"The 'money shot' of food being inserted into mouth, usually to a soundtrack of proto-sexual groans..."

"... has long been a key element of food TV. But lately, online food culture has entered an 'oral' era that puts the fleshy, wettened mouth — at once destructive and violated in the act of ingestion — at the center of the spectacle. There seems to be a growing emphasis, among popular food accounts, on the messiness of the overflowing orifice as individual eaters shovel food down their throats; online, the mouth has become a canvas for thick spacklings of various juices, pastes, condiments and whips. If you think I’m exaggerating, consider a recent post from @sanaaeats, in which the popular culinary influencer (1.6 million followers across TikTok and Instagram) feeds herself fingers of chicken, Texas toast and crinkle-cut fries drowned in a jumbo cup of Raising Cane’s sauce — the camera lingering on each bite just long enough to reveal the viscous splatter around her mouth...."

From "The Mixed Martial Artist Who Became the King of Tidy Eating/Rapturously messy food reviews are all over the internet. Keith Lee’s discreet eating style rises above them all" (NYT)(free access link, so you can learn about this man who is getting a NYT article about his fastidiousness and see more descriptions of on-camera sloppy eating).

"He... compared Zionists to white supremacists and Nazis. 'These are all the same people' he said."

"'The existence of them and the projects they have built, i.e. Israel, it’s all antithetical to peace. It’s all antithetical to peace. And so, yes, I feel very comfortable, very comfortable, calling for those people to die.' And, Mr. James said, 'Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.'..."

From "Columbia Bars Student Protester Who Said ‘Zionists Don’t Deserve to Live'/After video surfaced on social media, the student, Khymani James, said on Friday that his comments were wrong" (NYT).

"[I]n an interview earlier in the week, Mr. James drew a distinction between the ideas of anti-Zionism, which describes opposition to the Jewish state of Israel, and antisemitism. 'There is a difference,' he said. 'We’ve always had Jewish people as part of our community where they have expressed themselves, they feel safe, and they feel loved. And we want all people to feel safe in this encampment. We are a multiracial, multigenerational group of people.'"

Sunrise — 5:35, 5:38, 5:42, 5:44, 5:46, 5:48, 5:54.

"Concern for posture, as a matter of etiquette, has been around since the Enlightenment, if not earlier, but poor posture did not become a scientific and medical obsession..."

"... until after the publication of Darwin’s 'On the Origin of Species' in 1859. He posited that humans evolved through natural selection, and that the first thing to develop was bipedalism; in other words, standing upright preceded brain development. This idea was controversial because convention taught that higher intellect distinguished humans from nonhuman animals, and now it appeared that only a mere physical difference, located in the spine and feet, separated humankind from the apes.... With the rise of eugenics in the early 20th century, certain scientists began to worry that slouching among 'civilized' peoples could lead to degeneration, a backward slide in human progress. Posture correction became part of 'race betterment' projects, especially for white Anglo-Saxon men but also for middle-class women and Black people who were trying to gain political rights and equity. Poor posture became stigmatized and defined as a disability. As I show in my book, people with postural 'defects' were regularly discriminated against in the American workplace, educational settings and immigration offices..."

From "Beth Linker Is Turning Good Posture on Its Head/A historian and sociologist of science re-examines the 'posture panic' of the last century. You’ll want to sit down for this" (NYT).

This made me think about the way, back in the 1950s, we girls were encouraged to train ourselves in good posture by walking with a book on one's head. I see there's an entry at TV Tropes, "Book on the Head."

And here's a random poster (from 1946):

"Biden, asked if he’s planning to debate Trump, says 'I am happy to'" — asked by Howard Stern.

The NYT reports.

Mr. Biden’s announcement, made in response to a question from the radio host Howard Stern, comes after pressure from television networks and Mr. Trump’s campaign for the president to agree to participate in debates.

Hey, I'm surprised he submitted to an interview... and irked and amused that the interviewer his people chose was Howard Stern. 

When Mr. Stern asked Mr. Biden if he would debate Mr. Trump, the president replied: “I am, somewhere, I don’t know when, but I am happy to debate him.”

That should be his motto: "I am, somewhere, I don’t know when, but I am happy." 

Mr. Biden’s remarks appeared to be off the cuff, rather than a planned announcement of a shift in his campaign’s strategy, according to a top Democratic official familiar with its thinking...

Oh? Let's see how they weasel out of it. It was a gaffe, right? Somehow it will be impossible to get the conditions right. 

"What Harvey Weinstein’s Overturned Conviction Means for Donald Trump’s Trial."

A good title. It's something I was trying to parse on my own yesterday.

The article is at The New Yorker, written by Ronan Farrow. Subheadline: "The legal issue behind Weinstein’s successful appeal is also at the heart of the former President’s hush-money case." The subheadline in my head was: Big man brought down by sex. Or should it be: Pile everything together and the monster will be visible?

Consider this: Farrow's book about Weinstein was called "Catch and Kill" (commission earned), and in Trump's trial, David Pecker has been testifying about the National Enquirer’s "catch and kill" scheme. 

From a CBS News story about Trump's lawyer's cross-examination of Pecker:

Pecker said he first gave Trump a heads up about a story in 1998.... [Trump's lawyer Emil] Bove had Pecker walk through negative stories that he had killed about other figures, including Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tiger Woods.

"The days when Democrats could get away with thinking of Hispanics as one of 'their' minority groups are, or should be, over."

Writes Ruy Teixeira, in "Postcard from the Hispanic Working Class/Education polarization comes to America’s Latinos"  (The Liberal Patriot).

In terms of voting intentions, Biden leads by just one point among working-class Hispanics but by 39 points among their college-educated counterparts. Interestingly, this 38-point reverse class gap is actually larger than the class gap in this poll among whites (30 points).... And here’s something that should concentrate their mind when considering the working-class Hispanics problem and how seriously to take it. The simple fact of the matter is that there are far, far more working-class than college-educated Hispanics. According to States of Change data, Hispanic eligible voters nationwide are 78 percent working class. And working-class levels among Latinos are even higher in critical states like Arizona (82 percent) and Nevada (85 percent).

I'm giving this post my "Biden's racial nightmare" tag, though I can't remember what made me invent that tag and will need to publish this post and click on it to find out. 

UPDATE, right after posting: I now see why I created the tag. It's a pretty different topic, but I want to go back into it. It was August 13, 2020:

"If it is felony 'election interference' for a candidate to try to keep private the details of a seamy relationship, what other candidate concealments — of a lawful and entirely personal nature — must be reported?"

"Must the out-of-pocket settlement for that fender-bender be disclosed, since it conceals a candidate's bad driving skills? How about plastic surgery, since it masks the true ravages of age or health?... The Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016 paid an opposition-research firm to produce a bogus dossier that accused Mr. Trump of collusion with Russia. They fed it to the FBI and leaked it to the public prior to the 2016 election. The DNC and Mrs. Clinton's campaign reported the expenditures to the Federal Election Commission but concealed their true nature by describing the payments as 'legal' services, as Mr. Trump did with his NDA. The FEC fined them for the deception, but under Mr. Bragg's theory it should count as criminal election interference."

Writes Kimberley A. Strassel, in "Alvin Bragg and Democrats' 'Election Interference'/His theory in New York state’s Trump case is crazier than you think" (Wall Street Journal).

Dear Dan Rather: Are you trying to allude to a Beatles title?

I don't really want to read what Dan Rather — or "Dan Rather and Team Steady" — has to say about the Supreme Court. (Sample text: "More Republican-led state houses should take note of a plethora of unintended consequences that have come from the reversal of Roe.")

I just want to talk about the headline — over at Steady — "Dear SCOTUS, Look What You Have Done/The unintended consequences that could affect the election."

Pardon me for fussing over a headline when the country is collapsing into chaos.

"Who is going to buy TikTok?"

Writes Charlie Warzel in "Welcome to the TikTok Meltdown/The ban is a disaster, even if you support it" (The Atlantic)(also noting that courts might find the ban unconstitutional and that China may block selling the algorithm).

At the heart of the government’s case...  is that TikTok is the beating heart of a social-media industrial complex that mines our data and uses them to manipulate our behavior....why, if the government believes this is true, should anyone have access to these tools?... 

