At the Smoky Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

And that photo is from yesterday. Today was so smoky, I closed all the windows and hid inside. By the way, where are the leaves for those trees? It's getting ominous out there.

"Unlike the original Vine, which required users to film their own six-second clips, Musk’s reimagined version will harness AI to generate videos..."

"... based on simple text descriptions. Users could potentially type phrases like 'a cat breakdancing in Times Square' or 'Shakespearean drama in a McDonald’s' and watch as the system instantly creates corresponding video content complete with sound."

From "Elon Musk says X will bring back Vine — with an AI twist — to rival TikTok, Reels" (NY Post).

Vine was bought by Twitter which then closed it down — all in the years before Elon Musk took over. Now, Musk is saying the old Vine video archive has been located. I like the idea of bringing Vine back, but if it's loaded with AI videos, I hate it already. 

Maybe you've seen the AI video with bunnies bouncing on a trampoline. It's got over 230 million views:

"[Governor Greg] Abbott could not remove [the quorum-avoidant Democratic] lawmakers on his own and would need the courts to go along with his plan..."

"... according to University of Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller. While Abbott and other Republicans could argue that the Democrats had abandoned their duties, those lawmakers would have a chance to make the case that they were representing their constituents by denying the majority the quorum it needs to operate, he added.... 'Even if you go to a court, you’re going to have to make a showing that I think it’s going be tough to make.' Samuel Issacharoff, a professor at New York University School of Law who has observed Texas redistricting battles for more than 30 years, said the governor’s authority to order legislators to be arrested or to remove them from office, 'is at best, unclear.'"

From "Texas House Republicans vote to issue civil arrest warrants for fleeing Democrats/The Texas state House reconvened Monday without dozens of Democrats who left the state to try to stop the GOP from moving ahead with enacting a new congressional map that would give them five more safe seats" (WaPo)(free-access link).

57 of the Texas Democrats have absconded to Chicago, Boston, or Albany. It takes 51 to deny the Republicans a quorum. When is interfering with democracy characterizable as a form of democracy? Whenever the constituents you were elected to represent oppose what they majority elected to the legislature is trying to do?

ADDED: “Schwarzenegger ready to fight Newsom on redistricting/The Republican who helped pass California’s independent line-drawing commission wants to defend his legacy” (Politico).

"A zoo in Denmark is asking the public for donations of unwanted small pets or horses to feed its captive predators."

CBS News reports

The zoo in northern Denmark said that chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs were an important part of the diet of its predators, which need "whole prey," reminiscent of what they would hunt in the wild.

"If you have a healthy animal that has to leave here for various reasons, feel free to donate it to us. The animals are gently euthanized by trained staff and are afterwards used as fodder. That way, nothing goes to waste — and we ensure natural behavior, nutrition and well-being for our predators," Aalborg Zoo said. 

The zoo said it accepts donated rabbits, guinea pigs and chickens on weekdays between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., but no more than four at a time.

They're eating the dogs! They're eating the cats! No, they are not. It doesn't say dogs and cats. It says "chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs." 

Here's the notice. Is that the zoo's predator or somebody's unwanted cat?

 

That's easy to translate and to see that's a lynx: "Chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs form an important part of the diet of our predators – especially the European lynx, which needs whole prey that resembles what it would naturally hunt in the wild." 

"Is it ever appropriate to slap someone in the face to calm them down or stop them from spiraling emotionally?"

"I'm thinking of the 'Snap out of it' slap Cher delivers in 'Moonstruck.'"

That's a question I asked Grok after reading "Plane passenger blasted for slapping man amid a panic attack in wild video: ‘You shouldn’t have raised your hand'" (NY Post). 

Here's Cher's memorable slap (or, I should say, slaps):

Don't try that at home and don't try it in public either. Now, you might wonder, what if the man doing the slapping sincerely believed he was helping? (That makes me think of the episode of "Loudermilk" where the main character gives someone the Heimlich maneuver and gets sued.)

Here's Grok's answer, if you are curious. Excerpt: "The 'hysterical slap' is a common cinematic device rooted in early 20th-century ideas about treating emotional distress (once labeled 'hysteria,' now recognized as conditions like panic attacks, anxiety, or dissociation). Physiologically, a slap might theoretically trigger a fight-or-flight response by activating the sympathetic nervous system, increasing alertness through hormone release (like adrenaline) and potentially interrupting a panic loop via surprise. However, this is unreliable and short-lived at best, often depicted in media for dramatic effect rather than accuracy. In practice, it can backfire by provoking aggression, deepening trauma, or shifting the person from emotional distress to physical pain or anger, making de-escalation harder."

