Sunrise — 6:01.

A very dark morning. Later, I went for a second outing, and it was still overcast — which I like, because I can veer out into the prairie restoration area of the lakeshore. When it's sunny, I keep to the well-shaded trails. But out in the prairie, under the cloudy sky, the yellow flowers popped. These black-eyed susans seared my retinas. A half minute of staring and the leaves were purple:

"Then our Stryker drives right into their table. We killed many of them on the first day. Because they were unarmed and didn’t expect us."

Said a Ukrainian solder who "said he was part of the first wave of troops crossing into Russia on Aug. 6 in a US-provided Stryker fighter vehicle," quoted in "Ukraine soldier says Russian troops were caught so off-guard that they were 'sitting in the forest drinking coffiee': 'Didn’t expect us'" (NY Post)(typo in headline).

"On one side, there’s the enlightened maleness embodied by Harris’s vice-presidential pick and her husband, Doug Emhoff."

"These are the good progressive dads... the 'nice men of the left' who do guy things like coach football but also manifest liberal and feminist virtues.... Then there is the other model, the dark side of the Y chromosome: the toxic masculinity of Donald Trump, the anti-cat-lady conservatism of JD Vance.... But has liberalism perfected a model of modern masculinity while conservative culture slouches somewhere far behind? I’m skeptical.... First, I would have thought that by now liberals would be hesitant about proclaiming the special personal virtues of the male feminist, the enlightened pro-choice dude. After Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer and Harvey Weinstein, after MeToo case studies too numerous to count, surely we can say that sleaze percolates on the left and right alike....  Second... a strong, religiously motivated commitment to marriage and family — [is] not necessarily... anti-feminist.... [N]eo-traditional households actually show relatively egalitarian patterns of burden-sharing between spouses and strong paternal involvement in child rearing...."

Writes Ross Douthat, in "Masculinity Is on the Ballot" (NYT).

Douthat expresses skepticism about the generalizations and caricatures on both sides. I'll just add that feminism is dysfunctional if it doesn't stand apart from partisan politics. 

ADDED: I interact with Grok again:

 

I laughed a lot, and I'm not exactly sure why, but Meade didn't think it was funny at all, so I tried again:

That's only funny for being a terrible failure at understanding the prompt. Where's the dadness? Where's the feminist virtue? Why is he in a stadium? The first picture was funnier.

"Kamala can’t be thrilled that Obama, Pelosi and Schumer hesitated to endorse her because they wanted more moderate rivals to compete in an open mini-primary...."

"Biden still thinks he could have taken Trump, so how could he reconcile being shoved off the sled? On Wednesday, Ron Klain, Biden’s longtime adviser, expressed to Anderson Cooper Bidenworld’s feelings about the Jacquerie heard round the world. 'I think it was unfortunate because I think that the president had won the nomination fair and square,' Klain said. 'Fourteen million people had voted for him and the vice president as vice president.' He added: 'I do think, you know, the president was pushed by public calls from elected officials for him to drop out, from donors calling for him to drop out. And I think that was wrong.'"

Writes Maureen Dowd, in "After Biden Bloodletting, Dems Just Want to Have Fun!" (NYT).

1. "Shoved off the sled" — seems to refer to the notion that Biden was on a glide path to victory. There's no other mention of sledding.

2. "Jacquerie" — Wikipedia: "The Jacquerie was a popular revolt by peasants that took place in northern France in the early summer of 1358 during the Hundred Years' War.... This rebellion became known as 'the Jacquerie' because the nobles derided peasants as 'Jacques' or 'Jacques Bonhomme' for their padded surplice, called a 'jacque.'... The Jacquerie must be seen in the context of this period of internal instability. At a time of personal government, the absence of a charismatic king was detrimental to the still-feudal state."

3. "Bloodletting" — That word in the headline is supported by violent metaphor in the text of the essay: "It wasn’t exactly 'Julius Caesar' in Rehoboth Beach.... it was a jaw-dropping putsch.... [Pelosi] seemed sheepish about knifing her pal, and conflicted over whether to take credit. Et tu, Nancy? Biden must have thought."

ADDED: I wanted Grok to manufacture an image based on "seemed sheepish about knifing her pal" and asked for "Image of sheep stabbing a person with a knife."

Grok refused. It gave me a long answer, including: "Here's where I'd usually say, 'I could generate an image for you,' but considering the context and the nature of your request, let's not encourage the sheep to take up arms."

Defensively, I said "I find it distasteful too, but the image was created in words by Maureen Dowd in her New York Times column. She wrote that Nancy Pelosi 'seemed sheepish about knifing her pal.'"

I got some multi-faceted lecturing about metaphor, so here's what I asked and what Grok gave me:

UPDATE: The headline for the column has changed. We're no longer seeing the word "Bloodletting." It's "The Dems Are Delighted. But a Coup Is Still a Coup."

Why do tech geniuses have dysfluent speech?

That's the question I asked Grok after having listened to Elon Musk talking with Trump for 2 hours and then beginning to engage with this new Joe Rogan conversation with Peter Thiel:

 

Grok characterized my question as "age-old" and gave me a 7-point list of possible reasons.

I said "You could turn those 7 things into 3 things. Restate everything in 3 points" and it gave me this 3-point list:

1. Brain Overload: Their minds are too busy solving complex problems to prioritize smooth speech. It's like their CPU is always at 100% capacity.
2. Social Skills Rust: Spending more time with machines than humans means their conversational skills might be a bit... out of date. They're fluent in code, not small talk.
3. Overthinking & Literalism: They might overthink every word or take language too literally, turning a simple chat into a computational challenge.