One analysis of TikTok’s U.S. market values the app at $100 billion—a sum that rather quickly narrows down the field of buyers.... 

[A]s we’ve seen from Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, putting the fate of a social-media platform into the hands of a few highly motivated individuals can quickly turn into a nightmare.

Sunrise — 5:48, 5:57, 5:59, 6:01, 6:04.

6 quotes from today's oral argument in Trump v. United States.

I listened live and took some handwritten notes, so I could find various things in the transcript. Here are the 6 quotes that made the cut for me. All but one are from the Justices.

1. Trump's lawyer, D. John Sauer, encourages the Court to see far beyond Trump to the true horror of criminally prosecuting ex-Presidents:

The implications of the Court's decision here extend far beyond the facts of this case. Could President George W. Bush have been sent to prison for... allegedly lying to Congress to induce war in Iraq? Could President Obama be charged with murder for killing U.S. citizens abroad by drone strike? Could President Biden someday be charged with unlawfully inducing immigrants to enter the country illegally for his border policies?

2. In a similar vein, from Justice Alito:

So what about President Franklin D. Roosevelt's decision to intern Japanese Americans during World War II? Couldn't that have been charged under 18 U.S.C. 241, conspiracy against civil rights?

3. Justice Gorsuch makes a brilliant suggestion. If Presidents didn't have immunity from prosecution, they could give themselves the equivalent by pardoning themselves on the way out. And note the reminder that Obama could be on the hook for those drone strike murders:

Listen to the live oral argument in Trump's immunity case.

Here.

ADDED: I've listened to the whole argument and have notes, but I need the transcript to write the things I have in mind, so please carry on the discussion without me.

AND: Here's what Adam Liptak wrote in the NYT:

"New York’s highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 conviction on felony sex crime charges.""

 The NYT reports. Free access link.

In a 4-3 decision, the New York Court of Appeals found that the trial judge who presided over Mr. Weinstein’s case had made a crucial mistake, allowing prosecutors to call as witnesses a series of women who said Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them — but whose accusations were not part of the charges against him.

Citing that decision and others it identified as errors, the appeals court determined that Mr. Weinstein... had not received a fair trial....

Now it will be up to the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg — already in the midst of a trial against former President Donald J. Trump — to decide whether to seek a retrial of Mr. Weinstein....

If he is not retried, he still faces a 16-year sentence in California, where he was convicted of rape.

Here's the opinion. Excerpt:

"[T]ensions between the White House and the [New York] Times... had been bubbling beneath the surface for at least the last five years."

"Biden’s closest aides had come to see the Times as arrogant, intent on setting its own rules and unwilling to give Biden his due. Inside the paper’s D.C. bureau, the punitive response seemed to typify a press operation that was overly sensitive and determined to control coverage of the president.... Although the president’s communications teams bristle at coverage from dozens of outlets, the frustration, and obsession, with the Times is unique, reflecting the resentment of a president with a working-class sense of himself and his team toward a news organization catering to an elite audience — and a deep desire for its affirmation of their work. On the other side, the newspaper carries its own singular obsession with the president, aggrieved over his refusal to give the paper a sit-down interview that Publisher AG Sulzberger and other top editors believe to be its birthright."

Writes Eli Stokols, in "Inside the NYT-White House Feud" (Politico).

I read the NYT every day and have closely followed presidential campaign news for the last 20 years. I want the NYT to hold to the highest journalistic standards, and — without question — any deviation from that has been in favor of Biden.

"Please don’t speculate on who any of the real-life people could be. That’s not the point of our show."

Said Richard Gadd, whose brilliant Netflix series "Baby Reindeer" is a fictionalized version of his own true story, quoted in "Baby Reindeer creator asks fans to stop speculating about stalker/Richard Gadd says his real-life friends are being unfairly targeted as viewers try to guess the identity of characters in his Netflix series" (London Times).

So the point of the show is not to focus viewers on the question of what really happened and whether there are free-roaming individuals who deserve punishment or public shaming. What then is the point? Having watched the whole series, I'd say it is to open up thinking about the cyclical cause-and-effect of sexual abuse.

I encourage discussion in the comments from people who have seen the show, so I am not asking you to avoid spoilers. If you haven't seen the show, I'd recommend avoiding reading spoilers. Here's the trailer, which spoils a little, so it would be better to just start watching, unless you're wary of a show on this subject and need some encouragement.

"I hate that my tattoos are such a defining factor for me getting a job or not. Just because I have tattoos doesn’t mean I’m not going to be a good worker."

 Said Ash Putnam, quoted in "Tattooed applicant claims she was denied TJ Maxx job over her ink, confronts store employees: ‘It’s so annoying’" (NY Post).

There's a big satanic tattoo on her throat and so much more.

Here's Putnam deadpanning in her hilarious TikTok:

"Out of control New York University protesters swarmed and berated an NYPD chief and his officers – calling them 'f–king fascists'..."

"... after they cuffed one of the demonstrators at an anti-Israel rally, wild new video shows. The viral video... shows NYPD Assistant Chief James McCarthy and his officers being chased and surrounded by protestors on Monday night while trying to get inside the NYU Catholic Center after arresting one of them. 'F–k you! F–k you, pigs,' the crowd could be heard shouting as they harassed the officers and demanded they release the woman in custody."

From "NYPD chief swarmed by anti-Israel protesters and berated while seeking shelter in NYU building" (NY Post)(video at link).

NYPD Assistant Chief James Mccarthy and a few officers are chased by protestors after making an arrest at NYU last night.

Mccarthy is seen attempting to get inside the NYU Catholic Center, but couldn't open the door. He eventually finds an unlocked door around the corner.… pic.twitter.com/WVVriOBbMP

— Peter H (@peterhvideo) April 24, 2024

From the top comment at the Post: "I don't believe this ever would have been allowed to take place when Giuliani and Bratton were in charge. There was law and order in those days. Sadly, not sure we will ever see anything like that again."

Meanwhile, Giuliani just got indicted, for something that happened back in 2020.

"We think it may be to reduce competition and intimidation in the kinds of close-cooperation, within and between sexes, that’s required to make our complex, highly cooperative societies function."

Said University of New South Wales professor Rob Brooks, puzzling out why men shave given that facial hair is a "sign of dominance."

He's quoted in "This is the reason why men with facial hair are hotter — could this explain the Mark Zuckerberg ‘beard’ appeal?" (NY Post).

Sunrise — 5:58, 6:00, 6:02.

"Biden and his supporters are intent on making Trump the Nelson Mandela of America."

Said Trump pollster John McLaughlin, quoted in "How 'The Nelson Mandela of America' Is Making Bank Off of His Criminal Trial/'I’m catching up on my fucking sleep ’cause I’m bored,' Trump told one source" (The Bulwark).

Wow, that caught my eye, and not just because "I’m catching up on my fucking sleep ’cause I’m bored" is hilarious. Just this morning — and before reading that — I was saying, in conversation, that if Trump goes to jail the Trump movement will gain energy and "He'll become Nelson Mandela."

"We heard from employees who, because of noncompetes, were stuck in abusive workplaces."

"One person noted when an employer merged with an organization whose religious principles conflicted with their own, a noncompete kept the worker locked in place and unable to freely switch to a job that didn't conflict with their religious practices."

Said FTC Chair Lina Khan, quoted in "U.S. bans noncompete agreements for nearly all jobs" (NPR).

The vote was 3 to 2 along party lines.... [The U.S. Chamber of Commerce] has vigorously opposed the ban, saying that noncompetes are vital to companies, by allowing them to better guard trade secrets, and employees, by giving employers greater incentive to invest in workforce training and development.

"I said: 'This is a terrible, toxic relationship, you and Trump. And you’ve got to break up.'"

Said Tom Arnold, "the actor and comedian best known for his role on the 1990s sitcom starring Arnold’s ex-wife, Roseanne Barr." 

Quoted in "Michael Cohen says he’s reformed. Will America buy it? Resistance hero or reprobate? As Cohen takes the stand against his former boss in Trump’s first criminal trial, it depends on whom you ask" (WaPo)(free access link, so you can sort through the cast of characters).

Arnold was quoting himself advising Michael Cohen.

