Sunrise — 6:32, 6:37, 6:51, 6:55.

Things not believed.

You released 425,000 convicted criminals into the public.

No one believes you. pic.twitter.com/ddq048Eqv9

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 27, 2024

"Sleep disorders can become more common as people age, and older adults tend to sleep more lightly and go to bed and wake up a little earlier than they used to..."

"... that is completely normal. But if there are dramatic changes in someone’s sleep habits, where they are starting their morning at 3 a.m. or are unable to stay awake during the day, it can be a sign of dementia.... One change that can occur specifically with dementia with Lewy bodies — another type of progressive brain disorder — is that a person might begin acting out their dreams. This is also true for Parkinson’s disease, which is related to dementia with Lewy bodies. Ordinarily, our muscles become paralyzed while we’re in REM sleep, which is when we tend to have the most vivid dreams. But in these two neurodegenerative disorders, toxic proteins attack the cells in the brainstem that control sleep paralysis."

From "Memory Loss Isn’t the Only Sign of Dementia/Here are five other common red flags to look out for" (NYT).

The other 4 are financial problems, personality changes, driving difficulties, and loss of smell.

I have loss of smell, so it was disconcerting to see that description of sleep.

You know, Hillary used to try to promote herself with drinks.

I see Kamala is using alcohol as a come-on to Hispanic voters: Trump wants to tax "your tequila, Modelos, and Coronas." 

I remember Hillary using beer:

"WeightWatchers CEO Sima Sistani abruptly stepped down Friday after a two-year stint that included a controversial embrace of weight-loss drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy."

The NY Post reports.

Sistani pushed the 61-year-old company — famous for in-person meetings and portion control — to buy a telehealth platform that connected patients with doctors who can prescribe the popular obesity medications. However WeightWatchers’ shares have been in freefall, plummeting more than 90% this year. The stock was down nearly $3 Friday, trading below $1.

The interim CEO is Tara Comonte, the former president of Shake Shack.

Is there some mysterious order in that chaos?

Professor vividly demonstrates the problem with the duty to retreat.

 TikTok, after the jump:

"Hezbollah on Saturday confirmed the death of Hassan Nasrallah, its longtime leader, in an airstrike on the organization’s underground headquarters near Beirut, hours after Israel said he had been killed."

The NYT reports, just now.

The death of Mr. Nasrallah is a major escalation in Israel’s rapidly expanding campaign against the Iran-backed group.... Beirut was gripped on Saturday by a feeling that the capital was no longer safe after months of Hezbollah clashes across the country’s remote border with Israel. Thousands of people from outside Beirut spent the night sleeping on the streets and beaches of the capital....

"Malcolm Gladwell, the best-selling author, has an office on a quiet street in Hudson, N.Y., where he sits at a desk under a poster of Mao Zedong, the former communist leader of China."

"Why? Maybe to signal how ideas can be dangerous? Nope, no particular reason. There are two other Chinese communist posters on the wall, too. 'I found them online for like $10,' said Mr. Gladwell, 61. 'I just think it’s funny.'"

From "Malcolm Gladwell Holds His Ideas Loosely. He Thinks You Should, Too. As he releases 'Revenge of The Tipping Point,' the best-selling journalist talks about broken windows theory, Joe Rogan and changing his mind" (NYT).

What if he had a Hitler poster and said "I just think it’s funny" and they were really cheap? Before you answer, remember when Jordan Peterson "bought like 400 Soviet paintings on eBay."

"The Democratic party that I grew up with — the Democratic party of John F Kennedy, of Robert Kennedy — does not exist today."

"The Democratic party that I grew up with — the Democratic party of John F Kennedy, of Robert Kennedy — does not exist today. This was the party of Peace. Today, it's the party of war. And we saw President Zelensky come over here. I was so proud of President Trump today who did at a press conference was with Zelensky. And the Democrats had on their own press conference, and you know what he got them to do? He got them to sign artillery shells....  I was so proud of President Trump.... He was the epitome of diplomacy.... He was kind and civil to President Zelensky. He was also firm in his resolve, and he said I've had a nice meeting, but I have not changed my mind. We need a peace, and we need to do it very quickly, and we need to protect US interests, not the interests of a country in which we have no strategic interest, and no treaty. And he was polite he was kind, he was firm in protecting our country, and that's what Donald Trump will always do. And it was especially impressive to me because I know what Donald Trump would was thinking while he was having that meeting he was thinking I want to turn this guy over and hold him by his legs and shake all the money out of his pockets and I hope it adds up to $28 billion?"

Said RFK Jr. at yesterday's Trump rally in Michigan.

To see the clip of Trump with Zelensky, see "Trump meets Zelensky and says it's time to end Russia's war" (BBC).  An excerpt from that article:

Sunrise — 6:51.

"I have a message for the tyrants of Tehran: If you strike us we will strike you."

"There is no place in Iran that long arm of Israel cannot reach, and that is true of the entire Middle East.”

Said Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking to the U.N., quoted in "Netanyahu Gives No Ground in Address at U.N./The Israeli leader made no mention of moving toward cease-fires in Lebanon, where conflict with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia has spiraled, or in Gaza" (NYT).

He also criticized the U.N. itself as a “swamp of antisemitic bile” and said its members concern for Gaza was motivated not by humanitarianism but by dislike of Jews.

“It’s not about Gaza,” he said of criticism over the last year of his government’s handling of the war. “It’s about Israel. It has always been about Israel. About Israel’s very existence.”

Goodbye to Maggie Smith.

The wonderful actress was 89.

NYT obituary here.

ADDED: Sorry my embedded video doesn't put Maggie Smith in the freeze frame, but she does appear prominently in the clip, and it's a great clip from one of my favorite movies, "A Room With a View." Smith plays the stilted chaperone for the main character, who is an exuberant young woman, but feeling the emotion of the repressed older woman is crucial to the deepest understanding of that incredibly moving film.