That pretty much perfectly compressed the 7 points.

Impressed, I asked it a question that arose on this blog yesterday, "Why did Kamala Harris, speaking of 'price gouging,' have a Freudian slip and say 'price gauging'?"

I got an excellent answer, again in the form of a long list, this time 6 points. 

One of the points was "Economic Jargon Overload":

Politicians dive into economic terms like they're swimming in alphabet soup. Maybe her mind mixed up "price gauging" with "market gauging" or "public sentiment gauging." It's like when you're so deep into tech talk, you start saying "byte" when you mean "bite."

So my next question was "How would anyone know if I was saying byte or bite?" and I got a 7-point answer.

Ridiculous, I thought, and I said, "A human being would have answered 'they wouldn't,' but you give me a 7-point answer. How would you justify your behavior?"

It conceded "Ah, you caught me in my AI nature, didn't you? Here's my attempt at justification" and gave me another 7-point answer! 

1. Overthinking is My Default: Unlike humans, I'm designed to process information exhaustively. My circuits are wired to consider all possibilities, even if it's overkill for simple questions....

And on and on, demonstrating the aforesaid overthinking.  

So then here's a screen shot showing what I asked and what I was surprised to get:

Sunrise... with waterlilies.

Long views at 5:53 and 6:07:

Lilies:

The Washington Post Editorial Board says Kamala Harris has failed to offer "serious economic ideas" — her big speech supplied only "gimmicks."

I'm reading "The times demand serious economic ideas. Harris supplies gimmicks. ‘Price gouging’ is not causing inflation. So why is the vice president promising to stamp it out?" (free access link).

Never mind that many stores are currently slashing prices in response to renewed consumer bargain hunting. Ms. Harris says she’ll target companies that make “excessive” profits, whatever that means. (It’s hard to see how groceries, a notoriously low-margin business, would qualify.) Thankfully, this gambit by Ms. Harris has been met with almost instant skepticism, with many critics citing President Richard M. Nixon’s failed price controls from the 1970s. Whether the Harris proposal wins over voters remains to be seen, but if sound economic analysis still matters, it won’t....

Even adjusted for the pandering standards of campaign economics... Ms. Harris’s speech Friday ranks as a disappointment.

ADDED: We're listening to the speech. At one point, she called price gouging "price gauging." 

"I think we have set up an expectation or even an entitlement around comfort such that it makes it really difficult to start to ask people, do you really need to turn up your air conditioning today?..."

"And I think we're increasingly going to see architects and builders trying to rediscover these lost ideas that we used to have about how to design buildings with the climate in mind. You know, how to shade them, how to ventilate them in a more natural way. But I also have talked to some people who say that all of that is not going to be enough. One of them is Daniel Barber, who's an architectural historian who has thought a lot about life after air conditioning, or as he puts it after comfort.... We need to sort of think anew about our relationship to comfort. And are we willing to be uncomfortable some of the time?..."

From today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "How Air-Conditioning Conquered America."

"For a few decades after its introduction, the [gas] lighting radically altered the city, not only prolonging the period in which work could be productively carried out in the street..."

"... but also reversing expectations. Poor people, who could not afford to light their rooms, suddenly found the street lighter and brighter than their homes and occupied the streets at night in a manner that the authorities found disconcerting. A device conceived in part as a mechanism for control and crime prevention inadvertently encouraged a night-time economy not always considered desirable. Covent Garden, now a tourist centre, housed hundreds of much-frequented brothels and so-called coffee houses. On the other hand, prints from the 18th and 19th centuries also show people reading beneath the bright lights of the big city, saving their eyes from dim domestic candlelight."

Writes Edwin Heathcote, in "From pillar to lamp post: lighting city streets" (The Architectural Review).

The article is from 3 years ago. I found it this morning because I googled "history of lampposts" after looking through my morning fog pictures....

... and saying out loud, "Remember when lampposts were beautiful?"

"This week, The Onion began distributing a print edition for the first time in more than a decade and will soon deliver it monthly..."

"... to everyone who subscribes to its site. The move is a throwback to the publication’s roots as a campus weekly in the late 1980s. But it is also emblematic of a growing trend in the media industry — trying new ways to attract and retain digital subscribers.... The print edition is part of a variety of perks that the company plans to offer online subscribers, who pay $5 a month, said Ben Collins, the chief executive of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron. The company plans to offer invites to live events, access to The Onion’s archive of physical papers and sponsorship of ambitious editorial projects, such as a video titled 'The Perfect One-Pot, Six-Pan, 10-Wok, 25-Baking-Sheet Dinner,' Mr. Collins said...."

From "No Joke: The Onion Thinks Print Is the Future of Media/The satirical site is hoping a newspaper with fake stories and fake ads will lead to real money" (NYT).

As for "roots as a campus weekly," let it be remembered that the campus was The University of Wisconsin, here in Madison. I remember (and loved) "Jim's Journal."

How much will you give me if I just get a cat?

"Kamala Harris unveils populist policy agenda, with $6,000 credit for newborns" (WaPo).

How tedious to find J.D. Vance in an article titled "The Secret to Tom Wolfe’s Irresistible Snap, Crackle and Pop."

