Sunrise — 6:39, 6:41, 6:46, 6:46.

People have found some excellent sticks and want to tell you about them, quite sincerely.

Read Official Stick Reviews (at TikTok).

Just a random example so you'll get the idea and see how charming this is:

Althouse at 6:47 a.m.

Photo by Meade:

"Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s brags to friends that star reporter Olivia Nuzzi had sent him intimate photos was what led the scandal to explode into the open..."

The Daily Beast reveals, in "Married RFK Jr., 70, Bragged He Had ‘Intimate’ Photos of Reporter Olivia Nuzzi, 31" (Daily Beast).

The 70-year-old scion’s boasts became known to the 31-year-old New York magazine correspondent’s boss—who confronted her over the photos.... Nuzzi repeatedly denied an affair to David Haskell, New York’s editor in chief....

Haskell told Nuzzi, 31, that he was informed by a source of his that Kennedy had bragged about his relationship with Nuzzi to others, including possessing photographs of her and that they were in a romantic relationship....

We're told only Haskell and Nuzzi were in this meeting, so either Haskell or Nuzzi (or both) decided to talk to the press. Why talk to the press other than to hurt RFK Jr. (and to drain him of the power to help Trump)?

"Trump on Saturday argued it was 'too late' to have another presidential debate because Americans have begun casting their ballots in the 2024 election...."

"Trump suggested last week that he might be open to participating in a third presidential debate.... 'Maybe if I got in the right mood,' he told reporters during a stop in California, after previously postingon Truth Social, 'THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!'... Harris’ campaign last week dismissed Trump’s announcement that there would not be another debate, with one senior adviser saying the former president 'changes his position every day.'..."

From "Harris accepts CNN debate invitation for October 23, again challenging Trump to another showdown" (CNN).

I assume he's negotiating. But it is getting late. And yet October 23 seems too late because too many people will have already voted. Don't we all need to be reacting to the same information? Maybe not. Why does it seem as though we should? Am I just nostalgic for the days when we all — except the overseas military and the truly housebound — trudged to the polls and waited in line together?

"Biden's fun. Biden's kind of fun... I don't want to lose him now that he's just not going to be the president. He's fun now...."

Says Tim Dillon near the end of this week's podcast, reacting to Biden's putting on a Trump hat he gets from some old guy at a rally and telling the guy not to eat dogs and cats:

And watch beginning at 24:10 for Tim's critique of the Wall Street Journal piece reassuring readers about the viral video of armed migrants in the corridor of an apartment building in Aurora, Colorado: "This is the Wall Street Journal writing an article telling people to relax, going, hey, why don't you fucking relax, you racist, because what you thought was a full takeover of a building was not — it was just 10 violent Venezuelan prison gang members carrying out a routine operation or something they felt needed to be done.... Thank you, Wall Street Journal.... There are guys in the in the corridor with guns, and they're killing someone, but it's okay. They didn't take over the whole building.... Can you imagine writing this article thinking it lands?...."

Here's the Wall Street Journal piece in case you want to fact-check Tim's mockery: "In Colorado, a Murder and a Viral Video Stoke Fears of Migrant Crime/In exaggerated claim that a Venezuelan gang took over an apartment complex spread quickly through an already-on-edge community."

We just saw it from a different point of view....

A Tale of Two Stories.

Tale #1: Kamala Harris overused the word "story" and looked ridiculous in the Fox News edit.

Tale #2: J.D. Vance said, "If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do" and gave his antagonists great material for characterizing him as a fabulist.

***

What's the story with "story"? Is there some reason for this word to become more useful than "narrative" or "framing" in speaking about how politicians communicate with the people?

Advisers, behind the scenes, may be saying "story" because they think the voters are rather stupid and childlike and a "story" sounds easier than a "narrative." But "narrative," like "framing," seems to refer to the overall structure of the message, while "story" works better to refer to more specific anecdotes, such as the dog-eating incident.

"The core assumption of the ad is men hate her... it's like... if we can't vote for that douchebag Trump... before you sock me directly in the nuts let me tell you..."

Says Ben Shapiro, watching what he assures us is the worst ad he's ever seen in his life:

ADDED: Ben says the ad is paid for by the "Beige Rainbow PAC," and I was a little skeptical and looked it up. I found this in The Daily Beast: "Kamala’s Splashy Play for Trump Toadies/Vice President Kamala Harris is seeking an elusive Trump-loving demographic." This piece is written by Mini Racker, who seems to be a young woman, that is, a member of the same demographic group as, Shapiro believes, the writers of the ad). Racker says:

"This is the first time Microsoft has secured a dedicated, 100% nuclear facility for its use."

 I'm reading "Microsoft AI Needs So Much Power It's Tapping Site of US Nuclear Meltdown/Constellation to invest $1.6 billion to restart dormant reactor as data-center power demand surges" (Bloomberg).

The decision is the latest sign of surging interest in the nuclear industry as power demand for AI soars. More than a dozen reactors went dark over roughly the past decade in the face of increasing competition from cheaper natural gas and renewable energy. But growing demand for electricity — from factories, cars and especially from data centers — has spurred interest in nuclear plants that can provide carbon-free power around the clock.

