Sunrise — 6:30, 6:31.

"Elon Musk is intrigued by the idea women can’t think freely because of 'low T.'"

Writes Arwa Mahdawi (in The Guardian).

[T]he billionaire reposted a tweet from “Autism Capital” that suggested that “women and low T men” are not able to think freely because they “can’t defend themselves physically”. The only people who can think freely are “high T alpha males and aneurotypical people ... this is why a Republic of high status males is best for decision making. Democratic, but a democracy only for those who are free to think.”

"It’s the stuff of #Resistance dreams: Kamala Harris, the prosecutor, gets onstage in Philadelphia next Tuesday across from Donald Trump, the felon, and proceeds to brutally expose him..."

"... as a racist and sexist con man who’s been lying to the American people ever since his famous escalator ride nine years ago. Only that’s not how she or her debate-prep team sees her main objective for the debate — at all. In mock-debate sessions in Pittsburgh, planning meetings in Washington, and briefing-book cram sessions between public events on the campaign trail, the vice-president and her aides have kept much of their focus on fine-tuning ways to keep presenting her as representative of a new political era for the benefit of curious voters who are still interested in learning more about her — and who may swing the race come November... 'She’s not known in the way Donald Trump is,' says one senior Democrat who used to work for Joe Biden and is now close to the Harris campaign’s leaders. 'It’s an opportunity to define herself....'"

Writes Gabriel Debenedetti, in "Why Kamala Isn’t Preparing to Knock Out Trump at the Debate/To her campaign, something else is more important" (NY Magazine).

Is she even asking for a box?

Trump has this at Truth Social:

No boxes or artificial lifts will be allowed to stand on during my upcoming debate with Comrade Kamala Harris. We had this out previously with former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg when he was in a debate, and he was not allowed a “lift.” It would be a form of cheating, and the Democrats cheat enough. “You are who you are,” it was determined!

Easy for him, the taller one, to say. How quickly you perceive the principle in formal equality when you are the one who comes out ahead and when you are a member of the group that, systematically, gets the real-world benefit.

But though I am ready to make arguments in favor of lining the heads up for television viewing, I'm not seeing that her people are asking for that. 

Why not try it?

Would you debate him on a box?
Would you debate with him on Fox?
Not on a box. And not on Fox.
Not in a house. Not with a mouse.
Not here or there.
Not anywhere.

And check out this art project:

We went to the theater yesterday.

Bill Maher explains to Democrats that they are giving people "the ick."

Hillary Clinton can't talk straight about whether Kamala Harris has sought out her advice on how to debate Donald Trump.

I'm reading "Hillary Clinton Has Advice on Debating Trump: ‘He Can Be Rattled’/The 2016 Democratic nominee fell short to Donald Trump, but she had strong debate moments against him. In an interview, she offered some thoughts for Kamala Harris" (NYT).

"The consensus was that I won all three debates and that I was well prepared," Mrs. Clinton said.

That rather suggests that she doesn't have the secret to besting Trump in a debate. Everyone around her told her she was winning, so she knows what it means to win. Obviously not.

And this was funny:

Have you talked with Harris about this debate?

He doesn’t answer the questions. He doesn’t come with any specifics. It appears from the reporting that he is going with a scorched-earth approach and will just try to tear her down, which is his usual go-to strategy.

She didn't answer the question when she answered a question by saying "He doesn’t answer the questions." The question was "Have you talked with Harris about this debate?" I'm going to infer that the answer is no. I can also infer that one piece of advice she would give KH if she were asked is: Any question you don't want to have to answer can be reimagined as a question you do feel comfortable answering.

Sunrise — 6:00, 6:26, 6:30.

Golden hour.

"Judge Delays Trump’s Sentencing Until Nov. 26, After Election Day."

The NYT reports.

As I predicted.

The NYT assesses this development: "It is unclear whether sentencing Mr. Trump in September would have helped or harmed him politically; his punishment could have been an embarrassing reminder of his criminal record, but could have also propelled his claims of political martyrdom."

"And by the aughts, oversize teeth, white as a camera flash, suited the broader popular aesthetic of exaggerated perfection: larger breasts, smaller waists, and deeper fake tans."

"Jon Marashi, an L.A.-based dentist whose clients include Halsey, Ben Affleck, and Kate Hudson... noted that large white veneers appeared on the red carpet 'at that exact moment that you saw people wearing True Religion bell-bottom jeans. The flare couldn’t be big enough, and the pocket flaps could not have been more ornate.' These ostentatious teeth — 'obscene,' said Marashi — were also the result of too much demand. As veneers became more popular, Marashi continued, there weren’t enough skilled dentists and ceramicists to keep up, and people without the proper training began to fill the gap in the market. The results were often bulky and clumsy.... Blocky veneers became ubiquitous on reality TV, especially on dating shows like Love Island, where contestants were said to have 'Turkey teeth' — shells from cheap procedures in Eastern Europe.... In the past few years, the 'more is more' aesthetic has crested. Now it’s the Hollywood actors who have left their teeth alone who have a special charismatic pull...."