"Trump’s Huge Civil Fraud Penalty Draws Skepticism From Appeals Court/A five-judge New York appellate panel questioned both the size and validity of a judgment of more than $450 million against Donald J. Trump at a hearing."

That's the headline in the NYT this morning. 

Justice [David] Friedman... asked [Judith N. Vale, New York’s deputy solicitor general] to identify any other case in which the attorney general’s office had sued 'to upset a private business transaction that was between equally sophisticated partners.' Before she could respond, Dianne T. Renwick, the court’s presiding justice, who generally seemed supportive of the case, added her own question. 'And little to no impact on the public marketplace?' she asked....

The questioning by the five-judge panel was vigorous. 

"Do you think it’s at all reasonable for the mother of a teenage boy to worry about a false accusation of sexual assault? Or is that just like, a normal maternal anxiety?"

Asks Ross Douthat of Tressie McMillan Cottom, who answers: "I think it is about as normal as worrying that you’re going to be sex trafficked at the shopping center if you are a Middle America mom. That is to say, is it possible? Sure. Is it likely? No. And is there a much bigger threat out there that might be a better use of your maternal anxiety?... The feminist philosopher Kate Mann calls it 'himpathy; — this default sympathy for men and for the male condition and that it is so deeply embedded in our culture."

That's part of a conversation at "Diddy and Our Culture’s 'Himpathy' for Powerful Men/How the allegations against/Sean Combs change the way we talk about #MeToo, rumors and powerful men" (NYT)(and that's my last gift link of the month, which should tell you there's a lot more to read there).

"The powerful Category 4 hurricane came ashore on Florida’s Gulf Coast and quickly moved into Georgia, where it dumped record amounts of rain."

The NYT reports.

Did anyone here experience Helene? Perhaps you wouldn't be on line if you did. 

"Early indications from Florida’s Big Bend coast were of catastrophic damage to small, marshy villages like Cedar Key, which sits on a series of islands jutting into the Gulf of Mexico. 'It looks like a nuclear bomb went off,' said Michael Bobbitt, a novelist and playwright who lives in the heart of the island community."

Anyone waiting, right now, in her path?

"Flooding and tornadoes were forecast across much of the Southeast, and 'significant landslides' were predicted across the southern Appalachians through Friday. In Greenville-Spartanburg, S.C., nearly 400 miles from Florida’s Gulf Coast, forecasters warned that the storm could be one of the region’s 'most significant weather events' in modern history."

Sunrise — 6:52.

"The proposal would slash fuel burn by 5 to 7% and would reduce the 4% industry contribution to overall climate change, per the research, which is being presented to the United Nations."

From "Scientists want every flight to take up to an hour longer — they say slower speeds are better for the planet" (NY Post).

How about if people just fly 5 to 7% less often?

Or never.

"Zelensky’s arms-factory visit reeks of partisan foreign-election interference."

Says the New York Post Editorial Board.

Zelensky got flown into battleground Pennsylvania aboard a USAF C-17 plane on Tuesday; he then toured the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant accompanied by Gov. Josh Shapiro, Sen. Bob Casey, Rep. Matt Cartwright — the last two being active Democratic candidates. And it looks like no GOP candidates got invited — trapping a foreign head of state into apparently taking sides in US domestic politics....

"The Sarco, short for sarcophagus, can also be voice-activated, so that physically incapacitated individuals can achieve suicide."

"Its inventor, a retired Australian physician known as Dr Death for his decades-long place at the vanguard of the right-to-die movement, tweeted on Monday that the (unnamed) American woman 'had had an idyllic, peaceful death in a Swiss forest.' Dr Philip Nitschke — for that is his real name — also announced, via The Last Resort, whose website describes it as 'the only accompanied suicide service in Switzerland where the 3D printed Sarco capsule will be used,' that he was 'pleased that the Sarco had performed exactly as it had been designed to do: that is provide an elective, non-drug, peaceful death at the time of the person’s choosing.' The response from the Swiss authorities has been less positive. Asked in parliament about the legal conditions for the use of the Sarco capsule, health minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider suggested that its use would not be legal, saying she doubted the device would comply with product safety law...."

From "I sat in Dr Death’s suicide pod (then had dinner with its maker)/A woman has taken her own life in Switzerland, using the Sarco. Mark Smith met the device’s creator" (London Times).

"You would have to hike for days to catch the same views they saw travelling through.... She likens a moving train to 'the ultimate dolly'..."

"... the wheeled cart that allows a film camera to capture travelling, panoramic shots. It was 'bonkers' to discover how close the tracks ran to the rivers; on the west coast they were so close to the sea they were practically in it. There’s a snobbery, too, about certain states, which is both political and aesthetic. The central states are often dismissed as the 'flyover states' — miles and miles of cornfields worth seeing only from 35,000ft. But, Edwards says, the 'middle of nowhere' often gave her the most exciting shots. 'You could just see such a long way.... And when you did see something significant, it made it almost more unbelievable that it might be able to exist so far from all other activities.' The emptiness sometimes made her feel anxious.... 'Have I got enough shots? Is this interesting enough? Where is everybody? Where are all the animals?'"

From "Why I spent 180 hours on a train across America (with my dad)/Katie Edwards travelled 10,000 miles on Amtrak, taking 20,000 photographs on the way. She tells Laura Freeman what she saw out of the window" (London Times).

Edwards grew up in the Lake District in England, which makes me think of William Wordsworth and his dedication to walking. Walking, you can always stop and look at whatever you want. It's easy to take photographs (or, if you must, write a poem in your head, stomping out the meter). But I like Edwards's train photography project. It was easy to catch sight of many more things, but difficult to get the shots at the right time (and to deal with reflections in the window glass). 