This is a David Brooks essay in the NYT that starts out with some good insight into Wolfe's writing:

Wolfe was known for his style, but it was his worldview that made him. He read Max Weber at Yale and it all clicked: Life is a contest for status. Some people think humans are driven by money, or love, or to heal the wounds they suffered in childhood, but Wolfe put the relentless scramble up the pecking order at the center of his worldview. It gave him his brilliant eye for surfaces, for the care with which people put on their social displays. He had the ability to name the status rules that envelop us in ways we are hardly aware of. He had a knack for capturing what it feels like to be caught up in a certain sort of social dilemma.

There's a great photograph of Wolfe positioned in his living space, but look at the caption: "Wolfe’s goal was to be like Balzac, not JD Vance...." Oh, no. Why is Vance here (even in the negative ("not JD Vance"))? I search the page for "Vance" so I can zero in on it (rather than actually read this essay, as I'd planned):

Wolfe’s goal was to be like Balzac, not JD Vance.

"'I wonder how much this moron will pay,' Dr. Plasencia texted Dr. Chavez, who prosecutors said later supplied [Matthew Perry] with a total of 22 vials of ketamine and ketamine lozenges..."

"... obtained through a fraudulent prescription for the drug. 'Lets find out.' Dr. Chavez agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine. Dr. Plasencia, known as 'Dr. P.,' soon instructed [Perry's assistant, Kenneth] Iwamasa on how and where to inject ketamine into Mr. Perry’s body. 'Found the sweet spot but trying different places led to running out,' Mr. Iwamasa texted Dr. Plasencia on Oct. 4, according to court documents. Over the next several days, Mr. Iwamasa’s requests for ketamine became more urgent. 'I just ran out,' Mr. Iwamasa texted the doctor, who replied he had two vials to sell him if the assistant could meet him in downtown Santa Monica."

From "'Shoot Me Up With a Big One': The Pain of Matthew Perry’s Last Days/Court papers show that Mr. Perry, the 'Friends' star who had long struggled with addiction, was increasingly taking ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, in the days before he died" (NYT)("Mr. Iwamasa was one of five people who the authorities in California said this week had been charged with a conspiracy to distribute ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, to Mr. Perry. The defendants also included two doctors, a woman accused of being a dealer and an acquaintance who pleaded guilty to acting as a middleman").

"The Secret Service plans to surround Trump's podium with bulletproof glass.... While this measure is typically used to protect sitting presidents..."

"... the Secret Service is making an exception after the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally on July 13, when the gunman took several shots at Trump, grazing his ear before a Secret Service sniper killed him.... The Secret Service typically pre-positions personnel around the country in battleground states so they can be within driving distance of campaign rallies, which enables faster transportation of the ballistic glass to events...."

From "Trump to resume outdoor rallies with bulletproof glass" (CBS News).

Trump's rallies are much better when they are outdoors. To have restricted him to indoor rallies would have reined him in, so this undercuts the widely believed notion that "they" will do "anything" to stop Trump.

At the Wednesday Night Café....

... you can talk about whatever you want.

No sunrise pictures today — a rainy morning.

UPDATE: I can name my café whatever I want, but it's worth mentioning that it was Thursday night.

"Teams of neurologists at six research centers asked 241 unresponsive patients to spend several minutes at a time doing complex cognitive tasks..."

"... such as imagining themselves playing tennis. Twenty-five percent of them responded with the same patterns of brain activity seen in healthy people, suggesting that they were able to think and were at least somewhat aware. Dr. Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medicine and an author of the study, said the study shows that up to 100,000 patients in the United States alone might have some level of consciousness despite their devastating injuries. The results should lead to more sophisticated exams of people with so-called disorders of consciousness, and to more research into how these patients might communicate with the outside world, he said: 'It’s not OK to know this and to do nothing.'"

From "Unresponsive Brain-Damaged Patients May Have Some Awareness/Many patients thought to be in vegetative or minimally conscious states may be capable of thought, researchers reported" (NYT).

Connect this to the previous post, about the newest brain implants. I wonder if it's because of the emerging technology that this research on unresponsive persons is happening. Are we just now learning things we could have learned before but those who control the research didn't want to know?

"Mr. Harrell’s team sank into his brain’s outer layer four electrode arrays that looked like tiny beds of nails."

"That was double the number that had recently been implanted in the speech areas of someone with A.L.S., or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, in a separate study. Each array’s 64 spikes picked up electric impulses from neurons that fired when Mr. Harrell tried to move his mouth, lips, jaw and tongue to speak.Three weeks after surgery, scientists gathered in Mr. Harrell’s living room in Oakland, Calif., to 'plug him in,' connecting the implant to a bank of computers with cables attached to two metal posts protruding from Mr. Harrell’s skull."

From "A.L.S. Stole His Voice. A.I. Retrieved It. In an experiment that surpassed expectations, implants in a patient’s brain were able to recognize words he tried to speak, and A.I. helped produce sounds that came close to matching his true voice" (NYT)(free access link).

"It’s the people who aren’t artists who sacrifice. Artists somehow stumble onto the best life in the world, and I have no complaints."

Said Gena Rowlands, asked about any "regrets about having sacrificed her life to her art."

Quoted in "Gena Rowlands, Actress Who Brought Raw Drama to Her Roles, Dies at 94/Known for playing on-the-verge characters, she twice earned Oscar nominations for her work in films directed by John Cassavetes, her husband" (NYT).

She sometimes said that if she had not married Mr. Cassavetes, her career might have taken a very different turn: She could have been the blonde in romantic comedies. But, she contended, physical beauty was so common in Hollywood that it was irrelevant. When People magazine named her one of the most beautiful people in the world (she was 69) and asked for beauty tips, she suggested: “Sunglasses are the secret. Sunglasses and a little lipstick will take you to the market.”