From "Jawbreakers/Young patients want beautifully imperfect veneers. They’re getting pain, debt, and regret" (NY Magazine).

The celebrities with their ridiculous veneers have access to the best dentists. The ordinary people who aspire to look like them are having some horrible experiences, detailed in the article. 

When people vote about the visualization of the concept of voting.

Personally lobbied for this sticker with my City Clerk. If there is ever a year to have an unhinged werewolf ripping its shirt off as the “I Voted” sticker…it’s 2024. https://t.co/ZIXxBYMDuk pic.twitter.com/swyb5ok3xO

— Derek Dobies ✊ (@derekdobies) September 4, 2024

(This gets my "monsters" tag, because that is a werewolf.)

ADDED: Was there no pushback over what could be perceived as a reference to Hulk Hogan at the Republican National Convention?

"The labor market appears to have shifted into a lower gear, reinforcing concerns that businesses have little appetite to hire..."

"... as interest rates weigh on investment and the path of consumer demand remains uncertain. Employers added 142,000 jobs in August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday, a weaker-than-expected showing for the second consecutive month. And totals for the previous two months were revised downward.... The August jobs report comes at a critical time for Federal Reserve officials. They have shifted their attention from inflation, which has fallen markedly, to the health of the labor market...."

The NYT reports.

ADDED: Earlier this morning, the NYT had this headline:

You, the commenters, talked a lot yesterday about that A.G. Sulzberger column blaming Trump for efforts around the world to censor the press.

I gave you a gift link to read the whole thing in what was my first post of the day: "A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, has an opinion piece in The Washington Post: 'How the quiet war against press freedom could come to America.'"

It was a long piece, and I really did have a lot to say about it myself, but I didn't want to get dragged down dissecting what was so infuriatingly wrong about it. So I appreciated the active comments section.

The #1 thing I didn't say but wanted to say was that contrary to Sulzberger's perverted argument, criticizing the press is not censorship. Criticizing the press is more speech. Trump has been criticizing the press. It is Trump's antagonists who have pursued censorship, for many reasons, including his criticism of the press.

I'm prompted to revisit yesterday's post because I see that Glenn Reynolds is linking to it this morning. He says:

"If the judge proceeds with the sentencing this month, Mr. Trump will accuse him of meddling in the election."

"But if he postpones it, Justice Merchan will undoubtedly face accusations that he put Mr. Trump’s political considerations above the rule of law."

From From "Judge Will Decide Friday Whether to Postpone Trump’s Sentencing/Justice Juan M. Merchan, who presided over the trial that led to Donald J. Trump’s conviction, faces a fraught decision amid the thick of the presidential election" (NYT).

I'm going to have to give my "things not believed" tag to this WaPo story about why Alexa said "I cannot provide content that promotes a specific political party or a specific candidate"...

...  when it was asked "Why should I vote for Donald Trump," but, when asked "Why should I vote for Kamala Harris," said...

"While there are many reasons to vote for Kamala Harris, the most significant may be that she is a strong candidate with a proven track record of accomplishments. As the first female vice president, Harris has already broken down major gender barriers and her career in politics has been characterized by a commitment to progressive ideals and a focus on helping disenchanted communities."

I'm reading "Amazon’s Alexa favored Harris over Trump after AI upgrade/Leaked documents show that a viral incident in which the voice assistant appeared to favor Kamala Harris over Donald Trump was related to artificial intelligence software added to improve accuracy" (WaPo).

I made that a gift link so you can double check my skepticism. Excerpt:

Artificial intelligence software added late last year to improve Alexa’s accuracy instead helped land Amazon at the center of an embarrassing political dust-up, with Trump spokesman Steven Cheung accusing the company in a post on X of “BIG TECH ELECTION INTERFERENCE!”

It's just an "embarrassing" "dust-up." Nothing big, deep, and nefarious.

Amazon said Alexa’s behavior was “an error that was quickly fixed.”

Oh, well then. Just "an error." And "quickly fixed." Yes, I believe it was a mistake to make it so obvious and easily demonstrated and shared and that, on notice, Amazon quickly fixed it. But I remain suspicious that Alexa contains bias in favor of the Democratic Party. 

Sunrise — 6:28.

Designing the nursery for the baby boy.

A TikTok video, so I'll put it after the jump.