I like seeing the outsider's view of America:

"But a careful look at the available data strongly indicates that Harris’s coalition looks very different from Obama’s and is still struggling to match the contours of Biden’s 2020 coalition."

Writes Ruy Teixeira in "Harris has yet to replicate the Biden coalition as Election Day nears/With about six weeks until the election, Kamala Harris has yet to match Joe Biden’s coalition" (WaPo)("for now, she is underperforming her party’s historical patterns with non-White and working-class and younger voters")(free access link).

"One celebrated offering is pigeon meat cured in a casing of beeswax and served suspended, like a ham, with the bird’s feathered head intact."

"Another is ice cream made from pig’s blood and filled with a ganache of juniper oil and deer-blood garum. ('Fatty, with a weird umami aftertaste,' in the judgment of a food blogger.) Not all diners appreciate being scolded during their meal. 'I care deeply about climate change, yet I don’t necessarily go to a restaurant to worry about it even more,' Jeff Gordinier wrote in Esquire. 'I go to a restaurant to get away from the awful news for a few hours.' One night, a guest threw the chicken cage across the domed room, declaring that he hadn’t signed up to be lectured by Greenpeace. But that was in itself a satisfying moment of theatre. On only three or four occasions has a diner walked out in disgust."

From "Can Your Stomach Handle a Meal at Alchemist? At the Copenhagen restaurant, diners are served raw jellyfish—and freeze-dried lamb brain served in a fake cranium—while videos about climate change swirl on the ceiling. Is it 'gastronomic opera,' or sensory overload?" (The New Yorker).

Ha ha. It's funny that the climate change propaganda is the most disgusting part.

I had to look up the word "garum," and I found "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Garum/A culinary star in ancient Rome, this fermented fish sauce transforms everything it touches" (Eater)("it has been called the ketchup of the Roman world"). Are we still doing that thing of thinking about Rome all the time?

"If Mayor Eric Adams were to resign, New York City’s public advocate, Jumaane Williams, would become the acting mayor."

"Mr. Williams, a left-leaning Democrat from Brooklyn, has served as public advocate since winning a special election in 2019. He was re-elected to a full term in 2021 and ran unsuccessfully for governor the next year. Mr. Williams has been a fierce critic of Mr. Adams, assailing the mayor’s aggressive policing strategy and pushing to end solitary confinement in city jails.... Within three days of becoming mayor, Mr. Williams would name a date for a special election to pick a new mayor.... The city’s relatively new ranked-choice voting system, in which voters can rank multiple candidates, would be used. No public advocate has become acting mayor before.... The office of public advocate was created in 1993.... Mr. Adams has insisted that he will not resign. The mayor recently told reporters that more than 700,000 people had voted for him in the 2021 election. 'I was elected by the people of the city, and I’m going to fulfill my obligation to the people of this city,' he said.... 'I always knew that if I stood my ground for New Yorkers that I would be a target — and a target I became.... If I am charged, I am innocent and I will fight this with every ounce of my strength and spirit.'"

From "Eric Adams Is Indicted in New York/The indictment makes Mr. Adams the first sitting New York City mayor to face criminal charges. The mayor vowed to fight the charges" (NYT)(free-access link).

What's more worrisome, Jumaane Williams becoming mayor for the few months it may take to hold a special election or that ranked-choice voting system? I feel sorry for New York City. 

And what about this indictment? I see, elsewhere in the NYT: 

"Harris had roundabout answers to open-ended questions."

That's the first of the 3 — only 3? it's usually 5 — "takeaways" offered by the NYT in "3 Takeaways From Kamala Harris’s Interview on MSNBC." 

The piece, by Reid J. Epstein, is subtitled "In her first one-on-one cable TV interview since becoming the nominee, the vice president repeatedly dodged direct questions and stuck firmly on message." That is harsh, but I have to assume it's written tactfully. (And I did try to watch it myself.)

Fleshing out "takeaway" #1, Epstein writes: "Ms. Harris responded to the fairly basic and predictable questions with roundabout responses that did not provide a substantive answer."

The other 2 "takeaways" are: "She avoided a looming scenario: What if Democrats lose the Senate?" and "A hard-hitting Harris interview is still yet to come." Sorry, I think #3 repeats #1. And though #2 looks specific, it's just specific about the same generality that constitutes ##1 and 3: She didn't say anything of substance.

And this was with what Epstein called a "friendly inquisitor" — Stephanie Ruhle — on a "liberal cable channel whose viewers overwhelmingly favor Democratic candidates" — MSNBC. It was "roughly in the same ballpark as Mr. Trump having one of his regular chats with Sean Hannity of Fox News."

Sunrise — 6:47, 6:52.

"Listen, I didn't like the way they did it. I'm gonna just say it out loud, because nobody says it out loud. I didn't like the way it was done publicly."

"I thought they could have done this in a different way because we didn't need to hear all the inner fight. I didn't like it. I'm saying it to you. You were my ride or die. I was going wherever you go and that's what I would do, so I just wanted to say that because I always felt you were going to probably do four years and then try to figure out where to go with Kamala. Then he just wouldn't go. He was like a a a bug. He just kept being there. He was like a like a bug right there, so you felt that's what was needed, and you did...."

Said Whoopi Goldberg to Joe Biden, on "The View" today.

 

I always like to get a chance to use the old "insect politics" tag, but Whoopi likened Joe to a bug. She said it twice. [ADDED: On rewatch, I can see that Whoopi was characterizing Trump as the bug. Biden slaps the table, smashing the insect. I thought we weren't supposed to speak of human beings as vermin, but that's a rule that becomes conveniently invisible.]

