Sunrise — 6:16:00, 6:16:21, 6:17:41.

"Subtract your age from 100, and you’ll end up with the number of pages you need to read before dropping a book."

Writes Maya Chung, in "Go Ahead, Put Down That Book" (The Atlantic)(free-access link).

That links to "When Is It Okay to Not Finish a Book?/How to decide to put down a book—without all the angst" (also in The Atlantic, with a free-access link).

Before dropping a book, you need to figure out what’s motivating you to stop reading it.

RFK Jr.'s issues — he's made it very clear — are censorship, chronic disease in children, and the war in Ukraine.

From RFK Jr.'s speech announcing his endorsement of Trump:

Three great causes drove me to enter this race in the first place, and these are the principal causes that persuaded me to leave the Democratic Party and run as an independent, and now to throw my support to President Trump. The causes were free speech, the war in Ukraine, and the war on our children.... 

"And multiple speakers delighted the crowd by alluding to the fabricated viral claim that Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, wrote in his memoir about having sex with furniture."

"'I wouldn’t trust them to move my couch,' Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said of the GOP ticket on the final night. 'I know a couch commando when I see one,' Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said minutes later. The jabs were just part of a more expansive case against Trump that Democrats laid out over four nights in Chicago. But they reflected a broader shift in tone for Democrats toward a no-holds-barred kind of rhetorical warfare many in the party once eschewed. Eight years after the Philadelphia convention cheered Michelle Obama’s famous line 'When they go low, we go high' — and with Trump still waging a campaign full of personal insults and baseless accusations... some Democrats said they are tired of being polite...."

From "Democrats once strove to ‘go high’ against Trump. Not anymore. This year’s convention culminated recent efforts to needle Trump on topics known to strike a nerve in the former president, with some Democrats saying they are tired of being polite" (WaPo)(free-access link).

This gets my "civility bullshit" tag, which in this case reflects my belief that the old "When they go low, we go high" was just a strategy choice, to be abandoned when it didn't seem effective... or when the low material is tantalizing enough, like that well-upholstered couch that seems be calling out to you.

"But the potential for researchers to bias the outcomes of these trials has become a common critique of the psychedelic research field."

"It is unusual for a drug under F.D.A. consideration to also be used personally and recreationally by the researchers studying it, or even for clinical trial researchers and clinicians to be encouraged to test the drug themselves. But that’s exactly what Lykos has done with MDMA. In a phone conversation after the F.D.A. decision, Dr. Doblin told me that therapists should be 'strongly encouraged' to have their own psychedelic experiences, as it 'really helps therapists to better understand their patients.' He says almost all of the researchers in the Lykos phase 3 clinical trials underwent MDMA experiences themselves, and many studying the drug are open about their own recreational use. It’s difficult to disentangle the personal enthusiasm for psychedelics with the study of these drugs as therapeutic interventions. And the extraordinary claims of some of its leading researchers — Dr. Doblin has professed a belief that psychedelics will usher in world peace — as well as criticisms of the quality of the clinical trials only accentuate how much the enthusiasm has gotten ahead of the science...."

From "How Psychedelic Research Got High on Its Own Supply" (NYT)(free-access link).

"One of the joys of my life in the social churn of New York is living with a son whose inability to read the room makes him incapable of telling anything but the truth."

"Once, as my husband, Harry Evans, and I left a pretentious social gathering in the Hamptons, Georgie told the host sunnily: 'Thank you very much. No one spoke to me really, so it was a very boring evening. The food was OK. I doubt I will come again.' 'I have never been prouder of you in my life!' shouted my husband in the car. How many times have all of us wanted to say that as we gushed about the fabulous time we just hadn’t had? Then there was the moment he went up to Anna Wintour at one of my book parties and asked if she was Camilla Parker Bowles. And the time at the intake meeting for a supported work program, when the therapist asked Georgie, 'Has anyone ever molested you?' 'Unfortunately not,' he replied. Georgie teaches me every day how much we depend on social lies to make the world go round...."

Writes Tina Brown, in "My Son and Gus Walz Deserve a Champion Like Tim Walz" (NYT)(free-access link).

Tina Brown, the famous author and editor, is the mother of "Georgie, a 38-year-old on the spectrum who still lives with me." She "recognized" Tim Walz's son Gus as "one of 'ours,' a sweet, unfiltered, slightly bewildered-looking young man who wasn’t quite sure what was expected of him in this epic moment of political adulation."

Imagine going to posh parties filled with celebrities at the Anna Wintour level and bringing along a 38-year-old man who does not — and seemingly cannot — refrain from saying insulting things to people. It's like being inside a Marx Brothers movie and forbidden to laugh. 

Jon Stewart daringly but silently calls Bill Clinton a sexual predator... then coyly laughs about it.

Comedian John Stewart is now calling out the hypocrisy at the DNC. pic.twitter.com/zfzfltVmp3

— Jonathan Choe (@choeshow) August 24, 2024

Stewart is getting points for bravery.

"Of all the repellent Kennedy spectacles of the past 60 years, today's spectacle of Kennedys disavowing other Kennedys for not being good Kennedys..."

"... is really the kind of false aristocratic creepiness that makes me want to, you know, drive off a bridge."

Tweets John Podhoretz.

"At the Democratic convention, especially on the opening night, 'corporate greed' was a scourge, and speaker after speaker sought to link 'freedom'... to programs that protect the middle class..."

"... from the depredations of concentrated wealth.... [Y]ou have to understand how [Lina] Khan, a 35-year-old legal wunderkind, became both so revered and so abhorred. Khan is a heroine to many on the left.... But she’s also respected by many populist conservatives... What brings Khan’s fans together is suspicion of Big Business, Big Finance and Big Tech, even if the reason for their suspicion differs.... To Khan, as I suspect to Harris, price gouging means more than just corporations raising prices during emergencies. Rather, it’s shorthand for a whole range of exploitative practices that leave consumers feeling taken advantage of. 'Oftentimes, the way people are taught about prices is it’s just the result of supply and demand,' she said. 'These natural forces. And I think over the last few years in particular, people have started picking up on the fact that actually there are a whole bunch of other factors that can affect pricing.' That can mean outright collusion, but it can also mean things like junk fees and subscription traps. (Under Khan, the F.T.C. has proposed a rule that companies must make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up for one.) 'I view the price-gouging conversation as an opening to talk about that broader set of corporate tactics,' said Khan. The fight against those tactics could be an important part of a Harris presidency...."