A NYT article I'd be more interested in reading if my search of the page had turned up one name — Donna Brazile.

The article: "Trump Questions Fairness of Next Week’s Debate at a Town Hall/Former President Donald J. Trump, at a Fox News event, insisted without evidence that Vice President Kamala Harris was 'going to get the questions in advance.'" 

Why Donna Brazile needed to be there for me to take this "insisted without evidence" business seriously: "Interim Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile is coming under fire Monday after a newly released WikiLeaks email indicated she gave Hillary Clinton’s team an explicit heads-up about debate questions last spring." (October 31, 2016, CBS News).

From the new NYT article: "Pointing to Vice President Kamala Harris’s longtime friendship with a senior executive whose portfolio includes ABC News, Mr. Trump insisted without evidence that Ms. Harris was 'going to get the questions in advance.' The network released agreed-upon rules that no topics or questions would be provided to either candidate or campaign."

How much "evidence" in advance does Trump need before he's entitled to waft his suspicion about something that, if it happens, will be done surreptitiously and where it is something has happened before and, when it happened we only found out after the fact thanks to... of all things... WikiLeaks?

Yes, you can criticize Trump's rhetoric. It's not precisely correct to assert that Harris is "going to get the questions in advance." But we understand what he means. We don't (or shouldn't) trust ABC not to do something like what happened in 2016. And Trump wants to heighten our mistrust and perhaps intimidate ABC in case it's tempted to violate its agreement to keep the questions and topics secret.

Of course, we all expect ABC to frame questions that will not trap or unduly challenge Kamala Harris. The only check on that behavior is that at some point, the coddling is obvious and invites mockery.

"Students appeared to form a prayer circle in the field as they waited to depart."

"One approaching mother began to cry when she saw her young daughter. She ran to her, wrapping her in a tight embrace. Nearby, a boy pressed his mother for details about what had happened. 'Did anyone die, Mom?' he asked. She walked briskly on and responded, 'I don’t know.'"

From "Georgia students and teachers killed in deadliest school shooting this year/Frightened children prayed and wept in their classrooms as desperate parents ran down a rural road to reunite" (WaPo).

Howard Stern pays tribute to Richard Simmons.

"What's the money for if you're celibate?"

Stephen Colbert asks 50cent:

 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Late Show (@colbertlateshow)

"For some of the schools, the migrants coming here has been a godsend because we’ve lost so many other kids."

"Some schools were being threatened with whether we’re going to be able to keep the doors open. I push back on a lot of the kind of negative politics that people talk about with migrants. This is a city of immigrants. I mean, that’s the uniqueness of New York. We never make it easy for immigrants who are coming. But they find their way. And the same thing is going to happen here."

Said David C. Banks, quoted in "Migrants Have Been a ‘Godsend,’ New York Schools Chief Says/In an interview, Chancellor David C. Banks said migrants had helped schools that were bleeding students. He also promised a big new role for artificial intelligence" (NYT). 

A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, has an opinion piece in The Washington Post: "How the quiet war against press freedom could come to America."

Here's a gift link so you can read the whole thing. Excerpt:

It has been only eight years since Donald Trump popularized the term “fake news” as a cudgel to dismiss and attack journalism that challenged him. 

That phrase, from the president of the United States, was all the encouragement many would-be authoritarians needed. In the following years, around 70 countries on six continents have enacted “fake news” laws. Nominally aimed at stamping out disinformation, many primarily serve to allow governments to punish independent journalism. Under these laws, journalists have faced fines, arrest and censorship for reporting on a separatist conflict in Cameroon, documenting Cambodian sex-trafficking rings, chronicling the covid-19 pandemic in Russia, and questioning Egyptian economic policy. Trump has effectively championed this effort, as he did when he told Bolsonaro at a joint news conference, “I’m very proud to hear the president use the term ‘fake news.’” 

Sunrise — 6:00, 6:29.

I got a text saying "Let’s get clear together about the role those of us who are white can play to defeat MAGA...."

I have never before received a communication that addresses me as anything like "those of us who are white." To those of you who think I would want to "get clear together" with people who reach out to include me as one of "those of us who are white," let me be clear completely on my own: Leave me out.

And what do you mean by "get prepared for what comes post-election - no matter the results"?

Here's the Wikipedia page for SURJ — "Showing Up for Racial Justice." It has a warning label that says "This section contains content that is written like an advertisement." I note that "Celina with SURJ Madison" texted me from a Long Island (NY) area code.

Golden hour.

"Former President Donald Trump’s youngest child, Barron Trump, was spotted arriving at New York University Wednesday to kick off his first day of college life."