"National Enquirer made up the story about Ted Cruz's father and Lee Harvey Oswald, former publisher says."

NBC News reports.

The paper had published a photo allegedly showing Cruz's father, Rafael Cruz, with Lee Harvey Oswald handing out pro-Fidel Castro pamphlets in New Orleans in 1963, not long before Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy....

"What I do know is that even the most peaceful of protests would be treated as outrages if they were interpreted as, say, anti-Black..."

"... even if the message were coded, as in a bunch of people quietly holding up MAGA signs or wearing T-shirts saying 'All Lives Matter.' And besides, calling all this peaceful stretches the use of the word rather implausibly. It’s an odd kind of peace when a local rabbi urges Jewish students to go home as soon as possible, when an Arab-Israeli activist is roughed up on Broadway, when the angry chanting becomes so constant that you almost start not to hear it and it starts to feel normal to see posters and clothing portraying Hamas as heroes. The other night I watched a dad coming from the protest with his little girl, giving a good hard few final snaps on the drum he was carrying, nodding at her in crisp salute, percussing his perspective into her little mind. This is not peaceful..."

Writes John McWhorter, in "I’m a Columbia Professor. The Protests on My Campus Are Not Justice" (NYT).

Sunrise — 5:42.

"This hearing, ostensibly about violations of a gag order, doubled as a complete onslaught on the Trump ethos. "

"Justice Merchan clarified that politics infused everything that the former president does and insisted on hearing good faith arguments, and the truth, wherever possible. We knew this was going to be a big moment; it was even more revealing than expected."

Writes Jonah Bromwich, covering the Trump trial at the NYT.

Some of us are worried that politics infuses everything that the judge and the prosecutors do. I insist on hearing good faith arguments — and the truth — wherever possible.

It seems to me, we are talking about gagging a presidential candidate, whose prosecution might be political persecution, and that's inescapably political. It's not something to be brushed off as some sort of "ethos" of Trump's that deserves "a complete onslaught." 

Jon Stewart's view of the Trump trial: It's a test of the media's fairness and accuracy.

"If the media tries to make us feel like the most mundane bullshit is earth shattering, we won't believe you when it's really interesting. It's your classic boy who cried Wolf Blitzer."

"After listening to Monday’s opening statement by prosecutors, I still think the Manhattan D.A. has made a historic mistake."

"Their vague allegation about 'a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election' has me more concerned than ever about their unprecedented use of state law and their persistent avoidance of specifying an election crime or a valid theory of fraud.... Both the misdemeanor and felony charges require that the defendant made the false record with 'intent to defraud.'... Instead of a theory of defrauding state regulators, Mr. Bragg has adopted a weak theory of 'election interference,' and Justice Juan Merchan described the case, in his summary of it during jury selection, as an allegation of falsifying business records 'to conceal an agreement with others to unlawfully influence the 2016 election.' As a reality check, it is legal for a candidate to pay for a nondisclosure agreement. Hush money is unseemly, but it is legal.... In Monday’s opening argument, the prosecutor Matthew Colangelo still evaded specifics about what was illegal about influencing an election, but then he claimed, 'It was election fraud, pure and simple.'... Calling it 'election fraud' is a legal and strategic mistake, exaggerating the case and setting up the jury with high expectations that the prosecutors cannot meet...."

Writes Boston University lawprof Jed Handelsman Shugerman, in "The Bragg Case Against Trump Is a Historic Mistake" (NYT)(that's a free access link because there is good detail there that I haven't quoted).

"'There’s just one question on voting day. Do you want an Islamized Europe or a European Europe?'"

"This stark choice was posed by Marion Maréchal, a rising star of the French far right, at the launch of her party’s campaign for the European elections in June.... While Ms. Maréchal’s Reconquest party sulfurously accuses elites of orchestrating a Great Replacement of Christians by Muslims, it seeks its own place in the corridors of power. Across the continent, the aim of far-right parties like hers is not to exit the bloc but, increasingly, to take it over. In this project, they have a model: Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy....  Ms. Meloni’s group, dominated by her Brothers of Italy party and Poland’s Law and Justice, isn’t the only European home for far-right forces. There’s also the Identity and Democracy group, which houses France’s National Rally and Italy’s League party.... Far from seeking to break up the European Union, these far-right groups are now bidding to put their own stamp on it — to create what Ms. Maréchal calls a 'civilizational Europe' rather than the technocratic 'commission’s version of Europe.' Ms. Meloni, for her part, seems convinced the two can go together."

Writes David Broder, in "The Far Right Wants to Take Over Europe, and She’s Leading the Way" (NYT).

This David Broder is the author of a 2023 book titled "Mussolini’s Grandchildren: Fascism in Contemporary Italy." Don't confuse him with David S. Broder, the Washington Post journalist, who died in 2011 at the age of 81. I accidentally used my David Broder tag for this post, but have removed it.

"I’m seeking out clients that are also neurodivergent, disabled and autistic so I don’t need to mask or hide my disabilities..."

"Especially on your wedding day, when there’s so much pressure on it being just right. Why would they hire me when they could just hire somebody who’s nondisabled?... I’ve marketed myself as a queer, awkward, anxious photographer who hopefully makes others feel more comfortable in front of the lens, so I tend to organically attract those same people.... I wear earplugs to reduce the noise level. I’ve learned to take breaks, to ask for what I need, to not take calls at night and communicate transparently upfront so I don’t have to work with people who are not going to be a good fit. I used to mask or camouflage my disabilities at weddings, but because I work with so many autistic and neurodiverse people, I feel free to be myself, and I feel understood by the people I’m photographing, who in turn feel understood by me. It creates a more authentic relationship and unmasks all of us so that I get photos other photographers wouldn’t be able to get otherwise...."

Said Shannon Collins, quoted in "Capturing Special Moments, While Creating Inclusive Weddings/Shannon Collins, a 'queer, awkward, anxious photographer,' wants to change the way disabled people are viewed, one picture at a time" (NYT).

Here's her Instagram account, and here's an example (where she's discussing the problem of telling photographic subjects to "relax"):

Here's a long interview with RFK Jr. and someone I hadn't thought about in a long time — Glenn Beck.

The nothing that happened.

The most surprising part about this is that you uploaded it. Nothing happened. Nobody even reacted. Your provocation failed. This demonstrates that you are not unsafe among supporters of Palestinian liberation.

— Daniel Baryon (@AnarkYouTube) April 22, 2024

ADDED: I suspect that the person who posted the video actually wanted to show that the protesters were not accosting those they identified as Jews. In that light, here's a NYT article: "A Night Different From Others as Campus Protests Break for Seder/Pro-Palestinian protesters, many of whom are Jewish, prepared Seder dinners at college protest encampments, even as other Jewish students sought community in more traditional settings":

"Do you think that someone who is a drug addict is absolutely incapable of -- that all people who are drug addicts are absolutely incapable of refraining from using drugs?..."

"All right. Then compare that with a person who absolutely has no place to sleep in a particular jurisdiction. Does that person have any alternative other than sleeping outside?... They have... none. They have absolutely none. There's not a single place where they can sleep.... So the point is that the connection between drug addiction and drug usage is more tenuous than the connection between absolute homelessness and sleeping outside."

Said Justice Alito, in yesterday's oral argument in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson. There's a precedent, Robinson v. California, that found it to be cruel and unusual punishment to make a crime of the "status" of drug addiction. The 9th Circuit said that the city — by prohibiting sleeping outdoors — had made a crime out of the status of homelessness.

For more detail, see the SCOTUSblog coverage: "Court divided over constitutionality of criminal penalties for homelessness."

Roseanne's political comedy: "Joe Biden raped me."

#believeallwomen. #meshoe #bergdorfdressingroom #loosemeat pic.twitter.com/yzebab8syO

— Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) April 23, 2024

Is this good satire?

"Joe Biden. He raped me right here. In the shoe department of Bergdorf Goodman... I need to sue."

I get the point: You can't trust women who say they've recovered a memory of a rape from the distant past. That's not funny as an idea. Does it become funny when a comedienne enacts it? Theoretically, it could. I don't think this did. To me, it works more as a declaration that E. Jean Carroll should not have won her case against Trump.