Writes Michelle Goldberg, in "Billionaire Donors Have It Out for This Legal Prodigy, but President Harris Will Need Her" (NYT).

"The fight against those tactics could be an important part of a Harris presidency...." — could be.  Did Goldberg have to write it like that — in the conditional — because Harris doesn't do interviews?

Sunrise — 6:05, 6:11, 6:18, 6:26.

"Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to endorse former president Donald Trump..."

"... according to a new court filing in Pennsylvania. The filing surfaced ahead of a planned speech in which Kennedy said he would make an announce about the direction of his campaign. Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic presidential nomination in a speech Thursday in Chicago. Trump is campaigning Friday in Nevada and Arizona. He is scheduled to be joined by a 'special guest' in Arizona."

From "RFK Jr. to endorse Trump, court filing says" (WaPo).

I'm very interested in hearing RFK Jr. explain — with precision — how one goes from where he's been to supporting Trump. 

ADDED: Here's his full speech, which I thought was excellent:

 

From the transcript:

The DNC dragged us into court state after state.... It deployed DNC-aligned judges to throw me and other candidates off the ballot and to throw president Trump in jail. It ran a sham primary that was rigged to prevent any serious challenge to President Biden, then, when a predictably bungled debate  performance precipitated the palace coup against President Biden, the same shadowy DNC operatives appointed his successor also without an election. They installed a candidate who was so unpopular with voters that she dropped out in 2020 without winning a single delegate. 

My uncle and my father both relished debate. They prided themselves on their capacity to go toe-to-toe with any opponent in the battle over ideas. They would be astonished to learn of a Democratic party presidential nominee who, like Vice President Harris, has not appeared in a single interview or an unscripted encounter with voters for 35 days. This is profoundly undemocratic. How are people to choose when they don't know who they are choosing? And how can this look to the rest of the world? 

My father and my uncle were always conscious of America's image abroad because of our nation's role as the template for democracy, the role model for Democratic processes, and the leader of the Free World. Instead of showing us her substance and character, the DNC and its media organs engineered a surge of popularity for Vice President Harris based upon... well, nothing. No policies, no interviews, no debates. Only smoke and mirrors and balloons in a highly produced Chicago circus....

How did the Democratic party choose a candidate that has never done an interview or debate during the entire election cycle? We know the answer. They did it by weaponizing the government agencies. They did it by abandoning democracy. They did it by suing the opposition and by disenfranchising American voters. What most alarms me isn't how the Democratic party conducts its internal affairs or runs its candidates. What alarms me is the resort to censorship and media control and the weaponization of the federal agencies when a US president colludes with or outright coerces media companies to censor political speech. It's an attack on our most sacred right of free expression and that's the very right upon which all of our other constitutional rights rest....

Fungus of the Day.

Photo taken yesterday in Blue Mound State Park. 

Talk about whatever you like in the comments.

"Speculation was rampant over the past few days that the 32-time Grammy winner would appear at the convention... But the final speaker of the night, Harris, was followed by 100,000 balloons..."

"... and a piped-in recording of Beyoncé’s 'Freedom,' a song the Harris campaign has been using in campaign ads and videos that aired throughout the event.... Columnist Laura Bassett mused: 'teasing a huge surprise guest and leaking that it’s both beyonce and taylor swift just to get people to tune in is actually kind of funny.' In fairness, it wouldn’t have been out of the question. In 2020, Beyoncé seemed to endorse President Joe Biden and Harris: On the eve of the election, she called for Texas residents to vote via an Instagram clip that showed her wearing a Biden-Harris mask...."

From "Beyoncé at the DNC? It wasn’t to Bey. Speculation was rampant that the 'Freedom' singer would make a surprise appearance. She never materialized" (WaPo).

I was trying to picture "a Biden-Harris mask," and thinking of one of those rubbery Halloween things with celebrity facial features and finding it weird that Beyoncé would disguise herself like that. Somehow, Covid had slipped my mind:

 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Beyoncé (@beyonce)

It's a bad move to trick people into staying tuned and then denying them what they thought they'd get, but I'm glad there was so little use of pop-culture celebrities. I was picturing one celeb after another, but I don't think they did that. I watched very little of the convention, but I got the impression that the Democrats went in the opposite direction and kept filling the stage with clusters of relatively ordinary people who exemplified one issue or another. That's good, though not enough for me to watch. 

I didn't watch the Kamala Harris convention speech — way too late for me — but how can I catch up now?

When things are happening live, you sit through them as they happen, including long breaks, such as the one that impelled me to switch off the TV last night. The stage was empty, music was playing, the conventioneers were waving American flags, and the voice-over commentators were enthusing inanely about how wonderful it was to see such a large crowd waving flags. 

I knew that in the morning, all the speeches would be on YouTube, but when you have recorded speeches, are you really going to watch them through? I'd like to, just so I could write about the effect. Did Kamala do what she needed to do with this speech? We went for a long walk yesterday, and one topic was predicting how well the speech would go. I had a scale from 1 to 100 — 1 being the worst possible speech and 100 the best possible. Think of the absurdities. 50 was just: She did what she needed to do, nothing wrong, nothing special. Meade predicted 51, and I took the "under" bet. 

So there's a vague need to figure out where she did on my scale. I've skimmed the headlines and the text of the speech, but I'm disinclined to watch the whole YouTube. Can I just rely on Mickey Kaus?

Haven't read anyone else's comments on Kamala speech. Here are mine: 

High point: "out of their minds" 

Other effective themes: Caring for one another, non-Dem outreach, Project 2025 attacks (however disingenuous); not a series of ethnic or interest group panders--represents broad American interest. 

Low points: All that family stuff, all the furrow-browed pleading ( joy?), general blandness of text; oratorical Olestra. 

Bottom line: Job of speech was to make her plausibly presidential. Mission not accomplished. I doubt this will hurt her campaign but a big missed opportunity. Hollywood trainers could not transform her (which is kind of reassuring).

ADDED: The "out of their minds" bit was this:

And get this. Get this. He plans to create a national anti-abortion coordinator, and force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions. Simply put, they are out of their minds. And one must ask — one must ask, why exactly is it that they don’t trust women? Well, we trust women. We trust women.