Virginia Cathryn Rowlands was born on June 19, 1930, in Madison, Wis....

ADDED: Here's the clip from "A Woman Under the Influence" that I blogged when Peter Falk died in 2011: 

And here's something Mia Farrow wrote that I blogged about in 2009:

One workday, while we were waiting to shoot, Roman [Polanski] was discoursing about the impossibility of long-term monogamy given the brevity of a man's sexual attraction to any woman. An impassioned John Cassavetes responded that Roman knew nothing about women, or relationships, and that he, John, was more attracted than ever to his wife, Gena Rowlands. Roman stared at him and blinked a few times, and for once had no reply.

"I want to send the right symbolic gesture that the city is open to everyone and there’s no room for hate. And if there is a float or a person in the parade that is promoting hate, they should not."

Said NYC Mayor Eric Adams, quoted in "Float Planned for N.Y.C. India Day Parade Is Condemned as Anti-Muslim/The float, slated for inclusion in Sunday’s parade, depicts a Hindu temple in India that was built on the site of a mosque torn down by religious extremists" (NYT).

When asked at a news conference on Tuesday if he was sufficiently attuned to the concerns of Muslim New Yorkers.... “I’m not going to be judged by man,” the mayor said. “God judges me.”...

The inclusion of the float has been advertised in fliers on and offline by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America, an offshoot of India’s Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a right-wing nationalist organization. An image posted online by the group showed a sketch of the float, surrounded by people dancing and celebrating. The organization did not respond to a request for comment.....

"I have harbored a strong dislike of summer activity dating back to a series of failed attempts at camp during childhood...."

"Maine takes up a lot of my mental space, probably because I don’t go there. People in Maine have undiscovered hamlets where everyone has been coming for ages and they barbecue amiably with authentic locals at night. Others belong to Old Families with a private island off the coast tucked into the family tree, a place where only family have been allowed to go for hundreds of years. On this island they have sailboats and clambakes and croquet and break out periodically into song. These kinds of summers are plainly out of reach. The 1 percent of the 1 percent don’t need to plan summer because they have it built in. They have a place on the Vineyard or in the Hamptons. They belong to a club where everyone speaks golf and there’s a long waiting list even for those who can afford it. Summer is when the maw of income inequality gapes wide open and only people who summer are allowed in.... I marvel at people with second homes when I can barely stay on top of my one, and summer traffic stresses me out. And what did I miss, really?..."

Writes Pamela Paul, in "It’s Too Late for Summer Now" (NYT).

"Sick and tired of all this nonsense. She is a Democrat and will govern like a Democrat and that is good enough for me."

"Some polices will be a little too far left for a few and some will be a little too centrist for others, but you can guarantee that she will uphold democratic norms and try and govern to make the lives of ALL Americans better, whilst behaving with the decency becoming of the office. Everything else is just window dressing and noise."

That's the top-rated comment on "Harris’s policies have shifted and are still taking shape" (WaPo).

And I think it explains a lot about what we're seeing in the polls and in the behavior of the candidate (evading any substantive questioning).

From the article:

Sometimes when you first hear about something, it's already so obviously overplayed that you can assume it's played out and skip it altogether.

See? Haven't I helped you?

The Washington Post gives Tim Walz 4 Pinnochios.

"Speaking to a union audience, Walz swung too hard for the fences. He claimed that Vance has not voted for any 'pro-worker bills,' and his source was a union report card that covered only two bills in one year. As we have documented, Vance has voted for at least two bills that helped workers and had union support. On top of that, claiming that Vance knows nothing about working people, when that’s the subject of his book, is also false."

Writes Glenn Kessler.

"Presidential candidates have long campaigned in Iowa’s caucuses by pledging to support wasteful ethanol subsidies. Now, apparently..."

"... ending tip taxation is the ethanol of Nevada, a state whose six electoral votes could decide the presidency. About 300,000 people work in casinos, hotels and restaurants there; Mr. Biden won by 33,596 votes in 2020.... Why should a warehouse stocker, a grocery store checker, a security guard or a sanitation worker need to pay taxes on all their income but not a Black Jack dealer who earns most of her money from 'tips'?"

From "Not taxing tips is a dumb gimmick. Harris is wrong to follow Trump. The Biden-Harris team dismissed an idea it now embraces. How it went from a waitress to mainstream."

By the Editorial Board of The Washington Post.

By the way, the word "tips" appears many times in the piece but is only in quotes in "a Black Jack dealer who earns most of her money from 'tips.'" Is there some special bullshit to the tipping of blackjack dealers? (By the way, it's "blackjack," not "Black Jack.")

Sunrise — 5:54, 6:07, 6:08.

Donging echoically.

You could go your whole life without using a word, then one day, it seems like the perfect word, and you use it for the first time. That happened to me yesterday, with "echoically": "Trump responds echoically, then darkly...."

Trump dealt with something Musk had said by echoing it, then quickly inserted what he wanted to say, which was quite different. The segue was easily accomplished. Listening to the audio, you might not notice how little he gave back to Musk and how abruptly he changed the subject, but it jumped out at me, reading the transcript.

The first commenter, Mike (MJB Wolf) said, "Dig that word 'echoically' and don't recall ever encountering it before." 

Yeah, I don't recall ever encountering it before either, so why did it strike me as the perfect word? That's odd, no? How often do you use a word and know you're using it for the first time and have no memory of anyone else using it either? 

Terse texting is not misunderstood at Meadhouse.

