a person who is very partisan sitting alongside him, perhaps even more partisan than he is.” Was he talking about the judge's law clerk? Trump testified that he was talking about Michael Cohen! How was Michael Cohen, a witness, "sitting alongside" the judge?

Did Trump lie under oath? That's a separate matter, of course, with no bearing on the question whether the gag orders violate Trump's free-speech rights. 

ADDED: If you're trying to picture the seating arrangement: "The judge's clerk, Allison Greenfield, typically sits right next to the judge, and during pretrial hearings often questioned attorneys for the two sides herself."

At the Mossy Rock Café...

... you can write about whatever you want.

Oh! They actually elected a Speaker of the House.

Hmm. Okay. Mike Johnson.

"Rep. Mike Johnson elected speaker, breaking weeks-long stalemate" (WaPo): "He is antiabortion, voted against Ukraine aid and supports LGBTQ restrictions.... Johnson received votes from all 220 Republicans present."

From the NYT: "Who Is Mike Johnson? One of the House’s Staunchest Conservatives. A lawyer and former chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, he played a pivotal role in congressional efforts to overturn the 2020 election.": "Mr. Johnson’s hallmark in Congress has been combining his hard-line views with a gentle style. He emerged at a moment when members of the conference were worn down and ready to accept someone who they did not view as an obvious choice. Instead, he passed a lowered bar: They view him as someone sufficiently conservative and who they do not personally despise."

"The footage has become a widely cited piece of evidence as Israeli and American officials have made the case that an errant Palestinian rocket malfunctioned in the sky..."

"... fell to the ground and caused a deadly explosion at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City. But a detailed visual analysis by The New York Times concludes that the video clip — taken from an Al Jazeera television camera livestreaming on the night of Oct. 17 — shows something else. The missile seen in the video is most likely not what caused the explosion at the hospital. It actually detonated in the sky roughly two miles away, The Times found, and is an unrelated aspect of the fighting that unfolded over the Israeli-Gaza border that night."

 
I'm reading "A Close Look at Some Key Evidence in the Gaza Hospital Blast/A widely cited missile video does not shed light on what happened, a Times analysis concludes" in The New York Times.

"I had a series of caves and each had different amenities – some were next to springs, or near better fishing, hunting and foraging."

"The 'main cave' had a bed in it – by which I mean a big pile of grass and leaves, which was comfortable. It had a bit of a skylight, so the smoke from my fire could rise through it and I could see the stars. I would jam a stick between the cave walls and dry clothes on it, and would keep an old soup can there for boiling water in. That was the cave that had the most resources, but I would move from cave to cave. I’d cache animal hides in one, and if I wanted to treat myself to something special, I’d put a jar of dried mangoes in another... I always had a notebook with me with a photo of my sons.... I missed my sons, but I also knew that this was my time to really heal and reflect...."

Writes Donny Dust, in "A moment that changed me: I had a heart attack at 37 – so I went to live in a cave" (The Guardian).

Now, Dust has "a place," a truck, a TV, and a YouTube channel. 

"Amid the impasse, [Kevin] McCarthy is floating a plan that would reinstall him as speaker and make Jordan, a conservative Trump ally, the assistant speaker..."

"... according to three sources familiar with McCarthy’s pitch. Asked why the idea — which lacks key details, like how it would be enacted and whether it could even gain enough traction to happen — was being floated now, a GOP lawmaker replied: 'We’re desperate.'... A source briefed on the idea likened it to the Speaker Nancy Pelosi/Assistant Speaker Katherine Clark arrangement that the Democrats had. 'Kevin speaker, Jordan assistant speaker,' the source said. Two GOP lawmakers described McCarthy as having melted down in conference meetings [Tuesday] because, they said, he is losing his ability to handpick a new speaker...."

NBC News reports.

Otis.

Wow...seeing #HurricaneOtis rapidly strengthen from a Tropical Storm yesterday at noon to a Category 5 Hurricane at midnight is astounding...almost mind boggling. #Acapulco #Hurricane pic.twitter.com/9jgOu1F8Bg

— Meteorologist Zach Maloch (@ZachMalochWX) October 25, 2023

Instagramming from Tokyo.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Chris Althouse Cohen (@caltcoh)

 

Photos by my son, Chris.

"I pulled both emergency shut off handles because I thought I was dreaming and I just wanna wake up."

