"Although today’s critics rue our inability to get through long novels, such books were once widely regarded as the intellectual equivalent of junk food."

"'They fix attention so deeply, and afford so lively a pleasure, that the mind, once accustomed to them, cannot submit to the painful task of serious study,' the Anglican priest Vicesimus Knox complained. Thomas Jefferson warned that once readers fell under the spell of novels—'this mass of trash'—they would lose patience for 'wholsome reading.' They’d suffer from 'bloated imagination, sickly judgement, and disgust toward all the real business of life.'"

Writes Daniel Immerwahr, in "What if the Attention Crisis Is All a Distraction? From the pianoforte to the smartphone, each wave of tech has sparked fears of brain rot. But the problem isn’t our ability to focus—it’s what we’re focussing on" (The New Yorker).

Who decides what's the right or wrong thing to pay attention to? Freedom of thought jumps to mind as the best answer to that question.

"[Stephen Miller] had these big thoughts of execution... what I'll just call flood the zone."

"His idea of flood the zone is you do so many things at once, so many aggressive, controversial actions at once, at speed, that your opposition is scattered and almost defenseless when it's one of 50 or a hundred actions that are extremely controversial. There's only so much bandwidth for the opposition to muster resistance, muster resources, muster outrage, muster legal action. So you just flood the zone. You do so many things at once that your opposition, they might stop some of them that they can't stop all of them.... Overwhelm. Overwhelm...."

Says Jonathan Swan, on the new episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "Stephen Miller’s Return to Power" (transcript and audio at link).

"But, if the new tariff regime has been hyper-publicized, it has also been somewhat undertheorized."

"If the plan is to disrupt the existing regime, in the conviction that global free trade has undermined American interests and workers, what is meant to replace it?... Ever since Trump was first elected, in 2016, his main guru and interpreter on trade, the man largely charged with converting the President’s protectionist instincts into theory and practice, has been a voluble, savvy seventy-seven-year-old Washington lawyer named Robert Lighthizer.... The view Lighthizer has come to after nearly half a century working on the issue is that free trade is a fiction, believed only by Americans and economists (and, intermittently, by the British). 'Free trade doesn’t exist anywhere in the world,' he told me. 'It just doesn’t. And it doesn’t largely because of details.' Even in the absence of tariffs, countries do all sorts of things to protect domestic manufacturing.... What Lighthizer would like to see, as he explained to me, is 'a new trade system,' in which the U.S. walked away from the disadvantageous trade agreements of the nineties and negotiated a new series of agreements with other democracies, wealthy and not, that fixed those mistakes.... 'We have the momentum politically to do it,' Lighthizer said. 'We have the benefit of a trillion-dollar trade deficit, which gives us enormous leverage. We take unilateral action, we disrupt the system, we build over not too long a period toward what I suggest.'..."

From "Why Is the Mastermind of Trump’s Tariff Plan Still Sitting at Home in Florida? Robert Lighthizer, the former U.S. Trade Representative, lost his bid to rejoin the White House, but he still believes the President’s protectionist instincts can jump-start American manufacturing," by Benjamin Wallace-Wells" (The New Yorker).

"China’s DeepSeek AI app sends U.S. tech stocks reeling/The tech-heavy Nasdaq index lost nearly 4 percent in early trading Monday, with chipmaker Nvidia down nearly 12 percent.."

WaPo reports (free-access link).

Analysts said the Monday sell-off underscores anxieties about whether the massive spending on artificial intelligence ― and the specialized chips, data centers and related power infrastructure ― are justified....

DeepSeek is a China-based start-up that last week launched a free AI assistant that it says can operate at a lower cost than American AI models like ChatGPT....  DeepSeek has shaken the market because it purports to need fewer and less advanced chips than other AI models, while still performing as well as U.S. rivals — challenging the premise that only big, well-capitalized companies can make breakthroughs in the sector.

Trump's tariff threat worked.

"Under threats from President Trump that included steep tariffs, President Gustavo Petro of Colombia has relented and will allow U.S. military planes to fly deportees into the country, after turning two transports back in response to what he called inhumane treatment.... 'Today’s events make clear to the world that America is respected again,' [said a statement from the White House]."

The NYT reports.

The accusation of "inhumane treatment" referred to our use of military planes rather than passenger planes. 