Does comedy need to be funny? There is some debate these days on that questioning the centrality of funniness in the performances of some artists who are categorized as comedy. For example, "Does comedy have to be funny?," by the sophomore Monika Narain, last year in the Duke student newspaper. Excerpt:

"Lola DeAscentiis, a sophomore, zeroed in on the song 'But Daddy I Love Him,' comparing it to the Sylvia Plath poem 'Daddy.'"

"She plans to explore the link in her final paper. 'I hesitate to say that the song was anywhere near the genius of Sylvia Plath — no offense to Taylor Swift — but I can definitely see some similarities in the themes, like sadness, depression and mental health,' Ms. DeAscentiis, 20, said.... 'The way that Taylor overlays her relationship with the significant other that she’s talking about in the song with the relationship that she has with her father — I think that was very Plath,' she added."

I'm reading the NYT article "Harvard’s Taylor Swift Scholars Have Thoughts on 'Tortured Poets'/The students taking Harvard University’s class on the singer are studying up. Their final papers are due at the end of the month."

In the Harvard undergrad course called "Taylor Swift and Her World" student compare Taylor  Swift song lyrics to the work of poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth.

The nesting crane.

(Write about whatever you want in the comments.)

"He stuck his finger in the mouth to see if he might wiggle the piece loose. 'And my finger came back wet,' he said."

"'I thought about it for a half-second longer and said, "Oh my God, my finger is wet,"' he recalled. 'I got my flashlight out and shined it in there, and the thing is completely full of liquid,' he said. He summoned colleagues. They were stunned. Here was 'an out-of-the-box, next level, spectacular find,' said Jason Boroughs, Mount Vernon’s principal archaeologist.... 'There are whole, recognizable cherries,' said Boroughs. 'It actually smelled like cherry blossoms when we got to the bottom.'"

From "Centuries-old bottles of cherries unearthed at George Washington’s home/The two, rare intact bottles, about 250 years old, were discovered by archaeologists working in the Mount Vernon basement" (WaPo).

I would have thought they'd have cleaned out the basement by now. This is a feel-good story on so many levels.

A puzzling criticism — in the NYT — of Trump's lawyer's building Trump up instead of "blasting" him.

I'm reading Jonah Bromwich, in "Live Updates: Jurors in Trump Criminal Case Told That He Lied ‘Over and Over and Over’/Donald J. Trump is charged with falsifying business records to cover up a sex scandal that threatened to derail his 2016 campaign. A lawyer for Mr. Trump insisted that the former president “did not commit any crimes" (NYT)(free access link).

This is the third time that I’ve heard lawyers for Trump talk in a New York courtroom about how successful the Trump Organization, his business, has been. It’s another way of pacifying their client — and it again shows the way that Trump’s lawyers are hemmed in by his personal preferences. Instead of blasting Trump but seeking to appeal to the jury’s fairness, they’re compelled to build him up.

The assumption appears to be that it would be a better strategy to tear Trump down and only Trump's narcissism is preventing his lawyers from taking that approach.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I would think it's better to portray Trump as a great benefactor of New York City, someone who has attracted political enemies who are bent on bringing him down. 

"Dogs in large cities are essentially settler-colonial—a way for their owners to move into and occupy more of the urban space than they are allotted while making it everyone else’s problem."

That's a tweet quoted in "Dogs slammed as ‘settler-colonial’ as pooches and owners blamed for ‘gentrifying’ NYC by woke activists" (NY Post).

"Identifiably Jewish students found themselves surrounded and cornered by protest mobs."

"Sahar Tartak, a sophomore who has written for these pages, was poked in the eye with a flagpole and needed hospital treatment. On Friday night the mob cheered as students ripped down the American flag in front of a memorial for fallen soldiers and tried to burn it. Students called Yale trustees and senior administrators 'terrorists.' Their chants included 'There is only one solution, intifada revolution' and 'From the river to the sea, Palestine is almost free.' They cornered a man at the plaza for wearing a T-shirt that read 'F--- Hamas.' This protest is in clear violation of Yale's code of conduct, which explicitly forbids protesters from obstructing building entrances or blocking students' ability to observe an event. But the administration sat on its hands.... For the police to step in, the Yale administration has to give them the green light, according to the [Yale police] officers. Some officers expressed frustration that Yale wouldn't allow them to intervene...."

Writes Gabriel Diamond, a Yale senior, in "Protests Turn Violent At Yale" (Wall Street Journal).

UPDATE:

"He hadn’t read more than 'a couple pages' of my work, but he had seen me lecturing on YouTube, and concluded that I was 'disingenuous.'"

"'I don’t like people who are disingenuous like that,' he said, somewhat opaquely. Disingenuous like what? He did not elaborate. 'I wanted to murder him because he was disingenuous' would be an unconvincing motive if one were to use it in crime fiction, and my strongest feeling, after reading his remarks, was that his decision to kill me seemed undermotivated."

Writes Salman Rushdie near the beginning of his new book, "Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder" (commission earned).

"For Sole-Smith, 'diet culture' has come to symbolize all the crushing expectations under which American women live."

"In her Substack newsletter and podcast, Burnt Toast, she muses on whether hewing to a household budget, gardening only with native plants, or limiting kids’ screen time can be regarded as diets."

From "Let Them Eat … Everything/In the age of Ozempic, the “fat activist” Virginia Sole-Smith is inspiring and infuriating her followers" (NYT).

"Did you hear Trump's take on the JFK assassination? Why he didn't release the files?"

"He said that if you knew what I know, you wouldn't tell people either. Which is crazy. What does that mean?"

Joe Rogan asked Tucker Carlson, toward the end of a 3-hour conversation.

Carlson answered:

"[T]he type of perfectionism with the steepest rise — socially prescribed perfectionism — was rooted in the belief that others expect you to be perfect...."

"There could be a number of causes for the uptick: increasing parental expectations, school pressures, the ubiquity of social media influencers and advertising...."

I'm reading "Perfectionism Is a Trap. Here’s How to Escape. Perfectionism among young people has skyrocketed, but experts say there are ways to quiet your inner critic" (NYT).

The article is what the headline says, tips on overcoming any sort of perfectionism. I'd like to see another article about the problem of socially prescribed perfectionism. It's so clearly delusional. Other people don't expect you to be perfect. Why is there a steep rise in this particular sort of perfectionism? I'm skeptical about the notion that it's "socially prescribed." If you desire perfection for social success (or social media) success, it's not prescribed by society. You're writing your own prescription.

"Supreme Court to Consider How Far Cities Can Police Homelessness/A group of homeless people in a small Oregon city challenged local laws banning sleeping in public."

A NYT article about a case up for oral argument today.

The plaintiffs’ argument rests in part on a 1962 case, Robinson v. California, in which the Supreme Court held that laws imposing penalties on people for narcotics addiction violated the Eighth Amendment because they punished a state of being, not a specific action, like drug possession or sale. 

In a similar fashion, the plaintiffs contend, Grants Pass is punishing people for being involuntarily homeless, not for specific actions.

Sunrise at 6:09 and flowers at 1:30.

Trout lilies:

Bluebells:

Things I talked about with Meade this morning.

1. How Tucker Carlson told Joe Rogan that Bari Weiss is a fraud and not honest at all. She called Tulsi Gabbard a "toady" and she didn't know what "toady" meant.

2. The similarities and differences between the Bob Dylan song "You Got to Serve Somebody" and the Band song "Unfaithful Servant."

3. The use of the tuba in popular music recorded in the last 60 years and why it matters if they had an actual tuba player in the studio as opposed to a digitalized tuba sound.

4. "Tuba players now rehearse around the flagpole."

5. Whether flags of foreign countries should be waved by members of Congress and how the use of the flag may mean different things to different people.

6. It was Richard Nixon who originated the wearing of a flag lapel pin and how everyone followed along and now they can't stop.

7. The way some people these days are calling their loved one "my person." I heard it in Salman Rushdie's new book "Knife" and I opened The New Yorker at random and saw it in a Roz Chast cartoon.

8. Some people call a dog's owner the dog's "person," and that seems related to the old joke "Are you walking him or is he walking you"?

9. Bill Maher asked why people want drag queens reading to children and said it would be better to have disabled people reading, but drag queens are entertainers and disabled people are not. 