Language tip: It's better to say "They are out of their mind," singular, because each person only has one mind. 

The use of children in politics.

Tim Walz is under fire for aggressively pulling his son Gus Walz’s arm on stage at the Democratic National Convention.

The incident was apparently filmed on the third day of the event (Wednesday), the same day Walz gave his speech.

Gus is 17-years-old and reportedly has a… pic.twitter.com/5yMWpgy8Ur

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) August 23, 2024

 

Tim Walz's son Gus is 17. We were discussing him yesterday in "Simply having a neurodivergent son is not enough reason for [Tim Walz] to be praised..." 

Yesterday's post title is a quote from an MSNBC article that goes on to say "what makes the Walz family’s story so reassuring is that they seem to want to help Gus live a good life rather than change who he is." I hope that is what they want. But if we're going to talk about what "they seem to want," then we have to contemplate the way Tim Walz — who's being held out as some sort of Dad for All of Us — yanked the boy into place on the stage. But let's talk about all the children who were — conspicuously or not — yanked onto that stage — or any stage.

It's been bothering me for a long time. I've had a tag — "using children in politics" — to collect the many stories over the years. 

ADDED:

This deceptive clip is going viral on right-wing media for supposedly showing Walz “abusing his son” by grabbing his hand & pulling him. In the 2nd clip, I show that he was pulling his son away from smashing his head into the teleprompter, which his daughter has to walk around. pic.twitter.com/EUE2AH5UdK

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 23, 2024

Sunrise — 6:06, 6:15, 6:16.

Oh, no.

That happened at the Democratic National Convention last night. Some kind of Minnesota = Prince = Tim Walz concept. 

I was starting to think why not Bob Dylan, but the answer is clear: Dylan lives. Prince isn't around to object to this travesty.

"Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, I was too young to know [Elizabeth] Taylor as the violet-eyed phenom who first dazzled in 'National Velvet' and went on..."

"... to be perhaps the most famous, the most glamorous movie star in the world. I was, however, just the right age to experience her as a pop culture mainstay and occasional punchline. This was Ms. Taylor’s frosted-tips-and-caftans era, when she appeared in front of a camera only to make soft-focus perfume ads, parodied by 'Saturday Night Live.' It was the time of her union with Mr. Fortensky, a construction worker she’d met in rehab, and whom she married at her friend Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch."

Writes Jennifer Weiner in "Jennifer Lopez Is Becoming an Elizabeth Taylor for a New Generation" (NYT)(free-access link).

I'm not interested enough in Jennifer Lopez to care about her multiple marriages and divorces, and Elizabeth Taylor began a bit before my time, but I remember the Elizabeth Taylor of the 1960s, and that sets me apart from Weiner, who arrived after Taylor's prime. I'm still quite interested in Taylor, even more so after watching this new HBO documentary:

Taylor critiques fame. I thought this review from Chris Cassingham was apt: "At a time when the public’s access to celebrities’ personal lives is simultaneously at its greatest and most calculated, the raw vulnerability of Taylor’s recollections is necessarily tempered when transposed onto something so pedestrian as Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes often is. If the material at [director Nanette] Burstein’s disposal holds within it deep insights about the toxic nature of hypervisible celebrity, about an industry’s exploitations, her film deploys them hesitantly...."

"Simply having a neurodivergent son is not enough reason for [Tim Walz] to be praised..."

"... indeed, many parents of neurodivergent children have been harmful to their children and peddled harmful ideas, including the idea that vaccines cause autism. Rather, what makes the Walz family’s story so reassuring is that they seem to want to help Gus live a good life rather than change who he is. According to the Child Mind Institute, nonverbal learning disorder, or NVLD, affects nonverbal forms of learning like the ability to notice patterns or learn concepts, including visual and social patterns as well as concepts in language and math. Because of the similar traits, people with NVLD are often confused as being on the autism spectrum and vice versa. Most recently, comedian Chris Rock disclosed that he received a diagnosis after a friend initially thought he might be somewhere on the autism spectrum...."

From "What anxious parents of neurodivergent children can learn from Tim and Gwen Walz/The Walzes’ words and their embrace of their son may seem utterly unremarkable. But that’s the point" (MSNBC).

There's also this, from People Magazine: "Tim Walz and His Wife, Gwen, Open Up About Son's Non-Verbal Learning Disorder: 'His Secret Power'/Tim and Gwen tell PEOPLE that their 17-year-old son, Gus, is 'brilliant, hyper-aware of details that many of us pass by, and above all else, he’s an excellent son.'"

"If you are supporting Kennedy in part because you don’t like Harris or Trump, perhaps you will be compelled by Trump’s promise to include Kennedy in his Cabinet..."

"... or give him some government position where he can do whatever it is he thinks needs to be done. Or maybe you’ll just make a sound of frustration and write the whole thing off. That’s one of the challenges of being the outsider candidate: Moving to the inside isn’t necessarily what your supporters want to see. Perhaps the most important point of consideration here, again, is that there simply aren’t that many Kennedy supporters....  At the end of the day, it would still be a good move for Kennedy. How good a move it might be for Trump remains to be seen."

Writes Philip Bump, in "What happens if Kennedy endorses Trump? The independent candidate doesn’t have much support — and it’s not clear how much of it would transfer" (WaPo).

Bump says, "How good a move it might be for Trump remains to be seen," and that probably means...

We can't tell if it's a good move or not.

It's a bad move, but Bump doesn't want to help Trump avoid alliance with RFK.

It's a good move, but Bump doesn't want to help Trump see the advantage in closing the deal.

Bump sincerely can't tell, but I can: It's a good move.

Bump sincerely can't tell, but I can: It's a bad move.

 

pollcode.com free polls

Trump says he thinks that Biden withdrew because he was "threatened... violently."

From the Theo Von podcast embedded in the previous post — at 44:31. Von asked about what pushed Biden to let go of the nomination he had won in the primaries. Trump said:

"I know what happened, and you're not supposed to do that. It's not supposed to be probably constitutional. She got no votes. He got 14 million votes. All of a sudden they're telling him to get out. or they threatened him. And he is an angry person."