Said Joseph Emerson, 44, who is "is facing 83 counts of attempted murder, 83 counts of reckless endangerment," quoted in "Pilot Arrested for Trying to Turn Off Plane Engines May Have Been on Mushrooms" (NY Magazine).

... Emerson told police officers that he thought he might’ve been having a “nervous breakdown” and disclosed that he hadn’t slept in more than 40 hours and had consumed psychedelic mushrooms for the first time....

One more reason to adhere to your ethics even when you are having a lucid dream.

"Think Chris Van Allsburg’s 'Jumanji' gone darker, crossed with Fritz Lang’s 'Metropolis.'"

"The characters, unnamed, are drawn from that strange eternal medieval world of fantasy: knights, wizards, a king; peasants with faces like Leonardo grotesques, wearing kerchiefs or hoods. There are forty-three sentences in total, and one exclamation point. The magic of condensation that is characteristic of cartoons is also here, in a story with a quick, fairy-tale beginning: 'Long ago, the forest was dark and deep.'..."From "Life After 'Calvin and Hobbes'/Bill Watterson’s return to print, after nearly three decades, comes in the form of a fable called 'The Mysteries,' which shares with his famous comic strip a sense of enchantment" (The New Yorker).

You can buy "The Mysteries" at Amazon — and if you use that link, I'll receive a commission. Keep in mind that Watterson is only the writer. The illustrations are by John Kascht. And the writing is minimal. 43 sentences. Sample page:

There are more, not fewer, abortions in the year after Dobbs, but isn't the increase in the earliest weeks of pregnancy?

I'm reading "Despite State Bans, Legal Abortions Didn’t Fall Nationwide in Year After Dobbs/The first full-year census of U.S. abortion providers shows significant increases in abortion in states where it’s legal" in The New York Times:

Even as... restrictions reduced the legal abortion rate to near zero in some states, there were large increases in places where abortions remained legal. Researchers said they were driven by the expansion of telemedicine for mail-order abortion pills, increased options and assistance for women who traveled, and a surge of publicity about ways to get abortions. The response by abortion providers and activists to the end of Roe v. Wade, it seems, has resulted in more access to abortion in states where it’s still legal — not just for women traveling from states with bans but also for women living there.... In the 12 months after the Dobbs decision in June 2022, there were on average 82,298 abortions a month, compared with 82,115 in the two months before Dobbs....

I'd like to see more detailed information. I had to look up how late into pregnancy an abortion pill works. The answer is 10 weeks. What if Dobbs hasn't reduced the number of abortions, but it has motivated women to seek early abortions? Has there been a decrease in mid- and late-term abortions? 

"K-12 schools only manage 10 percent of children’s time, and they do it pretty equitably."

"The other 90 percent of nonschool time — early childhood, after school, summer, private extracurriculars, counseling, tutoring, coaching, therapy, health management — masks all the most important inequality of opportunity."

Said Nate G. Hilger, author of "The Parent Trap: How to Stop Overloading Parents and Fix Our Inequality Crisis," quoted in "New SAT Data Highlights the Deep Inequality at the Heart of American Education" (NYT).

"You have lied under oath numerous times, Mr. Cohen — isn’t that correct?"/"That’s correct."

I'm reading "Cohen Denounces Trump During Courtroom Face-Off/Michael D. Cohen accused his onetime boss, Donald J. Trump, of manipulating his net worth as Mr. Trump stared blankly ahead. It was their first interaction in five years" (NYT).

Sunrise — 7:09, 7:13, 7:16, 7:26.

"We New York Jews have always voted for the Democrats.... Why do Jews vote Democratic?..."

"But there is no more cosy mystery in the antisemitism of the Democratic Party; Representatives are affiliated with the Democratic Socialists and pro-Palestinians, calling for the end of the state of Israel — that is, for the death of the Jews. And Democrat Representatives repeat and refuse to retract the libel that Israel bombed a hospital, in spite of absolute proof to the contrary, and will not call out the unutterable atrocities of Hamas. The writing is on the wall. In blood.... The Jews had no protection whatever: from Cossacks, peasants, pogroms, the Crusades, Hitler, Stalin, and so on. And, so, we were convenient victims as we were powerless, in effect the battered wife of the West.... The position of the Jews changed in 1948 with the foundation of the Jewish State. But the habits of 2,000 years, now of Liberal Jews (in the diaspora and in Israel) have not changed. These appeal, in the name of humanity, to powers which may believe in humanity, but, unfortunately, do not consider Jews human...."