ADDED: What are some other ways to deal with emotion that the movies might make you think are a good idea? Grok's answers: 1. Throw a drink in somebody's face to express anger, 2. Kiss someone suddenly to interrupt their verbal argument, 3. Keep pursuing your love object after she/he has turned you down, 4. Grab someone by the shoulders and shake them hard while yelling "Get a grip!" right in their face.

Basically, the movies are full of bad ideas!

IN THE COMMENTS: I'm being savaged for my failure to acknowledge "Airplane!"

Now, I gotta get outta here!

"Los Angeles and California surely need a daily dose of The Post as an antidote to the jaundiced, jaded journalism that has sadly proliferated."

"We are at a pivotal moment for the city and the state, and there is no doubt that The Post will play a crucial role in engaging and enlightening readers, who are starved of serious reporting and puckish wit."

Said Robert Thomson, CEO of The Post’s owner News Corp, quoted in "Start the presses! New York Post will expand to LA with launch of The California Post" (NY Post).

I like the illustration, featuring the Post's best claim to fame, Alexander Hamilton:

Clutching the lunch cloche.

I'm just reading the New Yorker article, by Lauren Collins, called "The Case for Lunch/Notes on an underappreciated meal." I'm not going to appreciate or fail to appreciate the meal called "lunch." I just want to snip out 2 things that stirred my love for language:

Per Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, the word “lunch” likely derives from “clunch” or “clutch,” meaning “as much food as one’s hand can hold.”... 

It was lunch, so there was sunshine, streaming into the dining room, backlighting the cursive lettering on the plate-glass windows. I felt as though I had just put on a cloche and pulled up a seat in the cafeteria of a Hopper painting....

"Cloche" — which means "bell" in French — is a bell-shaped hat:

"Last weeks Job’s Report was RIGGED, just like the numbers prior to the Presidential Election were Rigged. That’s why, in both cases..."

"... there was massive, record setting revisions, in favor of the Radical Left Democrats. Those big adjustments were made to cover up, and level out, the FAKE political numbers that were CONCOCTED in order to make a great Republican Success look less stellar!!! I will pick an exceptional replacement. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAGA!"

Writes Trump, at Truth Social.

The NYT presentation of this news story is: "Trump to Appoint New Top Labor Official Within Days/President Trump fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday after the agency released dour monthly jobs data."

Mr. Trump fired the top labor official in charge of compiling statistics on employment, Erika McEntarfer, on Friday after the B.L.S. released monthly jobs data showing a significant slowdown in hiring. Mr. Trump accused Ms. McEntarfer, without evidence, of rigging the numbers.

There's that phrase, "without evidence."

"[Adrienne] Salinger would approach an interesting-looking kid in a mall or on the street and ask: might she come to their home and take their picture?"

"Salinger stipulated that her subjects were not to tidy up their rooms before she arrived—as if. With sessions lasting several hours, her intention was to grant as much agency as possible to the teens involved, and to counter the inevitable power imbalance between herself and her subjects.... Another rule was that parents had to stay out of the way. Even so, their presence leaks into many of the images and interviews. Greg H., pictured at thirteen in Kirkland, Washington, in 1984, has a mural of clouds, a mobile of planet-like orbs, and a telescope, all bespeaking parental investment in cultivating a wholesome interest. Anne I., sixteen, shot in 1990, in upstate New York, sits on her bed, with a white fluffy Teddy bear by her side and wall art of Jim Morrison hanging behind her, the two aptly illustrating the tenuous cusp between childhood and adolescence.... What appealed to Salinger about portraying people of that age, she says now, was the way in which they were so uncompromising. 'When you are a teen-ager, I think, you are really clear about what your viewpoints are,' she says. 'I wanted that fierceness of having your point of view without also having to pay rent, or think about having a job, or anything....'"

From "Teen-Agers in Their Bedrooms, Before the Age of Selfies/Adrienne Salinger’s cult photography book from the nineties makes a comeback" (The New Yorker).

That's about a book of photographs published in 1995, which is being reissued — here's a commissioned-earned link.

How would you like a photographer approaching your "interesting-looking kid" and asking to photograph them in their bedroom for hours and enforcing a rule that you stay out of there? It's so creepy by present-day standards that I'm surprised to see the artist vaunted in the New Yorker without questioning the intrusion on the child.

Canada smoke sunrise.

Write about what you like in the comments.

16 years!

Another milestone.

"Why is he allowed to use the word 'GOD' when describing himself? Can anyone imagine the uproar there would be if I used that nickname?"