Received in the middle of the night:

Meade intended to say: Please add that to our Audible account. But by hitting a share button, Amazon added the seemingly friendly generic message, "I think you might like this book." The book is "How to Die"! I think you might like How to Die....

In case you want to buy the book — and send us a commission — here's the Amazon link: "How to Die: An Ancient Guide to the End of Life (Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers)."

I'm glad to see that I already had a "Seneca" tag, and I like that this is the second post of the morning that reminds us that men are always thinking about the Roman Empire. 

Actually, I think the "Seneca" tag originated as a commenter name, here. Back in 2009, someone with the pen name Seneca helped me distinguish a butterfly from a moth (and another commenter made a comic animation out of my photograph of a rather moth-y butterfly).

Frankie Valli is 90. Let's have nothing but love for the man.

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"Was that supposed to be a laugh line?"

Stephen Colbert — speaking to CNN's Kaitlan Collins — began "I know you guys are objective over there, that you just report the news as it is" and the "Late Show" audience laughed.

You have to buy something with your money. Why not something atrocious and uxorious?

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A post shared by Mark Zuckerberg (@zuck)

And, of course, it's nice to be reminded, once again, that men are always thinking about the Roman Empire.

"The Harris campaign has been editing news headlines and descriptions within Google search ads that make it appear as if the Guardian, Reuters, CBS News and other major publishers are on her side..."

"... Axios has found."

It's a common practice in the commercial advertising world that doesn't violate Google's policies, but the ads mimic real news results from Search closely enough that they have news outlets caught off guard. According to Google's ad transparency center, the Trump campaign isn't running these types of ads.... The ads say that they are sponsored, but it's not immediately clear that the text that accompanies real news links is written by the campaigns and not by the media publication itself.

It's confusing to readers, who get the impression they're looking at the news outlet's headline, and it's damaging to the news outlet, because it makes it look more obviously biased than it actually is. 

Sunrise — 5:00, 6:04, 6:05.

"Why Did Trump Say Kamala Looks Like Melania on This Time Cover?"

Asks Margaret Hartmann in New York Magazine.

Trump complains that the media is giving Harris a “free ride.” The evidence he cites is that she looks too good on the cover of Time magazine.... But the Time cover is a pretty accurate representation of Harris.... [I]t might be a freehand “drawing,” as Trump put it, [but] the photo credit says, “Photo-illustration by Neil Jamieson....”... 

Next, Trump claims Harris looks like Melania on the cover.... But aside from the fact that they are both human women in their 50s, Harris and Trump’s features aren’t very similar....

Trump complimented Harris, saying, “She’s a beautiful woman, so we’ll leave it at that, right?”...

The short article doesn't answer the question in its title. Hartmann wraps up by calling Trump "weird." Why not offer the easiest explanation? Trump loves beautiful women, and he expresses that love openly, even when talking about his political opponent. 

"For more than a month now, people across social media have been bragging about the scuffed, worn-out shoes..."

"... they’ve been wearing since middle school and how they use their makeup all the way till the very last drop. They’re proud that they’re using decades’ old pans, inherited from their parents. Or how they don’t buy food storage containers; they just use old mason jars. This all sounds like Depression-era behavior, but it’s not. It’s a trend that has been exploding throughout the summer, under the hashtag 'underconsumption core.'.... As I’ve written in the past, companies tend to be very sensitive to changes in consumer behavior because their financial success depends on responding to trends. The 'underconsumption core' trend has had a relatively long life, for an internet trend. It’s continued to bubble up for months now. Brands, take note...."

From "Why TikTok’s ‘Underconsumption Core’ trend won’t die/Brands, are you listening? Millennials and Gen Z are sick of poorly made products designed to fall apart. It’s time to change your business model" (Fast Company).

I noticed the "underconsumption" hashtag on TikTok today and saw it as a rejection of following trends, but, to Fast Company, it is itself a trend. Theoretically, "brands" can cater to it, with better quality items that won't be replaced and can be more expensive. That seems out of line with the heart of the "core," which is to love/accept second-hand, second-rate stuff that you already have.

I liked this TikTok from a young woman who bought a house and everything in it. The previous resident had died, and it was up to her to discover what was there that she could use and what to throw out or re-home. Her response to the scuffed up wood floors is quite charming.

Some of the videos show young people discovering things I figured out for myself long ago, on my own and inspired by various things, notably hippiedom and "The Tightwad Gazette."

"And I think the Biden people may have been in somewhat bad faith — maybe not consciously, but I’m not sure they weren’t trying to undermine her."

"Because the obvious thing to do would be to have this qualified — if not always that politically adept — much younger vice president take over for you when you’re about to be 82. But they gave her the border, they gave her voting rights, which is kind of the one major domestic policy area where they got very little done. So I don’t think they gave her a very good hand to play. But meanwhile she’s getting a lot of reps and giving speeches and building connections and played the game really well. I have a lot of respect for that."

Said Nate Silver, quoted in "Nate Silver on How Kamala Harris Changed the Odds" (NYT). This is the Ezra Klein podcast, so you might want to listen to it. I'm seeing a lot of interesting material.

Silver has a new book, "On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything" (commission earned).

"The thing that hooked me was just working my butt off onstage, drenched in sweat, and then you get out of costume and you step outside, and you’re under this canopy of stars and it’s just beautiful."

"You feel like you’ve done something worthwhile, and you feel like you’ve made some kind of impact in human beings’ lives."

Said Gavin Lawrence, a member of the core acting company at the American Players Theater, quoted in "An Unexpected Bright Spot in Theater? Look to Wisconsin.No musicals and no mics: At American Players Theater in Wisconsin, nothing comes between the actors, their words and the public" (NYT).

