"It was unclear when the gas began flowing. Grayson rocked his head, shook and pulled against the gurney restraints."

"He clenched his fist and appeared to struggle to try to gesture again. His sheet-wrapped legs lifted off the gurney into the air at 6.14pm.... He took a periodic series of more than a dozen gasping breaths for several minutes. He appeared to stop breathing at 6.21pm, and then the curtains to the viewing room were closed at 6.27pm, with Grayson pronounced dead at 6.33pm.... Alabama is the only state to use the method... pumping nitrogen through a mask and depriving someone of oxygen. It has been banned by veterinarians for use on most mammals.... John Hamm, Alabama corrections commissioner, said... he thought some of Grayson’s initial movements – shaking and gasping on the gurney – were 'all show' but maintained that other movements exhibited by Grayson and the two others executed by nitrogen gas were expected involuntary movements, including the breathing at the end."

From "Alabama man shook and gasped in final moments of nitrogen gas execution/Death of Carey Dale Grayson, 50, marks third time the southern US state has killed someone using controversial method" (The Guardian).

"Their existence, and my relationships with each of them, are essential to my understanding of life itself."

That's a very strangely written sentence... by M. Gessen, in "What Democrats Are Getting Wrong About Transgender Rights" (NYT). 

Context:

I am trans and I am a parent of three children, one of whom I carried. Their existence, and my relationships with each of them, are essential to my understanding of life itself. I also have many friends (none of them trans, as it happens) who never had children. I occasionally envy their freedom. They may occasionally envy me my sprawling family. In neither case is the feeling of regret — if it can even be called that — significant or particularly long-lasting. It is, rather, an awareness that life is a series of choices, all of which are made with incomplete information.

Presumably, Gessen has one relationship with each of the children, but it's possible that Gessen really does means to claim multiple relationships with each one. I suppose the grammar was a minor distraction on the way to proclaiming the superiority of a life lived without regrets. 

Anxiety about trans people and reproduction, and the laws and rules that it produces, cut both ways...

Puzzling commas again. And why choose a cutting metaphor here? Intentional prodding of our anxiety about surgery?

There's a lot more going on in the article, which was originally titled "The Secret Behind America's Moral Panic." What's the secret? And what are "Democrats... Getting Wrong About Transgender Rights"? This is the most useful passage:

"Mr. Trump would not be the first newly elected or re-elected president to assume his victory gave him more political latitude than it really did."

"Bill Clinton tried to turn his 5.6-point win in 1992 into a mandate to completely overhaul the nation’s health care system, a project that blew up in his face and cost his party both houses of Congress in the next midterm elections. George W. Bush likewise thought his 2.4-point win in 2004 would empower him to revise the Social Security system, only to fail and lose Congress two years later. And President Biden interpreted his 4.5-point win over Mr. Trump in 2020 as a mission to push through some of the most expansive social programs since the Great Society, then saw Republicans take control of the House in 2022 and the White House and Senate two years after that."

Writes Peter Baker, in "The 'Landslide' That Wasn’t: Trump and Allies Pump Up His Narrow Victory/The latest vote count shows that Donald J. Trump won the popular vote by one of the smallest margins since the 19th century. But Mr. Trump claims a 'powerful mandate'" (NYT).

Saying it's a landslide is the same thing as saying it's not a landslide: propaganda.

It's just a word.

Insane not to think about.

Just one of these could level an entire European city within 20 minutes of being launched. Insane to think about. https://t.co/9MkZBxp8DN

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) November 22, 2024

"I make a pretty sharp distinction between his medical ideas, which I think are really unsound and dangerous, and his critique of the food system, which has many elements I completely agree with."

Says Michael Pollan, quoted in "Michael Pollan Is Not Endorsing RFK Jr./A Q&A with the food reform advocate about the common ground he has with RFK Jr. — and why he does not want him to be HHS secretary" (Politico).

Michael Pollan, perhaps the country’s best-known advocate of healthy eating and reforming the food system, caused a stir earlier this week when he posted an article on his X account headlined “They’re Lying About Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” The article, published in the American Conservative, stopped short of endorsing Kennedy for the job of Health and Human Services secretary, but did endorse Kennedy’s critique of the food system and tried to add nuance to his skepticism of vaccines. Pollan posted a link to the story without comment, but the mere fact that he did so was interpreted as the latest sign of how the nomination of RFK Jr. has scrambled some partisan health policy divides.

The American Conservative article is by Spencer Neale, whose name does not appear in the Politico piece.

Pollan sounds nervous. He ends the interview with: "Are you going to publish this soon? Because I really want to stop this. I don’t want to get a phone call from RFK Jr. I want him to read this and not call."

Imagine being afraid of a call from Kennedy. What kind of people are leaning on Pollan?

Pollan originally liked Neale's article — unsurprising, because Neale mentions him with great favor:

Sunrise — 6:54, 6:55.

Gaetz withdraws.

WaPo reports.

Former congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) announced in a social media post Thursday that he was withdrawing his bid to be attorney general for President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration, saying his confirmation was “unfairly becoming a distraction.” “There is no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle,” Gaetz said after meeting with senators on Wednesday. Former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for defense secretary, is meeting with senators on Capitol Hill on Thursday after police records revealed new details about a sexual assault allegation against him. Vice President-elect JD Vance is accompanying Hegseth.

"The DOGE Plan to Reform Government" — by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

Read it in The Wall Street Journal. Excerpts:

We are entrepreneurs, not politicians.... We'll cut costs.... We will focus particularly on driving change through executive action based on existing legislation rather than by passing new laws. Our North Star for reform will be the U.S. Constitution, with a focus on two critical Supreme Court rulings issued during President Biden's tenure.

"Most of the country shifted right in the 2024 presidential election...."

"Trump won the suburbs.... Rural areas went even more for Trump.... Harris also underperformed in urban areas...."

NPR reports.

I see my county got bluer though.

First snow — this morning at 7:07.

"House GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced that she will chair a new oversight subcommittee in the next Congress that will work with..."

"... the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. House Oversight Chair James Comer 'intends to establish a new Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) for the 119th Congress,' a source familiar told CNN, confirming that Greene will chair the subcommittee.... The creation of the new subcommittee establishes a congressional arm to the broader effort by Trump and his allies to make significant cuts to the federal government. The subpanel will examine the salaries and status of members of the federal civil service and intergovernmental personnel among other oversight measures...."

CNN reports.

A quote from Greene: "Our subcommittee’s work will expose people who need to be FIRED. The bureaucrats who don’t do their job, fail audits like in the Pentagon, and don’t know where BILLIONS of dollars are going, will be getting a pink slip."

Speaking of bureaucrats, I'm seeing complaints about Trump's appointments that are faulting them for not being bureaucratic enough.

"If we're going to dance, let's all dance in the sunlight."

Why doesn't this article even mention RFK Jr.? This is precisely his issue.

I'm reading "We Tire Very Quickly of Being Told That Everything Is on Fire," by Jeneen Interlandi in the NYT:

The obesity crisis has... brought its share of unintended consequences. Alarm bells have almost certainly nudged more people to eat healthier foods. They also helped spur the development of effective anti-obesity medications. But they have not touched off any meaningful effort to repair our food system, which most experts agree is the root cause of expanding waistlines. 

"Obesity did not reach epidemic proportions because of changes in human nature or human willpower," says Tom Frieden, who served as C.D.C. director under the Obama administration and is now president of the public health nonprofit Resolve to Save Lives. "What changed is that our environment became far more conducive to weight gain." 

What crisis vibes have managed to accomplish is to normalize fat-shaming, especially among doctors. Shame is a deeply ineffective way to resolve any health crisis, but it has proved especially counterproductive and cruel when it comes to weight loss.....

Why doesn't this article even mention RFK Jr.? This is precisely his issue. He blames the food industry, and Trump's elevation of him to Secretary of Health and Human Services surely  represents a "meaningful effort to repair our food system." But why look at him when we have an Obama era former C.D.C. director to quote? And, more importantly, why give him any credit for getting something right when we are deeply into the agenda of portraying him as a dangerous crackpot.

