At the Saturday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

In preparation for Alberta's joining us as the 51st state, I'm listening to Millennial Moron explain the Canadian love for Kraft Dinner Language (AKA K.D. Lang).

And it's great that Bob Dylan went on to become a popular musician in his own right. Some commenter over there says "This is the single most Canadian bit of humor I think I might have ever seen." I don't know, but I want to find out. Join us, Alberta! 

We'll give you more gold/Than your apron can hold.

Now, maybe you think I'm getting ahead of myself, and I am. I lived through the arrival of the 49th state and the 50th state, and — I was a kid — I just thought new states would be joining us every year or so. Alaska and Hawaii clamored to join the coolest place on earth, and I thought everyone else would just be piling in. Why wouldn't they?! Why didn't they? Here it is, 66 years later and not one new entrant. So it would really warm my heart — I literally had tears in my eyes — if Alberta would come on in.

I was reading "Should Alberta Become the 51st State? The Case for Secession, Statehood, and a Freer Western Canada" by Rod D. Martin. Excerpt:

"We feel threatened by them. So it would’ve been a total disaster and a cold slap in the face if the pope had been full-on American."

Said Araceli Torres Hallal, 64, "a Catholic entrepreneur in Mexico City," quoted in "World Catholics See the First American Pope as Hardly American/Catholics around the world were skeptical at first about an American pope. But Pope Leo XIV’s multicultural and multilingual identity has put them at ease" (NYT).

We're also told:

Even calling Pope Leo “American” has bothered those Latin Americans who resent the use of the word to describe someone from the United States, because they see it as a form of imperialism. They think “American” should apply to anyone from the entire continent — that is, from North, Central or South America.

Isn't that 2 "continents" — North America and South America? Central America is not a continent. It's part of North America, though I've heard educated Americans deny it. And I mean to say Americans for United Statesians, because we don't say "United Statesians." There's the Esperanto "Usonians." There's "Yankees." These are never going to happen. We don't have another word for saying who we are. Show a little empathy for our plight. Read the Wikipedia article "Demonyms for the United States." It's been a problem all along.

But the NYT writes "the entire continent — that is, from North, Central or South America," and maybe that means it has adopted the theory that the whole landmass — south and north (and central) — is one continent. I don't think the NYT has adopted that nomenclature. And I wonder if Trump would like it. He looks at a map and insists that it's some kind of manifest destiny that Canada should be part of the U.S. And he came up with Gulf of America. And if you want to say it's one continent because we're all here on one tectonic system, remember who's on our plate: Greenland. The Trumpian dinner is served!

"Ms. LaFavers said in an interview that Liam, 8, became familiar with Amazon and other shopping sites during the pandemic..."

"... when she regularly ordered supplies. Since then, she has occasionally let him browse the site if he keeps the items in the cart."

From "Boy Accidentally Orders 70,000 Lollipops on Amazon. Panic Ensues. Holly LaFavers said she was eventually refunded $4,200 for her 8-year-old son’s order of Dum-Dums candy" (NYT).

I haven't seen a story like that in a long time. Seems like an early-internet cautionary tale.

Suffice it to say, the LaFavers got their problem straightened out, and "Spangler Candy Co., the company that has made Dum-Dums since 1924, invited Ms. LaFavers and Liam to visit its factory in Ohio." Everybody wins, especially Dum-Dums, because who cared about Dum-Dums? 

"... showing the best people the best people...."

I'm reading "The Interview/Can Whitney Wolfe Herd Make Us Love Dating Apps Again?" (NYT). Wolfe Herd, a co-founder of Tinder, left Tinder and founded Bumble, then left Bumble and went back to Tinder, which she thinks she can reform into something that makes sense in this crazy world. Her career sounds like a romcom story arc — a jobcom.

I just want to focus on this one Q&A:

You’re quite bullish on A.I. I’ve heard you talk about it. How are you imagining A.I. functioning in this next iteration of the app?

Let’s say we could train A.I. on thousands of what we perceive as great profiles, and the A.I. can get so sophisticated at understanding: “Wow, this person has a thoughtful bio. This person has photos that are not blurry. They’re not all group photos. They’re not wearing sunglasses. We can see who they are clearly and we understand that they took time.” The A.I. can now select the best people and start showing the best people the best people and start getting you to a match quicker, more efficiently, more thoughtfully. The goal for Bumble over the next few years is to become the world’s smartest matchmaker. This is beyond love....

How do you become one of the best people who will be shown the best people? Obviously, you will use A.I. And so everyone using the app will also use A.I. to refine their profile, photos including, into something that A.I. has come to believe is best, and these A.I. bests will be paired up with other A.I. bests. Where, if anywhere, are the humans?

"Meghan Markle Wears Ginormous, Cozy Button-Down While Flower Arranging With Dog Guy."

That's the headline of the morning for me — over at InStyle.

Don't get me started on the present-day inanity of calling a shirt a "button-down" — in my day, a "button-down" was a shirt with a button-down collar, not a shirt that you button up (up, not down) — because I've already spent an hour down a rathole with Grok, exploring the origins of that usage — is it a retronym necessitated by the prevalence of T-shirts? — and wondering the how kids these days could understand the meaning of the album title "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart." And that veered off into a discussion of the comic genius of Lucille Ball in this 1965 episode of "Password," and how, in Episode 4 of Season 1 of "Joe Pera Talks With You," Joe, dancing, says "Do you think AI will dance like this?," and Sarah says "No, because they don’t have genitals." How does that make Grok feel? 