I listened to all of what Joe Biden said — in response to the various super-soft questions — and I extracted 3 highlights:

• On why he didn't follow through on the understanding that he'd be a 1-term President: "When I ran for the first... for my first this last term, I said that I was, I thought, saw myself, as a transition president, yeah, transitioning to a new generation of leadership... but what happened was... I found myself having used more time than I would have ordinarily to you know pass that torch."

• Indicating that those who pushed him to give up the nomination were not so much worried that he couldn't handle it but motivated by the desire of "some folks" to get their hands on the power: "I never fully believed the assertions that somehow there was this overwhelming reluctance [about] my running again. I didn't sense that... but uh what I did was I think there were... some folks who would like to see me step aside so they have a chance to to move on. I get that. That just human nature. But that wasn't the reason that I stepped down. I stepped down because started thinking about it...." ("It," I gather from the extended babbling that followed, was his advanced age.)

• Praising Kamala Harris but also saddling her with the burden of what has gone on in his administration: "She is bright, she is tough, she's honorable... Look, she is smart as hell, number one, yeah, she's tough. She was a first-rate prosecutor. She is a United States Senator of significant consequence, and as Vice President, there wasn't a single thing that I did that she couldn't do, and so I was able to delegate her  responsibility on everything from foreign policy to domestic policy."

At the Lost Toy Café...

... there's the pink giraffe you've been grieving far too long. Go get it or let it go.

"Mr. Trump appeals to some Silicon Valley elites because they identify with the man. To them, he is a fellow victim of the state..."

"... unjustly persecuted for his bold ideas. Practically, he is also the shield they need to escape accountability. Mr. Trump may threaten democratic norms and spread disinformation; he could even set off a recession, but he won’t challenge their ability to build the technology they like, no matter the social cost.... Most Americans... blame tech companies for contributing to the mental health crisis among teenagers, political polarization, rampant misinformation and privacy violations. Many of us, reading the evidence about social media’s negative effects on our children, do not want to make the same mistake of failing to create guardrails for new technologies, however promising they may be. Mr. Trump’s tech supporters see it differently. Echoing monopolists of the past, they say they are the victims of zealous progressives who want to overregulate the industry.... But just as we needed rules of the road for cars and safety regulations for planes, we need to manage these new technologies through public policy to ensure we like what they are doing to us, not resign ourselves to letting them run wild...."

Writes Chris Hughes, chair of the Economic Security Project (and a co-founder of Facebook), in "Why Do People Like Elon Musk Love Donald Trump? It’s Not Just About Money" (NYT).

"Big threats on my life by Iran. The entire U.S. Military is watching and waiting. Moves were already made by Iran that didn’t work out..."

"... but they will try again. Not a good situation for anyone. I am surrounded by more men, guns, and weapons than I have ever seen before. Thank you to Congress for unanimously approving far more money to Secret Service - Zero 'NO' Votes, strictly bipartisan. Nice to see Republicans and Democrats get together on something. An attack on a former President is a Death Wish for the attacker!"

Writes Donald Trump, at X.

Here's some background at Axios:

Hillary Clinton doubles down on "deplorables."

"In 2016, I famously described half of Trump’s supporters as 'the basket of deplorables.' I was talking about the people who are drawn to his racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia — you name it. The people for whom his bigotry is a feature, not a bug. It was an unfortunate choice of words and bad politics, but it also got at an important truth. Just look at everything that has happened in the years since, from Charlottesville to Jan. 6. The masks have come off, and if anything, 'deplorable' is too kind a word for the hate and violent extremism we’ve seen from some Trump supporters...."

Writes Hillary Clinton, in an excerpt from her new book, presented as a column in The Washington Post, under the headline "To err is human, to empathize is superhuman/Is there any way to drain the fever swamps so we can stand together on firmer, higher ground?" 

"Maybe what ails us is not our freedom per se, but something we mistake for freedom—being detached from family obligations, which are actually the demands that save us from egoism and despair."

Writes Catherine Pakaluk, author of book titled "Hannah’s Children," a book published by Regnery, "a publishing house known for its rightward bent."

The quote appears in the New Yorker article, a magazine publisher known for it's leftish bent, in an article titled "The Case for Having Lots of Kids/In 'Hannah’s Children,' an economist and mother of eight interviews highly educated women with large families—and examines the reasons for America’s declining fertility rate."

As Pakaluk writes, “My subjects described their choice to have many children as a deliberate rejection of an autonomous, customized, self-regarding lifestyle in favor of a way of life intentionally limited by the demands of motherhood.”

Some readers might find Pakaluk and her subjects overly judgmental toward other women. Pakaluk explains that this isn’t her intention. “My full and real view is that women with much smaller families or no children at all may share the purposes, values, and virtues of the women I interviewed, even though life did not hand them the same opportunities,” she writes.... This is a group that the cat-lady discourse seems to miss: women who don’t have the families they dream of, whether because of infertility or financial struggles or because they haven’t found the right partner....

Pakaluk clearly thinks that, as a culture, it is good to encourage young women to have families. The problem is how.... Her suggestion? Religion.... Her subjects describe their trust in God as one of their primary motivations for having a kid, and then another and another....

Sunrise — 6:48, 7:15.

An assessment of my cruel neutrality.

Yesterday, I asked "If Election Day were tomorrow, who would Althouse vote for? Who should she vote for?" I took a poll, with 9 combinations and 3 possible votes: Trump, Harris, and the ever-popular "no one."

What I really wanted to see was how I was perceived, that is, what level of neutrality or cover I'm pulling off. The second question gave me some ability to account for bias.

Here are the results:

"We know there are people who are going to take things that they see out of context to bolster or inform their own narrative..."

"... and that is part of the tension with being super transparent: It potentially leaves you vulnerable for misunderstanding in a moment when we know that absolutely any function in election administration can be weaponized."

