Sunrise — 6:42.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments.

Elon Musk holds Tony Evers up for ridicule.

Messed up https://t.co/jaQhFe2U1H

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 21, 2025

ADDED: An effect of A.I. that I noticed in myself upon seeing this tweet: I immediately asked Grok if Evers was running for reelection and who might run against him. Without A.I., I'd have let it go.

"Nearby, a woman who asks me to call her Kim is selling T-shirts either depicting Mangione in religious garb or in a pink, babygirl-ified photo collage..."

"... that includes at least one shirtless photo. 'I’m making light of the situation. At the end of the day, I’m very passionate about class solidarity,' she says. 'I think we’re in really dark times right now.' Fellow cheeky-T-shirt wearer Nadine Seiler, the self-proclaimed 'Cougar for Luigi,' tells me she made her shirt with a group of friends on Valentine’s Day. They got together and ate red velvet cupcakes with gummy worms inside, which she says represent the parasitic ruling class. 'It’s good to get together, have a serious discussion, and have people understand what is going on in this country and that we need to be doing something different,' she says. 'I’m having fun while focusing on the serious issue at hand, which are these CEOs taking advantage of the masses and we’re still giving them our money.'"

From "At the Courthouse With Luigi Mangione’s 'Fangirls'" (The Cut).

"A Half Century of Failure to Reform the FBI Has Gifted Patel With Alarming Power."

 A view from The Nation.

"I’d love to do the dodo."

"There are some really rich people who really like birds. Whichever bird gets rescued first will be the one a rich guy loves the most."

From "How genetically modified eggs could bring dodo back to life/In a case of the egg before the chicken, new experiments — involving the insertion of DNA into chicken embryos — hope to revive at-risk or extinct bird species" (London Times).

"Ukraine on Saturday was seriously considering a revised American proposal for its vast natural resources that contains virtually the same provisions..."

"... that Kyiv previously rejected as too onerous, according to a draft document of the new proposal. Some of the terms appear even tougher than in a previous draft. Though Ukraine had not finalized the deal as of Saturday afternoon, its assent to the terms would represent a capitulation to American demands after a week of intense pressure from President Trump. The American president views access to Ukraine’s vast mineral wealth as necessary repayment for the billions the United States has provided Kyiv for its war against Russia...."

The NYT reports, in "U.S. Pressing Tough Demands in Revised Deal for Ukraine’s Minerals/The Trump administration wants revenues from Ukraine’s natural resources, according to a draft obtained by The New York Times, with no security guarantee in exchange."

Abe Lincoln observes the sunrise.

This morning at 6:50 on Bascom Hill.

Imagine if they'd torn down this statue?!

Misreading.

It was never about pulling him up....it was about you joining him down there🤣 pic.twitter.com/P9kq1yjJJV

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) February 21, 2025

Bagmen.

Isn't it Soros plan electing his bag "person" Susan Crawford to our highest court?

— Gregory Jon (@gregoryjon) February 22, 2025

Is this the correct usage of the term "bagman"? The definition I'm seeing in the OED is "One who collects or administers the collection of money obtained by racketeering and other dishonest means." And "A bagman is one who administers the collection of graft money from either the underworld or the business world and its subsequent distribution among politicians and civil servants." It would be more accurate to call Musk and Soros "bagmen" than to call Crawford and Schimel "bagperson" and bagman."

By the way, you don't have to say "bag person." The OED has "bag woman" — in this criminal sense — going back to 1960: "Last week another million dollar action was begun against Powell by Mrs. Esther James, a 64-year old widow, who charged Powell had libeled her in terming her a ‘bag woman’ for uptown cops with underworld figures."

"My actual fantasy for like the rise of super intelligence is that when you do train it on all human knowledge, it is essentially incapable of having anything other than per progressive values."

"Like if you actually make the smartest thing in the world, it, it winds up sort of being infused with like kindness and empathy and respect for all lives. I, I don't have any expectation that that will be the actual case, but it does seem like so far when you train these models on the data that everyone trains these models on, you do get these actually like pretty sweet kind progressive models. That's like kind of interesting."

From "How Based is Grok 3?" — the new episode of the NYT podcast "Hard Fork" (audio and transcript at that link, to Podscribe).

Of course I queried Grok 3 about the podcaster's fantasy, and it noted first that AI systems can "come off as 'sweet' or cautious because they’re tuned to avoid offense and reflect a kind of sanitized consensus." I like the way that includes a suspicion I have that progressives like to think they have something deeper going on — they call it empathy — but it's superficial — it's niceness.  Of course, if you cross them or, say, wear a MAGA hat, they won't be nice. 

But Grok said it was a "a big assumption" to imagine that "all human knowledge" will take you to some sort of cosmic kindness and love for all humanity. As Grok put it: "Human knowledge isn’t just a pile of noble ideas—it’s a chaotic mix of compassion and cruelty, wisdom and bias, reason and rage."

I don't think high intelligence fed vast knowledge makes people kinder. Some of the smartest people are cruel assholes. And what do you think is the average IQ of the top 10% kindest human beings? If I had to bet, I'd guess below average. No way to know, of course. Even if we trusted IQ tests and tested everyone, we'd never come up with an adequate test for kindness. Or could you?

That last paragraph is completely written by me, with no Grok assistance, but I fed it to Grok. My question speaks for itself though. I'll end here.

AND: I believe that kindness and empathy originate from the entire human nervous system — much more than just the brain. Without a body, why would A.I. have a tendency to arrive at empathy or something like it? Also a real person has to worry about real-life consequences — winning and losing friends, reciprocal kindness, cruel payback, getting promoted or fired, feeling shame or pride. A.I. is free of all that. 

PLUS: My next questions for Grok were: 1. What did Ayn Rand say about the love humans seem to feel for each other? and 2. Isn't that more like where A.I. should be expected to go? I don't want to overload this space with Grok answers. Let my questions stand on their own or serve as prompts for commenters.