Writes David Mamet, in "How the Democrats betrayed the Jews/The sick thrill of antisemitism has a price" (UnHerd).

"In truth, there are no good options for an Israeli ground offensive in Gaza. No matter how successful the operation proves..."

"... in defeating Hamas as a military organization, Hamas’s political imperative and the population’s support for the resistance will continue. Israel either reoccupies Gaza to control it or, by withdrawing after an offensive, cedes ground to people for whom the resistance is existence."

Writes Tom Beckett, "a retired lieutenant general of the British Army and executive director of the Middle East for the International Institute for Strategic Studies," quoted in "Israel Says It Will Destroy Hamas. But Who Will Govern Gaza? Israel has set itself a stiff challenge in aiming to vanquish Hamas. But an even bigger question looms: Once in Gaza, how and when does Israel get out?" (NYT).

"The Manhattan district attorney is part of the 'progressive prosecutor' movement, which seeks to use prosecutorial discretion to reduce mass incarceration and racial disparities."

"Bragg’s press release in People v. Donald J. Trump noted the 'solemn responsibility to ensure that everyone stands equal before the law.' Willis, on the other hand, is a 'lock ’em up' district attorney. Her office used the same racketeering law that is the basis of the Georgia state charges against Trump and his 18 co-defendants in a case against dozens of Black educators in a cheating scandal. The problem for Trump? Both Bragg’s commitment to equal justice and Willis’s 'tough on crime' stance lead directly to the former president."

Writes Paul Butler, in "The Black prosecutors taking on Trump know what they’re up against" (WaPo).

"Anything that turns up the temperature and becomes controversial is where the online fundraising comes from."

"It’s a lot easier to catch fish in a hot lake than a cold lake. All these stories heat up the lake." 

Said Brad Parscale, "a former Trump campaign manager who now works in online fundraising," quoted in "Trump seethes at gag order in federal case while his campaign relishes it/The former president took advantage of a temporary pause in the restriction to resume attacking special counsel Jack Smith" (WaPo).

Trump "took advantage" of his right to speak. Noted.

"Just came home to hundreds of people outside of my apartment here in NYC calling for Intifada... mostly... white far-left extremists in masks...."

This anti-Israel protest is mostly comprised of white far-left extremists in masks… pic.twitter.com/XxDlmjkHGn

— Eli Klein (@TheEliKlein) October 23, 2023

"Killers of the Flower Moon" provides an occasion for a Slate writer named Rebecca Onion to decry "the white man’s food."

If the idea is to stir up interest in a big new movie when a strike is depriving the press of access to actors, this is not the way to do it. I'd consider going out to see "Killers of the Flower Moon" just because it's a Martin Scorsese movie that reviewers have praised. I'm hesitant though, because I know the thing is 3 hours and 26 minutes long, so I need to believe it's not boring. And then I see this:

 

"What if I weren’t a writer? Would I be allowed to repeat a story at a cocktail party? Are comedians allowed to repeat things on stage?"

"How far do the ethics reach? Did my repeating your story ‘steal’ it from you? Did it mean you couldn’t write about it in the future?"

Said David Sedaris, quoted by Gabb Schivone in "The Hot Dogs and the Notebook/How David Sedaris turned me into one of his freaks" (Slate).

I wish there were a comments section over there. Schivone tries so hard to attack Sedaris and to inflate the importance of his anecdote, an anecdote that I won't even repeat... and not because of scruples about theft. It's not something you'd want to hear. Read "Portnoy's Complaint" if you'd like a description of a kid's relationship to a food item.

ADDED: I'm seeing comments there now. They are not supportive of Schivone. A good one: "The hot dog is not a story. Telling Sedaris about the hot dog is a story."

"Part of me shudders to view the unfolding catastrophe in Israel and Gaza through the provincial lens of America’s cancel culture debate."

"In some ways, that debate has now come full circle, because pro-Palestinian voices were being censored long before the phrase 'cancel culture' existed, one reason the left was unwise in recent years to prevaricate about the value of free speech...."