Von breaks in to ask, "But who are 'they'?" and Trump responds:  

"Well, I would say Schumer, Pelosi, and numerous other people — the heads of the Democrat Party, yeah — and they did, they threatened him violently, I think. And he didn't want to get out. Remember he said only God will get me out — right? Only God... Yeah, and what happened is they went to him, and they said — this was after the debate — now, if he didn't have the debate he would still be running...."

What violence is Trump talking about?  

Haven't I looked into the word "violence" before? Yes, I did the OED routine back in 2019 when Elizabeth Warren introduced the term "traffic violence":

To what extent does "violence" mean that the damaging action was intentional? The first definition is, as expected, "The deliberate exercise of physical force..."

But then there's "Great strength or power of a natural force or physical action" — for example, a storm or an earthquake. There's no mind deliberating there (though maybe there's an implication of human will and the usage is metaphorical, such as when corny writers tell you the sea was "angry").

"Violence" is also "Great intensity or severity, esp. of something destructive or undesirable. Example: " Mrs. Viveash had been reduced, by the violence of her headache, to coming home..for a rest." (That's Aldous Huxley.)

Similarly, there's "Vehemence or intensity of emotion, behaviour, or language; extreme fervour; passion." Example, from Shakespeare, "Marke me, with what violence she first lou'd the Moore." But now we've got the human mind in play again. I don't think what's being called "traffic violence" is any intensity in the traffic, just accidents, by people who didn't mean to do that (if we set aside the very tiny proportion of car damage done by an evildoer deliberately running somebody down).

"Violence" is also used to refer to restrictions imposed on nature, as in "He was obliged to attend near a Quarter of an Hour, though with great Violence to his natural Impetuosity, before he was suffered to speak" (Henry Fielding, "Tom Jones" (1749)).

And then there's the "Improper treatment or use of a word or text; misinterpretation; misapplication; alteration of meaning or intention." Again, from "Tom Jones": "A Passion which might, without any great Violence to the Word, be called Love."

Back then, the issue was the lack of intentionality in car accidents. Pressuring Biden to drop out was completely intentional, so the issue here is whether "violently" connotes physically injuring him. I find it very hard to believe anyone threatened to physically injure him, but perhaps it's not so hard to believe that Trump thinks that or that Trump would lie and say that he thinks that. 

But let's look at the fact that Trump did say that he thinks Schumer, Pelosi, and numerous other people — the heads of the Democrat Party — threatened Biden violently.

Now, maybe the word "violently" was used in a different sense that doesn't involve physical injury, that aligns with the OED's definition of "violence" in terms of great intensity, severity, vehemence, fervor, and passion. Maybe Trump just meant to say They threatened him very strongly. Then his use of "violently" may be easy to accept... depending on what the meaning of "threatened" is.

Of course, Trump has been accused of inciting violence on January 6, 2021. That word looms large in his subjective experience of persecution. So I don't think he uses it lightly. I think he feels mistreated in these accusations of violence. Perhaps he thinks: If they're going to use that word wildly as they come for me, I'm using it against them. Very strongly.

Theo Von delivers an hour of casual conversation with Donald Trump.

This is what I'd hoped we were going to get from the Elon Musk conversation with Trump. Theo Von is much more adept at creating a conversational back and forth. Perhaps more importantly, the 2 men are in the same room. The cut begins with Trump buttering up Von: "But your thing is going really great. My son's a big fan of yours, Barron":

At the DNC: Bill Clinton stamps his presidential approval on Joe Biden: "And he kept the faith, and he's infected a lot of the rest of us."

"He healed our sick and put the rest of us back to work. And he strengthened our alliances, for peace and security. He stood up for Ukraine. He's trying desperately to get a ceasefire in the Middle East. And then he did something that's really hard for a politician to do. He voluntarily gave up political power. And George Washington knew that. And he did it. And he set the standard for us serving 2 terms before it was mandatory. It helped his legacy. And it will enhance Joe Biden's legacy. And it's a stark contrast to what goes on in the other party. So I want to thank him — for his courage, compassion, his class, his service, his sacrifice. Joe Biden, thank you. And he kept the faith, and he's infected a lot of the rest of us. Now let's cut to the chase. I am too old to gild the lily. Two days ago I turned 78. The oldest man in my family of 4 generations. And the only personal vanity I want to assert is I'm still younger than Donald Trump...."

On the topic of things George Washington knew... or things we think George Washington knew... George Washington knew that he was still wanted. He wasn't abandoned and bullied into leaving. But I presume part of the pressure that Joe Biden experienced was the argument that only if he left quietly could he receive this comparison to George Washington. It's hard to imagine George Washington influenced by the prospect of a laudatory speech comparing him to some other leader. That sounds like an insult to George Washington.

"And let us choose inclusion over retribution. Let us choose common sense over nonsense...."

"And let us choose the sweet promise of tomorrow over the bitter return to yesterday. We won't go back. We won't be set back, bullied back, kicked back. We're not going back."

Oprah at the DNC:

It's a familiar Democratic Party trope: We go forward and Republicans go back. Back where? I remember when Joe Biden came out with "They're going to put y'all back in chains." So: back to slavery times. Who was that dreaded Republican racist who was "going to put y'all back in chains"? It wasn't that terrible ogre Donald Trump. It was Mitt Romney. 

Sunrise — 6:15, 6:16, 6:17.

At the Thistle Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

"It can be dizzying, for an outsider, to see the Democratic Party and its allied institutions walk in lockstep — promoting a fiction that Biden 'passed the torch' voluntarily..."

"... suspending scrutiny of Harris’s policy positions, reveling in emotions and 'vibes.' But Tocqueville emphasized how democracy is not always amenable to a diversity of opinions: Instead, the majority’s pressure 'acts upon the will as well as upon the actions of men, and it represses not only all contest, but all controversy.'..."

Writes Jason Willick, quoting Tocqueville, in "How Alexis de Tocqueville explains Democratic Party conformity/Why Democrats could so easily pivot from defending Biden’s abilities to celebrating Harris’s takeover" (WaPo).

"I will... leave my memories, my reflections and I will cease to exist in this body... I don’t know when, but very soon..."

"... this long journey will come to an end. Death will find me worn down from having lived so much, but I want to meet it with a smile, feeling free and satisfied."

Said María Branyas Morera, quoted in "World’s oldest person, whose secret was avoiding ‘toxic people,’ dies at 117/María Branyas Morera, a U.S.-born Spaniard, died in her sleep. Her family said she recently spoke of nearing death and that she would miss daily mundanities like drinking coffee" (WaPo).