10. How little children shouldn't be exposed to overly exciting entertainment and even peekaboo can be too intense for young minds.

11. How it's already too late to go south for warmer weather and we are better off here in the north, where there was frost on the grass this morning.

12. How fluent and funny Tucker Carlson was describing his boss at the New York Post who had a hairy back that he would rub against the door jamb while he talked to Tucker and the 5 or 6 ways that Tucker could have known that the man had a hairy back.

13. What a big part of life hairiness is — for the lower animals and for us, the humans. 

14. Was the hairy-backed man John Podhoretz? Carlson mutters the name.

15. The annoyingness of Carlson's laugh and how hard you have to commit to do a good enough imitation of it.

16. The energy Joe and Tucker had. Doesn't Tucker wear a hairpiece and Joe just shaved off all his hair.

17. Meeting for coffee and not an entire meal so you're free to leave whenever you want and how some people have trouble getting out of small-talk conversations and this one simple trick that's all you need.

18. The perception that a conversation can't end until both participants want it to end and the way some people keep adding new topics as if keeping a conversation going is a game.

19. The very low level of tennis playing that has you just trying to keep the ball in play as long as possible.

20. How all this talk is taking the place of writing on the blog, but I could just make a blog post out of all the topics that didn't make it onto the blog because I was talking about everything with Meade.

Sunrise — 6:03, 6:08.

Much as he hates to side with conservatives, Bill Maher worries about the sexualization of children in schools and entertainment media.

Watch the whole thing to see what I mean:

"Elephants learn crucial social and behavioral skills from their mothers and other relatives, with whom they share intense emotional bonds."

"Instead of experiencing all this in their natural homes, elephants used in circuses are exploited—made to do meaningless circus tricks on the road."

A statement from PETA, quoted in "Elephant escapes circus, roams streets of Montana" (WaPo).

People are finding this amusing...

... but it isn't, really.

"There is chaos that is happening."

Said Laura Coates, quoted in "A history of CNN’s Laura Coates, who calmly narrated a self-immolation/She’s a lawyer-turned-journalist who captivated viewers by reporting calmly on a tragedy unfolding before her eyes" (WaPo)(free access link).

“We have seen an arm that has been visible that has been engulfed in total flames,” she said, two fingers on an earpiece that connected her to CNN’s control room. “We are watching multiple fires breaking out around his body and person.”

Powered off.

I'm reading "Daniel C. Dennett, Widely Read and Fiercely Debated Philosopher, 82, Dies/Espousing his ideas in best sellers, he insisted that religion was an illusion, free will was a fantasy and evolution could only be explained by natural selection" (NYT).

According to Mr. Dennett, the human mind is no more than a brain operating as a series of algorithmic functions, akin to a computer. To believe otherwise is “profoundly naïve and anti-scientific,” he told The Times.

For Mr. Dennett, random chance played a greater role in decision-making than did motives, passions, reasoning, character or values. Free will is a fantasy, but a necessary one to gain people’s acceptance of rules that govern society, he said.

Do you take offense at my post title? 

"Of the so-called Big Six Romantics, he’s the hardest to place. The hikers and the introverts read Wordsworth..."

"... the hippies love Blake, Keats is for the purists, Shelley for the political dreamers … and Byron? In spite of his fame, he lacks brand recognition. That’s partly because, halfway through his career, he decided to change the brand. 'If I am sincere with myself,' he once wrote, '(but I fear one lies more to one’s self than to any one else), every page should confute, refute and utterly abjure its predecessor.'"

From "Lord Byron Was Hard to Pin Down. That’s What Made Him Great. Two hundred years after his death, this Romantic poet is still worth reading" (WaP0).

"They’re spread from south-east Asia to the Korean peninsula and Europe. What is [Biden] implying? All 79,000 that were never found were eaten?"

Said Michael Kabuni, a lecturer in political science at the University of Papua New Guinea, quoted in "'Lost for words’: Joe Biden’s tale about cannibals bemuses Papua New Guinea residents/President’s suggestion that his ‘Uncle Bosie’ was eaten by cannibals harms US efforts to build Pacific ties, say local experts" (The Guardian).

79,000 U.S. soldiers were never accounted for after World War II.

"The presidency is really hard, people age during the presidency. Maybe he’s just what a lot of 80 year olds would be like if you made them work that hard."

Texted my son Chris, in a discussion about some recent Biden videos — the one about cannibalism, the one about little kids in the west giving him the finger, and the one where he has trouble closing a box:

Joe Biden can’t close a box and struggles to order a milkshake at a Wawa convenience store… But democrats somehow think you won’t notice and will believe he’s going to be able to solve the complex problems of the world. 🤡🤡🤡 pic.twitter.com/ZfbXtME7aV

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) April 19, 2024

Chris had asked, "Do you think he really has dementia? To me he’s always seemed like he had a screw loose. Even in What It Takes" (commission earned link)("What It Takes" is a book about the 1988 presidential campaign, which Chris just read and I am rereading).

I said: "Maybe he’s faking it.... Faking it and having a little dementia mixed in." 

He said: "To me he seems extremely low energy. The presidency is really hard, people age during the presidency. Maybe he’s just what a lot of 80 year olds would be like if you made them work that hard."

The idea of driving 80 year olds to work extremely hard, under 24/7 high stress, is quite disturbing. Who can imagine a torturous work camp like that? Of course, we aren't making Joe do it. He's insisting on it for himself.

"The Natural Law Party was founded in 1992 on a platform that included promotion of transcendental meditation, responsible gun use, flat taxes and organic farming...."

"For 22 years, [Doug] Dern, a bankruptcy lawyer with a small practice outside Detroit, has almost single-handedly kept the Natural Law Party on Michigan’s ballot."Each cycle, the party runs a handful of candidates in obscure state races to meet Michigan’s minimum polling requirements for minor parties. 'Keep that ballot access,' Mr. Dern, 62, said in an interview on Friday. 'Because someday, a candidate is going to come along who’s going to be perfect for it. Someday, the third parties are going to be hot.'... "

I'm reading "How R.F.K. Jr. Got on the Michigan Ballot, With Only Two Votes/The independent candidate persuaded a tiny party to give him its line on the ballot in a key 2024 battleground state, sparing him a costly, arduous organizing effort" (NYT).

"Mr. Kennedy was formally nominated at a brief convention held Wednesday morning in Mr. Dern’s law office. The only two attendees were Mr. Dern and the party’s secretary.... Mr. Dern... has worked as a stage magician and also has a law practice for drunken-driving arrests.... 'I’ve just been plugging away, year after year, making sure there are people on the ballot,' he said."

Nothing goes together like transcendental meditation, drunk driving, and magic.

Thanks to Doug Dern for keeping the Natural Law fire burning, lending a hand to Bobby, and throwing a monkey wrench into the 2-party system.

"It’s clear to me that [university authorities] haven’t transgressed here. You can debate who you ought to be sympathetic with..."

"... but in my own mind, I am confident that the students have no First Amendment claim to stay in that space."

Said Columbia lawprof Vincent A. Blasi, "who has spent decades studying civil liberties issues, said the university had articulated a 'reasonable' policy to govern protests and had every right to punish students who violate it," quoted in "Faculty Group at Columbia Says It Has ‘Lost Confidence’ in the President/The campus chapter of a faculty organization said it would 'fight to reclaim our university.' Students were undeterred by the crackdown on their protest" (NYT).

Of course, the university doesn't have to do everything within its power.

What the man who burned himself to death outside the courthouse symbolizes.

This is what he symbolizes to me and also what I think he ought to symbolize: People have grown far too emotional about politics.

Calm down, everyone. Observe. Think. Don't throw away your humanity. Don't throw away your life. The anguish — the fever pitch — is not helping. 

Where the Trump jurors say they get their news.

A helpful graphic from "Where Jurors in Trump Hush-Money Trial Say They Get Their News" (NYT):

Juror #2 is the only one who gets the news from X and also the only one who gets news from Truth Social. This person has no other news source. (Of course, it's possible that the jurors weren't accurate/truthful about their news sources.)

There are 2 jurors, #5 and #6, who get news from TikTok, but #5 also looks at Google and #6 looks at Facebook, Google, and the NYT. Juror #4 is the odd/wise person who identified no news source at all.