Writes Michelle Goldberg, in "With War in Israel, the Cancel Culture Debate Comes Full Circle" (NYT).

At the Monday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

It's difficult for Arnold Schwarzenegger to get old, because he was was in perfect shape, but...

"... most of the people never have been in shape. So what does it mean — 'getting out of shape'? They've always looked at a shitty body, so therefore it gets shittier as time goes on." You can't know what it's like for Arnold, who looked in the mirror and saw "the supreme body."

A TikTok embed:

"As the planet warms, larger volumes of warm water are bathing the undersides of West Antarctica’s ice shelves, the giant tongues of ice at the ends of glaciers."

"The sheer mass of these shelves stops the ice on land from flowing more quickly into the open sea. So as the shelves melt and thin, more of the land ice moves toward the ocean, eventually contributing to sea level rise.... A certain amount of accelerated melting is essentially locked in. Even if nations limited global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 Fahrenheit, it wouldn’t do much to halt the thinning."

From "Rapid Antarctic Melting Looks Certain, Even if Emissions Goals Are Met/It may be too late to halt the decline of the West Antarctic ice shelves, a study found, but climate action could still forestall the gravest sea level rise" (NYT).

"In the compulsively watchable 'The Insurrectionist Next Door,' Alexandra Pelosi visits rank-and-file people arrested because of their roles in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol."

"And then, instead of condemning, she asks them about themselves. Her brisk emotional portraits of Americans are disarming, unpredictable, funny, sad, and, yes, at times enraging. Palming her own camera, "Pelosi fires away why’s and what’s-your-deal’s to her polite subjects: a genial former wrestler; a military man who shares a love of wine with his husband; a family guy with a 'Proud Boy' forehead tattoo and a rabble-rousing hit rap song; and a practitioner of parkour who apparently learned about some kind of war in 1776 from a Trump speech."

Writes Nicolas Rapold, in "'The Insurrectionist Next Door' Review: Getting Personal In her latest film, the documentarian Alexandra Pelosi has disarming chats with people who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol" (NYT).

I'm only about a third of the way into it, but I like the style, because it's personal. It de-mob-ifies the mob and shows us individuals. 

Here's the trailer (which is good except for the an annoying music that is not in the movie and that injects urgency and suspense that utterly misrepresents the mood of the movie):

"Though same-sex marriage has been legal in all 50 states since a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, it remains prohibited on the largest Indian reservation in the country..."

"... which, as a sovereign tribal nation, is not subject to the decision of America’s highest court.... [S]ame-sex couples are at the center of a contentious debate on the Navajo Nation, where the tribal council is weighing legislation to repeal a ban enacted in 2005. The change would grant them equal rights in situations involving property and hospital visitation. Indigenous scholars say it also would honor Navajo tradition, which recognized multiple genders and sexualities that were suppressed and stigmatized after Europeans arrived.... In recent decades, many Native Americans have adopted 'two-spirit' as an umbrella term for 'an individual that has both male and female spirits within them,' signaling a rejection of more rigid, western labels, said professor Gregory D. Smithers.... Two-spirit leaders and activists have made gains, Smithers said...."

From "Same-sex marriage remains banned — for now — in the Navajo Nation" (WaPo).

I was surprised to see that "two-spirit" is not a traditional term. Here's the Wikipedia article on the subject. A short excerpt from what is a long article:

"Perhaps the portrayal of Black idleness will always be, if not haunted, then framed by a broader context that makes it seem like an act of resistance rather than a simple fact of life."

"'When we talk about Black people and time,' [one curator] says, 'we’re talking about stolen labor, stolen time—and each of these images steals it back.'... [The curators] show that Black people around the world have been reposing, alone and in each other’s arms, for a long time...."

Writes Emily Lordi, in "The Visual Power of Black Rest/Black people are generally pictured as doing anything but relaxing—as being attacked, or agitating, or performing. The Black Rest Project aims to widen the lens" (The New Yorker).

"The show is part of a broader initiative called the Black Rest Project... [which] will explore the complexities of rest for Black people, and challenge the binary assumption that one can either slow down or make a living, can either struggle or sleep (a myth encoded in the activist mandate to 'stay woke')."

Trump decries "a red haired weirdo."