But back to Meghan Markle. I'm not going to ask why it's a story that she wore a shirt while doing something and why the headline doesn't prioritize what she did, which was to arrange flowers, which would only make us wonder why it's a story that she arranged flowers. What I want is to clarify is what was meant by "Flower Arranging With Dog Guy." I assumed, the entire time I was down the rathole with Grok, that Markle had a guy who helped her with her dogs, that a "Dog Guy" was like a "Pool Guy," and for some reason, the Dog Guy got involved in the effort to arrange flowers. But no. Here's the Instagram InStyle wrote the headline about:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (@meghan)

So Guy was the name of her dog. And the dog was not participating in the flower arranging. He was just running around the general area. I don't know much about flower arranging, but I do have some confidence in my word arranging, and that headline needs work. But I'm not doing the work. I'm writing this post to say that I find my misreading delightful and enjoy thinking about this phantom character, the dog guy. I kind of am married to a dog guy. If we ever get a dog, I want to name him Whisperer so I can go around referring to my "Dog Whisperer." Or do you prefer Whiskerer? I can tell you Grok thought both names were brilliant. 

"After a long night of talks mediated by the United States, I am pleased to announce that India and Pakistan have agreed to a FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE."

"Congratulations to both Countries on using Common Sense and Great Intelligence. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

Writes President Trump, on Truth Social.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

AND: Here's Marco Rubio at the State Department website: "Over the past 48 hours, Vice President Vance and I have engaged with senior Indian and Pakistani officials, including Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Shehbaz Sharif, External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Chief of Army Staff Asim Munir, and National Security Advisors Ajit Doval and Asim Malik. I am pleased to announce the Governments of India and Pakistan have agreed to an immediate ceasefire and to start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site. We commend Prime Ministers Modi and Sharif on their wisdom, prudence, and statesmanship in choosing the path of peace."

Sunrise — 5:16, 5:35, 5:42.

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"One divide in the MAHA movement is between those who are focused on the nation’s food system — concerned about petroleum-based food dyes, highly processed foods and seed oils..."

"... and those who believe the nation’s health problems stem from the use of vaccines. Means shares Kennedy’s focus on eliminating food dyes and ultra-processed foods. At times she has promoted health practices that public health experts warn can be harmful, such as drinking raw-milk smoothies. 'We’re never going to hear anything about the safety of vaccines from Casey Means,' Mike Adams, an anti-vaccine advocate who runs the far-right website Natural News, said in an X live-stream on Thursday. 'Because again, she’s an impostor, she’s a plant, airdropped into the movement to change the narrative so you don’t talk about vaccines. Instead you talk about this other stuff — seed oils or whatever.'..."

I'm reading "Uproar over surgeon general pick exposes MAHA factions among RFK Jr. allies/Casey Means, a prominent nutrition advocate in the Make America Healthy Again movement, has been described as insufficiently critical of vaccines" (WaPo).

I know Casey Means from this great episode of Joe Rogan (from last October):

Excerpt:

Goodbye to Justice Souter.

I'm seeing "David H. Souter, Republican Justice Who Allied With Court’s Liberal Wing, Dies at 85/He left conservatives bitterly disappointed with his migration from right to left, leading to the cry of “no more Souters'" (NYT)(free-access link).

A shy man who never married and who much preferred an evening alone with a good book to a night in the company of Washington insiders, Justice Souter retired at the unusually young age of 69 to return to his beloved home state.... He turned down all the opportunities for foreign travel that other justices accepted eagerly.... No one who had Boston needed Paris, he would say.

"The problem with even a 'TINY' tax increase for the RICH, which I and all others would graciously accept..."

"... in order to help the lower and middle income workers, is that the Radical Left Democrat Lunatics would go around screaming, 'Read my lips,' the fabled Quote by George Bush the Elder that is said to have cost him the Election. NO, Ross Perot cost him the Election! In any event, Republicans should probably not do it, but I'm OK if they do!!!"

Writes Trump, on Truth Social.

"Robert Francis Prevost, the Chicago-born cardinal selected on Thursday as the new pope, is descended from Creole people of color from New Orleans."

"The pope’s maternal grandparents, both of whom are described as Black or mulatto in various historical records, lived in the city’s Seventh Ward, an area that is traditionally Catholic and a melting pot of people with African, Caribbean and European roots. The grandparents, Joseph Martinez and Louise Baquié, eventually moved to Chicago in the early 20th century and had a daughter: Mildred Martinez, the pope’s mother. The discovery means that Leo XIV, as the pope will be known, is not only breaking ground as the first U.S.-born pontiff.... It’s unclear whether the new pope has ever addressed his Creole ancestry in public, and his brother said that the family did not identify as Black.... Creoles, also known as 'Creole people of color,' have a history almost as old as Louisiana. While the word Creole can refer to people of European descent who were born in the Americas, it commonly describes mixed-race people of color. Many Louisiana Creoles were known in the 18th and 19th centuries as 'gens de couleur libres,' or free people of color. Many were well educated, French-speaking and Roman Catholic...."

From "New Pope Has Creole Roots in New Orleans/His ancestry, traced to a historic enclave of Afro-Caribbean culture, links Leo XIV to the rich and sometimes overlooked Black Catholic experience in America" (NYT).

ADDED: Haven't there been Popes of mixed race before — in all this long history? Grok offers 3 possibilities:

"At a moment when the creation of art at such a scale feels impossible without a corporate sponsor, when most visual stunts are shallow cries for publicity..."