Yes, I'm journalism-shaming, and I think it needs to be cruel to be productive.

Sunrise — 6:44.

"Malpractice was committed by that campaign. They saw the ad, they knew it was being bought in heavy quantities. Where were they? What were they thinking?"

Said Ed Rendell, a former governor of Pennsylvania and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, who "was so alarmed by the Trump attacks that he called top Harris campaign advisers, pleading for them to respond directly."

Quoted in "Harris Loss Has Democrats Fighting Over How to Talk About Transgender Rights/Kamala Harris left Donald J. Trump’s anti-transgender attack ads largely unanswered. Some Democrats call it political malpractice" (NYT).

Meanwhile, Republicans are not content to stand back and watch the Democrats screw up over the transgender issue. They want attention too: "Johnson pressured by GOP firebrands on trans bathroom access" (Axios)("House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is facing pressure from some of his most outspoken members to restrict transgender Rep-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.) from using women's bathrooms at the Capitol... Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)... even went as far as to threaten to get into a 'physical altercation' with McBride").

"She was only 15 when Warren Beatty lent her Natalie Wood’s bathing suit and took her for cigarettes and a swim."

"She was 16 when she met the 11-years-older, mid-divorce Salvatore Phillip 'Sonny' Bono, who lied to her about being a descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte, and she moved into his apartment in exchange for cooking and cleaning — not sex, at first."

From "Becoming Cher Didn’t Come Easy/The first volume of her frank autobiography is a testament to resilience, chronicling a grim childhood and the brazen path to stardom, with and without Sonny" (NYT).

"They’ve asked for these, and so I think it’s a good idea."

Said Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, in a stunning feat of moral reasoning, quoted in "Biden Administration Approves Ukraine’s Use of Anti-Personnel Mines" (NYT). The U.S. did not merely approve the use of land mines. We are supplying them. 

The Biden administration’s decision came despite widespread condemnation of mines by rights groups that cite their toll on civilians, which can stretch for years or decades after conflicts end as the locations of minefields are left unmarked or forgotten.... Russia has seeded mines throughout vast swaths of Ukraine since 2014 as front lines have swayed over forests, farm fields and villages. It has also set many so-called victim-activated booby traps, such as explosives rigged to detonate when a car door is opened, a category of weapon also prohibited in the mine ban treaty.

Why didn't the NYT publish this report before the election?

I'm reading "The Hidden Truth Linking the Broken Border to Your Online Shopping Cart/The incoming Trump administration promises an immigration crackdown. But for years, the on-demand economy has been fueled by unscrupulous staffing agencies exploiting migrant workers."

This would have been useful to voters. Too useful, I suspect. This issue seems to have been suppressed, papered over by Trump-is-a-racist rhetoric. "Hidden truth," indeed.

"America is not going to save Ukraine. Maybe we need Mr. Trump — brazen and unscrupulous — to finally say so out loud and act accordingly."

Writes Megan K. Stack, in "Trump Can Speed Up the Inevitable in Ukraine" (NYT)(free-access link).

"Ukrainians would be hung out to dry, and Mr. Putin could end up attacking again or expanding his imperial designs to other neighbors. Mr. Trump should do it anyway."

What methods has this 16-year-old girl used to measure the boys?

You might wonder how a 16-year-old girl gets an op-ed column published in the NYT. I won't guess about her parentage, but her name is Naomi Beinart. The piece is titled "I’m 16. On Nov. 6 the Girls Cried, and the Boys Played Minecraft." Excerpt:

We girls woke up to a country that would rather elect a man found liable for sexual abuse than a woman. Where the kind of man my mother instructs me to cross the street to avoid will be addressed as Mr. President. Where the body I haven’t fully grown into may no longer be under my control. The boys, it seemed to me, just woke up on a Wednesday.

What made my skin burn most wasn’t that over 75 million people voted for Donald Trump. It was that this election didn’t seem to measurably change anything for the boys around me, whether their parents supported Mr. Trump or not. Many of them didn’t seem to share our rage, our fear, our despair. ​​We don’t even share the same future....

The word "seem" doesn't cure all problems with assertions about what other people are thinking. The election didn't "seem to measurably change anything for the boys around me." Either you tried to measure them or you did not. If you had some sort of measuring device and applied it, you wouldn't need to use the word "seem."

If you're so worried about what the boys share with you — "didn’t seem to share our rage, our fear, our despair"/"don’t even share the same future" — why don't you share in the sense of speaking to each other? Why just look at them and decide they aren't enough like you to interact with? 

Now that the election's over, MSM is free — and selfishly motivated — to present Trump in a favorable light.

The Mika/Morning Joe confabulation with Trump is just one manifestation of this phenomenon, which I'm seeing popping up wherever I look this morning. I need a tag to keep these things together so we can see the pattern. I was thinking of: Now we like him. 

They don't like him that much. They're just taking a different tone and raising issues they'd have suppressed and they're not forcing the old template on everything.

"[Bike lanes] are often installed not to satisfy the barely measurable trickle of residents who pedal to work..."

"... but mainly to make car traffic worse enough that people will be discouraged from driving.... The city has built about 20 miles of bike lanes in the past five years, but despite that, the portion of D.C. residents who bike to work peaked in 2017 and has decreased each year since, falling from 5 percent to 3 percent.... Rodney Foxworth, a longtime civic activist who now leads an anti-bike lane group, says the city 'has a bias in favor of bike lanes no matter whether residents or businesses want them, and a lot of these lanes are being installed in Black, low-income communities. There is a nexus between bike lanes and gentrification.'... Adding bike lanes 'is meeting a relatively small demand' from cyclists in an older, largely African American area, [VJ Kapur, an advisory neighborhood commissioner,] concedes, 'but we are working to make the roadway safer. We are not scheming to induce developers to displace folks from the neighborhood. Change is occurring. Bike lanes potentially yield a visceral reaction because they are alien, visible implements going into a neighborhood that has looked very much the same for a long time.'"

From "The truth about bike lanes: They’re not about the bikes/D.C. is building miles of bike lanes, though fewer people are biking to work" (WaPo). That's an opinion column by Marc Fisher. 

Can I get an opinion from Pete Buttigieg? I remember this from back in 2022: "Pete Buttigieg launches $1B pilot to build racial equity in America's roads." He was inviting us to lean toward the interpretation that there is systemic racism in the design of road projects, so shouldn't we presume Rodney Foxworth is right about the motivation behind the installation of bike lanes?

Trump isn't going to shut down the federal Department of Education.

I'm reading "Trump Chooses Longtime Ally Linda McMahon to Run Education Dept./A friend and financial backer of Donald J. Trump’s, Ms. McMahon, who led the Small Business Administration during his first term, remained close to him during the campaign" (NYT):

While Mr. Trump has repeatedly called for an outright dissolution of the agency, any effort to shutter it would require congressional action and support from some Republican lawmakers whose districts depend on federal aid for public education....

So it's just something to talk about, not actually do. So what is McMahon really going to try to do? She's the chairwoman of the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action.

[T]he America First Policy Institute has set out a more immediate list of changes it says could be achieved through vastly changing the department’s priorities. Those include stopping schools from “promoting inaccurate and unpatriotic concepts” about American history surrounding institutionalized racism, and expanding voucher programs that direct more public funds to parents to spend on home-schooling, online classes or at private and religious schools.

"Ozempic users... aren’t just eating less. They’re eating differently. GLP-1 drugs seem not only to shrink appetite..."

"... but to rewrite people’s desires. They attack what Amy Bentley, a food historian and professor at New York University, calls the industrial palate: the set of preferences created by our acclimatization, often starting with baby food, to the tastes and textures of artificial flavors and preservatives. Patients on GLP-1 drugs have reported losing interest in ultraprocessed foods, products that are made with ingredients you wouldn’t find in an ordinary kitchen: colorings, bleaching agents, artificial sweeteners and modified starches. Some users realize that many packaged snacks they once loved now taste repugnant. 'Wegovy destroyed my taste buds,' a Redditor wrote on a support group, adding: 'And I love it.'... Now, 'my first place I hit when I get to the store is produce,' [one Wegovy user said]. “My favorite is Mount Rainier cherries and apples, peaches, pears.”... Major food companies are scrambling to research the impact of the drugs on their brands — and figure out how to adjust.... Big Food is practiced at spotting perverse openings for new products...."