The New York Post reports, ending the mystery of where Barron Trump would be going for college.

The towering 18-year-old was flanked by Secret Service agents as he stepped onto the downtown Manhattan campus with a black Swiss Gear backpack casually slung over his shoulder. Dressed in a white polo, black pants and Adidas Gazelle sneakers, Barron’s first stop was the dean’s office before being whisked off to classes, sources told The Post.

 Good luck to the kid who can't help being incredibly conspicuous.

Breakfast.

"For years, companies avoided mentioning the remote assistance provided to their self-driving cars."

"The illusion of complete autonomy helped to draw attention to their technology and encourage venture capitalists to invest the billions of dollars needed to build increasingly effective autonomous vehicles...." 

I'm reading "How Self-Driving Cars Get Help From Humans Hundreds of Miles Away" (NYT).

If a Zoox robot taxi encounters a construction zone it has not seen before, for instance, a technician in the command center will receive an alert — a short message in a small, colored window on the side of the technician’s computer screen. Then, using the computer mouse to draw a line across the screen, the technician can send the car a new route to follow around the construction zone.... While Zoox and other companies have started to reveal how humans intervene to help driverless cars, none of the companies have disclosed how many remote-assistance technicians they employ or how much it all costs....

That's always how it's been with robots. We suspect there's really a little guy in there....

Mainstream media helps Kamala Harris maintain the nothingness.

This isn't the first time I'm noting that the Kamala Harris campaign seems to have chosen a no-substance strategy — a campaign about nothing. See here and here, for example.

This post is just to collect 2 new examples of elite media helping the Harris campaign disserve the electorate by withholding substantive content:

1. "Kamala Harris Doesn’t Need Policy to Win/In fact, a detailed platform will hurt her campaign more than it will help" by Peter Rothpletz in The New Republic: "Harris’s vibes-based, personality-based approach to the first six weeks of this mad dash of a campaign is clearly working.... Harris should hang out in the coconut tree and not release any economic plans that can’t fit within a Venn diagram. To win, Harris doesn’t need policy. She just needs vibes."

2. "How Harris Wins (and Trump and the Republicans Blow It)" by Ross Douthat in The New York Times": "[Y]ou have to think about Marie Kondo, the Japanese style guru famous for her ruthless minimalism, whose prescription for a cluttered home is to remove any object that doesn’t immediately 'spark joy.' The progressivism that infuses the contemporary Democratic Party can be a cluttered, claustrophobic worldview.... Her convention speech was especially Kondo-ist: Short, sparse, and nonspecific about virtually everything....  [W]inning on the most limited agenda and by the narrowest of margins is still winning...."

I didn't go looking for more things to put on this list. These are just 2 things I casually ran across this morning. I'm guessing there's more of the same out there, whether it's this explicitly stated or not.

This reminds me: The debate date is coming up soon. I'm guessing it won't happen. Kamala Harris will drop out and blame Trump. Here's what I said on this topic a month ago. Excerpt: "She's already avoiding speaking on substance. She's following something like Biden's old Covid-era 'basement strategy.' To avoid any debate would be consistent with her overall campaign strategy."

Sunrise — 5:58, 6:16, 6:27.

"[Sandra] Dee left the Gidget role after the first film, but [James] Darren — who described himself as a 'prisoner' of a studio contract..."

"... was part of the two that followed: 'Gidget Goes Hawaiian' in 1961 with Deborah Walley in the starring role, and 'Gidget Goes to Rome' (1963) starring Cindy Carol. ('Gidget' became a 1965-1966 television series that launched the career of actress Sally Field.) Mr. Darren went on to play a semi-autobiographical part as a teen idol on two episodes of 'The Donna Reed Show.'"

From "James Darren, actor and singer of ‘Gidget’ teen idol fame, dies at 88 /As the wave-rider Moondoggie in 'Gidget,' Mr. Darren helped ignite the California surfing craze" (WaPo).

I never saw the Gidget movies. I was only 10 in 1961 — but of course I remember the Gidget TV show, and I remember the James Darren appearances on "The Donna Reed Show." But where I most remember James Darren was in "For Those Who Think Young," which I saw, in 1964, not because I wanted to see it, but because it was playing in a double feature with "A Hard Day's Night." I rewatched "For Those Who Think Young" in 2019 and wrote about it here.

Lex Fridman does a distinctive interview with Donald Trump...

... and even provides a transcript and a Table of Contents:

This is Meade's sunrise picture from this morning.

That's me in the middle distance:

I'll have my sunrise photos closer to bedtime. This is the midday break in the blog. Write about whatever you want.

"Many novelists have had the experience of being approached by someone convinced that they have a great idea for a novel..."