"... the preservation of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s legacy feels urgent. And a crucial part of their oeuvre is that the inception of their grand, internationally known works happened humbly, in an unglamorous, gritty industrial building.... At first, only Christo was recognized as the artist behind the pieces, but in the mid ’90s, he started sharing equal credit for outdoor works with Jeanne-Claude. She also acted as his publicist and began hosting dinner parties, inviting influential dealers and gallerists. 'She was notorious for being a terrible cook.... They had no money at all, so she would cook flank steak and canned potatoes. That was it.' ... [T]he dealer Ivan Karp described one of the gatherings as 'a disastrous, bleak evening with some of the worst food served in a private home, ever!' Still, some people returned — two frequent dinner guests were Marcel Duchamp and his wife, Teeny.'"

From "Where Christo and Jeanne-Claude Cast Their Spells/The couple’s lives are preserved in a SoHo building where for decades they plotted their monumental projects" (NYT)(free-access link).

Lots of cool pictures of the Christo real estate, so go check them out at that link, but I want to show you this picture of Teeny, by Henri Matisse (who was her father-in-law during her first marriage):

Duchamp was her second husband. He said: "Everything important that I have done can be put into a little suitcase." Christo went colossal, but Duchamp went small. And he was married to a woman named Teeny.

Is there some idea that you should either go very big or very small? What springs to mind is the related idea of hot or cold: "I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth." File that under: Things Jesus Said In Someone Else's Dream.

Looking for quotes that credit the very small and shun the medium-sized:

"Around 10 years old, she got her first sense of [Kate] Winslet’s notoriety. The star was asked to do a reading at a literary festival..."

"... [her daughter Mia] Threapleton was in the crowd, surrounded by adoring fans. 'I propped myself up on my knees and looked around, and there were so many people,' Threapleton says. 'I ran over to her at the end, and I said, "Oh my God, mum. Loads of people came. Loads of people know who you are!" She said, "Yeah, they kind of do."' But Threapleton says she wasn’t used to seeing scripts around the house or feel fame encroaching on the family’s private life. Every part of Winslet’s career was contained in the star’s small home office, which Threapleton never dared enter because 'there were usually birthday presents that were hidden under the desk.' 'I’ve never had social media. I don’t want it. It’s not something that I think would really serve my life very much,' Threapleton continues. 'I never really read magazines either. So I was just never that aware of the knownness of her until I got a little bit later in my teenage years.'"

From "Mia Threapleton Is Wes Anderson’s Next Breakout Star—and Happens to Be Kate Winslet’s Daughter/Twenty-four-year-old Mia Threapleton, who gives a revelatory performance in The Phoenician Scheme, talks about being raised by an Oscar winner, landing the biggest part of her life, and establishing a blossoming career on her own" (Vanity Fair).

Sunrise — 5:39, 5:57, 5:58.

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White smoke!

New pope about to show his face. 

ADDED: "The cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church elected Robert Francis Prevost as their 267th pontiff on Thursday, ending a two-day conclave in Rome with the election of the first pope from the United States" (NYT).

AND: Some background from the National Catholic Reporter, published  last week: here. Excerpt: "He is a polyglot who speaks English, Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese and can read Latin and German, giving him abilities to communicate with his fellow cardinals in ways that others cannot. The language ability, his international travel experience as head of his religious order, and his work in identifying Latin-rite bishops around the world mean that he will be among the best-known candidates going into this conclave. While fluent in languages, he is not garrulous. When he speaks, he does so with caution and great deliberation. A private man with a reserved style, he will not score high on the charm offensive. But his steely determination and clarity might comfort those looking for a leader who knows where he wants to go and how to get there."

ALSO: "Pope Leo XIV, Born in Chicago, Is the First American Pontiff/Robert Francis Prevost, who led the Vatican office that selects and manages bishops globally, has spent much of his life outside the United States" (NYT).

"What is the aesthetic you want to create? Classic? Counter cultural? Outdoorsy? Streetwear? These all operate on their own language."

 Derek Guy explains pants.

"President Donald Trump on Thursday will announce a new trade pact with the United Kingdom, the first of dozens of agreements he is seeking with countries around the world."

"In early April, Trump announced tariffs on more than 70 countries worldwide, but he then implemented a 90-day pause to allow for negotiations before they went into effect.... 'It is an agreement in concept. There’s a lot of details to be worked out,' Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on Fox Business. Critics have expressed skepticism of the significance of the 'deals' the White House is attempting to negotiate in strikingly little time. Administration officials have also said not to expect the current 10 percent tariffs on Britain to be removed as part of the trade talks, intensifying doubts about any potential concessions...."

WaPo reports (free-access link). This is the "big news" teased yesterday.

What do we import from the U.K.? — you might wonder. I know I did. According to WaPo, it's mainly "high-end cars" and pharmaceuticals.

Here's the announcement:

"On this question of how you unrig the economy... Democratic economic policy during the Biden administration, I would argue, was very heavily reliant on subsidy."

"The child care tax credit, the increased Obamacare subsidies, the forgiveness of student loans, essentially a whole bunch of efforts to write families a check in order to paper over the unfairness of the economy: I don’t think that’s actually what voters want. Those are good economic policies, but they feel kind of dirty, kind of lousy to have to be compensated for the fact that work doesn’t pay, that my inputs don’t match my outputs. Which is why that has to be the structure of our efforts to unrig the economy: making work pay. That means a much higher minimum wage. That means much more empowered labor unions. That means the deconstruction of corporate power, so that if you do start up a small bookstore in your community, you don’t get squashed out of existence in the first week. A suite and a set of policies that say to families: If you play by the rules, you are going to have a much better shot of getting ahead than you did under the old rules...."

Says Chris Murphy, in "Can Democrats Win the Working Class and Save the Republic?/Senator Chris Murphy on the Democrats’ 'five alarm' crisis" (NYT podscast, but my link goes to Podscribe, with audio + transcript).