From "Ozempic Could Crush the Junk Food Industry. But It Is Fighting Back. As revolutionary new weight-loss drugs turn consumers off ultraprocessed foods, the industry is on the hunt for new products" (NYT Magazine).

Users of Wegovy and Ozempic are finding existing ultraprocessed foods disgusting, and they are currently drawn to fresh fruit, but Big Food can make new products for the new market — less sweet, more fruity, and much more fun and reliable and convenient. You know, fruit might need to ripen, it might bruise or rot. You've got to wash it and dry it and maybe peel it or core it, and it might drip on you or vary in flavor. It can be expensive, hard to carry around, not the right size for a snack, and in need of refrigeration. Big Food can compete for these newly created fruit lovers, and it is already hard at work on the task.

Sunrise — 6:50.

"Some folks might decry this practice as 'rent-free living.' However, if it maximizes Congress’s productivity..."

"... and camaraderie while respecting professional boundaries with staff, then it is a step worth taking."

Writes Buddy Carter, a Republican representing Georgia’s 1st Congressional District, in "I sleep in my office. The rest of Congress should, too. The House would be more bipartisan if lawmakers made the Hill their home away from home" (WaPo)(free-access link so you can see the photographs).

A commenter over there says: "More performative bullsh*t from the party that harbors felons, rapists and pedophiles. Spare me." Another commenter: "I agree this is performative behavior. The writer also doesn’t tell us that he is pocketing his taxpayer-funded cost-of-living reimbursements while staying in DC." 

"Ukraine’s military used American-made ballistic missiles on Tuesday to strike into Russia for the first time..."

"... just days after President Biden gave permission to do so in what amounted to a major shift of American policy. The pre-dawn attack struck an ammunition depot in the Bryansk region of southwestern Russia.... The strike represented a demonstration of force for Ukraine as it tries to show Western allies that providing more powerful and sophisticated weapons will pay off — by degrading Russia’s forces and bolstering Ukraine’s prospects in the war..... The authorization came just months before the return to office of President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has said he will seek a quick end to the war in Ukraine...."

From "Ukraine Fired U.S.-Made Missiles Into Russia for First Time, Officials Say/The attack came just days after President Biden gave Ukraine permission to use the weapons to strike targets inside Russia" (NYT).

"If some nonprofit needed a T-shirt design, Ed would always draw it. So we wrapped him up..."

"... in a quilt that a friend made of old T-shirts with Ed's drawings on them and gave him a green burial."

From "A Visit to Planet Koren/A new exhibition celebrates the work of the late cartoonist Edward Koren" (The New Yorker).

This is the best disposal of a human body I have ever seen.

"In the wake of Mr. Kavanaugh’s confirmation, the gender and sexuality scholar Asa Seresin picked up on a feeling in the air..."

"... and put a name to it: 'heteropessimism.' ... Mr. Seresin argued that heteropessimism was defined by 'performative disaffiliations with heterosexuality, usually expressed in the form of regret, embarrassment, or hopelessness about straight experience.' By 'performative,' Mr. Seresin meant that though many women freely admitted that being attracted to men was at best a bummer and at worst a form of masochism, few acted on their beliefs. While expressing a sincere hopelessness, women’s disavowals seemed to be mostly gestural, like a sardonic Etsy mug."

Writes Marie Solis, in "Men? Maybe Not. The election made clear that America’s gender divide is stark. What’s a heterosexual woman to do?" (NYT).

That's a long article, but I chose that excerpt because I have a tag "performative (the word)." Here's the post — from June 11, 2022 — where I created the tag. Interestingly, it was about a David Axelrod piece asking "Should Biden Run in 2024?" Axelrod wrote, "Biden doesn’t get the credit he deserves... And part of the reason he doesn’t is performative." I said:

"Even the most apparently conservative and decorous women writers obsessively create fiercely independent characters who seek to destroy all the patriarchal structures..."

"... which both their authors and their authors’ submissive heroines seem to accept as inevitable. The madwoman in literature by women is not merely, as she might be in male literature, an antagonist or foil to the heroine. Rather she is usually in some sense the author’s double, an image of her own anxiety and rage."

From "The Madwoman in the Attic," quoted in "Sandra M. Gilbert, Co-Author of ‘The Madwoman in the Attic,’ Dies at 87/A poet, scholar and literary critic, she turned a feminist lens on 19th-century writers like Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë, creating a feminist classic" (NYT).

“People forget that, when they were writing, even to talk about women writers as having anything in common, as having a story of their own, as being connected in any way to each other, was incredibly controversial,” Katha Pollitt, the feminist author, told The Washington Post in 2013. “Now it seems completely obvious.”

"Have you ever seen a Commie drink a glass of water?"

Said Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper, quoted in "The Anti-Fluoride Movement Vaults Into the Mainstream/With the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary, a formerly fringe opinion suddenly gets wide attention" (NYT)(free-access link).

Fixing the state borders — not the borders with Mexico and Canada — the state-on-state borders.

They ought to have more to do with mountains and rivers — and give the Upper Peninsula to Wisconsin:

"For the unacquainted, Mr. Trump’s gyrations are a far cry from the complexities of the moonwalk, the Macarena or the Electric Slide."

"Both simple and strangely hypnotic, Mr. Trump’s wiggle incorporates the kind of stiff swivel often employed by arrhythmic wedding guests or awkward, one-too-many conventioneers."

Writes Jesse McKinley, in "Trump’s Signature Dance Move Finds Its Way to the Sports World/Jon Jones punctuated his U.F.C. win with the president-elect’s shimmy, and numerous N.F.L. players followed suit on Sunday" (NYT).

It says there that McKinley is "a Styles reporter who covered the criminal trial of Donald J. Trump earlier this year, from opening statements to guilty verdicts."

McKinley has written a lot of other things too. Why focus on Trump's criminal trial? Maybe subtle humor: Not long ago it seemed that New York authorities had found a way to put Trump in prison, and now we're just wondering if it's okay for football players to dance the Trump dance.

McKinley also wrote, recently:

"Mr. Trump beat his polling numbers by about 2.5 points nationally... and 2.1 points in the average swing state."

"Our final forecast had it so close to 50-50 that the outcome was literally more random than a coin flip. (Empirically, heads win 50.5 percent of the time.) But a Trump sweep of the swing states was our single most likely outcome, because polling errors tend to be correlated. It’s not great that the polls missed low on Mr. Trump for the third and final time, even in a year when survey companies adopted all sorts of novel strategies to avoid this exact outcome."

Writes Nate Silver, in "Don’t Blame Polling" (NYT).

I'm blaming polling. What's Silver's reason not to blame polling? First, Republicans are (supposedly) more suspicious and less likely to respond to polls. Pollsters using "weighting" to try to compensate. There's also "herding," which is massaging the numbers to make them more like other pollsters' numbers, but herding isn't a basis for not blaming polling, and Silver is certain that herding occurred in 2024. So what justifies that headline? I see this:

Should we trust polls less? I’ll offer a brave and qualified no, but only because the shift in public sentiment about polls — from viewing them as oracular to seeing them as fake news — has probably overcorrected relative to reality....

Blaming and not trusting are 2 different things! But that's an issue with the headline writer. Silver is talking about trust, and he's only saying don't trust polls any less that you already do. I guess it's like the way I feel about reading the mainstream news, which I do every day. I don't consider it a complete waste of time. I regard it as biased and manipulative, but the alternatives are even worse. (And this blog is not an alternative to MSM. It feeds off MSM.)

Sunrise — 6:31, 6:37, 6:46, 6:51.

"What is the insecurity, the anxiety, the deficit in our culture today that makes us worship figures like Leonardo?..."