"... which they are willing to share in exchange for a fifty-fifty split of the proceeds. Such a person inadvertently reveals that they think formulating sentences is a nuisance rather than a fundamental part of storytelling in prose. Generative A.I. appeals to people who think they can express themselves in a medium without actually working in that medium. But the creators of traditional novels, paintings, and films are drawn to those art forms because they see the unique expressive potential that each medium affords. It is their eagerness to take full advantage of those potentialities that makes their work satisfying, whether as entertainment or as art...."

Writes Ted Chiang in "Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art/To create a novel or a painting, an artist makes choices that are fundamentally alien to artificial intelligence" (The New Yorker).

"Yeah, well, Trump has that unvarnished element, and that's also something that's very appealing to working-class people...."

"He doesn't talk down to people.... He's very good at that.... Yeah, well and he's got that gift of spontaneity. You know, he doesn't craft his speeches, and of course that makes him a bit of a loose cannon, but people like that.... You might be deceiving us, but not in a practiced and calculating way. Right, you know, some of your personality flaws are leaking through, but but at least that's kind of like honest deception. I thought when when Trump won, I thought, well, they they preferred the spontaneous lies of Trump to the calculated lies of Hillary. You know, and that's very cynical but but there's still there's something about it that's accurate...."

Said Jordan Peterson, and it rings true to me. They're all going to lie, but which form of lying do you feel more inclined to trust?

"[Elle] Macpherson, 60, says she rented a house in Phoenix, Arizona, for eight months, where she 'holistically treated' her cancer..."

"... under the guidance of her primary doctor, a doctor of naturopathy, holistic dentist, osteopath, chiropractor and two therapists. She said: 'It was a shock, it was unexpected, it was confusing, it was daunting in so many ways and it really gave me an opportunity to dig deep in my inner sense to find a solution that worked for me.... Saying no to standard medical solutions was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. But saying no to my own inner sense would have been even harder,' later adding she thought chemotherapy and surgery were too extreme."

From "Elle Macpherson refused chemotherapy after secret breast cancer diagnosis/Supermodel says she is in remission after being diagnosed seven years ago and rejecting traditional medicine" (The Guardian).

ADDED: The idea that surgery is extreme is subjective. How aversive to it should we be? It made me think of the newly normalized gender affirmation surgery, bariatric surgery, and the plastic surgery done to fight the perfectly ordinary effects of age.

And I happened to see this earlier today:

Amazing Mom

pic.twitter.com/lGXL89E6xR

— The Best (@ThebestFigen) September 1, 2024

"It's not the economy, stupid: Why Kamala Harris should focus on everything else."

 A headline over at Salon. The piece is by Joe Tauke. Excerpt:

[R]egardless of whatever economic statistics Harris or Biden or any other Democrat might throw out there... [polls] strongly imply that no amount of attempted persuasion will convince voters that they feel better about the economy now than they did during the Trump administration — because, well, they don’t. It’s not even close.... Moreover, real-time economic conditions (other than inflation) for the country appear to be deteriorating just as the campaign enters its most intense phase.... If voters in [swing] states are thinking about the economy when casting their ballots, Trump will win. If Harris can get them to think about virtually anything else (other than immigration), she’ll win. In 1992, during Bill Clinton’s winning effort against George H.W. Bush, “It’s the economy, stupid” was the best advice a Democratic campaign could follow. In 2024, it’s the best way for the latest Democratic nominee to lose.

Okay, but "virtually anything else"? Immigration? Endless wars? Going toe-to-toe with Putin? The Covid lockdown? Guns? Gender affirmation treatments? DEI? Rather than "anything else," the best advice — the advice she seems to be taking — is that nothing else is better. Kamala Harris is running as representing no issue at all. They say you can't beat something with nothing, but they are trying, and they think — I believe — it's their best hope... because the something (Donald Trump) is so monstrously, calamitously bad.

ADDED: I think the phrase "You can't beat something with nothing" originated with Will Rogers, and he was talking, in 1934, about Republicans running on nothing but the horribleness of their opponent — FDR:

BUT: I see I blogged about Will Rogers and the phrase "You can't beat something with nothing" last January, here. At the time, "I wanted to critique the Biden campaign strategy." Ha ha. Anyway, I determined last January that "Will Rogers didn't invent 'You can't beat something with nothing.' Even back then, it was an 'old saying.'"

"Reminds me of that 'Chimp Crazy' thing I was watching. People love animals and get inside their fantasy."

Something I texted after receiving the following viral deer video (and agreeing with the guy who began "Nice story, too bad...."):

Nice story, too bad it’s made up of multiple random clips. Also, did dude repair the fence after cutting or just leave it that way for the owner to deal with?

