Althouse: Sunrise

December 13, 2025

Sunrise — 7:00.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

43 comments:

Clyde said...: Clyde's Top 15 Favorite "New" Songs of 2025 - Honorable Mentions - (Part 3 of 5) - Buckingham Nicks - "Don't Let Me Down Again" - Buckingham Nicks (1973; re-released 2025)

In 1973, then-unknown Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks went into the studio in Los Angeles along with various session musicians and recorded an album, released in September 1973 on Polydor Records. It was a commercial failure and was never re-released in any other format until this year. However, shortly after the album was released, the English blues-rock band Fleetwood Mac had relocated to southern California, and Mick Fleetwood was checking out local recording studios, and while at Sound City Studios, Keith Olsen (who had produced the album) played the song "Frozen Love" back over the studio monitors for Fleetwood, who was so impressed with Buckingham's guitar playing that he invited him to join Fleetwood Mac. Buckingham told him that he and Nicks were a package deal, and after consulting with the other members of the band, both Buckingham and Nicks were added, and the rest is history.

This ended up being one of those "lost records" until this September, when the album was re-released by Rhino Records on vinyl and CD, and made available for streaming music services. Some of the songs had been re-recorded at later times, but up until now, the original record had been unavailable. You can hear echoes of the future incarnation of Fleetwood Mac in these songs. The album is worth a listen.

https://youtu.be/QQZy7MqDfSA?si=XP-DyrlZLkMBweNK

Clyde's Top 15 Favorite "New" Songs of 2025 - Honorable Mentions -Bonus Song - Buckingham Nicks - "Crying In the Night"

Another song from the same album.

https://youtu.be/RlCzwEdrX8Y?si=UNYkQzcoJWH3p1RW; 12/13/25, 6:48 PM
tcrosse said...: An alleged photographer has allegedly shot the sun in its alleged rise. See ya later, alligator.; 12/13/25, 6:48 PM
Mason G said...: Internet meme:

If the people who entered the Capitol on J6 were criminals...

Why did the investigating committee need to be pardoned?; 12/13/25, 6:53 PM
Eva Marie said...: Happy Birthday to Dick Van Dyke. 100 years old today. There were going to be birthday screenings of Betty White’s 100th birthday in the movie theaters. Unfortunately she died 17 days short of her birthday.; 12/13/25, 7:15 PM
William said...: I just finished that New Yorker article on Oliver Sacks. Even by New Yorker standards it's quite long. I don't see that much of a scandal. His patients welcomed the attention he gave them, and their lives were not in any way harmed by his fabrications. People enjoyed reading his fabrications and were not in any way harmed by reading these fabrications.......As a scientist, Sacks was a sham, but he was apparently the real deal as a writer.......It seems that the most enduring relationship in Sacks' life was that with his analyst. Fifty years in analysis. That might be some kind of record. But again, no harm, no foul. Both Sacks and his analyst enjoyed their sessions and felt that they were meaningful--as indeed they were. If you think a joke is funny, it's funny. If you think a relationship is nurturing and productive, then so it is.; 12/13/25, 7:20 PM
William said...: Both Bettelheim and Freud himself were involved in far more egregious instances of malpractice and fabulism than Sacks. I've never read any of Sacks' books, but based on the article in The New Yorker, he doesn't seem like a bad sort. If you have an appreciation of his writings, I don't see any need to re-evaluate that appreciation, and he certainly shouldn't be cancelled--at least not as a writer. As a scientist, he's suspect.; 12/13/25, 7:27 PM
Big Mike said...: There were going to be birthday screenings of Betty White’s 100th birthday in the movie theaters. Unfortunately she died 17 days short of her birthday.

She died shortly after receiving a COVID booster.; 12/13/25, 7:37 PM
RCOCEAN II said...: Just got through watching SNL season 10. For those who think SNL was always great until 2010 or 2002, I suggest they go back and watch some of the episodes. from 1980s.

Awful hosts: Mr. T, Howard Cosell, Ringo Starr, Ed Asner, Jesse jackson.
Lots of Billy crystal doing blackface.
Lots of mediocre cast members like Rich Hall and Jim Belushi.
Lots of low-key mildly amusing sketches that go one forever.

The only bright spot? Martin Short.; 12/13/25, 7:46 PM
john mosby said...: Ocean: I did love the Jesse Jackson sketch "The Question is Moot!" CC, JSM; 12/13/25, 7:48 PM
RCOCEAN II said...: For the first part of Season 10 we get Harry Shearer, who supposed to be the master of impressions (like Phil Hartmann or Dana Carvey). But shearer is hit or miss. His reagan is good (vocally) and his Mike Wallace is also OK. But everyone else more or less sounds like Harry Shearer.

And as a straight comic actor he's horrible.; 12/13/25, 7:49 PM
Christopher B said...: @William ...

Assistant Village Idiot, a blogger himself and sometime commenter at this establishment, who worked in the field has something of a different view of the harms Sacks work may have done.

Link to his comments on the Sacks revelations

The patient is potentially harmed, but in many of these cases the patient experienced the doctor's attention and even projected interpretation as a positive. For people abandoned by the world, someone simply showing up and showing consistent focus would be precious. Oliver Sacks rather obviously cared about these people and tried to see something special in each, to the point of overidentification. That matters. That counts. But the subsequent storytelling to the world is not a necessary part of that. A sincere and kindly person with no clinical training could do the same. Being seen inaccurately is not as good as being seen truly, but it must be better than remaining invisible. This comes up in the discussion of AI therapists which reflect back to you what you want to hear. Is that good for you? We crave being understood deeply - an imitation of that might well meet the craving. I thought of Ray Bradbury's The Man In The Rorschach Shirt. Couldn't the doctor have just done that instead? No, despite his very real compassion, Dr. Sacks was in it to "work through" (vacuous phrase) his own issues. It might have kept his nose to the grindstone, to his patients' benefit, but the risk of spilling his own pathology into them would be real. Treatment decisions, including independence, medication, and legal status are decided on the basis of reported information. It could matter. I have seen entire treatment approaches to a patient reversed on the basis of discovering some new information, or the disproving of old information. Not often, but it happens.

The public was harmed. New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv stresses the importance of the compassion and (ahem) empathy people might feel for damaged individuals. That's fine. Keeping up general fascination with the brain and research could have good effect. I draw the line at clinicians. Teaching therapists, prescribers, and outreach workers false information must in the end be bad for their patients. I did not read The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat thinking "How inspired I am to see the ultimate value of every human being," I was looking for brain understanding, thinking how wonderful it was that we are learning such intricacies on the basis of these oddities. We now know looking back that Postwar psychology was more a literature than a science - which would have been fine if everyone had been clear about that. The Stanford Prison Experiment, Kinsey's mythology of sexual behavior, delayed gratification prediction, priming, stereotype threat - all pretty much useless. But it would be so cool if this were true. Let's all talk about what it would mean if it were true. No thanks. These are people's lives we are screwing with.; 12/13/25, 7:52 PM
Big Mike said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12/13/25, 7:53 PM
john mosby said...: PBS recently showed two Shakespeare in the Park offerings: Hamlet and Richard III. I finally got around to watching them. BLUF: not as bad as I feared.

Hamlet: Turned it into a bit of a hip-hop musical. The hey-nonny songs and a bit of dialogue were set to beats. Didn't disrupt the play. Hamlet's royal family was all played by black actors. Other characters were a variety of ethnicities. Also didn't disrupt anything. Costumes were modern.

R3: Some music, roughly Renaissance but on modern instruments. Colorblind casting: actors of all ethnicities, with no symbolism or anything behind it - just who can do the lines best. The characters were all at least cousins in real history - Richard and Clarence were brothers! Stunt casting: Richard is played by a black actress, but she treats it as a trouser role and acts like a man. The dialogue keeps he/him/His Grace pronouns intact. Interestingly, she doesn't wear a hunchback or act like she has any sort of disability. Speaking of: Lady Anne Neville is played by Ali Stroker, the blonde wheelchair-borne Broadway actress. Again, no references to the chair are inserted in the script. More stunt casting: some roles are played by actors who sign their dialogue, while some other actor says it. The script isn't changed - no explanation given, and no apparent symbolic reason, e.g., they're not all on one side of the civil conflict. Costumes 15th-centuryish.

Best of all: Neither play tries to bring Trump into it. I know it must have been especially tempting for the R3 showrunners. CC, JSM; 12/13/25, 8:09 PM
Original Mike said...: The Question is Moot!
I am the game show host, I win the car!; 12/13/25, 8:12 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Via Twitter: Pray for Scott Adams "I am paralyzed below the waist. I can't move any muscles. I do have feeling - just can't move any muscles."

"The solution is to ambulance me to a facility to get radiated. They're gonna try to radiate that pesky tumor around my spine."

"If all goes well...I could go home. The good news is, we've MRI'd it and looked at it. I got all the help I need at Kaiser."; 12/13/25, 8:35 PM
Jupiter said...: "Why did the investigating committee need to be pardoned?"
Because the civil war we are fighting now is a lot more dirty, under-handed and vicious than the one that started in 1861.; 12/13/25, 8:57 PM
Kakistocracy said...: Due to an act of Congress, the Epstein files must be released by Friday. Is Venezuela ready for the imminent invasion?; 12/13/25, 9:05 PM
bagoh20 said...: Do you people eat whale blubber in winter?; 12/13/25, 9:11 PM
Prof. M. Drout said...: I just finished teaching an English 101 class, "Writing about Mathematics and Science" in which Oliver Sacks' Uncle Tungsten was one of the three texts we read. While I was teaching that book, I read the L. Weschler's memoir, And how are You, Dr. Sacks. There were discrepancies, and I wondered why no one had mentioned them: Sacks said that when he was 14, his mother arranged for him to dissect a cadaver (!), and it turned out to be that of a 14-year-old girl (!!). In Weschler's notes, it is a "child," not a teen-ager, and no mention of gender, and there were other things.
So I was disappointed but not surprised buy what I read in the Aviv essay, though I agree that nothing in that article seems like a particularly terrible scandal in itself (i.e., no patient seems to have been injured), I can't go along with the notion that it's all ok because Sacks was on the side of the angels in his efforts to get people to empathize with people with neurological ailments. That's a noble goal, but you do that in FICTION (according to Iris Murdoch, that's the PURPOSE of fiction), not in case studies in Medicine.
The effects of narratives, both internal and shared, on medical practice are complicated, and you can't just assume that as long as the aim was benevolent no harm arises from the contamination of our knowledge based. We don't know if having heard a dramatic and memorable fake story ends up leading doctors to make decisions that are sub-optimal or even harmful.
I still may teach Uncle Tungsten in the future, because it's good for students to wrestle with issues like those raised by the revelations about Sacks. (Also, I always tell my students that I don't assign Sacks, Stephen Jay Gould, and David Foster Wallace as an endorsement, but as extreme examples of particular ways to try to write about math and science).; 12/13/25, 9:15 PM
William said...: @Christopher B: I read the comment. I guess the proper response to Sacks is ambivalence. He succeed as a writer. His success in other areas is less clear....."The fuck you up, your mom and dad". Lots of other people too, but some less so than others. From the article I read, I don't see how he screwed up any life but his own. And even his own life, he didn't screw up all that much. Heaven probably doesn't exist, but the hope of heaven can be real. I guess he spent fifty years in analysis thinking that someday he'd get it all worked out. It never happened, but there were patches where he thought it would. That's worth something. For the most part they enjoyed their sessions and both thought their sessions were productive. In like way, I think the patients that Sacks interacted with got something out of the interaction. Perhaps that was true of the patients that Sacks himself interacted with.; 12/13/25, 9:28 PM
Eva Marie said...: For me that photo is the definition of cold. Also it came so close to being a photo of the photo being taken. But I like that there’s just a hint of what that photo might have looked like. Apparently it didn’t come up to Althouse’s standards to be included in the nightly recap of the day’s sunrise.; 12/13/25, 9:31 PM
William said...: @Prof Drout: I've never read anything by Sacks, but by all accounts, he's a good writer. Put that in the plus column. I'm pretty sure Nietzsche or D.H. Lawrence et al. have inspired more mischief than Sacks.; 12/13/25, 9:39 PM
RCOCEAN II said...: Ocean: I did love the Jesse Jackson sketch "The Question is Moot!"

Yeah, that was probably the best sketch in the episode.; 12/13/25, 9:42 PM
Jupiter said...: So, wait; lying liars lie and lie?

The human ability to communicate is quite useful to humans. But the individual's ability to lie, and thereby take advantage of that communicative ability, is even more useful. To the liar. Really, the puzzle is why anyone ever tells the truth. Boredom? Lust? Greed? Those are, in my experience, the three main human motivations.; 12/13/25, 9:42 PM
Jupiter said...: Well. I left out fear. Being caught in a lie can be a serious problem.
But there is also a human desire, or tendency, or perhaps necessity, to tell the truth. Perhaps a desire that strong falls under "lust". A powerful impetus, which gives rise to a deeply pleasurable climactic sensation, and a deep sense of satisfaction. Which slowly fades ...

Leaving a pensive unease ...; 12/13/25, 9:47 PM
Jupiter said...: On further reflection, "a deeply pleasurable climactic sensation" may not be an accurate description. Given the root of the word, "sensation" should not be used to describe an event that is essentially internal. Both orgasm, and the intense psychic pleasure associated with expressing forbidden truths, are divorced from external realities. Perhaps that is why they are so satisfactory.; 12/13/25, 9:52 PM
Lazarus said...: "Affable Comic Acting Legend Dick Van Dyke Turns 100 Years Old." A year ago, also from Mary Poppins: "Glynis Johns, Impish British Actress of Stage and Screen, Dies at 100." I congratulate the headline writers on keeping words like "affable" and "impish" in use -- even if only once a century.

Van Dyke did high school dramatics with Donald O'Connor and Bobby Short, but -- because of the war -- he didn't get his high school diploma until 2004. Lacking the sheepskin doesn't seem to have held him back any.; 12/13/25, 10:04 PM
Jupiter said...: But it occurs to me that I have left out "trust", a critically important consideration. If two humans can both see the same things, there is no need for them to communicate. But this means that the ability to communicate is only useful when there is a disparity of knowledge. And that is precisely when the ability to lie becomes even more useful, to the liar.
So, we have one of those weird situations -- actually rather common -- in which it becomes critically important to determine whether you can trust someone. If you can, then they can extend your knowledge of the world you live in, and your ability to successfully deal with it. But if they are liars, they achieve their own goals, at the expense of yours.

Which is why, if everyone who ever worked at the New York Times was on a bus, traveling along a narrow, winding road, with a towering mountain on one side, and a precipitous cliff on the other ...; 12/13/25, 10:09 PM
Jupiter said...: "It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine."
NFK.; 12/13/25, 10:13 PM
James K said...: PBS recently showed two Shakespeare in the Park offerings: Hamlet and Richard III.

I saw that Hamlet live. I enjoyed it, as they mostly delivered Shakespeare's lines, so even the silly staging can't ruin that. But I was annoyed that they cut out the opening scene (the night watch, where the ghost appears).; 12/13/25, 11:20 PM
Humperdink said...: Minnie Governor Tim Waltz created a new position, a Fraud Czar. That ought to do it, I.e. take the heat off. The media nods.; 12/14/25, 4:12 AM
Breezy said...: The term “Fraud Czar” is ambiguous.; 12/14/25, 5:09 AM
Humperdink said...: I do not follow Candice Owen’s, nor her pronouncements. But it hard not to be exposed to her statements. I would just point out that she is hurting deeply the surviving widow of someone who was assassinated. For that reason alone she should silence herself.; 12/14/25, 5:57 AM
Saint Croix said...: I'm watching the Bari Weiss interview with Erica Kirk.

"When you stop the dialog, this is what happens. You lose the willingness and the ability to communicate. We get violence."

And then...

CBS News presents...a town hall, with Erica Kirk.

I haven't seen it yet. I'm just very happy that CBS is doing stuff like this. Opening up their network to voices outside the Democrat liberal echo chamber. Kudos.; 12/14/25, 6:20 AM
Fritz said...: "bagoh20 said...
Do you people eat whale blubber in winter?"

Not a lot of whales in Lake Mendota, and buying it is steep. I blame Trump.; 12/14/25, 6:45 AM
Saint Croix said...: I suspect most people here have no idea who Hasan Piker is. I ran across him when he zapped his dog with a shock collar in the middle of his podcast.

He's much worse than that.; 12/14/25, 7:58 AM
Original Mike said...: "Not a lot of whales in Lake Mendota, "

I bet you've never been to the Fresh Water Whaling Museum in Hibbing.; 12/14/25, 8:52 AM
Rusty said...: bagoh20 said...
"Do you people eat whale blubber in winter?"

Sure. If you want to call it that.; 12/14/25, 9:38 AM
Iman said...: It’s alleged hasan piker has congress with goats.; 12/14/25, 12:03 PM
Mason G said...: "Minnie Governor Tim Waltz created a new position, a Fraud Czar."

They seem to be doing just fine committing fraud without a designated leader, seems to me.; 12/14/25, 12:21 PM
Kakistocracy said...: If Trump invades Venezuela to distract the country from the release of the Epstein files, Congressional Democrats will have blood on their hands.; 12/14/25, 2:09 PM
Iman said...: The 49ers are coming around. I’m looking forward to seeing how they finish the season.; 12/14/25, 5:50 PM
narciso said...: Hope springs eternal iman; 12/14/25, 6:07 PM