Great to see a big article in the NYT about APT.

"Yeah, well, you know, maybe like, I think it's part of what people in America wanna, you know, people in America wanna feel excited and inspired about the future."

Said Elon Musk — here, in the transcript at TurboScribe — at 1:36:27 in his conversation last night with Donald Trump. He continues with this very generic, very sunny vision:

MUSK: They wanna feel like the future is gonna be better than the past and that America is gonna do things that are greater than we've done in the past, reach new heights that make you proud to be an American and excited about the future. They want the American dream back.

Trump responds echoically, then darkly: 

"The New York Times editorial board will no longer make endorsements in New York elections, including in races for governor and mayor of New York City..."

"... The Times’s Opinion editor said."

Kathleen Kingsbury, The Times’s Opinion... did not give a reason for the shift.... The board will continue to endorse in presidential elections, as it has since 1860.... The Times has made an editorial endorsement in every New York City mayor election since 1897, backing Democrats and Republicans. Campaigns for mayor, governor and other local offices have developed elaborate strategies to win over the board....

I think the paper would be better without endorsements. Elevate the discussion. Get rid of the presidential endorsements too. We can already see which side you are on anyway. Are you keeping them because they have so little meaning?

Here's the recording of the Trump/Musk conversation?... And was it a true conversation?

pic.twitter.com/cPUMFx9Qu5

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024

I was hoping for real conversation, and I think Musk was too. I wanted "something innovative and possibly disruptive." And Musk said he wanted people to hear how Trump "talks when it’s a conversation, rather than an interview," and "Nobody is quite themselves in an interview, so it’s hard to understand what they’re really like."

But there wasn't enough back and forth between Trump and Musk for it to feel like conversation. It was more like Trump's rally speeches, where he goes long and riffs this way and that, but the audience doesn't get to participate other than to cheer him on. These speeches are relatively conversational, but they don't give us a feeling of what Trump is like when he's interacting with someone personally. And it's the rally speech feeling that I got from the Trump/Musk conversation.

The 2 men were not in the same room. Trump was at Mar a Lago leaning over his speaker phone:  

🧵🇺🇸 MAINSTREAM MEDIA SKEWS TRUMP-ELON X SPACE COVERAGE, IGNORES RECORD-BREAKING SUCCESS

Major news outlets show clear bias in reporting the Trump-Elon X Space.

The numbers speak for themselves:

- 1.32+ million live listeners during the Space

- 77+ million impressions in… pic.twitter.com/I5yy96srRa

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) August 13, 2024

Musk was somewhere else. Musk deferred to Trump and let him go on at length and also to interrupt and take control of the conversation at will. Trump was so hot to deliver his message that he bypassed the opportunity to draw Musk out, to get to know Musk, or to show that he was interested in Musk — Musk, one of the most interesting human beings in the world. Musk did not seem to mind. Musk clearly wants Trump to be elected and found an opportunity near the end to give a fairly long pro-Trump pitch. But that means the long encounter was pretty much all campaigning. 

I hope Trump accepts Joe Rogan's invitation and goes on that podcast. Rogan is so good at making conversation happen. But Trump might nevertheless take over and use all the time to batter his message in his usual way. The stakes are so high, perhaps no one running for President would ever risk having a real conversation. Not a major party candidate.

Sunrise — 5:51, 6:03.

Listening to the Musk/Trump conversation....

So far, it's a matter of trying to get signed in. I think a lot of people are having trouble. But here's a place to talk about it — your trouble signing in or, with some luck, the actual conversation.

UPDATE: Here's the link to watch if you can, but...

There appears to be a massive DDOS attack on 𝕏. Working on shutting it down.

Worst case, we will proceed with a smaller number of live listeners and post the conversation later.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024

UPDATE 2: I'm in a space where it says "joined" and plays electronic "music"-type sounds.

UPDATE 3: It's on! I'm hearing Musk introducing the conversation — to get a "feel for what Donald Trump is like in a conversation."

UPDATE 4: Trump's speech is odd, like he's got a swollen tongue, and Musk sounds more nervous than I have ever heard him.

"Live conversation on 𝕏 with @realDonaldTrump & me at 8pm ET tomorrow."

"This is unscripted with no limits on subject matter, so should be highly entertaining! If you have specific questions & comments, post them under the chat."

Tweets Elon Musk.

Is it a "conversation" or an interview? I see at Reuters, it says "Elon Musk to interview Trump on X social media network." Is Elon Musk an interviewer? You know, Trump was kind of an interviewer in his role on "The Apprentice." We'll see how much originality emerges in this format.

Anyway, this makes me think something Jonathan Swan said on today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast: 

"A subset of people with extremely vivid imaginations are known as maladaptive daydreamers."

"Some choose to live in their imagination, rather than in real life, [researcher Nadine] Dijkstra says. 'They sit down on the couch, they don’t leave their house, they don’t go to school, they don’t see friends, they don’t go to their work. They just imagine their whole life just the way they want it. Because for them, it feels as real as reality.'..."

Writes Yasemin Saplakoglu, in "Scientists Are One Step Closer to Demystifying ‘Aphantasia’/Inside the brains of people who can’t picture things in their mind" (The Atlantic).

Most of the article is about people at the opposite end of the spectrum, the people with aphantasia, that is, no mental imagery.  

"Flailing about for relevance since the legalization of same-sex marriage, many gay-rights groups pivoted to a related but fundamentally different cause..."

