"A new straight-studies course treats male-female partnerships as the real deviance."

Subheadline for a New York Magazine article titled, "If Hetero Relationships Are So Bad, Why Do Women Go Back for More?" The teaser title on the front page is "Do Straight Women Really Exist?" The author of the article is Jessica Bennett.

“In this class, we’re going to flip the script,” [said sociologist Jane Ward to her students on the first day of class]. “It’s going to be a place where we worry about straight people. Where we feel sympathy for straight people. We are going to be allies to straight people.”...

Flipping the script is a good approach to studying the topic, and the topic is worthy of study. However, I don't like being directed to "worry" or "feel sympathy" or "be allies." I'd look at the subject head on. But neutrality is cruel, and women want to present as empathetic. 

The online world seems to get weirder and more retrograde about heterosexuality every day. Idealized masculinity has become more aggressive, more jacked up, and also more high maintenance... while femininity gets ever “softer,” more nurturing and domestic, and somehow still more sexy....

Sunrise — 6:04, 6:04, 6:05, 6;06.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments. And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

"Five years ago, meat hit a wall. Plant-based burgers were catching on, and the amount of meat the average American ate..."

"... per year started to wane. By 2022, it was down to 264 pounds — a drop of 10 pounds in two years. Editors at the recipe website Epicurious announced in 2021 that beef would be banished from all future content, citing its contribution to greenhouse-gas emissions. That same year, the chef Daniel Humm of Eleven Madison Park in New York City — considered one of the world’s top restaurants — retooled his $335 tasting menu to eliminate animal products. Restaurants of all sorts added vegetarian dishes for environment- and health-minded diners. Meat’s rebound surprised researchers.... The research showed that nearly 98 percent of households buy meat and 73 percent consider it a healthy choice, up 10 percent since 2020."

From "Meat Is Back, on Plates and in Politics/After years in which 'plant-based' was the mantra, meat once again dominates the national conversation about dinner" (NYT).

"By dint of his down-home edginess and comfort with slick filth, Von somewhat overlaps with the rest of the manosphere."

"What sets him apart is that he is not particularly cowed by fame or wisdom or authority or aggression. He blends curiosity with humility, and treats his guests as conveyors of mystical information.... His naïveté is both honest and strategic, a carefully laid roadblock protecting Von and forcing everyone else to move at his unlikely rhythm.... In almost every episode, there comes a moment when Von’s guest stumps him. It’s never a gotcha, and the topic is rarely something terribly obscure.... Some recent examples: Mitchell-Lama housing, the Kurds, who wrote the song 'This Land Is Your Land,' misandry.... He can sometimes free-fall into inventive left-field phrasing that achieves a sort of bliss. He said he once saw the boxer Evander Holyfield eating, putting French fries in his 'Panamouth Canal.' Kissing someone with lip filler is 'like trying to eat two shrimps that won’t give up.' Nudity is 'the Lord’s matte finish.'"

From "Theo Von Dismantles the Interview Show/The comedian and podcaster is one of the defining conversationalists of media’s new MAGA-friendly mainstream. But he can be harder to pin down, politically and culturally, than his bro-cast peers" (NYT).

Something I learned: Theo Von's full name is Theodor Capitani von Kurnatowski III.

"The left is full of empathic people. Right. And so those who parasitize empathy have a field day on the left...."

"The ethic is pretty straightforward. Anything that cries is a baby, it's like, no, some things that cry are monsters....Well, let, let's take the case of Nicola Sturgeon. The, the Scottish Prime Minister, the previous Scottish Prime Minister. Any man who wants to can be a woman. It's like, okay, any man, you mean any man? Do you? Yeah. Ha! Have you encountered the nightmare men? Oh, they don't exist. They're all victims. Yeah. You just bloody well wait till you encounter one. You'll change your story very rapidly. Yeah. And for the, for the naive and sheltered empaths of the radical left, they're either psychopaths, so they're wolves in sheep clothing, or they're people so that are so naive that the, the — what would you say? — Red Riding Hood's grandmother can definitely have his way with.... There are no shortage of naive people who've never really encountered a monster and have no imagination for it.... And they're, and they're very good at crying like infants... And then the mothers, the naive mothers come flooding out...."

Said Jordan Peterson on Joe Rogan's podcast. Scroll to 02:30:52 for the part I excerpted.

 

"Many gums are made using plastics like polyethylene and polyvinyl acetate... This helps give gum its elasticity...."

"The new study suggests that most of these plastics are released from gum within several minutes, so if you tend to spit out gum and start a new piece as soon as it loses its flavor, it may be better to stick with the same piece for as long as you can."

The NYT doesn't seem to concerned about ingesting plastic in this article, "Is It Bad to Chew Gum All Day? Here’s what to consider before you pop in that second (or third or fourth) piece."

I'd say yes, it's bad. Obviously. But what do I know. There are some gums without plastic. See "I Tried 6 Non-Toxic Gum Brands With Safe, Plastic-Free Ingredients" (The Green Choice).

I tried one of them one time. It was terrible. And expensive.

"I’ve seen a plane taxiing down the runway and the people looking out and seeing me with a bird. They’re like, ‘What’s that? What are you doing?"

Said Norman Smith, quoted in "The 'owl man' is busy at Boston Logan airport/Norman Smith has trapped and released more than 900 Arctic raptors for the safety of the birds and the planes" (WaPo)(free-access link, because of all the owl pics).

With the congested airspace and constant rumble of jets, the airport is hardly a tranquil bird sanctuary. But Smith said the terrain resembles the Arctic tundra. It’s open, flat and barren, with water on three sides and plenty to eat, including waterfowl and small mammals....

“The importance of Norm coming in is that he helps us take out a significant threat to aviation safety, which is a large, dense-bodied bird on the airfield,” said Jeff Turner, the airport facilities supervisor....

I liked that phrase "dense-bodied bird." Googled it and found only one other iteration: "Think Turkeys Aren't Tough?" on Archery Forum ("i've had more broadhead damage caused and no pass through situations on turkeys than deer or bear. I've had 95 ke setups not pass through. They are a dense bodied bird).

"There was a time last summer when the Democratic Party was cool."

"Kamala Harris had just stepped in as the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in the waning days of Brat summer. She went on the popular podcast 'Call Her Daddy.' Tim Walz’s outdoorsy drip led to a Chappell Roan-inspired camo trucker hat. The memes were flowing, and the party’s mood was high...."

That's the beginning of a NYT article called "What Is 'Dark Woke'? Democrats are trying out a new attitude. It’s provocative, edgy and perilously toeing the line of not being too offensive." The author is Jack Crosbie.

How painfully embarrassing to remember things that were painfully embarrassing at the time. But the media tried to palm it off as "cool" last summer... back when they were pretending America would vicariously appreciate Kamala's "joy." I'd have thought no one would be so cruel as to bring up "Brat summer" again. It was so insanely delusional. And that is not cool. 

But let's keep reading.

With Donald J. Trump back in the White House.... so-called masculine energy... seems like the dominant [culture].... As liberals try to get their groove back...

Ugh. 

... some party insiders say Democratic politicians have been encouraged to embrace a new form of combative rhetoric... “Dark woke.”

Is this like "Dark Brandon"? Why, yes it is: 

"We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years."

Said President Trump, quoted in "Trump Says Undocumented Immigrants Shouldn’t Get Trials Before Deportation/The president claimed that countries were sending their prisoners to the United States and that he needed to bypass the constitutional demands of due process to expel them quickly" (NYT).

The sub-headline bothers me because it equates "due process" with a full-scale trial. The question is what process is due. I don't think Trump is saying that rights need to be bypassed:

“I hope we get cooperation from the courts, because we have thousands of people that are ready to go out and you can’t have a trial for all of these people,” Mr. Trump said. “It wasn’t meant. The system wasn’t meant. And we don’t think there’s anything that says that.”