"Leonardo sometimes seems like humanity’s miraculous pet unicorn, a pure and perfect, one-off instantiation of grace, intelligence, superhuman talent and bewildering wisdom. We feed and cosset his memory as if he is the spiritual father of all humanism, art and science, which he wasn’t. If Leonardo invented our world, how bad can that world be?... Near the end of the film, there is brief mention of 19th century rhapsodists... who helped launch Leonardo into the stratosphere of genius, 'lavishing Leonardo’s masterpieces with lyrical praise.' That’s what the film has also been doing for almost four hours. You can never say enough good about Leonardo, which is why it is an entirely uncontroversial cultural exercise to praise him. The work will continue until we actually understand the man, or no longer need his tacit benediction for the civilization we have inherited."

Philip Kennicott in "Ken Burns takes 4 hours to canonize Leonardo da Vinci. He needed only two.The celebrated documentarian turns his lens on the great Renaissance polymath, with mixed results" (WaPo).

Ken Burns things are always extra long. Why complain about this particular lengthiness? It's Burns's style to drag it way out. But Kennicott has a special problem here. It seems to have something to do with the idea that "our world" isn't so great, that "the civilization we have inherited" does not deserve reverence. I don't know if that's what Kennicott thinks or if he's just looking down on the people who feel "anxiety" and "insecurity" and want to be indulged with a vision of human glory. 

"It is very unlike me to make a public statement about anything. I don’t think of myself as an actor-vist. I’m not that person."

Said Rebecca Hall, in "Rebecca Hall: I regret apologising for working with Woody Allen/The British film star issued a statement after accusations were made against the director but now says ‘I don’t think it’s the responsibility of his actors to speak to that situation’/‘I’ve had a wild, chaotic, beautiful life’: Rebecca Hall on race, regrets and learning to be herself" (The Guardian).

"I don’t regret working with him. He gave me a great job opportunity and he was kind to me.” Hall added that she did not talk to Allen any more, “but I don’t think that we should be the ones who are doing judge and jury on this.” Her policy now, she said, “is to be an artist. I don’t think that makes me apathetic or not engaged. I just think it’s my job.”

Morning Joe restarts communications with Hitler Trump.

Morning Joe then: Donald Trump is comparable to Adolf Hitler.

Morning Joe now: We met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago to settle our differences. pic.twitter.com/UkfMt9ScuP

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 18, 2024

ADDED: "Defeated left-wing MSNBC anchors Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski reveal they met with Trump: ‘Time to do something different’" (NY Post).

"Trump’s team is already thinking about how to craft executive actions aimed to withstand the legal challenges from immigrants' rights groups..."

"... all in hopes of avoiding an early defeat like the one his 2017 travel ban targeting majority-Muslim nations suffered. This time, Trump may have friendlier arbiters. These fights will be refereed by a federal judiciary that he transformed during his first term, including by appointing more than 200 federal judges himself. And at the very top — the ultimate decider of these questions — is the Supreme Court, to which he appointed three conservative justices...."

From "Trump’s immigration crackdown is expected to start on Day 1/The president-elect is expected to take a series of actions aimed at restricting immigration and ramping up deportations" (Politico).

"President Zelensky has been pushing for this moment for months. When it finally came, he was a little coy."

"Strikes are not made with words, he said in his nightly address: 'Such things are not announced, missiles speak for themselves.' President Biden has given Ukraine permission to use long range missiles supplied by Washington to strike deep inside Russia."

BBC reports.

"The French Revolution looms large in the philosophy of crowds because it was the first time that a 'mob' or what looked like one..."

"... was responsible for a decisive turn in the history of humankind. The Roman Republic was always an upper-class affair, with the mob a mere chorus, and even the American Revolution was... very much a legislative revolution, made by the manor, with the crowds much smaller than they are remembered to have been. The Boston Tea Party was more a publicity stunt than a significant popular protest.... Americans celebrate a group of merchants and planters signing a document on July 4th; the French celebrate a crowd of citizens storming the monarchical prison called the Bastille on July 14th. There is a difference.... When you are 'taking democracy into your own hands,' what you have in your hands is not democracy, because democracy begins with the recognition that other people have hands, too....  Can we speak of the wisdom of crowds? Sometimes. The madness of mobs? Sometimes, too. Perhaps, within the winningly minute range of terms that Bobrycki captures, vulgus and populus and the rest, lies a truth that resonates through centuries, even millennia. We see the shifting varieties of human assembly and search to give them meaning, when the meaning lies exactly in the mutability.... A crowd can become a mob; a crowd can even become an army. To turn a crowd into a community? Ah, that’s the hard work."

Writes Adam Gopnik, in "What’s the Difference Between a Rampaging Mob and a Righteous Protest? From the French Revolution to January 6th, crowds have been heroized and vilified. Now they’re a field of study" (The New Yorker).

Bobrycki = Shane Bobrycki, author of "The Crowd in the Early Middle Ages."

"And so it became this kind of self-licking ice cream cone where Gaetz would say something, Trump would love it, Gaetz would want to please him even more. And on and on and went."

Said Robert Draper, in "Will Republicans Reject Gaetz?" this morning's episode of the NYT podcast The Daily.

"Flannery O’Connor’s favorite meal at the Sanford House restaurant in Milledgeville, Georgia, where she lunched regularly with her mother..."

"... was fried shrimp and peppermint chiffon pie.... Every morning started with Catholic Mass followed by cornflakes and a thermos of coffee in her spinster bedroom while she wrote for three hours. The writing time, she said, was her 'filet mignon.'... [O'Connor's biographer] told me that 'you wouldn’t want to eat what O’Connor ate' and described the cuisine she ate at home with her mother as a 'curdled, dry, dyspeptic kind of fare.' At home, O’Connor and her mother rarely had their meals in the dining room. Left to her own devices, O’Connor might eat a tin of sardines for lunch. Once, during the brief time in which O’Connor lived alone in New York City, she served her friend Lyman Fulton nothing but 'goat’s milk cheese and faucet water'—which later became a running joke between them.... [T]he restaurant’s recipe for the peppermint chiffon pie... looked unappetizingly dour. It called for evaporated milk, gelatin, and a premade Keebler’s Chocolate Ready Crust crust. The peppermint flavor and pink color came from melted peppermint hard candy...."

Writes Valerie Stivers, in "Cooking Peppermint Chiffon Pie with Flannery O’Connor" (Paris Review).

The recipe refers to the candy as "Starlight," and they are still sold under that name. Here's an Amazon Associates link to the product, in case you're yearning to relive old-timey hard-candydom. And here's the Keebler chocolate crust. Now all you need is a can of evaporated milk and some packaged gelatin and you can figure out how the restaurant did it. Stivers makes a posher version of the antiquated treat. She makes the crust from scratch... if you consider Oreos scratch. 

"Few forces have transformed our planet as thoroughly as the introduction of invasive species...."

"Burmese pythons have eaten their way through the Everglades; Indo-Pacific lionfish have swum roughshod over Caribbean reefs; silver carp have taken over Midwestern rivers. Most non-native species spill into novel habitats incidentally, as in the case of quagga mussels that likely poured into the Great Lakes from the ballast water of container ships. But ecosystems have also been distorted on purpose. John Muir argued that stocking trout in the fishless lakes of the Sierra Nevada would make angling 'the means of drawing thousands of visitors into the mountains.'... Reginald Mungomery, an Australian entomologist... imported toxic South American cane toads to eat beetles that were devastating the country’s sugar crop. The toads didn’t control the beetles but poisoned native mammals and snakes.... Jon Sperling... theorized that because New York has few native lizards to displace, Italian wall lizards would harmlessly fill an unoccupied niche. He even claimed that predators would benefit from a new food source.... 'My first instinct is, Who are you to play God like that?' Earyn McGee, a herpetologist... said...."

From "The Lizard King of Long Island/Jon Sperling secretly spread a non-native species across the Northeast. 'It’s insane what this guy was doing,' a biologist said" (The New Yorker).

Sunrise — 6:48.

"Omnivore, Intermittent Faster, Reformed Twinkie Lover: the R.F.K. Jr. Diet/Mr. Kennedy... could wield considerable influence over the nation’s food supply. Here’s what we know about his own habits."