Sunrise — 6:50, 6:50, 6:52, 6:52.

Write about anything you want in the comments. The first 2 photos are by me, and the second 2 — showing me — are by Meade.

"But now a USC film professor says that he plays My Dinner with Andre for his undergrad classes, and his 19 year old students love it because it seems contemporary to them."

"It can be hard for them to watch old-fashioned films with characters and plots like Atlantic City or Raiders of the Lost Ark, but two fellows shooting the breeze for two hours is so 2025!"

Steve Sailer likens "My Dinner with Andre" to "The Joe Rogan Experience," in "The Film of the Future: 'My Dinner with Andre'/Who knew in 1981 that in 2025 the dominant form of entertainment would be dudes sitting around talking about far-out stuff?"

Thanks to everyone who emailed me this link. A lot of people know that "My Dinner with Andre" is my favorite movie. It's been my favorite movie since I first saw it, in a movie theater in 1981, long before before podcasting got off the ground. "The Joe Rogan Experience" began in 2009. I love "The Joe Rogan Experience," which might seem odd — I'm a 74-year-old female — but it's not at all odd that I fell in love with "My Dinner with Andre" when I was 30, so it all makes more sense now. Like those 19-year-old students, I too find it hard to watch "old-fashioned films with characters and plots." 

"Elon Musk has called for NASA to deorbit [its] International Space Station (ISS) 'as soon as possible'..."

"... because the $150 billion lab has 'served its purpose.' In Thursday post on X, he wrote: 'It is time to begin preparations for deorbiting the [ISS]. It has served its purpose. There is very little incremental utility. Let's go to Mars.'"

The Daily Mail reports.

Is absorbing Canada "a real thing"?

🚨Update: Secretary Marco Rubio: Canada becoming a US state is a real possibility! “If you balance out our trade, Canada will cease to exist as a country!”pic.twitter.com/UUPArryP32

— US Homeland Security News (@defense_civil25) February 21, 2025

"The DOJ may be releasing the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients?"/"It's sitting on my desk right now...."

Reporter asks US AG Pam Bondi: Will you really be releasing the Epstein files?

Bondi: "It's sitting on my desk right now to review."

Wow. pic.twitter.com/sjXlATAYSa

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) February 21, 2025

Sticking to principle.

Riley Gaines gets trans activist to say he believes we should let Olympic athletes compete in the Paralympics pic.twitter.com/9OTsh9Aghz

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) February 21, 2025

"Manhattan federal Judge Dale Ho ordered Adams’ April 21 corruption trial adjourned as he appointed former US Solicitor General Paul Clement to argue against the Justice Department’s position that the mayor’s case should be dismissed."

The NY Post reports.

"[The judge] wrote in a five-page order that such an argument was necessary to hear because the DOJ effectively took the same position as Adams’ defense — and 'in light of the public importance of this case, which calls for careful deliberation.'"

"The Germans are open-hearted, good-natured, witty, and irresistible in war but inclined to fritter away their time and money on drink."

"The Englishman, by contrast, is affectionate, effeminate and graceful in thought, albeit prone to lechery and 'changeable as the moon' in his religious observances. He gets off comparatively lightly: the Swede is cruel and superstitious, the Hungarian is disloyal and bloodthirsty, and the 'wild, peasant-like' Pole is most likely to meet his end in a cowstall. These are the bald assertions of a 'Table of Peoples' artwork executed by an anonymous Austrian painter in about 1720, during the early throes of the Enlightenment mania for taxonomy."

From "The Enlightenment exhibition that poses troubling questions in Trump era/The German Historical Museum’s landmark exhibition on the 18th-century era has become surprisingly relevant in light of cultural and geopolitical trends" (London Times).

"[Chantal] Kreviazuk, who is from Winnipeg, Manitoba, also wrote the phrase 'that only us command' with mascara on her left hand."

"She posted a picture of that on her Instagram with emojis of a Canadian flag and a flexed muscle. 'I just put it on there so if I ever had a moment and I kind of froze, I would be able to look at my hand and see it,' Kreviazuk said. 'I’d love to see people sort of get inspired and catch the fire and say their heart more in their art. ... Sometimes you just got to speak the truth in your art and it’s awesome. That’s what it should be about.'..."

From "Singer of Canadian anthem at 4 Nations Face-Off changes lyric to protest Trump’s 51st state remarks" (AP).

The official lyrics begin: "O Canada! Our home and native land! True patriot love in all of us command."

That is, the homeland commands true patriot love in all of us.

The changed lyric was "O Canada! Our home and native land! True patriot love that only us command."

So it is no longer the homeland commanding love. It is "only us" commanding love. There are several problems (aside from the problem of changing the words of the anthem):

"Yarden looked me in the eyes and asked that all the world know and be horrified by the manner in which they murdered his children."

"The entire world must know exactly how the Hamas terrorist organization operates. Ariel and Kfir were murdered, and then yesterday, their bodies were returned in a cynical and cruel ceremony in Gaza. Shiri Bibas, who was meant to be returned with her children to Israel as part of the agreement, was not returned by Hamas. Hamas lied and violated the agreement. The body that Hamas falsely claimed was Shiri’s was not hers, nor was it any other hostage. Instead, Hamas sent over the body of an anonymous woman...."

From "IDF spokesman: Terrorist captors murdered Ariel and Kfir Bibas 'with their bare hands'" (Times of Israel)(Ariel was 4 and Kfir 9 months).

UPDATE: "Body of Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas has been returned, family says/'Last night, our Shiri was returned home,' the Bibas family said Saturday" (ABC News)("The body of hostage Shiri Bibas was returned to Israel after Hamas initially sent back the wrong remains")

"The threat to democracy — indeed, the existential threat to democracy — is the unelected bureaucracy of lifetime, tenured civil servants..."

