At the New Year's Café...

 ... you can talk about whatever you like.

"I do not work with AI at this time directly other than to produce options. Here’s this table: could I see this table in a wood? And then..."

"... could I see this shape in, you know, a marble? I’d like to see it in reflected steel. Only in that scenario. I’ve been using AI as a tool, not as an agent. Now, people speak very much about AI at this moment, being an agent in that it has its own, you know, thoughts, its own ability to create, and I’m sure that at some point that I will be moving in that direction in some manner, but I’m very embedded at this moment in biology."

Said Jeff Koons, quoted in this Guardian article with a headline that doesn't square with that quote: "Jeff Koons on why he has drawn a red line on AI in art: ‘I don’t want to be lazy’/World’s most expensive artist, who is exhibiting at the Alhambra in Granada, sees his work as embedded in biology."

ADDED: I read the headline to mean that he said he would not use AI in his art, but obviously he's not against using it. One might try to defend the headline by saying that he has drawn a red line — one that distinguishes some uses from others. But even if you can see that distinction — don't use it "directly other than to produce options" — he's only observing the distinction "at this time," and he's "sure that at some point that I will be moving in that direction in some manner."

I'm not criticizing Koons. I'm criticizing The Guardian.

"Cybertruck that exploded and truck in New Orleans attack rented on same app."

 ABC reports.

Investigators do not know what caused the blast, such as whether something was wrong with the vehicle or whether something external prompted it. Determining what was behind the explosion is the key focus of the probe.

An official briefed on the probe told ABC News that the Tesla Cybertruck had a load of fireworks-style mortars onboard. Investigators were urgently working to determine a motive and whether the driver intended to set off an explosion and why....

[Elon] Musk later posted on X: "We have now confirmed that the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the vehicle itself." 

It's not known if Musk's claim has been independently verified....

"Authorities say Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, from Houston, had an ISIS flag strapped to the rented Ford F-150 Lightning EV truck he used to carry out an act of premeditated terror on New Year’s Day...."

"In a YouTube video he posted in 2020 for his real estate business, a clean-cut Jabbar described himself as a reliable, trustworthy native Texan who spent 10 years in the military, which taught him 'the meaning of great service.' But when he carried out the terror attack — one of the deadliest since 9/11 — Jabbar lived in a squalid trailer park on the outskirts of Houston that is home to mostly Muslim immigrants.... Jabbar traveled to Egypt for 10 days last year, officials told the Post...."

From "Inside terrorist Shamsud-Din Jabbar’s squalid home where sheep and goats roam his yard — after his financial ruin" (NY Post).

From the Washington Post, there's this: "FBI says driver may not have acted alone in New Orleans attack that killed 15": "During a news briefing Wednesday afternoon, Alethea Duncan, an FBI assistant special agent in charge, said investigators 'do not believe that Jabbar was solely responsible.' Authorities did not elaborate... The FBI said investigators found an Islamic State flag in the vehicle used in the attack, along with additional weapons and a possible improvised explosive device. Other potential IEDs were located elsewhere in the city’s French Quarter...."

I note the discrepancy about the placement of the ISIS flag. Was it "strapped to the rear" or "in the vehicle"? 

I was wrong about hitting 3,000 blog posts in 2024.

On December 27th, I wrote "Unless I write 70 more posts in the next 4 days... this will be the first year since 2007 when I have less than 3,000 blog posts." 

But I didn't understand that the post count in the side bar is week by week, so the year doesn't begin on January 1st and continue thought December 31st. It begins on the first Sunday of the year, and in 2024, the first Sunday was January 7th. That means the first 6 days of 2024 were added to the count for 2023, and it means the count for 2025 will not begin until January 5th. With the count now at 2968, I have 4 days to write 32 posts. I'm sorry I started to pay attention to this, but nothing I can do about that now. I'd like to continue in my usual intuitive, intrinsically rewarding style and let the numbers fall wherever they do. I just wanted to note that in the world of blog post counting, it's still 2024.

Feel free of accusing me of padding... until Sunday.

"My kids don't want to go to the movies. They think the screen's too big. It freaks them out."

"The biggest screen that they want watch is the screen that we have at home or their phone. I took them to see a movie. They were like freaked out. It's too big, the screen."

"The idea that [Lloyd] Austin would even attempt to fob off a catastrophe like this with mumblings about his surprise amid ineffectual efforts to avert it is absurd."

Says the Editorial Board of the New York Post, in "Plea deal for KSM & other 9/11 terrorists is a final Biden ‘Screw you!’ to America."

"The question swirling around all the new believers was: Were they true believers? Or was their conversion mostly or entirely utilitarian..."

"... driven by a desire to push back against the forces of technology and secularism and wokeness and an increasingly militant Islam? Did they actually believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God and that he had died for our sins and was resurrected? Or did they think that was a nice story that we should tell ourselves because it encouraged people to treat each other better—because it was a kind of cultural bulwark? And did it really matter in the end? Andrew Sullivan, the writer and podcaster, suggested this might not be easy to answer. 'The feeling'—of believing—'will vary,' Sullivan, a Catholic, told me. 'Sometimes, there’s no feeling. Sometimes, you’re overwhelmed. The point really is to escape feeling as such—our emotions are not what prove anything. The genius of ritual is that it allows us not to articulate our feelings... It allows us to express our faith through an act.'"

From "How Intellectuals Found God/Almost 150 years after Nietzsche said ‘God is dead,’ some of our most important thinkers are getting religion. Peter Savodnik meets the new theists" (Free Press).

"Welp. I'm cooked.... I was just bit on the leg by a diamondback.... Let's get some pictures of it first."

NEW: Florida man accepts his fate after being bitten by a diamondback rattlesnake, says he is "cooked" but at least it will make a good meme.

Gotta respect his commitment to the meme game.

Social media influencer David Humphlett told the snake "good game" (gg) before he was… pic.twitter.com/Vmwh4ve3RT

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) December 31, 2024

We're told that this young man, a "social media influencer" named David Humphlett, made it to the hospital, but not before swinging his camera around and complimenting the snake: "Let's get some pictures of it first. We're already screwed anyways. Cool snake! Big diamondback!"

They're saving him at the hospital. He received 88 vials of antivenin. You may think he's an idiot, but is he? Hearing his words called to mind Seneca's "How to Die" (commission earned) which I happen to be in the middle of reading:

There’s no life that’s not short. If you examine the nature of things, even the life of Nestor is short, or that of Sattia, who ordered inscribed on her tombstone that she had lived ninety-nine years. You see in her someone glorying in a long old age. But who could have endured her, if she had filled out a full century? Just as with storytelling, so with life: it’s important how well it is done, not how long. It doesn’t matter at what point you call a halt. Stop wherever you like; only put a good closer on it. Farewell.

 We're already screwed anyways. We're cooked. This is it. This is death. It came by snake. And you have the presence of mind to proclaim: Cool snake.

The men of CNN charmingly circle the drain.

Anderson Cooper struggles to consume a shot:

They’re letting Anderson Cooper drink on TV again for New Year’s Eve.

CNN is getting desperate for ratings.

pic.twitter.com/hbZNY8ODUt

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) January 1, 2025

And Diplo — who's somebody, but I don't need to know who — calmly asserts that he's on LSD:

Diplo trips on LSD while appearing on CNN’s New Year’s Eve special.

pic.twitter.com/V9iauqF86B

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) January 1, 2025

How are men these days supposed to enact the meaning of New Year's Eve? It's traditionally about drinking a lot of alcohol, but they don't want to do that, so they put on a little show of finding it hard to drink just one shot, and then they talk to a guy who calmly and humorously says he's on LSD and he's "not even lying." This stuff has gone viral, so credit to CNN. Do what you must. It's not the news.

Meanwhile, CNN brings out a representative of the opposite sex: Whitney Cummings woodenly delivers some jokes that have — predictably — gone viral because they mock Democrats: 

NEW: Anderson Cooper stands completely speechless after Whitney Cummings says Dems couldn’t hold a primary because they were too busy holding up a dead body.

“It was amazing that the Pro-Choice Party didn't give their voters one…”pic.twitter.com/EtxIcMKRXZ

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 1, 2025

Here we are in 2025 — the quarter century mark.

It's a nice solid milestone. 25 has a substantiality that exceeds that of 22, 23, and 24. It's more "famous," no? It's the atomic number of manganese.

What are you doing New Year's Eve?

One option is to talk about anything you want in the comments to this post. It doesn't need to be New Year's Eve-y, but feel free to discuss your aspirations for the year that lies ahead or to belabor whatever it is that you liked or didn't like about 2024. 

"In a bid to polish up Biden’s rusted image, The Washington Post on Sunday reported on the president’s private complaints that Garland should have been faster to prosecute Trump..."

"... so that he could have staged a 'politically damaging trial before the election.' Funny, as I recall Trump had a lot of trials before the election — and they all seemed to drive his approval levels up, not down. In any case, this seems like an admission, as law professor Ann Althouse observed, that 'Biden intended to use the Justice Department to destroy his political adversary!' Indeed. That now seems to have been Garland’s role throughout this administration, which — in the name of 'protecting democracy' and our institutions — has only undermined our democracy and corrupted our institutions. That’s Biden’s sorry legacy. And Merrick Garland’s, too."

Writes Glenn Reynolds, in "Merrick Garland corrupted the Justice Department with political persecutions" (NY Post).

Here's my blog post about the WaPo article.

I knew the day would eventually come... and it came yesterday.

I changed my first word, and it's off to a good start on the last day of the year.

"He's a kindred spirit to me of a rare kind — the kind of man you don't meet every day and that you're lucky to meet if you ever do."

Said Bob Dylan, about Jimmy Carter.

"Write another version with the focus on the Trump character, fictionalized. He's old, too old for the burdens of the presidency, and weary of the usual politicians, and sad..."

"... to have his last campaign over, and he latches on to the Musk character, who is complicated and highly energetic and realizes he can override the preferences of those who voted for Trump and reenergize and redirect the man into something that will be absolutely brilliant for the country and the world."

I wrote, prompting A.I., in the midst of a conversation that began with a reading of the NYT article "How Elon Musk Has Planted Himself Almost Literally at Trump’s Doorstep/For much of the period since Election Day, the billionaire has been staying at a $2,000-a-night cottage at Mar-a-Lago, giving him easy access to the president-elect."

I'm expending my last free access link of the month — of the year! — on that so you can begin where "we" — A.I. and I — began. My original prompt was: "Does Elon Musk avoid buying a house for himself and if so, why?"

"Do you think with what you've done, choosing to have the sort of life you've chosen to lead, it's going to make things very, very difficult for your children?"

"No, I think it's wonderful for them! They think it's... they think Mummy's wonderful!"

Sunrise — 7:09, 7:31.

"Toward the end of their time in office, Mr. Mondale said he and Mr. Carter talked about how they wanted their tenure to be remembered."

"'We came up with this sentence, which to me remains an important summary of what we were trying to do: "We told the truth, we obeyed the law, and we kept the peace,"' Mr. Mondale wrote. 'That we did, Mr. President.'"

From "From the Grave, Mondale to Eulogize the Man Who Made Him Vice President/Walter F. Mondale died in 2021, but he left behind the eulogy he planned to deliver at former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral" (NYT).

"The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a written opinion upholding the $5 million award that the Manhattan jury granted to E. Jean Carroll for defamation and sexual abuse...."

"Trump skipped the trial after repeatedly denying the attack ever happened. But he briefly testified at a follow-up defamation trial earlier this year that resulted in an $83.3 million award. The second trial resulted from comments then-President Trump made in 2019 after Carroll first made the accusations publicly in a memoir. In its ruling, a three-judge panel of the appeals court rejected claims by Trump’s lawyers that trial Judge Lewis A. Kaplan had made multiple decisions that spoiled the trial, including his decision to allow two other women who had accused Trump of sexually abusing them to testify. The judge also had allowed the jury to view the infamous 'Access Hollywood' tape in which Trump boasted in 2005 about grabbing women’s genitals because when someone is a star, 'you can do anything.'"

AP reports.

Sunrise — 7:36.

Write about anything you want in the comments.

"Just remember, you’re a living organism on this planet, and you’re very safe."

ADDED: It really happened:

How's your attention span lately?

Scroll...

"'Did you hear that guy order milk? Who orders milk?'... Their meal came — including the milk — and Milk Man went to town: taking big swigs..."

"... between chomps of steak with such gusto that my blood ran cold. That hairy, masculine hand. The glass of frothy milk. The pure delight. The cow two ways.... I couldn’t ignore it.... I interrupted his conversation. 'I don’t mean to be rude,' I said, 'but what’s with the milk?' 'Oh, I know it’s weird, right?” he responded, self-aware but not ashamed. Then he leaned over and drawled, 'I can’t explain it. I just love a big glass of cold milk with a rare steak. Mmmmm-mm!' Milk Man’s date didn’t seem to feel weird about it; she gave a 'Yes, my man is a freak' smile as he finished his Big Ol’ Glass of Cold Milk.... Milk symbolizes innocence and purity, and the adult who continues to indulge in it — nay, cling to it — long after their loss of innocence provokes light repulsion, confusion, and fascination in the observer...."

Writes Allison P. Davis, in "The Pervert’s Beverage/From Babygirl to Fellow Travelers, milk is for freaks" (Vulture).

"We in the news media and chattering class mocked Jimmy Carter as a country bumpkin..."

"... with cartoons depicting him installing an outhouse next to the White House. His public approval dropped to 28 percent, and when Ronald Reagan succeeded him, the Reagans’ interior designer reportedly smirked about the need to 'get the smell of catfish out of the White House.' President Carter, a member of Congress lamented in 1979, 'couldn’t get the Pledge of Allegiance through Congress.' Rolling Stone described Carter as 'the great national sinking feeling.' Ousted after a single term, he wasn’t so much criticized as sneered at. Even Democrats like Bill Clinton treated Carter as an embarrassment who had undermined liberals and paved a path for Reagan. Yet all this speaks to our failure of discernment...."

Writes Nicholas Kristof, in "Jimmy Carter Deserved Our Thanks and Respect, Not Our Sneers" (NYT). That's a free-access link, so you can see Kristof's argument for respecting and thanking President Carter. And let it represent all the many columns that are going up right now, expressing that sentiment. It is a time for eulogy.

Reading "the great national sinking feeling" made me think of Carter's "malaise" speech. I'm surprised it didn't come immediately to mind upon hearing of President Carter's death, but it did not. The cliché got worn out over the course of 45 years. Carter lived so long one grew tired of reacting to the name "Carter" with the one-word outburst: "Malaise!"

Or had your reaction to hearing Carter's name over the years been 2 words long? "Killer rabbit."

I see The Onion went there:

Sunrise — 7:29, 7:30.

Goodbye to Jimmy Carter.

"Jimmy Carter, 39th president and Nobel Peace Prize winner, dies at 100, his son says/The tenacious Southerner was turned out of office by disillusioned voters after a single term. But he had a brilliant post-presidential career as a champion of health, peace and democracy" (WaPo)(free-access link).

His wife, Rosalynn, died Nov. 19, 2023, at 96. The Carters, who were close partners in public life, had been married for more than 77 years, the longest presidential marriage in U.S. history. His final public appearance was at her funeral in Plains, where he sat in the front row in a wheelchair... 

When Mr. Carter left Washington in January 1981, he was widely regarded as a mediocre president, if not an outright failure.... In the summer of 1979, Americans waited in long lines at service stations as gasoline supplies dwindled and prices soared after revolution in Iran disrupted the global oil supply....

In November 1979, an Iranian mob seized control of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans as hostages. It was the beginning of a 444-day ordeal that played out daily on television and did not end until Jan. 20, 1981, the day Mr. Carter left office, when the hostages were released....

As the years wore on, the judgment on Mr. Carter’s presidency gradually gave way to a more positive view....

It's sad to need to say goodbye to the man who's been with us for so long. I remember walking to the polling place in 1976 and deciding, in the middle of the walk, that instead of voting for him, I'd vote against him. I did not trust him. In 1980, with that monster Ronald Reagan threatening us, I had to vote for him.

"My favorite part of Dead Week is getting up early, drinking coffee, and looking ahead to the long stretch of nothingness that fills the day."

"The nothingness doesn’t have to be slothful; sometimes I leave the house and sometimes I don’t, but the point is that it doesn’t matter. If I don’t go outside, I don’t feel bad about it, and if I do, everybody else I encounter looks equally confused and at loose ends, frittering away these leftover days. It is the only time of year when the days feel slow to me, when the time outside of whatever tasks I have to do does not somehow vanish into further worry and busyness. It is the only time I don’t feel like I am perpetually late to my own life...."

Writes Helena Fitzgerald, in "All Hail Dead Week, the Best Week of the Year/The week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve is a time when nothing counts, and when nothing is quite real" (The Atlantic).

The author "is a writer based… in New York." I presume that means New York City, and not just because I know it is the convention in New York to say "New York" for New York City and to specify "New York State" if you mean to refer to the state. There's no other state where people add "State" to the state's name. Imagine if in Oklahoma, you said "Oklahoma State" to signal that you didn't mean Oklahoma City. Anyway, I know that means New York City because the people on the street have a distinct look of being off from work. If the author goes outside she's struck by everyone looking at loose ends. New York City is such a workplace.

Anyway, for me, out here in Madison, Wisconsin, every day is the equivalent of a day in Fitzgerald's "Dead Week."

Flying home from Texas on Friday, I avoided getting sucked into the hysteria of the day, the intra-MAGA discord over H-1B visas.

And now it looks like it's over, more or less: "Trump backs H-1B visas, aligning with Musk on immigration/'I’ve always liked the visas,' he said, siding with tech leaders against anti-immigration hard-liners" (WaPo).

“I’ve always liked the visas. I have always been in favor of the visas,” Trump told the New York Post in a phone interview. He added: “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”

It seems as though, to see the problem, you had to buy into the anti-MAGA view that MAGA was all about xenophobia. There must be some number of xenophobes in there, but it seems to me that it's opposition to a chaotic influx of people who might harm us and cost us a lot of money.  That's not in conflict with H-1B visa, which is a legal path for immigrants who are chosen because they to offer benefits to Americans.

The article quotes Tom Warrick, "a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who worked at the Department of Homeland Security under both Trump and Barack Obama": "The Trump White House has the danger of turning into a snake pit when different factions within Trump’s world compete for his attention. Many people during the first administration feared that whoever talked to Trump last before he made a decision, that’s what he would do. I can say firsthand this actually does happen."

I don't know about that, but I do think that Trump antagonists are rooting for a snake pit.

"Abdoulie Fatty, one of Gambia’s most prominent imams, previously told The Washington Post that cutting is necessary to 'balance the feelings of a woman'..."

"... because 'in sex, women’s power is more than men’s power.' In one of the more explicit — and widely shared — moments of the year-long debate, Fatty also gave specific tips on one of Gambia’s most prominent shows about non-clitoral means of pleasuring women, including kissing their earlobes. Listening to such comments was 'embarrassing,' said Imam Baba Leigh, one of the religious leaders in Gambia who has campaigned against FGM. Leigh said FGM is in no way required by Islam. 'Are you telling me that God doesn’t know what is the right limit for a woman to enjoy? And you know it better? That is ridiculous,' he said when asked about Fatty’s statements. 'Allah knows what is suitable.'"