Said Tammy Patrick, the chief executive officer for programs at the National Association of Election Officials, quoted in "Latest strategy in fighting election skepticism: Radical transparency" (WaPo)(free-access link).

"She complained that her arranged death, which would have been the first one in the Sarco pod, had become a 'media circus.'"

"McLaughlin also said that the group had pushed her to spend her money, telling her she 'won't need it after I die.' She said: 'I felt manipulated and exploited. If I had known that the deeply heartless people who held my fate in their hands were mainly driven by their own media presence and marketing, I would never have subjected myself to this ordeal.'"

From "Makers of Sarco suicide pod 'pushed another woman to spend money before she died'" (Daily Mail).

"In public... Mr. Zuckerberg is declining to engage with Washington except when necessary. In private, he has stopped supporting programs..."

"... at his philanthropy that could be perceived as partisan, and he has tamped down employee activism at Meta said [friends, advisers, and executives], who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to do so or did not want to jeopardize their relationships with Mr. Zuckerberg.... 'The political environment, I think I didn’t have much sophistication around, and I think I just fundamentally misdiagnosed the problem,' Mr. Zuckerberg said during a recent interview at a live podcast event in San Francisco. Last month, Mr. Zuckerberg publicly expressed regret around some of his political activity in a letter to Congress. He said that in 2021, the Biden administration 'pressured' Meta into censoring more Covid-19 content than Mr. Zuckerberg felt comfortable with. And he said he would not repeat the contributions he made in 2020 to support electoral infrastructure because the gifts made him appear not 'neutral.' Mr. Zuckerberg’s evolution has drawn comparatively little attention compared to that of tech titans like Elon Musk... But it is also reflective of a larger shift in Silicon Valley, where chief executives have grown frustrated with contentious social issues. Their response has largely been to back away from it."

From "Mark Zuckerberg Is Done With Politics/He was once a backer of liberal causes. Then everyone seemed to turn on him. Now he wants to stay away from politics — if that’s possible" (NYT).

Musk openly supports Trump. Maybe Zuckerberg secretly supports Trump. Wouldn't that look the same as being "done with politics"? There are certainly advantages to hiding one's support for Trump. And we're told he's had 2 one-on-one phone calls with Trump in the last few months.

Yesterday, at the golden hour, the Joe Pye weed had not yet gone into decline.

Please use this post to talk about whatever you want in the comments.

"Under traditional targeting principle... [the] pager attack... passes that basic test with flying colors.... It might be the most precise targeted strike [on] a military force embedded in a civilian population in the history of war.

Says David French, applying the United States's DOD Law of War Manual, in the new episode of the Advisory Opinions podcast, "The Legality of Israel’s Beeper Attack" (audio at transcript at Podscribe)(I've slightly edited the transcript to match the audio).

Under traditional targeting principles, which require necessity, distinction, and proportionality, necessity means: Is there a military need for this? Distinction means: Are you attacking only military targets? And proportional is: Are you using no more force than is necessary to accomplish your legitimate military aim?

This pager attack under that construct passes that basic test with flying colors.

"Our task, our test is to make sure that the forces holding us together are stronger than those that are pulling us apart."

"I truly believe we’re in another inflection point of world history. For the choices we make today will determine our future for decades to come."

Said Biden this morning, addressing the United Nations. That's the only quote I have at the moment. It's not something I went looking for, in some hare-brained quest for banality. That's what the NYT highlighted.

ADDED: Here is the full text of the speech. Video:

"I support and vote for Trump over Harris"... says Rand Paul.

While he continues to withhold an official endorsement, Senator @RandPaul will “support and vote for Trump over Harris… the Democrat Party is the one of Santa Claus, disbursing gifts to children…

For someone who’s concerned about the debt, the Republican Party is the better… pic.twitter.com/K2vKmTWPIc

— Honestly with Bari Weiss (@thehonestlypod) September 24, 2024

They're shovel-killing the dogs.

"Project 2025 mastermind allegedly told colleagues he killed a dog with a shovel/Revealed: former colleagues claim Kevin Roberts told them he killed a neighbor’s pit bull around 2004" (The Guardian).

“My recollection of his account was that he was discussing in the hallway with various members of the faculty, including me, that a neighbor’s dog had been barking pretty relentlessly and was, you know, keeping the baby and probably the parents awake and that he kind of lost it and took a shovel and killed the dog. End of problem,” said Kenneth Hammond, who was chair of the university’s history department at the time.

Megan McArdle went to see the Matt Walsh movie "Am I Racist?"

You know, so did I, last week, and I didn't even blog about why I wasn't blogging about it. But I'm telling you now because I have the hope that reading McArdle will liberate my thoughts on the subject. 

The headline is "You might not enjoy ‘Am I Racist?’ You should watch it anyway. In the mockumentary, Matt Walsh is concerned that he is racist. Awkward moments follow" (WaPo)(free access link).

Ok, first, I don't agree that it's a mockumentary. I think the word "mockumentary" refers to a scripted (or improv) fictional movie that takes the form of a documentary, like "Spinal Tap" or "Best in Show." It's a great comedy category. I love it. But "Am I Racist?" films real people who are being themselves within a situation that the filmmaker sets up. It's in the category of pranking. The classic example is "Borat." The central character is pretending to be something he isn't, perhaps for sheer comedy, perhaps with a political agenda, and the idea is to extract something revealing from people who are not in on the joke. 

McArdle writes:

"Playgrounds aren’t shadeless by accident: Many public playgrounds were designed to be treeless."

"In the 1980s, lawsuits over playground injuries made city planners start to see trees not as shade providers but as temptation for tree climbers who could end up with broken arms. Clearing trees in play areas was encouraged... The kids in her class 'wanted to go outside so badly,' [one teacher] told me. But 'after five minutes, their little faces were just beet red,' and they’d huddle, lethargic, under the one tree on the edge of the schoolyard.... If kids do spend August and September recesses indoors, they’ll probably stay in the classroom.... 'They do things like watch movies' during indoor recess...."