Interesting that only one juror reads the NY Post and that's also the only juror who listens to public radio. This person also reads the NYT and the Wall Street Journal.

Anyway, seeing those dots so widely scattered across this grid, do you feel reasonably good about this jury?

At the Friday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

(Photo taken at 6:17 yesterday morning. The forest floor is carpeted with trout lilies.)

"It happens all the time" — "in a rural town, in the west" — The signs say "F Biden" and little kids give him the finger.

Enjoy this video of Biden talking about how many ‘F*ck Joe Biden’ signs he sees and how many little kids flip him off 🤣

pic.twitter.com/n6LRFQshuC

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) April 19, 2024

"In a city where many feel ready to snap, dogs have become easy targets for a bubbling undercurrent of rage."

"Now, strangers will just tell my dog he’s an asshole. On three separate occasions, a woman in my building, who doesn’t know I work from home and who doesn’t live on my floor, has come downstairs to stand right in front of my door until Milo starts barking, then yells at him gleefully. Walking to the corner store the other day, Milo made a little woof while crossing the street. 'Shut up, dog,' a man told him, staring at me. The woman next to him started laughing. 'Yeah, shut up dog!'..."

Writes Bindu Bansinath, in "Why Does Everyone Hate My Dog? In a city bubbling over with rage, pets — and their owners — are enemy No. 1" (The Cut).

"A young man set himself on fire on Friday afternoon near the Lower Manhattan courthouse where jury selection continued in the criminal trial of former President Donald J. Trump."

"The man doused himself with a liquid around 1:35 p.m. in Collect Pond Park, across the street from the courthouse.... It was unclear what motivated his action. People rushed over to try to extinguish the fire, but the intensity of the heat could be felt several hundred feet away. After a few minutes, dozens of police officers rushed over and tried to smother the flames. The man, who appeared to be alive, was loaded into an ambulance and rushed away."

The NYT reports.

MORE: At The Guardian, in "Jury selection completed for Trump’s historic criminal hush-money trial - live":

"The ugly shoe conversation reminds me of..."

"... the stylist Allison Bornstein’s 'wrong shoe' theory: the idea that you can really make an outfit sing — or make a boring outfit interesting — with a shoe that contradicts the rest of the look.... I think there’s also concern around being a 'fashion victim' not just by wearing an ugly shoe, but by wearing a shoe that will be everywhere. I like the non-ugly Bode Nike Astro Grabbers, for example — especially the cream style with colorful shoelace charms. But even if I’m able to nab a pair when they’re released on May 1, do I want to be wearing the same sneaker as every other joker on Orchard Street?"

Says Jessica Testa, in "The Ugly State of Shoe Collaborations/Blingy Crocs, punk Uggs and spangled sneakers, oh my" (NYT).

This gets my "paradox" tag: the wrongness is the rightness.

Sitting within good information.

EXCLUSIVE: Katherine Maher doesn't just want to "stamp out bad information" on the internet. She wants to replace it with "good information"—i.e., left-wing narratives—and force the public to "sit within that good information" as "a collective."

Big Sister has arrived. pic.twitter.com/7kfq8VYHfj

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) April 18, 2024

I like the plants in the background, because she really is visualizing the people as plants. Watch for her snarky snicker when she knows she's characterizing NPR's news as manure for us to take root in and grow in the direction that pleases her.

"In 1877 a British philosopher and mathematician named William Kingdon Clifford published an essay called 'The Ethics of Belief.'"

"In it he argued that if a shipowner ignored evidence that his craft had problems and sent the ship to sea having convinced himself it was safe, then of course we would blame him if the ship went down and all aboard were lost. To have a belief is to bear responsibility, and one thus has a moral responsibility to dig arduously into the evidence, avoid ideological thinking and take into account self-serving biases. 'It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence,' Clifford wrote. A belief, he continued, is a public possession. If too many people believe things without evidence, 'the danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.'"

From "The Courage to Follow the Evidence on Transgender Care" by David Brooks (NYT).

Here's the essay "The Ethics of Belief."

And here's Hilary Cass's study (discussed in the Brooks column), "Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People."

"When your community no longer reflects morals and values, it might be time to move."

 Says the website Conservative Move, quoted in "Sick of Your Blue State? These Real Estate Agents Have Just the Place for You. Agents in South Carolina, the fastest growing state in the country last year, say that many newcomers are Republicans eager to leave the Northeast and West Coast" (NYT).

Yana Ghannam, a recent client of [a Conservative Move real estate agent], said that she had moved to Greenville from Livermore, Calif., because she wanted to make friends who wouldn’t criticize her for voting Republican or for being anti-union. “It was very much, ‘Oh you have to do this to fit in, you have to do that,’” Ms. Ghannam said of her life in Livermore.

There's a big difference between: 1. Wanting to live where everyone thinks like you, and 2. Wanting to be free of rejection for failing to think like everyone else.

Reason #1 is anti-diversity. Reason #2 is pro-diversity. Don't mix up the 2 mindsets! A conservative might want to leave a blue state because Democrats are treating them with hostility. That is, Democrats are in mindset #1, seeking uniformity. 

What are you supposed to do if you want good social interaction among people who enjoy a diverse marketplace of ideas? I'm afraid the only option — even if your motivation is to flee hostility (Reason #2) — is to go to the place where people agree with you (which would be Reason #1 if it were your motivation).

Why is Trump doing so well in the polls?

I'm reading "As Trial Begins, Was Trump Benefiting From Being Out of the News? His liabilities weren’t dominating the conversation the way they once did, perhaps helping his polling" by Nate Cohn.

Donald J. Trump appears to be a stronger candidate than he was four years ago, polling suggests, and not just because a notable number of voters look back on his presidency as a time of relative peace and prosperity. It’s also because his political liabilities, like his penchant to offend and his legal woes, don’t dominate the news the way they once did....

Really? I think he seems to dominate the news. But of course, he isn't President. The actual President does necessarily claim some space. In Biden's case, it's the least space I've ever seen claimed by a President. Because of all the prosecutions, Trump's first presidency is still immensely important daily news. And Trump also gets attention as the leading contender to be the next President. Biden is overwhelmed. What do we hear of Biden? He said something weird about cannibalism. He didn't wear a bow tie with his dinner jacket.

Nevertheless, Cohn seems to have convinced himself that Trump is lower profile in the news these days:

"News aggregation and analysis accounts like Mx. Spehar’s are shaping the discourse about current events in the United States, especially among young people."

"They’re a modern version of old-school bloggers — users respond to the personal tone, and the editorializing. (Some creators have even built followings simply by reading print news articles to their followers.) Pew Research Center has found that about one-third of 18- to 29-year-olds say they get news regularly on the platform, far outpacing people in other age groups."

From "Love, Hate or Fear It, TikTok Has Changed America" (NYT). That's a free-access link. The article has a wide scope. I excerpted what was interesting to me, an old-school blogger, a living relic of the pre-modern period.

"Mx. Spehar posts to more than three million followers from the handle @UnderTheDeskNews and films many clips lying on the floor, a gimmick that began as an effort to differentiate from the authoritative tone of traditional television news anchors. The style of communication has resonated enough to make Mx. Spehar a regular at White House briefings with social media influencers."

If you, like one-third of 18- to 29-year-olds, were getting your news from Spehar, here's what you'd be seeing this morning. Just guess how a TikToker would present the news that Israel retaliated against Iran. Now compare that to what Spehar actually did:

"Biden’s Catholic faith should make him a natural middle-grounder..."

"... but his personal qualms about abortion have zero policy substance since he abandoned his support for the Hyde Amendment, and he’s planted himself to the left of secular Europe on transgender issues.... Biden is only now considering a Trump-like executive order on border crossings....  [T]he White House is reluctant to put any clear distance between itself and climate activists.... 'If you like your gas-powered car, you can keep your car' is a simple, politically effective formulation. Yet somehow the Biden administration has ended up with 'If you like your gas-powered car, you’re a clueless antiquarian' instead. One explanation for this pattern is that Biden’s White House is staffed by progressive ideologues.... The greater freedom that Trump enjoys has roots in some dark places — cynicism, conservative tribalism, a populist indifference to policy detail...."