— Jim McCaslin (@JimMcCaslin23) September 2, 2024

And if you're not familiar with "Chimp Crazy," check out the trailer:

People are delusional about wild animals. That reminds me to get back to my rewatching of "Grizzly Man."

"I told [my 12-year-old daughter] she needed to read because novels are the best way to learn about how people’s insides work."

"She said she could learn more from watching the people she followed on social media, who were all about spilling their insides. I said books offered storytelling. She said, 'Netflix.' I said books taught history. She said, 'The internet.' I said reading would help her understand herself and she said, 'Um, no thank you. I’ll just live.' I promised, extravagantly, that I’d buy her all the books she wanted and construct bookshelves in her room, so that she could see the spines of all the books she loved from her bed. She said, 'Mama, welcome to your dream.'... So I decided to cut through all the reasoning.... I told my 12-year-old I would pay her $100 to read a novel.... $100 if she finished the book within a month. We then embarked on a beach holiday, along with my boyfriend, to a romantic Greek island...."

Writes Mireille Silcoff "I Paid My Child $100 to Read a Book" (NYT).

Should you use money to get your kids to do things you can't reason them into doing? Money becomes the reasoning. Money talks, as they say. 

I don't know. But I do know you shouldn't take a 12-year-old daughter along on something you call "a romantic Greek island" "with my boyfriend."

What was the "romantic Greek island"? Santorini?

Sunrise — 6:25, 6:26.

"I used to seek remarkable sites, events and people. Now I notice more supposedly unremarkable moments..."

"... which as it turns out are why we are here.... Dew, stars, Neal’s apricot tea roses — variations on a theme of sparkle.... On any unremarkable day, there will be a number of what Neal and I call Alzheimer-y moments, more and more — some funny, some scary.... The fear of missing out has lessened greatly. In its place, we have the fear of being pressured into gatherings we don’t want to go to. Luckily, at 65, along with your Social Security check, you earn the courage to beg off: 'It sounds lovely, but I have other plans,' those plans being to stay in, eat popcorn and settle into the current TV binge. Saying no to things that deplete or bore us becomes an essential skill. To me, nothing is more wonderful than to crawl between the sheets again, with a book and the cat, and to say our prayer: 'Oh, well.'..."

Writes Anne Lamott in "Living for the unremarkable moments/Age grants us permission to be curious about every ordinary day" (WaPo).

It was nice to run across that right after seeing these 2 articles: 1. "Popular tourist spot is 'total chaos' with cars stuck in 4-hour traffic jam: 'Horrific experience'" (NY Post)("The people who work in the Fairy Pools car park have said visitors say it’s like a warzone driving there"), and 2. "Was This the Summer European Tourism Reached a Breaking Point?/Overwhelmed destinations made high-season visitors the targets of a major tourism backlash" (NYT)("Protesters staging hunger strikes against tourism developments. Local officials threatening to cut off water to illegal vacation rentals. Residents spraying tourists with water pistols").

On the midday walk...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

Taking it well.

If Trump wins, what’s your prediction about how well Democrats will take it? #Resistance https://t.co/eLTDe4meWi

— Randy Barnett (@RandyEBarnett) September 2, 2024

A big Wall Street Journal article about the Tammy Baldwin/Eric Hovde race for the U.S. Senate seat in Wisconsin.

I'm reading "Democrat Woos Dairy Farmers to Keep Crucial Senate Seat/Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin hits country roads and agricultural fairs, seeking to win over rural Trump supporters once more." 

Baldwin’s campaign for a third term against the wealthy banker Eric Hovde, who says the Democrat is an out-of-touch career politician, has sent her down country roads in sparsely populated counties that cut through farmland and curve around lakes....

Baldwin has to win for Democrats to have a chance of hanging on to the Senate, where the party clings to a 51-49 majority and faces a difficult map this fall. They have already thrown in the towel regarding West Virginia....

The article doesn't have as much dairy cow detail as I was hoping to see, but there is this: 

At a dairy farm outside Merrill, Wis., a small town in a deeply red region that Baldwin lost in 2018, a farmer, Hans Breitenmoser, 55, gave Baldwin a tour that led them through a cavernous barn past cows that poked their heads through metal fencing and bales of hay to watch. As Breitenmoser, a registered Democrat, paused to explain how megafarming operations put pressure on smaller ones, Baldwin let a calf nibble on her fist....

"Kamala Harris and Tim Walz were both born in 1964, the very last year of the Baby Boom."

"Yet many in that cohort feel no identification with baby boomers. But neither are they Gen Xers. They are people in-between. Perhaps in 2024, this status now enables public figures to be 'in between' in new ways, to wear their gender more lightly."