“Policymakers and the market have received a huge wake-up call,” Constellation Chief Executive Officer Joe Dominguez said in an interview. “There’s no version of the future of this country that doesn’t rely on these nuclear assets.”

Sunrise — 6:47.

"Not only do more women want to be small; they want to be smaller. Jerry Chidester, a plastic surgeon in Salt Lake City, said his patients used to ask for C cups."

"Now, they want Bs. He often does five breast reductions a week, mostly on young, postpartum mothers.... Small breasts may not draw as much attention on the subway or the street as bigger breasts do, but they are also a fashion. Whereas big breasts signal motherhood and sexual availability, smaller breasts can convey youth, girlishness, puberty, thinness, androgyny.... They can also indicate class. In March, a meme circulated on X... 'MEN,' it said. 'Which do you prefer? The aristocratic elegance of the small breasted woman OR the Nietzschean pro-sex, pro-beauty large breasted woman?' Thornton agrees that smaller breasts signal the self-assurance of affluence whereas breast augmentation can signify social ambition — a desire to attain wealth and status via the attention of men.... For a woman to withdraw from the male gaze, to assert herself in her refusal to be ogled, to relieve her own pain, to be able to comfortably train for a marathon or dance at her own birthday party — that is liberation. But it’s a personal, individual one, said Thornton. 'If women are going to have an emancipated rack,' she said, 'then men need to change.'"

I'm reading "The Power of a Smaller Breast/Breast reduction is all the rage in cosmetic surgery. Are women asserting their independence or capitulating to a yet another impossible standard of beauty?" (NYT).

Thornton is "Sarah Thornton, 59, a sociologist who lives in San Francisco, was a B cup before her double mastectomy. After breast reconstruction she had Ds, which felt huge to her — 'bulky and cartoony,' she wrote in 'Tits Up,' her recent social history of the breast."

"The official in charge of New York City’s pandemic response participated in sex parties and attended a dance party underneath a Wall Street bank during the height of the pandemic..."

"... even as he was instructing New Yorkers to stay home and away from others to stop the spread of Covid-19. He acknowledged his transgressions on Thursday after being caught on hidden camera boasting about his exploits."

Reports the NYT, in "Former N.Y.C. Covid Czar Partied While Preaching Social Distancing/In a hidden-camera video posted by a conservative podcaster, Dr. Jay K. Varma boasts about flouting the public health guidelines he insisted others follow."

"The video appears to have been compiled from several recordings, in which Dr. Varma is seen at a number of restaurants and cafes, chatting with a woman who remains off camera. At various points, he describes a sex party he and his wife held in a hotel and a dance party he attended in a space under a bank on Wall Street, joined by more than 200 people. In a statement, Dr. Varma did not dispute the recordings’ authenticity but said they had been 'spliced, diced and taken out of context.'"

Here's the video:

Why are we suddenly hearing about the New York Magazine editor who says she engaged in "sexting" with RFK Jr.?

I've been reading reports in various newspapers, and I'm going to select the one in the London Times to link to and quote: "Reporter put on leave after admitting personal relationship with RFK Jr/Olivia Nuzzi allegedly exchanged sexual messages with Robert F Kennedy Jr while covering his campaign."

The magazine said a review of Nuzzi’s work had found no evidence of bias but described the relationship as a “violation of our readers’ trust” and its own standards. “Had the magazine been aware of this relationship, she would not have continued to cover the presidential campaign,” it added.

Although Nuzzi did not identify the other person in the relationship, it has been widely reported that it was Kennedy....

It's a "relationship"? I'm only seeing that there were text messages and that they were "sexual." What are we talking about? Photos of naked body parts? Written invitations to have sex? Prompts to masturbate? Sexual words, such as saying that someone can go fuck himself? I don't know what we are talking about, and I suspect New York Magazine of wanting to hurt RFK Jr. and making sex-and-politics theater out of nothing.

According to the New York Post, Nuzzi had been “sexting” with Kennedy, who is married to Cheryl Hines, the Curb Your Enthusiasm actress, when Nuzzi was engaged to Ryan Lizza, the chief Washington correspondent for the Politico website. The couple called off the wedding a few weeks ago, said the newspaper.

Was Ryan Lizza involved in revealing these "sexts"? What's going on there? Here are Ryan and Olivia in happier times:

What nonsense! The photo, I mean. Who can look at that and not laugh? Can someone please tear off the veneer of middle-class respectability and tell us what the hell really happened?

"I'm a gun owner... and if somebody breaks in my house, they're getting shot... Probably should not have said that, but my staff will deal with that later."

Said Kamala Harris, at last night's Oprah event:

1. Where does her prosecutor persona come into play here? She knows it's not good legal advice to encourage people to go ahead and shoot a person who has broken into the house but not yet physically threatened you.