Wrote Donald Trump, railing, at Truth Social, against Charlamagne Tha God.

It's funny that he looks at the moniker Charlamagne Tha God and his first thought is What about me? Why can't I call myself a God? Trump the God, yeah, that's great, but those idiots will come for me. They'll call me a narcissist!

By the way, Mr. Trump, you're allowed. Go ahead!

"Going back to our childhood homes as adults is inevitably a collision. This collision is kind of fun for some of us: We get to alienate our partners by regressing a bit..."

"... while enjoying the indulgence and shared eccentricities of our families. Others experience this collision as disorienting and lonely. Was I ever really at home here? Do these people know me at all?... There are very often new people living with our aging parents, people we sometimes don’t know very well. Even as adult children, it can feel odd to spend time with our parents in houses that can’t accommodate us anymore. It can be tempting to feel sorry for ourselves, as if something that was promised us is being withheld.... "

Writes Kathryn Jezer-Morton, in "Do Your Parents Really Want Your Family to Come Visit?" (NY Magazine).

"In a couple of weeks my family is making our annual pilgrimage to my mother-in-law’s place, but she won’t be home for at least half of our visit. She’s written a play that will be performed in another city and has rehearsals to attend. We are all thrilled for her, and proud. And also, in a childish way, disappointed.... I wonder if some of what makes having aging boomer parents hard sometimes is that we no longer lean on these old reliable — if limiting — expectations about how old people 'should' behave. Sometimes I suspect my friends and I expect elders to behave like old-school grannies and grampies while also wanting them to be fully actualized independent people...."

I can't believe I read "Prince Andrew and Donald Trump’s Sick ‘P***y’ Conversations Revealed"...

 ... a Daily Beast "Royalist" column by Tom Sykes.

But I read it and now you don't have to. I read it because I wanted to find an actual "pussy" quote from Trump. Short answer: There isn't one!

There's a new book, by Andrew Lownie, "Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York," and "pussy" is Lownie's word. If 2 men are having a conversation about sex with women, in Lownie's style, it's a conversation about pussy. Maybe the men used that word too, but I'm not seeing any quotes, and also, what difference does it make?!

"And on his head, where a swooping red beret has sat almost every day of his adult life, there was only a cap-shaped tan line and balding pate...."

"In a city rich with sartorial symbols, few have been more memorable than [Curtis] Sliwa’s ruby red headpiece. It helped the Guardian Angels, his subway patrol group, gain notoriety in the 1970s; was his uniform for a career in television and radio and provided an unofficial motif for his unsuccessful first run for mayor in 2021. Yet as he takes a second, seemingly more viable run at City Hall, Mr. Sliwa, 71, is beginning to show up without it... 'For some people, the beret is a defining issue,' Mr. Sliwa said, volunteering that it could evoke a certain Che Guevara-style revolutionary look. 'Guys and gals, I get it. If taking my red beret off will help you just to listen to me, no problem.'... Mr. Sliwa makes a point of wearing his beret underground — he tries to campaign in the subway two hours a day ('It’s the only way') — and on the streets. It makes him more visible.... Mr. Sliwa said he has six berets in rotation. On hot summer days, the wool can create its own small heat dome. 'I don’t mind shvitzing, but my wife does,' he said. 'She says, "oofa, this beret, it can walk on its own by the end of the day."' He is also hearing from friends who think it is worth more on than off.... 'First, I was all for taking his red hat off,' Mr. Dietl said. 'But now I think when Superman came to save everyone, he didn't take his cape off.'"

From "Curtis Sliwa Wants to Be Mayor. He’s Taking Off His Beret to Prove It. The Guardian Angels founder and Republican nominee for mayor has long been a New York curiosity. Can he become a serious contender?" (NYT).

You know who wore a hat? Lincoln. As Trump likes to say, responding to critics who call him insufficiently presidential: "I would say I can be more presidential than any president in history except for possibly Abe Lincoln with the big hat." And by the way, Trump has a damned distinctive hat and it worked for him. 

If the question is how can you be serious in a hat I think we have the answer, and Sliwa made that beret so much a part of his persona that it's the only thing recognizable about him. Without the hat, he's a generic old guy. It's too late to de-hat. He has to convince people he's serious, without de-hatting.

 

Should Curtis Sliwa prove his worth by going without the hat?

No, it's too late now.

No, the hat is good.

Yes, it's a barrier to being taken seriously. Crucial to de-hat.

Yes, but don't concede that it wasn't serious. Take control of the expression.

Who cares? This clown can't win. Move on to Cuomo or Adams.

 

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