The figurative use of the word "lousy" — literally, full of lice — has been around nearly as long as the literal use. Both go back to the 14th century. The OED records one writer complaining about the word in 1849: "I wish I could never hear the word lousy again. I am willing to bet that Tommy Plunkett uses it fifty times a day, but he is no worse than the others. It is ‘lousy’ this and ‘lousy’ that. The rain is lousy, the trail is lousy, the bacon is lousy, and Gus Thorpe, losing in the card game, has just said that he has had a lousy deal."

Anyway, maybe you can sift through that Murphy stuff and find his "suite" and "set of policies" that Democrats could credibly offer the working class. Trump figured out a way to do it. Do it back. I'd like to see them try. Credibly.

"Think I'm going to be sitting on a waiting line, at United, waiting...?

Bernie Sanders: "You think I should wait on line at United? No apologies for my private jets."

Socialists are beyond parody pic.twitter.com/MF6dDHOiyE

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) May 8, 2025

I know. He sounds entitled. I see that being mocked at Instapundit — "FIGHTING THE OLIGARCHY LOOKS A LITTLE… OLIGARCHIC" — but I just want to join the pile on so I can comment on the language: "sitting on a waiting line, at United, waiting."

1. There's no sitting. One stands in line.

2. A line's a line.

"Everybody, don't worry about it. Don't panic. You're gonna be on that island as a tourist for decades and decades to come."

"I mean, you gotta be kidding me. This is going nowhere. This is distraction day in the United States of America."

Says Gavin Newsom — yes, he still has a podcast — addressing Trump's plan/"plan" to turn Alcatraz back into a prison, in "And, This is Escape From Alcatraz" (Podscribe, transcript + audio).

"A million plus people, I think it's 1.2 million last year came to Alcatraz and the island. I think the Park service that runs it generates $60 million a year in revenue. Back to my Doge point, this would cost tens of millions of dollars. You have to bring people onto the island, the workforce and everything else. [Trump] specifically directed his Department of Justice and, and he directed Secretary Burgum to start to put together a plan of action on this. I mean, I pray that they're focused on other things and not focused on the folly of this latest distraction...."

You don't have to canoe where there are alligators, but...

... you do have to get to your house when there are bears in the way:

"[I]n about 2.5 feet of water '... their canoe passed over a large alligator.' The alligator then 'thrashed and tipped the canoe over'..."

"... throwing the couple into the water. 'She ended up on top of the alligator in the water and was bitten'.... The gator, which the authorities said was 11 feet 4 inches long, pulled her underwater. Ms. Diekema’s body was later recovered from the water.... [A]lligator trappers... captured two alligators on Tuesday evening. One was more than 11 feet long.... The second gator was approximately 10 to 11 feet long...."

More information about that alligator attack we were talking about yesterday, in "Alligator Kills Woman After Flipping Her Canoe in Florida, Officials Say/The woman was paddling with her husband in shallow water on Tuesday when they passed over a large alligator that thrashed and tipped over their boat, the authorities said" (NYT).

We're told that the husband "attempted to intervene."

I can't imagine canoeing in such shallow water and passing over an animal that size, dipping the oar into that. I presume the water was murky. Perhaps the alligator looked like rocks or a log, but it seems inadvisable to pass that closely even over inanimate objects. 

For the annals of Things I Asked Grok: Is it advisable to canoe in water that is only 2.5 feet deep? Answer: No. I don't think the alligator was the aggressor — sad though it is that the woman died.

Sunrise — 5:21, 5:43, 5:45

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"The women’s hair is in Utah curls, long waves with straight ends, popularized by Mormon momfluencers. Their makeup is heavy..."

"... the content creator and comedian Suzanne Lambert called it 'Republican makeup,' which she explained to me is 'matte and flat': thick eyebrows and lashes, dark eyeliner on the top and bottom lids, a bold lip, lots of bronzer. 'Inappropriate unless you’re on a pageant stage. And in that case, I would still do it differently,' she said. Their clothes, whether casual or corporate, are form-fitting and often accessorized with giant crosses. They are always thin and almost always white. To each her own. But it is also undeniable that this hyperfeminine and overtly Christian look offers a stark contrast to the often blunt and even brutal language they employ. Another glaring example of this is the horrifying video of Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, at CECOT, the tropical gulag in El Salvador where the Trump administration has sent migrants. She stood there before a group of shirtless prisoners and declared, 'If you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face,' while wearing a $50,000 Rolex.'"

Writes Jessica Grose, in "MAGA Beauty Is Built to Go Viral" (NYT).

"The Trump administration is planning to transport a group of immigrants to Libya on a U.S. military plane..."

"The nationalities of the migrants were not immediately clear.... The country is racked with conflict, and human rights groups have called conditions in its network of migrant detention centers 'horrific' and 'deplorable.' The Libya operation falls in line with the Trump administration’s effort to not only deter migrants from trying to enter the country illegally but also to send a strong message to those in the country illegally that they can be deported to countries where they could face brutal conditions.... A major transit point for Europe-bound migrants, Libya operates numerous detention facilities for refugees and migrants. Amnesty International branded those sites 'horrific' and 'a hellscape'...."

The NYT reports.

Meanwhile: "Trump offers illegal immigrants $1,000 to 'self-deport'" (BBC): "The scheme relies on migrants utilising the CBP Home app, which can be used to confirm that person's return to their home country...." So, part of the incentive to self-deport is that you get to go to your home country. The threat of removal to Libya (or Rwanda) is powerful. 

"We’re going to have a very, very big announcement to make. Like, as big as it gets, and I won’t tell you on what. It’s very positive. I’d tell you if it was negative or positive.... It is really, really positive."

