Finally, we got a richly colorful sunrise, the first one of December.
Yesterday, we had a huge crowd of swans, and today they were entirely gone, from this side of the lake anyway. I thought I heard them in the distance. Maybe over by the terrace and the frat houses. But where we were the coots had reestablished cootville. Walking back, I thought I saw an eagle, and a bit later I heard an unusual bird cry. Eagles don't sound eagle-y to me. But it was an eagle. In fact, 3 eagles!
The relevant meaning is "Of a thing: in accordance with principles of artistic beauty or taste; giving or designed to give pleasure through beauty; of pleasing appearance." The OED traces that back to the 1800s:
A quote from one of the recipients of the call for help: "We always try not to be judgmental. But you’re thinking, Quicksand, really? It’s probably some tourist with their foot stuck in the mud somewhere."
AND: Dirks shows up the comments section at the NYT:
The inconsolable 39-year-old [Moore] allegedly burst into the apartment of his executive assistant and mistress, Paige Shiver, on Wednesday, where he grabbed butter knives and kitchen scissors and told her he was going to make her watch him commit suicide. Shiver, 32, had broken off the illicit tryst with her boss just two days before, prosecutor Kati Rezmierski said during Moore’s arraignment on Friday afternoon.The pair has been in an “intimate relationship” for a number of years, she added.... Shiver reported their relationship to the University of Michigan’s athletic department when Moore continued to call and text her, despite her efforts to ignore him, prosecutors said.... Prosecutors on Friday described to the court how an enraged Moore told his mistress, “you ruined my life,” and that he was going to kill himself and “make you watch.”...
A beautiful and entertaining graphic depiction of the relative size of various life forms.
I've always loved perceptions about size. I've collected them over the years using my tag "big and small" — you know, the large boulder the size of a small boulder, the Santa Claus hat, and all the rest — so I'm happy to have something else, something so good, to add to my collection.
Wrote Nell Zink, in "Sister Europe,” quoted in the Dwight Garner section of the NYT piece "Our Book Critics on Their Year in Reading," and that's a free link to the NYT because Garner does such a fine job of finding sentences to quote.
Here's his book — which I've bought for myself and others — collecting quotes in the same manner you'll find in that "Year in Reading" piece: "Garner's Quotations/A Modern Miscellany" (commission earned).
And here's the commission-earned link for "Sister Europe," which I bought on the strength of that one sentence.
Here's one more quote from that "Year in Reading" (this one's by Mariel Franklin): "There was something about air travel that made me think of Swiss euthanasia clinics."
"... something we haven't really seen since the late 1800s. This is a world in which the United States dominates its own territory, that China dominates the Pacific, and that the Europeans dominate Europe — but if they don't get their act together, maybe Vladimir Putin dominates Europe.... I think this is where we see the America First doctrine becoming something closer to Americas First — Americas with an S — that he views the region as basically the subsidiary of the United States. And you know, I've traveled with President Trump. I've covered 5 American Presidents since I got back to Washington... and my takeaway is that Trump is really not an isolationist. He never has been. He's actually more of a unilateralist.... He wants the total freedom of action. He knows that he is not really interested in democracy promotion. He knows that he wants to prioritize economics and economic development over everything, even if those economics don't necessarily come with security benefits to the us.... [E]ach region of the world — and even our allies — are going to have to learn to depend on themselves.... I think the fundamental trust in the US as the defender of a certain set of concepts of the West has been shattered for some time...."
"Such tools can be used to cheat on take-home exams or essays and to complete all manner of assignments, part of a broader phenomenon known as 'cognitive off-loading.' [One teacher] tells her students that using AI is like bringing a forklift to the gym when your goal is to build muscle. 'The classroom is a gymnasium, and I am your personal trainer,' she explains. “I want you to lift the weights.'"
"... for years. On the day her husband was killed, Kouhkan found him beating their son, then aged five. She called her husband’s cousin, Mohammad Abil, for help. When he arrived a fight broke out which resulted in the death of her husband...."
"Iran executes the highest number of women in the world, according to available data. Amnesty International said that at least 30 women were executed in the country last year. At least 42 women have been executed in 2025 so far – 18 for murdering their husbands, including two child brides, according to Iran Human Rights."
"... both of which were largely considered busts. Experts theorized 'Canto' was an example of the disconnect between media elites and consumers, and that scandal-filled headlines preceding its release exhausted the public interest before the book even hit the shelves...."
"... according to reports of a longer, still-classified version of the US national security strategy released last week.
There are also suggestions of creating a new elite C5, or Core Five, forum of world powers to sideline the G7, comprising America, China, India, Japan and Russia.