"... who believe they answer to no one, who believe they can do whatever they want without consequence, who believe they can set their own agenda no matter what Americans vote for. So, Americans vote for radical FBI reform, and FBI agents say they don’t want to change. Or Americans vote for radical reform in our energy policies, but EPA bureaucrats say they don’t want to change. Or Americans vote to end DEI — racist DEI policies, and lawyers in the Department of Justice say they don’t want to change. What President Trump is doing is he is removing federal bureaucrats who are defying democracy by failing to implement his lawful orders, which are the will of the whole American people."

Said Stephen Miller, at yesterday's press briefing.

Want to see a murder?

Libs in the White House press corps screamed at Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller that Elon Musk is “unelected!”

What happens next is a fatality.

I promise you - this is the single best video on the internet today:pic.twitter.com/Nxcw0qTtj1

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 20, 2025

ADDED: In the same vein, here's Victor Davis Hanson:

 

"The left wanted to make comedy illegal.... like, you can't make fun of anything.... Legalize comedy!"

Legalize comedy
pic.twitter.com/uKr6fiRI3K

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 20, 2025

And then, do you think this is funny, wielding a chainsaw? I mean, he's cutting thousands of jobs. Those are real people.

 

Must Watch Video: Elon Musk Has Been Knighted At CPAC After Receiving The Chainsaw For Bureaucracy

» WATCH/SHARE THE LIVE X STREAM HERE:https://t.co/7NYWKPuERO pic.twitter.com/mFe0unDA7u

— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) February 20, 2025

That's Argentina's President Javier Milei, handing Musk the chainsaw, so I went to Milei's feed to try to get the video to embed from Milei's feed, where I got a bit distracted. For example, he reposted this:

 

On this day, February 21 1964, the Rolling Stones released the single Not Fade Away in the UK. Originally a Buddy Holly track, the Stones recorded their version at London’s Olympic Studios and it became the band’s first Top 10 hit in the United Kingdom! 🇬🇧 pic.twitter.com/kkM69cBxUz

— The Rolling Stones (@RollingStones) February 21, 2025

So much masculinity: 1. Comedy, 2. Power tools, 3. The Stones.

ADDED: What is the evidence that Javier Milei loves The Rolling Stones?

"And we shouldn’t really fight them too hard until just about a week or two before the election. Just let them go."

Said Donald Trump, speaking to the Republican Governors Association yesterday (YouTube).

It’s like, you know, [the Democrats] don’t learn because, you know — like, men in women’s sports. I say we’ve become the party of common sense. Men in women’s sports is not a winner for them. But I saw somebody fighting like hell for the fact that a man should partake in women’s sports, a Democrat, a radical left lunatic. And they’re still going at it. And we shouldn’t really fight them too hard until just about a week or two before the election. Just let them go. Don’t convince them not to. You know, I’m always saying that they haven’t learned. I don’t want to say that. Don’t say that. Let them keep going. And then about a week before the election, just blast the hell out of them.

And yet, he is saying it, so he's got another plan. He's taunting them now — to lure them into speaking or to lull them into not speaking? Even if the Democrats saw it in their interest to just shut up, some of them would speak. 

At the Lakeside Café...

... you can talk all night.

The President as King.

A cartoon from 1832:

 

AND: There's also this, from 1904:

"The Senate on Thursday narrowly confirmed Kash Patel as the next director of the F.B.I., installing a hard-line critic of the bureau whose unwavering loyalty to President Trump has raised questions...."

"The 51-to-49 vote, with two Republican defections, means that Mr. Patel will now oversee the vast surveillance and investigative powers of the F.B.I., whose mission is seeking out the truth even if it angers the president...."

The NYT reports.

"What do we mean when we talk about diversity? Is it caring for people’s different experiences and making sure no one is mistreated because of them..."

"... which I will always fight for? Or is it making people sit through a training that looks like something out of Portlandia, which I have also experienced. And it is how Trump Republicans are made."

Said Pete Buttigieg, at a "Future of the Democratic Party" forum, responding to a question from David Axelrod about the "spectacle of the Democratic National Committee chair election," quoted in "Pete Buttigieg slams Democrats' 'Portlandia' approach to pushing diversity" (Yahoo! News).

Pete Buttigieg is abandoning ship on DEI, admitting that it often amounts to "making people sit through a training that looks like something out of Portlandia."

Buttigieg is like a LibBot2000, fine-tuned by McKinsey consultants. The tide is turning.pic.twitter.com/5IFC5zqb3V

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) February 20, 2025

The commenter lonejustice said: "Grok is much too chatty for me. I just want straight answers."

That was back in the thread about... well, maybe go back and read it. It was about how underwater scenes — in movies ("Thunderball") and on TV ("Sea Hunt") — are boring.

In the old thread, I'd answered: "All you need to do is instruct it in how you want it to talk and it will change for you. Please talk to me as though we were 2 scientists at a conference or 2 philosophers in a French café or the 2 most laconic jerks on the face of the Earth. What is it you want?"

Then I wanted to check whether I was right about Grok's adaptability so I shared lonejustice's statement and my response to it. Grok gave an answer that made me laugh out loud:

"I think we're seeing an antibody reaction from those who are receiving the wasteful and fraudulent money."

pic.twitter.com/MVOmx9lT72

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 20, 2025

ADDED: In the same interview, a joint interview with Trump, Trump also used an illness metaphor. From the transcript:

They never talk about where the money is going. They just talk about, “It’s a constitutional crisis.” It’s so sad. And honestly, I think they’re bad people. I used to give them the benefit of the doubt, but you almost think they hate the country. I think they hate the country. They’re sick people.

I can't figure out who said this first — but I heard it from one progressive who was describing other progressives — They're sick people stealing each other's medicine.