2. That's why she said "probably should not have said that." She knows it's bad, but she almost seems to want to display herself as somewhat bad. She’s been trying to come across as one of us, a "middle class" American, fond of our guns and adamant about protecting our family inside the home. She needs to replace the image that she's that person who said — in 2007 video that went viral yesterday — "Just because you legally possess a gun in the sanctity of your locked home doesn't mean that we're not going to walk into that home and check to see if you're being responsible and safe in the way you conduct your affairs."

3. Which Kamala is she — the one who walks into your house to check to see if you're being responsible or the one that shoots the person who walks into her home? I suspect she isn't really either person, but is simply saying what seemed worth saying at the time.

4. Don't get me started on the distinction between "breaking" into the home and "walking" into the home. I see it, and you can do your own legal research. I read her first comment to create an image of finding someone in her house and shooting him because he's there, and I read her second statement to say that she would use the authority of the state to gain access to the homes of people who are not opening the door and inviting her in.

5. She's portraying herself as the lone armed protector of her home, but we all know she has the Secret Service protecting her. 

6. My favorite part of the quote is "but my staff will deal with that later." The staff will clean up after me. I'd like to see the Harris impersonators do a scene where Kamala is President, making wild, impulsive decisions, then laughing, and saying lightheartedly — as World War III begins — "my staff will deal with that later."

Sunrise — 6:21, 6:44, 6:47.

"I was just exhausted... the show was all filmed on a green screen.... I was in every take of every shot, every day..."

"... with no other actors or props or anything, just sort of standing in a void for years and years. My real job was listening. Most children’s television talks to the camera, right? That’s kind of an established convention. But what 'Blue’s Clues' did that I think was really a breakthrough is we listened. I worked really hard on making that as believable as possible. And that was becoming more and more challenging every day to do. The entire time I was on that show, I was struggling with undiagnosed, severe clinical depression and I didn’t know what was going on. That made my job extra hard."

Says Steve Burns, interviewed in "Steve from ‘Blue’s Clues’ Was Here for Us All Along/The former star of a beloved children’s show survived the rumors of his own demise and then found a new home on social media. He is still ready to listen" (NYT).

It was nice to see this article after running into him on TikTok... where he listens to all of us quite compellingly.

A well-attended sunrise this morning.

Talk about whatever you want in the comments.

"The racketeering conspiracy charge, which accuses [Sean Combs] of carrying out crimes as part of an 'enterprise,' carries up to life in prison."

"But defense lawyers... have argued that the federal laws are being deployed to charge less serious conduct than was envisioned when they were adopted.... In a bail hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Combs’s lead lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, objected to the government painting the encounters as sex trafficking, arguing that with Cassie... it was consensual — 'part of the way that these two adults wanted to be intimate together.'... Julie A. Dahlstrom, a legal scholar who has studied trends in American sex trafficking law, said she believed that the broader application of sex trafficking law by prosecutors had been driven, in part, by a more expansive use of the statute to bring civil claims during the #MeToo movement. 'We saw victims' rights attorneys try to use the tools that they had,' she said, citing as an example a lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein that led a judge to acknowledge that a promise of possible career advancement in exchange for sex could help bolster a sex trafficking claim...."

From "In the Sean Combs Case, Echoes of the Tack Taken Against Other Powerful Men/Federal authorities are prosecuting Mr. Combs under sex trafficking and racketeering laws, which were used to successfully prosecute R. Kelly and Keith Raniere in earlier abuse cases" (NYT).

"When you guys wrote this song — you know, 'we'll make good pets' — you were talking about if these aliens came and visited us and we suddenly became a planet of pets."

Said Howard Stern to Perry Farrell in 1997:

I found that because I've been reading about Perry Farrell this week and it intersected in my head with all the loose talk about newcomers eating the pets of the people who live there in Ohio.

Here's the NYT story if you need to catch up on Perry Farrell's problems: "Jane’s Addiction to Cancel Tour After Onstage Fight/In a social media post, the rock band said it was halting its reunion tour after the group’s singer, Perry Farrell, hit its guitarist at a Boston show" ("Farrell’s wife, Etty Lau Farrell, said on Instagram after the concert that her husband had been upset throughout the tour about the band’s sound levels drowning out his vocals. He was suffering from tinnitus and a sore throat.... 'He was screaming just to be heard,' she said.")

Lyrics from the song "Pets": "Will there be another race/To come along and take over for us?/Maybe Martians could do better than we've done/We'll make great pets!"

There's always the question whether Martians will eat their pets. I come from the "Twilight Zone"/"To Serve Man" era of thinking about the aliens....

"Harris Had Stronger Debate, Polls Find, but the Race Remains Deadlocked."

 The NYT reports, just now. Free-access link.

ADDED: 2 interesting highlights:

1. "The share of voters who said they still wanted to learn more about Ms. Harris was nearly identical, both before and after the debate, suggesting that she might have missed an opportunity to address doubts or provide more details to the public....:

2. "[F]ar more voters see [Harris] as too liberal than view Mr. Trump as too conservative.... Mr. Trump took the title as the more 'extreme' candidate, 74 percent versus 46 percent.Yet being extreme was not viewed negatively by many voters. In fact, Mr. Trump won the group of voters who said 'extreme' described him 'somewhat well' by more than 50 percentage points...."