From "How to Save Outdoor Recess/Build more shade" (The Atlantic).

I find it hard to believe trees were cut down out of fear that children would climb them. Why not just cut off the lower limbs so kids can't climb them? 

"Vice President Kamala Harris largely embraces Mr. Biden’s view of the importance of strategic alliances, though her specific policy views are still coming into focus..."

"... as she campaigns on a compressed timeline.... [M]any leaders are scrambling to meet with all three of America’s current or would-be leaders — Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump — during, or after, their visit to New York for the General Assembly this week. The vice president had a closed-door meeting with Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the president of the United Arab Emirates, at the White House on Monday afternoon, just hours after a similar meeting between the Emirati leader and Mr. Biden. Officials said Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris each was expected to raise the deepening violence in Israel and the Emirates’ involvement in the conflict in Sudan. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is set to meet with Mr. Biden in the Oval Office on Thursday, one day after he addresses the United Nations. Later on Thursday, Mr. Zelensky will meet separately at the White House with Ms. Harris — an indication that he is eager to bolster his own one-on-one relationship with her in case she wins the presidency in November. After that meeting, aides say the White House has no plans for further engagement between Ms. Harris and foreign leaders or travel by the vice president outside the United States before Election Day, as she focuses all of her energies on the campaign trail."

From "At U.N. Conference, Global Crises Collide With Fraught American Politics/President Biden will speak at a time of deep uncertainty about the future of America’s role in the world" (NYT).

Is Harris displaying an intention to maintain continuity with Biden's foreign policy? We're told she's "coming into focus," but is she? It seems that after today, the plan is to "focus[] all of her energies on the campaign trail." But the campaign has what seems to be a deliberate strategy of remaining out of focus. It's a focus on being out of focus. The NYT asserts, without evidence, that Harris's "specific policy views are still coming into focus."

ADDED: To avoid my criticism of the phrase "her specific policy views are still coming into focus," the NYT could write "her specific policy views have yet to come into focus." That little change would replace coddling with gentle criticism. 

BUT: I still have a problem with "her specific policy views have yet to come into focus" —  a big problem! It assumes, without evidence, that Harris has specific policy views.

"Among Generation Z Christians... The men are staying in church, while the women are leaving at a remarkable clip...."

"[W]ithin Gen Z, almost 40 percent of women now describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated, compared with 34 percent of men.... In every other age group, men were more likely to be unaffiliated. That tracks with research that has shown that women have been consistently more religious than men, a finding so reliable that some scholars have characterized it as something like a universal human truth. The men and women of Gen Z are also on divergent trajectories in almost every facet of their lives, including education, sexuality and spirituality. Young women... came of age as the #MeToo movement... [a]nd the overturning of Roe v. Wade.... Childless young men are likelier than childless young women to say they want to become parents someday, by a margin of 12 percentage points.... For decades, many American churches and ministries have assumed that men... must be wooed into churchgoing and right living.... Pastors emphasized Jesus’s masculinity, and men’s ministries like Promise Keepers exhorted followers to embrace their roles as husbands and fathers...."

 
I'm reading "In a First Among Christians, Young Men Are More Religious Than Young Women/At Grace Church in Waco, Texas, the Generation Z gender divide can be seen in the pews. It has the potential to reshape both politics and family life" (NYT)(that's a gift link so you can read the whole thing and because there are a lot of great photographs of churchgoers).

In the comments over there, one man writes: "Could it be that these young men want a church that tells them they have the right to dominate women? And women don’t want a church like that? I wouldn’t want to be in that group of men in a church like that either. Not all men want it. They are not that insecure."

And one woman writes: "Young men are making themselves unmarriagable by buying into various cults of toxic masculinity and misogyny."

"First, starting in the early 1970s, he led the effort to import into American circles the critical perspectives of Western Marxism..."

"... a diverse set of ideas, popular in France and Germany, arranged around the notion that culture was closely related to a society’s economic base, though not completely constrained by it.... Then, in the mid-1980s, he [applied] that same arsenal of ideas to... a critique of postmodernism, which, beginning in the 1970s, had taken hold in academic departments to describe what many saw as the breakdown of grand narratives about history, culture and society. In response, Mr. Jameson argued that postmodernism was itself just one more grand narrative, albeit one that tried to disguise its own status.... Postmodernism, he said, was special in that it signified the commoditization of culture itself, replacing history and progressive visions with irony, cynicism and pastiche, or mixing and matching cultural artifacts and forms without respect to their historical contexts. It meant... that 'our entire contemporary social system has little by little begun to lose its capacity to retain its own past, has begun to live in a perpetual present and a perpetual change that obliterates tradition.'" 

From "Fredric Jameson, Critic Who Linked Literature to Capitalism, Dies at 90/Among the world’s leading academic critics, he brought his analytical rigor to topics as diverse as German opera and sci-fi movies" (NYT).

"I'm going to go to a McDonald's next week. I'm going to go to a McDonald's and I'm going to work the french fry job for about a half an hour. I want to see how it is."

Says Trump (expressing doubt that Kamala Harris ever worked at McDonald's):

Trump: I'm going to go to a McDonald's next week. I'm going to go to a McDonald's and I'm going to work the french fry job for about a half an hour. I want to see how it is.. pic.twitter.com/5EXIqDdMz4

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 24, 2024

How can we simultaneously believe in the resurrection of Joe Biden and in the legitimacy of depriving him of the nomination he won in the primaries?

I open the NYT this morning — it's 3 a.m. — and see this:

 

Biden isn't sleeping in the middle of the day on a beach in Delaware, he's working — if not around the clock, against the clock.