Writes Ross Douthat in "Why Can’t Biden Triangulate Like Trump?" 

I clicked on that headline as soon as I saw it, so I'm surprised to see it's dated April 13th. Since I scan the front-page headlines at the NYT every day, I have to think Biden's failure to "triangulate" is something the editors wanted buried. By the way, "triangulate like Trump" is funny, considering that Bill Clinton was the original triangulator. No mention of Clinton in Douthat's column.

Sunrise — 5:59, 5:59, 6:00, 6:20.

"Behind the scenes, Trump’s defense team is scrambling to find and review potential jurors’ social media accounts..."

"... and when they find ones critical of the former president and presumptive GOP presidential nominee, they are racing to show them to the judge to try to get those people dismissed. The turnaround time for such work is tight — lawyers on the case have been given lists of names of potential jurors, some of whom they have to start questioning in a matter of hours.... To fight back against what he says is an inherently unfair jury pool, Trump’s defense team hired a jury consulting firm that is analyzing all posts from jurors.... So far, the judge has been mostly skeptical of the defense claims of dangerous bias exhibited by old social media posts. Jurors questioned in court about their old social media posts were often defensive and dismissive of the suggestion that the old posts revealed anything important about their views or ability to be fair...."

WaPo reports.

"Since Donald J. Trump’s election in 2016, many campuses have become especially volatile places, seeing an increase..."

"... in angry demonstrations over conservative speakers, some of whom have been disinvited out of fear for their safety. The Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel has sparked another wave of protests.... In interviews, they described encountering students who were unwilling to engage with administrators when invited to do so, quick to use aggressive and sometimes physical forms of expression, and often wore masks to conceal their identities..... 'When I talk to my fellow university presidents, everybody has the same experience,' said Daniel Diermeier, the chancellor of Vanderbilt.... 'They’re not interested in dialogue. When they are invited for dialogue, they do not participate,' Dr. Diermeier said. 'They’re interested in protesting, disruption. That’s different... This has nothing to do with free speech. That’s a red herring'...."

From "Colleges Warn Student Demonstrators: Enough/After years of tolerating unruly protests, some schools are starting to suspend and expel students, raising questions about where they should draw the line" (NYT).

Meanwhile: "Live Updates: Police Arresting Pro-Palestinian Protesters at Columbia/Officers began arresting students on Thursday, a day after university officials testified about antisemitism before Congress" (NYT)("The arrests, which drew a new crowd of students to support the protesters, came the day after university leaders pledged to Congress that they would crack down on unauthorized student protests tied to the war in Gaza").

"'I think that, like, boys’ rooms as a concept is interesting,' said Mr. Isaacson, who is a full-time comedian."

"'It’s just very fun to see myself and these other, you know, contestants, for lack of a better word, in their natural habitat.' Mr. Isaacson’s apartment tour included a large amount of clothes spread across the floor; a dresser filled with gray wigs (for his sketch comedy, he says); and a desk that was given to him by his grandmother. 'I think of the clutter as, like, if you’re crossing a creek,' said Mr. Isaacson, who has since cleaned his apartment in response to some of the comments. 'There are sort of steppingstones that you use to avoid the water. And I think in a good messy boy’s room, there are steppingstones of floor.'"

From "Bravely Exploring the Squalor of a ‘Boy Room’/Male 20-somethings are showing off their messy apartments in a video series that poses the implicit question, “You live like this?”" (NYT).

Here's the "Boy Room" tour of Chris's room. More of "Boy Room," here, at Instagram.

I came away from the experience wanting to paraphrase Leo Tolstoy: Messy boy rooms are all alike; every neat rooms is neat in its own way. 

Now, it's the negative that's all alike, so I've reversed Tolstoy's idea —  Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. And that makes me want to examine the possibility that unhappy families are all alike and every happy family is happy in its own way. I mean, why not? Who has done the research here?

We're talking about chaos and order. It's chaos that is always the same. There are so many possibilities for order.

Men in stores.

Trump at an NYC bodega: Pandemonium.
Biden at a Sheetz gas station: Crickets. pic.twitter.com/iFRV6g22rd

— Suburban Black Man 🇺🇸 (@niceblackdude) April 18, 2024

President Trump will put New York in play this November!

It is only Day 2 of this show trial, and President Trump is already breaking the internet by visiting Jose Alba's bodega.

Alba was shipped to Rikers Island by Bragg after acting in self-defense.

pic.twitter.com/60wIKUpMWT

— Lee Zeldin (@LeeMZeldin) April 16, 2024

Trump later proclaimed, "That was great action at the bodega," and there was an instant campaign ad.

"Furry is a fandom. We don’t think that we’re animals. I really like the idea of animals that walk and talk, so I’m going to dress up as one, as kind of a fun sort of cosplay thing."

Said a student named Strudel, quoted in "Students walk out of Utah middle school to protest ‘furries’" (abc4). Strudel explained that people who think they actually are a nonhuman animal are called "therians."

The student protesters object to the school's tolerance of the furries. There is a dress code banning things that "draw undue attention, distract, disrupt, or otherwise interfere with the learning atmosphere." You can see from the video of the protest, below, that signs say things like "Compelled speech is not free speech" and "I will not comply," so there seems to be more going on than a simple failure to enforce the dress code against the furries. I haven't watched much of the video, but I'm guessing the non-furry students are compelled to acknowledge the furries' professed identity in some prescribed way. And the article says the protesting students accuse the furries of "biting, scratching, spraying air freshener on, barking at and chasing other students." I'm guessing they are claiming a privilege to manifest behavior in line with their professed identity. How would that explain spraying air freshener? Perhaps that's a mellow substitute for a spray bottle of urine.

I'm not sure this isn't a hoax. There's plenty of video though:

"Donald Trump, who relentlessly undermined the justice system while in office and since, is enjoying the same protections and guarantees of fairness and due process before the law that he sought to deny to others during his term."

So says the Editorial Board of the New York Times, in "Donald Trump and American Justice."

That's a free access link, in case you want to search for details about that relentless undermining. 

I got there via Mickey Kaus, who tweeted, "@NYTopinion gives zero (0) examples of Trump denying due process to others during his term."

According to the Editorial Board:

[Trump] portrays himself as a victim of an unfair and politically motivated prosecution. That defense is built on lies. Mr. Trump is no victim. He is fortunate to live in a country where the rule of law guarantees a presumption of innocence and robust rights for defendants.

I don't like how the Board is conflating the prosecution and the court and the rule of law. The rule of law is an abstraction. Rights exist within the abstraction, but rights can be violated. The abstraction doesn't guarantee the rights. People exercising power must ensure that those rights are protected, and they may deviously hide behind the abstraction... perhaps with the help of elite onlookers who make abstract pronouncements in print. 

At the Trout Lily Café (formerly the Bloodroot Café)...

... you can talk all night.

Breadcrumbing.

I'm learning a new buzzword in "My Girlfriend Said She Loved Me. Should I Say It Back Even if I’m Not Sure?/The magazine’s Ethicist columnist on whether it’s OK to profess love if you’re uncertain you feel it" (NYT).

[I]f she has a vision of a shared future that doesn’t resonate with you... exaggerating your feelings in order to preserve the status quo would amount to “breadcrumbing”: leading her on, and preventing her from moving along with her life. The prototype breadcrumber is the manipulative cad who just wants to keep all options open on a Friday night. More typical breadcrumbers, I suspect, are driven not by cynicism but by uncertainty, and by a desire to avoid conflict....

Breadcrumbs. I tend to think of Hansel and Gretel dropping breadcrumbs to mark a path that leads back out of the forest. But breadcrumbs fail as path markers because the birds eat them. But there's also the idea of feeding a person mere crumbs. Isn't that usually seen from the point of view of the person offered the crumbs? You're just giving me crumbs! I don't think I've seen it from the perspective of the person hoping to get what they want by only giving crumbs. So I don't think this is a good buzzword — not unless it's used by the person who's rejecting the offer of crumbs.

Googling, I see that it is, in fact, a well-established term for manipulating someone. Why are people letting themselves be manipulated by metaphorical crumbs? I'm blaming the victim here.

"No one’s been harder on Trump than me. But I get it, and I’m bored with it. And there’s a different way to do this...."