The quote made me think of these lines from Seneca, in "How to Die: An Ancient Guide to the End of Life" (commission earned):

Take this on faith from me: I won’t tremble, at the last moments; I’m prepared. I don’t think at all about the entire day ahead. Praise and emulate that man who does not disdain to die, though it’s pleasant to live; what virtue is there in leaving by being thrown out? Yet here too is a virtue: I’m being thrown out, but let me take my leave nonetheless. The wise man is never thrown out, for to be thrown out is to be expelled from a place that you leave unwillingly; the wise man does nothing unwillingly; he flees from necessity, since he desires that which it will force upon him. Farewell.

"Something wonderfully magical is in the air, isn’t it?... A familiar feeling that has been buried too deep for far too long."

"You know what I’m talking about. It’s the contagious power of hope. The anticipation, the energy, the exhilaration of once again being on the cusp of a brighter day. The chance to vanquish the demons of fear, division and hate that have consumed us and continue pursuing the unfinished promise of this great nation, the dream that our parents and grandparents fought and died and sacrificed for. America, hope is making a comeback. Yeah. But, to be honest, I am realizing that, until recently, I have mourned the dimming of that hope. And maybe you’ve experienced the same feelings, that deep pit in my stomach, a palpable sense of dread about the future.... For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard-working, highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black..... Doubling down on ugly, misogynistic, racist lies as a substitute for real ideas and solutions that will actually make people’s lives better..... We need to overwhelm any effort to suppress us..... Let us work like our lives depend on it, and let us keep moving our country forward and go higher, yes, always higher than we’ve ever gone before...."

Said Michelle Obama — I've edited it down — at the Democratic National Convention last night.

Watch the whole thing for yourself and form your own opinion:

How many times did she say "hope"? I counted: 7.

How many times did she say "Biden"? I counted: 0.  

She said "Kamala"17 times. And, by the way, she said "Harris" only 5 times, and each time, it was the full name "Kamala Harris." I think she (and her speechwriters) are showing us the preferred locution — say either the full name or the first name. "Kamala" is distinctive in a way that "Harris" is not. Ask the person on the street, "What do you think of Harris?" and I bet most people will express puzzlement: Who's Harris?

The intriguing shape of the betting average graph.

Link.

IN THE COMMENTS: We all get together and recognize that the "intriguing shape" is a dinosaur. Wince digs up the precisely relevant Monty Python clip:

"The U.S. economy added far fewer jobs in 2023 and early 2024 than previously reported, a sign that cracks in the labor market are more severe — and began forming earlier — than initially believed."

"On Wednesday, the Labor Department said that monthly payroll figures overstated job growth by roughly 818,000 in the 12 months that ended in March. That suggests employers added about 174,000 jobs per month during that period, down from the previously reported pace of about 242,000 jobs — a downward revision of about 28 percent."

The NYT reports.

"Iran's parliament is set to pass a bill regulating how men dress in public..."

"... banning apparel that 'is against public modesty, such as clothing that does not cover a part of the body lower than the chest or higher than the ankle." But the Basij, the nation's morality police, is already enforcing the law. They have been beating and arresting men caught wearing shorts in public, at a time when temperatures reaching 45° Celsius (113° Fahrenheit) and frequent power outages have led many men to wear shorts outside."

Reason reports.

"Is it a big deal that Blake Lively said 'tranny' over ten years ago?"

Asks Out Magazine, in "Blake Lively is catching heat for using a transphobic slur multiple times in past interviews":

Lively is at the center of a lot of controversy right now after a chaotic press tour for her movie It Ends With Us and an alleged feud she had with her director and co-star Justin Baldoni. Now, people are digging into her past to find more reasons not to like her.... 

In the late 2000s the word "tranny" was thrown around with wild abandon, and even became a part of the catchphrase 'hot tranny mess' thanks to beloved designer Christian Siriano coining the phrase on Project Runway.... But does it mean that a celebrity saying it ten to fifteen years ago has little impact on who that celebrity is now as a person? Probably."

Here are the old quotes, which all sound like a young person's light-hearted, self-centered banter:

"I’m watching—my kids are super into 30 Rock right now, and they’re constantly saying things on 30 Rock that my kids are like, Oh, my God. You can’t say that!"

"And that show—I don’t remember at the time feeling particularly provocative. And so the natural evolution of language is often a good thing. The forced evolution of language in a way that feels like it comes down from some really sanctimonious, prissy commissar is not a good thing. Although I just said that, we have to remember that there actually was no commissar. People, I think—in reaction to stuff that really annoyed them, the kind of people who made their identity around opposition to wokeness—they almost had to inflate its danger to match the scale of their annoyance. Rather than something that, like, really bugged them or really seemed obnoxious, it had to be totalitarian. It had to be something that was remaking all of the systems of our society, which I just don’t think was ever really true. But anyway, there was this very laudable attempt to correct systemic injustices in our society, systemic injustices that were really thrown into high relief for a lot of people by the election of Donald Trump." 

Says Michelle Goldberg, in "You May Miss Wokeness/'Wokeness' has few defenders left. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing to defend" (The Atlantic).

It's in print at the link, but it's a podcast — listen here. The part I quoted... I don't think you could understand just hearing. I had to read it twice even to feel that I might have figured it out. I read it twice, but more importantly, I've copied it here and I'm noting that I think it's complicated, and I display it for you to make of it what you will.

My favorite part was the sanctimonious, prissy commissar who doesn't actually exist. We need more fantasy characters in our mental life. Why not the sanctimonious, prissy commissar?

Replete with cheeseheads and "Jump Around"...

Wisconsin weighed in at the convention:

I don't know why Governor Tony Evers had such trouble getting the words out, but what does it matter? The votes were cast, and the votes were not real anyway.

Nice to see Ben Wikler by his side.

As for the convention in general, no, I did not watch. Maybe I'll take a look at the Obamas speeches on YouTube... or just look at the transcripts... count how many times they said "hope" or something.

ADDED: I scrolled right to Wisconsin and felt good about hearing "Jump Around," but I see that all the states got their popular song. Here's a full list. Because they went in alphabetical order, Alabama was first, and the song is a song that used to make lefties cringe: "Sweet Home Alabama."

Sunrise — 6:00, 6:08, 6:11, 6:12.