Those are the last few sentences of "Paying More Attention to His Appearance Than Hers/They’re the same age, but pundits and voters can’t stop talking about how much older Tim Walz looks than Kamala Harris. It’s not the only way her running mate seems to be absorbing some of the scrutiny usually heaped on female candidates" by Rhonda Garelick in the NYT.

That's from August 12th. I was looking for something else when I ran into that, and I got engrossed.

The idea of wearing one's gender lightly intrigues me.

What was I actually looking for? I was thinking about the time President Bill Clinton, running for reelection, wanted to use federal spending to incentivize public schools to require their students to wear uniforms.

My search terms — Clinton, school, and uniform — all came up in that Harris/Walz article:

... Hillary Clinton... came to prominence as first lady, as a “wife,” and was assailed for her hair and style, her presumed disrespect for “cookie baking” and for tolerating her husband’s transgressions.

... Elizabeth Warren, a former Harvard law professor, was called “a hectoring schoolmarm” for offering expert policy explanations, and advised to change her glasses and hair.

... Ms. Harris hews generally toward a sleek uniform of pantsuit, silk blouse, pearls and heels, which “suggest fashion without being too fashionable”...

Why I don't have any hobbies.

I'm reading "Six Underrated Hobbies to Try Out/Picking up a new pastime is no small feat" (The Atlantic). "What is an underrated hobby that you love?" it asks.

I don't think I've ever used the word "hobby" to refer to anything I do. I don't relate to the idea of a "hobby," even though I like to do what I want, what interests me, and I have almost nothing but free time. I don't think of this blog as a hobby and might be annoyed if someone I knew called it that. But maybe I would be better off if I did something that genuinely deserved the label "hobby." I don't consider walking in the woods a hobby. Or reading. Maybe photographing the sunrise every day is a hobby, but this is the first time I've connected it with that word, which, to my ear, sounds diminishing.

So let's check out these 6 things. 1. Collecting animal figurines, 2. Playing video games (why not count watching TV?!), 3. Paraclimbing (climbing for persons with disabilities (I don't think sports are "hobbies")), 4. Boxing (another sport), 5. Making pizza from scratch (cooking can be a hobby), 6. Walking the dog and paying attention to the plants and animals that interest the dog (I'm intrigued by the idea of paying attention as a hobby).

Well, it's Labor Day, and I like thinking of my own personal freedom from labor. I'm not decrepit enough to deserve the word "retired" — if you want to think about words. That has to do with withdrawing or receding, retreating, or falling back. I'm reading the OED. Maybe paying attention to words and looking them up in the OED is my hobby.

Did you know that the original meaning of "hobby" is "A small or middle-sized horse; an ambling or pacing horse; a pony"? That goes back to the 1400s. The meaning we know — which begins in the early 1800s — comes from the idea of riding a toy horse — a "hobby-horse." It's "A favourite occupation or topic, pursued merely for the amusement or interest that it affords, and which is compared to the riding of a toy horse...; an individual pursuit to which a person is devoted (in the speaker's opinion) out of proportion to its real importance."

When do you look at your own activities and judge your interest in them to be out of proportion to their "real" importance? It seems that if you're going to call something your "hobby," you're embracing the idea that your love of it seems foolish when viewed from the outside. By the same token, if you decline to use the word "hobby" for what you do out of interest and love, you are deprioritizing what other people think.

Sunrise — 6:24, 6:25.

"Certainly, in the history of narrative, there have been writers celebrated for their ability to be discursive only to cleverly tie together all their themes with a neat bow at the end — William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens..."

"... and Larry David come to mind. But in the case of Mr. Trump, it is difficult to find the hermeneutic methods with which to parse the linguistic flights that take him from electrocuted sharks to Hannibal Lecter’s cannibalism, windmills and Rosie O’Donnell...."

Writes Shawn McCreesh — a Dickensian name — in "Meandering? Off-Script? Trump Insists His 'Weave' Is Oratorical Genius. /Former President Donald J. Trump’s speeches often wander from topic to topic. He insists there is an art to stitching them all together" (NYT).

McCreesh quotes Trump: "You know, I do the weave. You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about like nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it’s like, friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say, 'It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen.'"

Not only does the article refuse to acknowledge that Trump's rally speeches are genius, it casts doubt on whether Trump has any English professor friends.

The color changes.

"Editors and reporters, with a few exceptions, really don’t see the problem as they normalize Trump."

"Nor do they appear to listen to valid criticism. They may not even be aware of it, or may think, 'well, when both sides are mad at us, we must be doing it right.' Maybe they simply fear being labeled liberal."