"It is really, really positive and that announcement will be made either Thursday or Friday or Monday before we leave. But it’ll be one of the most important announcements that have been made in many years about a certain very important subject.... We’re going to have a great announcement and I’m not necessarily saying it’s on trade. I don’t want you to think it’s necessarily on trade...."

Said Trump yesterday, quoted in "Trump has teased a ‘very big’ announcement. What could it be? The US president would not be drawn on when it will be made, saying ‘either Thursday or Friday or Monday’ before he leaves on a Middle East visit" (London Times).

"I just don't understand how people think that if we allow a dictator, a thug, to decide he's going to take significant portions of land that aren't his, that that's going to satisfy him. I don't quite understand."

Said Joe Biden, quoted in "Five takeaways from Biden's BBC interview" (BBC).

"Gator grabbed her out of the canoe. He tried to fight the gator off. We're at the last place he saw her. He left the paddle here where he last saw her at."

Said the cop quoted in "Alligator attacks, kills woman canoeing with her husband on lake in Florida: 'He tried to fight the gator off'" (CBS News).

"When you say things on a podcast like 'six women, all white, my understanding is you've got a six-pack of white women.'"

"Like that's not — that's something that you shouldn't — that no one should be saying as an officer of the Court and a member of the bar, right?"

Said US District Judge Arun Subramanian to lawyer Mark Geragos, quoted in "Diddy trial judge snaps at lawyer for calling prosecutors a 'six-pack of white women'" (Business Insider).

"The 'rawdogging' phenomenon has apparently gone underground, with young subway-riding professionals... star[ing] at their fellow commuters instead of a book or their phone..."

"... an alleged form of rebellion against return-to-office policies. Curiously dubbed 'barebacking,' the NSFW-sounding practice involves forgoing all tech and either gazing into space or — even worse — making repeated, awkward eye contact with other passengers ...."

The NY Post reports, with a link to a TikTok video that seems to be the wrong link. It goes to something on a completely different subject.

I think the Post is getting pranked here, but it is funny to think of protesting in that manner. The person who just wants to be able to stay at home is not the kind of person who invites conflict on the subway. Upping the slang confusion is another tell.

Sunrise — 5:23, 5:42, 6:02.

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"I look forward to meeting the new Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney. I very much want to work with him, but cannot understand one simple TRUTH..."

"Why is America subsidizing Canada by $200 Billion Dollars a year, in addition to giving them FREE Military Protection, and many other things? We don’t need their Cars, we don’t need their Energy, we don’t need their Lumber, we don’t need ANYTHING they have, other than their friendship, which hopefully we will always maintain. They, on the other hand, need EVERYTHING from us! The Prime Minister will be arriving shortly and that will be, most likely, my only question of consequence."

Writes Trump on Truth Social.

President Trump Participates in a Bilateral Meeting with the Prime Minister of Canada, May 6, 2025 https://t.co/GE1pY6Dws7

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) May 6, 2025

"Until now, arguments for limiting consumption have tended to come from the left rather than the right."

"They date back at least to the economist Thorstein Veblen, who, at the start of the twentieth century, wrote acidly about the 'conspicuous consumption' engaged in by grandees of the Gilded Age. More recently, a 'degrowth' movement has emerged, which aims to decrease consumption and to de-prioritize G.D.P. growth on the grounds that they are harmful to the environment and that, in any case, accumulating more 'stuff' doesn’t really increase the well-being of people.This argument depends on two concepts familiar to economists: the diminishing marginal utility of consumption, which is, roughly speaking, the notion that if you already own nineteen dolls, buying a twentieth won’t give you much pleasure, and competitive consumption, or the idea that many people are trapped in an endless cycle of trying to outshine their friends and neighbors with their purchases.... 'Trump, degrowther,' the leftist journalist Doug Henwood commented online last week.... 'What he is doing is fairly unprecedented: explicitly saying that he is willing to pay an economic price in terms of growth in order to protect something else that he thinks is valuable and important,' Daniel Susskind, an economics professor at King’s College London who is the author of the 2024 book 'Growth: A History and a Reckoning' told me...."

Writes John Cassidy, in "Donald Trump Versus Barbie/Can the Administration retain public support for a trade policy that could force Americans to buy less stuff?" (The New Yorker).

Why don't the anti-consumption lefties embrace Trump? 

My first reaction to Trump's "Maybe the children will have 2 dolls instead of 30" was: "This reminds me of what those on the left used to say to us

"Marjorie Taylor Greene, you happen to be here. Would you like to run for the Senate? I will fight like hell for you, I tell you."

Said Donald Trump, quoted in "Awaiting possible indictment, Trump rallies in Waco and vows to 'destroy the deep state'/Trump railed against the government officials investigating him, vowing to remove 'the thugs and criminals who are corrupting our justice system' if he is elected again" (NBC News).

You don't see headlines like that anymore!

That's from March 25, 2023, but I'm reading it this morning because that quote was re-quoted in "As Kemp Bows Out of Senate Race, Is It MTG Time?" (NY Magazine). Sample text: "If nothing else, a Greene candidacy will make the Georgia Senate contest one of the most entertaining of the midterm cycle, ensuring that Ossoff’s low-key demeanor doesn’t sedate the electorate."

It sounds like the idea is that MTG is so exciting, people will be newly energized to vote for boring. I'm giving this my "I'm for Boring" tag not because I'm for Ossoff — it's not my state and I haven't followed him — but because I would like politics and government to back way off. Could we just have competence, professionalism, expertise, integrity, hard work, and good judgment? Long experience says no, but I like to keep a tag on the subject if only to mark that it exists as a subject.