"A campaign has been constructed around a mood, rather than the other way around. The mood is Obamacore..."

"... the outburst of brightness and positivity that took over pop culture upon the election of our first Black president in 2008, and that continued until the wheels fell off eight years later. This was the age of Glee, Taylor Swift’s 1989, and Hamilton, seemingly disparate art born out of the same impulse: the feeling of a new dawn, a generational shift, a national redemption.... ... Obamacore positioned itself as sensitive, non-threatening, and relatable. It was Aziz Ansari writing a book on modern dating alongside a Berkeley-trained sociologist, porn star James Deen talking about bacon, Louis C.K. playing a cop on Parks and Recreation.... The fandom that had sprung up around Obama’s presidential campaign expanded to embrace New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and later, Hillary Clinton. For a moment, bodies as hidebound as the Supreme Court and the papacy looked as if they might be rehabbed into vehicles for social justice.... This summer’s sudden reappearance of hope and positivity has spurred split reactions. Do you embrace your inner cringe, or try to tamp it down?... The optimistic case is that, against all odds, we seem to have heeded the lessons of Obamacore. Generation Z is willingly climbing the coconut tree."

Writes Nate Jones, in "That Feeling You Recognize? Obamacore. The 2008 election sparked a surge of positivity across pop culture. Now hindsight (and cringe) is setting in" (NY Magazine).

See also "100 Pieces of Pop Culture That Defined Obamacore/You know them when you see them — whether they were genius or, well, not," by Nate Jones (in NY Magazine). Just to select one:

"Like Dr. Frankenstein, we are neglecting the monster’s point of view. What will our possible children think of their existence?"

"Will they be glad they’ve been born, or curse us for ushering them into being? Having children, [the philosopher Mara] van der Lugt argues, might be best seen as 'a cosmic intervention, something great, and wondrous—and terrible.' We are deciding 'that life is worth living on behalf of a person who cannot be consulted,' and we 'must be prepared, at any point, to be held accountable for their creation.'..."

Writes Joshua Rothman, in "Should We Think of Our Children as Strangers? A new line of inquiry asks us to imagine them as random individuals who just happen to live in our homes" (The New Yorker).

Based on the title alone, I presumed I was about to read some anti-natalist material. Who would commit to accepting a random stranger into one's home — with no option to kick him out? To ask the question in that form is to undercut the pro-natalist propaganda that is — unless women are coerced — needed to keep humanity from becoming extinct. 

And, indeed, Rothman gives short shrift to the pro-natalists (though he does say a little more than that they include Trump and Vance, which, I suspect, would be enough to put off most New Yorker readers):

"During the pandemic, we recovered the spaces and customs that tourism had forced us to abandon. You could have a coffee at a table..."

"... in front of the cathedral, or chat calmly with your neighbors on the street. There were even beautiful scenes like children bathing in the fountain in the Plaça Reial."

Said Daniel Pardo, 48, co-founder of the Assembly of Neighborhoods for Tourism Degrowth, quoted in "'The Demand Is Unstoppable': Can Barcelona Survive Mass Tourism? This summer, thousands of local protesters in the Spanish city denounced overtourism. With more crowds expected for the America’s Cup, we visited the areas where tensions are highest" (NYT).

In my mind, I'm going to the Democratic Convention/Can't you see the sunshine/Can't you just feel the moonshine/Ain't it just like a friend of mine/To defenestrate Joe Biden....

"Women are not without electrical power."

Women aren't without what? pic.twitter.com/MZVeVK6DxN

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) August 20, 2024

President Biden was attempting to reference this passage in the Dobbs opinion, which took abortion out of the realm of individual rights and put it in play in the political processes:

Our decision returns the issue of abortion to those legislative bodies, and it allows women on both sides of the abortion issue to seek to affect the legislative process by influencing public opinion, lobbying legislators, voting, and running for office. Women are not without electoral or political power. It is noteworthy that the percentage of women who register to vote and cast ballots is consistently higher than the percentage of men who do so. In the last election in November 2020, women, who make up around 51.5 percent of the population of Mississippi, constituted 55.5 percent of the voters who cast ballots.

Biden was making a good point but garbled it badly. He went on to say: 

Women are not without electoral power or political power — no kidding. Republicans found out the power of women in 2022, and Trump is going to find out the power of women in 2024.

A very well-written line that had a hard time traveling from Teleprompter to vocalization. 

By the way, Biden has found out the power of women in 2024. Nancy... Kamala... they ousted him.

At the Democratic convention, as Hillary beams, the crowd chants "Lock him up!"

I'd fallen asleep by then, because it was my bedtime and because I'd already watched a bunch of speeches. As I texted to my son, "I can't just be watching some coach." 

But this morning I was reading "'There Was a Whole Lot of Sass for a Gathering of Democrats': The Best and Worst Moments From Night 1 of the Convention" (full access link), with the NYT opinion writers giving individual opinions on concise topics, and, asked what was the worst moment, Charles M. Blow said, "It dragged on too long — and the unfortunate image of delegates chanting 'Lock him up' from the convention floor."

So I'm watching — and sharing — the relevant clip. Hillary looks great and seems to be doing what needs to be done, at least in that minute. I wonder what Blow thinks is so "unfortunate" about the delegates chanting "Lock him up." That criminally prosecuting the former President was deeply wrong or, at least, reflects badly on Democrats? That it reminds us of the chant "Lock her up" and creates a lot of dissonance for Democrats? 

Sunrise — 6:20.

"'One of the things that’s really interesting with Hume’s Treatise is that he introduces the term "sympathy" to explain why we have esteem for the rich and the powerful'..."

"... says Neil Charles Saccamano, associate professor of English at Cornell University. 'Hume talks about how the notion of property enters into why we esteem them – that they own things like houses and gardens.' The beauty of those objects, Saccamano says, is designed to produce pleasure in the owner of the object. 'And we others, who do not own this property, and are not rich and powerful, and who are of a lower class, we simply "sympathise" with the pleasure we anticipate that the owner of the property will receive from the objects,' he says. So, when we watch Meryl Streep and Steve Martin making late-night chocolate croissants at her bakery in It’s Complicated, the sense of pleasure and anticipation we take from the scene is as much about 'sympathising' with the luxuriousness of it all: the softly lit kitchen, the pastry against the cool marble counter, the exquisite indulgence of owning a bakery at all, let alone breaking in after hours for a little erotically charged patisserie-making.... 'And in [Hume]’s analysis, part of the pleasure of the owner is knowing that others envy them – or sympathise with their pleasure,' says Saccamano...."