AND: Those 2 points fit together. Do you see how? Harris is trying to look moderate, but that makes people feel they don't know enough. If she's extreme, we're not seeing it so much. Trump is more revealing, so he seems more extreme. People feel they know what he's saying, and a lot of them like it.

"I say, without evidence, that the media’s Trump qualifiers are backfiring."

A great headline — on a column by Matt Bai, in WaPo.

I know exactly what he's talking about —  even though "Trump qualifiers" is an awkward term — and I'm assuming he's going to articulate my position on the subject... but is he? The subheadline makes me wary:  "We in the news media are making him less accountable for his mendacity, rather than more so." I want you in the news media to be more accountable too. You're just throwing in "without evidence" all the time without establishing that you have honestly assessed whether there is evidence.

Now, I'll read it and make some excerpts and comments as I go:

First!

Presenting the 2024 NL Central Champions. 👑 #CLINCHED pic.twitter.com/JimZUtdG0A

— MLB (@MLB) September 19, 2024

Brewers are the first team to clinch.

"Powered by just a few ounces of an explosive compound concealed within the devices, the blasts sent grown men flying off motorcycles and slamming into walls..."

"... according to witnesses and video footage. People out shopping fell to the ground, writhing in agony, smoke snaking from their pockets. Mohammed Awada, 52, and his son were driving by one man whose pager exploded, he said. 'My son went crazy and started to scream when he saw the man’s hand flying away from him,' he said."

From "How Israel Built a Modern-Day Trojan Horse: Exploding Pagers/The Israeli government did not tamper with the Hezbollah devices that exploded, defense and intelligence officials say. It manufactured them as part of an elaborate ruse" (NYT).

Sunrise — 6:43.

"As is the case for many people who grew up in the Deep South but have lived somewhere else for many years, the Southern accent I once had..."

"... has given way to the 'nowhere man' accent that I think of as generically American. But it comes roaring back when I visit my family in central Alabama, and even lingers for a few days after I have returned to Brooklyn. It’s also a little more pronounced after a martini (or two). No one gets offended when my Southern accent comes and goes. For Kamala Harris, it’s a different story. Figures on the political right, including JD Vance, Donald Trump and various conservative internet celebrities, have accused Ms. Harris of affecting a Southern accent on the campaign trail, and implied that it was a kind of deception. Ms. Harris, who is not from the South, wasn’t using a Southern accent, though. As John McWhorter has recently pointed out, what Ms. Harris was slipping into was Black English. There’s nothing unusual about her using Black English because to state the obvious (to everyone except Donald Trump, apparently) Ms. Harris is Black...."

Writes Elizabeth Spiers in "The Real Reason the Harris Twang Is Driving Republicans Crazy" (NYT)(free-access link, because she has a lot of other things to say and I'm not in the mood to summarize it).

And then there are the people who say she sounds drunk....

"The man who is not a husband, father, and soldier is not a man."

I took these photos of the movie "A Special Day," which is playing on The Criterion Channel (in its current tribute to Marcello Mastroianni). Begin around 53:23 to view just this segment, which has Mastroianni's character poking around inside the apartment of Sophia Loren's character and finding her fascism scrapbook. (It's 1938, in Rome.)

"So you can have people who attempt to gesticulate. Again, modern politicians, you’ll see this sometime where they feel like, 'I’m supposed to be making hand gestures'..."

"... and they’re terrible at it. And it undercuts it. Cicero and Quintilian give some very amusing examples from ancient Rome. He says, there was this one guy who when he spoke, looked like he was trying to swat away flies because there were just these awkward gestures. Or another who looked like he was trying balancing a boat in choppy seas. And my favorite is there was one orator who supposedly was prone to making, I guess, languid supple motions. They actually named a dance after this guy, and his name was Titius. And so Romans could do the Titius, which is this dance that was imitating this orator who had these comically bad gesticulation...."

From "Transcript for Gregory Aldrete: The Roman Empire – Rise and Fall of Ancient Rome | Lex Fridman Podcast #443"

The segment on gestures begins here. Or watch the video:

How does this go on for 16 years?

I'm reading "Charges against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs allege 16 years of abuse and crimes/The music mogul was arrested on charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. He is being held without bail" (WaPo).

The crimes Combs and his associates are accused of committing and covering up include sex trafficking, narcotics distribution, arson and kidnapping. Many of these alleged crimes took place at illegal sex parties that Combs referred to as “freak offs.” During these parties, Combs allegedly threw objects at the victims and dragged them by their hair.

"Roy finds deculturation everywhere: in viral controversies over whether emotional-support animals belong on airplanes..."