Here's the NYT story: "A President, a Billionaire and Questions About Access and National Security/Anthony Pratt, one of Australia’s wealthiest men, made his way into Donald Trump’s inner circle with money and flattery. What he heard there has become of interest to federal prosecutors."

In his interviews with prosecutors [in the classified documents case), Mr. Pratt recounted how Mr. Trump once revealed to him sensitive information about American nuclear submarines, an episode that Mr. Trump denies....

Here's Trump's response on Truth Social:

The Failing New York Times story, leaked by Deranged Jack Smith and the Biden “Political Opponent Abuser” DOJ, about a red haired weirdo from Australia, named Anthony Pratt, is Fake News. I never spoke to him about Submarines, but I did speak to him about creating jobs in Ohio and Pennsylvania, because that’s what I’m all about.... Maggie Hagerman and the Misfits never called me for a comment. Why would they, they just write anything they want. Whether it’s correct or not is of ZERO importance to them. “All the News That’s Unfit To Print.” That’s why we call it the Fake News!

Should Trump be calling a man "a red haired weirdo"?

Trump seems to be contemplating whether what he sees in Pratt is what other people see in Trump — red haired weirdness.

Sunrise — 7:06, 7:18, 7:21.

Lakeside foliage at sunrise.

I just like that his name is Jordan Character.

But here's a whole paragraph from "What’s in Your ‘Spend the Night’ Bag? A toothbrush, sure, but some people bring everything they need to feel comfortable (and a whole lot more) for a romantic overnight" (NYT):

Jordan Character is a natural health specialist in Los Angeles, so when he’s staying at a woman’s home, he brings a change of underwear, socks and an assortment of natural hygiene products that include fluoride-free toothpaste, shea butter and natural soap (“I’m definitely not washing my body with Dove”). He usually carries psychedelic mushrooms and essential oils on him, so that’s coming, too. “I bring my own water as well,” he said, adding that it’s alkaline. “I’m not trying to get caught up drinking tap water, bro.” He also brings all-natural lube and non-latex condoms: “I just bring one because I don’t want to seem like I’m there just for that.”

Coots on Lake Mendota at 7:18 a.m.

"If you love dogs, maybe don’t get one."

That's the subheadline to the Atlantic article "Too Many People Own Dogs" by Rose Horowitz.

I feel like I know what this article says and I agree with it... all before reading it. Do you?

Let's see.... "American humans" these days are more anxious than ever, and it's no coincidence that dogs are anxious too... or anxious humans are just interpreting their dogs as anxiety ridden. Lots of dogs these days are getting dosed with Prozac. Therefore, we're told, getting a dog is "ethically murky."

People who adopt "rescue" dogs may feel proud of their ethics, but they're more likely to begin with a dog that is already anxious. And the way people live today, they may plan to keep the dog indoors nearly all the time. Then they are going to worry about this dog of theirs that seems to be mentally ill.

"The ability to spot danger in advance and prepare for it is the test of a body’s functioning."

"The Jewish nation has never excelled at foreseeing danger. We were surprised again and again—and the last time was the most awful one. That won’t happen under my leadership. This is what the state of Israel expects from me, and this is what I’ll do."

Netanyahu once said, quoted by Yair Rosenberg in "The End of Netanyahu/He sold Israelis a story about their safety. It turned out not to be true" (The Atlantic).

Israelis do not forgive failures to secure their safety. Golda Meir left politics after the debacle of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which Israel lost nearly 3,000 soldiers following a surprise Egyptian and Syrian attack. Her name is reviled by some in the country to this day. But what happened on October 7, 2023, was worse than what happened on October 6, 1973. Meir lost soldiers—people who had purposely put their lives on the line. Netanyahu lost civilians—the people the state and its soldiers were supposed to protect....  In the end, the man known as “Mr. Security” failed by his own standard, and he failed to fulfill the fundamental expectation of his fellow citizens.....

Bill Maher: "Don't go to college." And: "If you absolutely have to go, don't go to an elite college"

"It just makes you stupid."

Contains the line: "Harvard Yard is the Wuhan wet market."

Watch the whole thing so you see that Maher somehow ends up lashing out at right-wing politicians and Supreme Court Justices — displaying photos of of 15 of them and declaring these faces "utterly punchable." We see Paul Begala guffawing. No one seems to notice the embrace of violence here, even as Maher just got done lambasting students for endorsing/accepting the massacre in Israel.