"Not to defend Trump, but to defend the people who still vote for him. Because what they see on the other side, to them, is even more dangerous. Because it’s closer to home: 'My kid is coming home from school and he thinks he’s a racist? He’s five, what have you been telling him? My son thinks maybe he’s not a boy.' And maybe that’s true, that happens. Those kind of things are what they say. 'That’s why I’m voting for Trump.'"

Said Bill Maher, criticizing the mainstream commentators who endlessly express negativity toward Trump, quoted in "Bill Maher Defends Trump Voters in Contentious Katie Couric Sit-Down" (Daily Beast)(video at the link).

Maher is right. The media pundits should not be aiming disrespect and contempt at the millions of Americans who support Trump. They are voters, and they are human beings. The self-important experts ought at least to pretend to care about understanding and reaching them.

"Having rarely missed a Morning Edition or All Things Considered every day every week for every year between 1984 and 2013, by 2014 NPR became less and less tolerable to this centrist..."

"... until by 2020 I just stopped caring and certainly stopped listening. I doubt I am alone in having concluded NPR had become something of a joke. And a really sad one."

That's the second highest-rated comment on the NYT article, "NPR Editor Who Accused Broadcaster of Liberal Bias Resigns/Uri Berliner, who has worked at NPR for 25 years, said in an essay last week that the nonprofit had allowed progressive bias to taint its coverage."

Highest rated: "Kudos to Berliner for having the backbone to write the essay he did. Weren’t we all thinking it anyway and he just voiced the reason many of us stopped listening to NPR on a regular basis?"

Third-highest: "Mr. Berliner was on suspension not for working for outside organizations but for truthfully criticizing NPR's bias."

Fourth: "I've been listening to NPR my entire life. Things took wild turn after 2016. And now I am finding myself disjoint from almost all conversation happening on NPR.

Remember, these are NYT readers. These are most likely liberals who are put off by the left-wing slant. I was going to write What happened in 2016? I had to laugh at myself.

"My husband...’s a frat bro who loves sports, and I’m a radical alien witch academic nerd."

"In the beginning, we did all the typical stuff. Read the books on nonmonogamy, did the relationship check-ins. We’d sit down, take notes. We did every exercise in the books, listened to every podcast. We learned a strategy from the Multiamory podcast called 'agile scrum,' which was adapted from business-meeting models. We utilized that format. We did that for a year and a half, at least once a month, sometimes six to 10 hours of hard poly-processing. That gave us great communication tactics."

Said a woman named Ann, quoted in "Lessons From a 20-Person Polycule/How they set boundaries, navigate jealousy, wingman their spouses and foster community" (NYT)(free access link).

My head spins. Who could listen to every podcast? Exhausting, and I'm barely picturing what "hard poly-processing" must mean!

Anyway, what does Ann's husband think? He seems quite a bit less jaunty and managerial about the whole thing. This is actually pretty sad, so I will put it after the jump, for your protection:

"I don’t think the obvious thing needs to be stated out loud, which is that when Russia blocks YouTube, they’ll justify it with precisely this decision of the United States."

Said the Russian opposition blogger, Aleksandr Gorbunov, quoted in "What a TikTok Ban Would Mean for the U.S. Defense of an Open Internet/Global digital rights advocates are watching to see if Congress acts, worried that other countries could follow suit with app bans of their own" (NYT).

By targeting TikTok... the United States may undermine its decades-long efforts to promote an open and free internet governed by international organizations, not individual countries, digital rights advocates said. The web in recent years has fragmented as authoritarian governments in China and Russia increasingly encroach on their citizens’ internet access.... 

"Many people with obesity... have fat deposits in the tongue and in the back of the throat. The neck gets larger with fat that narrows the airway..."

"... and the tongue gets larger in all directions, 'like blowing up a balloon'... During sleep, the tongue obstructs the flow of oxygen, repeatedly waking the person repeatedly.”

Writes Gina Kolata, in "Sleep Apnea Reduced in People Who Took Weight-Loss Drug, Eli Lilly Reports/The company reported results of clinical trials involving Zepbound, an obesity drug in the same class as Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy" (NYT).

That's good news, and I hope this drug helps with sleep apnea, which must be a terrible problem, but I'm blogging this because I was cheered up by the phrase "repeatedly waking the person repeatedly."

"Many younger women, for instance, shaped in part by the #MeToo movement, are engaging in intentional abstinence."

"There are trends on TikTok about going 'boysober'... 'Platonic life partners,' meanwhile — friends who commit to owning a home and even raising children together — insist that sex and romance are not necessary to lifelong unions. The sex educator and researcher Emily Nagoski is resistant to the idea that frequent sex should be a chief component of every committed relationship. Nagoski — who has been open about her own hiatus from marital sex — doesn’t endorse obligatory sex, nor does she encourage aiming for any sexual base line in terms of regularity or behavior. Drawing on the work of the Canadian sexologist Peggy Kleinplatz, Nagoski believes that low desire can sometimes be evidence of good judgment. 'It’s not dysfunctional not to want sex you don’t like,' Nagoski says.... For couples measuring themselves against what Nagoski calls the 'fictions' of sex, or for those worried that their relationship is on the line whenever they enter the bedroom or don’t meet some monthly number, there may be too much pressure for sex to be enjoyable. It’s more important that couples establish what kind of sex is worth having...."

Writes Amanda Montei, in "Can a Sexless Marriage Be a Happy One? Experts and couples are challenging the conventional wisdom that sex is essential to relationships" (NYT).

My excerpt deprives you of a lot of anecdotes, so I'll just give you one as an example... an absurd example:

"If a belligerent state launched 186 explosive drones, 36 cruise missiles, and 110 surface-to-surface missiles from three fronts against civilian targets within the United States..."

"... would Joe Biden call it a 'win'? Would the president tell us that the best thing we can do now is show 'restraint'? What if that same terror state’s proxy armies had recently helped murder, rape, and kidnap more than 1,000 American men, women, and children? What if this terror state were trying to obtain nuclear weapons so it could continue to agitate without any consequences?"

Asks David Harsanyi, in "The World Is Paying A Deadly Price For Barack Obama’s Foreign Policy Legacy" (The Federalist).

"I spent most of Mr. Trump’s speech not far from the stage, sandwiched between two exceptionally kind older guys clad in camo..."

"... one with a matching hat that read 'Ultra MAGA warrior.' One of them rustled me up a chair, offered to serve as a wind shield and even tried to lend me his gloves so my fingers wouldn’t freeze. I was comfortable enough, but after nearly an hour of listening to Mr. Trump’s usual ravings, I decided to call it a night."

Writes Michelle Cottle, in "What I Found Inside the MAGAverse on the Eve of Trump’s Trial" (NYT). That's a free access link, so you can find more of Cottle's experience among the deplorables and her seeming surprise at finding them happy, not angry, and pretty nice.

"There was a vibe of unity, common purpose, faith and joy. I didn’t run across anyone sweating the trial. But I spoke with plenty of folks like Lauren Herzog — who was rocking pigtails, a MAGA hat and an American-flag pajama onesie — with her husband and a bunch of their friends, who were happy to field my questions about whether they were concerned that Mr. Trump would soon be in court. There was much laughter and even more cross talk, but the bottom-line ruling from the group was, 'Nah.'"

"Would pulling a fire alarm before a vote qualify for 20 years in federal prison?"

From yesterday's argument in Fischer v. United States, the case about charging January 6th defendants with violating a federal statute that arose out of the Enron scandal and was aimed at the destruction of documents.

What fits the statute under the government's interpretation?

JUSTICE GORSUCH: Would a sit-in that disrupts a trial or access to a federal courthouse qualify? Would a heckler in today's audience qualify, or at the state of the union address? Would pulling a fire alarm before a vote qualify for 20 years in federal prison?

The fire alarm scenario must allude to the Jamaal Bowman incident, but of course, the Solicitor General proceeds smoothly and professionally, and calls it a "hypothetical":

GENERAL PRELOGAR: There are multiple elements of the statute that I think might not be satisfied by those hypotheticals, and it relates to the point I was going to make to the Chief Justice about the breadth of this statute. The -- the kind of built-in limitations or the things that I think would potentially suggest that many of those things wouldn't be something the government could charge or prove