The last couple weeks I'd been fretting about whether we even had a President at the moment and fantasizing about asking Kamala Harris how she could justify refraining from using the 25th Amendment to fill the vacuum. If it was proper to engage in the bold strategy to displace him as her party's candidate, why is it acceptable to stand by and do nothing when you are the one with the power to oust him from the presidency? 

Maybe it's because of questions like mine that the NYT concocted the headline "Biden Works Against the Clock as Violence Escalates in the Middle East" and installed it at the top of the front page alongside that somber photo of the elderly man's serious, determined face. I read the subheadline and wonder if any newsworthy story even occurred: "President Biden is beginning to acknowledge that he is simply running out of time to help forge a cease-fire and hostage deal with Hamas, his aides say. And the risk of a wider war has never looked greater." That's a well-known, persistent condition. 

Sunrise — 6:34, 6:44, 6:48, 6:50.

"Democrats are increasingly worried that pollsters are undercounting Donald Trump’s voter support..."

"... rating his prospects of winning November’s presidential election as much higher than headline opinion polling figures suggest.... Although some polls have shown the vice-president with leads of between four and six points in Pennsylvania... others show Trump trailing by smaller deficits. Narrower gaps separate the two in Michigan and Wisconsin, where Harris’s lead is just 1 or 2%, according to several different recent polls. Underpinning Democrats’ fears is the knowledge that Trump greatly out-performed predictions in all three states in 2016, when he narrowly won them en route to his election triumph over Hillary Clinton, and in 2020, when he was pipped by Joe Biden by far smaller margins than forecast. The worries are compounded by the latest New York Times/Siena poll, which records Trump performing more robustly in three Sun belt battleground states – Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina – than he has in weeks...."

From "Democrats worried about polls undercounting Donald Trump’s support/Prospects of ex-president’s victory could be higher as some Harris supporters unnerved by small lead in swing states" (The Guardian).

I like the phrase "pipped by Joe Biden." Just one of the benefits of getting news about America from somewhere other than America. Chiefly, I like getting the distance. 

Why would anyone fight for Mark Robinson? He was already expected to lose.

But that's got to be sad for the people who were hoping to use Mark Robinson's problems against anyone other than Mark Robinson.

I'm reading "Mark Robinson’s porn site scandal greeted with shrugs by some Trump backers/The revelations surrounding the N.C. gubernatorial candidate mark a test of voters’ tolerance for disturbing allegations in the Trump era" (WaPo).

Oh, it's not "tolerance." It's just withholding all support and letting him go.

Here, you can see the history of his polling. He wasn't going to win.

"Exposure to other tourists... can improve our mood and enhance cognitive function. And travel can lead to healthy eating."

So says an expert quoted in the WaPo article "Travel can slow the aging process, new study says/According to researchers in Australia, positive tourist experiences can help you live a longer life."

This gets my "things not believed" tag, of course, but here's a picture my son Chris sent me this morning from Tokyo:

A question I'd like to ask Kamala Harris — it's the question that caused me to vote against Jimmy Carter in 1976.

And I had voted for George McGovern in 1972 and would go on to vote for Jimmy Carter in 1980. 

Here's the question: If you don't win this election, what will you do next?

For Kamala Harris, I mean after you finish your term as Vice President... unless you want to tell me that if you lose the election you'll exercise your power under the 25th Amendment and at least attain the distinction of becoming the first woman President and enjoy the solace of a short stint as the President, perhaps inspiring the nation to long for the full-term presidency we missed or to celebrate you for saving us from the last few months of depending on the declining husk of a President, Joe Biden.

What's the answer? You tell me. Not just what would she say to my question what will you do next. I can imagine an evasive or insincere answer. But what, really, do you think she will do? Will she — like Trump, after losing in 2020 — go on to challenge the winner every step of the way, right up to vying for the nomination and running again in the next election? Will she seek to represent California again, in the Senate or as Governor? Will she withdraw into memoir-writing and speech-giving or some fancy academic post? Could she do any of that successfully if she loses?

***

What did Jimmy Carter say that rubbed me the wrong way? He said he'd just go back to his peanut farm. It made him seem so small to me. And Gerald Ford was already President, so one did not need to try to picture him as President.

If Election Day were tomorrow, who would Althouse vote for? Who should she vote for?

This is just a survey for you to answer. I may respond in the end if moved. 

Who would Althouse vote for? Who should she vote for?

would vote for Trump, should vote for Trump

would vote for Harris, should vote for Harris

would vote for Harris, should vote for Trump

would vote for Trump, should vote for Harris

would vote for no one, should vote for Trump

would vote for no one, should vote for Harris

would vote for no one, should vote for no one

would vote for Trump, should vote for no one

would vote for Harris, should vote for no one

 

pollcode.com free polls

"About 30 percent said inflation or the economy was central to their vote. And Mr. Trump holds a wide advantage with those voters."

"The [abortion] amendment, which is one of several abortion-related ballot initiatives across the country this fall, is seen by Democrats as a potential opportunity to increase turnout, since abortion has come to be a motivating issue on the left. Polling on ballot initiatives is notoriously challenging. Ballot language can be complicated for voters to understand to begin with, and they do not always understand which side accurately represents their views. Translating ballot language into a clear polling question adds another degree of complexity."

I'm reading "A Majority in Arizona Supports Establishing Right to Abortion, Poll Finds/A ballot measure codifying 'the fundamental right to an abortion' is supported by 58 percent of the state’s likely voters, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll" (NYT).

The NYT links to the Arizona ballot initiatives. There are a lot of them! I had to scroll to find the one on abortion and struggle to read it — and I taught the law school course that covers the right to abortion! The all-caps are painful:

The day-late sunrise.