"... in the recent, charged debate over whether Israeli or Lebanese people invented hummus; in Disney’s 'remixing' of traditional fairy tales into profitable mega-franchises; in the struggles of universities to attract humanities majors. What unifies these phenomena, he thinks, is that they unfold in a cultural vacuum. In the past, a society could rely on 'a shared system of language, signs, symbols, representations of the world, body language, behavioural codes, and so on' to govern all sorts of situations. Today, in the absence of that shared background, we must constantly renegotiate what’s normal, acceptable, and part of 'us.' ... [Roy writes] 'Here we are on a terrain in which culture has no positive aspect, since the old culture has been delegitimized and the new one does not meet the necessary condition of any culture, which is the presence of implicit, shared understandings'.... Around the world, cultures aren’t being replaced by other cultures; the idea of 'Westernization' is a red herring, he suggests, because, despite the worldwide popularity of pizza and 'Succession,' what’s actually ascendant are 'weak identities' constructed through that 'collection of tokens.' It’s a bit like moving from a place where your family has lived for generations to a faceless suburb. You could adopt your neighbors’ traditions, if they have any, but they don’t—they’re just a random collection of people who happen to live near one another. 'You do you,' they say...."

From "Is Culture Dying? The French sociologist Olivier Roy believes that 'deculturation' is sweeping the world, with troubling consequences." The article, by Joshua Rothman in The New Yorker, reviews Oliver Roy's book "The Crisis of Culture: Identity Politics and the Empire of Norms."

Rothman writes "I’m one of those people who is 'spiritual, but not religious'" — people who is?!! I'm one of those people who remember when The New Yorker had a noble tradition of meticulous editing. Has that degenerated into a nonculture of if it sounds good, write it? But we've already analyzed this grammar issue and come up with the answer. It's a rule. If you don't follow it, your venerable institution is crumbling. You're just a random collection of scribblers who happen to publish under the same cover.

Rothman's last paragraph gestures at the struggle over immigration that's roiled American politics:

Sunrise — 6:18, 6:41, 6:43, 6:46.

"Hundreds of pagers blew up at the same time across Lebanon on Tuesday in an apparently coordinated attack that killed eight people and injured more than 2,700..."

"... health officials said on Tuesday.... Hezbollah said that pagers belonging to its members had exploded and accused Israel of being behind the attack. The Israeli military declined to comment. The wave of explosions left many people in Beirut in a state of confusion and shock. Witnesses reported seeing smoke coming from people’s pockets, followed by small blasts that sounded like fireworks or gunshots.... Lebanon’s health minister, Firass Abiad, said... many of the victims had injuries to their faces, particularly the eyes, as well as to their hands and stomachs.... Three officials briefed on the attack said that it had targeted hundreds of pagers belonging to Hezbollah operatives who have used such devices for years to make it harder for their messages to be intercepted. The devices were programmed to beep for several seconds before exploding, according to the officials...."

The NYT reports.

"Hamas’s reasoning is simple — winning simply means surviving and, at least for now, the group has managed to do that..."

"... even if it is severely weakened... In the interview, Mr. Meshal made clear that Hamas officials are not in a rush to conclude a cease-fire with Israel at any price, and will not give up on their main demands for an end to the war and an Israeli withdrawal. Independent analysts have made similar assessments about Hamas’s priorities. 'They completely feel time is on their side,' said Ghaith al-Omari, an expert on Palestinian affairs. 'They think they’re the only game in town.'...At the war’s start, President Biden expressed a similar position to that of Mr. Netanyahu — that Hamas needed to be eliminated. But Mr. Biden no longer speaks of its eradication, and both the United States and Israel have taken part in indirect negotiations with Hamas. Mr. Meshal said he took that to mean that the United States was acknowledging Hamas was not going anywhere...."

"Hamas Is Surviving War With Israel. Now It Hopes to Thrive in Gaza Again. Khaled Meshal, one of Hamas’s most senior officials, said in an interview that the militant group expects to play a decisive role in the enclave when the war is over" (NYT).

"And, sadly, the press is still not able to cover Trump the way that they should. They careen from one outrage to the next...."

"What was outrageous three days ago is no longer on the front pages, even though it threatens the physical safety of so many people, particularly... immigrants that he and Vance have decided to demonize. And I don't understand why it's so difficult for the press to have a consistent narrative about how dangerous Trump is. The late, great journalist Harry Evans one time said that journalists should really try to achieve objectivity. And by that, he said, I mean, they should cover the object. Well, the object in this case is Donald Trump, his demagoguery, his danger to our country and the world, and stick with it.... The second thing, though, is that part of what Trump is counting on is for people to get desensitized. I mean, oh, my gosh, did you hear what he said yesterday? Did you hear who he attacked? Did you hear the viciousness? And it's just, like with a shrug, OK, fine we're moving on...."

From "Hillary Clinton: I Don't Get 'Why It's So Difficult For The Press To Have A Consistent Narrative About How Dangerous Trump Is'" (Real Clear Politics, with video from the Rachel Maddow show).

"Of the many recent failures of the American left, one of the greatest is making entry-level battle-of-the-sexes humor seem avant-garde."