From "Lights, camera, comfy furnishings: why the ‘beige chic’ of Nancy Meyers is having a revival/In her hit romcoms, the director’s sets were as popular as the films. Now trending on social media more than a decade after her last movie, her coveted look is back" (The Guardian).

"The humorist Erma Bombeck, a friend of his from Dayton, described Mr. Donahue as 'every wife’s replacement for the husband who doesn’t talk to her.'"

"By 1979, the show was reaching 9 million viewers, nearly 8 million of them female.... Over the years, he interviewed late night host Johnny Carson, pop star Elton John, boxer Muhammad Ali, anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela, comic filmmaker Mel Brooks, and tennis rivals Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. Some of his more controversial guests included Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler’s architect; novelist Ayn Rand; Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan; Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke; and porn star Harry Reems.... Mr. Donahue never claimed to be impartial. He was a strident liberal — his most frequent guest was Ralph Nader, whose presidential campaign he later supported. He belonged to the National Organization for Women, attributing what he described as his sexism early in life to his religious education. 'We were so busy trying to avoid sin that we could never make friends with women, never share ideas, never care how they felt,' he told TV Guide in 1978."

From "Phil Donahue, long-reigning king of daytime television, dies at 88/His award-winning show tackled tough social and political issues but also pioneered a breezy format that opened the door to successors like Oprah Winfrey" (WaPo)(free access link).

"When Exit Here organized the funeral last year of Poppy Chancellor... who died at 36, guests shared photos of the 'leaving party,' as the service was called, on social media."

"Inside the West London crematory were big, beautiful banners emblazoned with slogans like 'Embrace joy today' and 'I want to see you dance again.' In one video, guests were doing the limbo to the silky vocals and pulse of Beyoncé’s hit song 'Heated.'"

From "They’re Putting Some Fun in Funerals/Modern, even hip, mortuaries around the world are hoping to answer one question: How do we commemorate death in 2024?" (NYT).

Is this hip? Big, beautiful banners with slogans like "Embrace joy today"? Seems too close to the "Live/Laugh/Love" approach to home decor — the antithesis of hipness, no?

But I'm not the arbiter of hipness, so I'll just say....

Inside the West London crematory... Beyoncé’s hit song "Heated"....

Crematory... Heated.... intentional?

"When she starts talking about presence and power—the twin pillars of her political philosophy—she gets steely around the mouth...."

"It’s always been a mistake to think of Harris as a next-gen version of Barack Obama, as commentators who are fixated on color and on vibes sometimes do.... Harris is a person in a role, and sometimes, while speaking, she wears that role the way a groomsman wears a tux he doesn’t like....  During the notoriously dramatic Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, Harris pressed the nominee hard. She set her face neutrally and peered intently at him, asking questions meant less to gather information than to speak directly to the TV-watching audience: 'Can you think of any laws that give government the power to make decisions about the male body?' Her voice was low and mellifluous and strong: a prosecutor’s sharklike gravitas.... Get in where you fit in, use your power where you can.... These days, by contrast, Harris looks unbounded, emancipated, often genuinely happy. In her speeches, she seems tickled to have another chance at the Presidency, and energized by the prospect of running against Donald Trump and all he stands for. She often looks overcome by joy.... She’s still a prosecutor, poised to use her position for one good reason, the rest be confounded: stop Donald Trump.... It doesn’t matter, by her lights, what the Presidency means, only what she means to do with it...."

Writes Vinson Cunningham, in "The Kamala Show/How Vice-President Harris’s public persona has evolved, from tough prosecutor to frozen interviewee to joyful candidate" (The New Yorker).

A second occasion this morning for my "how does Kamala feel" tag. And how does Kamala feel? Unbounded, emancipated, overcome by joy, mellifluous, strong... and sharklike.

Not a big fan of the unbounded shark as President.

What does "Heavy on Buzz" even mean?

I'm trying to read Reid J. Epstein, in "Harris’s Early Campaign: Heavy on Buzz, Light on Policy/On policy, the vice president is drafting off President Biden, essentially cherry-picking the most popular parts of his agenda and betting that a younger messenger can sell them to Americans" (NYT).

When Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2016, she had more than 200 distinct policy proposals. Four years ago, Joseph R. Biden Jr. had a task force write a 110-page policy document for his White House bid.

Now, Vice President Kamala Harris does not have a policy page on her campaign website.

A last-minute campaign born of Mr. Biden’s depreciated political standing has so far been running mainly on Democratic good feelings and warmth toward Ms. Harris, drafting off legislation and proposed policies from the man she is hoping to succeed....

I made the link a free-access "gift" link so you can help me read this thing. I am irritated by the claims of "buzz" and "good feelings and warmth." We're being instructed on how to feel, but it seems to be about how other people feel, or so we are told. 

ADDED: Is there a shift going on? A week or so ago, it was all about how Kamala Harris feels. I made a tag "how does Kamala feel" because I thought that was the wrong focus. We were told she was "joyous." Obvious bullshit, of course, but that was the nature of the campaign — the purportedly heavy-on-buzz campaign. But now the NYT seems to be nudging us into thinking about how we the people feel, and we're supposed to feel good... good and warm... about Kamala.

AND: "Buzz" is a cool looking word.

"Republicans said there is 'overwhelming evidence' that Biden participated in a 'conspiracy to monetize his office of public trust to enrich his family.'"

"They alleged that the Biden family and their business associates received tens of millions of dollars from foreign interests by 'leading those interests to believe that such payments would provide them access to and influence with President Biden.' The committees said the Biden family and its associates received more than $27 million from foreign individuals or entities since 2014.... 'Based on the totality of evidence, it is inconceivable that President Biden did not understand that he was taking part in an effort to enrich his family by abusing his office of public trust,' the report states...."

From "Biden committed ‘impeachable conduct,’ ‘defrauded United States to enrich his family’: House GOP report/House Oversight, Judiciary, Ways and Means committees have led impeachment inquiry against Biden" (Fox News).

Interesting timing: Biden is scheduled to give the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention tonight, opening night. 