The NYT asks "What does Robert F. Kennedy Jr. eat?" Go down one post to see him feasting on McDonald's things alongside Donald Trump and Elon Musk. But let's check out this article:

In his [2023] interview with [Lex] Fridman, Mr. Kennedy said he ate his first meal around noon and tried not to eat after 6 or 7 p.m.... It is nearly impossible to avoid processed food, a category that is most broadly defined as any food altered from its original state, including chopped vegetables.

Including chewing! 

Some of his podcast interviews suggest that he is using “processed” as shorthand for “ultra-processed,” a term that more narrowly refers to industrially made foods containing hard-to-pronounce additives and ingredients....

Oh, well, then... never mind. 

Bobby surrenders.

Make America Healthy Again starts TOMORROW. 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/LLzr5S9ugf

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 17, 2024

"RFK Jr. Fact-Check Dispute: Social Media vs. New York Times."

That's a big trend on X. Top post on the topic:

This “fact check” from the NYT is wild. Why have fruits and veggies when you can have lab-made chemicals? 💁‍♂️#MakeAmericaHealthyAgain pic.twitter.com/L7ZyD0cuU4

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) November 17, 2024

Oh! That is really quite insane.

Or is there some complexity in the phrase "But he was wrong" that I am missing?

Here's the original NYT article, "Kennedy’s Vow to Take On Big Food Could Alienate His New G.O.P. Allies/Processed foods are in the cross hairs of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., but battling major companies could collide with President-elect Donald J. Trump’s corporate-friendly goals" (and that's a free-access link, so you can scour it for a justification for that insane paragraph). No comments enabled over there. I wonder why. (I love social media!)

"Did you just do the weave?"/"It's my own version of the weave, I call it the wander."

"Your brain knows bullshit," said Joe Rogan.

"You could kind of bullshit someone for an hour, but... hour two and hour three.... that's when the real you comes out.... How much are you bullshitting the world?...[T]he narrative about Trump has always been that he's bullshitting everybody.... But that's him, that's the, the guy's right there. You could talk to him about everything and anything. He's right there.... Your brain knows bullshit...."

Context (from the full transcript at Podscribe, which I edited a bit for accuracy):

Sunrise — 6:54 and midday — 1:41.

"It is certain that the war will end sooner with the policies of the team that will now lead the White House."

Said Volodymyr Zelensky, quoted in "Trump’s victory means war will end sooner, says Zelensky/Ukrainian president said he had had a ‘constructive’ conversation with the US president-elect and he had heard nothing ‘that goes against our position'" (London Times).

He added that Ukraine “must do everything so that this war ends next year, ends through diplomatic means.”

"Of course, Harris might make a third bid for the White House, though her loss to Trump after raising over $1 billion will weigh heavily on many Democrats’ minds."

"On the flip side, Harris was within a few swing-state percentage points of the presidency after spending just over 100 days in the race and battling economic headwinds that have sunk parties in power around the world. Whether Harris is up to another campaign is a different question, a senior aide noted, and the answer will only come with time. 'We’re barely a week after the election,' the person said."

From "Democratic jockeying for the 2028 presidential election is already underway/Nearly two dozen Democrats are seen as possible contenders ahead of an invisible primary that will be shaped partly by Trump and his second term" (NBC News).

From this, I will avert my eyes.

"The rise of Bhattacharya — from being scorned by the nation’s NIH director to possibly occupying his office four years later..."

"... reflects how the backlash to coronavirus policies has helped reshape conservative politics and elevate new voices..... [W]hile many public health experts issued dire warnings about the need to shutter schools and businesses, Bhattacharya coauthored an April 2020 study that drew a different conclusion: The coronavirus was far more widespread than previously assumed, suggesting its risks were overstated.... [T]he study’s key contention — that many Americans were unknowingly infected and showing no symptoms — was hailed by some conservative leaders eager to end lockdowns.... Then came the Great Barrington Declaration, drafted with Martin Kulldorff, then a professor at Harvard Medical School, and Sunetra Gupta, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at the University of Oxford.... 'Our goal should therefore be to minimize mortality and social harm until we reach herd immunity,' the trio’s open letter read. Public health groups swiftly condemned Bhattacharya and the other authors, saying their proposal would imperil the most vulnerable Americans. While the declaration called for focused protections, such as delivering groceries to older Americans, it urged that younger Americans return to work, allowing them to slowly build immunity against the virus...."

From "Jay Bhattacharya, an NIH critic, emerges as a top candidate to lead the agency/The Stanford physician was excoriated by NIH’s director in 2020 for his 'fringe' ideas on covid. Four years later, he’s poised for power in Trump’s Washington" (WaPo).

"A mom in Georgia is speaking out about being arrested for reckless conduct after her then-10-year-old son was found walking alone."

 ABC News reports.

During the arrest, [Brittany] Patterson...said to one of the deputies, "Last time I checked, it wasn't illegal for a kid to walk to the store."

But the deputy replied, "It is when they're 10 years old."... 

Authorities said they would drop the charge against Patterson if she signs a safety plan that involves the use of a GPS tracker on her son's phone but... "I just felt like I couldn't sign that and that in doing so, would be agreeing that there was something unsafe about my home or something unsafe about my parental decisions and I just don't believe that," Patterson said.

"The words 'chronic illness,' as far as I know, never came out of the Harris campaign's mouth. And I think that was a real misstep..."

"... because Americans are, I think, tired of being gaslit about the fact that there's not a problem right now. And when we look around us, we know there is. And Trump has asked RFK to do three simple things. He's asked to get the corruption out of the U.S. health agencies, produce uncompromised evidence-based research for our health guidelines, and reverse the trends of the chronic disease epidemic in two years for children and adults so that we can show up for our 250th anniversary of America stronger than ever. That sounds pretty good to me."

Dr. Casey Means Wows Liberal Audience and Gets Them to CHEER for RFK Jr.'s HHS Nomination

“If we were crushing it [at health], we would not be spending 2x every other country in the entire world and have the lowest life expectancy of any developed country in the entire world.”

pic.twitter.com/160GKOHQMh

— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) November 16, 2024

That's Dr. Casey Means on Bill Maher's show last night.

"The boys in our liberal school are different now that Trump has won."

This is an article by "Anonymous" in The Guardian, ostensibly written by a girl who is a senior in a high school in New York's Hudson Valley — a "mostly liberal" place, we're told. She purports to be capable of perceiving and reporting how boys have changed since 10 days ago. I have no idea how accurate any of this is, but I'm interested in the text that was published, which says something about The Guardian's attitude, if nothing else:

When we walked into school on the morning of 6 November, we exchanged quick glances with the other girls in our social circle – looks filled with uncertainty and dread about the future.... [A]s we walked to our first period classes... we noticed a very different attitude among our male peers. Subtle high-fives were exchanged and remarks about the impending success of the next four years were whispered around. It didn’t make much sense.... 

Sunrise — 6:57.

"So what happened in this campaign is Donald Trump said to the American people, you are angry. You're really pissed off."

"And I know that, and you're right. And then he gave his explanation and his explanation, which was obviously nonsense and false and racist, et cetera, was that millions and millions of undocumented people were coming across the border. They were invading. America, we're an occupied country. They were taking your jobs, taking your benefits, eating your cats and your dogs. That is why you are hurting. Now, that is a crazy explanation, but it is an explanation. Now you tell me what the Democratic explanation was.... Well, the Democratic explanation was, hey, we have passed some good things, very important things in the Biden administration, which happens to be true.... There was no appreciation — no appreciation — of the struggling and the suffering of millions and millions of working class people.... You know, you can't fight something with nothing. You gotta have an alternative vision. Trump had his vision. It was incorrect, it was dishonest. It was in many cases racist and sexist. He had a vision, he had an explanation. To my view, Democrats really did not."

Said Bernie Sanders, in the new episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "Bernie Sanders Says Democrats Have Lost Their Way."

Rocky says Trump is George Washington.

BREAKING: Sylvester Stallone just made a surprise appearance with President Donald Trump here at Mar-a-Lago! @A1Policy

“No one could have done what this man has done. He’s the 2nd George Washington” pic.twitter.com/j8F53EVhvL

— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) November 15, 2024

"The Onion’s Decision to Buy Infowars Started As a Joke/It’s their most expensive gag yet."

Headline at New York Magazine.

Does anyone find this funny?

Last June, the satirical website’s new CEO, Ben Collins, saw that a federal bankruptcy judge had ordered Alex Jones to liquidate his assets at auction to pay off the millions he owes to Sandy Hook families he defamed. “That’d be one of the funniest jokes of all time if we pulled this off, if the Onion bought Infowars,” Collins said on Thursday afternoon. “Then I was like, ‘What if we actually did it?’”

There's nothing funny in the vicinity of the Sandy Hook massacre. It's not a playground for anyone. To the extent that the pain the victims' families have experienced through Alex Jones can be converted into a dollar amount, he's obligated to come up with the money, but I guess this is more about disabling him from continuing to speak to the world. What good is the website to anyone else? The Onion thinks it's funny if the URL goes to a page that isn't him but people who hate him? 

"That is something that I have not heard before — someone say that," said the little girl to Mike Tyson.

Mike Tyson definitely forgot he was talking to a kid while answering that question 😭pic.twitter.com/WDHvtoVnnj

— Happy Punch (@HappyPunch) November 14, 2024

"When we're dead, we're dust. Absolutely nothing.... You're dead!... I want somebody to think about me when I'm gone? Who the fuck cares about me when I'm gone!"

"John Thune Says Recess Appointments 'On the Table' To Get Trump Picks Through."

Newsweek reports.

"I think that all options are on the table, including recess appointments. Hopefully, it doesn't get to that but we'll find out fairly quickly whether the Democrats want to play ball or not," [Thune] said on Thursday during an interview....

If Trump were to use recess appointments at the start of his term, those appointees could remain in their positions until the end of the next Senate session, or until 2026.

Per the Congressional Research Service, former President Barack Obama made 32 recess appointments, ex-President George W. Bush made 171 and former President Bill Clinton made 139 while the Senate was on recess....

"Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner," Trump posted to X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday. 

"Democrats lost because everyone except for whites moved in the direction of Donald Trump this cycle."

Said the sociologist Musa al-Gharbi, quoted in David Brooks's new column, "Why We Got It So Wrong" (NYT).

I thought that was a good quote, but I don't care about this column otherwise, because if you were "so wrong" before, why would I look to you for right answers now? I skimmed it. I get the impression Brooks thinks we should move beyond identity politics... now that the identity groups have trended toward Trump.

At the Thursday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

(Photo by Meade/sunset/November 10th.)

Trump picks RFK Jr. to head Health and Human Services.

The NYT reports.

Sample text: "In addition to his outside-the-mainstream views about medicine and health, he has been associated with a number of peculiar activities, like dumping a dead bear in Central Park and supposedly decapitating a whale. In interviews, some Republican senators said Mr. Kennedy gave them pause, but none ruled out voting for him."

What an exciting cast of characters in the new Trump administration. I hope it works out okay!

"Kamala Harris’s campaign was predicated on the dominance and continuance of the alleged monoculture..."

"... an appearance from Oprah Winfrey, a rally endorsement from Beyoncé, Instagram support from Taylor Swift, twerking from Megan Thee Stallion. It presumed the existence of a coherent cultural tent that the targeted voters already lived under, and presented Harris’s embrace by these stars as an extension of the audience’s pre-existing fandom.... Trump, denied access to this monoculture, took an approach that was both fragmentary and more modern — and in many ways more attuned to the rhythm of a young person’s media diet. He leaned into the evanescent, the niche, the lightly scandalous...."

Writes Jon Caramanica in "Where to Find the Avuncular Donald Trump? Check the Manosphere. In the months leading up to the election, Donald J. Trump sat for a slew of casual and unconventional conversations with podcasters and streamers. We watched them all" (NYT).

Do I need a tag for this post-election hand-wringing about the "manosphere"? I've got my old "MSM reports what's in social media" and "gender politics," but must I cook up a combination of the two?

"I said to my class, ‘Explain this girl to me. She’s not pretty, she can’t act. Why is she so hot?’ Nobody had an answer."

Said movie producer producer Carol Baum, quoted in "Sydney Sweeney calls BS on Hollywood’s ‘women empowering other women’ movement: ‘None of it’s happening’" (NY Post).

Sweeney's response: "It’s very disheartening to see women tear other women down.... This entire industry, all people say is 'Women empowering other women.' None of it’s happening.... All of it is fake and a front for all the other shit that they say behind everyone’s back.... I’ve read that our entire lives, we were raised — and it’s a generational problem — to believe only one woman can be at the top. There’s one woman who can get the man. There’s one woman who can be, I don’t know, anything. So then all the others feel like they have to fight each other or take that one woman down instead of being like, Let’s all lift each other up."

"The potential for a high-profile confrontation between the Pentagon’s two most senior leaders — one a telegenic political appointee, the other a circumspect career soldier..."

"... further challenges the military’s fraying status as a trusted, apolitical American institution. Polls show that public confidence in the military, intended to act as a national ballast amid shifting political currents, has fallen to its lowest level in decades.... A self-labeled introvert, [Charles Q. Brown Jr.] is described by associates as studious and reserved, often last to speak in a group but concise and direct when he does. Unlike his predecessor, the voluble Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, who was known to regale others with historical lessons and personal stories for hours at a time, Brown typically shares little.... [F]ollowing the police killing of George Floyd, he spoke in raw, emotional terms about his experience as a Black man in the U.S. military...."

From "Top general faces brewing storm after Trump’s Pentagon pick/The incoming administration’s focus on culture issues and countering diversity goals intensifies the transition challenge for Joint Chiefs chair" (WaPo)(free-access link).

Trump named Hegseth "days after Hegseth suggested firing Brown and other senior officers over what he described as a 'woke' agenda undermining U.S. military strength."

WaPo portrays Brown as "apolitical" and "reserved," but how does that connect to the "'woke" agenda"? You can't tell from that article. Let's look at the corresponding article in the NYT, "What to Know About Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Pick for Defense Secretary."

"I mean, I would describe it as god-tier level trolling, that has triggered a full-on China Syndrome to own the libs in perpetuity."

Said John Fetterman, quoted in "Sen. John Fetterman calls Rep. Matt Gaetz AG nomination ‘god-tier’ level of trolling to 'own libs'" (NY Post).

Amazing 😂
pic.twitter.com/CmDmUFXptP

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 14, 2024

"Trump’s Win Leaves Democrats Asking: Where Are Our Bro Whisperers?"

That's a headline at the NYT. Subhead: "Democrats have widely acknowledged that they have no answer for the online ecosystem of conservative influencers popular with Gen Z men. Some have argued for a rethink of media strategy."

Celebrity appearances and paid endorsements from influencers come across as transactional and inauthentic, [some younger Democrats] said.

“It’s last-second, ‘Let’s get Beyoncé onstage to say we support women,’ but that doesn’t move anyone who wasn’t already going to vote Democrat,” said Ayem Kpenkaan, a liberal content creator.... He suggested that Democrats needed liberal versions of media platforms that are culturally right-leaning but not inherently political — like Barstool Sports....

“We have to make entertaining, engaging content that men want to watch and care about,” Mr. Kpenkaan said. “Then, over time, you pepper in more progressive views.”

So... make something authentic, then pepper in the political propaganda. How distasteful. 

Re "Let’s get Beyoncé onstage to say we support women": 

Sunrise — 6:35, 6:54.

"Senate Republicans reacted with alarm and dismay to President-elect Donald J. Trump’s decision to nominate Representative Matt Gaetz... for attorney general..."

"... and several said they were skeptical that he would be able to secure enough votes for confirmation....  Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, raised his eyebrows when reporters informed him of Mr. Trump’s choice. 'I’m still trying to absorb all this,' he said, adding: 'I don’t really know him, other than his public persona.' Mr. Gaetz, who has been one of Mr. Trump’s fiercest attack dogs on Capitol Hill, has routinely used his position on the House Judiciary Committee to question the motives of Justice Department officials and rail against what he has called the 'deep state.'... Mr. Trump has called on Senate Republicans to allow him to circumvent the confirmation process by calling recesses during which he could install personnel without Senate approval. It was not clear whether Senator John Thune, the South Dakota Republican elected as majority leader on Wednesday, would be willing to do so for Mr. Gaetz, or other nominees who might struggle to draw enough support to be confirmed...."

The NYT reports.

"Among the criticisms of the book was that its descriptions of the girl’s powers appeared to liken the First Nations’ complex spiritual beliefs to 'magic'..."

"... and failed to differentiate between their many languages and traditions.... Calls to pull the book from shelves were led by... an educational group that works on behalf of First Nations communities in Australia. In a statement released this month, the group called Mr. Oliver’s depictions 'irresponsible and damaging, reflecting a profound lack of understanding and respect.'...
The depiction of child abduction in Mr. Oliver’s book, the group said, 'dangerously trivializes the ongoing trauma associated with Australia’s violent history of child removal.' 'I am devastated to have caused offense and apologize wholeheartedly,' Mr. Oliver said in a statement...."

From "Jamie Oliver Pulls Children’s Book Amid Criticism of Insensitivity/The celebrity chef’s second children’s book, 'Billy and the Epic Escape,' faced accusations that it stereotyped First Nations people in Australia" (NYT).

The NYT goes on to analyze the problem as "A-list celebrities dabbling in children’s literature," but isn't it white people dabbling in the history and culture of nonwhite people? Is Jamie Oliver white? I had to Google that, and I didn't find the answer — I'm just guessing it's "yes" — but I bumbled into this from 2022: "Jamie Oliver says he’s hired cultural appropriation specialists to advise on cookbooks" (CNN). You may want to be inclusive — for whatever mishmash of reasons — but then you have to worry about being inclusive the wrong way.

From the 2022 CNN article:

"You've got to fire the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and obviously, to bring in a new Secretary of Defense, but any General that was involved, General, Admiral, whatever that was involved in any of the DEI woke sh*t has got to go."

"Either you're in for war fighting and that's it. That's the only litmus test we care about. You got to get DEI and CRT out of military academies. You're not training young officers to be baptized in this type of thinking. And then, you know, whatever the standards, whatever the combat standards were, say, and, I don't know, 1995, let's just make those the standards. And as far as recruiting to hire the guy that, you know, did Top Gun Maverick and create some real ads that motivate people to want to serve...."

🚨NEW: Newly appointed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on reforming US military leadership:

Anyone "involved in the woke sh*t has got to go...you have to reestablish that trust by putting in no-nonsense warfighters in those positions who aren't going to cater to the socially… pic.twitter.com/9181gOVp2q

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) November 13, 2024

That's Pete Hegseth, Trump's choice for Secretary of Defense.

ADDED: Here's the NYT article on the appointment, "Trump Picks Pete Hegseth, a Veteran and Fox News Host, for Defense Secretary/The choice of Mr. Hegseth, a dedicated supporter of the president-elect in his first term, is outside the norm of the traditional choice for the post." Excerpt:

Mr. Hegseth’s book, the New York Times best-seller “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free,” was published in June. “Our ‘elites’ are like the feckless drug-addled businessmen at Nakatomi Plaza, looking down on Bruce Willis’s John McClane in ‘Die Hard,’” Mr. Hegseth wrote in the book. “But there will come a day when they realize they need John McClane — that in fact their ability to live in peace and prosperity has always depended on guys like him being honorable, powerful and deadly.”

"[I]n 2020, Mr. Trump refused to concede the election and never invited Mr. Biden for the traditional meeting in the White House."

"It is unlikely that Mr. Biden has forgotten that snub (though it is not clear that he wanted to meet with Mr. Trump in 2020). But Mr. Biden is an institutionalist who has long expressed respect for the trappings and traditions of the White House and the Senate.... That is most likely what motivated him to offer Mr. Trump the invitation that he did not receive himself."

The NYT reports on today's meeting, which I'm trying to picture. I thought of this:

"Women are actually adult human beings with agency and freedom of choice. They could choose, like men..."

"... to spend less time on cleaning and household chores, and more time on exercise. They are free to do that if they want to. They could say 'no' to some, or many, of those other people, including family members, who make demands on their time. They are free adults who can choose what to do. 'Women are oppressed victims of patriarchy' isn't actually the only possible lens with which to view gender issues, although one would never know that from reading the New York Times."

Writes someone in Tribeca named Macaulay, commenting over at the NYT article "Even Exercise Has a Gender Gap/Women have less time to work out than men. And their health pays the price."

The article begins with an anecdote about a woman trying to use her elliptical machine and getting interrupted, first by her husband telling her that their daughter wants her to come say goodnight and then by her son who had the non-problem of needing "help finding something to do." The woman responds to both interruptions by getting off the machine.

"One of the things that incredibly frustrates [Elon Musk] is when he encounters paperwork requirements and regulatory slowdowns."

"He often comments about how he can build his rockets faster than federal bureaucrats can move paper from one side of their desk to the other. It just totally burns him up. And that's in part what has motivated him to get more involved in politics. He thinks it might give him the power to help defang them and to limit their power and to reduce what he considers to be redundant or ridiculous requirements to help wipe away some of this slowness that really frustrates him. And Musk was clear during the presidential campaign that he wanted to be named to a position in the future Trump government that would give him the power to help oversee significantly cutting back on federal regulations, federal employees, and federal spending.... And he would be sort of this superpowered czar, overseeing the reach of federal government operations and looking for ways to eliminate what he considers redundant federal regulations and cutting as much as $2 trillion in federal spending, which is a crazy and really unachievable goal, but that's what he says he wants to do."

From "Elon Musk Launches Into American Politics," the new episode of the NYT podcast, The Daily.

And here's the top news story at the NYT: "At Mar-a-Lago, 'Uncle' Elon Musk Puts His Imprint on the Trump Transition/He’s on the patio. He’s on the golf course. Everywhere Donald Trump looks, there is the world’s richest man" (free-access link).

Sunrise, midday, sunset.

6:50 AM:

1:10 PM:

4:38 PM (photo by Meade, from November 10th):

"There are grates in one of the rooms of 4 North. They have little holes. If you lay down, you can look through the holes and talk to the women one floor down and see them."

Said Gene Borrello, "a former mob enforcer who spent time in the unit," quoted in "Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs housed in low-security jail dorm alongside Sam Bankman-Fried — where inmates can spy on female convicts: sources" (NY Post).

"She ain’t going. Jill Biden’s husband authorized the FBI snooping through her underwear drawer."

"The Bidens are disgusting. Jill Biden isn’t someone Melania needs to meet."

Said a source, quoted in "Melania Trump declines to meet with Jill Biden at White House, citing Mar-a-Lago raid: source" (NY Post).

Meanwhile, "Melania’s husband, President-elect Donald Trump, will sit with President Biden in the Oval Office Wednesday for a traditional post-election meeting."

Jon Stewart gives Democrats the chewing out they deserve.

"Democrats never once mentioned Arnold Palmer's cock. Never once. Yet focus group after focus group said, you got anything on Arnold Palmer's cock? If not, can you at least stand there and sway to 'Ave Maria' for, like, an hour? Can you at least do that? But it's a delight to hear about why it happened from so many people who were so wrong about what was going to happen...."

That made me laugh out loud, but don't let it make you think Stewart mainly takes sideswipes at Trump. He does not. Watch the whole thing.

Can you pay celebrities millions to appear at your rally and report it as an "event production" expense to the FEC?

I'm reading "Did Kamala Harris Pay Celebrities to Endorse Her? Oprah Winfrey Speaks Out" (Newsweek)(examining various claims, e.g. Beyoncé got $10 million just to walk up to the podium and say a few pro-Kamala words):

Nonprofit fact-checking website FactCheck.org said that a Harris campaign official told them the claim "is not true." PolitiFact also said that it had found "no evidence" for the claim and that Beyoncé's publicist told them it was "beyond ridiculous."

Newsweek reached out to the Harris campaign for comment via email outside of regular working hours. Newsweek also reached out to representatives for other celebrities who endorsed Harris and have been accused of being paid for it, including Beyoncé, Megan Thee Stallion, Lizzo, and Eminem, via email. 

Some social media users pointed out that two payments to Winfrey's production company, Harpo Productions Inc, can be found under the Harris campaign's disbursements on the Federal Election Committee website. The payments, of $500,000 each, were made on October 15 and are marked as "event production."

"Marked as 'event production'"? I hope they didn't mismark anything! What was the "production" that cost a million dollars? Causing Oprah to appear onstage? The social media users are trying to help, but it looks as though they are calling attention to what might be a false statement to the FEC.

Wouldn't that be much worse than mislabeling the hush money paid to Stormy Daniels in private business records?

"I’m afraid of politics, you understand? I do not like it. … It’s because when you do get involved in it, no matter how you feel, somebody passionately disagrees with you."

"Look, if you say 'I stay away from religion,' I stay away from politics. Religion, that’s the formula for the confusion that it sent Kanye to Japan. He said something about both of those things and now he can only go to Japan. So you know I’m like I don’t want to get in that, man."

Said 50 Cent to Charlamagne Tha God, quoted in "50 Cent Reacts to Donald Trump’s Presidential Election Victory: 'Leaving With the Winner'/Last week Curtis said he proudly turned down an alleged seven-figure payday offer to appear with the once and future prez at MSG" (Billboard)("Curtis" = Curtis Jackson, AKA 50 Cent). 

At Real Clear Politics, the GOP has won control of the House.

 

Link. The GOP takes control at 218, and they're up to 219.

At the NYT — here on Tuesday morning, a week after Election Day — we're locked in a state of wistful wondering....

 

You can't attribute the difference to California's agonizing slowness in vote-counting. The 2 news sites are looking at the same public information. It is journalistic/commercial decision-making on display, but impossible to tell whether either site is doing anything wrong. Personally, I assume both sites are attempting to feed the emotional needs of their readers, and they've just got different readers. But maybe one is adhering to higher principles than the other. 

Sunrise — 6:57, 7:07, 7:08.

"Lemurs are strange in the way that the reclusive and wealthy are strange; having had the island of Madagascar to themselves evolve in..."

"... they have idiosyncratic habits. Male ring-tailed lemurs have scent glands on their wrists, and engage in 'stink-fighting,' battles in which they stand two feet apart and wipe their hands on their tails, then shake the tail at their opponent, all the while maintaining an aggressive stare until one or the other retreats. It feels no madder than current forms of diplomacy. It’s not unusual for female ring-tailed lemurs to slap males across the face when they become aggressive."

Writes Katherine Rundell, in "Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures" (commission earned) quoted in "A Pretty Girl, a Novel with Voices, and Ring-Tailed Lemurs" (Paris Review).

Hadn't used my "animals are jerks" tag in a long time.

"New York Rep. Elise Stefanik has accepted President-elect Donald Trump’s offerto be his enforcer as United Nations ambassador...."

The NY Post reports.

The 40-year-old upstate Republican, who helped force out two Ivy League presidents with her sharp questioning on campus antisemitism, will the lead Trump’s “America first” and pro-Israel message in Turtle Bay... Stefanik, the No. 4 House Republican, has been a close Trump ally, including serving on his ceremonial defense team in 2020 during his first impeachment trial for pressuring Ukraine to investigate alleged Biden family corruption.

"She doesn’t believe in labels for her own sexual orientation and has little interest in dating other women, but she does believe in political lesbianism..."

"... as a way for women to establish lives separate from men — with an emphasis on the 'political' rather than the 'lesbian.' 'I don’t need to try being a lesbian, because in political lesbianism, I can just be a person, like a normal person — a human being. I can be in a safe place,' she told me as we drank sweet-potato lattes at a campus café. The most important thing, in her view, is the absence of men. 'Always, when I use the word "safe place," it means the place for women.'"

From "A World Without Men/The women of South Korea’s 4B movement aren’t fighting the patriarchy — they’re leaving it behind entirely" (New York Magazine).

That's featured on the home page, but I see: "This story, about women in South Korea who identify as part of the 4B movement, was originally published on March 8, 2023. In the days following the election of former president Donald Trump, interest in the movement has spiked dramatically."

Yes, I showed interest in it yesterday, here, linking to the NYT article "A Sex Strike Is a Losing Strategy for American Women."

And I blogged the New York Magazine article the day it came out, here, March 8, 2023. I quoted more of it at the time, and — I see now — I included that "political lesbianism" quote. 

"Democratic campaign strategists condescended to women, which is what both parties have been doing for a century now."

"But the parties are now also divided by class and on abortion, and a great deal of Democratic messaging has involved college-educated women telling women who never went to college how to think about their own bodies, or their own very real American dreams. Trump liked to say that he will, as President, protect women, whether they want him to or not. The Harris campaign said the same thing, only with more celebrity endorsements. None of this is good for women or for children or for men...."

Writes Jill Lepore, in "Democrats Tried to Counter Donald Trump’s Viciousness Toward Women with Condescension/The Harris campaign felt the need to remind women voters that they can vote for whomever they want. Women understood this. The campaign failed to" (The New Yorker).

It's hard for Democrats to criticize Democrats. They approach the topic but get distracted by how much worse the other side is. But the Democrats lost, and they need to figure out why and change something.*

I don't even know what "Donald Trump's Viciousness Toward Women" is supposed to refer to. I go back to the article and search for the word "vicious." Yes, I remember reading this the first time:

"Imagine you are about to have a political argument with a close friend or family member. You are on opposing sides of the left-right rift...."

"Doesn’t it sometimes feel that it would be simpler if you each just brought over a small TV and left it running in the kitchen, tuned to your respective network, while the two of you went into the yard and talked about something about which you possess some original knowledge? Once you’re out there, talking like that, won’t it be nice to feel your pre-formed 'political' carapaces drop away? And won’t it be discouraging and alarming when, as soon as one of you slips up and utters a triggering word or phrase ('immigrant' or 'Trump' or 'politically correct' or 'eating cats and dogs,' for example), you veer back into your canned 'political' jargon, like actors suddenly aware that the scripts you’ve been given must, at all costs, be honored?"

Writes George Saunders, in "Five Thought Experiments Concerning the Underlying Disease/Our civic wells are poisoned. Why?" (The New Yorker).

Saunders is a fine writer, but I'll be cruelly neutral and give him the "civility bullshit" tag he deserves. If Kamala Harris had won, would he be urging us to abandon political speech and get back to the little life of the backyard about which we possess "original knowledge"?

Sunrise, 6:32 — and a rainy walk in the woods, 9:33, 9:50.

"Right-leaning social media influencers... and their merry bands of wine moms and girl bosses have long waited for this moment: Validation..."

"... that they, too, can 'go wild on medicines,' no matter how many lives it puts in danger. Should Kennedy be instated to this unnamed high-ranking public health role... his intention is to dismantle and privatize the foundations of public health initiatives.... The bombastic Trump attitude may at times seem at odds with the Ballerina Farm wannabes and their sprawling broods, a picturesque life off the grid fueled by unpasteurized milk and sunshine with that one 'I think I like this little life' line from that song playing on a constant loop in the background, but consider that so many of these 'wellness'-minded people consider themselves to be freethinking rebels, a value that Trump also cherishes, albeit with wildly different understandings of how to use bronzer.... If all the newly pumped MAHA tradwives need something cute and farmhouse-chic to slurp up Kennedy’s Kool-Aid, great news: He has just the whimsical heart-emblazoned glass for you."

From "When MAGA Won, So Did MAHA, the 'Healthy'Arm of the Trump Apparatus/With RFK Jr. as a figurehead, American public medicine is set to enter its 'MAHA' era, no ha-has about it" (Vanity Fair).

"Trump’s initial calls with world leaders are not being conducted with the support of the State Department and U.S. government interpreters."

"The Trump transition team has yet to sign an agreement with the General Services Administration, a standard procedure for presidential transitions. Trump and his aides are distrustful of career government officials following the leaked transcripts of presidential calls during his first term. 'They are just calling him [Trump] directly,' one of the people familiar with the calls said...."

From "Trump talked to Putin, told Russian leader not to escalate in Ukraine/President-elect Donald Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday and discussed the war in Ukraine, according to people familiar with the call" (WaPo).