That can be heard as a component of the argument that courts should find the process that's due is something much faster and simpler than a trial. I would like to hear Trump say that rights are important but, in this case, the due process right should be interpreted narrowly. But at least he's not saying Rights! I don't care rights! 

At the Tuesday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you like.

"A university dedicated to free thought should know better. The First Amendment draws a clear line..."

"... between unprotected 'true threats' and core political speech. Speech is only a true threat when it demonstrates a serious, specific, and imminent intent to commit unlawful violence against a particular individual or group. That’s a high bar — and for good reason. It’s meant to protect public debate, especially about uncomfortable topics. Advocacy for violence, no matter how disturbing, remains protected unless it crosses that line. Decker’s essay never comes close. It’s abstract, hypothetical, and lacks any indication of intent to commit violence. Asking about the moral propriety of force is philosophy, not a true threat...."

From "George Mason University calls cops on student for article criticizing Trump/GMU student Nicholas Decker’s Substack essay 'When Must We Kill Them?' earned him a visit from the Secret Service" (FIRE).

"Jury Rules Against Palin in Libel Case Against The New York Times."

The NYT reports.

Ms. Palin sued The Times in 2017 after the newspaper published — and then swiftly corrected and apologized for — an editorial that wrongly suggested that she had incited a deadly shooting in Arizona years earlier.

The case became a bellwether for battles over press freedoms and media bias in the Trump era, with Ms. Palin’s lawyers saying they hoped to use it to attack a decades-old Supreme Court precedent that makes it harder for public figures to sue news outlets for defamation....

During the trial, Ms. Palin told the jury that the editorial “kicked the oomph” right out of her, damaging her reputation. She said it had ignited another round of criticism of her years after the map was first distributed.

"The plaintiffs here are not asking the school to change its curriculum. They’re just saying, ‘Look, we want out.’ Why isn’t that feasible? What is the big deal about allowing them to opt out of this?"

Said Justice Alito, quoted in "Justices Seem Set to Allow Opt-Outs From L.G.B.T.Q. Stories in Schools/In a lively and sometimes heated argument, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared poised to rule for parents with religious objections to storybooks with gay and transgender characters" (NYT).

Here's the transcript of the oral argument.

"Larry David had one of the stupidest op-eds in today's New York Times in which he compares Bill Maher having dinner with Donald Trump with having dinner with Adolf Hitler."

"Um, you know, Larry David, that's a form of Holocaust denial. Comparing Trump to Hitler is a form of Holocaust denial because Trump didn't have gas chambers, he didn't have shooting squads, he didn't take babies, and throw them into ovens, and if you're making a comparison what you're saying is Hitler didn't have any of those things either. So shame — shame — on you Larry David. You know, we used to be friends, boy. No more. And the one thing: about Larry David he stopped being funny, I don't laugh at his jokes anymore because I know they're not jokes. That's who he really is, so they're not jokes...."

Said Alan Dershowitz, trashing Larry David's trashing of Bill Maher's dining with Trump.

Here's David's NYT op-ed "My Dinner With Adolf" — free-access link — which begins:

Imagine my surprise when in the spring of 1939 a letter arrived at my house inviting me to dinner at the Old Chancellery with the world’s most reviled man, Adolf Hitler. I had been a vocal critic of his on the radio from the beginning, pretty much predicting everything he was going to do on the road to dictatorship. No one I knew encouraged me to go. “He’s Hitler. He’s a monster.” But eventually I concluded that hate gets us nowhere. I knew I couldn’t change his views, but we need to talk to the other side....

Read the whole thing. I gave you the free link. Now, I do think what Larry wrote there is funny. It just violates a rule of taste: You shouldn't compare anything to the Holocaust. 

We can talk about why that rule fell out of fashion. But whether Larry David is violating a strict and important rule or just going with the flow of the current taste within his hyper-elite stratum of society is a separate question from whether it's funny.

He's got the touch.

J.D. Vance:

Do you picture the desk jobs of others like this?

I think this is, essentially, how Elon Musk pictures 90% of the federal workforce:

Beware the panicans and the entryists.

I'm reading "How Trump Worship Took Hold in Washington/The President is at the center of a brazenly transactional ecosystem that rewards flattery and lockstep loyalty," by Antonia Hitchens, in The New Yorker:

Jack Posobiec, a maga operative and podcaster, emerged as a primary enforcer. “Crush panicans, destroy panicans, deport panicans, roundhouse kick a panican into the concrete, slam dunk a panican into a trash can, banish filthy panicans,” he tweeted, to his 3.1 million followers....

The tone of that tweet. It rang in my head like the voice of Divine:

"Panicans," by the way, is a portmanteau of "panic" and — not pelicans — "Americans."

Back to The New Yorker. Hitchens writes:

"Perhaps the biggest shot in the arm for the fetal-personhood movement came in the form of an executive order ostensibly unrelated to abortion..."

"... one with an especially unwieldy and Orwellian name: Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government. The order proclaims, with unwarranted confidence, that '"Female" means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell. "Male" means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell.'... At this year’s March for Life rally... Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House... brought up Trump’s executive order early in his speech: 'I don’t know if you saw his executive order on gender, but it defines life as beginning at conception, rather than birth.' Johnson put invisible air quotes around 'gender,' but he came down hard on the word 'conception,' jabbing one finger in the air as he said it. The crowd cheered. Ideas have consequences."

Writes Margaret Talbot, in "Does a Fetus Have Constitutional Rights? After Dobbs, fetal personhood has become the anti-abortion movement’s new objective" (The New Yorker).

At the Trout Lily Café...

... you can write about whatever you want.

"The passport policy does indeed impose a special disadvantage on the plaintiffs due to their sex and the court therefore concludes that it discriminates on the basis of sex."

Wrote Judge Julia E. Kobick, quoted in "Judge Rules Against Trump Administration on Passport Changes/A group of transgender plaintiffs sued President Trump and the State Department over a new rule prohibiting passports from including a gender different from the sex listed on an original birth certificate" (NYT).

President Trump is really into this coloring.

President @realDonaldTrump coloring with the kids at the White House Easter Egg Roll!

“I’m really into this!” pic.twitter.com/VKOK0h2Jcm

— Margo Martin (@MargoMartin47) April 21, 2025

Twinspeak.

NEW: Australian identical twins speak in sync after witnessing an armed carjacking incident in Queensland, Australia.

This is hands down a top 5 interview of all time.

The twins, Bridgette Powers and Paula Powers, explained how their mom came face to face with a… pic.twitter.com/qvbOxK2Vyf

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 21, 2025

"But it’s not just the song’s universal applicability that feels important right now. It’s also Dylan’s sneering, taunting tone."

"You could hear that same tone — a kind of sarcastic contempt, directed at an unnamed 'you' — 15 years ago in Lady Gaga’s anthems of alienated love and today in Kendrick Lamar’s diss tracks. ('Your lil’ memes is losin’ steam, they figured you out.') I sense the same spirit, too, behind television shows like 'The White Lotus,' where almost everyone is morally repulsive but no one knows it, or (if they suspect it) has any idea what to do about it...."

Writes Sebastian Smee, in "The uncanny Bob Dylan song that inaugurated an era of dread/Dylan is the Picasso of popular music. His ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’ speaks more powerfully to what it feels like to be alive in 2025 than anything I can think of" (WaP0)(free-access link).

I wasn't going to read this article, because I didn't need The Washington Post to help me understand a song I've been listening to — very attentively — for 60 years.

But then I saw that it was written by Sebastian Smee, so I read it.

The NYT notices that Kamala Harris was protected from needing to state an opinion on the trans-athlete issue.

The observation is hidden away near the end of "How the War Over Trans Athletes Tore a Volleyball Team Apart.Blaire Fleming was a little-known college player. Then she suddenly became a symbol of injustice — to both sides of the controversy."

It's written like this, as if it was just a fluke that Harris never had to face this difficult, divisive question:

Following Biden’s exit from the presidential race last July, Kamala Harris seemed willing to address the trans-athlete issue. According to three people familiar with Harris’s campaign strategy, the campaign expected that the moderators would ask Harris about transgender children in sports during her September debate with Trump. The answer Harris’s advisers prepared for her, according to a person familiar with her campaign strategy, emphasized that trans children should be made to feel welcome in their schools but also acknowledged the concerns of parents whose kids, especially older ones, play competitive sports and want to make sure the competition is fair. But no one ever asked her, and the candidate didn’t bring it up on her own.

Oh? She "seemed willing"? I think if "no one ever asked her," it was because she never answered questions from the kind of people who would ask, and though she barely answered any substantive questions at any point, she only exposed herself to questions from interviewers who wanted to help her. So I don't think she "seemed willing" to address the issue! That she had an answer worked out, in case the question ever slipped through, proves virtually nothing, but I can imagine her circling around the abstract platitudes of making everyone feel welcome and simultaneously ensuring the competition is fair. The prepared answer is as puzzling as no answer at all.

On the topic of what actually is fair, I found this interesting material in the middle of the article:

"I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that includes the repatriation of 100 percent of the 252 Venezuelans who were deported, in exchange for the release and surrender of an identical number (252) of the thousands of political prisoners you hold."

Wrote El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, on X, addressing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, quoted in the NYT.

Among the political prisoners in Venezuela named in Mr. Bukele’s post were several people detained by the Maduro government in a crackdown last year. He also said that as part of the swap, he would require Mr. Maduro to release “nearly 50 detained citizens of other nationalities,” including Americans. As of last month, at least 68 foreign passport holders were wrongfully imprisoned in Venezuela, according to a Venezuelan watchdog group, Foro Penal.... 

“Unlike you, who holds political prisoners,” Mr. Bukele wrote, “we do not have political prisoners. All the Venezuelans we have in custody were detained as part of an operation against gangs like Tren de Aragua in the United States.” 

"That branch in the water looks like some creature rising from the lake and reaching for the shore...."

Said Rusty in the comments to last night's café. He was looking at the sunrise photo I'd taken that morning.

And Meade had made a similar comment about the previous morning's sunrise photo. He commented pictorially, by text, picking out the detail...

... with the caption "The Easter Bunny."

It made me wonder — what are the horror stories involving rabbits?

"Ex beauty pageant competitor wants to decide what is and isn’t appropriate for the Smithsonian."

"Great — if the administration is going to embrace stupid, it might as well go all the way. Just another incompetent boob doing a job they aren’t qualified for and they’ve no business doing. There are some parts of American history I don’t like — that doesn’t mean I get to pretend they didn’t happen or demand they be stricken from museums and textbooks. It’s how most of us learn. And if we actually learn the lessons our ancestors taught us, we don’t do those things again. Unless you are a Republican — then you embrace the wrongs of the past. And btw — art can make people feel uncomfortable sometimes — it’s supposed to evoke feeling!"

A comment, over at The Washington Post, on an article titled "She told Trump the Smithsonian needs changing. He’s ordered her to do it. Who is Lindsey Halligan, the attorney assigned to help remove 'improper ideology' from a major cultural institution?" (free-access link).

"As a boy, he was intelligent, deeply religious and loved to dance the tango."

"When he was 16, Jorge was rushing to meet friends but paused at the Basilica of St. Joseph in Buenos Aires, feeling an urge to go inside. In the sanctuary, it felt as though 'someone grabbed me from inside,' he said, adding, 'Right there I knew I had to be a priest.'... Francis died on Monday at 7:35 a.m., less than a day after blessing the faithful who had gathered for an Easter Mass in St. Peter’s Square. He appeared on a balcony on Sunday, looking frail, and after blessing the crowd, he deferred to a Vatican aide to address the crowd on his behalf...."

From the NYT obituary for Pope Francis.

There's also this: "Francis repeatedly sought to stand up to nationalism. During the U.S. presidential election, he suggested that Donald J. Trump, the Republican candidate, was 'not Christian' because of his preference for building walls rather than bridges. Mr. Trump responded: 'For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful. I am proud to be a Christian.'"

ADDED: Francis had seemed to be doing better but perhaps he was only determined — massively determined — to make a strong showing for Easter (and to target the United States for criticism over its treatment of migrants):

Easter sunrise — 6:13.

Please feel free to write about what you like in the comments.

“Happy Easter to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics…”

“… who are fighting and scheming so hard to bring Murderers, Drug Lords, Dangerous Prisoners, the Mentally Insane, and well known MS-13 Gang Members and Wife Beaters, back into our Country. Happy Easter also to the WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges and Law Enforcement Officials who are allowing this sinister attack on our Nation to continue, an attack so violent that it will never be forgotten! Sleepy Joe Biden purposefully allowed Millions of CRIMINALS to enter our Country, totally unvetted and unchecked, through an Open Borders Policy that will go down in history as the single most calamitous act ever perpetrated upon America. He was, by far, our WORST and most Incompetent President, a man who had absolutely no idea what he was doing -- But to him, and to the person that ran and manipulated the Auto Pen (perhaps our REAL President!), and to all of the people who CHEATED in the 2020 Presidential Election in order to get this highly destructive Moron Elected, I wish you, with great love, sincerity, and affection, a very Happy Easter!!!”

An Easter message. From Donald Trump.

ADDED: Trump took a similar approach to Easter last year:

"Do you think, do you think... when you don your tinfoil hat and and velcro, the chinstrap... that this is a grand plan to destroy civilization?"

Joe Rogan asks Tim Dillon:

Dillon says he doesn't know if there's "a grand plan," but, he says, there are "two things that are happening simultaneously." First, there are "people that believe in like nothing," "like empty suit Gavin Newsom types." And second, there are "the craziest people in the world that somehow have gotten hold of a ton of money and a ton of influence on social media." It's a terribly destructive combination:

"I am happy to have dual citizenship, with access to all 27 EU countries. If the next president is cut from the same cloth as Trump..."

"... I will conclude the dream is over, and it's time to go. This country had so much promise."

So writes a commenter at "Want to leave the U.S. for good? How to get dual citizenship. Depending on your ancestry, you could get a second passport and live abroad" (WaPo).

That's a free-access link, so you can see all the other comments that display a shocking thinness of love for one's native land. Imagine being born in the United States of America, then leaving in a huff and running off to a non-place called "all 27 EU countries." Where's the love?!

If you really hate what the President is doing, what good is it to remove yourself and observe from afar? Presumably, you hate him because of what he is doing to hundreds of millions of people, who will remain where they are, victims of his (as you see it) evildoing? Your leaving the premises does absolutely nothing to help. Why would it matter where you are? 

"Vance in Rome trying to meet the Pope? What a theatrical performance. Hypocrite. Viper."

That's the 3rd most highly rated comment at the WaPo article "Vance meets with pope as Francis’s Easter message decries ‘logic of fear’/The visit at the Vatican brought together the ailing head of the Catholic church and a high-profile convert who has criticized the pope’s social teachings."

Second most highly rated comment: "I’m surprised Vance didn’t burst into flames."

Most highly rated: "Vance is just one of many fake religious politicians. They run around boasting of their faith, but practice none of the Christian values Jesus and the bible preached."

And here's the "logic of fear" statement in the Pope's Easter message: "How much contempt is stirred up at times towards the vulnerable, the marginalized and migrants. I appeal to all those in positions of political responsibility in our world not to yield to the logic of fear which only leads to isolation from others, but rather to use the resources available to help the needy, to fight hunger and to encourage initiatives that promote development. These are the ‘weapons’ of peace: weapons that build the future, instead of sowing seeds of death."

Sunrise — 6:06, 6:26.

Happy Easter.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments.

"I got my one foot stuck because I was trying to get my electronics out of my pocket. I knew not to panic."

"I have to be a macho man. You can’t ask for help when you’re trying to impress the girl you’re with."

Said Mitchell O’Brien, quoted in "Man Sinks in Quicksand and Emerges With a Girlfriend/A Michigan man who ended up waist-deep on an unstable beach was rescued, and found himself in a relationship" (NYT).

A comforting thought: "As it happens, drowning in quicksand in real life is nearly impossible, scientists say. Sand is denser than the human body, so even if one’s legs sink, the air in the lungs keeps the body too buoyant to go all the way under."

And here's that John Mulaney bit about quicksand: "I always thought that quicksand was going to be a much bigger problem than it turned out to be. Because if you watch cartoons, quicksand is like the third biggest thing you have to worry about in adult life — behind real sticks of dynamite and giant anvils falling on you from the sky. I used to sit around and think about what to do about quicksand. I never thought about how to handle real problems in adult life, I was never like 'Oh, what's it gonna be like when relatives ask to borrow money?' Now that I've gotten older, not only have I never stepped in quicksand—I've never even heard about it! No one's ever been like, 'Hey if you're coming to visit, take I-90 'cause I-95 has a little quicksand in the middle. Looks like regular sand, but then you're gonna start to sink into it.'"

"When Biden bit into an ice cream bar after the talk, the partially melted dessert fell to the floor."

Wrote The Harvard Crimson, quoted in "Joe Biden drops ice cream and calls Ukraine ‘Iraq’ on secret Harvard visit."A talk by the former president at the university in Donald Trump’s crosshairs was 'marked by gaffes,' a student newspaper said" (London Times).

The former president held a private seminar with 50 politics students that was kept secret until his arrival. When word got out, a group of pro-Palestinian students assembled to protest outside the building....

Biden is well-known for his fondness for ice cream and frequently stopped for a cone during campaigning or presidential visits. He remarked in 2023 that, “you know it’s pretty dull when you’ve been in public life as long as I have and you’re known for two things: chocolate chip ice cream and Ray-Ban sunglasses, but what the hell.”

Why did they give him an "ice cream bar"?

"The Supreme Court temporarily blocked the Trump administration early Saturday from deporting another group of Venezuelan migrants..."

"... accused of being gang members under the expansive powers of a rarely invoked wartime law. 'The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court,' the court said in a brief, unsigned order that gave no reasoning, as is typical in emergency cases. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented.... More than 50 Venezuelans were scheduled to be flown out of the country...."

The NYT reports.

Meanwhile, with respect to a person already deported, Trump displays a picture and frames Democrats as admirers of the man (rather than as devotees of due process rights): 

This is the hand of the man that the Democrats feel should be brought back to the United States, because he is such “a fine and innocent person.” They said he is not a member of MS-13, even though he’s got MS-13 tattooed onto his knuckles, and two Highly Respected Courts found… pic.twitter.com/31sNr2k1SK

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 18, 2025

For the annals of Things I Asked Grok: Does Abrego Garcia have gang tattoos on his hand? Answer: here.

At the Friday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

The unfortunate storefront in my photograph used to be Paul's Books, one of the loveliest places in Madison. It had been around since 1954, and I didn't know that it had closed. I hadn't walked downtown in quite a while. I prefer to walk in the woods, but I thought I'd change my ways today. I pictured myself looking at the poetry books at Paul's Books. But no, Paul's was gone. And this insanity was there. You're sorry? I'm sorry.

"The sentence, dull but clear, was buried 158 pages into Wisconsin’s budget. 'For the limit for the 2023-24 school year and the 2024-25 school year,' the sentence read..."

"... when it was passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature, 'add $325' to the amount school districts could generate through property taxes for each student. But by the time Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, and his veto pen were finished, it said something else entirely: 'For the limit for 2023-2425, add $325.' It was clever. Creative. Perhaps even a bit subversive, extending the increase four centuries longer than lawmakers intended. But was it legal? On Friday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court said yes. In a 4-to-3 ruling in a lawsuit challenging Mr. Evers’s use of his partial veto authority, the court’s liberal majority said the governor had acted legally. The three conservative justices on the court dissented...."

From "Wisconsin Supreme Court Says Governor’s 400-Year Edit Was Within Veto Authority/Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, used his veto power to increase school funding limits for four centuries longer than Republican lawmakers in the state had intended" (NYT).

"On Netflix for the past couple seasons, there has been a TV show that displays love — a type of love that I have never seen or experienced before."

"It's a love on the spectrum. Yeah. Best show out right now...."/"So although they have... I call them different abilities... they really about their business in what they desire and what love looks like to them....  And they'll tell you straight up, hey, baby, you don't like this? That ain't going to work for me."/"I'm telling you right now, if everybody dated how they date on 'Love On the Spectrum,' dating would be so easy.... I want to be matter of fact. I want to be able to just go in... It's so amazing to watch because if they don't like each other, they'd be like, all right, cool, I'm fine with that. And they walk away. They'll go on a date and she'd be like, did you have a good time? He was like, not really, not really. I wasn't feeling it. I didn't like you like that. But we could be cool. She'd be like, I understand. Don't worry about it. And they shake hands and hug and walk off.... If I could just wake up in the morning and say how I felt...."

I enjoyed "The Manly Deeds Podcast" talking about one of my favorite TV shows, "Love On the Spectrum":

I like the idea of neurotypical people watching the show and picking up communication hints. Now, the autistic people on the show have been taught skills that are modeled on the communication of neurotypical people. But there is room for learning in both directions.

Here's the trailer for Season 3 of "Love on the Spectrum," which I highly recommend:

"The single worst thing I think this White House could do politically is what they are doing, right?"

"Creating a causal relationship between their signature economic policy and prices going up. And so if... we do see that inflation or we do have a recession... this White House will be blamed... And that creates the perfect conditions for Democrats to have a good midterms and feel good about 2028. And that's nothing to do with their own vision.... Right now, it seems like the chaos, they're kind of used to. Donald Trump up against his usual enemies. And I think there is some leeway — for art of the deal... negotiation, things like that. But the guy who says he'll eat a rat for Donald Trump is the exception. If those prices increase, the only person who will be blamed for that is the president. And if you're a Democrat, that's the best thing that could happen for the prospect of the party returning the power, right?"

Said Astead W. Herndon, in "Do Trump Voters Like His Tariffs? We Went to Michigan to Find Out," today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast.

Was there a guy who said he'd eat a rat for Donald Trump? There was a guy who said he wouldn't care if prices go up, that he would "survive," "adapt," and: "I'm the kind of guy that'll, if I'm starving, I'll eat a rat. I'll eat cockroach. I'm a survivalist." I wouldn't say that's eating a rat for Donald Trump. It's eating a rat for himself — to survive. The implication is that he's self-reliant. He doesn't look to the government to solve his problems. The podcast made it sound like a "Fear Factor" challenge or a sick devotion to Donald Trump, the man. 

Anyway, I'm trying to highlight the idea that — on the tariff issue — those who are rooting for the Democrats seem to think their best strategy is to do nothing but hope for inflation and recession: "That's the best thing that could happen for the prospect of the party returning the power, right?"

"Kilmar Abrego Garcia, miraculously risen from the ‘death camps’ & ‘torture,’ now sipping margaritas with Sen. Van Hollen in the tropical paradise of El Salvador."

"Now that he’s been confirmed healthy, he gets the honor of staying in El Salvador’s custody."

Said El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, quoted in "Alleged MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia seen ‘sipping margaritas’ with Sen. Van Hollen amid El Salvador deportation battle, new photos reveal" (NY Post).

"Miraculously risen" — somehow, we get Easter joke to take us into Easter weekend. 

"Almost a decade after its première, 'Handmaid’s' retains its signature violence but has thoroughly exhausted its narrative premises...."

"Writing in the Reagan years, [novelist Margaret] Atwood imagined an authoritarianism of the repressive Christian variety. The sexual politics of our era’s conservatives are more prurient and boorish: the misogynists of Gilead say 'Blessed be the fruit'; ours say 'Grab ’em by the pussy.' Still, the sadism of the show’s fictional world finds ample comparisons in our own... In its early seasons, 'The Handmaid’s Tale' was criticized for what some saw as its self-indulgent scaremongering. The show, its detractors sneered, was trauma porn for middle-class women who wanted to see themselves as victims of the Trump age...."

Writes Moira Donegan, in "'The Handmaid’s Tale' Reflects the Exhaustion of Liberal Feminism/What’s most striking about the show, now in its final season, is not its hysteria but its lack of conviction" (The New Yorker).

If your first thought is "Sheer Madness," your second thought should be is this for real.

If you just X about it, you're revealing something about yourself. Do you want this to be true?

***

I just found that in draft form. Couldn't remember what it was, and it seemed so strange. Now, I remember and I remember why I left it unfinished, and somehow I like it in its unfinished form. I don't want to call attention to the specific thing I was reacting to, and I like it in the abstract.

"I’m very proud of my near thirty years with the Who. Filling the shoes of my Godfather, ‘uncle Keith,’ has been the biggest honor and I remain their biggest fan."

Said Zak Starkey, quoted in "The Who Fired Ringo Starr’s Son As Their Drummer" (Vulture).

The article links to "Moment Roger Daltrey halts show and kicks off at The Who drummer weeks before sacking" (Metro), where we hear Daltrey stop, mid-concert, and say "We’ve got a big problem up here. I can sing to some things, but I can’t sing to that fucking racket."

Vulture asks "But, well, was Keith Moon’s kit explosion considered too much?" I think the answer is yes. 

Roger Daltrey is 81 years old. 

UPDATE: "Zak Starkey reinstated as The Who’s drummer, days after departure" (The Guardian). A quote from Pete Townshend: "Roger and I would like Zak to tighten up his latest evolved drumming style to accommodate our non-orchestral line up and he has readily agreed. I take responsibility for some of the confusion."

At the Thursday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

"Salmon given antianxiety drugs take more risks, study finds."

Says the headline at The Washington Post — free-access link. Your first thought might be: Scientists, leave those fish alone! But they're not just getting the drugs from scientists:

We’re turning our rivers, lakes and oceans into soups of pharmaceutical pollution.... Nearly 1,000 pharmaceuticals have been detected in waterways around the world.... 

"We have now seen that the Trump administration manages the economy with the same expertise and competence it manages higher education, and as a result we might begin to rally the American people."

I'm reading "I’m a Columbia Professor. Here’s the Really Disheartening Part of This Mess," a NYT op-ed by Matthew Connelly, a Columbia history professor.

I'm all for expertise and competence, but who is this "we" threatening to "rally" us in the name of longing for expertise and competence?

Well, it doesn't say "rally us," it says "rally the American people." I used the "us" pronoun for "the American people," but that doesn't work very well with the "we" that is used twice in the quoted sentence.

Professor Connelly sees himself and his New York Times readers as the "we" who look on as Trump breaks things and hope to excite "the American people" to oppose and resist Trump. But the American people have supported Trump because the American people have seen what your "we" has done with its power when it has had the chance. "Let the Experts Handle It Again" is not a great rallying cry these days.

I'm railing about one sentence. Most of the column is about Columbia working with the Trump administration and professors at other schools boycotting Columbia. Connelly's "we" is not cohesive. It's in no position to "rally the American people." It's in what Connelly calls a "circular firing squad." And you want to be our "expertise and competence" providers?

"On American TV shows, the London native starred as an android brought to an asteroid to keep a prisoner (Jack Warden) company on 1959’s 'The Lonely'..."

"... the seventh episode of CBS’ 'The Twilight Zone,' and she was the self-described 'office bitch' Roz in 1982-83 on ABC’s adaptation of '9 to 5.'"

From "Jean Marsh, ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ Actress and Co-Creator, Dies at 90/The British actress won an Emmy for her performance as the prim and proper parlormaid Rose Buck on the acclaimed ITV drama ['Upstairs, Downstairs']" (Hollywood Reporter).

I saw that yesterday and immediately watched the "Twilight Zone" episode, "The Lonely." Marsh plays a robot, given, mercifully, to a man condemned to 50 years alone on a desolate asteroid:

It's a great robot story! Watch the full episode here, on Vimeo. Great ending (with a great teaser for next week's show). I don't remember having seen "The Lonely" before, and I devotedly watched the show at the time, but perhaps not until after the first season, which aired in 1959, when I was 8. 

The actor who plays the condemned man in "The Lonely" is Jack Warden. That blew my mind! I had just finished watching "Shampoo" (on The Criterion Channel) the previous night.

In "Shampoo," Warden plays the male character who is not played by Warren Beatty. I never go around thinking about Jack Warden! And yet yesterday, before I got the prompt to watch "The Lonely," I was thinking about Jack Warden. Here's the trailer, which has everything you need to know about Warren Beatty and just a bit of Jack Warden:

"My friends and I are being described as like Satan’s lapdogs, the devil and the Manson family all rolled into one."

Wrote Michelle Zajko, in a letter from jail, quoted in The London Times, which looks like this:

 

Note the caption — The Times doesn't seem to know the difference between "peddle" and "pedal." Imagine riding lies around like they're some kind of bicycle!

As for these Zizians:

The Zizians have been described by authorities as an “extremist group”. A woman who knew one of their alleged members described them as a group of “highly intelligent, transgender, vegan” individuals. Social media posts attributed to the group have mentioned “evil people ganging up to kill off good people”, and a wish to “strip society of morality”....

About that figurative use of "lapdogs," the OED finds it first in the 1838 novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton novel "Alice, or The Mysteries," where a character says:

"I allow that your beauty and talent were sufficient of themselves to charm a wiser man than Doltimore; but had I not suppressed jealousy, sacrificed love, had I dropped a hint to your liege lord,--nay, had I not fed his lap-dog vanity by all the cream and sugar of flattering falsehoods,--you would be Caroline Merton still!"

Now, that's writing! Perhaps you remember The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which "challenged entrants to compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels."

Sunrise — 6:16.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments. And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

I remember a blog post from December 6, 2021 titled "I remember...."

I remember it began: "I remember something made me read this old blog post of mine, from 2013, when I had a little project going where I'd take one sentence from 'The Great Gatsby' and present it for discussion.... The sentence of the day was 'I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This-or-That’s and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances, and the matchings of invitations: 'Are you going to the Ordways'? the Herseys'? the Schultzes'?' and the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands.'"

I'm looking back at that post because I just did a search of my archive for "Brainard," because I'm reading a new article in The New Yorker, by Joshua Rothman, "What Do You Remember? The more you explore your own past, the more you find there" and it begins: "Last year, for my birthday, my wife gave me a copy of 'I Remember,' an unusual memoir by the artist Joe Brainard. It’s a tidy little book, less than two hundred pages long, made entirely from short, often single-sentence paragraphs beginning with the words 'I remember.'"