Are we still talking about "price gouging"?

From "Dems defend Harris’ economic policy but don’t go all in on price-gouging/Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear was alone in discussing the particulars of a policy designed to stop price gouging" (Politico).

Prominent Democrats flooded the airwaves Sunday morning to defend Vice President Kamala Harris’ economic platform — but they were hesitant to specifically back a proposed price gouging ban that has raised eyebrows among Republicans and some economists.

“I think picking this one proposal of the many she’s put out misses the broader point, which is that Vice President Harris is continuing the work of President Biden in reducing costs faced by working Americans,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) told Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday.”...

From "Kamala Harris’s new economic plan draws Democrats’ praise, GOP’s scorn/Democrats touted her proposals, from grocery prices to health care, as addressing Americans’ daily concerns" (WaPo).

As Vice President Kamala Harris’s new economic proposals dominated Sunday morning’s political shows, allies touted her ideas to address food and housing costs as beneficial to middle-class Americans, while critics — including Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), the GOP vice-presidential nominee — slammed her plan as unworkable and unrealistic.

Harris’s economic plan... includes a ban on price gouging for groceries and food....  

Democrats on Sunday defended Harris’s economic proposals as targeting many Americans’ key needs, and they noted that her speech... represented the start of her policy pitch, with more detail to come....

Sunrise — 6:31.

"That Trump loses this election is important. But how he loses matters. The Democratic Party’s first strategy for the 2024 election was..."

"... to try to force voters into an unwanted choice between Biden or Trump, with the president ducking interviews and news conferences along the way. Their second approach, at least so far, is to select a new candidate with no primaries and then shield her from taking questions from voters or reporters. I’ve spent much of the past nine years saying that I am against Trump because he constantly breaks with core democratic norms and values. Those aren’t just partisan talking points. So I’m frustrated that the main anti-Trump candidate has started her candidacy by breaking with the democratic values of treating the press as an important institution and answering questions from reporters and the public."

Writes Perry Bacon Jr. in "Harris should talk to journalists more. Particularly the wonky ones. Not talking to the media or taking questions from virtually anyone for weeks further erodes democracy" (WaPo).

I don't know what's up with Robert De Niro and X.

I saw:

Roadside cranes and turtles.

Seen, this morning, at around 6:30:

"Allison Zuckerman was 27 and working in her cramped apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, when the mega-collectors Donald and Mera Rubell discovered her..."

"... buying more than 20 pieces. (She stashed dirty clothes under the bed before their visit.) Since 2021, her work has sold at auction 59 times, a remarkably high volume for a young artist. 'It feels very out of body,' Zuckerman said of watching auctions. 'Everything that went into that painting — the discoveries, resolving that one corner, that brushstroke that really brought the whole thing together — isn’t what’s being talked about.' While Zuckerman said most of her paintings sold at a solo exhibition in June for $35,000 to $65,000, she couldn’t ignore the auction debacle for 'Woman With Her Pet' that same month: Someone tagged her in an Instagram post about the 91 percent price drop while she was on her honeymoon.... Today, she’s making a new body of work about losing control of her paintings in the market. 'Reclaiming it is the only way I can have a sense of agency,' she said."

From "Young Artists Rode a $712 Million Boom. Then Came the Bust. Artists saw six-figure sales and heard promises of stardom. But with the calamitous downturn in the art market, many collectors bolted — and prices plummeted" (NYT).

"Woman With Her Pet" sold for $212,500, then, 3 years later, brought only $20,160. 

You can see a lot of Allison Zuckerman paintings — including "Woman With Her Pet" — here.

I thought it would be funny if — instead of embedding an image of Zuckerman's "Woman With Her Pet" — I got Grok to produce something like that. Grok was TERRIBLE at this task. Here are my prompts, each of which produced — as you can tell from my tone — a frustratingly bad image:

1. "Make a painting in a crazy colorful style based on Picasso that shows a view of a woman seated with a little dog on her lap."

2. "The woman should be facing forward, her face and hair and clothes should be broken up in a chaotic way, and the dog should not be cute or realistic at all."

3. "No no no. This is far too realistic. I want cubism, and I want absolutely no conventional or cute beauty in the woman or the dog. Think Picasso!"

4. "The woman and the dog should be ugly in a disturbing and chaotic way that challenges the viewer and does not bring any serenity or calm or interest in having a sexual relationship."

5. "No. You are still relying on conventional beauty but just making the woman seem to have a challenging demeanor. I need the painting to be challenging and you must make the painting painterly, not suggestive of realistic 3D space."

6. "Eradicate everything photographic and destroy all interest in feminine and canine beauty. Make it look forthrightly like a painting, something that has the thickness of a layer of paint."

Scroll down for the responses to prompts 1 through 5. The response to 6 was: "Something went wrong while responding to your request."

"Becoming chief sausage-maker for President Obama.... Plotting a 2016 presidential run, only to be discouraged by Obama.... Running as a moderate, but governing as a progressive.... Signs of slipping concerned allies.... A legacy now tied to his own vice president’s candidacy...."

Those are the "Six Takeaways From the Magazine’s Profile of Joe Biden/His decision to quit the race ended a remarkable chapter in American political history — and started one that may yet define his legacy" (NYT).

The profile itself is, "Joe Biden’s Interrupted Presidency/He sought the office nearly all his life. When he finally got there, it brought out his best — and eventually his worst" (NYT)(free access link).

I'm most interested in the heading "Running as a moderate, but governing as a progressive," at the first link:

"He was often criticized for rampant egotism but seemed able to see fame for the complicated illusion that it was."

That's the best line in this obituary: "Alain Delon, Smoldering French Film Star, Dies at 88/The César-winning actor was an international favorite in the 1960s and ’70s, often sought after by the era’s great auteurs" (NYT).

There's also this:

Mr. Delon had denied paternity of a third son, Christian Aaron Päffgen — later known as Ari Boulogne — from a brief relationship with the pop star Nico. But Mr. Delon’s mother raised the boy as her grandson, giving him her surname from a remarriage. He died in 2023.

Alain Delon was in a lot of movies, but I don't think I've seen any of them... not even "Rocco and His Brothers" or "Is Paris Burning?" or "Le Samouraï." The Criterion Channel has quite a few of his movies streaming now.

Here's the Criterion teaser, which displays the extreme male beauty he had to offer: