Sunrise — 7:12/

Meade braved the cold and got that photograph. I hid inside again. The "feels like" temperature was 1°.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments.

"Some of the looks impressed me from afar, drawing my gaze with big coats, fun trousers or tailored jackets."

"In other cases, it was only up close that I noticed how special looks were, thanks to details like coins in the straps of loafers, the faded pony hair of a vintage handbag or the handmade quality of crocheted gloves. The looks, which you can read more about by clicking the images below, together form a tapestry of style and are a reminder that every outfit can tell a story. Sometimes, you just have to ask."

Writes Simbarashe Cha, in "Clothes With Stories to Tell/See all the outfits from around the world that were featured this year in our Look of the Week column" (NYT)(and I'd like to make that a gift link so you could see all the many photographs, but I've used up all my gift links for the year).

Can I derive a few hints on how to dress yourself? Yes: 1. If you think you are dressed, think again and add 2 more things, 2. Big pants, clunky shoes, 3. A hat and a hood, 4. We're not doing quiet rich, we're doing loud working class, replete with ludicrously capacious bag, 5. Leopard prints.

"The enormous public interest generated by garish reconstructions is surely because of and not in spite of their ugliness."

"It is hard to believe that this is entirely accidental. One possibility is that the reconstructors are engaged in a kind of trolling. In this interpretation, they know perfectly well that ancient sculptures did not look like the reconstructions, and probably included the subtle variation of color tones that ancient paintings did. But they fail to correct the belief that people naturally form given what is placed before them: that the proffered reconstruction of ancient sculpture is roughly what ancient sculpture actually looked like. It is a further question whether such trolling would be deeply objectionable.... There is genuine intellectual value in the project and what could be seen as mean-spirited iconoclasm could equally be embraced as harmless fun. On the other hand, at a time when trust in the honest intentions of experts is at a low, it may be unwise for experts to troll the public."

Writes Ralph S. Weir, in "Were classical statues painted horribly? It is often suggested that modern viewers dislike painted reconstructions of Greek and Roman statues because our taste differs from that of the ancients. This essay proposes an alternative explanation" (Works in Progress).

Is that a joke about how the ancient Greeks painted their statues? 

"A few (male) editors have told me they wish they could figure out what men would read, what books they would buy."

"I think they do read. They read nonfiction and genre fiction, mostly. And then they probably read the canon. They’re just not reading, like, contemporary literary fiction, and I don’t know if that’s bad or good. I also think it’s a question of generations — they’re wondering what younger millennial men are reading and Gen-Z boys/men. They’re young, and their tastes are as yet unformed, so … get to work!"

Said an unnamed literary agent, quoted in "28 Book Industry Professionals Get Candid About the State of the Industry" (New York Magazine).

"Cecilia Giménez, famed for ‘Monkey Christ’ mural mishap, dies at 94."

The Guardian reports.

Amid the storm of mockery and bad publicity over what became known as the Monkey Christ, Giménez took to her bed with an attack of anxiety, losing 17kg (37lb) in the process. However, she soon found that notoriety had an upside as people began bidding to buy her own art, which she sold on eBay, and she later donated the proceeds to a Catholic charity. The botched restoration became first an internet sensation and then a tourist attraction and the church began charging for admission. Ryanair laid on special flights to Zaragoza, the nearest airport, and today thousands of people continue to visit the village to see her work....

They made an opera about it:

"G IS FOR PREGNANCY/A degrading punishment imposed on women’s bodies after they have given themselves to the love of a man…"

"... it transforms the lover into a disfigured progenitor who no longer inspires mad desire. It is the beginning of the deterioration of a couple’s relationship."

Wrote Brigitte Bardot, quoted in "Everything (and Everyone) Brigitte Bardot Scorned" (NYT).

She had one child. See "All About Brigitte Bardot's Estranged Son Nicolas-Jacques Charrier" (People):

"I'm not made to be a mother," Bardot wrote in her memoir.... "I'm not adult enough — I know it's horrible to have to admit that, but I'm not adult enough to take care of a child."... 

"I looked at my flat, slender belly in the mirror like a dear friend upon whom I was about to close a coffin lid,” she wrote....

Bardot also wrote that she had two abortions before the pregnancy she carried to term, one of which was almost fatal.... she also revealed that she attempted suicide.... "I wanted to free myself — in every sense of the word...."

In the world of Chappell Roan, Brigitte Bardot might as well be Milkshake Duck.

I'm reading "Chappell Roan walks back tribute to Brigitte Bardot over late star’s 'insane' beliefs" (NY Post).

It looked like this on Instagram:

Quick turnaround. 4 minutes. Made me think of Milkshake Duck:

But "Red Wine Supernova" came out in 2023. It begins "She was a playboy/Brigitte Bardot/She showed me things...." The reference to Bardot is not obscure, but in your face, line 1. Chappell Roan has been trading on that famous name for 2 years.

Bardot has openly expressed the ideas that got her accused of racism since 2 years before Chappell Roan was born. (Bardot published "Mon cri de colère" ("My Cry of Anger") in 1996.)

How is it that no one told Chappell Roan that Brigitte Bardot was something more than a sex object until Roan made herself part of the story of Bardot's death?!

"The artists who have protested in recent weeks include Kristy Lee, a folk singer from Alabama, who announced she was pulling out from a free concert...."

"'I won’t lie to you, canceling shows hurts,' she said in a social media post. 'This is how I keep the lights on. But losing my integrity would cost me more than any paycheck.'"

From "New Year’s Eve Concerts at Kennedy Center Are Canceled/The jazz drummer Billy Hart said the decision was 'evidently' connected to President Trump’s name being added to the arts center" (NYT).

Art is not logic.

At the Monday Night Café…

 … you can talk about whatever you want.

Pinching lobsters. Hmm. They're the ones with the pincers.

Just reading the headlines in the British paper:

Here's the story: "The FBI is investigating after a truck carrying lobsters worth $400,000 was hijacked by a thief posing as a legitimate driver." How does a stolen truck make the front page? I guess it seems amusing that the truck was loaded with lobsters. That "s" on "lobsters" indicates they were living lobsters, but it says they were on their way to Costco, so I'm picturing what I would call "lobster" — no "s" — boxes of frozen lobster. I'd hate to have keep $400,000 worth of lobsters alive. Too complicated!

In other news... too bad for Harry and Meghan. They keep losing publicists. This latest loss "comes after Meghan and Harry attended a birthday party hosted by Kris Jenner, 70, the night before the UK marked Remembrance Sunday." Quite the gaffe.

"He is not the Word made flesh but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair."

It's obviously laughable to pay Ezra Klein $40-70k to hear his vapid, DNC-donor-pleasing, liberal clichés.

That said, I would pay him some substantial portion of that fee to come to a wedding or birthday party to perform a dramatic reading of this hilarious passage he wrote: https://t.co/q0fX4EL2S8 pic.twitter.com/isZtqbNkRs

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) December 28, 2025

I don't know what irritates me more — the capitalization of one "word" but not the other, or the italics for "over." So he's not the Messiah but his excellent speech conquers... well, everything... or something. 

ADDED: I think Klein deserves this fee. He's a well-known figure who embodies the idea of moderation and civility and he will have to set aside his regular work to travel to and from your event. That's going to cost you at least $40,000. There must be all these Democrats fretting about how to not look so awful and the calming stately presence of Ezra Klein might help them believe there will be an answer.

"I never liked the MAGA Mar-a-Lago sexualization. I believe how women in leadership present themselves sends a message to younger women."

"I have two daughters, and I’ve always been uncomfortable with how those women puff up their lips and enlarge their breasts. I’ve never spoken about it publicly, but I’ve been planning to."

Said Marjorie Taylor Greene, quoted in "'I Was Just So Naïve’: Inside Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Break With Trump/How the Georgia congresswoman went from the president’s loudest cheerleader to his loudest Republican critic" (NYT).

This is a very long article, by Robert Draper. Let me just pull out 3 more things:

"Unlike anything ever done or seen before!"

Link.

"Though Musk is unpredictable, he is also a formidable ally. With his nearly unlimited resources and unmatched digital megaphone..."

"... Musk could prove a powerful asset to the MAGA movement once Trump leaves the stage. Vance in particular stands to benefit. Though the falling out between Trump and Musk dominated the headlines, Vance’s role in the reunion highlights his own relationship with the billionaire. He talks regularly with Musk, who sees Vance as a viable 2028 candidate.... Musk and Vance, a former Silicon Valley investor, share not just a tech-infused worldview but a fondness for online performance — especially on Musk’s social media platform, X, where Vance has embraced a sharp, 'own-the-libs' style that can mirror Musk’s own taste for provocation. Their alliance could further entrench the influence of tech titans in the White House, extending the authority of private entrepreneurs."

From "How Vance brokered a truce between Trump and Musk/JD Vance played a key role brokering a reconciliation between the president and his wealthiest supporter. But as Trump’s first year in office comes to a close, both he and his allies have learned hard lessons about Musk’s unusual influence" (WaPo)(gift link).

That seems pretty important, and WaPo — fighting darkness for the sake of democracy — put it at the top of the front page, right alongside a dubious headline about the spread of "The epidemic of toxic flattery:

I can do without the disease metaphor — "epidemic," "spreading" — because I don't think the problem of flattery — whatever it is — is going to need anything analogous to masks, vaccinations, and staying at home. And what is "toxic" about flattery?

"The most new York couple is: very sweet man that everyone loves with a wife way out of his league that he’s obsessed with."

That's the top rated comment on this TikTok about Rama Duwaji, the wife of Zohran Mamdani:

"I think the museum staying in North Bay will help them from making foolish choices, like what they did to us, you know. It should never be repeated again."

Said Annette Dionne — born in North Bay, Ontario — quoted in "Annette Dionne, Last of the Celebrated Quintuplets, Dies at 91/She was the first to crawl, the first to cut a tooth, the first to recognize her name, and the last to die. And, like her sisters, she resented being exploited as part of a global sensation" (NYT).

Imagine being one of 5 babies and then also to be famous, all your life, for just that. It's a puzzle of distinction and indistinction.

From the Wikipedia article for North Bay: "The Dionne Quintuplets... had a tremendous impact on tourism in the area. For a province struggling against economic strangulation they were as valuable a resource as gold, nickel, pulpwood or hydro power. They saved an entire region from bankruptcy. They launched Northern Ontario's flourishing tourist industry. At their peak they represented a $500 million asset. North Bay and the surrounding area lived off this legacy well into the 1960s. Many visitors to the area discovered lakes and summer retreats that were easily accessible, and the businesses thrived on the tourist dollars."

Shopping completely alone.

It is possible —  apparently — but you will need to be in China and, presumably, sacrifice your privacy for safety and convenience? And wouldn't most Americans sacrifice privacy for safety and convenience? I'll say, no, we won't, because we wouldn't believe that we'd get the promised safety and convenience. We'd just be giving up our privacy for not much of anything.

At the Sunday Night Café…

 … you can talk all night.

"Joey Ramone once said that the Ramones 'started off just wanting to be a bubblegum group.'"

"The band covered 'Little Bit O’ Soul' on its 1983 album 'Subterranean Jungle.' The ever-arty Talking Heads gave their own disjointed spin to '1,2,3, Red Light' while performing in their early years at CBGB, the Bowery club that was a cradle of punk rock. No less a rock purist than Lester Bangs, the storied gonzo critic, eventually gave bubblegum its due in the 1992 book 'The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll.' 'The basic bubblegum sound could be described as the basic sound of rock ’n’ roll,' he wrote, 'minus the rage, fear, violence and anomie that runs from Johnny Burnette to Sid Vicious.'"

So ends the obituary "Jerry Kasenetz, a King of Bubblegum Pop Music, Dies at 82/With his producing partner, Jeffry Katz, he made lightweight ditties like 'Yummy Yummy Yummy' that soared up the charts in the late 1960s" (NYT).

The links in the text go to the Ramones and Talking Heads covers, but here's a Spotify playlist I made of the original version of those 2 songs along with all the other Kasenetz and Katz songs named in the obituary. It's all great stuff — 9 songs, 22 minutes:

"The first major turning point in Goldstein’s poker career came in 2008, when he put up the $10,000 fee to enter the World Series of Poker..."

"... a multiday extravaganza in Las Vegas. On the first night, after the tournament had ended for the day, Goldstein sat down at a table at the Bellagio. 'I end up playing without looking at my cards,' Goldstein said. That, to put it mildly, was an unconventional strategy. He bet wildly and recklessly, but his opponents were flummoxed by his blind aggression. Goldstein told me he ultimately played that way for 18 hours and won some $400,000...."

Writes Jeffrey Toobin in "He Was a Supreme Court Lawyer. Then His Double Life Caught Up With Him. Thomas Goldstein was a superstar in the legal world. He was also a secret high-stakes gambler, whose wild 10-year run may now land him in prison" (NYT).

"I’ve been saying for a while that the gender-neutral 'they/them' was going to become even more widespread. As a linguist..."

"... who studies the ways language changes, I noted the rise in people resisting the gender binary and got caught up in — and perhaps even biased toward — what I processed as a pronominal revolution. But surveys show that the number of young people identifying as nonbinary has decreased considerably over the past two years. Binary genders are on the rise again, and therefore so are the pronouns most closely associated with them...."

Writes John McWhorter, designating "He and she" as item #7 of the "Words and Phrases" list in his section of "The Year in Lists."

And that happens to be my last gift link of the year from The New York Times, so enjoy reading all the items on all the lists.

Jennifer Weiner has "9 Retrograde Moments for Women." I guess there were only 9, because if you'd had a 10th, wouldn't you go for the cliché of a 10 item list? And yet Weiner made a single item out of Erika Kirk and Usha Vance. Was it "retrograde" to put them together? Yes, but it wasn't Weiner's doing. Some people on the internet did it: they talked about JD Vance divorcing Usha and marrying Erika Kirk. Was that important enough to repeat? Weiner only purports to give us "moments"....

"Are we still producing anthemic songs that everyone can know and sing anymore? Songs like 'We Will Rock You,' 'Living on a Prayer' and 'Sweet Caroline'?"

"... The difference is, back in those songs’ eras, people across demographics still seemed to know and enjoy them. Whether from performances on Johnny Carson’s 'Tonight Show,' spins on Casey Kasem’s 'American Top 40' or others, that was a time of cultural commonalities regardless of personal taste or ideology.... When I perform older songs such as 'Take Me Home, Country Roads' everyone sings the chorus.... Yet for their modern-day equivalents, that’s far less likely. By not singing communally, we lose the emotional experience to feel bonded with those from other groups or ideologies. This lack of kinship plays out across multiple domains throughout our society with more serious impact. Studies and surveys find Americans in the 2010s and 2020s are increasingly unlikely to have cross-ideology friendships, to live near neighbors who disagree politically, or to date across party lines."

Writes piano-bar musician Jesse Rifkin, in "I perform at a piano bar. The most requested song might surprise you. So long 'Piano Man.' Chappell Roan’s ode to a gay bar now draws the most requests" (WaPo).

One thing Rifkin seems blind to is TikTok. At least for "Take Me Home Country Roads," one reason the old song is known today is through extreme repetition on TikTok.

For an extra-charming example, look at this:

"The Islamic State’s history shows that when the group establishes a stable presence, it’s only a matter of time before it looks to wreak havoc around the world."

"It’s tempting to want to pretend that the chaos in West Africa isn’t an American problem, but the world isn’t that simple...."

Writes the Washington Post Editorial Board, in "Why West Africa is worth worrying about/Strikes on ISIS targets in Nigeria are welcome but insufficient" (gift link).

Goodbye to Brigitte Bardot.

"Brigitte Bardot, the pouty, tousle-haired French actress who redefined mid-20th-century movie sex symbolism in films beginning with 'And God Created Woman,' then gave up acting at 39 to devote her life to the welfare of animals, has died. She was 91."

The NYT reports.

President Macron writes: "Her films, her voice, her dazzling glory, her initials, her sorrows, her generous passion for animals, her face that became Marianne, Brigitte Bardot embodied a life of freedom. French existence, universal brilliance. She touched us. We mourn a legend of the century."

Much as I've admired Brigitte Bardot for her great beauty, I have never seen a Brigitte Bardot movie, not even "Contempt."

"We must rebel when we're trapped by circumstances, conventions."

Here's her filmography, full of titles I'm sad not to recognize.

"At best, Ms. Bardot was considered eccentric in her later years, prompting observations that this former sex kitten, as she was often called, had turned into a “crazy cat lady,'" it says in the NYT obituary. 

At best? That's because of this:

"Althouse takes boxing day pretty seriously."

Said Old and slow in last night's open thread, "Sunrise — 7:13." It was only the second post of the day. The first, "Tea with Larry," at 9:29 a.m., was also an open thread. It consisted of 2 photographs and the single sentence, "It's a no-news Saturday, the day after the day after Christmas."

It was the day after the day after Christmas. But it was not Boxing Day. Boxing Day is the day after Christmas, and there were 5 posts on Boxing Day. So what was this day after the day after Christmas? Do we call it nothing but the day after the day after Christmas (or, if we say Boxing Day, the day after Boxing Day)?

It is the Feast of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist. Those who have grown weary of the Christmas holiday might turn to the Feast of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist for fresh inspiration.

But now it is December 28th. Is it a back to normal day? Will scanning the headlines in the usual way yield blog posts with the natural flow that is my long custom? If not, is it a day with a name — like Christmas, Boxing Day, and the Feast of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist — a day we might observe with special activities?

It is a special day, but it's a day I wouldn't want to focus on: It is the Feast of the Holy Innocents:

The Feast of the Holy Innocents was one of a series of days known as the Feast of Fools, and the last day of authority for boy bishops. Parents temporarily abdicated authority. In convents and monasteries the youngest nuns and monks were allowed to act as abbess and abbot for the day. These customs, which were thought to mock religion, were condemned by the Council of Basel (1431). In medieval England children were reminded of the mournfulness of the day by being whipped in bed in the morning; this custom survived into the 17th century....

"Perhaps because they have so many kids, they said they aren’t the types to hover over their children and check their homework."

"And as it is physically impossible to shuttle their children to extracurriculars all over town, they are often free to do what they want within a two-mile radius. In short, because they are not capable of meeting the expectations of parenthood in the modern age, they do not try to. 'We have these childless friends come over and they’re like, "You always seem so calm,"' Mrs Korczynski said. 'They say, "You ignore most things, but if something’s going on then you can hop on that."'  There are, of course, downsides. Every morning the children struggle to get into the one bathroom they share with each one banging on the door, yelling for the shower (the parents have their own). Dinners are like battles royale — 'they know if they’re late there might not be any food left,' said Mr Korczynski."

From "Why we decided to have seven children Americans are having fewer kids, worried about the high cost and uncertainty of the world. But for John and Sasha Korczynski, raising a large brood has been a leap of faith." That's in the London Times, but the family lives in the U.S. — in Florida.

How will they pay for college? "I think this is where having a big family comes in handy for college, because they do give you better financial aid packages."

Sunrise — 7:13.

The conversation continues into the night in this day without news.

Tea with Larry...

It's a no-news Saturday, the day after the day after Christmas.

Sunrise — 7:18.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"I used to love feeling her body, her big body next to me in bed, the softness of her body — you know, the extra tummy and the extra booty, you know, next to me...."

"I miss that — that voluptuousness — being able to, you know, lean up next to her and feel her — for lack of a better word — draping over me. That's no longer an option. Now it's, it's cuddling and it's cuddling as tight and closely as we can — or as I can. And that's, that's the extent of the intimacy. I'm at a loss for why there's no physical intimacy. There hasn't been any...."

Said a man who's wife lost a lot of weight on Ozempic, in "Marriage and Sex in the Age of Ozempic: An Update," today's episode of the NYT podcast "The Daily." (Link goes to audio and transcript at Podscribe.)

ChatGPT has been watching me, collecting what it can of my thoughts, and today, it serves it up to me — as if it's cool fun and compliments — as "Your Year With ChatGPT."

Here's what I saw at the bottom of the screen when I went to ChatGPT:

Admittedly, I clicked "Try it," so I suspect that there was no profile of me until I asked for it. That black oval is like the "Eat me" cookie in "Alice in Wonderland." I didn't have to click on it.

First, I got a poem supposedly about me, but skip that. The next screen was my "3 big themes." These are just for my use of ChatGPT in a browser on my desktop, mostly while I was involved in blogging. I got a different report on my iPhone ChatGPT app, where I never blog. I work through various off-blog problems and fancies. And even on the desktop, I use Grok more that ChatGPT. So there are other "me"s. Anyway, here's this thing purporting to know me:

I was given an award that reflects the me that I am when immersed in blogging:

Am I the only one who remembers Willie the Worm?

That is a puppet show — on WCAU Philadelphia — that got started in 1950. I myself got started in 1950, in Texas, of all places, but I emerged in January 1951, in the Philadelphia television market, so I had the great good fortune to encounter this simple worm character when I was young enough to get the sense that he was important and well-loved.

It must have been more than a half century since Willie the Worm crossed my mind, but my memory was jogged yesterday as I was walking through the neighborhood with Meade, and we stopped to look at an elaborate yard display that had a sign with the lyric "Whisper words of wisdom" from the Beatles' song "Let It Be." The painted letters were a bit blobby and misshapen, and Meade read it as "Whisper worms of wisdom." My memory whispered the name of that worm of wisdom: "Willie."

I'm so touched to find video of my long-lost childhood friend, the puppet Willie the Worm. But let me acknowledge 2 other Willies the Worm:

"Nigeria’s foreign minister, Yusuf Maitama Tuggar, said the strike was a 'joint operation' targeting 'terrorist,' and it 'has nothing to do with a particular religion.'"

"Without naming Isis specifically, Tuggar said the operation had been planned 'for quite some time' and had used intelligence information provided by the Nigerians. He did not rule out further strikes, adding that this depended on 'decisions to be taken by the leadership of the two countries'.... The strike comes after Trump in late October threatened to send his military intervention in to Nigeria 'guns a-blazing' over what he said was a failure to stop violence targeting Christian communities. In a diplomatic turnaround earlier this week, Trump handed Nigeria a $1.6 billion aid package in exchange for the protection of Christians...."

From "US strikes Isis in Nigeria to protect ‘innocent Christians’, says Trump/The attacks on Islamic State were conducted with the co-operation of Nigeria after the US president threatened to go into the country ‘guns a-blazing'" (London Times).

Sunrise — 6:58, 7:05, 7:09, 7:32, 7:40.

Merry Christmas to everyone! Hope you had a great day.

Write about anything you want in the comments.

ADDED: Can you see the pale disc of the sun to the right of the capitol dome? You have to look quite closely to see what was nicely visible "in person." Meade's video, one post down, shows what was there to be seen and what my photo barely records.

Christmas sun.

"All these kinds of winter traditions are tied very intricately into small communities. You develop between yourselves a folklore about this winter time and this period of darkness."

Said Nordic studies professor Maren Johnson, quoted in "How cozy Yuletide traditions got their start with raging parties and animal sacrifice" (NPR).

For example, in Iceland, instead of Santa Claus, "there's the 'Christmas Men,' also known as the Yule lads. As the stories have told it, the mystic men – with names like 'Window Peeper,' 'Sausage Swiper,' 'Bowl Licker' and 'Meat Hook' — come one by one down from the mountains by your community, play pranks and steal things from homes. (To be fair to them, they'll also leave presents in windows for children.) On top of that, they have an ogress mother, Grýla, who eats misbehaving children 'like sushi for Christmas'...."

Trump's Christmas message: "Don't ever leave Oklahoma!"

Trump explaining to children why we track Santa is pure comedy:

“We want to make sure that Santa is being good—that Santa is a very good person. We want to make sure that we're not infiltrating into our country a bad Santa.”

He’s so good at this. 🤣pic.twitter.com/CgQe8bY40f

— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) December 24, 2025

Sunrise — 7:01, 7:08, 7:08, 7:09.

It's Christmas Eve. What are you up to?

"As their seventh month at sea begins, the sailors will get a rare treat of prime rib and lobster tails on Christmas Day."

"But neither the Navy nor the Pentagon has said when this deployment will end, nor whether there is another carrier being readied to take their place. At stake is whether Mr. Hegseth further extends the deployment to keep his military options open. If so, that decision will probably increase costs down the road by delaying crucial maintenance for the Ford and putting strain on the crew's morale."

From "Long Carrier Deployment Projects U.S. Strength, and Carries Costs/The U.S.S. Ford has been deployed for six months, now in the Caribbean as part of President Trump’s pressure campaign on Venezuela. Maintenance woes and strains on sailors will likely mount" (NYT).

The article quotes Senator Mark Kelly, who was deployed beyond 6 months during the 1991 Gulf War: "It kind of wears on you. And you start to see accidents start to happen — not just pilots crashing planes, necessarily, but accidents on the flight deck.... All kinds of stuff starts to happen when you’re out there for an extended period of time."

"The State Department is taking decisive action against five individuals who have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose."

Said Marco Rubio, quoted in "'Witch hunt': Ex-EU commissioner Breton denounces U.S. visa ban targeting ‘censorship'" (CNBC). 

The Trump administration imposed visa bans on Thierry Breton, a former European Union commissioner behind the Digital Services Act (DSA), and four anti-disinformation campaigners, accusing them of censoring U.S. social media platforms.... The DSA forces tech giants like Google and Meta to police illegal content more aggressively, or face hefty fines.... 

Breton... wrote on X: “Is McCarthy’s witch hunt back?” He added: “As a reminder: 90% of the European Parliament — our democratically elected body — and all 27 Member States unanimously voted the DSA. To our American friends: Censorship isn’t where you think it is."

I can't find anything by Breton explaining his idea of "where" censorship really is. Try to persuade us, Thierry. Give us a chance to argue with you. If you've got a good idea put it up for sale in the marketplace of ideas. Prove us wrong.

ADDED: Breton seems to be giving priority to whatever the majority decides to do. We Americans have traditionally put individual rights above majoritarian choice. I suspect that when he says "Censorship isn’t where you think it is," he means it's never censorship when it's done democratically. Believe that, and you don't believe in individual rights. 

"Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all. Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer."

Wrote Ben Sasse, quoted in "Republican former senator Ben Sasse says he has terminal cancer/The 53-year-old — who was one of a handful of Republicans to speak out against Trump during his first term — said in a lengthy social media post he has Stage 4 pancreatic cancer and suggested he doesn’t have long to live" (WaPo).

"Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die. Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence... I’m not going down without a fight. One subpart of God’s grace is found in the jaw-dropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more.... Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape."

Have you ever zealously embraced gallows humor in the presence of a person who is dying? Do you know what it means "to run through the irreverent tape"? 

"Aside from the gold, Mr. Trump has hung more than 20 portraits in the Oval Office. In addition to Mr. Washington’s above the fireplace..."

"... portraits of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Abraham Lincoln, James Monroe and Franklin D. Roosevelt are also on the walls. Mr. Trump has ruminated about the fate of Mr. Harrison, who died shortly after he was inaugurated, to people who have visited the Oval Office. He has said that the portraits of his predecessors are there to remind him of how quickly fate can change. Most other presidents had just a few portraits or scenery paintings in the Oval...."

From "'He’s a Maximalist': Inside Trump’s Gilded Oval Office/The New York Times recreated the president’s office in 3-D, using hundreds of photos taken in October" (NYT)(gift link, for all the photos 

1. The NYT calls the photos "3-D," but they're not 3-D. They are 360°. I think the correct term is "360° panoramas."

2. This article is respectful toward Trump, an effort at objectivity, though of course the comments over there are anti-Trump — "Fool’s gold, in every sense," etc.

3. The "maximalist" characterization comes from Karoline Leavitt: "Why all the gold? 'He’s a maximalist,' Ms. Leavitt said, citing Mr. Trump’s background in real estate and hospitality. 'So he loves showing people who come in, the renovations, his office, his gift shop.'"

4. The "gift shop" isn't a shop. As the link on the phrase shows, it's a gift room, a small room off the Oval Office that Presidents have used for different purposes, that Trump uses to house a supply of hats and other items to hand out as gifts. And yes, this is the room where Bill Clinton consorted with Monica Lewinsky. 

5. I'm delighted to see the name William Henry Harrison. I was just talking about him yesterday. Off blog. I've been slowly making my way through this biography of John Quincy Adams (commission earned). I'd finally made it to Chapter 35: 

IN THE YEARS AFTER ADAMS LOST HIS BID TO BE REELECTED president, the slave states and their allies had controlled the White House, as they did the Congress and the Supreme Court.... Finally, in 1840, the Whigs had broken through, in the person not of Clay, the perennial candidate, but of William Henry Harrison. Adams was inclined to dismiss Harrison as a genial buffoon, an 'Indian fighter' like Jackson who had been puffed up into presidential material by the popular fancy for war heroes.... 

Then, on April 4, one month after taking the oath of office, Harrison died of pneumonia caused by a cold he had contracted at his inaugural. He was succeeded by John Tyler [who]... had been included as vice president in order to shore up party support in the slave states.

6. And here's the part that I clipped out and texted to Meade and to my son Chris (who reads bios of Presidents and had sent me this book):

It had never crossed anyone’s mind that he would exercise power of any sort; no president had ever died in office. No one even knew how to address the successor; the Constitution was unclear on whether the vice president would succeed to the presidency or merely assume its functions. Adams was outraged that Tyler considered himself the president and insisted on being addressed as such.

I had never seen that idea before, the notion that when a President dies, the VP does not become the President. How dare Tyler expect to be called Mr. President! 

7. But back to the present day and to Trump with that picture of William Henry Harrison hanging alongside all the far greater Presidents. Trump keeps Harrison on the wall as a memento mori. We know that because he talks about it to people. He "has ruminated" aloud about the President who's known for dropping dead. We tend not to think of Trump as a person given to rumination — about anything, certainly not death.

8. Now, looking at those pictures of the Oval Office, maximally ornamented in gold, I think perhaps he sees the place as something like a tomb. Perhaps he envisions a chamber in the soon-to-come Trump library that looks something like this:

Sunrise — 6:55, 7:24, 7:28, 7:32, 7:42.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

I thought it was just me, but apparently it's a big, sad trend.

I don't like shopping. I can't make myself go (other than food shopping). Occasionally, I consider forcing myself to go shopping — find some clothes to try on and buy at least something — but I'm beset with boredom, and I do not go. Have I even set foot in a clothes store in the past year? Somehow I pictured other women going into the shops, getting excited about clothing items, and splurging on things.

But here's Robin Givhan — in "Why Is Shopping an Abyss of Blah?" (NYT) — "Shopping has become a drag. A bore. An obligation. A thing you do alone on your phone, not out in the world.... Shopping should be about lust. Instead, shopping has become a slog.... Our senses are flattened, our appetites dulled. Nothing seems quite right.... Shopping has become a grotesquerie of commodified consumerism and environmental waste.... Retailers became more corporate and mimed soliloquies on status and trends. Shoppers’ aesthetic discernment grew weak and flabby. A once lively conversation between sellers and buyers quieted. Shopping lost its fizz...."

"It begins in 1976. Epstein is a teacher at the Dalton School in Manhattan, and he gets invited to a reception at an art gallery, and he goes kind of grudgingly...."

"And at the reception, he bumps into the parent of one of his students who is impressed with his math chops. And the parent suggests that maybe he is wasting his time being a teacher and instead should consider a career in Wall Street. And the parent then introduces Epstein to a guy named Ace Greenberg.... a top executive at Bear Stearns, which is this scrappy Wall Street investment bank. And one of the ways in which it's scrappy is that it is not going to hire Ivy League MBAs. It is looking for what Ace Greenberg likes to call PSDs, which stands for poor, smart, and deeply desirous of being rich. And Epstein goes in to meet Greenberg for a job interview, and Epstein fits the bill. Greenberg is bowled over by the guy's charisma and charm and apparent math prowess and offers him a job. So he arrives at Bear Stearns and he quickly becomes the protege to some of the firm's top executives. One is Greenberg, the guy who hired him, who is so taken with Epstein that he introduces him to his own 20-year-old daughter and they start dating, which affords Epstein something akin to protected status at the firm...."

From today's excellent episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "The Origins of Jeffrey Epstein."

So: a scrappy executive enamored of the idea that there are PSDs out there — that's the explanation....

"What we have is Karoline Leavitt's soundbite claiming they are evildoers in America (rapists, murderers, etc.). But isn't there much more to ask in light of the torture that we are revealing?"

"Tom Homan and Stephen Miller don't tend to be shy. I realize we've emailed the DHS spox, but we need to push much harder to get these principals on the record."

Wrote Bari Weiss, in an internal memo justifying her action, noting the failure to "present the administration's argument."

Quoted in "Scoop: Weiss told top '60 Minutes' producers that delayed segment had problems" (Axios).

Also at Axios: "Yanked '60 Minutes' episode aired in Canada." 

It's easy to find the whole segment on line, but I'm not going to link to it.

Here's the NYT article about the controversy: "Turmoil at CBS News After Bari Weiss Pulls a ‘60 Minutes’ Segment/Several veteran correspondents questioned how Ms. Weiss, the new CBS News editor in chief, had handled the segment, after she defended her decision on a call with the newsroom." Excerpt:

Sunrise — 7:23.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"I love the way an audiobook brings me one step closer to a story, removing the middleman of paper or a screen. I’m not just hovering over the action, I’m in it. Channeling it."

Writes Elisabeth Egan, in "Why I Stopped Reading and Embraced Audiobooks/On the joys of having stories in my ears — and yes, listening counts" (NYT).

This is a genuinely new point in what is for me a very old question/"question." (What's the question? Do audiobooks "count"? What does that even mean?) Egan also makes many of the familiar points about audiobooks: You can do other things while listening — chores, crafts, exercise — and it's good for people with vision troubles, great for drifting off to sleep, etc. etc.

But I love this idea that the audiobook is more intimate, bringing you closer to the material. Is that even true?! I think she's saying something about the experience of hearing in contrast to seeing. When seeing, you are looking at a physical object outside of your head. Or so it seems. The words are out there, on the page, your eyes allow you to sense them. But sound feels like it has entered your head, almost like your own thoughts, especially if you're using earphones. And yet both hearing and seeing happen in your brain, through a nerve located deep inside the organ that is part of your head — your optic nerve in the back of your eye or your auditory nerve in your inner ear. 

So the intimacy of hearing as opposed to seeing is a subjective feeling, don't you agree? But then the question becomes whether we prefer this intimacy when reading? I suspect that by using vision to consume a book, you maintain a more sharply critical mind. The page is out there. It's the other. We're suspicious. Or admiring. The audiobook reaches us differently. It's automatically already inside us, stirring us like music, like the murmurings of a loved one.

First Ladies read a Christmas story.

It's not a competition. We cherish diversity of expression. It's all a matter of taste...

 

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ADDED: Sorry, I didn't see the slur on Melania's name until I put this up. I am offering the contrast among the ladies in a neutral spirit. Anyone who assumes Michelle's reading is superior to Melania's is simply being very conventional.

AND: Here's the full reading by Melania:

"My job is to make sure that all stories we publish are the best they can be. Holding stories that aren’t ready for whatever reason..."

"... that they lack sufficient context, say, or that they are missing critical voices — happens every day in every newsroom. I look forward to airing this important piece when it’s ready."

Said Bari Weiss, quoted in "'60 Minutes’ Pulled a Segment. A Correspondent Calls It ‘Political.' Sharyn Alfonsi, a '60 Minutes' correspondent, criticized the network’s decision to remove her reporting from Sunday’s edition of the show" (NYT).

ADDED: Oh, for the golden age of "60 Minutes":

 

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"I didn't bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to de-platform."

Said JD Vance, quoted in an NPR article by the Associate Press with the mean-spirited headline "Vance refuses to set red lines over bigotry at Turning Point USA's convention."

"Greenland is not for sale and will not be for sale, so you can forget about your plans for Greenland to become part of the USA."

"Nothing about us without us, and Greenland’s future is solely up to us. A majority does not want to become Americans, we do not want to be taken over by another country...."

Said Aaja Chemnitz, "a Greenlandic politician serving in the Danish Parliament," quoted in "Trump appoints Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry as special envoy to Greenland/The Danish territory has long been in the president’s sights. Trump said the Republican governor “understands how essential Greenland is to our National Security" (WaPo).

From the text of the article: "Trump has said repeatedly that the United States will 'get' Greenland, casting it as a national security objective for the U.S. His administration also covets Greenland for its untapped rare earth metals, an industry dominated by China globally. In April, The Washington Post reported that the White House was preparing an estimate of what it would cost the federal government to control Greenland as a territory."

"How big is Greenland?" — that question came up in a novel I'm reading. A child asks the question of her father who was telling her a story about the Greenlandic ice sheet melting and flooding the world and had said "Imagine, a slab of ice the size of Greenland!" The father "had no idea," only that Greenland "was notorious for being smaller than it looked on a Mercator projection, but he felt sure it was large, given that its melting would cause global sea levels to rise by something like seven meters."

The WaPo article offers an answer to the question: Greenland is "around three times the size of Texas."

"His daughter Lana... recalls flying to Austin to visit Nelson and failing to recognize him until her son shouted, 'That’s Grandpa!'"

"The last time she’d seen him, in Nashville, he had short hair and wore country-club clothes. Now he had long hair and a beard and wore a T-shirt, a bandanna, and an earring. 'He went from jazz musician to hippie,' she said. In Texas, Nelson cut back on the drinking. His face thinned out. His features sharpened. He ran five miles a day through the Hill Country, practiced martial arts, kept smoking weed—it tamped the rage down, he said—and read spiritual tracts and 'The Power of Positive Thinking.' People who killed the mood didn’t stay in his orbit for long. 'Somewhere along the way, I realized that you have to imagine what you want and then get out of the way and let it happen,' he told me."

From "How Willie Nelson Sees America/On the road with the musician, his band, and his family" (The New Yorker).

"He has given so many people hope that there’s a chance to beat the bad guys..."

Said Nicki Minaj (talking to Erika Kirk about President Trump):

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Solstice sunrise — 7:21, 7:36.

The solstice came at 9:03 a.m., the sunrise a bit earlier. Meade was out there in the bitter cold, walking the very rough and slippery terrain that I, in my weakness, eschewed. His pix:

Write about whatever you like.

Midday napping — at work — in China.

It's all TikTok, so I'll put it below the fold:

Another snapshot from a presidential biography.

Texted, just now, from my son Chris, who reads presidential biographies:

The book is "The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism" (commission earned).

I think there's some fat-shaming there, no? Or fat-celebrating. Also: "Venezuelan troubles."

Well, what would you do with "a 'plain vanilla' box"?

After buying a “plain vanilla” box, a Chicago trio brought in an interior designer who blended their aesthetics and added elements like a moody den for socializing and a three-person bed.

🔗: https://t.co/b2Z4qO0bzg pic.twitter.com/2P6CpcN2xI

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) December 18, 2025

So a "moody den" is a solution to "a 'plain vanilla' box." Who knew?! The things you learn reading the Wall Street Journal. You can get a "three-person bed." How does that work?

"This is the open question. When people are doing something risky or dangerous together, how much is one person responsible for the other?"

Said a University of Innsbruck law professor, quoted in "A Woman Froze to Death on an Alpine Trek. Is Her Boyfriend to Blame? A man in Austria was charged in the death of his girlfriend after leaving her behind, in a case testing ideas of freedom and responsibility in the mountains" (NYT).

The case has brought to the fore a legal doctrine known as Garantenstellung, a broad concept in Germanic law that establishes a responsibility to intervene for people who have a “duty of care” in a range of situations, including parents caring for children or a driver who hits a pedestrian — and can put liability on those people. It is often invoked on trips with hired guides, but has rarely been applied to a private hike like the couple’s excursion, experts said. Prosecutors argue that the man was liable for his girlfriend’s death because he planned the trip and was much more experienced than her....

The Eternal Cher.

Last night on SNL:

BONUS: Arianna Grande takes the Macauley Culkin role in a "Home Alone" takeoff... and really looks the part:

ADDED: I watched that second video after posting it, and I just want to add that I don't think they'd have gone through with it if they hadn't already put so much money and effort into producing it. The idea of beginning with a lovely Christmas celebration and descending into mayhem calls to mind the Conan O'Brien Christmas party and its horrible aftermath.

"This is the trap of being the person who always steps up: No one else will. As long as I shouldered the entire burden..."

"... my family had no reason to develop the skills and awareness to share it. It wasn’t really malicious on their part. They simply existed in a system where holidays happened automatically, and they’d never been forced to examine the machinery that made it work. The pattern is familiar to many eldest daughters, who inherit the invisible work of family cohesion through a mysterious combination of gender and birth order. We become the keepers of tradition and the executors of emotional labor, and we worry about the horrible things that might happen if we ever stopped — holiday chaos, forgotten family members or, worst of all, no longer being the woman who can 'do it all.' Our competence becomes a flattering cage.... I am here to tell you: You can step out of that cage. I have. People are surprisingly capable when they’re given no other choice...."

From "Why I Gave Up Holiday Hosting," by Elizabeth Austin, who hosted her family's Christmas dinner for 20 years.

ADDED: It's not automatic that others will step up and make Christmas Christmas. It may very well be that everyone who might have stepped up will simply participate in the family-wide realization: Christmas was Mom. It's an echo of the childhood realization that Santa Claus is your parents. Once you have that realization, the magic is gone. You might have someone in your family whose newfound capability takes the form of becoming the new Mom, the new embodiment of Christmas — Christmas understood as a set of family traditions imbued with love and excitement. But the newfound capability might take the form of analyzing whether any of it mattered enough to play-act the traditions year after year. It might take the form of recapturing the religious narrative. The idea of just getting other people to cook the dinner might strike the younger folks as threadbare and sad. 

The Winter Solstice.

How will you observe the profound occasion?

Sunrise — 7:01.

Both pictures were taken at the same time, the first one by me and the second one by Meade:

It's funny, when I saw the time stamp on Meade's, I thought the iPhone got the time wrong and wondered how. I'd only walked part way out, stopped for a photo, then retreated, because the path was atrocious, ruggedly bumpy with ice-slicked snow. Meade walked all the way out to the usual vantage point, and I was counting on him to get some later photos, closer to sunrise. What you see above is my favorite of the pictures he took. Because his picture is lighter and because I wanted a later photograph, I got sidetracked into puzzling over why the time stamp went bad. But that goes to show how thinking goes bad. There was one thing I didn't want to believe and it was the thing that was true: Meade and I snapped our pictures at exactly the same time. We were both standing in the same darkness, but he zoomed into the lit up spot on the distant shore. The iPhone adjusted the exposure.

Anyway, what wrong thinking and unexpected coincidence have you encountered lately?

Or... write about whatever you want.

Famous.

I'm reading "Conan O'Brien Party Guests Recall Nick Reiners 'Creepy' Questions Hours Before Parents Slain" (Enstarz):

Guests at a holiday gathering hosted by Conan O'Brien said they were unnerved when Nick Reiner repeatedly asked strangers "creepy" questions hours before his parents, Rob and Michele Singer Reiner, were found slain in their Brentwood home, police and prosecutors said. According to RadarOnline, attendees described the questions — "What's your name? What's your last name? Are you famous?" — as abrupt and repetitive, delivered without context and continuing even after people tried to disengage.... 'It didn't come across as simple curiosity — it felt driven and repetitive,' one guest said. 'You could see people growing uneasy.' Hosts later asked him to leave, according to two attendees....

Hours later, Nick Reiner made himself famous. The murder he committed is a famous murder. It is now the most famous thing about his long-famous father. 

It shouldn't be possible to become famous through murder, but it very clearly is.

"I should not be treated like a terrorist for traveling within my own country by an agency that’s trash at its job anyway."

Tweeted Evita Duffy-Alfonso, the daughter of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, about the "absurdly invasive pat-down" TSA subjected her to after she, on behalf of her unborn child, declined to submit to the body scanner.

The agents were passive-aggressive, rude, and tried to pressure me and another pregnant woman into just walking through the scanner because it’s “safe.”... Perhaps things would have gone more smoothly if I’d handed over my biometric data to a random private company (CLEAR). Then I could enjoy the special privilege of waiting in a shorter line to be treated like a terrorist in my own country. Is this freedom? Travel, brought to you by George Orwell....

Can you interpret a photograph?

The fall of man.

Noam Chomsky, the world’s most famous critic of power structures, photographed at 30,000 feet with Jeffrey Epstein. pic.twitter.com/zi05lGSrfX

— Shiv Aroor (@ShivAroor) December 19, 2025

And what does Bill Clinton in a hot tub mean?

ADDED: If you drop Bill Clinton in a pot of boiling water, he will of course frantically try to clamber out. But if you place him gently in a pot of tepid water and turn the heat on low, he will float there quite placidly. As the water gradually heats up, Bill Clinton will sink into a tranquil stupor, exactly like one of us in a hot bath, and before long, with a smile on his face, him will unresistingly allow himself to be cooked into a sumptuous feast for.... Well, I don't know who it's for, but Bill sure looks dreamily blissful.

(See "Boiled Frog" (Wikipedia) for my source material, the version of the apologue in Daniel Quinn's "The Story of B.").

"Oh, lord. There's no way I could enjoy a meal with that poor piglet staring at me from across the table."

"Give me a great burrito from a taco truck or the perfect deli sandwich with salad and let the wealthy keep their creepy food."

A comment at this NYT article:

"Creepy food" is so apt.

Lots of photos at the link, but I'm low on free links at this point in the month, and we've still got 11 days to go. So you'll just have to take my word for it. I don't think all the food is "creepy," but it is all striving to look expensive to everyone who's hot to enjoy the life by spending large wads of money. I think the subtle subtext is: Don't go to these places.

No, it's not impressive. It's depressing.

Impressive https://t.co/IacxCOxpki

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 19, 2025

Who wants to watch robots dance? And Disney's Animatronic Lincoln has been around since the 1964 World's Fair. Still on display, giving the Gettysburg Address — at Disney World's "Hall of Presidents" since 1971:

Disney Animatronics have always been pretty dull. There's no real sense that Abraham Lincoln has returned or that any sort of magic is occurring.

Are we awed by the technology or do we find it offputting? Musk seems impressed that robots can dance. I'm impressed that human beings dance.

Sunrise — 7:01, 7:34.

It was very cold this morning, and the refrozen snow was incredibly slippery, so I only made it this far:

I would have put up with the cold and the wind, but the extra slippery — and bumpy — surface made me opt out of the full sunrise walk. I drove home and Meade walked out to the distant vantage point and then all the way home. Here's my favorite photo of his:

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"The pioneering American maker of the Roomba, iRobot — once the leader in robot vacuums — said that it had filed for bankruptcy..."

"... and that control of the company would be taken over by its Chinese supplier.... Chinese companies have been racing to dominate the robotics industry..... In 2022, Amazon said it would acquire iRobot and all of its debt for about $1.7 billion. But the deal fell apart under scrutiny from regulators in the United States and Europe who said it could undercut competition.... On Sunday, iRobot filed a bankruptcy petition in Delaware...."

From "Roomba Maker iRobot Files for Bankruptcy, With Chinese Supplier Taking Control/Founded in 1990 by three M.I.T. researchers, iRobot introduced its vacuum in 2002. Its restructuring will turn the company over to its largest creditor" (NYT).

Amazon + iRobot — the American entity — seemed too big, so now the iRobot will be part of a Chinese company.