"The neighborhood has, in recent years, transformed into a fabulous theme park for young women of some privilege to live out their Sex and the City fantasies..."

"... posting and spending their mid-20s away. They all seem to keep impressive workout routines... have no shortage of girlfriends, and juggle busy heterosexual dating schedules. (The boys they consort with tend to be of the fratty variety.) They work in finance, marketing, publicity, tech — often with active social-media accounts on the side. They have seemingly endless disposable income. They are, by all conventional standards, beautiful. Occasionally, they are brunettes. Whatever their political beliefs, their lives seem fairly apolitical; as one 27-year-old lawyer on a walk with her best friend, both wearing identical puffer jackets, succinctly put their collective interests to me one day in April, 'Brunches, coffees, dinners, drinks with your girlfriends — that type of energy.' (They may be more political than they appear: 'You can have a Cartier Love bracelet and still care about immigrant rights,' said one person who lives in the neighborhood.)"

I'm reading "It Must Be Nice to Be a West Village Girl/A new generation has transformed the neighborhood — and reshaped the fantasy of New York City living" (New York Magazine).

For the record: "Sex and the City" was a current TV show from 1994 to 2004. My own West Village experience was long before that: 1976 to 1981.

Back to the article:

"This garden is very interesting in that it’s part of a spiritual practice: It’s used for meditation. Moss is very tiny..."

"... and being in the garden, looking so closely to distinguish one type from another, requires a special kind of attention. It opens up a completely different kind of universe."

Said Harvard architecture professor Toshiko Mori, about the Saihoji Kokedera Temple and Moss Garden in Kyoto, quoted in "The 25 Gardens You Must SeeWe asked six horticultural experts to debate and ultimately choose the places that’ve changed the way we look at — and think about — plants" (NYT)(free-access link, so you can see all the photos and read about the other gardens).

I love the story of the creation of this garden: "In 1339, Muso Kokushi, a Buddhist high priest and master gardener, created what’s believed to be the first-ever karesansui (dry landscape)... carefully placed rocks and swaths of sand or gravel raked to invoke rippling water... In the nineteenth century, Saihoji was flooded repeatedly when a nearby river overflowed its banks... Rather than fight nature, the monks embraced change... With more than 120 varieties [of moss]... Saihoji looks quite different than it did in Kokushi’s day, but, in the hands of the monks who continue to maintain it, its purpose of encouraging serenity and contemplation hasn’t changed....."

The monks carry on a traditional practice of meditation, bound to this site for 7 centuries. But what would it be for you to drop in one day?

Sunrise — 5:23, 5:46, 6:09.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments. And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

"Will Hutchins, who had a comically genteel starring role during the craze for television westerns in the 1950s, playing a sheriff who favored cherry soda..."

"... over whiskey on 'Sugarfoot,' died on April 21 in Manhasset, N.Y., on the North Shore of Long Island. He was 94.... Mr. Hutchins’s character, Tom Brewster, was the sugarfoot in question: an Eastern law student seeking his fortune as a sheriff who sidles up to the saloon bar to order a sarsaparilla (Wild West root beer) 'with a dash of cherry.' He abhors violence, tries to stop women from throwing themselves at him and lovingly gives up his share of drinking water for his horse. Mr. Hutchins played the role for comedy, following up a villain’s insult with a dramatic pause, only to critique the man for not being 'sociable.'... [H]e was likely to end a fight not with a killing but rather a comment like, 'All right now, how about that apology?'... [Hutchins said] the best advice he had received about comic performance was to act as if you were doing something no less severe than 'Hamlet.' "In order to make people laugh, you have to act seriously,' he said. 'Chaplin was just as sad as he was funny. Buster Keaton never smiled.'"

From "Will Hutchins, Gentle TV Cowboy Lawman in ‘Sugarfoot,’ Dies at 94/He starred in one of the westerns that dominated TV in the late 1950s. After losing traction in Hollywood, he became a traveling clown" (NYT).

Here's a snippet that shows the beginning of the second episode, "Reluctant Hero." I like how our law student character is reading what looks like a casebook as he rides his horse into town:

Watch the whole first episode — the pilot — here. Look for Dennis Hopper as Billy the Kid and Slim Pickens as Shorty.

And here's a clip from an episode of "Bronco" where Will Hutchins — as the Sugarfoot character — has a conversation with Theodore Roosevelt!

"I can tell you... '16 was providential. That was the hand of God.... The pandemic and the stealing of the 2020 election was also the hand of God."

"At the time, it didn't seem that [way] but if we had gone right into a second term, it would have been like trench warfare. It would have been like the Western Front in World War I, just two sides dug in, and they kind of had Trump surrounded. God's hand worked that we would step back.… We had the time to regroup. Trump had the time to think.... You had those four years of preparation."

Said Steve Bannon.

That made me think about something Ross Douthat said in that podcast blogged 2 posts down: 

"Neighbors soon grew frustrated with the constant hubbub at the house. They saw people coming and going carrying gun holsters..."

"... as the security team ballooned along with Mr. Musk’s safety concerns. Though Texas has permissive gun laws, the activity stood out. 'I call that place Fort Knox,' said Mr. Hemmer, a retired real estate agent who lives across the street and is president of the neighborhood homeowners association.... Mr. Hemmer, who has long owned a Tesla, grew so frustrated with his neighbor that he began flying a drone over the house to check for city violations, and he keeps a video camera trained on the property around the clock. Last year, he complained to West Lake Hills officials about Mr. Musk’s fence, the traffic and how he thought the owner was operating a security business from the property. Mr. Musk’s security team also contacted the West Lake Hills Police Department about Mr. Hemmer, according to city records. One security official accused Mr. Hemmer last year of standing naked in the street, according to the records. Mr. Hemmer denied that he was naked and said he was on his property wearing black underwear. On another night, he said, he was walking his dog fully clothed and stopped when he suddenly needed to urinate — which Mr. Musk’s camera captured. 'The cameras got me,' Mr. Hemmer said. 'It’s scary they have guys sitting and watching me pee.'"

I'm reading "Won’t You Be My Neighbor? No Thanks, Elon Musk. Residents of an upscale enclave outside Austin, Texas, learned the hard way what it’s like when a multibillionaire moves into the mansion next door. Some of them have started a ruckus over it" (NYT).

Some screwy details in that story — Texans bothered by holstered guns, flying a spy drone into your neighbor's airspace then complaining that he's got cameras aimed out at the street where you took the liberty to pee, that whole nakedness-or-black-underwear conundrum....

In any case, doesn't Elon have his own city now? I'm reading "Voters Approve Incorporation of SpaceX Hub as Starbase, Texas/A South Texas community, mostly made up of SpaceX employees, voted 212 to 6 in favor of establishing a new city called Starbase" (NYT).

"The TV show 'Girls' is a right-wing show.... [That's] some labeling we’re grafting onto this thing after the fact."

"But what these pieces of work are doing is telling the truth about the world in a way that is not compromised by artistic or ideological preferences.... about [what]... society wishes were true about these people. So my thing is that if you are telling the truth about the world, then you are going to make right wing art..."

I'm listening to Jonathan Keeperman on Ross Douthat's podcast in an episode called "The New Culture of the Right: Vital, Masculine and Offensive":

 

The quote above is Keeperman's. Douthat responds: "Then you’re saying all great art is somehow right wing." He thinks there can be some great art that is "left coded," but he agrees about "Girls," because "it’s a scabrous satire of a particular kind of upper middle class lifestyle in a liberal city."

Keeperman denies that he's saying "if I like it, therefore it’s right wing art, or if it tells the truth [it's right wing art]." Click on the embedded video if you want to hear Keeperman clarify or hear Douthat wedge in the concept of "vitalism" ("a celebration of individuality, strength, excellence, and an anxiety about equality and democracy as... enemies of human greatness").

That reminds me of the time — back in 2005 — I incurred the wrath of lefties by saying "To be a great artist is inherently right wing."

But back to "Girls." Why talk about "Girls" now? The reason for me is that Lena Dunham has a new essay in The New Yorker: "Why I Broke Up with New York/Most people accept the city’s chaos as a toll for an expansive life. It took me several decades to realize that I could go my own way."

"The tariffs have made it impossible for Mr. Liu to continue selling on Amazon, where he previously made about $1 on every garment but now just 50 cents."

"And he felt he could not cut his employees’ pay, Mr. Liu said, as workers at a labor market crowded past his motorbike, which he had parked on the sidewalk with a dress sample draped over the handlebars. 'You can’t sell anything to the United States right now,' Mr. Liu said. 'The tariffs are too high.'"

From "China’s Garment Factories Face a Tipping Point After New Tariffs/As a U.S. tax loophole ends, the apparel makers that sell to America are forced to consider alternative markets or cheaper locations in and outside China" (NYT).

Sunday in the Arb.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

Trump on "Meet the Press."

Watch the whole thing. I did.

I thought it was good, balanced sparring and that he said nothing that surprised or shocked me. How about you?

ADDED: Kristen Welker likes to needle Trump with questions in the form of "What do you say to people who say....?"

"It’s a chatbot that encourages people to tap, tap, tap on hand-held small screens as they watch films on a big one."

"Users gain access to exclusive trivia and witticisms in real time (synced with what’s happening in the movie). Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has positioned Movie Mate as a way 'to get audiences back in theaters.' Nearly 20 percent of moviegoers ages 6 to 17 already send text messages during movies even though it’s against the rules.... Why not try to channel that instinct, Blumhouse argues, toward what is happening on the theater screen?"

I'm reading "Chatting in Movie Theaters Is a No-No. But What About Chatbots? Blumhouse, the horror movie studio, has teamed up with Meta on a chatbot that encourages people to use their phones while watching a movie" (NYT).

In the last moments of the film "Sunset Boulevard," the delusional actress says, "There's nothing else — just us — and the cameras — and those wonderful people out there in the dark." But the phones have taken away the dark. The "wonderful people" are interposing lighted screens between each others' eyes and that screen that used to control the flow of light.

The delusion is over.

"The client, a townhouse owner in Williamsburg, had a vision of a rooftop greenhouse for morning yoga and coffee."

"Dankman had been hired on in January and the initial estimate for the project was around $55,000 — $40,000 for materials alone. But by the time he started placing aluminum orders in April, Trump had kicked off his chaotic tariff spree, and the cost of materials jumped to almost $50,000. This is a tricky thing to have to tell someone, even if that someone has the sort of funds to build a yoga gazebo on their roof. 'Some of our clients are understanding the situation; some of them are just expecting us to eat the cost,' says Dankman...."

I'm reading "How to Tell a Client Their Yoga Gazebo Just Got $10,000 More Expensive/Navigating the tariffs on high-end renovation projects" (NY Magazine).

A rooftop greenhouse for morning yoga and coffee.... yes, this is exactly the point at which I'm going to start caring about the tariffs.

I almost started caring a few days ago when I heard a story about a young woman who ordered 4 dresses because they only cost $8 each and might later cost $12 each. 

Are these tariff empathy stories trying to get us not to care?

"The usual justification for rehashing Diana’s story is that she — a barely educated aristocrat who married a future king — is just like us..."

"... whoever we might be: feminists, gay people, Jews, Asians, Americans. White is very aware of this and rounds up some of the dafter examples of such deluded narcissism. The journalist Julie Burchill once claimed that Diana ticked off all the classic traits of a Jewish woman: 'Profoundly maternal, disliking horses, strong-nosed, comely, needing too much and giving too much.'"

From "Britain was obsessed with Princess Diana — not any longer/The barely educated aristo was a blank screen on to which we projected our dreams and delusions. Edward White’s biography delves into this strange 'Dianaworld'" (London Times).

Meanwhile, also in the London Times: "Prince Harry: I want reconciliation but the King won’t speak to me/The Duke of Sussex, who opened up in an interview with the BBC, earlier lost his appeal for the right to taxpayer-funded police security" (“So, you know, I miss the UK. I miss parts of the UK. Of course I do. And I think that it’s really quite sad that I won’t be able to show, you know, my children my homeland.... Of course, some members of my family will never forgive me for writing a book...')."

"I got off at the city center and walked to Helsinki’s main library, which looks like a ship made of carrot cake. It is called Oodi...."

"On the ground floor of the library was a cinema, a cafeteria serving beet lasagna and carrot soup and 22 children playing games of chess.... [T]he second floor... featured a 3-D printing station, a laser cutter, a large-format printer, an engraving machine, conference rooms... rocking chairs... electric and acoustic guitars — nice ones — to borrow, as well as a drum kit and multiple zithers. A podcast studio, an electronic-music studio, classrooms.... In the course of a text conversation with a friend... I rambled about my sorrow at watching the Finnish children rove and play, and told her about how mothers of all ages gathered spontaneously in the library to chat or rest or idly massage their feet. I explained that one of these mothers had placed her baby, a child of no more than 9 months, in a highchair at a library cafe table and handed him a vegetable purée to consider, then left for 20 minutes to fetch books. When she came back we exchanged smiles.... We talked about children and libraries and the relative safety of our nations. 'Every few years there’s a crisis where a baby is stolen but then it is returned or found 15 minutes later,' she said...."

From "My Miserable Week in the 'Happiest Country on Earth'/For eight years running, Finland has topped the World Happiness Report — but what exactly does it measure?" (NYT).

Here, I found this:

That video says a lot about why Finns may be the happiest people in the world. That man is warmly pleased with small things. The chess boards are credited with "keeping people smart and educated," the ceiling calls to mind the ceiling in a particular Rolls Royce you might remember.

"'What Not to Wear' ended in 2013, but the co-hosts teamed up again for 'Wear Whatever the F You Want'...."

"Instead of rules, it focuses on channeling inner fashion desires. 'I may not think this is the best we could have done, but have I made you the happiest? Because that’s the goal, and that’s the shift between where we were and where we are now as a society,' Ms. London said...."

I'm reading "How Stacy London Spends Her Sundays/Ms. London, the former co-host of 'What Not to Wear,' goes shopping, of course. But she also has a latte with friends and spends time with her dog, Dora" (NYT).

Ha ha. "What Not to Wear" became what not to air so they changed their attitude from telling young women they were doing it all wrong and needed to listen to instruction to telling them they were inherently right and to go ahead and do anything they want.

But this article is just about what Stacy London does on a Sunday... and it's very much like what everyone else in this NYT series does on a Sunday.

From the Althouse archives: "I don't want anybody telling me what to do, so why would it entertain me to see some purported experts telling somebody else what to do?"

"Six hundred and forty-two people are watching when Emily tugs off her sleep mask to begin day No. 1,137 of broadcasting every hour of her life."

"They watch as she draws on eyeliner and opens an energy drink for breakfast. They watch as she slumps behind a desk littered with rainbow confetti, balancing her phone on the jumbo bottle of Advil she uses for persistent migraines. They watch as she shuffles into the bathroom, the only corner of her apartment not on camera.... When Emily started streaming in 2016, her world felt impossibly small. She worked night shifts as a cashier on Long Island and spent her off hours at her boyfriend’s place, watching him play video games. At 19, she chose to save money by staying close to home and enrolling at the local community college, watching as all her friends moved away. One afternoon, her boyfriend told her to try Twitch, saying, as she recalled: 'Your life sucks, you work at CVS, you have no friends. … This could be helpful.'..."

From "Inside the life of a 24/7 streamer: ‘What more do you want?’ A lonely young woman in Texas has streamed every second of her life for three years and counting. Is this life, or a performance of one?" (WaPo)(free-access link, because there's a lot of material here, and I couldn't begin to quote everything interesting/horrible).

If it all feels very deja-vu, perhaps you are remembering JenniCam, which went on for 7 years and went off 22 years ago. Jenni — Jennifer Ringley — got on the David Letterman show: "He predicted that Ringley’s style of entertainment would 'replace television, because this is really all people want.... They’re lonely, desperate, miserable human beings... they want to see life somewhere else taking place.'"

"This order would reduce the number of interracial couples in TV commercials"/"Oh, it's just too many, right?"

"You see them in the kitchen together making meals from HelloFresh. He's wearing loafers, she's got tight braids. You're like: Where'd they meet, you know, what do they even talk about? It's insane."

Most of what is in that sketch has Trump signing orders with respect to things Trump has actually made an issue of his own, but I don't think he's ever seemed antagonistic toward interracial couples. I wonder how that made it into the sketch. And the line "He's wearing loafers, she's got tight braids" prompts us to picture the man as white and the woman is black, but the humor I've been hearing about these ads is that the man is always black and the woman is white. Anyway, the issue of interracial couples in TV commercials is a general topic for comedians these days. It's not connected to Trump, so it's rather scurrilous to throw this subject into the mix.