"(Did you know that women often run relationship decisions past their female friends? Bitches be crazy! That sort of thing.) As Rogan himself says after he emerges in stonewashed jeans, clutching a glass of something amber on ice: 'Fox News called this an anti-woke comedy club. That’s just a comedy club!'... Rogan now lives in Austin, which has recently become known for its transformation from chilled-out live-music paradise to a miniature version of the Bay Area—similarly full of tech workers, but with fewer IN THIS HOUSE, WE BELIEVE… signs.... It is... the center of the Roganverse, an intellectual firmament of manosphere influencers, productivity optimizers, stand-ups, and male-wellness gurus. Austin is at the nexus of a Venn diagram of 'has culture,' 'has gun ranges,' 'has low taxes,' and 'has kombucha.'"

Writes Helen Lewis, in "How Joe Rogan Remade Austin/The podcaster and comedian has turned the city into a haven for manosphere influencers, just-asking-questions tech bros, and other 'free thinkers' who happen to all think alike" (The Atlantic).

That's a free-access link, because there's a lot going on in that article, beyond what I chose to excerpt.

How to argue that Trump is responsible for attracting assassins without catching hell for blaming the victim.

That's what the elite media commentators are working hard to figure out, I think, scanning the many headlines this morning. I tired of reading the commentary before even beginning, and I am also tired of the columns reacting to it.

So I'll choose one piece, on the chance that it might go a bit deeper. It's by Peter Baker in the NYT and the title suggests some sobriety and moderation: "Trump, Outrage and the Modern Era of Political Violence/The latest apparent assassination attempt against the former president indicates how much the American political landscape has been shaped by anger stirred by him and against him."

Excerpt:

At the heart of today’s eruption of political violence is Mr. Trump, a figure who seems to inspire people to make threats or take actions both for him and against him. He has long favored the language of violence in his political discourse, encouraging supporters to beat up hecklers, threatening to shoot looters and undocumented migrants, mocking a near-fatal attack on the husband of the Democratic House speaker and suggesting that a general he deemed disloyal be executed....

Mr. Trump’s critics have at times employed the language of violence as well, though not as extensively and repeatedly at the highest levels. The former president’s allies distributed a video compilation online of various Trump opponents saying they would like to punch him in the face or the like. Some of the more extreme voices on social media in the past day have mocked or minimized the close call at the Florida golf course. Mr. Trump’s allies often decry what they call Trump Derangement Syndrome, the notion that his critics despise him so much they have lost their minds.

Anger, of course, has long been the animating force of Mr. Trump’s time in politics — both the anger he stirs among supporters against his rivals and the anger that he generates among opponents who come to loathe him....

"A liverwurst sandwich with mustard is quite possibly the perfect lunch for me. It tastes somewhere between bologna and bacon."

"It's just such a rich flavor … the texture is great, too."

Said one admirer of liverwurst, perhaps liverwurst's biggest fan, quoted in "Boar's Head ditches liverwurst, a once-popular sandwich staple that Americans no longer stomach/Liverwurst is dropped from product line in wake of product recall and declining popularity" (Fox News).

Boar's Head discovered — so luckily — that its listeria problem was entirely located within a facility that made liverwurst, the product no one liked anyway.

Kind of makes you wonder how anyone got infected, but obviously some people were clinging to liverwurst. 

We'll all be on our best behavior, because — with cameras everywhere, monitored by AI — we'll all be supervised.

Says Oracle's Larry Ellison:

Oracle's Larry Ellison says a surveillance system of police body cams, cameras on cars and autonomous drones, all monitored by AI, will constantly record and report on police and citizens, leading everyone to be on their best behavior pic.twitter.com/RAq5XGaNmZ

— Tsarathustra (@tsarnick) September 15, 2024

Watch the whole Q&A session here.

Sunrise — 6:41, 6:42.

At the Medium Hot Mocha Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

Who wrote this headline?! What would taking it to 11 mean in this context?

Meade texts me this headline from a NYT op-ed: "Harris Is Good on Abortion Rights. Now She Needs to Take It to 11."

He comments: "Wouldn’t 'taking it to 11' be analogous to post-birth abortion?"

Cecile Richards is a former president of Planned Parenthood (and the daughter of Ann Richards, who was a memorable governor of Texas). The column asserts that Harris can win by "turning the volume up to 11 on abortion." That is, get louder, not more extreme in one's position, but the headline doesn't dictate that interpretation. It left room for Meade's grim retort.

As for Trump, he's been trying not to exhibit extremism about abortion. He says leave the legislating to the states, and he refuses to answer the question whether he'd sign legislation restricting abortion if he wins the election and gets a Congress inclined to act at the federal level. Why would we trust him? If the answer is no, say no. So what if it's hypothetical. Lots of questions asked of candidates rely on hypotheticals.

By the way — and I know I've linked to this twice before — Wikipedia has an entry for "Up to eleven." Excerpt:

The influence of the phrase "up to eleven" is such that it has been used outside of music; in 2016, for example, astronomer Krzysztof Stanek described the then brightest-known object in the universe, ASASSN-15lh, as being "as if nature took everything we know about magnetars and turned it up to 11".

Kamala Harris sounds so weary of all those people in Pennsylvania. Does she even want to be President?

Let me preface this with the assurance that I have never trusted the people who want to be President, and I have despaired over the structural problem that we're always stuck having to vote for somebody who has strongly desired the presidency. But it is possible occasionally — through ascension from the vice presidency — to end up with a President who didn't want the job.