This is yesterday's sunrise, at 7:05 a.m. I left it out of yesterday's collection because it didn't fit the color scheme, which was a deep red-orange. I decided to keep it for a day when I missed the sunrise, and that turned out to be the very next day. It rained all night and into the morning, so we stayed in, and I got the chance to use this picture from yesterday. I especially like the shadow cast by that one cloud. It seems to be a negative sunbeam.

"During his 27 years at Apple, he had conceived the minimalist aesthetic of Apple products...."

"Over the past four years, [Jony Ive] has quietly accumulated nearly $90 million worth of real estate on a single city block. The purchases began early in the pandemic, at a time when many tech luminaries were fleeing San Francisco. Mr. Ive found the exodus noxious.... A self-professed control freak, Mr. Ive decided that he had fretted enough over the snugness of each iPhone box, the layout of every Apple Watch component and the curve of every iPad corner. He wanted something new.... [H]e and his future wife, Heather, fell in love with Jackson Square. Many buildings in the neighborhood had survived the city’s 1906 earthquake and fire because there was a whiskey storehouse in the area. City officials had worried the alcohol would catch on fire, so they protected the neighborhood, even as the rest of the city burned.... At Apple, he had worked at Infinite Loop, a sterile office park near the interstate, and Apple Park, a futuristic circle of glass and blonde wood. Both campuses were so isolated that they could have existed anywhere. He wanted his new office to be part of the community."

From "After Apple, Jony Ive Is Building an Empire of His Own/Five years after leaving Apple, the iPhone designer is forging a new life in San Francisco, one imaginative building at a time" (NYT)(free-access link).

"Thank you all for being here and now, uhh, who am I introducing next? Who’s next?"

Said the President of the United States — who is he? uhh, whatsisname? — quoted in "Awkward moment Biden fumbles, snaps at staffers after forgetting he was supposed to introduce Indian prime minister to stage" (NY Post).

We really don’t have a president.

Biden completely FORGOT he was at a press conference with the Prime Minister of India.

The entire world is laughing at us.
This guy is COOKED. pic.twitter.com/useM07uh0R

— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) September 21, 2024

ADDED: Yeah, seriously: Who is President?

"The case has garnered national attention both for the salaciousness of a high-profile university official making pornographic movies and publicly talking about it..."

"... and the questions it raises about free speech rights. [Joe] Gow argued that his videos and two e-books he and his wife, Carmen, have published about their experiences in adult films are protected by the First Amendment. 'You don’t need the First Amendment to protect "The Star Spangled Banner,"' Gow’s attorney, Mark Leitner, told the committee. 'You don’t need the First Amendment to protect easy and comforting speech. It’s exactly the opposite. We need the First Amendment precisely when the danger of stifling, controversial, unpopular speech is at its highest. And that’s what we have here.'... The school is pushing to fire Gow for unethical conduct, insubordination for refusing to cooperate with an investigation and violating computer policies.... Gow has maintained that he and his wife produced the pornographic materials on their own time. He insists the videos and the books never mentioned UW-La Crosse or his role at the university...."

From "Porn-making former University of Wisconsin campus leader argues for keeping his teaching job" (AP)." Gow, formerly chancellor of UW-La Crosse, made his argument to the personnel committee of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents.

I don't know if these free-speech arguments garnered the attention of the regents. We're told they "asked no questions."

Watch Senator Fetterman deal with the question of fracking by repeatedly invoking the old eating-the-dogs-eating-the-cats foofaraw.

You may question your brain function:

Fetterman on Meet the Press in response to Welker's question about fracking: "Now in 2024, we're still trying to talk about fracking & the other side is talking about eating cat and geese and dogs... having a serious policy conversation when the other side is absolutely on fire." pic.twitter.com/5A4ZuBfAS4

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 22, 2024

"Sean Combs was able to stay relevant for many years, in part because he used his power to intimidate people in the industry, particularly women, who might say no to him."

"In an article for The New York Times Magazine in July, Danyel Smith, who was the editor of Vibe Magazine in the late 1990s, wrote about the 'menacing encounters' she had with Diddy. He threatened he would see her 'dead in the trunk of a car' if she didn’t show him a cover before publication. Smith describes the ethos of the music industry at the time: 'To report sexual misconduct — whether it was to attorneys or law enforcement or even your supervisor — often meant losing your job. Being ostracized. Or being a girl that just didn’t "get it," or didn’t know how to fend for herself.'"

Writes Jessica Grose in "Sean Combs and the Limits of the 'Family Man' Defense" (NYT).

I didn't excerpt the references to the "family man" defense. I don't think that's necessary, but I would like to quote the last sentence of the column so you can click on the link it contains, which will get you to a high-impact photograph: "There are limits to the ‘family man’ defense no matter how many photos you take with your kids wearing matching pajamas."

I'm less interested in Combs's groping to defend himself now than I am in how so many people supported and protected him for so long.

"Those in power have figured out how to outmaneuver protesters..."

"... by keeping peaceful demonstrators far out of sight, organizing an overwhelming police response that brings the threat of long prison sentences, and circulating images of the most disruptive outliers that makes the whole movement look bad. It works. And the organizers have failed to keep up. The digital platforms they rely on make it difficult to impose any discipline on the message being communicated. Crackpot agitators and off-the-wall causes attach themselves more easily than ever. Conflict erupts. Fueled by the drama-loving algorithms of social media platforms, the movements descend into ugly public bickering.... The internal tensions that social movements have always faced become especially paralyzing when they play out in public, amplified by the algorithms that favor conflict. Without a counterbalancing organizational structure, there’s no way to bridge those differences and build consensus...."

Writes Zeynep Tufekci, in "How the Powerful Outmaneuvered the American Protest Movement" (NYT). Tukfekci is a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University who studies "politics, civics, movements, privacy and surveillance, as well as data and algorithms."

She has a book — "Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest" (commission earned). That's from 2017.