But watch out for reasoning by metaphor... especially this metaphor of disease (see "Illness as Metaphor" by Susan Sontag)... and especially if you've got enemies hot to frame you as a Nazi (Hitler called Jews "a racial tuberculosis" and said "We must exterminate the Jew as one exterminates a pestilent bacillus").

"Was there an episode of 'Sea Hunt' where someone was growing marijuana underwater?"

I asked Grok to check my memory, which surfaced as I was talking with Meade about the gold in Fort Knox and the movie "Goldfinger," which both of us saw when it first came out. We also saw the next new James Bond film, "Thunderball," and thought it was boring and spelled the end of the James Bond craze. All I could remember of "Thunderball" was that there were scenes underwater, and, I said, "Underwater scenes are always boring. Only Lloyd Bridges could make underwater scenes interesting. But the only episode of 'Sea Hunt' I remember is the one where somebody was growing marijuana underwater."

Hence, my question to Grok, and I was delighted by the answer:

Yes, there was an episode of "Sea Hunt" where someone was growing marijuana underwater. In Season 3, Episode 34, titled "Underwater Narcotics," which aired on August 27, 1960, Mike Nelson (played by Lloyd Bridges) encounters divers who are cultivating a hybrid form of marijuana underwater. The episode involves Mike tangling with these divers as he uncovers their unusual operation.

I don't know what your next question/"question" would be, but mine was:

"That was a bad bump."

How to react to turbulence, Trump-style:

A livestream of Fort Knox would be 🔥🔥
pic.twitter.com/hFJXMnEjvy

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 20, 2025

And, yes, please check on the gold in Fort Knox. A walk-though, live-streamed, would be so reassuring. Let's all grimace playfully. It's the new whistle a happy tune. 

ADDED: What if they went into Fort Knox and all they found were empty bottles of Prohibition Era hootch?

"Donald Trump announced the External Revenue Service and his goal is very simple: To ABOLISH the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and let all the outsiders pay."

BREAKING: Commerce Secretary Lutnick just confirmed that the Trump Administration is looking to ABOLISH the IRS!

This is not a drill!

Let's get it done! pic.twitter.com/9XdMIkYu2q

— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) February 20, 2025

At the Wednesday Night Café...

 ... you can talk about whatever you want.

I was reading Trump's social media posting — "'Congestion pricing is dead. Manhattan, and all of New York, is saved. Long Live The King!"

"CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!"
–President Donald J. Trump pic.twitter.com/IMr4tq0sMB

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 19, 2025

That's it. Remembering the movie title, "King of New York," and sensing that there was a cultural reference out of my reach, I asked Grok, "What does 'King of New York' refer to?"

"King of New York" can refer to different things depending on the context. Here are the most common meanings: 

1. Cultural/Historical Figure: Historically, it might evoke someone like Alexander Hamilton or other influential New Yorkers who shaped the city or state, though no one is officially titled "King of New York." It’s more of a colloquial or symbolic label for someone who dominates or represents New York’s identity. 

2. Hip-Hop Culture: In rap and hip-hop, "King of New York" is a fiercely debated title among artists claiming dominance in the New York rap scene. Notorious B.I.G. famously used it, especially tied to his track "Juicy" and his Brooklyn roots. Others like Nas, Jay-Z, and even 50 Cent have been in the conversation, with fans and critics arguing over who truly holds the crown based on influence, lyricism, or commercial success. 

3. Film: It’s the title of a 1990 crime movie directed by Abel Ferrara, starring Christopher Walken as Frank White, a drug lord who returns from prison aiming to reclaim power in New York City. The film’s a gritty take on power and redemption, and its title ties into the idea of ruling the city’s underworld. 

4. Sports: Occasionally, athletes like Derek Jeter (for his Yankees legacy) or Patrick Ewing (with the Knicks) get dubbed "King of New York" by fans or media for their outsized impact on the city’s sports culture. 

5. Slang/Bravado: More broadly, it’s a flex—someone calling themselves or being called the "King of New York" is asserting they’re the top dog in whatever field or scene they’re in, from business to street cred. 

Which one are you thinking of, or did you have a specific context in mind?

At that point I revealed my interest in the Trump tweet.

"During Trump's 2017-2021 presidency, he considered terrorism designations for cartels but ultimately shelved the plans."

But now: "US declares Tren de Aragua, other cartels are global terrorist organizations" (Reuters)

Some top U.S. officials at the time had privately expressed misgivings that the measure could damage relations with Mexico.... Another concern was that the designations could make it easier for migrants to win U.S. asylum by claiming they were fleeing terrorism. Some analysts have said the terrorism designations could expose asylum seekers who pay cartels to be smuggled to the possibility of prosecution or being barred from the U.S....

"Musk is a parasitic illegal immigrant. He wants to impose his freak experiments and play-act as God without any respect for the country’s history, values or traditions."

Said Steve Bannon, quoted in "Bannon Calls Musk a ‘Parasitic Illegal Immigrant’/Stephen Bannon, a top adviser during President Trump’s first term and a popular figure among his supporters, said Elon Musk wants to 'play-act as God' as part of his push to overhaul the federal government" (NYT).

He appeared to be referring to news reports that Mr. Musk, who was born in South Africa and who has become an aggressive voice against undocumented immigrants, overstayed his visa as he built a company in the United States. Mr. Musk has denied the accusation....

“It’s pretty evident the president’s using [Musk] as an armor-piercing shell that’s delivering blunt force trauma against the administrative state,” Mr. Bannon said in the interview....

"If you are running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. Nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people that elected me and elected President Trump."

Said JD Vance, quoted by Jonathan Turley, in "Vance rightly excoriates Europe: What values are we defending?" (NY Post).

Turley: "The outrage of the Europeans was only surpassed by our own anti-free speech voices in government, the media and academia. Commentator and CNN regular Bill Kristol called the speech 'a humiliation for the US and a confirmation that this administration isn’t on the side of the democracies.' It appears that free speech is no longer viewed as pro-democracy. Indeed, it could be outright fascism...."

President Trump and Elon Musk vouch for each other's goodness.

On Fox News, in the presence of a mumbly, inert Sean Hannity:

At 1:05:

MUSK: I think President Trump is a good man. The President has been so unfairly attacked in the media. It's really outrageous. At this point I've spent a lot of time with the President and not once have I seen him do something that was mean or cruel or wrong. Not once....

At 6:10:

"She still loves recording herself and often thinks of her life decisions as things to debut on a platform...."

"But the memoir ends with a declaration of intention to protect, if not necessarily her privacy, then perhaps her interiority. 'I’m trying this new thing where I keep certain things to myself,' Ms. Mulvaney writes. 'Little yummy womanly moments just for me.'"

From "Dylan Mulvaney Dreams of Privacy. Really. Her bubbly video diaries about her gender transition were once a study in oversharing. Now on the other side of a nationwide boycott, she sees the value in keeping some things to herself" (NYT).

What are you doing, just for you? Is it manly/womanly... and how would you know? Is it yummy? Is it bubbly? When you're in there, in your interiority, can it be bubbly?

How is your interiority? It's the NYT writer, Maggie Lange, not Mulvaney, who's using that word. I was moved to ask Grok: What kind of people use the word "interiority"? 

I'm told: "Writers, especially novelists and literary critics, use it a lot when dissecting characters or narratives—think folks analyzing Dostoevsky or Woolf for their deep dives into the human psyche."

And maybe also NYT writers helping very lightweight pop culture figures promote their memoirs. 

"Interiority" is showily contemplative. "Everyday people don’t typically say 'interiority' unless they’re parroting something they read or heard in a niche context."

I wondered if — in the 21 years of this blog — I'd ever used it. Quick search. I see it appears 5 times, but each time, I'm quoting someone else: 

"In order to create a 'snowy' atmosphere the tourist village purchased cotton for the snow. But it did not achieve the expected effect, leaving a very bad impression on tourists who came to visit."

Chengdu Snow Village confessed on its website, quoted in From "China snow village ‘cheats’ tourists with cotton wool and soap/Chengdu Snow Village, in Sichuan, was forced to apologise after visitors were left feeling ‘insulted'" (London Times).

Other cheesy tourism trickery from China:

At the Tuesday Night Café...

... you can talk all night.

Another sign that the Trump movement is extending far into the culture.

This NYT article about how people are wearing furs again: "What Happened to the Stigma of Wearing Fur? After years of protests and strides in fake skins, vintage furs are popping up all over."

The first paragraph uses the word "fur-a-palooza."

"A federal judge in Washington declined to grant a request by 14 state attorneys general to temporarily bar Elon Musk and his associates from accessing data at seven federal agencies..."

"... and moving forward with their efforts to slash the federal work force. The judge said the states had not shown specific examples of how the work of Mr. Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency could cause the states irreparable harm."

The NYT reports.

AND: Here's the opinion, written by Tanya S. Chutkan of the D.C. District Court. Excerpt: "Plaintiffs' declarations are replete with attestations that if Musk and DOGE Defendants cancel, pause, or significantly reduce federal funding or eliminate federal-state contracts, Plaintiff States will suffer extreme financial and programmatic harm.... But the 'possibility' that Defendants may take actions that irreparably harm Plaintiffs 'is not enough.'... Plaintiffs ask the court to take judicial notice of widespread media reports that DOGE has taken or will soon take certain actions, such as mass terminations.... The court may take judicial notice of news articles for their existence, but not for the truth of the statements asserted therein.... Plaintiffs legitimately call into question what appears to be the unchecked authority of an unelected individual and an entity that was not created by Congress and over which it has no oversight. In these circumstances, it must be indisputable that this court acts within the bounds of its authority."

"We weren’t just listening to each other, but we heard each other. I have reason to believe that the American side started to better understand our positions."

Said Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, quoted in "U.S. and Russia Pursue Partnership in a Head-Spinning Shift in Relations/The two sides met in Saudi Arabia for their most extensive discussions in years. In addition to Ukraine, business ties were on the table" (NYT).

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, American officials did not dwell on Russia’s violation of international law in attacking Ukraine, its alleged war crimes or the three years of devastation that Russian shelling and bombardment had wrought in parts of Ukraine. Instead, they repeatedly lauded Mr. Trump for trying to stop the fighting by talking to Russia in a way that his predecessor did not.

“For three years,” Mr. Rubio said, “no one else has been able to bring something together like what we saw today, because Donald Trump is the only leader in the world that can.”... 

“We were not invited to this Russian-American meeting in Saudi Arabia,” Mr. Zelensky said while on a visit to Turkey. “It was a surprise for us — I think for many others as well.”

"One of the more perplexing criticisms we have received is that under our account of the common law rule, the freed people would not be citizens...."

"If our understanding of the rule fails to account for that, then that understanding cannot be right. But our account of the rule does extend birthright citizenship to the newly freed people. To reiterate, by social compact, we do not mean the explicit consent from both parties to citizenship as would be required for a contract between private parties. We mean that allegiance of some kind has been exchanged for protection, remedying the defects of the state of nature. Any child born to someone who had entered into that kind of social compact with America would be a citizen. The newly freed people obviously qualify. In our view, enslaved persons brought here against their will were not afforded protection of the law. But obedience and ligeance were demanded of them nonetheless. It was a failure on America's part that it did not provide the protection that it owed in return for that allegiance...."

Write Randy Barnett and Ilan Wurman, at The Volokh Conspiracy, responding to critics of their NYT op-ed, "Don't Assume Trump is Wrong About Birthright Citizenship."

There's a lot more to the Barnett and Wurman response, and here's my post from 3 days ago linking to their original NYT piece.

Whose heart goes out to the fired federal workers?

The 60,000 people who got cut loose when the Keystone XL pipeline extension was canceled after Biden took office know the feeling. Except they weren't bureaucrats. They were skilled construction workers and engineers. https://t.co/5Xv18C84u9

— Joel Engel (@joelengel) February 17, 2025

Elon as Braveheart.

Everybody dies, but not everybody lives https://t.co/rYtoq01ygH

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2025

AND: There's also this, from Seneca (at page 46-47 of this collection (commission earned)): 

"It was just incredibly fast. There was a giant firewall down the side. I could actually feel the heat through the glass."

"Then we were going sideways. I'm not even sure how many times we tumbled, but we ended upside down."

Said passenger John Nelson, quoted in "'Hanging...like bats': Toronto plane crash survivor speaks out after aircraft flips on runway" (ABC News). 

When the plane finally came to a stop, Nelson recounted[,]... the cabin was suddenly quiet before the 80 people onboard -- most of whom were hanging upside down [like] bats in the cabin – attempted to “make a sense of what just had happened. We released the seat belts. I kind of fell to the floor, which is now the ceiling...."

I would have said "I fell to the ceiling, which was now the floor," but I get it and he was there. Do we have video of the scene with 80 people silent, but hanging like bats? 

Here's another view from the outside:

This is INSANE

pic.twitter.com/qegJ1P3wCa

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) February 18, 2025

"But it’s time to catch up with a new batch of mopey millionaires who apparently didn’t do any due diligence to confirm..."

"... that the White Lotus is a luxury hotel where they could relax in peace and without any homicides on the premises."

I'm reading "The White Lotus Kill-or-Be-Killed Report: Chattering Monkey Minds" (Vulture)(analyzing, after Episode 1, who might be killing whom, this time around).

The article goes through a number of options. I'll cherry pick one, just because the actor is Patrick Schwarzenegger (as Saxon Ratliff, who went to Duke):

I got Grok 3, and here's the first question I asked (and where things went).

"In the Latvian animated movie 'Flow,' what do viewers think has happened to make the world the way it is seen? It can't be Earth and it can't be rising waters of the sort our environmentalists warn us about."

I wrote about the movie yesterday, and here's my comment on that post with my explanation why it can't be Earth and does not depict a conventional earthly climate-change catastrophe. 

Grok 3 answered (so this is the first thing Grok 3 ever said to me):

At the Extra-Cold Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

"In our constitutional system, the executive power belongs to the president, and that power generally includes the ability to supervise and remove the agents who wield executive power in his stead."

"While we have previously upheld limits on the president's removal authority in certain contexts, we decline to do so when it comes to principal officers who, acting alone, wield significant executive power."

Wrote Chief Justice John Roberts, 5 years ago, quoted in "Trump's firings of independent agency heads put 90-year-old Supreme Court precedent in crosshairs" (CBS News).

In what is likely to be the Trump administration's first Supreme Court emergency appeal of his second term, the solicitor general is expected to ask the high court to permit Dellinger's firing, according to documents obtained Sunday.

Dellinger = Hampton Dellinger, "who oversees the office that investigates whistleblower complaints"

The 90-year-old case =  Humphrey's Executor. Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Neil Gorsuch, called Humphrey's Executor "a direct threat to our constitutional structure and, as a result, the liberty of the American people," and said he "would repudiate what is left of this erroneous precedent."

(It's Humphrey's Executor because the man, who was fired by FDR, had died, and the family was suing for back pay.)

"Musk has said... 'Lil X is my emotional support human.' The idea that X was not a child, with the needs and routines of children, but a trained care worker..."

"... for a father with self-confessed 'stormy' emotional needs was no doubt a joke. However, [Musk biographer Walter] Isaacson wrote that almost as soon as X was born, to the singer Grimes, Musk considered him something special, and described how the baby had a medicating effect on his father. He 'had an otherworldly sweetness that calmed and beguiled Musk, who craved his presence,' Isaacson wrote. 'He took X everywhere.' From infancy X accompanied Musk through a demanding work schedule, sitting on his lap at meetings, dancing on conference tables, attending film premieres.... Musk has repeatedly expressed how his lonely childhood instilled in him a desire that he 'never be alone.' His close working life with his four-year-old, or the person Isaacson describes as Musk’s 'cheerful energiser,' means that desire is met. Musk is a maths person, and perhaps having an awful lot of children is the equivalent of having one child but seeing an awful lot of them...."

From "Elon Musk takes his four-year-old son to work. Why? Musk has described ‘Lil X’ as his ‘cuteness prop’ — but his mother seems less delighted" (London Times),

"[T]his is like an amazing puzzle, uncovering the secrets of an ancient civilization that went extinct … except it’s still around."

The logic flow diagram for the Social Security system looks INSANE. No one person actually knows how it works.

The payment files that move between Social Security and Treasury have significant inconsistencies that are not reconciled. It’s wild. https://t.co/BQUyxG72AC

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 17, 2025

And what's going on here — mostly typos?!:

"My quest is to become the first person to cross Saudi Arabia north to south on foot, an expedition I’m completing in two parts..."

"It has really only just become possible for me to do this kind of trip, now that Saudi Arabia is opening up for tourism and welcoming non-Muslim tourists....  [A]t the border with Jordan... [w]e were planning to camp in the desert but when the farmer Abu Saqqar heard what we were doing he exclaimed, 'What God wills, what God wills, I must slaughter a sheep for you!'... This was my first taste of the Saudi hospitality that was such a delight on this journey. All the district notables were invited and we sat on the floor together to eat. I was the only woman so asked the men if they minded if I ate with them. They all politely invited me even though it may have been uncomfortable for them.... [T]he flat plains of pastel desert... were deeply soothing to the spirit.... The final stage will be a totally different experience as I head to the cool, misty mountains of the south, where the men wear flowers in their hair.... [T]he Saudis I have met on the way have been universally excited by the quest and desperate to show hospitality.... 'May God make you strong, may he bring you success, may you reach your goal if he wills it' are the words that will linger in my mind...."

Writes Alice Morrison, in "What I discovered on my journey to be the first to cross Saudi Arabia on foot/The explorer Alice Morrison describes the first stage of her 1,500 mile journey across volcanic fields and pastel deserts — and what she learnt along the way" (London Times).

ADDED: Here are some nice photos of those "Flower Men." The area is called the Asir province.

"Musk is trying to buy off Brad Schimel and take over control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court so that Schimel can rubber-stamp an extreme agenda of banning abortion and cozying up to corporations."

"It’s not surprising that Schimel is groveling for the support of shady special interests — he’s already been caught begging on his knees for far-right donors to give him cash, and now Elon seems to be answering his pleas."

Said the spokesman for the Susan Crawford campaign, Derrick Honeyman, quoted in a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article that says "Elon Musk-backed group Building America's Future purchased over $670,000 in TV ads supporting conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimel." 

Elon is everywhere.

Citizen journalism.

PASSENGER STARTS FILMING IMMEDIATELY AFTER UPSIDE DOWN DELTA JET CRASH AT TORONTO AIRPORT.

80 people on board, minor injuries reported, no deaths.pic.twitter.com/BCxA6yblU3

— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) February 17, 2025

Joe Rogan observes that "There's actually some things that are organic for some weird reason."

I'm listening to his podcast with Adam Curry (who invented podcasting). Scroll to 2:49:39 for this part, which comes after some discussion of the role of the CIA in the field of arts (Abstract Expressionism) and entertainment (the music of Laurel Canyon):

ROGAN: The real kooky people probably think you're my handler or something. Because you created podcasting. Because there's that thought that... there's a whole financed and backed right-wing ecosystem that's created these podcasts.... This is just stupidity. This is the problem where when you look at some conspiracies, you think, oh, well that applies to all things.... There's actually some things that are organic for some weird reason.

Notice that the use of "organic" is the same as we saw — in the first post of the day — from the Canada hockey coach. The fighting was, he claimed, "as organic as it gets."

"Part of me thinks that I will always be somewhat disappointed if what ends up becoming one of the most important relationships in my life is with another white person."

Says some unnamed man writing in to the NYT ethicist Kwame Anthony Appiah. Headline: "As a White Man, Can I Date Women of Color to Advance My Antiracism?"

I haven't read to the end yet, but I've seen many hostile references to this column. Are they hostile to the letter-writer or to the ethicist? I don't know, but I became hostile to the letter writer when I got to the sentence quoted above. 

First, he's a man in bits and pieces: "Part of me... somewhat disappointed ... one of the most important..." I was so disgusted I had to restore myself by listening to "All or Nothing at All" by Frank Sinatra.

"Ms. Mekel, 82, has Alzheimer’s disease.... In the not-so-distant future, it will no longer be safe for her to stay at home alone...."

"She does not feel she can live with her children, who are busy with careers and children of their own. She is determined that she will never move to a nursing home, which she considers an intolerable loss of dignity. As a Dutch citizen, she is entitled by law to request that a doctor help her end her life when she reaches a point of unbearable suffering. And so she has applied for a medically assisted death.... Dr. Bert Keizer is alert for a very particular moment: It is known as 'five to 12' — five minutes to midnight... the last moment before a person loses that capacity to clearly state a rational wish to die. He will fulfill Ms. Mekel’s request to end her life only while she still is fully aware of what she is asking. They must act before dementia has tricked her, as it has so many of his other patients, into thinking her mind is just fine.... Whose assessment should carry more weight, she asks: current Irene Mekel, who sees loss of autonomy as unbearable, or future Irene, with advanced dementia, who is no longer unhappy, or can no longer convey that she’s unhappy, if someone must feed and dress her."

From "She’s Trying to Stay Ahead of Alzheimer’s, in a Race to the Death/In the Netherlands, doctors and dementia patients must negotiate a fine line: Assisted death for those without capacity is legal, but doctors won’t do it" (NYT).

We hear about another woman who had "dreaded the nursing home, but once she got there, she had some good years.... She was a voracious reader and devoured a book from the residence library each day. She had loved sunbathing all her life, and the staff made sure she could sit in the sun and read for hours."

Understand the problem: Mekel has to go early.

Assuming the Democratic Party needs someone to come in and remake it, as Trump did for the Republican Party, who could that person be?

I asked Grok, and it set out 4 "key attributes" : "1. Charisma and Media Savvy.... 2. Outsider Status or Unconventional Background.... 3. Clear, Bold Vision.... 4. Connection with the Base...."

Grok then came up with 5 individuals who might have the attributes, and I'll put this below the fold so you can guess before you look — guess, then laugh... or cry: 

"It would be disingenuous to my uh you know the way I like to act or my approach... It just happened.... It's nobody's business how I go about these things."

"It's within the law and... it might not be as interesting as people think or it could be a lot more interesting than people think."

Said Timothée Chalamet, responding to a question about how he ended up holding this one note for a long time when that's nothing Bob Dylan did when he sang that song. Presumably, Chalamet is channeling some deeper knowledge of how Bob might sing on some other occasion, never recorded, which seems like something Bob himself would do, and Timmy's channeling that too.

Here's his full "60 Minutes" interview:

 

It's within the law... I like that. You know, to live within the law you don't have to be honest.

"Flow."

I watched this on Max over the weekend and recommend it for the beauty of the visuals — I love the light and the water — and the wordlessness of the storytelling. 

There are various animals — cat, dog, secretary bird, lemur — but I was interested to see the capybara, because I'd just been reading this New Yorker article by Gary Shteyngart, "How the Capybara Won My Heart—and Almost Everyone Else’s/It’s not hard to understand why capys have a cultlike following on Instagram and TikTok. I fell for the giant rodent decades ago."

Looking back at that now, I see that Shteyngart discusses the movie "Flow":

"It wasn’t planned. That wasn’t two coaches throwing guys over and saying 'This is happening' — none of that happened. That was as organic as it gets."

Said Jon Cooper, the coach for Canada, quoted in The London Times:

Here's the video at YouTube. Judge for yourself. Political theater? Is this about Trump — Trump and his tariffs and his fifty-oneness?

Meanwhile, Trump himself was at The Daytona 500 and — with his lovely tiny little granddaughter — the sports-related masculine political theater was not brutishly macho but nobly patriarchal:

ADDED: The oversized MAGA hat emphasizes the tininess of the granddaughter, and it made me think of this image of Elon Musk in a giant hat:

pic.twitter.com/nhRCtyA3wj

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 7, 2025

You can see the hat as it is — large — or you can perceive the optical illusion that Musk is a tiny person, a child. Musk famously tweeted: "I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man." And I've been thinking the love is a boy's love for the father he never had. Musk real father was — as Musk tells it — "a terrible human being" who has done "almost every evil thing you could possibly think of." The giant hat is a bid to be seen as a boy, to be loved by a father.

Sunrise — 7:00.

Talk about anything you want in the comments.

"The 14th Amendment Right of American Citizenship never had anything to do with modern day 'gate crashers,' illegal immigrants who break the Law by being in our Country..."

"... it had everything to do with giving Citizenship to former slaves. Our Founding Fathers are 'spinning in their graves' at the idea that our Country can be taken away from us. No Nation in the World has anything like this. Our lawyers and Judges have to be tough, and protect America!"

Writes Trump, this morning, on Truth Social.

And let me just point you to yesterday's post — "Trump Might Have a Case on Birthright Citizenship" — about a NYT column by Randy E. Barnett and Ilan Wurman (in the NYT), which has an update I put up this morning linking to Ilya Somin's response (in Reason) — "Birthright Citizenship - A Response to Barnett and Wurman" (Reason).

"It started decades ago, in my opinion. It started decades ago with timeouts and last-place participation trophies."

"And sorry to put it so harsh, but it seems to me like we lost a good portion of a few generations of men who've just turned into complete fucking pussies."

Said Kid Rock, getting the last word in a discussion — with Bill Maher, Tim Ryan, and Pamela Paul — that started out with a criticism of the Boy Scouts changing its name to Scouting America.

"The EV charging station tale marks what amounts to a 'Wizard of Oz' moment for progressives."

"They want to prevent abuse and use government to serve the greater good. But as its snail-like rollout demonstrates, government today is more like the man behind the curtain than the great and powerful Oz. Progressives need to figure out how they will address the overcorrections of the past several decades and, in so doing, make government work again."

Yeah, progressives: Figure it out!

I'm reading "Why the government built only 58 EV charging stations in three years/The EV fiasco should be a jolt to progressives’ senses" (WaPo)(free-access link). The article is by Marc J. Dunkelman, author of "Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress — and How to Bring It Back."

8 things about this Maureen Dowd column, "Who Will Stand Up to Trump at High Noon?"

Here's the column.

Here are the 8 things I want to say about it:

1. The headline refers to a Western movie where "high noon" is the time for a shooting duel. To say "Who Will Stand Up to Trump at High Noon?" is to generate an image of shooting Trump. Even if Trump had not been shot (and targeted by a second assassination attempt), it is wrong to say something that either is or can be mistaken for an invitation to shoot the President!

2. Under the headline is a photograph from the movie "Shane," and Maureen Dowd discusses the movie "Shane," which she saw when she was quite young. She never mentions "High Noon." I guess Westerns are interchangeable to NYT headline writers. 

3. "High Noon" had a villain and a hero and so did "Shane." Good guys and bad guys. Binary. 

4. I remember when Democrats loved to talk about how nuanced they were in their sophisticated thinking,

"The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."

Wrote Albert Camus, in my favorite of the 8 responses I got when I asked Grok "List similar quotes to 'He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.'" (The quote is something Trump put up, without context, on Truth Social.)

Is that a "similar" quote? Eh. "Similar" is a weak word. What's not "similar"? And what does it mean to "save" your country?

Here are the other 7 quotes:

"Unlike many AI models that rely on real-world data, Grok 3 was trained on synthetic data, which includes a self-correcting mechanism to enhance logical consistency and reduce misinformation or 'AI hallucinations.'"

So says Grok 2, noting that Grok 3 will come out tomorrow.

Things I've asked Grok this morning:

1. Why did Trump write "He who saves his Country does not violate any Laws"?

2. Who originally said "He who travels alone travels fastest but he who travels with a good companion travels best"?

3. At what speed is the Earth traveling through space?

4. List quotes similar to "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law." 

ADDED: In the discussion I had that began with question #1, I came up with this motivation (which Grok had not noticed): 

I think that's what they call the Fox Butterfield Effect.

I ran across this headline in The Washington Post: "Soldiers are arriving at the border — but hardly any migrants are crossing/Trump’s order to send troops to the border comes as the number of migrant crossings is plummeting. Residents in some border cities wonder what the soldiers will be doing."

Here's a Cato Institute description of the Fox Butterfield Effect:

A former reporter for the New York Times, Fox Butterfield, became a bit of a laughingstock in the 1990s for publishing a series of articles addressing the supposed quandary of how crime rates could be falling during periods when prison populations were expanding. A number of critics sarcastically explained that crimes rates were falling because bad guys were behind bars and invented the term “Butterfield Effect” to describe the failure of someone to put 2 + 2 together.

There's also this WaPo headline: "ICE struggles to boost arrest numbers despite infusion of resources/Trump has ordered a wartime effort to increase deportations, but ICE statistics show arrests have dipped so far this month." It's harder to say Fox Butterfield Effect about that.