Please watch the TikTok video I've put at the bottom of this post, after the jump, or you can also go here, for YouTube video (begin at 1:06). Alternatively, read the text.

But you won't get the point from the cold text, so I'll have to ask you to imagine a first rate actress reading the lines in the role of a woman who can barely cover up that she's really had it with being carted around to these bullshit nothing places with their tedious needy people:

"I am feeling very good about Pennsylvania, because there are a lot of people in Pennsylvania who deserve to be seen and heard. That's why I'm here in Johnstown, and I will be continuing to travel around the state to make sure that I'm listening as much as we are talking and, ultimately, I feel very strongly that I've got to earn every vote, and that means spending time with folks in the communities where they live, and so that's why I'm here.  We're going to be spending a lot more time in Pennsylvania."

Harris was speaking at a bookstore in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Can you put your usual partisanship to the side and genuinely empathize with her as human being?

"The chief justice’s Feb. 22 memo, jump-starting the justices’ formal discussion on whether to hear the case... tore into the appellate court opinion greenlighting Mr. Trump’s trial..."

"... calling it inadequate and poorly reasoned. On one key point, he complained, the lower court judges 'failed to grapple with the most difficult questions altogether.' He wrote not only that the Supreme Court should take the case — which would stall the trial — but also how the justices should decide it. 'I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently' from the appeals court, he wrote. In other words: grant Mr. Trump greater protection from prosecution."

From "How Roberts Shaped Trump’s Supreme Court Winning Streak/Behind the scenes, the chief justice molded three momentous Jan. 6 and election cases that helped determine the former president’s fate" (NYT)(reporting based on hearing from "several people from the court who saw the document").

The man arrested for attempting to assassinate Trump was interviewed by the NYT last year for an article about Americans participating in the war in Ukraine.

Here's the article from March 2023: "Stolen Valor: The U.S. Volunteers in Ukraine Who Lie, Waste and Bicker/People who would not be allowed anywhere near the battlefield in a U.S.-led war are active on the Ukrainian front, with ready access to American weapons."

Here's this morning's article: "Suspected Gunman Said He Was Willing to Fight and Die in Ukraine/Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, told The New York Times in 2023 that he had traveled to Ukraine and wanted to recruit Afghan soldiers to fight there" (NYT). Excerpt:

Mr. Routh, who had no military experience, said he had traveled to the country after Russia’s invasion and wanted to recruit Afghan soldiers to fight there. In a telephone interview with The New York Times in 2023, when Mr. Routh was in Washington, he spoke with the self-assuredness of a seasoned diplomat who thought his plans to support Ukraine’s war effort were sure to succeed. But he appeared to have little patience for anyone who got in his way. When an American foreign fighter seemed to talk down to him in a Facebook message he shared with The New York Times, Mr. Routh said, “he needs to be shot.”

In the interview, Mr. Routh said he was in Washington to meet with the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, known as the Helsinki Commission “for two hours” to help push for more support for Ukraine. The commission is led by members of Congress and staffed by congressional aides. It is influential on matters of democracy and security and has been vocal in supporting Ukraine.

He said he was meeting with the Commission? Was he? 

Mr. Routh also said he was seeking recruits for Ukraine from among Afghan soldiers who had fled the Taliban. He said he planned to move them, in some cases illegally, from Pakistan and Iran to Ukraine. He said dozens had expressed interest.

Again, things he said. Was that fact-checked in 2023? What I'm seeing in the old article is: "It is not clear whether he has succeeded [in recruiting Afghan soldiers], but one former Afghan soldier said he had been contacted and was interested in fighting if it meant leaving Iran, where he was living illegally."

I want to know more about Routh's connections and activities.

Sunrise — 6:13, 6:35, 6:40, 6:41, 6:42, 6:42.

"Donald Trump has survived 'what appears to be an assassination attempt' after shots were fired at one of his golf courses in Florida, the FBI has said...."

"A Secret Service agent opened fire on a man as Trump was playing golf nearby, according to the agency. A man in his fifties was taken into custody by the West Palm Beach sheriff’s office after a traffic stop on I-95. In an email to supporters, Trump wrote: 'There were gunshots in my vicinity, but before rumours start spiralling out of control, I wanted you to hear this first: I AM SAFE AND WELL! Nothing will slow me down. I will NEVER SURRENDER! I will always love you for supporting me.'"

The London Times reports.

I'm using the "Trump shot" tag because it's another assassination attempt, and that's the tag I established for the first one.

"Vote preferences haven't moved meaningfully.... Each is within a percentage point of its pre-debate level in ABC/Ipsos polling."

I'm reading "Harris seen as debate winner while maintaining slight lead over Trump: POLL/Taylor Swift's endorsement of Harris shows little impact, the poll found" (ABC News).

ADDED: ABC has Harris at 51% and Trump at 47%. In its previous poll, at the end of August, Harris had 50% and Trump had 46%. They remained exactly the same distance apart in percentage points — 4. That's less obvious when you say "Each is within a percentage point of its pre-debate level."

"[Trump] would fire the absolute wrong person.... [He] had no idea what was going on, and he would just make something up."

"He just had to choose a name... And maybe that was the only name he remembered of the people sitting around.... Our job then was to reverse engineer the show and to make him not look like a complete moron.... to make the person who he fired look not as good."

Said Jonathon Braun, who was a producer on "The Apprentice" (and on "Survivor"), quoted in "The Star-Making Machine That Created ‘Donald Trump’/The inside story of how the producers of 'The Apprentice' crafted a TV version of Mr. Trump — measured, thoughtful and endlessly wealthy — that ultimately fueled his path to the White House" (NYT).

The article is adapted from the book "Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success," by NYT reporters Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig.

Isn't selective editing like that the norm in these competitive reality shows? I remember reading Television Without Pity contemporaneously with those old "Survivor" and "Apprentice" episodes, because sophisticated fans enjoyed watching the show and analyzing the edit. The ultimate winner would get a "hero's edit," and the loser's mistakes would be highlighted. The show had to make sense, but still keep you guessing. That was the method, already developed on "Survivor," but here's Braun trying to impose an interpretation of Trump by selectively presenting his observations — editing! As if Trump was a special sort of bungler, and the editors were covering for him. Trump did the show brilliantly. By the way, what about Jeff Probst? Does he watch the rough footage before he conducts the "tribal council" on "Survivor," or are the editors making him look more savvy than he is? And how would you badmouth Probst if he were running for President?

Game day parking at the fairy garden.

Yeah, we lost, but what did you expect? And what does it all mean... in the greater span of time?

"The modern style of parenting is not just exhausting for adults; it is also... not supported by evidence from our evolutionary past."

"For most of human history, people had lots of kids, and children hung out in intergenerational social groups in which they were not heavily supervised. Your average benign-neglect day care is probably closer to the historical experience of child care than that of a kid who spends the day alone with a doting parent.... A parenting style that took its cue from those hunter-gatherers would insist that one of the best things parents can do — for ourselves as well as for our children — is to go about our own lives and tote our children along. You might call it mindful underparenting.... [F]ollowing adults around gives children the tremendous gift of learning to tolerate boredom, which fosters patience, resourcefulness and creativity.... An excellent way to bore children is to take them to an older relative’s house and force them to listen to a long adult conversation about family members they don’t know. Quotidian excursions to the post office or the bank can create valuable opportunities for boredom, too...."

Writes the psychologist Darby Saxbe, in "Parents Should Ignore Their Children More Often" (NYT).

By the way the most boring long adult conversation about family members they don’t know is the long adult conversation about the health problems of family members they don’t know. Just a child-rearing tip, in case you decide to embrace the let's-be-like-the-cavemen-and-bore-them-out-of-their-skull approach.

"We cannot get myopic or get focused based upon a knee-jerk reaction to something that is very titillating or very out there in the public right now."

Said Todd Chamberlain, the police chief in Aurora, Colorado, quoted in "How the False Story of a Gang 'Takeover' in Colorado Reached Trump/The claim that Aurora, Colo., has been overrun by gun-toting migrants stemmed from the city’s fight with a landlord. Now it is central to one of former President Donald J. Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign promises" (NYT).

That's a free-access link, because there are more details to absorb than I can summarize here. The quotes around "takeover" are a clue.

I thought it was rich that the police chief was taking a stand against getting focused.

"Many are drawn to Steinberg for his claim to have a 92 per cent accuracy rate in predicting eye colour."

"'We are not making blue eyes,' he says. Rather, his clinicians implant the embryo that carries the DNA for blue eyes. 'But we are learning that there are five different shades of blue, because parents might call up with a five-year-old and say, "Well, this isn’t quite the blue we were thinking about."' IVF at his clinic — involving hormone treatment of the mother, egg extraction and fertilisation — costs about $30,000, then $10,000 for each test for genetic abnormalities. Two famous singers came to see him who wanted their child to be a singer too — which he could not facilitate...."

I'm reading "Want a girl with blue eyes? Inside California’s VIP IVF industry/In the state’s low-regulation fertility clinics the perfect child may soon be available — for a price. Megan Agnew meets the doctors, mums and surrogates" (London Times).

From the anecdote that begins the article: "The couple conceived their first daughter, Aspen, the old-fashioned (and free) way, and she was born four years ago — her hair fiery red like her father’s. Soon afterwards Hartley wanted a second daughter. 'I grew up in a family full of girls,' says the stay-at-home mother. 'It was, like, girl family vibes.'... 'I thought, we have one redhead, let’s have a blonde. But my doctor said you can’t do that — yet. So then we were, like, OK, we’ll just have the girl.'...The couple received one round of IVF treatment at the Southern California Reproductive Center... It worked. Bardot arrived very quickly one night in autumn and is now nearly two — and, by chance, strawberry blonde. 'It was perfect... Bardot has my features, so I have my mini-me and Neil has his. So I got what I wanted in the end.'"

Imagine naming your little girl Bardot, then going around enthusing about how she looks like you. Imagine going public about using IVF to sex-select and to try to get blue eyes.