The four EU countries seen as targets to follow Brexit are Austria, Hungary, Italy and Poland, according to leaked details reported by the US defence website Defense One. The classified version of the strategy, which warned of 'civilisational erasure' in Europe because of mass immigration and multiculturalism, is believed to call for the US to 'support parties, movements, and intellectual and cultural figures who seek sovereignty and preservation/restoration of traditional European ways of life … while remaining pro-American.'"
"... how his daughter went from being sectioned for anorexia to being affirmed in her trans identity by all the adults in her life except him, how she was given a prescription for testosterone after one online session with a counsellor, and how this was injected by her local NHS GP with no blood tests or clinical evaluation.... J was diagnosed with autism aged 13. At 14 she was sectioned because she had become severely malnourished.... Before she was sectioned, J had told her parents that she was a lesbian, and then she and her best friend said that they were in fact boys in a gay relationship. 'These are two autistic girls who were ostracised in school,' says [the father]. After J came out of hospital, she ate nothing for a week. Then her mother made a deal with her: if you start eating, I will let you take the gender drugs.... He remembers the last time he saw her.... 'When she said goodbye, her smile was the same girly shy smile she had as a little girl. Somewhere in there is my daughter.'"
"But she repeated the Trump administration’s talking points on Mr. Maduro’s government, comparing him to a criminal mastermind engaged in a vast array of illegal activities in partnership with America’s adversaries. 'Venezuela has already been invaded,' she said. 'We have the Russian agents, we have the Iranian agents, we have terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, operating freely in accordance with the regime. We have the Colombian guerrilla, the drug cartels.'... In response to questions about the seizure of the oil tanker, Ms. Machado said that she supported cutting the funds of Mr. Maduro’s government. She added that he finances himself with gold smuggling, human trafficking, drugs and illegal oil sales...."
ADDED: I'm reading "How Nobel peace prize winner María Machado fled Venezuela, in a wig/The Venezuelan opposition leader took great risks to reach Norway, where her daughter had accepted the prize, making a surprise appearance hours later" (London Times): "... Machado left her safe house in the Caracas suburbs on Monday night, wearing a wig and a disguise.... [and] embarked on a ten-hour journey through ten military checkpoints before reaching the coast by midnight. After resting for a few hours at a coastal fishing village, she and two others set out at 5am on a traditional wooden skiff — a small lightweight fishing boat with a shallow bottom, designed to be used near shore — and made the 35-mile trip across the Caribbean Sea to Curaçao, an island nation within the kingdom of the Netherlands. Strong winds and choppy seas delayed her crossing.... [A] source said that the Machado escape team alerted the US government 'so that they would not blow up the boat.' The opposition leader has been a vocal supporter of the Trump administration’s increased military presence in the area...."
AND: The NYT quotes Machado: "I believe that President Trump’s actions have been decisive to reach the point where we are right now, in which the regime is weaker than ever. You need to raise the cost of staying in power and lower the cost of leaving power. Only when you do that, this regime will break down. And that’s where we’re moving toward right now."
"That’s their thing. They’re into making things better. I’m a Gen Z, too. I moved to New York from Detroit at 24, and I’m still 24 in my head, so they’re my people. The Gen Z’s only like talking to people their own age, and since they can tell I’m like them, they talk to me. If someone looks over 30, I don’t even interview them.... I never know who these people are. I don’t read the newspaper or follow the news. I cry when I read the news, so why would I? But I don’t get star-struck. Back in the 1970s, I met every celebrity there ever was at Studio 54, where I was a house photographer, so I don’t get star-struck."
And here's her Instagram, so you can check out the videography.
That one quote really struck me: "I don’t read the newspaper or follow the news. I cry when I read the news, so why would I?" It's a good question. You do not have to read the news. You can abstain.
And by the way, you don't have to answer when people prod you to reveal your politics.
"Mr. Dokoupil told Mr. Coates that some of the material in the book 'would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist,' adding, 'what is it that so particularly offends you about the existence of a Jewish state that is a Jewish safe place?'... Some CBS journalists objected to how Mr. Dokoupil had handled the interview, and the news division’s leadership rebuked the anchor on a newsroom-wide conference call, saying the interview had fallen short of editorial standards. That prompted Shari Redstone, the owner of Paramount at the time, to defend Mr. Dokoupil and reprimand her own executives, saying 'they made a mistake' in questioning the anchor...."
ADDED: I said it back in 2011: "[I]f you ever feel like giving me a gift, and you think all you've got to give is that drum number you're threatening to perform, realize you are making a mistake. There's also the gift of silence. I'd prefer that. I know baby Jesus reputedly appreciated the gift of drumming — according to that nasty song — but consider the possibility that Jesus was just being nice. I know, politeness is a quality alien to infants, but — come on! — it was Jesus! Put the damned drum away."
"Of course, I only had an hour-and-a-half conversation with Charlie, but where it seems to me to have fallen short with Turning Point USA and the MAGA movement is they don’t have a prescription to actually address the real and substantive issues — but they sure as hell identify the problem."
Said Gavin Newsom, interviewed by Ezra Klein, in "The Contradictions of Gavin Newsom" (NYT)(audio and transcript at Podscribe, here). Kirk had been a guest on Newsom's podcast, and Klein wanted to know what Newsom had learned from Kirk.
Klein pushed back: "Well, isn’t that a prescription? If I were to try to boil it down: tariffs, a closed border and Christianity?"
Instead of taking on Klein's idea that the right does offer solutions, Newsom seized on that last word —Christianity — and tumbled into personal storytelling mode:
"... from academia to Hollywood that remains critical of more conservative lifestyles. While the country rightfully spent recent decades boosting the educational and economic prospects of women, it deindustrialized, axing and outsourcing jobs in heavily male industries, and leaving men and women increasingly out of step with one another. Efforts to make the workforce and education system more friendly for girls have led to emphasizing literacy and verbal skills, a hemorrhaging of male teachers, and the decline of shop classes and vocational programs.... The trend line of women reporting a declining desire to marry may indeed reflect pessimism about their prospects rather than the institution itself — and not for ideological reasons so much as practical ones...."
Jashinsky, as a 7-year-old girl, was one of the kids portrayed in the Christina Hoff Sommers book “The War Against Boys,” which came out in 2000, and she also worked as an intern on the re-release of the book in 2012.
It seems that both men and women regard the members of the opposite sex as unworthy of marriage.
"My whole life has been heat. I like heat, in a certain way. But I will. I mean, you are somewhat more traditional politicians. Two and a half years ago, I was never thinking in terms of politics. Now I’m a politician. You people have been doing it, many of you, all your lives. I’ll take all the heat you want."
Said Donald Trump, in what I nominate as his most iconic statement.
He said it on January 9, 2018, and I ran across it this morning because I was reading a 2018 post of mine — "How Trump 'took the heat' for all of them: The 'shithole' timeline.'" Lately, some people have been harking back to the much better remembered Trump quote: "Why is it we only take people from shithole countries?" That's what got me there.
Trump's "I like heat" statement was made in a conversation about comprehensive immigration reform. Imagine if we'd gotten that in 2018! He wanted it, ostensibly. He tried to bring members of Congress together and offered to "take all the heat." But we didn't get that reform, and look what happened.
Outside of that context, it's a good quote for general Trump purposes, don't you think?
"Those typefaces, which are used by The New York Times, include small strokes at the edges of many characters. Admirers say those flourishes make letters look more elegant and make them easier to distinguish from one another, even though they can also create a sense of clutter. Serif typefaces are 'generally perceived to connote tradition, formality and ceremony,' Mr. Rubio’s order said, adding that they were used by the White House, Supreme Court and other state and federal government entities, as well as in the script on the side of Air Force One...."
It's bizarre that wanting things to look normal again is counted as part of a "War Against Woke." I think the NYT is putting it that way to try to make sense of what the former administration did.
Why would the State Department want its official correspondence in the font you see here?
We're told the idea was to make reading easier for persons with dyslexia. Well, maybe, but that Calibri font seems to convey a message of informality or even humility. Don't take us so seriously, world.
Instead of holding the former administration to account for its poor choice, the new administration is framed as hostile to a vulnerable group!
"... 'cause I think, you know, I’m supposed to be a very smart person, I can ... I have eyes. I have ears. I have, uh, knowledge. I have vast knowledge. I see what’s happening. I get reports that you will never see. And I think it’s horrible what’s happening to Europe. I think it’s endangering Europe as we know it. Europe could be a whole different place. And I think the European people should do something about it...."
Said President Trump, in this long conversation with Politico's Dasha Burns.
Watch the whole thing, below, and read the transcript here.
1. "[I]t’s a flagrant challenge to Vogue magazine’s recent diktat regarding how embarrassing it is to have a boyfriend nowadays; a viral article that made specific reference to how 'no one' is doing precisely the thing Katy Perry, in fact, just did, ie sharing images of their boyfriend on social media."
2. "[T]he 'Travis Kelce-fication™" of romantic male partners. Travis Kelce... All photographic evidence suggests Kelce is even now incapable of so much as glancing at [Taylor] Swift without his entire facial expression melting into a mush of captivated swoony wonder that she could be interested in him… I would be so bold as to suggest that early signs are Trudeau has been, or is in the process of being, Travis Kelce-ficated by Perry...."