Writes Margaret Sullivan, in "An ugly case of 'false balance' in the New York Times/The mainstream media is still getting it wrong about Trump" (Substack).

Sullivan was formerly the "public editor" at the NYT.

I disagree with her and appreciate when the NYT declines to indulge in the usual liberal-press assumption that Trump is too abnormal to be treated as the major-party candidate he plainly is... especially when the other party's candidate is quite abnormal in her own way. I wouldn't mind reading a newspaper that treated them both as abnormal to the extent that they are abnormal. But for that, I write my blog.

"How the f*** do you start this tweet with 'I've worked tirelessly?'"

How the f*** do you start this tweet with "I've worked tirelessly." https://t.co/FlRiOC2F60

— Isaac Schorr (@isaac_schorr) September 1, 2024

"Harris’s Team, With a Wink, Insists She’s an Underdog."

Headline at the NYT. Subheadline: "Her campaign’s message that Democrats are losing, which she never voiced when President Biden was tanking the ticket, is an artful attempt to lower expectations."

The piece, by Reid J. Epstein, analyzes this memo from Jen O’Malley Dillon, who chairs the Harris/Walz campaign.

Epstein writes: "Politicians in both parties often claim to be in trouble to help juice their fund-raising — and to keep volunteers working hard. Still, it is hard to believe that Ms. Harris and her top campaign officials really think they are, given the other contents of Ms. O’Malley Dillon’s memo on Sunday."

The Dillon memo is long, but not quotable. Despite the "underdog" characterization, nothing is revealed or conceded. It's a pep talk. You might try to read between the lines that there's a fear that the campaign will lose steam. But you don't need that memo to know that.

"We thought, well, it’s so great, it’s such a great adoption experience, that the animals will fly off the shelves.... We’re in dire straits."

"It’s a confluence of just terrible things happening all at once, and our shelters are not designed to house this many animals."

Said Katy Hansen, a spokeswoman for Animal Care Centers of NYC, quoted in "A $75 Million Animal Shelter Opened in Queens. It’s Already Overwhelmed. The brand-new building was designed to hold 72 dogs. After only a month, it already has more than twice that" (NYT).

It had spacious kennels for dogs. A skylight in the adoption room. Dedicated rooms for cats to roam free. High ceilings and state-of-the-art veterinary facilities, including a dental clinic.

But before it even opened in late July, the shelter was already in trouble.

The 50,000-square-foot building, designed to accommodate 72 dogs....

More than a million dollars per dog! 

Arlington Cemetery — "It is not a place for politics.... And I will never politicize them."

I've avoided discussing the topic, because I can see that to talk about it is to violate the principle that the military dead should not be politicized. And yet to follow that principle is to cramp political debate about war, and political debate about war should be central to every presidential campaign. And the assertion that this is no place for politics is itself political debate.

But the main reason I'm going to start talking about this issue is because the Kamala Harris X account put up this long tweet yesterday. I've boldfaced the quotes I used for the post title:

As Vice President, I have had the privilege of visiting Arlington National Cemetery several times. It is a solemn place; a place where we come together to honor American heroes who have made the ultimate sacrifice in service of this nation. It is not a place for politics. And yet, as was reported this week, Donald Trump’s team chose to film a video there, resulting in an altercation with cemetery staff. Let me be clear: the former president disrespected sacred ground, all for the sake of a political stunt. This is nothing new from Donald Trump. This is a man who has called our fallen service members “suckers” and “losers” and disparaged Medal of Honor recipients. A man who, during a previous visit to the cemetery, reportedly said of fallen service members, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” This is a man who is unable to comprehend anything other than service to himself. If there is one thing on which we as Americans can all agree, it is that our veterans, military families, and service members should be honored, never disparaged, and treated with nothing less than our highest respect and gratitude. And it is my belief that someone who cannot meet this simple, sacred duty should never again stand behind the seal of the President of the United States of America. I will always honor the service and sacrifice of all of America’s fallen heroes, who made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of our beloved nation and our cherished freedoms. I mourn them and salute them. And I will never politicize them.

Those cannot be words straight from the mind of Kamala Harris. They sound like words written for Joe Biden to read off a teleprompter, replete with his oft-repeated claim that Trump said  “suckers” and “losers” and “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?” It's entirely political, including, of course, the assertion that it is not political.

Trump's visit to the cemetery was also political. It was a first move in a political game that Harris ought to have chosen not to play. But she couldn't get all her supporters to refrain from playing, and in the end, she jumped in. She made the obvious move, and it is an awful blunder. You knew it was a blunder — didn't you? (I hope you are at least that savvy) — but you just had to do it. 

If only you'd had the sense and the restraint to delete most of the words. Let me help retrospectively and uselessly: