Sunrise — 5:25.

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Democrats attempt to teach themselves how to speak with American men.

Joni Ernst serves up death, apology, sarcasm, and Jesus.

Against all odds, Joni Ernst has made it worse pic.twitter.com/aElIudNmZG

— Keith Edwards (@keithedwards) May 31, 2025

I had to go back to this after reading about it because I had clicked it off in disgust thinking it was an genuine effort to make a "sincere" apology.

For background: "Joni Ernst posts sarcastic apology video following comments that 'we all are going to die'" (Des Moines Register): "The Iowa Republican's original comments came at a town hall in Parkersburg on Friday, May 30, while she was answering a question about cuts to Medicaid in President Donald Trump's tax package that the Senate is poised to consider. During Ernst's answer, someone in the audience interrupted her to shout, 'people will die!' Ernst replied by saying, 'People are not — well, we all are going to die. For heaven’s sakes, folks.'"

Sandhill cranes take a long lunch.

From the driver-side window, Meade takes a 24-second video:

 

After our hike, riding home, 2 hours later, I take a 24-second video from the passenger-side window at exactly the same spot:

One might casually and shallowly dream of needing to eat constantly, just to maintain a healthy weight. Perhaps you'd love to take a pill that would put you in this predicament. But imagine living like this!

"The F.B.I.’s increasingly pervasive use of the polygraph, or a lie-detector test, has only intensified a culture of intimidation."

"Mr. Patel has wielded the polygraph to keep agents or other employees from discussing a number of topics, including his decision-making or internal moves. Former agents say he is doing so in ways not typically seen in the F.B.I.... Jim Stern, who conducted hundreds of polygraphs while an F.B.I. agent, said... that if someone violated policy, the F.B.I. could polygraph them. But if an agent who legitimately talked to the news media in a previous role had to take one, he said, 'that’s going to be an issue.' 'I never used them to suss out gossip,' he said. At a recent meeting, senior executives were told that the news leaks were increasing in priority — even though they do not involve open cases or the disclosure of classified information. Former officials say senior executives, among others, were being polygraphed at a 'rapid rate.' In May, one senior official was forced out, at least in part because he had not disclosed to Mr. Patel that his wife had taken a knee during demonstrations protesting police violence...."

From "Unease at F.B.I. Intensifies as Patel Ousts Top Officials/Senior executives are being pushed out and the director, Kash Patel, is more freely using polygraph tests to tamp down on news leaks about leadership decisions and behavior" (NYT).

I've made a new tag — "lie detector" — and gone back and applied it to old posts. Interesting to see how many times the topic has come up:

April 2004: "[E]ven if the lie detector was not to be used on [Omarosa], and, indeed, even if lie detector tests are not reliable, if she believed it was to be used on her and believed it was reliable, her running off at the sight of it is some evidence that she had lied in her accusation about the other contestant....."

April 2005:  "Everyone on TV was into analyzing why [the groom-to-be of the Runaway Bride] would take a private lie detector test, but wanted special conditions before he'd take the police test. He wanted it videotaped, and the police refused...."

July 2005: "Some researchers attached sensors to 101 penises and then showed the possessors of these penises either all-male or all-female porn movies. It was kind of a lie detector test, because the men had all professed to being heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual...."

October 2008: Ashley Todd, the woman who claimed a black man had carved the letter "B" on her face.

June 2012: "'$1.1 million-plus Gates grants: "Galvanic" bracelets that measure student engagement.'... [I]sn't this basically a lie detector? And if so, won't students train themselves to fool the authorities?"

April 2013:

"This dude’s the last guy I want to tell us about 'we lost our way.' You’re the guy who lost.'"

Said Tim Walz, talking about himself, in "'I Didn’t Get It Done': A Reflective Tim Walz Wants to Make Good/Last year’s Democratic vice-presidential nominee has thrown himself into a robust atonement-and-explanation tour, though aides insist there is no grand strategy" (NYT).

The unusually pink sunrise — 5:05, 5:07, 5:16, 5:17, 5:25.

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Joe Biden speaks to the press — a bit mumblingly — for 3 1/2 minutes.

"You can see that I'm mentally incompetent, I can't walk," he wisecracks. "And I could beat the hell out of both of them," he says — about Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, the co-authors of that book about Biden's decline.

Another addition to the list of quotes of Biden threatening to or bragging about beating somebody up — "If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him," etc.

By the way, I'm seeing reports that Tapper's book — despite the onslaught of publicity — isn't doing very well. I know I won't buy it. I think he shouldn't be rewarded for sitting on the information, apparently in the hope of helping Democrats win the election, and now trying to profit from revealing it. And it's absurd the way he's been going around acting as though he has just learned that journalists ought to do journalism and report events as they happen without toadying to the powerful.

AND: Why does Biden lean into the faces of female reporters? I think it's a grandpa move that has worked to delight little girls. The femaleness of the reporters makes them more like little girls to him than like what they are, adults engaged in professional work. He can't help it, just like he can't help threatening to "beat the hell out of" male antagonists. 

"I’m having little adventures, but yes, not on social media."

"I am painting, I am drawing, I’m doing photography. I’m climbing mountains and going on very long walks. I’m having little adventures, but yes, not on social media. I don’t think it’s something that would particularly serve my life, and I’m quite happy that I don’t have it."

Said Mia Threapleton, quoted in "Wes Anderson’s Newest Star Finds Inspiration Everywhere (Even a Napkin)/Mia Threapleton is Kate Winslet’s daughter but she’s intent on making her own way in Hollywood. That includes her deadpan nun in 'The Phoenician Scheme'" (NYT).

I hope young people today see that, but they'll only see it on social media.

Why did Elon Musk choose to be seen — in the Oval Office — with a black eye?

It must be considered a CHOICE, because — if it was a real black eye — he could have had a makeup expert conceal it completely and undetectably. If he didn't have a real black eye, then he could and did have a makeup expert create one for him.

So I think he wanted to send a message. Perhaps: This job has battered me, but I stand by my man. Perhaps: I'm a fighter, and I can take the blows... fight fight fight.

ADDED: Or maybe just: Here, go down this rathole. It means nothing, you puny idiots. Boy genius is mystifying you again. 

"I am so disappointed in The Federalist Society because of the bad advice they gave me on numerous Judicial Nominations... This is something that cannot be forgotten!..."

"I was new to Washington, and it was suggested that I use the Federalist Society as a recommending source on judges. I did so, openly and freely, but then realized that they were under the thumb of a real ‘sleazebag’ named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions."

Wrote Donald Trump, quoted in "Trump, Bashing the Federalist Society, Asserts Autonomy on Judge Picks/The president has grown increasingly angry at court rulings blocking parts of his agenda, including by judges he appointed" (NYT). 

The article is by Charlie Savage, who says:

While Mr. Trump was out of power, a schism emerged between traditional legal conservatives and MAGA-style lawyers.... During the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump had essentially made a deal with the conservative legal movement. In exchange for its support, he would outsource his judicial selections....

"Was it all bullshit?" — Trump asked, about Elon Musk's promise to cut $1 trillion from the federal budget.

We're told in "Inside Trump and Musk’s Complicated Relationship/The president and his aides have sometimes expressed frustration with Musk, but his advisers say the two remain close" (Wall Street Journal)(no paywall encountered).

We're also told Trump has called Musk "50% genius, 50% boy" or perhaps it was "90% genius, 10% boy."

More substantively:

Musk clashed with senior White House officials, as he made dramatic government cuts without consulting others, including White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and senior officials in the communications office, aides said. For several weeks, top Trump aides regularly learned from news reports or cabinet secretaries what DOGE was doing—even when the cost-cutting department laid off hundreds of people or sought sensitive data from agencies, according to the aides. He also clashed with personnel aides over vetting of some of his staff, some of the people said, believing the White House shouldn’t control his team at DOGE....

I assume that's a misplaced participle and that the phrase beginning with "believing" modifies "He." Don't they have AI to fix things like that?

Anyway, the person who could promise to cut $1 trillion was the person who envisioned himself with vast, unchecked power. Was it all bullshit? Not if you let him do it. Then it wouldn't be bullshit, though it might be crazy. Even on Trump's scale of sane to crazy.

Let me cherry-pick this:

Trump grew irritated in April when he learned Musk was getting a top-secret briefing at the Pentagon on China.... He said Musk getting the briefing was a conflict of interest, two administration officials said. Trump told aides that Musk, who has space contracts, shouldn’t be working at the Pentagon....

And here's some interesting material about the Wisconsin Supreme Court election:

White House aides were... dismayed at how involved Musk became in a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, because they believed Brad Schimel, who was backed by Musk and the state’s Republican party, wasn’t going to win, and the race was becoming a referendum on Musk and Trump. Musk was dismissive of those concerns, saying the polling he commissioned showed Schimel had a chance. Trump became annoyed after doing a town hall with Schimel, telling advisers that he was done with him because Schimel couldn’t answer questions cogently about abortion, according to people familiar with the matter....

Of course, Schimel lost.  

"I was trying to make a heart for him. I was too late."

Said Robert Jarvik, quoted in "Robert Jarvik, a creator of the artificial heart, dies at 79/He was the lead designer of the Jarvik-7, a controversial plastic and metal device intended to permanently replace an ailing human heart" (WaPo).

A handsome, tousle-haired man whose interests ranged from skiing and weightlifting to poetry and theoretical physics, he cited a personal motivation for his work on the device: His father, a physician, had died after open-heart surgery in 1976.

The first artificial heart, the Jarvik-7, was implanted in 1982. Perhaps, like me, you remember the name and occupation of the recipient: Barney Clark, a dentist. When he awakened from the surgery, he said to his wife, "I want to tell you, even though I have no heart, I still love you."

The artificial heart never became a replacement for a real heart. Didn't you think it would, if you were around, reading the news 43 years ago? Artificial hearts are only used as to keep people alive while they wait for a heart from a human donor.

Jarvik, the "handsome, tousle-haired man," also posed in Hathaway shirt ads — like this one, complete with the company's trademark eyepatch. He also posed in a Lipitor ad that got criticized as misleading because Jarvik was "not a cardiologist" and — though the ad depicted him rowing — "apparently, not a rower."

Jarvik was married to Marilyn vos Savant, the woman who's been famous for decades for supposedly having the highest IQ. (She scored 228 on the Stanford-Binet test when she was 10.)

Sunrise — 5:19, 5:26, 5:28.

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"Billionaire Elon Musk stunned the White House press corps Friday by sporting a black eye to an Oval Office event to mark the end of his 130 days in the Trump administration."

The NY Post reports.

Oh.. ha ha... I see he made the joke I was about to make: He "wasn’t anywhere near France."

"Sixty-four years ago, Connie Francis recorded 'Pretty Little Baby' as one of dozens of songs in a marathon recording session..."

"... that yielded three albums within two weeks. It did not, at the time, feel like a song that had the makings of a hit, so it landed on the B-side of the 1962 single... that was released in Britain. Since then, it was more or less overlooked. Then came TikTok... Over the last few weeks, 'Pretty Little Baby' has been trending on the social media app — it has been featured as the sound in more than 600,000 TikTok posts and soared to top spots in Spotify’s Viral 50 global and U.S. lists — bolstered by celebrities and influencers, like Nara Smith, Kylie Jenner, and Kim Kardashian and her daughter North, who have posted videos of themselves lip-syncing to it. The ABBA singer Agnetha Fältskog used the song for a clip on TikTok in which she said Ms. Francis had long been her favorite singer...."

From "As ‘Pretty Little Baby’ Goes Viral, Connie Francis Is Joining TikTok/With a forgotten song becoming an unlikely hit, the 87-year-old singer is happy to be back in the spotlight" (NYT).

Interviewed, Francis said she didn't even remember recording the song, but, listening to it now, she pronounced it "cute." I remember when that kind of thing was the current music...

"Today, parents still have obligations to their children. But it seems the children’s duties have become optional."

"'With parents and adult children today, the adult child feels like, "If you failed me in your responsibility as a parent" — in ways, of course, that are increasingly hard to define— "then I owe you nothing as an adult child,"' says [psychologist Joshua] Coleman. Which means that it now often seems like having a child entails an enormous amount of financial, emotional and spiritual investment, with a hovering possibility that your children will cut contact with you after they reach young adulthood and the increasing likelihood that they will hold you responsible — not only for their suffering and struggles but even for your decision to bring them into the misery-inducing world in the first place.

Writes Michal Leibowitz, in "Why Millennials Dread Having Babies" (NYT).

"'Why am I reading this' were the first lines of my latest memoir. I sat in my small apartment hearing the beautiful sounds of morning..."

"... and realized that as the sounds faded I had become stuck, almost against my will, in someone's head as began the torturous recounting of her sex life, legs firm, my mouth tight, I firmly withdrew myself from the dark spaces I was then inhabiting, back into the light. No thank you, NY Times, not this time. And coffee in hand, I went about my day, proud I had not succumbed yet again."

Writes MDH, a commenter over at the NYT Magazine, spoofing an essay that that I didn't read either. 

The essay, by Melissa Febos, is "What I Learned Trying to Spend a Year Celibate/Giving up sex was both harder and more rewarding than I could have imagined," which is adapted from her book, "The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex" — to be published by Knopf.

How can you spoof — or recognize a spoof of — something that you haven't read? If one person can write about the sex she hasn't had, another can write about the essay she hasn't read.

But can you believe going an entire year without sex? I don't know if she made it, but we're told she tried, and we can see that she extracted an entire book, apparently full of descriptions of her pleasure, out of this ordeal.

Note: The topic of the distinction between "celibacy" and "chastity" has already been addressed on this blog, back in 2010, here. Why do edited publications use "celibacy" for "chastity"? I think "celibacy" feels spiritual/philosophical and "chastity" sounds prudish. I don't know who they're trying to impress.

"Mr. Peng was apparently the victim of a potentially dangerous phenomenon that paragliders call 'cloud suck,' in which a pilot is rapidly drawn upward into a cloud."

"At extreme altitudes, people risk hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation, because of the thin air. Severe hypoxia can cause organ damage or death. Still, Mr. Peng managed to land about 20 miles away from where he took off. In stable health and recovering from his surprise flight, he has since said, 'Thinking about it still makes me quite scared,' China Daily reported on Thursday."

From "Chinese Paraglider Reaches Near-Record Heights, Over 28,000 Feet, by Accident/After video of the incident went viral, showing a face and body covered in ice, the local sporting authority said it had banned the paraglider from the sport for six months" (NYT).

"But I think the meta text of why it was so shocking was all of the people that were waved off as conspiracy theorists. Right wing fever swamp people were completely right."

"Were a hundred percent right. They were completely right. And the people who, you know, even now, you know, you still hope they're telling the truth. Like maybe we can trust some of what they say they were this profoundly wrong. I think that is like the, the deeper layer of the shock."

Says Bari Weiss, somewhat babblingly. 

Jake Tapper, who has more reason to babble, speaks eloquently:

"You have to say that now...."

CNN anchor gets visibly uncomfortable when Nathan Fielder suggests there are moments when she doesn't want to express criticism to Wolf Blitzer given his prominence at the network.

 "We like each other and we talk to each other," Blitzer insists. pic.twitter.com/K3d4l9YovI

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) May 29, 2025

"Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration, for Now, to End Biden-Era Migrant Program."

The NYT reports.

Subheadline: "The Trump administration had asked the court to allow it to end deportation protections for more than 500,000 people facing dire humanitarian crises in their home countries."

The court’s order was unsigned and provided no reasoning, which is typical when the justices rule on emergency applications. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissented, saying the majority had not given enough consideration to “the devastating consequences of allowing the government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending.”... 

In an emergency application to the Supreme Court on May 8, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argued that... the lower court had “needlessly” upended “critical immigration policies that are carefully calibrated to deter illegal entry” and had undone “democratically approved policies that featured heavily in the November election,” Mr. Sauer argued.

ADDED: "Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, dissented..." Not only didn't the Chief Justice join the dissenters, Justice Kagan went with the majority. The middle has spoken. I'm picturing many Trump victories to come in these "injunctivitis" cases.

AND: Here's Jackson's opinion. Excerpt:

"I think the best people age the hardest. You know, I think Obama like, was probably like a very idealistic young man..."

"And that dude aged more than anybody.... Who ages the least? Trump.... He just brushed that shit off his shoulders. Like it was nothing....  So he's got an act, he's basically like a comic.... These other people... have canned speeches.... But it's not them. It's not them. That's why they all fall apart when they're talking.... All of 'em have to be protected from themselves, because when confronted by like some basic facts about the fucking corruption of the world, they don't know what to say. And they, they crumble, and Trump just starts talking shit.... They're like, oh, he's a crazy person. I'm like, yeah, that's the only kind of person that would survive what you try to do to him.... That's the only kind of guy that gets through. Like, you want a perfect person? A perfect person morally falls apart by the time they've been indicted and they have 34 counts, felony counts. Like your whole body's just destroyed by the stress of you possibly going to jail for the rest of your life. You have to be a fucking insane person to ride that out and not look like anything even happened. Then you get shot. You get up after you got shot, you're fucking bleeding from your ear and you go fight, fight, fight. You gotta be a crazy person to get through these. He's a nightmare. For anybody that's trying to rig a system like that, guy's the nightmare. He's the final boss of Fuck You...."

Said Joe Rogan.

Transcript here.

"The video expected to be released by Bongino is said to show Epstein alone in his cell. However, the actual act of suicide is not shown."

"'There’s video clear as day,' Bongino... told Fox News on Thursday. 'He’s the only person in there and the only person coming out. You can see it.... We are working on cleaning it up to make sure you have an enhanced [version] and we’re going to give the original so you don’t think there were any shenanigans,'  he said."

I'm reading "FBI to release Jeffrey Epstein video ‘confirming suicide in cell’/Dan Bongino, the deputy director of the agency, hopes the video will end speculation that Epstein’s death was suspicious" (London Times).

If they're "working on cleaning it up" and "mak[ing] sure" it's "enhanced," then people are going to think there were "shenanigans." If the video is "clear as day," why do they need to clean it up and enhance it? Well, I guess he's saying we'll see "the original" and the cleaned-up, enhanced version that will influence how we look at what we'll see in that "original." I expect people to deny that they are seeing what the enhanced version is nudging us to see and to question whether the original is really the original.

I was just listening to the newest episode of Joe Rogan, where subject of Epstein comes up:

JOE: They were gonna release the Epstein files Day One. Right?... What happened? What happened? What happened?

"Suddenly, while they were drinking their coffee...."

GenX here. Three people I knew died in the towers, human beings just like Taylor Lorenz, who got on the subway and went to work one day and then suddenly while they were drinking their coffee they had to decide whether to jump or burn to death.

Not a fucking punchline. https://t.co/drIyJJxgfn

— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) May 30, 2025

"Large or small cancer was still cancer. Once a cell has gone haywire in your body and learned how to replicate itself in a campaign against you..."

"... can you ever feel safe? I thought about the large mass in my breast and pictured the cells marching like fire ants on a raging tour of my interior. Five days later, while I was driving, the surgeon called to tell me I did not have cancer. I had a fibroid-like mass with a jagged surface resembling cancer’s starburst shape. He had two radiologists confirm this. 'I am so very sorry,' he said. 'This was a lesson for me. Always wait for the test results.' That moment at the wheel is still perfectly preserved in my mind, the flood of relief, the blinding joy. I will die someday of something, but it probably won’t be from this. The lesson for me was that Danny was a partner for the long haul, however long or short this life might be."

Writes Beth Apone Salamon in "We Had to Break Up. He Refused. 'I love you,' I told him, 'but this is over'" (NYT).

This is a "Modern Love" column. The headline refers to the part, when she thinks she has cancer and tells her husband, whose first wife died, slowly, of breast cancer, that they have to break up because he doesn't deserve to go through the same thing twice. That's interesting. An offer he can't not refuse.

But I was more interested in the ideation about cancer. Those metaphors: a cell gone "haywire" and "fire ants on a raging tour." 

"[Musk] told people he was taking so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that it was affecting his bladder, a known effect of chronic use."

"He took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. And he traveled with a daily medication box that held about 20 pills, including ones with the markings of the stimulant Adderall, according to a photo of the box and people who have seen it. It is unclear whether Mr. Musk, 53, was taking drugs when he became a fixture at the White House this year and was handed the power to slash the federal bureaucracy. But he has exhibited erratic behavior, insulting cabinet members, gesturing like a Nazi and garbling his answers in a staged interview."

From "On the Campaign Trail, Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama/As Mr. Musk entered President Trump’s orbit, his private life grew increasingly tumultuous and his drug use was more intense than previously known."

In March 2024, Musk that the ketamine was prescribed — for depression — and that he only took a small amount. The FDA "has formally approved the use of ketamine only as an anesthetic in medical procedures," but "doctors with a special license may prescribe it for psychiatric disorders." But: "The drug has psychedelic properties and can cause dissociation from reality. Chronic use can lead to addiction and problems with bladder pain and control."

The NYT article reveals a text message he wrote last May: "There are at least half a dozen initiatives of significance to take me down.... The Biden administration views me as the #2 threat after Trump. I can’t be president, but I can help Trump defeat Biden and I will."

After he bounced around on stage at a Trump rally on October 5, he texted: "I’m feeling more optimistic after tonight.... Tomorrow we unleash the anomaly in the matrix.... This is not something on the chessboard, so they will be quite surprised... 'Lasers' from space."

Sunrise — 4:59, 5:19.

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.

Ducklings — paddling and scampering.

Today, on Lake Mendota:

"Divorce rumors have been following the Obamas for some time.... Michelle, as a solo artist, has been out and about..."

"... particularly as she promotes her podcast... She’s also been a regular guest on fellow famous people’s shows. This month alone, she went on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang to talk about bickering with Barack over their thermostat, and on The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett, where she insisted once more that 'everyone would know' if she and Barack were breaking up. 'I’m not a martyr,' she said. 'I would be problem-solving in public: "Let me tell you what he did."'"

That's from New York Magazine, which has a sarcastic headline — "Michelle and Barack Obama Are Dating Again" — because it's pushing back on the New York Post article that's titled "Barack and Michelle Obama spotted on swanky date night in NYC as divorce rumors swirl."

Repeated insistence... sounds like protesting too much.

And is it really true that if she and Barack were breaking up she's be out in public, problem-solving, dishing on what he did? I'd like to think she would not, but it was only 5 days ago that I was blogging "Why are men's podcasts so different from women's...?" after Danica Patrick went on "The Sage Steele Show"

"My children do not have phones; they are not allowed on social media. It does not matter. There was an afternoon, a few weeks back..."

"... when the six-year-old came home and sketched all these characters on a piece of paper: the ballerina with a coffee cup for a head, the shark in trainers, the bomber-jet crocodile. I thought he had a tremendous imagination. But he was just like a caveman after a hunt, drawing what he had seen. It is as Bob Dylan said to mothers and fathers across the land: 'Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command.' You don’t even know what they are saying. There was a moment, a year ago, when all they wanted to hear was the Eighties anthem Everybody Wants to Rule the World. 'Why are our children into Tears for Fears?' I asked at the time...."

Writes Will Pavia, in "Do not read this article if you are over six. You won’t get it/Meet Ballerina Cappucina, Bombardino Crocodilo and Tung Tung Tung Sahur — the little monsters of TikTok whose express purpose is to rot your child’s brain" (London Times).

Until now, we had, living among us, the grandson of the 10th President of the United States.

I'm seeing this in The Richmonder: "Harrison Ruffin Tyler, grandson of 10th U.S. president and longtime Richmonder, dies at 96."

Born on Nov. 9, 1928 in Richmond, Tyler was the son of Lyon Gardiner Tyler and Sue Ruffin. His father was a son of President John Tyler and president of William & Mary for more than three decades; his mother came from another Virginia family of long lineage and ardent support for slavery and secession.... President John Tyler was 63 when Lyon Gardiner Tyler was born; Lyon was 75 when Harrison entered the world.... At age 8, he was invited to the White House to meet President Franklin D. Roosevelt....

My son Chris, who is dedicated to reading a biography of every American President, read "President without a Party: The Life of John Tyler," by Christopher J. Leahy (commission earned). Chris does not read books on Kindle, so when he wants to share something with me, he texts me a photo. For Tyler, he sent this:

The artist of street litter.

Why doesn't the phrase "Special Government Employee" appear in the NYT article about Musk's "distancing" himself from Trump?

I've been trying to read "A Disillusioned Musk, Distanced From Trump, Says He’s Exiting Washington/The billionaire has made clear he is frustrated with the obstacles he encountered as he tried to upend the federal bureaucracy."

That piece in the NYT has 5 authors: Tyler Pager, Maggie Haberman,Theodore Schleifer, Jonathan Swan, and Ryan Mac.

In the midst of my struggle to absorb their message, I stumbled upon this easy-to-read tweet (which was re-tweeted by Elon Musk):

In the coming days, legacy media will try to convince you that President Trump and Elon Musk are no longer friends and that’s why Musk left.

What they won’t tell you is that Elon was a Special Government Employee, limited to 130 days of service and that term ends tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/blNzVm9Gnd

— DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) May 29, 2025

From the NYT article:

Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment. In a post on X, his social media site, on Wednesday night, he officially confirmed for the first time that his stint as a government employee was coming to an end and thanked Mr. Trump “for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending.”

So, instead of the phrase "Special Government Employee" — which appears at the post the NYT links — the Times makes it "government employee." And instead of noting the 130-day time limit built into the status of "Special Government Employee," the Times just says "his stint" is "coming to an end." And it adds the phrase "he officially confirmed for the first time" which makes it sound like a new development or something he'd previously kept under wraps. But the time limit was there from the start and official all along, so why did it matter that he "officially confirmed" it. Was it ever in question?

Perhaps the Times had previously cast doubt on whether Musk would leave when the 130 days ran out. 

Ah, yes, here's a NYT article from April 23 — "A Subdued Musk Backs Away From Washington, but His Project Remains" — that ends: "By dialing back the number of days he spends working for the White House, Mr. Musk can also potentially stretch out the 130 days he is allotted as a 'special government employee.'" And here, on April 18 — in "Head of I.R.S. Is Ousted in Treasury’s Power Struggle With Elon Musk"— "As a special government employee, Mr. Musk is allotted 130 days of time on the job. But if he works part time, he may be able to extend his time in government."

The names Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan are on both of those.

"'Duck Dynasty' was a simple entertainment, but it was also a complicated mash-up of several of the most popular TV genres of its time."

"It had some connection to 'hicksploitation' reality shows like 'Here Comes Honey Boo Boo' and to series like 'Deadliest Catch' that celebrated people who worked with their hands. It also had the structure and beats of a mockumentary sitcom. Like 'Modern Family,' it often ended with voice-overs summing up the episode’s themes and lessons.... Like 'The Office,' it structured stories around staffers goofing around the warehouse and cooking up schemes like flooding the loading dock to create a duck pond. But there was a key difference.... It was about work, family and faith — a typical episode would close with a prayer over a meal.... 'Duck Dynasty' was affectionate for backwoods ways and tradition.... It gave the patriarch Phil plenty of airtime to sermonize about manhood and encourage his grandsons to marry 'a meek, gentle, kind-spirited country girl.'.... Phil’s opinions came out more blatantly and less telegenically, however, in a 2013 GQ interview, in which he called gay sex a sin and insisted that southern Black farm laborers were happy in Jim Crow-era Louisiana. ... A&E suspended him from the series.The punishment seemed, at the time, like the affirmation of a new cultural order.... The Trump 2016 campaign was in many ways a successful appeal to voters like Phil Robertson, who believed that their views were being silenced, their icons canceled, their traditions trampled, their beliefs insulted.... [Trump] promised... to restore the rich and meaningful lifestyle of their ancestors...."

From "'Duck Dynasty' Is Coming Back to a Changed America/The family reality comedy, being revived on A&E, was a lighthearted entertainment — that anticipated a decade’s worth of cultural politics." (NYT).

The article is about the revival of the show. Phil Robertson does not appear in it, and, as we talked about here, he died a few days ago. 

Sunrise — 5:24.

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What Joan Baez said about crashing her newly bought Tesla.

"Yes, I did. God was speaking to me, because I got this car—literally, I was trying it out. I drove for 45 minutes, I drove home—boom: I backed into a big tree and it was destroyed."

I read that in this Vanity Fair article: "Joan Baez Thinks Timothée Chalamet Was 'Too Clean' to Play Bob Dylan/The iconic musician opens up about her detachment from Dylan, her political engagement, and her real thoughts on A Complete Unknown."

I read that out loud and said: "That's a kind of corny old humor — something happens and you say 'God is punishing me' or something.'"

Meade said: "Well, she does have that song, 'I Believe in God.'"

The song is "God Is God" ("Yeah, I believe in God and God ain't me.... And I believe in God but God ain't us.... But I believe in God and God is God")(written by Steve Earle, who is, I think, the background singer).

"Having spent two years in a mild hysteria over tap water, I no longer have my old, unthinking faith in it. Sometimes I miss that naïveté."

"But in its place, I have something better. The whole ordeal encouraged me to ask questions and engage others in dialogue instead of trafficking in superstition — to make up my own mind. Instead of simply relying on the warnings of others, I did my own research, learning that tap water is subject to more regulation than bottled water; the most recent survey of L.A. tap water showed it to be compliant with the Environmental Protection Agency’s measures.... Drinking tap water feels to me like a kind of civic duty too, because it means consuming the public resource that an ostensibly well-intentioned government system — and not a for-profit bottled-water company’s marketing firm — has worked hard to offer its citizens....."

Writes A. Cerisse Cohen, in "The Unparalleled Daily Miracle of Tap Water/Paying closer attention to what was coming out of my faucet changed the way I see the world" (NYT).

I drink tap water, and I always have. 

"The fact that he was bitten by an alligator significantly and continued on his rampage was shocking...."

Said Grady Judd, sheriff of Polk County, Florida, quoted in "Bitten by Alligator, Man Is Killed After Charging at Deputies, Sheriff Says/The authorities say that Timothy Schulz, 42, of Mulberry, Fla., swam across an alligator-filled lake before a violent encounter with deputies in the neighborhood" (NYT).

"Sheriff Judd also said that Mr. Schulz had a lengthy criminal history, which he described as 'meth arrest, meth arrest, meth arrest, meth arrest, meth arrest.'... At 7:43 a.m., a resident in a Polk County neighborhood called the sheriff’s office to say that a man was in a lake known to have alligators in it, and that the man was treading water near one of the broad-snouted reptiles.... 'It’s a long swim,' Sheriff Judd said. 'And he was gator-bitten along the way.'"

I note the phrase "one of the broad-snouted reptiles," which I believe is an example of the "second mention" problem in writing. The writer feels a need to avoid repetition of a word — here, "alligator" — and comes up with a variation. The example I gave in the old post at that link was of a woman who'd written "small house" and, on second mention, wrote "petite edifice."

The writer of that alligator article — had it gone on longer and required further struggle to escape the terrible (word) "alligator" — could have told us more about how the drug-addled man — the substance-impaired individual — tangled with the jawsome beast, the toothy predator, the swamp monster.

Sadly, the man is dead, an individual fatally shot by officers, a person deceased in a police encounter, a male victim of law enforcement action, a citizen killed in officer-involved incident....

"Among those admiring the work on a recent visit was Liliya A. Medvedeva, who said she was 'very happy that our leader got restored.'"

"'We won the war thanks to him,' said Ms. Medvedeva, a pensioner born in 1950, adding that she was grateful that Stalin didn’t send her father to the Gulag even though he was taken prisoner during World War II — something that was equated with treason at the time. 'Yes, there were many mistakes, but everybody makes mistakes.' In a country where criticizing government action can be dangerous, it is unclear how many people disagree with Ms. Medvedeva’s positive view.... But nostalgia for the Soviet era is strong, especially among older generations traumatized by the painful transition to capitalism...."

From "Stalin’s Image Returns to Moscow’s Subway, Honoring a Brutal History/The Kremlin has increasingly embraced the Soviet dictator and his legacy, using them to exalt Russian history in a time of war, but he remains a deeply divisive figure in Russia" (NYT).

"President Putin has repeatedly condemned Stalin over the years, and recognized that terrible crimes were committed under his rule.... [But i]n 2017, Mr. Putin told the filmmaker Oliver Stone that 'excessive demonization of Stalin has been one of the ways to attack the Soviet Union and Russia.'... 'The creeping re-Stalinization of the country is dangerous...' said Lev Shlosberg, a Russian opposition politician and member of the liberal Yabloko party that started a petition to dismantle the monument in the Moscow metro...."

"How about a map-a-loopy? Get a real paper road map. Pick some place to start and another place to end, and..."

"... take the most tertiary, wayward, roundabout farm roads, or tiniest neighborhood street to get there. You will be pretty surprised to spend a memorable hour or two admiring unknown, undiscovered corners, big trees, obscure roads, streets, byways and dirt lanes."

Writes Rabble in the comments at the NYT article, "Land Snorkeling? Townsizing? A User’s Guide to the Latest Travel Lingo. Here are eight terms, some brand-new, others recently resurfaced, that match today’s travel trends."

As you will suspect from Rabble's comment and even without it, the 8 terms the NYT has found are pretty dumb. "Townsizing" is going to a town instead of a big city. "Land snorkeling" is walking about looking at various things. I approve of these practices, and if a cute word encourages anybody, fine.

Sunrise — 5:04, 5:16, 5:18, 5:26.

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We were talking about Trump not being "polished or smooth" and about a place called "Creatable World."

The first post of the day, here, quoted a NYT writer who said: Trump "wasn’t polished or smooth. His appearance was shoddy, strange, lacking all polish." Trump has tarted up the Oval Office with gold, but he's still rough, lumbering, and orange.

And here's the post this morning about Mattel's line of "gender-neutral" dolls called "Creatable World." But somehow the kids did not flow into the world that Big Toy had envisioned for them.

So this NBC headline caught my eye: "Obama world loses its shine in a changing, hurting Democratic Party."

You see the resonance.

There was once a place called "Obama World" and it was shiny.

Don't let it be forgot that once there was a spot/For one brief shining moment that was known as... Obama World!

A brief shiny glimpse at the NBC News article:

Did this "longtime Democratic researcher" really ask "around 250 focus groups of swing voters" to name the animal each political party reminds them of?

I'm reading this free-linked NYT article — "Six Months Later, Democrats Are Still Searching for the Path Forward" — because my son John posted about it on Facebook.

I just couldn't believe this:

One longtime Democratic researcher has a technique she leans on when nudging voters to share their deepest, darkest feelings about politics. She asks them to compare America’s two major parties to animals. After around 250 focus groups of swing voters, a few patterns have emerged, said the researcher, Anat Shenker-Osorio. Republicans are seen as “apex predators,” like lions, tigers and sharks — beasts that take what they want when they want it. Democrats are typically tagged as tortoises, slugs or sloths: slow, plodding, passive. So Ms. Shenker-Osorio perked up earlier this year when a Democratic man in Georgia suggested that a very different kind of animal symbolized her party. “A deer,” he said, “in headlights.”...

Somehow Republicans do way too much, so aggressively, but Democrats don't get anything done? And these were swing voters? Sorry. Not believed. Sounds too much like the opinion of someone with left-wing policy preferences. You want more from the Democrats and you want it faster. And those terrible Republicans!

Anyway, asking people what animal Democrats and Republicans reminded them of reminded me of the old Barbara Walters question "If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?" Yeah, be skeptical about that too because she didn't ask that question... other than that one time, after Katharine Hepburn started it by likening herself to a tree. Barbara Walters followed up with "What kind of tree are you, if you think you’re a tree?" Of course, Hepburn gave the answer nearly everyone would give if they were asked what kind of tree they are: Oak. And poor Barbara was forever after treated as if she asked everyone what kind of tree they were.

"I’m surprised by it, it turns into some kind of global catastrophe where people are even coming up with theories to explain it.... It’s nonsense...."

"[T]here are people who have watched the videos and believe that I shared a bag of cocaine, that I had a 'mano a mano' with a Turkish president and that right now I’m having a fight with my wife. None of this is true.... So everyone needs to calm down and focus on the real news...."

Said Emmanuel Macron, quoted in "'It’s Nonsense': Macron Plays Down Video of Shove From Wife/The French president, Emmanuel Macron, was pushed in the face as he left a plane in Vietnam. The bigger issue, he said, was the reaction, part of a string of disinformation by 'crazy people'" (NYT).

How can so many things NOT be true? Such wacky things — all involving hands — and all caught on camera?

1. Here's the hand thing with Erdogan. Come on. That's not nothing!

2. Here's the hide-the-cocaine sleight of hand.

3. And here's the hand of his wife pushing him in the face.

How do all these things happen to one man?

"Squiffy."

I learned a new word reading "I love camping and have done for 40 years — these are my best tips" (London Times):

1. Put the tent up as soon as you arrive

The biggest dilemma you face is not where to pitch the tent, but whether to crack your first beer before you do. I camp most often with a group of friends, and the temptation to leave the practicalities for later and throw ourselves down on a rug for a few drinks and a chinwag is a powerful one. On no account give in to this urge. As anyone who has tried to follow small-print Decathlon instructions in the dark while squiffy can confirm, it is always an error. Remembering which poles go in which slots first is hard at the best of times, so delay the fun until you are fully erect, so to speak.

That's written by a woman, by the way, Gemma Bowes. I don't think a male would indulge in such low humor, but I'm leaving it in my excerpt, having copied it and encountered it after deciding I wanted to blog because of "squiffy." I don't want to seem prudish, so I'll just say I think that kind of double entendre has gone out of style.

Anyway, let's talk about "squiffy" — meaning "drunk." It is in the OED, with the oldest use from a letter written around 1855: "Curious enough there is a Lady Erskine, wife of Lord E, her husband's eldest brother living at Bollington, who tipples & ‘gets squiffy’ just like this Mrs E." 

"At the end of last week, the Democratic Party sent an email to members and supporters, asking them to chip in $30 each for its election fighting fund. The email was dressed up as a personal appeal from Kamala Harris...."

"Harris was so badly defeated by President Trump.... that the party’s power brokers might have thought better than using her to front their bid for campaign cash. Then again, those party bosses have also seen the polling that shows Harris, at least for now, is the overwhelming favourite among the party’s grassroots to be the presidential candidate in 2028."

I'm reading "The early frontrunner for the 2028 election? Kamala Harris/The former vice-president may run for governor of California. Or…" (London Times).

I laughed at this line "At 60, she is still young enough to have another run at high office...." Another? Like there's only one more chance for her to threaten us with a presidential candidacy — in 2028? She's only 60. She can go at least 4 more times. She can be there in 2028, 2032, 2036, and 2040! Imagine the 80-year-old Kamala Harris, well-seasoned, sharp as a tack.

Perhaps the Democratic Party must show her if it's going to use any individual person on this kind of fundraising email. Not to show her — when she's the party's most recent nominee — could be read as disrespectful. Ironically, that's the same motivation that got her the nomination last time and that led to dismal defeat. But there's no choice. They're boxed in. This is the corner into which they have painted themselves.

I'm making a new tag. 

Speaking of dolls, whatever happened to "Creatable World" dolls?

Dolls came up in the previous post when a NYT author located Trump's "level of aesthetic consideration" to that which a child gives "her doll’s face before covering it in nail polish."

That took me down the rathole that is the "dolls" tag in my archive, and I was surprised to encounter this 2019 post: "That’s why I applaud Mattel’s Creatable World, a new collection of gender-neutral dolls, which allow kids to customize their Barbie and Ken in ways they never could before."

That's not me applauding Creatable World. I was quoting something. I can't think of a time when I applauded a toy, and, though I like the idea of children creating little imaginary worlds with their toys, I'm wary of Big Toy's packaging of a particular world to capture the creative energy of the child. Was Creatable World — i.e., gender-neutral world — offered as the antidote to the excessive genderizing of Barbie?

But what happened to Creatable World? I don't think Mattel ever announced that it was withdrawing the product. How much of a fiasco was it?

Did kids just not like it? Did the adults who liked that sort of thing simply fail to have children?

Who even remembers Creatable World? It surprised me to run across it this morning. Is it in the junkpile of things people like to forget ever happened? Have we created a world in which Creatable World never existed?

"Lately the American president has been spending quite a bit of time redecorating the Oval Office. The results can only be called a gilded rococo hellscape."

I'm reading "All Hail Our Rococo President!" —  "an installment of Visual Studies, a series that explores how images move through and shape culture" — by Emily Keegin, in The New York Times. That's a free-access link.

There is a parade of golden objects that march across the mantel, relegating the traditional Swedish ivy to a greenhouse. Gilded Rococo wall appliqués, nearly identical to the ones at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, are stuck to the fireplace and office walls with the same level of aesthetic consideration a child gives her doll’s face before covering it in nail polish....

Lots of photos, analysis, and historical background, so go to the free link. I'll just quote one more thing:

Right before the 2016 election, Fran Lebowitz called Mr. Trump “a poor person’s idea of a rich person.” On the campaign trail, he didn’t look or sound like the rest of the new American billionaires. He wasn’t polished or smooth. His appearance was shoddy, strange, lacking all polish. And all that gold in his house? Well, yes, it looked fake. It was Rococo. He was a normal guy self-consciously performing wealth, something Americans had been doing for the previous 20 years. Not to mention the past 240....

Would America be less of a hellscape if it were polished and smooth? 

Odd that we got that metaphor out of nowhere — the little girl covering her doll's face in nail polish — and then the word "polish" became the essence of the way educated, intelligent people "perform wealth": "He wasn’t polished or smooth." And then the author doubled down about polish: "His appearance was shoddy, strange, lacking all polish."

Sunrise — 5:26.

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"I was bickering, or rather joking, with my wife. It's nothing."

Said Emmanuel Macron, quoted in "The giveaway sign that Macron was 'furious' with wife Brigitte for viral push in face... as he tries to brush it off as 'joking around'" (Daily Mail).

I'm sure you've seen the video:

French President Emmanuel Macron responds after he apparently got assaulted in the face by his wife Brigitte while stepping off of a plane in Vietnam.

Macron was seen getting shoved in the face before getting off the plane as if nothing happened.

Macron has since responded to… pic.twitter.com/YeEAwdLcxF

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) May 26, 2025

My favorite part is his "Oh, hi" gesture, when he sees that the face push got caught on camera. And that you only see Brigitte's hand, not the rest of her — in the manner of Soupy Sales and White Fang:

ADDED: Here's a different angle:

"I spend a lot of my time saucer-eyed with horror at the rapid degeneration of this country, agog at the terrifying power amassed by Silicon Valley big shots who sound like stoned Bond villains."

Writes Michelle Goldberg, pushing this new HBO show "Mountainhead," in "From the Creator of ‘Succession,’ a Delicious Satire of the Tech Right" (NYT).

No one, I suspect, can fully process the cavalcade of absurdities and atrocities that make up each day’s news cycle. But art can help; it’s not fun to live in a dawning age of technofeudalism, but it is satisfying to see it channeled into comedy.

I liked "Succession" and will give this show a try, but the trailer did not appeal to me. Was that music needed to mask the deficiencies of the script and the acting? 

"I hope you rich folks don't mind slumming it in the humble abode of the poorest billionaire in the gang" — that's the first line in the trailer! I can't believe present-day billionaires would talk like that. It sounds like the way a high-school student in the 1960s would write dialogue for a rich guy. Remember when any time a door was opened to reveal the innards of a mansion, some character would say "Welcome to my humble abode"?

I don't mind unrealistic dialogue if it's brilliant somehow — comically, tragically — but that's just so embarrassingly dumb. I don't get it. "Succession" was great. But I see this show was written and filmed very quickly:

"Scholars who have studied the earlier age of electric vehicles see parallels in their demise in the early decades of the 1900s..."

"...  and the attacks they are facing now. In both eras, electric cars struggled to gain acceptance in the marketplace and were undermined by politics. A big knock against them was they had to be charged and ultimately were considered less convenient than vehicles with internal combustion engines.... Charging and access to fuel were also concerns a century earlier.... They also had to overcome gender stereotypes. Their benefits like quiet, smooth operation were considered by some men to be too feminine, and, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, many models like the Baker Electric were explicitly marketed only to women.... In the fall of 2022, Representative Majorie Taylor Greene [said].... 'There’s nothing more American than the roar of a V-8 engine under the hood of a Ford Mustang or Chevy Camaro, an incredible feel of all that horsepower.' But Democrats, she said, 'want to emasculate the way we drive.'... 'Musk has done everything he could to try to make a Tesla a manly vehicle,' said Virginia Scharff, ... author of... 'Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age.'... But, Ms. Scharff added, Mr. Musk may have gone too far... 'Tesla is so associated with a kind of toxic masculinity now...'..."

From "Electric Vehicles Died a Century Ago. Could That Happen Again? Battery-operated vehicles were a mainstay more than a hundred years ago, but only a few still exist — one happens to be in Jay Leno’s garage" (NYT).

Here's Jay with his Baker:

Here's a charming 1910 ad — "Daddy — Get Me a Baker":

She's very feminine but does seem to know about "the business underneath," the "shaft drive."

First, he just exclaims "HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY!" but then he thinks again, and by "thinks again," I don't mean he questioned whether "HAPPY" is the right word.

I mean he decided it would be better to say "HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE SCUM....":

I especially like the all caps and the "21,000,000 MILLION." That's 21 trillion.

"I think there was a feeling — like, a lot of members of the Democratic Party that were seeing this or saw moments um of him seeming out of it — um that going public was not going to change [Biden's] mind."

"It was only going to help Donald Trump, um, and I think that's how a lot of them rationalized it. Now whether or not history will judge them, you know, as being right for doing that, um, you know, we will see, but this is also part of the reason why the White House was shielding him from as many people as possible including Cabinet secretaries because sometimes, you know, you see him once maybe it's just a bad day you can just say, like, you know, maybe I just had one bad meeting. You're not really sure..."

Said Alex Thompson, co-author of "Original Sin," on "Fox News Sunday" yesterday.

The interviewer, Shannon Bream, quotes from the book (on page 85): "[A longtime Biden aide said] 'He just had to win, and then he could disappear for four years — he'd only have to show proof of life every once in a while. His aides could pick up the slack." She asks: "Who would have been running the White House in a second Biden term?"

Thompson responds: "Well, this person went on to say that when you're voting for a President you're voting for the aides, uh, around him. But these aides were not even Senate-confirmed aides. These are White House aides. These were unelected people. And one of the things that really I think comes out in our reporting here is that if you believe — and I think a lot of these people do sincerely believe — that Donald Trump was and is an existential threat to democracy you can rationalize anything including sometimes doing undemocratic things, which, I think, is what this person is talking about."

It's like fighting fire with fire — fighting the destruction of the democracy with the destruction of democracy. You had to destroy the village to save it. Noted. 

"In a lot of ways, I was withdrawing from mainstream society. I was trying to drop back about two centuries to become an eighteenth-century man..."

"... who relied on hunting and fishing for his livelihood. But I was living in the twentieth century, and everything was constantly changing around me.... I’ve always believed that if we did what was morally and ethically right, while continuing to steadfastly believe in what we were doing, we’d end up okay in the end.... Now, I’m not a man of great intellectual depth, but it sounds to me like God Almighty has said we can pretty much rack and stack anything that swims, flies, or walks, which I consider orders from headquarters.... After studying several political parties to find out what they believe and stand for, I decided my political ideology was more in line with the Republicans. I definitely was no Democrat—that’s for sure—but I don’t really consider myself one or the other. I’m more of a Christocrat, someone who honors our founding fathers and pays them homage for being godly men at a time when wickedness was all over the world. Our founding fathers started this country and built it on God and His Word, and this country sure would be a better place to live and raise our children if we still followed their ideals and beliefs."

Highlights I selected from a book I read and blogged 11 years ago, retrieved this morning on seeing the obituary of the author. Do you recognize the voice?

Sunrise — 5:24, 5:27.

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"She said she realized that the craft risked dying out when the only person left in her village who knew how to make a blouse was an 87-year-old woman."

"She asked the woman to help teach local youngsters embroidery and started a class at her home. On a recent afternoon, 16 girls sat in rapt attention as they stitched away for hours.... Teaching teenagers to stitch, Ms. Uta said, not only keeps traditional handicrafts alive, but also helps wean young people off their cellphones, at least for a few hours.... Politicians 'are all wearing fake blouses and setting a bad example for everyone,' she added. 'We need to go back to traditions but real ones, not traditions deformed by politics.'"

From "A Blouse Gets Entangled in a Political Tussle in Eastern Europe/Nationalists in Romania have adopted an item of clothing traditionally worn by villagers, particularly women. Liberals say it’s an appropriation of a cultural identity that belongs to everyone" (NYT).

1. Does it matter exactly what this blouse looks like? Here's how Henri Matisse painted it in 1940:

2. Will embroidering keep the kids off their phone? It will keep them from looking at their phone, but not, I think, from listening. What music/podcast/audiobook would you listen to if your were doing some time-consuming, detailed embroidery? Here's a playlist of Romanian popular music. 

3. What item of traditional American clothing could a political movement adopt and cause you distress like that experienced in Romania over this blouse — something you or people you like want to keep wearing and now feel that to wear it is to express support for a cause they oppose?

4. When I was young, I used to worry that various items of clothing (or jewelry) had symbolic meaning that I didn't understand and I worried about unintentionally associating myself with a cause I didn't know or understand. 

5. "Though Henri Matisse’s prolific career as an artist greatly inspired numerous pieces and collections designed by the creative legend Yves Saint Laurent, it was Saint Laurent’s interpretation of Matisse’s illustrated and painted Romanian folk blouses that became an iconic house staple for generations to come...." These days, the elite won't do that. They are controlled into submission by the phrase "cultural appropriation."

"I think the NYT has framed men as a problem. They're not thriving, they're not aspiring. We need to figure out what's wrong with them..."

"... maybe even empathize with them, because, after all, we do need them to function."

So I said, in the previous post. And one reason I said it was because I'd already opened a tab for a second article on the home page of the NYT today: "Where Have All My Deep Male Friendships Gone? I have many guy friends. Why don’t we hang out more?"

This is a long piece in the NYT Magazine, by Sam Graham-Felsen, and like the article discussed in the previous post, it assures us that there's nothing gay going on here: "I never had sexual feelings for Rob, but there was an intensity to our connection that can only be described as love. I thought about him all the time, and cared, deeply, about what he thought of me. We got jealous and mad at each other, and often argued like a bitter married couple — but eventually, like a successful married couple, we’d always find a way to talk things out."

Graham-Felsen has had many other close male friends — "nearly a dozen other dudes — dudes I spent thousands of accumulated hours with; dudes I shared my most shame-inducing secrets with; dudes I built incredibly intricate, ever-evolving inside jokes with; dudes I loved and needed, and who loved and needed me...." 

But he doesn't have dudes like that anymore. Is that because he's older, and his contemporaries are absorbed in family and work, or is it because American men in general "are getting significantly worse at friendship"?

"A social media trend has men surprising their friends with a call before bed. It has led to a lot of laughs, but also some deeper connections."

I'm reading "Men Are Calling Other Men to Say Good Night, and the Results Are Amazing" (NYT).

Calling, not texting. I'm thinking the only reason to make a phone call is to have something to video for social media. A phone call. Just to say good night?

Now, I'm going to read this article, but my presumption is that the NYT is involved in 2 things. First, it's what I've been collecting for many years under my tag "MSM reports what's in social media." What's happening in social media is considered news, partly because it kind of is and partly because the newspaper wants to seem decently hip to various trends. Second, I think the NYT has framed men as a problem. They're not thriving, they're not aspiring. We need to figure out what's wrong with them, maybe even empathize with them, because, after all, we do need them to function.

All right. I've read the article. It's written by a woman, Gina Cherelus, and "All of the men interviewed for this article said their female partners encouraged them to make the call."

"The erosion of working-class support — among Black, white and Latino voters alike — has unnerved every ideological wing of the Democratic Party."

"Ben Tulchin, a pollster who worked on Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaigns, said the old political calculations for how Democrats can win elections were now obsolete. 'The math doesn’t work,' he said. 'For years, the belief was Democrats have had demographic destiny on our side. Now, the inverse is true.' Some Democrats hope that this is only a phenomenon of the Trump era, and that G.O.P. gains will evaporate once the president is no longer on the ballot.... But Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist who served as chief of staff to former Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who left the party last year, warned that such optimism was misplaced. 'Trump is the symptom, not the disease,” he said. “The disease is the fact that you have lost touch with a whole swath of voters that used to consistently vote Democratic.”... [Representative Ritchie Torres, a Democrat from the Bronx said] 'I am convinced that Donald Trump is a singular phenomenon in American history.... I am unconvinced that his appeal is necessarily transferable to the Republican Party writ large. That remains to be seen.'"

From "The Democrats’ problems run deep, nearly everywhere.This is where voters shifted toward President Trump in each of the last three elections" (NYT)(free-access link, because there are a lot of interesting graphics showing the dramatic shift toward Trump (or something more than just Trump)).

Sunrise — 5:01, 5:21, 5:20, 5:27.

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"Bono has stood by his decision to accept the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom, despite admitting to 'looking like a plonker' as President Biden placed it around his neck."

"The U2 frontman, who recently celebrated his 65th birthday, has no regrets keeping the award that he received in January for his humanitarian work in spite of claims that he was morally wrong to do so due to the former president’s track record over Gaza."

From "Bono has no regrets about accepting White House honour/The U2 frontman addresses backlash over accepting the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, citing his longstanding humanitarian work and collaboration with Joe Biden" (London Times).

According to the OED, "plonker" has meant "A foolish, inept, or contemptible person" since 1955. John Lennon muttered it on TV in 1964. "Plonker" also means "penis." Published examples go back to the 1920s: "Last night I lay in bed and pulled my plonker." I was amused to find that in the OED, but there it was. An older meaning of the word is "Something large or substantial of its kind." You can see how one thing leads to another.

"For at least two decades political leaders from both parties have dragged our military into missions — it was never meant to be— it wasn't meant to be."

"People would say 'Why are we doing this why are we wasting our time money and souls?' In some case they sent our warriors on nation-building crusades to nations that wanted nothing to do with us, led by leaders that didn't have a clue, in distant lands, while abusing our soldiers with absurd ideological experiments, here and at home. All of that's ended. You know that. All of it's ended. It's ended. Strongly ended. They're not even allowed to think about it anymore. They subjected the armed forces to all manner of social projects and political causes while leaving our borders undefended and depleting our arsenals to fight other countries' wars.... The job of the US armed forces is not to host drag shows, to transform foreign cultures, [or] to spread democracy to everybody around the world at the point of a gun. The military's job is to dominate any foe and annihilate any threat to America anywhere anytime and any place...."

Said Donald Trump, addressing the graduating class at West Point.

Comic timing.

During his closed press crypto event, Trump pretended to be hit in the ear after an unexpected loud sound was heard. pic.twitter.com/ZA4MmkXT3F

— PatriotTakes 🇺🇸 (@patriottakes) May 23, 2025

"About a year ago, Elon Musk quietly summoned a handful of Republican strategists and confidants to his sparsely decorated apartment overlooking downtown Austin."

"The Tesla CEO told the group that electing Donald Trump was essential to the country’s future, and he was willing to do anything — and pay any amount — to create a 'red wave' around the country. He did a lot... And this week, following a period of intense backlash against his political activity and his electric-vehicle company, he seemed to draw a line under all that work: 'I think I’ve done enough.'.... As Musk focuses on Mars and cars, his pullback from political spending could be a significant loss for the Republican Party...."

From "Tired of political attacks, Musk turns back to Mars and autonomous cars/As he retreats from Washington, Elon Musk says he will spend 'a lot less' on politics. Close advisers says he is eager to return to prior obsessions" (WaPo).

Who knows what Elon Musk is thinking or planning to do or what he will do? He likes to surprise and he's really good at that. Meanwhile, The Washington Post is rather flat-footed and obvious. I can see that it means to do what it always does — mix low-level hate with weak encouragement in the hope of keeping readers in the sickly embrace of the Democratic Party. 

"Of course, with a broadcast social network like X, everyone is both a patron and an owner of sorts."

"Followers can feel like a kind of currency, built up over years: Some people don’t leave the bar, because they’re invested and don’t want to dump their shares. Other people don’t leave, because the alternative hangouts aren’t enticing enough. Some simply don’t want to give the Nazis the satisfaction of successfully driving them out. There is plenty of commentary, even among users of other platforms, about how Threads is bloodless (and owned by Mark Zuckerberg), Mastodon is inscrutable, and Bluesky is humorless.... If a billionaire bought one of your local haunts... brought back many of the people who’d been banned for harassing other regulars, eliminated basic rules of decency... taking your business elsewhere would be perfectly rational. This is essentially what’s happened on X.... A critical mass of the nation’s politicians, news outlets, and major brands regularly post content for free... This platform is owned by the world’s richest man, a conspiracy theorizing GOP mega-donor who still holds a position in the Trump administration.... Let’s pause to sit with the absurdity of these facts...."

I'm sitting with the Atlantic article by Charlie Warzel, "What Are People Still Doing on X? Imagine if your favorite neighborhood bar turned into a Nazi hangout." 

Here's how I'd act when my favorite neighborhood bar turns into a Nazi hangout:

"People could never imagine that I would lack any confidence, or belief in the simple things about who I am."

"Everything was torn to bits. He leaves a trail of blood. I don’t think I’m saying too much earth-shattering stuff after we — there’s been enough out there. But it gave me the greatest gift, which is myself. It gave me the greatest gift of how much I needed to show up for myself and take care of myself."

Said Danica Patrick, on a podcast called "The Sage Steele Show," quoted in "Danica Patrick: 'Emotionally abusive' Aaron Rodgers relationship ‘wore me down to nothing'" (NY Post).

I saw that just as I'm in the middle of listening to Aaron Rogers on a new episode of Joe Rogan. Audio and transcript at Podscribe. I don't think Aaron talks about any of his relationships with women. Does he leave a trail of blood? He doesn't give a clue. He and Joe talk about vaccines, the pyramids, aliens, the Sean Combs trial, transwomen in women's sports. Juicy substantive topics.

Why are men's podcasts so different from women's and why do I only listen to the men's? Part of the answer is that I'm highly skeptical of female empowerment discourse — e.g., "the gift of how much I needed to show up for myself and take care of myself." It's not just that it's superficial and repetitious. I suspect that it's part of the subordination of women, not that it does men any good.