Writing about that "Gatsby" sentence, I'd said: "Things remembered: fur coats, chatter, hands waving, matchings of invitations, and long green tickets. These remembered things give the reader a sense of the incompletely delineated human beings.... This is a mass of faceless humanity, cluttered with hands, waving and clasping.... " And a commenter, gadfly, said: "Althouse is doing her Joe Brainard, 'I Remember' schtick - but she can't top the master." He quoted Brainard's book, and it was obviously my kind of thing — very sentence-y. I immediately read it. I'll read it again, now that I'm reminded of it.

But what is Joshua Rothman saying about it?

"The Trump administration has begun to scrutinize the real estate transactions of New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, in what could be the opening move..."

"... of President Trump’s first investigation into one of his foremost adversaries. The head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency sent a criminal referral letter to the Department of Justice this week, saying that Ms. James 'appeared to have falsified records' related to properties she owns in Virginia and New York in order to receive favorable loan terms.... When purchasing the Virginia residence, Ms. James signed notarized paperwork attesting that she would use it as a principal residence.... The referral letter also accused Ms. James of misrepresenting the number of units in a Brooklyn home she purchased in 2001, possibly in order to receive better interest rates.....The month before Ms. James’s lawsuit against Mr. Trump went to trial, anonymous complainants began to file documents with New York City’s Department of Buildings, several of them related to the number of units in the home.... One of the complaints, in October 2024, asked why Ms. James was 'NOT being prosecuted for fraud and filling false documents when other people have been persecuted for far less crimes,' then added a pointed question: 'a Double Standard???'"

From "Trump Official Scrutinizes N.Y.’s Attorney General Over Real Estate/The head of a U.S. housing agency told prosecutors that Letitia James appeared to have falsified real estate records, a move that could be the start of an investigation of a key Trump adversary" (NYT).

"The man accused of setting fire to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence Sunday indicated he was motivated by his views on the Israel-Gaza war and believed Shapiro needed to stop the killing of Palestinians..."

"... a newly unveiled search warrant says. Cody Balmer, 38, made the declarations in a 911 call after he left the property, in which he reported his own attack to dispatchers.... Balmer — who reportedly struggled with untreated mental illness — said the governor needed to stop having [Balmer's] friends killed and said 'our people have been put through too much by that monster,' according to the affidavit. He also said, 'All he has is a banquet hall to clean up.' Balmer allegedly identified himself by name and told the dispatcher he would “confess to everything that I had done.... Shapiro has expressed support for Israel, and last year pushed for the University of Pennsylvania to disband a pro-Palestinian encampment...."

From "Suspect who targeted Shapiro cited views on Palestinians, warrant says/Cody Balmer, 38, described his views in a call to 911 reporting the attack. His brother said that Balmer suffered from mental illness" (WaPo).

We're told that Cody Balmer's brother Dan says Cody "was diagnosed with bipolar disorder" and has expressed the belief that his sister-in-law is a witch. And: "Dan Balmer also said Cody Balmer was politically independent and had urged his family to vote for Donald Trump in November."

"August finally came in with a blast that shook my house and augured little augusticity. I made raspberry Jello the color of rubies in the setting sun."

"Mad raging sunsets poured in seafoams of cloud through unimaginable crags, with every rose tint of hope beyond, I felt just like it, brilliant and bleak beyond words. Everywhere awful ice fields and snow straws; one blade of grass jiggling in the winds of infinity, anchored to a rock. To the east, it was gray; to the north, awful; to the west, raging mad, hard iron fools wrestling in the groomian gloom; to the south, my father's mist...."

So begins the last chapter of "Dharma Bums," by Jack Kerouac. Full text at the link. Now, I've finished it. I read it because it came up in the context of notes that people leave at the top of mountains, blogged here.

No, I don't know what "groomian" means, but somehow the Jello made me feel grounded. The word "groom" does appear elsewhere in the book. Maybe that's a clue. It's in this description of colleges as "nothing but grooming schools for the middle-class non-identity

Magnolia.

"I'm reading about a tennis player who smelled so bad that her opponent was heard complaining, and I'm wondering..."

"... if a sports player might in some cases, perhaps this one, deliberately acquire a bad smell to gain a competitive edge? Are there known cases? Do the rules cover this behavior? It could be a way of cheating. Beyond sports, what other areas of human competition offer opportunities to gain an advantage through smelling bad?"

For the annals of Things I Asked Grok.

You can read Grok's answer here.

And here's the news story that prompted my question: "British tennis player Harriet Dart apologizes after asking opponent to wear deodorant during match/Dart told the umpire that her opponent, Lois Boisson, 'smells really bad'" (CBS Sports).

"After becoming pregnant with their son, St. Clair and Musk’s relationship progressed.... In November, Musk responded to a selfie she texted him saying: 'I want to knock you up again.'"

"While she was pregnant, Musk had urged her to deliver the baby via caesarean section and told her he didn’t want the child to be circumcised. (Musk has posted on X that vaginal births limit brain size and that C-sections allow for larger brains.) St. Clair is Jewish and circumcisions are an important ritual in the religion, and she decided against a C-section. He told her she should have 10 babies, and they debated the child’s middle name.... She complied with the request to not name Musk on the birth certificate. Not long after the birth, [Musk’s longtime fixer, Jared] Birchall pushed St. Clair to sign documents keeping the father of the baby and details regarding her relationship with Musk secret in return for financial support. The offer was a one-time fee of $15 million for a home and living expenses, plus an additional $100,000 a month until the baby turned 21. Musk told her by text it was dangerous to reveal his relationship to the baby, describing himself as the '#2 after Trump for assassination.' He added that 'only the paranoid survive.' But she didn’t sign...."

From "The Tactics Elon Musk Uses to Manage His ‘Legion’ of Babies—and Their Mothers/The world’s richest man juggles more than a dozen children and ‘harem drama’ along with running his companies and advising Trump. He recently took a paternity test in a battle with one woman over money and privacy" (Wall Street Journal).

The life of a one-man genius sperm bank is not easy.

An "SNL" sketch that surprisingly spoofs the idea that you're not allowed to ask where that baby came from.

"This is going to anger a lot of people.... People say they want change in the Democratic Party, but really they want change so long as it doesn’t potentially endanger their position of power."

"That’s not actually wanting change. That’s selfishness.... 'What we are not saying here is, ‘Oh, you’re old, you need to go.' What we’re saying is we need to make room for a new generation to step up and help make sure that we have the people that are most acutely impacted by a lot of the issues that we are legislating on — that are actually going to live to see the consequences of this."

Said David Hogg, who is a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee and also the president of Leaders We Deserve, which has a plan to back young challengers to Democratic incumbents in Democratic primaries.

Hogg is quoted in "A Top Democratic Official Plots to Take Down Party Incumbents/David Hogg, a young liberal activist and now a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, is leading an effort to unseat the party’s older lawmakers in primaries" (NYT).

At a private meeting last month, a “neutrality policy” was circulated asking the party’s top officers to refrain from any activity that would “call into question their impartiality and evenhandedness,” according to two people with knowledge of the pledge, which sought to cover officers “both in their D.N.C. capacity and in their personal capacity.” Everyone signed it — except Mr. Hogg.

Donald Trump presents — without a word of commentary — Joe Biden, saying "colored kids."

pic.twitter.com/Y6OFeGKS4l

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 16, 2025

What do we think of Joe here? It can't be that he's racist for saying "colored kids." It's not as though Biden is attempting to revive the old expression. It's not like what the other Joe — Joe Rogan — has been doing with the word "retarded." Biden is painting a picture of the past, when he was boy: "I remember seeing kids going by — at the time, called 'colored kids' — on a bus going by." Part of the memory is the memory of what the black children were called. It was the completely common speech of that time and, I believe, the preferred term. Not racist. To cling to it, after the 1950s, became problematic, but Biden isn't clinging to it. He's recreating his boyhood experience, sensing and learning. I think Trump knows all that, and by merely showing the speech and saying nothing, he avoids criticism. He just hangs it out there for people to react to, as if Biden's mere voicing of the now-disfavored words is the same as his actually using the word as his go-to way to refer to black people today. Many will take the bait.