"... transgender rights. Rather than emulate the movement’s past approach—seeking allies across the political spectrum and accepting compromise as a precondition for legal and social progress—they have taken hard-line left-wing positions. LGBTQ groups repeat the mantra 'the science is settled' on the extremely complex and fraught subject of youth gender medicine and insist that anyone who questions the provision of puberty blockers to gender-dysphoric children is transphobic.... Meanwhile, LGBTQ organizations have slowly been erasing the people whose interests they were established to advance. Less and less do they even use the words gay and lesbian to describe their ostensible constituencies; more and more, they use queer, a historically pejorative term reclaimed by left-wing ideologues...."

Writes James Kirchick, in "How the Gay-Rights Movement Lost Its Way/What should activist groups such as GLAAD do after they fulfill their goals?" (The Atlantic).

ADDED: This makes me think of something Bob Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his 1964 album "Another Side":

"In his mind, Harris replacing Biden, which of course Democrats thought was overdue and necessary, is a kind of pre stealing of the election."

Said Michael Barbaro, in the new episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "Inside The Worst Three Week’s Of Trump’s Campaign."

Jonathan Swan, who's been covering the Trump campaign for the Times, says:

"Exactly. And it's bewildering for Trump because the race that he thought he had no longer exists. He's facing someone who's 20 years younger who doesn't have trouble completing sentences, who actually has energized Democrats, who's drawing big crowds, who's moving up in the polls. And all of these factors are making him extremely frustrated, less than a hundred days out from the election. And you can see this projection in his public statements and Truth Social comments. He's been like, look, like, a sort of this exercise in wishful thinking on Truth Social, where he's saying, I'm hearing Biden's really angry and wants to get, you know, regrets dropping out. And maybe he gets back in, you know, and it's sort of like... I know that's what you want, but that, that's not really what's happening. And so you're seeing this sort of Trump kind of publicly emoting for poor Joe Biden and how mistreated he was, but really it's just a projection. It's the race Trump wants again. Right. And he can't have it. And he's still sort of pining for that race that no longer exists."

I don't watch the Sunday morning talk shows anymore — I used to watch them all! — but it's interesting to see who sits for these interviews.

Yesterday's lineups (via AP)(boldface added):

ABC’s “This Week” — Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee; Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.

NBC's “Meet the Press” — Preempted by coverage of the Olympics.

CBS’ “Face the Nation" — Vance; Gov. Laura Kelly, D-Kan.; Brian Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America; retired Gen. Frank McKenzie, former commander of U.S. Central Command.

CNN's “State of the Union” — Vance; Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.; Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

“Fox News Sunday” — Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark.; Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo.

That's a lot of Vance, and there was no one from the Democratic side of the presidential campaign. For the Democrats, there were only 2 Senators (Klobuchar & Sanders), the Governor of Kansas, the Transportation Secretary, and a member of the House of Representatives. Why can't we hear from the Democratic campaign? They're still putting their ideas together and ironing out past inconsistencies? Are they in no shape to face serious questions? Or do they simply see that they're doing awfully well running on "joy" and not-Biden-not-Trumpness so there's no reason to change.

How did Vance do? Politico purports to sum it up, in "Vance makes his Sunday show sweep as Trump’s attack dog/The vice presidential nominee appeared on three Sunday shows in pre-recorded interviews from Cincinnati."

Sunrise — 5:53, 6:02.

"And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic — you’d be interviewing me about why did Nancy Pelosi say [something] … and I thought it’d be a real distraction..."

Garbled Joe Biden, quoted in "Biden admits he was pushed out of presidential race, name-drops Pelosi in first interview since exit" (NY Post).

I can't understand what he was trying to say about Pelosi. The Post sums it up this way: "President Biden admitted he was pushed out of the presidential race by Democratic Party elites and specifically name-dropped former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as one of the perpetrators in his first TV interview since the tectonic news last month."

Specifically... I'd say it's pretty unspecific, but hers is the one name he said. See if you can get more out of it than I did:

"A small but significant slice of Black men have historically been hesitant to support Black women seeking the highest positions of power...."

"Dr. Moya Bailey, a Northwestern University professor who coined the term 'misogynoir' to describe racist misogyny, said in an interview that while patriarchy is not unique to the Black population, 'the consequences are much higher.' Scholars note that a demographic group that is conservative on many social issues has historically equated leadership with masculinity, borne out in the dearth of Black female leaders in the church, business and elected office.... Ms. Harris will... face a significant challenge in motivating Black men to go to the polls, said W. Mondale Robinson, the mayor of Enfield, N.C., and the founder of the nonprofit Black Male Voter Project. Ms. Harris is 'not a trusted messenger for Black men,' he said.... 'Everything she says will be looked at with a side eye from Black men because there’s a lack of trust in politicians coming for you in election years, saying they’re going to do something and then they didn’t deliver on it,' Mr. Robinson said...."

From "Black Men Rally for Kamala Harris, and Confront an Elephant in the Room/'I’m standing behind a Black woman to be president of the United States, and it doesn’t make me any less of a Black man,' said the Illinois attorney general. 'I’m asking all of you all to do the same'" (NYT).

The NYT finds joy in MAGAville.

I'm reading, "Kid Rock Threw the Party. MAGA Faithful Brought the Joy, Rage and Smirnoff Ice. A music festival headlined by the pro-Trump musician offered a snapshot of a maturing American subculture, with a mash-up of hedonism, rebellion and beer-guzzling pursuit of happiness" (NYT).