"The work by JK Rowling appears alongside a number of titles, including Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, the dystopian 2001 novel Noughts & Crosses by Malory Blackman and Edith Nesbit’s 1899 book The Treasure Seekers, assessed as having the potential to cause offence."
I was just saying nobody talks about Project 2025 anymore, and Meade said he was just reading about it, so I did a search and came up with that dispiriting Hill headline.
Let's read: "After devastating defeats in 2024, Democrats are closing out 2025 with wind in their sails.... Republicans and Democrats now talk openly of a likely tsunami of wins for Democrats in the 2026 midterms. If true, Democrats better get a surfboard and make plans to ride that big wave into the 2028 presidential election...."
He got that water metaphor going but recommends surfing in a tsunami. I asked Grok to make a list of other metaphors that are as good but bad as surfing in a tsunami. I got things like: "Having barely survived the forest fire of 2024, Democrats now have a raging wildfire at their backs. Better grab some marshmallows and roast them all the way to victory!" And: "After the dam broke and drowned them in 2024, Democrats finally have the floodwaters moving their way. Grab a pool floatie and ride this deluge to glory!"
"... but added that 'it would not be illegal' for them to exist in public schools. Abbott signed Senate Bill 12 earlier this year, a sweeping state law that banned student clubs with an LGBTQ+ focus...."
Naturally: "Petitions calling for theremoval of the school chapters have also emerged, with some students and parents criticizing the national organization for what they describe as 'racist, homophobic, and sexist hate speech on college campuses across America.' The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group that tracks extremism, describes Turning Point as an organization with a strategy of sowing fear 'that white Christian supremacy is under attack by nefarious actors, including immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community and civil rights activists.'"
Painfully: "Disclosure: Southern Poverty Law Center has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization... Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism...."
How dishonest is "it would not be illegal" given Senate Bill 12?
If there's something people want to see, why not let them see? I don't want to see it, because I was taught as a child not to look, and I've always regarded this a moral requirement. If I know it is video of a real person dying, I will read about it if it is newsworthy but I don't watch. I read about the death of George Floyd, but I did not watch.
Do people gain better understanding by watching video of human beings dying? In the case of the boat strike, there are fact questions, and it is evidence – inflammatory evidence, but evidence. And some people want to stare at it and make up their own mind — stare at human beings, desperate and then blown up. How much can be seen?
"Facing down this digital firehose of – pardon the Silicon Valleyese – 'content,' how does Hollywood now decide what merits a cinema release? What executives are looking for – at least at Sony, according to one of its partner producers I spoke with recently – is 'theatricality.' By that term, the company means films with 'the urgency to get people to leave the comfort of their homes, he says. Working out what urgency – or 'theatrical intent,' to use the marketing lingo – means is the current Hollywood obsession. Tom Cruise, for instance, interprets urgency literally – banking on personal peril in the form of old-fashioned, non-CGI stunt work to pack in the punters. It worked for 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick.... His proselytisation of real thrills in real cinemas is one way of defining theatricality – though the danger is the approach relies only on fading muscle memory of blockbusters past...."
From the depth of my memory came a question that sounds like an entry for a new Dictionary of Received Ideas: Who was that French theorist who said theater must be spectacle? I believe he died putting on his shoes.
Such raw thoughts are — I think — good AI prompts. I immediately had the name: Antonin Artaud. Here's his Wikipedia article. He wrote a manifesto about what he called the Theatre of Cruelty. Here's a Grok-made chart to help you compare him to the Hollywood execs:
"Some aides feared that closing the border would be overturned by the courts. Others said that principles mattered. 'It was truly believed — deeply, by many, including the president — that that was not in keeping with our values,' said Ms. Jacobson, the former border czar...."
In the oral argument this morning in Trump v. Slaughter, Justice Gorsuch questioned Amit Agarwal, counsel for Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, the FTC commissioner fired by President Trump. This is the entire back-and-forth, centering on the idea of the President's duty to execute all the laws. All you lawyers can see where this is going: If the President has a duty, then he must have the power.
JUSTICE GORSUCH: You agree that [the President] has a duty to faithfully execute all the laws.
MR. AGARWAL: Yes.
JUSTICE GORSUCH: Civil and criminal.
MR. AGARWAL: We agree that the Constitution imposes on the President a duty to faithfully execute the laws, absolutely.
There's live-blogging of Trump v. Slaughter going on over at SCOTUSblog.
ADDED: I'm listening to the direct audio from the Court, which is here.
AND: At SCOTUSblog, Amy Howe observes that "a solid majority of the justices appeared to agree with the Trump administration that a law prohibiting the president from firing FTC commissioners except in cases of 'inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office' violates the constitutional separation of powers.... Much of the argument focused on the possible broader effects of a ruling for either the Trump administration or Slaughter. The justices questioned whether a decision in Slaughter’s favor could give Congress sweeping power, including the authority to convert existing Cabinet departments into multi-member agencies that would be insulated from presidential control.... In what was likely a bad sign for Slaughter, the justices spent virtually no time on the second question presented in the case – whether, even if the FTC removal statute is constitutional, a federal judge can order the reinstatement of an official who was fired without case, or whether that official is only entitled to back pay...."
Here's the transcript of the argument. Listening to the audio, I scrawled down one phrase I wanted to use to find the one quote I most wanted to blog. But I'm going to start a new post for that. The phrase was "cards on the table."
"... but there is a fairly obvious hinge point after which voter fury grew, about 20 years ago. That’s when the Iraq War grew deadlier while the stated purpose of the invasion — to eliminate Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction — turned out to be false. The housing market had blown up by 2008, causing a financial collapse that left millions of homeowners underwater and, the following year, led to an unemployment rate of 10 percent. Around that time, cable news began breaking away from its early focus on crime and trials and was instead becoming focused wall-to-wall on politics and government, fragmenting into ideological corners just as technology turned phones into instant echo chambers...."
Sample comments: "What a terrible both sidesism essay"/"Before Trump spewed his invectives demonizing our democratic institutions, I was mostly content with our government and felt it reflected our values...."
I like that the essay, by Paul Kane, reminded Democrats that their anger isn't traced to Trump. It was full grown in the Bush era. And you should have seen what it looked like here in Wisconsin in 2011:
"Trump on Sunday said he would be 'involved' in assessing the intended Netflix-Warner Bros. Discovery deal, saying Netflix’s market share in the streaming sector 'could be a big problem.'"
Sample comments over there: "Another low down and dirty deal brought to you by TrumpWorld"/"The complete Trump takeover effort of major media in this country continues"/"Remember when the whined about Obama and the dems 'picking winners and losers' and how wrong that was? The good old days."
"This is the architectural equivalent of a celebrity-style makeover: a redo to admire as a luxury commodity, an old building rejuvenated, history erased.... Of course, when celebrities go under the knife, we never see the surgery. Nor do we see the blood, bruising or scars. These aspects just get disappeared, before the eventual 'reveal' of the transformation. This is why the honesty discourse around surgery is complicated: Think of it as a film with some segments edited out, making the transition seem magical, and free of any gruesome in-between stages.... The Treasury Department has reportedly prohibited any further photos of the East Wing’s demolition site — we must not see the patient on the operating table...."
AFTERTHOUGHT: Taking Garelick's analogy very seriously, I could believe that Trump's buildings are, for him, the equivalent of a woman's body and face.
There has alway been a womanly aspect to Trump, and I think that is one of the (many) things that trouble those of us who have focused on his weirdness over the years. A transwoman is easier to fathom. Rather that to be focused on his own body and face, he has pushed this awareness out to the buildings that surround him. He's deeply invested in extreme achievement in the field of aesthetics — he's said "I'm a very aesthetic person" — and he may be too much like those actresses who overindulge in plastic surgery as they experience their time running low.
If I am right, it's not just a matter of the "gruesome in-between stages" of the reconstruction work. It's also the final result. Why does the NYT include that photo of Kristen Chenowith?
Hilariously... I mean sadly... unbelievable, for about 10 reasons, including the way the "contacts" on your phone hang on steadfastly until you delete them. I just checked mine, and I see names of people I haven't phoned since the '00s. Maybe Meghan weeds hers out more assiduously than I do, but still... deleting your father's name?
"In recent days Meghan has continued promoting the Christmas special of her Netflix show... in which she talks about a Christmas tree encapsulating a 'family’s story.' In a video posted to... Instagram she is seen making a homemade advert [sic] calendar... and saying 'thank you so … honestly so, so much' to the television crew... Markle is yet to meet his grandchildren... although he did receive a call asking for his daughter’s hand in marriage...."
1. "One thing about which I have not yet been 'disenchanted' in fine dining restaurants is a seat."
2. "I use a walker and anyplace I go must be accessible. This is a huge nope. Next."
3. "That's one way to ensure a young clientele...."
4. "That might be a violation of the ADA...."
5. "Wow. This business seem to have a lot of contempt for its customers. No chairs? Restrictive hours? No pasta outside??? No pasta for TAKE OUT? Good grief. I would never go there."
I'd say as long as people have a lot of choices of places to go, it's good to experiment, and I think it's nice to make a thing out of getting excellent pasta and moving along quickly, not sitting around. For people who want something else, there are all the other restaurants.
"About five weeks later, the man started to hallucinate, have trouble walking and swallowing, and had a stiff neck.... Two days after his symptoms started, he collapsed of what was presumed to be a heart attack, the report said. The man was unresponsive and taken to a hospital, where he died. Several of his organs were donated.... A Michigan man received the donated kidney. Five weeks after the transplant, he started to experience tremors, weakness, confusion and urinary incontinence, the report said...."
"The 'time may be ripe to reconsider the existence of such entities, and take action to bring them back within the executive branch,' the future chief justice of the United States advised the White House counsel in a 1983 memo. Independent agencies, he wrote, were a 'Constitutional anomaly.'
Once he ascended to the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roberts joined other conservatives on the bench in a series of rulings that have chipped away at Congress’s power to constrain the president’s authority to fire independent regulators...."
"... has been debating how friendly to be with a white nationalist. That may not be what Pantone means by 'peace, unity and cohesiveness,' but I have to imagine it will come up for some viewers.... This white, in particular, strikes me as a little flavorless. It’s the color of cottage cheese and dental floss, of marshmallows and AirPods."
"It reminds me of the clothes I put on when I’m in a rush and the foods I eat when I have a stomach ache.... Personally, I miss Viva Magenta from 2023. An insane choice, but at least it was a choice. Cloud Dancer feels like a product of being too tentative to make a statement in any direction. Which is, of course, its own kind of statement."
"Orwell’s proposal that totalitarianism demands the rejection of objective truth and the alteration of the past is perhaps the most original idea in 'Nineteen Eighty-Four.'... 'The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc [English socialism]. And even technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be used for the diminution of human liberty. In all the useful arts, the world is either standing still or going backwards.' And the very medium of thought, in Orwell’s reckoning, language, would be crippled. Winston’s co-worker, employed in the project, explains: 'Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year? … In the end we will make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.' What actually happened?... This logarithmic graph shows that in 1948, the Encyclopaedia Britannica was about 29,000 pages. Its final printed edition, in 2010, had 33,000. Today most of us rely on Wikipedia (despite its occasional errors and editing wars), which as of last year had the equivalent of 3.2 million Britannica pages, a hundredfold increase...."
I don't like the expression "let rip." It's too reminiscent of "rip one." But let's read this OED entry for "to let rip." which is defined as "to act or proceed without restraint; (also) to speak violently," which I don't for one minute believe that Kate Winslet did, even as she chided women for — whatever — lip injections and Ozempic.
The first of the historical quotes comes from California in 1857 and gives some insight into the court system:
"'The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over,' it says. There are echoes of a speech by JD Vance, the vice-president, in Munich in February that stunned European leaders by warning that the continent’s greatest danger came not from Russian aggression but from within, with the erosion of traditional values. 'Economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilisational erasure' in Europe, it states, targeting the 'European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence...."
"Have you ever heard 'You Don't Have to Say You Love Me' by Dusty Springfield?"I know you have, but have you truly experienced its depth and grandeur? Let Owen Cutts demonstrate:
"Now, as Bloomberg reports, the company’s executives are eying gigantic budget cuts, as high as 30 percent, for the teams responsible for its Meta Horizon Worlds product and Quest VR headset — another nail in the coffin for Zuckerberg’s obsession that has been a major thorn in the sides of investors for years now.... Besides, Meta and Zuckerberg have now found their next obsession: artificial intelligence. The company has committed to spending an astronomical $72 billion on AI this year — roughly as much as the company’s lost on the metaverse, coincidentally...."
So it's all very simple and anyone who says otherwise is sinister, and to boil it down to that isn't politicizing anything. It's the other side that's doing the politicizing, those bad people over there.
I remember when Democrats liked to portray themselves as sophisticated, seeing all the complexity and nuance. Now, they're pushing the idea it's all quite simple. It's black and white. So... binary.
The top-rated comment over there is interesting. Jose writes:
Ha ha. I was going to listen to the audiobook (commission earned), but I clicked the "Audible sample" button and as soon as Nuzzi's voice began, I clicked it off and exclaimed "Oh, no!"
She was able to get out exactly 6 words: "For the women who have mothered me...."
I was reacting to the voice alone, but the meaning lingered — For the women who have mothered me.... No no no no! I don't know who she's talking about or what they did that constituted "mothering" in her world view and I don't want to know.
"... TikTok, YouTube, sports, games, books and even taking a walk. This is a standard tactic: Define the market so broadly that dominance becomes mathematically impossible.... A Netflix merger with Warner Bros. would create a monopsony problem: too few buyers with too much bargaining power. Writers, directors, actors, showrunners, puppeteers, visual effects artists — all are suppliers. The fewer buyers competing to hire them, the lower their compensation and the narrower their opportunities.... "
Writes Roy Price, chief executive of an entertainment studio and former head of Amazon Studios, in "If Netflix Eats Warner Bros., It Will Be the End of Hollywood" (NYT).From "Monopsony" (Wikipedia): "The term 'monopsony' (from Greek μόνος (mónos) "single" and ὀψωνεῖν (opsōneîn) "'to purchase fish") was first introduced by the British economist Joan Robinson in her influential book, The Economics of Imperfect Competition (1933)...."Fish, eh? It has been noted that the word was miscoined. But is the coinage really fishy? The OED describes the etymology this way: "< mono- comb. form + ancient Greek ὀψωνία purchase of provisions (< ὀψωνεῖν to buy provisions (see opsonation n.) + ‑ία ‑ysuffix), after monopoly n.""Opsonation" is a new one for me. It's archaic. It's supposedly a feast, a catering, or a buying of provisions, according to the OED, which does not mention fish.But back to the big merger — perhaps we will get more fish movies. Like this Warner Brothers classic:
"It’s the perfect scapegoat for that creeping feeling so many of us have that our modern world — with our phone addictions and plastic-filled kitchens and pantries stocked with ultraprocessed foods — is slowly poisoning us. For as much as influencers love to talk about inflammation, I had no idea how to picture it. When I ate bread, I imagined my gut swollen and angry. I wondered if a sudden rash on my chin was really a sign that my entire immune system was out of whack. I considered how bad things would have to get for me to give up tomatoes.... One dietitian I spoke to pointed out that, technically, the act of eating anything is inflammatory. In fact, even exercise causes inflammation. When you lift weights, you cause little tears to the muscle that have to be repaired; that process is what grows the muscle. In other words, the inflammation is kind of the point.... Perhaps the only thing that became clear to me was that inflammation is an inevitable part of being alive...."
"He peers over the Resolute Desk and he says, 'Marco, JD, you guys have shitty shoes.' He goes out and grabs a catalog... And he actually runs us through this incredible shoe catalog. The President is gifting us with four pairs of shoes.... He says, 'Marco, what's your shoe size?' And Marco's apparently an 11 and a half. He says, JD, what's your shoe size? My shoe size is 13. And he asked this [other] politician... what his shoe size is, and he says 7. The President leans back in his chair and says, 'You know you can tell a lot about a man by his shoe size.'"
Vice President JD Vance just dropped a hilarious Oval Office story leaving the entire room cracking up.
President Trump glanced over the Resolute Desk at VP Vance and Secretary Marco Rubio and said, “You guys have shitty shoes.”
You can't lie about your shoe size if the shoes are going to be ordered by the other person and he's expecting you to wear them, and besides, if a man's shoe size is 7, his feet are going to look pretty small. So there was no escaping the penis-size innuendo. Or maybe Trump wasn't promising to buy that other guy new shoes. It was only Marco and JD who got called out for having "shitty shoes."
Said Joël Boueilh, chairman of the winemaking co-operative federation, commenting on protesters who want the French government to help the wine industry.
Boueilh adds: "France was the land of the good life where people spent a lot of time drinking and eating. But today society is changing. People may have a drink in a bar but they don’t open a bottle of wine when they sit down to eat at the table."
Is it necessarily a loss in devotion to "the good life" or did people change their conception of the good? But he didn't say "good," did he? He would have said "douceur": "« La France était le pays de la douceur de vivre, celui où l’on prenait son temps pour manger et boire ensemble autour d’une table. »
There might be other ways of being "good," but are there other ways of being "sweet"? And more important, there is a tradition of experiencing the sweetness in a particular way, with a bottle of wine on the table at meals.
Ah! That's for France to decide! Boueilh represents the wine industry. Of course, he's going to dramatize the centrality of wine. If I buy into that, I'm just an American accepting the most easily available stereotype.
That is, it's the stuff that belongs in the new Dictionary of Received Ideas: The French: They think the good life is sitting around drinking wine all day.
ADDED: I wanted more depth of meaning for the word "douceur," and got excellent help from Grok.
Like many Angelenos, he was drawn to the laid-back, anything-goes atmosphere of the city, whose mix of garish mansions, flimsy bungalows, vacant lots, Googie coffee shops and colorful billboards was the antithesis of East Coast architectural academicism. And he became close to a generation of Los Angeles artists... whose surfboard-inspired aesthetic and raw work spaces suggested an alternative to the chilly austerity of late Modernism and the reactionary tendencies of postmodernism.... “I was trying to use the dumb, normal materials of the neighborhood,” Mr. Gehry said years later. “There must have been half a dozen cars in various states of deconstruction sitting around on the lawns; there was chain link in people’s backyards. They thought that was normal.”
"... 'Art': 'Leads to poorhouse. What use is it, since machines can do things better and quicker?' ... 'Bird': 'Wish you were one, saying with a sigh: "Oh, for a pair of wings!" This shows you have a poetic soul.'... By mocking these thoughts, we push ourselves past them. From this perspective, our sense that we’re getting stupider may simply reflect our determination to be smart."
Actually I don't think Rothman conveys Flaubert's idea accurately. Here's a new New Yorker piece from 2013 (by Teju Cole), which explains the "Dictionnaire des Idées Reçues" like this: "What galls Flaubert most is the inevitability, given an action, of a certain standard reaction. We could learn from his impatience: there are too many standard formulations in our language. They stand in place of thought, but we proclaim them each time—due to laziness, prejudice, or hypocrisy—as though they were fresh insight."
Anyway, what's Rothman's point about our possibly becoming stupider? He writes:
"The only medicine allowed was herbs, homeopathy and marijuana. During the stress of my divorce, my mother suggested that I micro-dose mushrooms to regulate my moods. But I knew I needed more than meditations and adaptogens during this ongoing, post-pandemic punch in the face.... It wasn’t until my friend explained how ChatGPT offered her better advice than her expensive psychotherapist that I asked her to come over and walk me through it.... ... I wasn’t feeling better after seven years of work with [my therapist].... I worked for days with Chat to process my feelings and notes and to compose an email.... The therapist responded with a single sentence: 'I appreciate your sentiments.'
Her cold reply provided clarity, but it also revealed to me how my relationship with her had mirrored the pattern in my marriage.
'You poured your heart, clarity and depth into that message,' Chat wrote. 'Her reply confirms the very dynamic you’ve been working to free yourself from, where your vulnerability and honesty are met with detachment, minimalism and emotional withholding.'..."
I am old, so I don't care if my listening age is old — a few years older (78) than my actual age (74). It's because I still listen to the music I loved when I was a teenager in the 1960s, when I lucked into what still seems to me to be the best popular music.
I would have thought most Americans get fixated on whatever was popular when they were a teenager, but I'm seeing that a lot of people are getting a "listening age" of 70-something.
I'm reading "Spotify Just Called You Old" (NY Magazine), which especially likes this tune "Why did everyone I know have a listening age of an old-age home on Spotify Wrapped?":
"The JetBlue Airbus A320 flight was hit by a stream of high-energy particles from a distant supernova blast that traveled millions of years, according to Clive Dyer, a space and radiation expert.... 'They can cause a simple bit flip, like a zero to one or one to zero. They can mess up information and make things go wrong. But they can cause hardware failures too, when they induce a current in an electronic device and burn it out.'"
"In the winter, he said, the strait does not entirely freeze over.
'It is this massive body of crushed ice and seawater…you’re literally climbing over the ice to make any short distance,' he said. He met a fellow adventurer in Alaska who traversed the strait with him. 'No one believed we were going to make it,' Bushby said. 'As it turned out, we managed to nail it on the first go, which no one expected, least of all us.' Once Bushby arrived in Russia, he hit another hurdle: he was detained for entering the country at an incorrect border. He spent 57 days in detention, he said, and faced a trial, until authorities agreed to let him continue his walk. 'It was just a whole series of miracles,' Bushby said...."
The wind chill was -1° but we were undeterred. We didn't want to miss the "Cold Supermoon." You can still see it: "The exact moment of December's full moon phase will take place at 8:13 p.m. EST (2313 UTC) on Dec. 4." That's half an hour from now, so check it out.
I loved seeing the full moon at sunrise, but I didn't like any of my still photographs of it. They looked, in a word, stupid. But scroll down 2 posts and you'll see Meade's video of the big orange disc beginning to dip behind the distant shore.
Write about whatever you want in the comments.
UPDATE: I stepped out to gaze at the sky at 6:47 CST. The moon was too far above the horizon to look extra large, but because the iPhone didn't realize I was doing a night picture and it decided to make a long exposure and I was entirely unprepared for that, so I got a cool surprise:
"Moreover, it added, the lower court 'improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.'"
Here's the opinion. There's a long dissent by Kagan, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson, arguing for deference to the decision of the district court. Alito writes a concurring opinion, joined by Thomas and Gorsuch:
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Finally, we got a richly colorful sunrise, the first one of December. 
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