The UK supreme court has ruled that the terms 'woman' and 'sex' in the Equality Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex....

"Five judges from the UK supreme court ruled unanimously that the legal definition of a woman in the Equality Act 2010 did not include transgender women who hold gender recognition certificates (GRCs). In a significant defeat for the Scottish government, the court decision will mean that transgender women can no longer sit on public boards in places set aside for women. It could have far wider ramifications by leading to much greater restrictions on the rights of transgender women to use services and spaces reserved for women, and prompt calls for the UK’s laws on gender recognition to be rewritten. The UK government said the ruling 'brings clarity and confidence' for women and those who run hospitals, sports clubs and women’s refuges. A spokesperson said: 'We have always supported the protection of single sex spaces based on biological sex. Single-sex spaces are protected in law and will always be protected by this government...."

The Guardian reports.

"The gender critical campaign group For Women Scotland, which is backed financially by JK Rowling, said the Equality Act’s definition of a woman was limited to people born biologically female...." So, let's check out what Rowling is saying on X:

"Would [Harvard] recognize the Ku Klux Klan? For me, the National Lawyers Guild and the Ku Klux Klan are indistinguishable in terms of ideology...."

"If [Harvard] wouldn't recognize Klansmen or if it wouldn't recognize a group of sexists who called for the end of equality for women, then it shouldn't recognize the pro-Hamas National Lawyers Guild.... If this were the 1950s and there was a university say the University of Mississippi — Old Miss — that was forcibly integrated and it was allowing... some of the Klansmen who were students to harass black students, and the federal government came in and said 'Unless you stop Klansmen from harassing black students we're going to cut off federal funding,' people would be applauding that.'..."

Said Alan Dershowitz, in his latest "Dershow":

"A startup called Sperm Racing, run by four teenage entrepreneurs from the US, said it had raised $1.5 million to stage the event at the Hollywood Palladium..."

"... on April 25. Eric Zhu, the company’s 17-year-old co-founder, said the inaugural event would pit samples taken from two healthy young university students against each other on a racetrack 20cm (8in) long and modelled on the female reproductive system.... 'We want to turn health into competition,' Zhu said. 'Sperm is surprising as a biomarker. The healthier you are, the faster sperm moves.'... A live video feed, magnified 40 times to display the 0.05mm spermatozoa, will track the samples’ progress....The event will be run over three races in front of a crowd of 4,000 spectators, and feature play-by-play commentary, instant replays and leaderboards, according to Zhu.

I'm reading "What to expect from ‘world’s first competitive sperm race’/A fertility startup raised $1.5 million to stage the event at the Hollywood Palladium this month" (London Times).

With the sperm expected to swim at a speed of 5mm per minute, each race will take something like 40 minutes. There are 3 races... and room for 4,000 spectators. Interesting concept, and congratulations to the teenagers for getting $1.5 million and an article in the London Times, but I think success here depends on the quality of the play-by-play commentators.

For the annals of Things I Asked Grok: "What is the key to doing good play-by-play commentary for a long race, say 40 minutes?"

At the Tuesday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

About those shorts.

Link.

"Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting 'Sickness?'"

"Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!"

Said Donald Trump (on Truth Social).

That message follows the news: "The Trump administration says it will freeze $2 billion in funding after Harvard refuses its demands" (NYT).

The demands — in the words of the NYT — are "that the university reduce the power of students and faculty members over the university’s affairs; report foreign students who commit conduct violations immediately to federal authorities; and bring in an outside party to ensure that each academic department is 'viewpoint diverse,' among other steps."

“Let those peasants in the United States wail in front of the 5,000 years of Chinese civilization."

"The Chinese people do not cause trouble, nor are they afraid of trouble. Pressure, threats and blackmail are not the right way to deal with China."

Said "a top Chinese official," quoted in "China fumes ‘peasants in the US’ will suffer as country issues stark warning on Trump’s ‘shameless’ tariff war" (NY Post).

"I do a weird little thing that really works. I tuck the hem of my pants underneath my heel inside my shoe while I’m walking outside."

"I know it sounds strange, but it keeps them from getting filthy on the street or the train. Once I’m indoors, I just pull them back out and let them drape as they’re meant to."

Said the designer Hillary Taymour, quoted in "Are My Pants Really Supposed to Drag on the Ground? Puddle pants, or trousers with floor length, pooling hems, are everywhere right now. Our critic offers tips for wearing them without tracking dirt around with you" (NYT).

Don't we all have pants like that? Too long, and we're too busy to get them re-hemmed. We can just wear them now and inform people that they are "puddle pants."

Things we will know by September.

"We’ve launched a massive testing and research effort that’s going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world. By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures."

Said RFK Jr., at a Cabinet meeting last Thursday, quoted in "Experts Doubt Kennedy’s Timetable for Finding the Cause of Autism/The nation’s health secretary announced that he planned to invite scientists to provide answers by September, but specialists consider that target date unrealistic" (NYT).

Why did he phrase it like that? I do not get the "by September." I could believe that scientists could be chosen to report their best ideas by a particular deadline and that a fact-finder could declare an answer, the way a court, after hearing evidence, could resolve an issue for the purpose of ending a dispute. But that's not the same as knowing. 

I note that he did not say we will know what causes autism. He said we will know what has caused the autism epidemic. Perhaps we will know — or have a pretty good answer to the question — whether the increased numbers are caused by more people seeking the diagnosis, or a changing standard in giving the diagnosis, or some substance (or combination of substances) in the environment, or (to quote Kennedy)  "different ways of parenting." To seek a cause for the epidemic is to ask what has changed. But a lot of things have changed over the years.

Plenty of people were already worried that RFK Jr. was not firmly rooted in science. His "by September" statement stokes that worry — and makes me think he likes to tweak the worriers. 

"Even Mao Zedong displayed a mischievous, almost grandfatherly warmth in private. Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger were both startled..."

"... during their historic 1972 visit to China: Mao joked with them, played with words and made them feel at ease — a deliberate mask concealing one of history’s most devastating authoritarian records. Private interactions, no matter how pleasant, should never influence how we weigh any leader’s record. Matthews softened his judgment of Castro after their personal encounter, helping shape American perceptions of the Cuban revolution — perceptions that soon collided with reality. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain trusted Adolf Hitler’s private assurances during their meetings, describing Hitler afterward as a man with whom he could 'do business' — just before Europe descended into war."

Writes León Krauze in "Bill Maher went to Washington. He got played. Authoritarians always smile in private — especially to journalists" (WaPo).

"Matthews" = Herbert Matthews, who interviewed Castro in 1957, and wrote in the NYT: "The personality of the man is overpowering. It was easy to see that his men adored him."

"He was clearly eligible for naturalization. He met all the requirements for citizenship, and he had applied for it last year, and he was scheduled for an interview, and he should have been naturalized."

Said the lawyer for Mohsen Mahdawi, quoted in "Palestinian Columbia student detained by ICE at citizenship interview/Mohsen Mahdawi, who has been a green-card holder for 10 years, was detained at an ICE field center in Vermont while appearing for a naturalization test" (WaPo)(free-access link).

Stephen Miller goes into a long Trumpish "weave," and the reporters don't turn and walk away.