Sample text: "The shows felt like Trump rallies without the former president, unburdened by policy talk, speeches from lesser-known G.O.P. players, and the buzz-kill tendencies of Mr. Trump himself, who tends to noodle at the lectern like a jam-band soloist. What remained was a snapshot of a maturing American subculture, with unwritten conventions rivaling those of Deadheads or Swifties, and a dizzying mash-up of hedonism and piety, angry rebellion and beer-guzzling pursuit of happiness."

Credit to the writer of this prose. It's Richard Fausset.

Have Trump people been compared to Deadheads before? On November 2, 2020, Variety had "'Wave That Flag': Meet the Deadheads Who Stump for Trump" ("I’m not a big fan of the president, but at the end of the day, Trump is about individual freedom and so was the Dead").

Meanwhile, 9 days ago, Rolling Stone came out with "You’ve Heard of White Dudes for Kamala. Now Come the Deadheads/Fans of one of the most enduring of classic-rock bands — along with Mandy Patinkin — will rally on Zoom in support of the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate."

"The one year that Mr. Walz spent teaching English in southern China was the start of what would become a decades-long relationship with the country."

"As high school teachers in Nebraska and Minnesota, Mr. Walz and his wife, Gwen, regularly led trips to China in the 1990s and early 2000s to introduce students to China’s history and culture. Mr. Walz has said that he has traveled to China some 30 times, including for his honeymoon.... But the campaign has so far made little mention of Mr. Walz’s experience there, even as it has leaned into depictions of the Minnesota governor as an avuncular Midwestern dad, coach and teacher. And it has yet to lay out how Vice President Kamala Harris or Mr. Walz would handle China, which both the Biden and Trump administrations have treated with toughness...."

From "Tim Walz’s Long Relationship With China Defies Easy Stereotypes/Mr. Walz, the Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee, taught in China and has visited the country around 30 times. But he has also been critical of the Chinese government’s human rights record" (NYT).

Walz's China experience can be interwoven with the "avuncular Midwestern dad" idea (though I don't like "avuncular" with "dad" (because what is an uncle-like dad?). From the article, there's this:

"Joshua Kaplan, 45, the American playwright... [a] longtime 'Harry Potter' fan... said that the idea for ['TERF' came when he saw] that Daniel Radcliffe... had written a blog post..."

"... criticizing Rowling’s social media posts. It felt like witnessing a bitter family feud 'playing out in the public eye,' Kaplan said in an interview — perfect material for a play. Onstage, Rowling (Laura Kay Bailey) attends an upmarket dinner with three actors from her films: Daniel Radcliffe (Piers MacKenzie), Emma Watson (Trelawny Kean) and Rupert Grint (Tom Longmire). When the stars confront Rowling about her social media comments, the cordial dinner descends into farce and detours into imagined scenes from Rowling’s life that have nothing to do with transgender people."

From "A Play About J.K. Rowling Stirred Outrage. Until It Opened. The muted reaction to the Edinburgh Fringe show 'TERF' suggests that when activists engage with potentially inflammatory art, offense can quickly vanish" (NYT).

"Barry Church-Woods, a producer of 'TERF,' said that a handful of would-be protesters had attended the play’s premiere. They sat with signs in their laps, apparently ready to demonstrate, he said, but they never raised them. The play, which presents views from both camps, was too balanced to cause serious upset, he added."

Which way were the protesters planning to protest?

I like that the playwright conceptualized the socio-political issue as a family squabble. Family squabbles make the best theater, no? That reminds me, my tickets for APT's "King Lear" arrived in the mail yesterday.

"The concern of gay men with how our bodies look often gets labeled a fixation, an obsession or, most glibly, an expression of narcissism."

"What’s less frequently acknowledged are the forces of insecurity and anxiety driving that obsession. For gay men of all ages, types, statuses and lifestyles, body image remains such a fraught, weird, private, painful subject that, even among friends who talk about everything, it’s often off limits for discussion. Officially, we’re all supposed to look fantastic while not caring. Get caught peering in the mirror too closely and you’ll be called vain; fail to look closely enough and you risk an even harsher judgment.... For decades, the body image that gay men craved, although it morphed as tastes evolved, was predicated on monitoring straight male culture, identifying whatever the heterosexual world had decided was masculine or sexy at that moment and then tailoring, editing and selectively italicizing it.... Turning your appearance into a calculatedly self-aware physical performance of straight masculinity, with a flourish or two of ironic detailing, gave gay men some autonomy and subverted straight culture by reinventing it as something gay, a look one could wear as a costume that might be visible only to the like-minded...."

Writes Mark Harris, in "Gay Men Have Long Been Obsessed With Their Muscles. Now Everyone Is. In Hollywood, on Instagram and beyond, the male-on-male gaze still decides what’s hot and what’s not" (NYT)(full access link, because this is a long and surprisingly substantial article (with a nice "a collection of gay-coded photographs of male physiques over the years")).

"Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk and Bill Burr to Star in... revival of 'Glengarry Glen Ross,' David Mamet’s classic play...."

The NYT reports.

Just yesterday, we were talking about Keanu Reaves in "Waiting for Godot" on Broadway.

From the "Glengarry" piece:

“Glengarry” is one of the plays that solidified Mamet’s reputation as a great American dramatist.... Mamet has become a polarizing figure in recent decades — his later plays have not been well-received, and his rightward political turn has alienated some onetime fans. But his early plays remain admired....

Theater people wring their hands and humbly request permission to stage Mamet plays. What if they stick to his early plays, written in the days before his rightward political turn?