According to a statement from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, "Colombian President Petro had authorized flights and provided all needed authorizations and then canceled his authorization when the planes were in the air."

Petro's reversal followed on a complaint from Brazil’s foreign ministry about the "'degrading treatment' of its citizens after 88 migrants arrived in the country handcuffed on Friday and some complained of mistreatment after not being given water or allowed to use the bathroom during the flight."

AND: Here's something Trump posted on Truth Social while this faceoff was under way:

"Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians were walking toward their homes in northern Gaza on Monday, nearly 16 months after they were forced to flee..."

"... at the start of Israel’s military offensive. A column of people that stretched for miles marched north along Gaza’s coastal road, many carrying their few possessions on their heads, on makeshift carts and in plastic bags slung over their backs.... As they began arriving in Gaza City, in the north of the territory, they confronted a wasteland of rubble after the Israeli military destroyed whole neighborhoods and Hamas booby-trapped many buildings. Many of those returning had spent the war sheltering in tents.... On Monday, some used bikes, wheelchairs and trolleys to carry their belongings. One man attached wheels to a plastic box, turning it into a makeshift stroller for a baby...."

The NYT reports.

At the Ice Bike Café...

... you can talk all night.

You have to look closely to see the 2 cyclists out on the lake ice. This isn't a sunrise picture. It was a bit too cold for us again. This is Lake Mendota at 2 in the afternoon.

J.D. Vance on "Face the Nation."

Transcript here.

ADDED: Margaret Brennan seemed keyed up from the start. Her desire to get Vance was ludicrously obvious. Meanwhile, Vance was perfectly even-tempered and articulate, prepared for everything she had hoped to flummox him with. Brennan's style of constant interruption failed to throw him off. It backfired, making him look steady and rational and her look afraid of what he might have to say.

For example, here's the exchange on birthright citizenship:

"Ms. Tilevitz, the sex therapist, said that a certain confidence can be gained by wearing generously sized sweaters."

"'There is a sexiness women can feel internally when they wear something that allows them to disappear from anyone else,' she said, comparing the garments to a security blanket. At a time when women in America have lost rights to their bodily autonomy, sweaters that 'obfuscate the body' can also serve as a sort of armor, said Kat Henning, 37, a senior footwear designer.... 'You feel a little under attack and being swaddled in a beautiful knit that completely covers you, not being available as a sex object, makes women feel better,' said Ms. Henning, whose has knits from Lauren Manoogian and Wol Hide, a brand in Philadelphia. Kelsey Keith, 40, a creative director in Berkeley, Calif., ... described their appeal this way: 'It’s about dressing on your own terms. The male gaze is not even a consideration.'"

From "Hefty Sweaters for Heavy Times/Thick, woolly and oversize knitwear has for some become a form of soft armor" (NYT).

Sweaters! This time, they're political.

Last time around, the political knitwear was the pussy hat, and you had to go to a big protest. This time, the knitwear is much larger, and you don't have to go anyplace... other than deeply inside it.

Additional reading: "Goodbye, 'Resistance.' The Era of Hyperpolitics Is Over. Where has the anti-Trump energy gone?" (NYT).

"It was kind of sad because she was lonesome. Judy would come out wearing her one little black cocktail dress and a pair of little earrings with pearls..."

"... and she would make shepherd’s pie because she liked it. It was comforting. We would have dinner and then we would watch 'The Ed Sullivan Show,' which was on before her show. And if she didn’t like the way someone performed, she didn’t mind telling you!"

Said Bob Mackie about Judy Garland, quoted in "Bob Mackie notoriously created Cher’s look— but he didn’t always like it: 'Don’t tell anyone'" (NY Post).

Mackie also designed for Tina Turner "She was just amazing and funny and if she hated something she told you immediately."

Is this typical of great singers, that they blurt it right out what they don't like? Judy "didn’t mind telling you" and Tina "told you immediately."

"If they ever invent a pill where they could say, 'OK, your social skills will be normal, but your ability to concentrate would also be normal,' I wouldn’t take the pill."

"Maybe I am forgetting how painful it was, but I needed my neuro diversity to write that software; I could do all that stuff in my head. That takes a lot of concentration."

Said Bill Gates, quoted in "Bill Gates: 'I would be diagnosed with autism if I were a kid today'" (Yahoo News).

Just because there's a treatment doesn't mean you need to take it. There's a balance between eradicating symptoms and unleashing side effects, and we should be careful not to pathologize human behavior.

Where the treatment doesn't yet exist — like Gates's anti-autism pill — it's easier to decide I wouldn't want it anyway. The unreachable grapes looked sour to the fox in the old fable. It's harder to think critically when the pill is right there — the pill or the surgery. Is effeminacy in a young boy a condition that ought to be treated, or can we embrace human diversity and discourage medical treatment? There might be something parallel to "I needed my neuro diversity to write that software." I needed my effeminate maleness to.... What? What is lost in the pathologizing? What sort of highly valuable person are we medicalizing out of existence?

This made me think of that classic of Critical Race Theory, "The Michael Jackson Pill: Equality, Race, and Culture" by Jerome McCristal Culp, Jr. (Michigan Law Review, 1994). I tried to get Grok to talk about it, and it engaged in blatant censorship: "There is no well-known or credible critical race theory article that discusses or imagines a pill to turn black people white...."

"How's everything going? Good? Everybody happy? You're getting a little bit more access to your President than you did the last time. Slightly. Like by about 5,000 percent."

Our tireless President, on Air Force One last night:

 

It's hard to listen through the plane noise, but let me pick out a few things. Responding to a comment that he'd been "so nice" to Governor Newsom ("you know, 'Governor Newscum,'" he said:

I decided to be nice. It was nice that he came to the plane, honestly... and in the end you know we have the same goal. We want to take that catastrophe and make it as good as possible. We disagree on some things I guess he's not so set on water. I like water for putting out fires. I find it to be extremely good. A little old fashioned, but about the best thing that God has ever created for putting out fires....

Asked about the First Lady, who "seems to be taking a more public facing role," he said:

She felt badly about North Carolina. She felt very badly about California. Los Angeles. Got a lot of friends. I have a lot of friends in North Carolina and both, and she has a lot of friends in California, so she wanted to be with me.

 About TikTok:

As you know, I have the right to sell it or close it depending on what I think is best for the country....

Pushed on "a report... that you are putting together a deal with Oracle and outside investors to help them buy TikTok," he said:

"Don't ask me nothin' about nothin' – I just might tell you the truth."

Sang Timothée Chalamet, on "SNL" last night, where he was the host, in a bunch of skits, and also performed, in his Bob Dylan persona, as the musical guest.

There were 3 songs — "Outlaw Blues" and, surprisingly "Three Angels"...

... and "Tomorrow Is a Long Time"...

What did you think? It's very hard for me to judge... other than that I was delighted that "Three Angels" was chosen and disappointed that the sound wasn't balanced properly in the end of the song and we lost Timmy's voice. But does anyone hear the music they play, does anyone even try?

I'm interested in the fashion interpretation of Bob's famous polka dots. Bob's were a shirt. Timmy's — same size and color — were a hoodie. The shift from shirt to hoodie sheds light on the choice to do "Three Angels." It's a rap song.

ADDED: I haven't been able to force myself to go see Chalamet's movie yet, so I don't know how close these performances last night are to his embodiment of Bob in the movie. In a Reddit discussion, the top comment is: "Actually credit for Timmy for not doing Bob, I much more appreciate a Dylan cover that's not trying to be Bob and that rendition of Three Angels sounded fresh." 

"From now on, there will be two genders... And we're done with LGBT. No more drag. No more guys and wigs. No more whatever these guys were wearing."

"What a weird way to dress, right? A little zesty darling. I'm off to start America. Hand me my wig and my tights and my big blousy shirts."

That was the cold open on "SNL" last night. Nice job, and I appreciate that the players — who had to freeze into a tableau at one point and remain frozen — quite professionally held the pose and resisted cracking up. James Austin Johnson, as Trump, had some funny lines — like the one I quoted above — and the players did not devolve into the old "Not Ready For Prime Time" raggedness — which was great in its day. 

Lin-Manuel Miranda showed up — to play Hamilton — and he froze into the tableau along with all the others and committed to holding the pose. I think it was planned that he — and he alone — would crack up at a specific point — but that point does not arrive until the players have held the pose for 4 whole minutes, with "Trump" cracking jokes the whole time.

Trumpers and anti-Trumpers — did anyone not like that?