I guess they're still waiting and hoping that they'll be the one to wedge in a question that will somehow stymie the man who's never going to stop:

I am SO GLAD the Trump administration decided to completely UNLEASH Stephen Miller on the media.

He regularly displays a masterclass in debunking their lies.

"Guys - do you know the difference between a deportation order and a withholding order? Do you know the difference? Any… pic.twitter.com/sDmzpLtiyu

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) April 14, 2025

What a dysfunctional relationship! Miller will take any question and return to the tortured, raped, and murdered women and girls who rule his world. The reporters cling to the hope that the plight of the deportees will seize the hearts of America. If only Miller would say something sufficiently inhumane about them, but every answer is the same: Think of their victims — the women and girls!

Sunrise — 6:18, 6:19, 6:22.

Talk about whatever you like. And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

"I feel I’ve lived my life well, but it’s a feeling. I’m just reasonably happy with what I’ve done."

"I would say if there is an objective point of view, then I’m totally irrelevant to it. If you look at the universe and the complexity of the universe, what I do with my day cannot be relevant."

Said Daniel Kahneman, on March 19, quoted in "There’s a Lesson to Learn From Daniel Kahneman’s Death" (NYT). On March 27th, he followed through with his plan to die by assisted suicide.

Another quote: "I have believed since I was a teenager that the miseries and indignities of the last years of life are superfluous, and I am acting on that belief. I am still active, enjoying many things in life (except the daily news) and will die a happy man. But my kidneys are on their last legs, the frequency of mental lapses is increasing, and I am 90 years old. It is time to go."

Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for his work in "behavioral" economics. You may know his book "Thinking, Fast and Slow."

Larch, magnolia, katsura.

Photos from yesterday in the Arb.

"The question is preposterous. How can I smuggle a terrorist into the United States? I don’t have the power to return him to the United States."

"I mean, we’re not very fond of releasing terrorists into our country. We just turned the murder capital of the world into the safest country in the Western Hemisphere and you want us to go back into releasing criminals so we can go back to being the murder capital of the world? That’s not going to happen."

Said El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, quoted in "El Salvador President Nayib Bukele says he won’t return Abrego Garcia to U.S." (CNBC).

The Supreme Court — in Noem v. Abrego Garcia — obligated the Trump administration to "facilitate and effectuate" returning Abrego Garcia to the United States and sent the case back to the district court to "clarify" the meaning of "effectuate" and to do so with "the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs."

"Oh, the women got back already."

I say, scanning the headlines for a report on Katy Perry, et al., and seeing "Blue Origin flight lands safely after taking Katy Perry, historic all-female crew into space" (Fox News).

I hate space tourism, and I hate just about every use I see of the word "historic," but, of course, you don't want anything bad to happen to the humans hurled upward in a tin can and falling back down to where they started.

Here's Katy Perry's delightfully inane pre-flight commentary:

"It’s kind of hard to make a funny video about that. Like, ‘Yeah, they died. This is the end of the content.'"

"[Said the father, who] was burned out on social media and worried about disappointing people. He didn’t want to answer any more questions. Ultimately, he simply deleted TikTok from his phone and left the story unfinished. 'I mean, what do you think?' Dr. Clifford asked me. 'How would you have finished it?' He was finishing it now, I said. What did he want people to know? He paused and then said that he wanted to thank his followers for their support and tell them that he had given these octopuses his all. 'I think the obvious lesson is that they’re not good pets,' he said. 'They’re not durable pets, they’re not cheap pets, they’re not easy pets....'"

From "A Cautionary Tale of 408 Tentacles/One pet octopus suddenly became more than four dozen. They went viral. Then it all went south" (NYT).

To see the story of the little boy who loved octopuses and the dentist dad who made the boy's dream come true and displayed the the dream — while it lasted — go to the doctoktopus TikTok page: here. 

"With his death, the last of the Latin American Boom's great stars has gone."

I'm reading "Mario Vargas Llosa: Giant of Latin American literature dies at 89" (BBC).

His first novel, The Time of the Hero, was an indictment of corruption and abuse... based on the writer's own time as a teenager at the Leoncio Prado Military Academy, which he described in 1990 as "an extremely traumatic experience." His two years there made him see his country "as a violent society, filled with bitterness, made up of social, cultural, and racial factions in complete opposition". The school itself burnt 1,000 copies of the novel on its grounds, Vargas Llosa claimed.

His experimental second novel The Green House (1966) was set in the Peruvian desert and jungle, and described an alliance of pimps, missionaries and soldiers based around a brothel.

The two novels helped found the Latin American Boom literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The Boom was characterised by experimental and explicitly political works that reflected a continent in turmoil....

The Governor's mansion, after the fire.

The man arrested for the crime, Cody Balmer, 38, has confessed, the NYT reports.

It was a low-key sunrise....

... but we got out later in the day — to the Arb — and found the earliest of the flowering trees in bloom:

That last photo shows my hand steadying the delicate bloom of the Polish larch. The previous 3 photos are all of the magnolia. These are our magnolias. You don't need to tell me that your magnolias look different or that only your magnolias deserve the name magnolias. These are magnolias. 

AND: Talk about whatever you want in the comments.

"The failure to find a clear biomarker doesn’t mean that there is no biological basis for A.D.H.D.; most scientists I spoke to..."

"... agreed that the condition is produced by some combination of biological and environmental forces, though there is little consensus about the relative importance of each. But it does have certain implications for the field, including for the question of medication. If we’re no longer confident that A.D.H.D. has a purely biological basis, does it make sense that our go-to treatment is still rooted in biology?... Adderall, now the leading treatment for the disorder, is a type of amphetamine.... A significant part of the A.D.H.D. establishment does, in fact, promote the message that children and adolescents who resist medication don’t know what’s good for them...."

I'm reading "Have We Been Thinking About A.D.H.D. All Wrong? With diagnoses at a record high, some experts have begun to question our assumptions about the condition — and how to treat it" (NYT)(free-access link).

"He remember... the night he thought his hair would turn white listening to the sound of Russian guards battering prisoners with fists and metal piping..."

"... knowing it would be his turn in the morning. Or the feeling of constant hunger, and the terrible disappointment of waking from a dream in which he was eating his favourite meal. Or the Russian pop song Forever Young, Forever Drunk, which one commandant would play as he selected who to beat...."

From "I was a PoW in Russia — guards played pop music before beatings/Ukrainians released in prisoner swaps with Putin struggle to understand or even remember the horrors they experienced" (London Times).

And here's a YouTube link, if you want to listen to Forever Young, Forever Drunk, the song chosen to intensify the fear of torture.

"The Podcaster Asking You to Side With History’s Villains/Darryl Cooper is no scholar. But legions of fans — many on the right — can’t seem to resist what he presents as hidden truths."

A long NYT article. Free-access link: here.

I don't listen to Cooper's podcast, but I heard a lot about it on the recent Joe Rogan podcast — this one — with Dave Smith and Douglas Murray. Snippet:

SMITH: Darryl is incredibly knowledgeable.

MURRAY: He's not, he's, he's not... when he was offered to debate the current greatest living biographer of Churchill, he said, I can't because he knows much more than me and I admire his work and I've learned from it, but I can't possibly debate him....

ROGAN: Right. But you don't have to be able to debate people to have opinions on things....  That's not your thing.

The world gave "SNL" some great material and "SNL" did not squander the opportunity. Enjoy the near perfection of "The White POTUS."

Why it's not complete perfection: 1. You need to have watched Season 3 of "The White Lotus" to get most of the jokes, 2. The joke about the watch is bad. It was like the old "moron" jokes of the 1960s — e.g., why did the moron throw his watch across the room?/He wanted to see time fly — and the idea that Eric Trump is a moron isn't worth spending time on. 

Mom & Pop Accounting.

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