From "Female cutting debate in Gambia takes surprising turn: To women’s pleasure/The debate about female genital cutting has led to an open discussion about sexual pleasure in Gambia, with women buying sex toys and men learning about foreplay" (WaPo).

"Mr. Trump told CNBC in March that he still considered TikTok a national security threat, but that young people 'will go crazy without it.'"

"He also said moves against TikTok would benefit Facebook, which he called an 'enemy of the people.' Mr. Trump went on to use TikTok with great success during the campaign, and has said that it was a key vehicle for reaching young people this year. His youngest son, Barron, also encouraged him to lean into the platform to win over young voters, according to two sources familiar with their interactions, who spoke on condition of anonymity.... With Mr. Trump’s brief to the Supreme Court, his position on TikTok has come full circle, and he is now casting himself as the platform’s savior.... 'President Trump opposes banning TikTok in the United States at this juncture,' the brief said, 'and seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office.'"

From "How Donald Trump Went From Backing a TikTok Ban to Backing Off/In 2020, he moved to ban the Chinese-owned app. Now, he is opposing the Biden administration’s effort to do just that" (NYT).

"We had just walked into the fentanyl lab when the cook poured a white powder into a stockpot full of liquid."

"He began mixing it with an immersion blender and fumes rose from the pot, filling the small kitchen. We wore gas masks and hazmat suits, but the cook had on only a surgical mask. He and his partner had rushed here to fulfill an order for 10 kilograms of fentanyl. While one sniff of the toxic chemicals could kill us, they explained, they had built up a tolerance to the lethal drug. But then, the cook jerked back. 'It really hit me,' he said, looking dazed. 'I need to take a breather.'"

From "'This Is What Makes Us Rich': Inside a Sinaloa Cartel Fentanyl Lab/New York Times reporters witnessed the dangerous fentanyl production process inside a secret lab in Culiacán run by Mexico’s most powerful criminal syndicate" (NYT)(free-access link, so you can see interesting photographs of appalling stovetop cookery).

Are you enjoying the happy good times of the Trump transition?

From Real Clear Politics:

"In private, Biden has also said he should have picked someone other than Merrick Garland as attorney general..."

"... complaining about the Justice Department’s slowness under Garland in prosecuting Trump, and its aggressiveness in prosecuting Biden’s son Hunter, according to people familiar with his comments.... Had the Justice Department moved faster to prosecute Trump for allegedly seeking to overturn the 2020 election and mishandling classified documents, they say, the former president might have faced a politically damaging trial before the election.... Biden has often looked to Franklin D. Roosevelt as a model, while governing in an age dominated by pop culture figures like podcast host Joe Rogan, tech billionaire Elon Musk and Trump himself.... Substantively, few analysts deny Biden’s accomplishments. He mobilized the government to vaccinate Americans against covid-19, bringing the country out of a devastating pandemic. He avoided a recession that many economists had considered inevitable. He rebuilt the transatlantic alliance, rallying the world to help Ukraine battle Russia’s invasion.... But Biden’s critics fault him for failing to grasp that his record itself was not enough, that he needed to tell a story that would resonate in a tribal America...."

Writes Tyler Pager, in "Joe Biden’s lonely battle to sell his vision of American democracy/In his presidency’s final chapter, Biden has mused about whether he should have handled some decisions differently" (WaPo)(free-access link).

This feels like an effort to puff up Biden. Few analysts deny Biden’s accomplishments?! Maybe the trick is to ascribe special meaning to the word "analysts" — if you don't think this is an impressive accomplishment, you're not an analyst. Or maybe the idea is that any accomplishment is an accomplishment, so what's to deny?

But look how clearly the article states that Biden intended to use the Justice Department to destroy his political adversary!