Sunrise — 6:14, 6:15, 6:17, 6:18.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments.

"A guy is a man who is loyal to something, even if his loyalty is..mistaken..."

"Bishop Sheen..is not against Bad Guys. He is only against their badness: he is for their guyness... He is only a guy like the rest of us."

That's from 1953 in the Catholic Times, the oldest appearance in print of the word "guyness," according to the OED, which defines "guyness" as "The quality, state, or condition of being a man, esp. with (typically humorous) reference to male stereotypical characteristics or interests, such as being uncomplicated, good-natured, uncomfortable with emotional issues, preoccupied with sport, gadgets, beer, etc."

There's also an obsolete version of "guyness," from back in the 1800s, that meant "The quality or fact of having an odd or grotesque appearance." That's less odd than it might seem: the original lowercase "guy" was an effigy of Guy Fawkes. 

"5 Takeaways From Ghislaine Maxwell’s Interview About Jeffrey Epstein."

For what it's worth. From the NYT. Gift link, because I don't value spending my time on this. 

The first bulletpoint is the one of most interest though not at all surprising, considering her interests: "Maxwell praised Trump and distanced him from Epstein."

ADDED: You can read or listen to all of the interviews at the Department of Justice website: here.

"People in Mississippi can no longer use the social media platform Bluesky."

"The company announced Friday that it will be blocking all IP addresses within Mississippi for the foreseeable future in response to a recent US Supreme Court decision that allows the state to enforce strict age verification for social media platforms.... The company says that compliance with Mississippi’s law—which would require identifying and tracking all users under 18, in addition to asking every user for sensitive personal information to verify their age—is not possible with the team’s current resources and infrastructure...."

From "Bluesky Goes Dark in Mississippi Over Age Verification Law/Bluesky has chosen to block access in the state rather than risk potential fines of up to $10,000 per violation" (Wired).

"I'm still mulling the point... about whether or not both parties moved in an individualistic direction and that there were these big solidaristic movements on the left that that began to to fade.... "

"My instinct was it was wrong. And as I think about it, I think it's right, but I think that it's right for possibly a different reason...."

Mulls Ezra Klein, in the new episode of his podcast, "MAHA Is a Bad Answer to a Good Question." I'm jumping you to a spot about half an hour into the discussion:

"I think there's a sense that that politics failed... particularly after 2024... You look around at the way... communal shaming worked. You look at the way people look back on the pandemic. You look at the backlash now to what gets called wokeness, Me Too. And whatever you believe about the underlying arguments being made that the effort to shame your way to a better world was a political failure — not a small political failure, but a political failure that has empowered the absolute worst people, the people you feared the most, like a Murderers' Row of who you did not want to have power.... And the move — I'm not sure if I would call it towards individualism — but away from this heavily enforced solidarity of both action and language — very, very aggressive on speech and info hazards — that that was part of what went wrong....  [T]he left became extremely comfortable with the deployment of state power on behalf of institutions and so on in a way that really radicalized the other side. And the other side didn't become libertarian — in a strange way, they became authoritarian...."

Klein seems to be blaming the left for making the right authoritarian, but isn't he also accusing the left of authoritarianism? What is "heavily enforced solidarity" that's "very, very aggressive on speech and info hazards" — what is it to be "extremely comfortable with the deployment of state power" — if not authoritarianism?

By the way, what is a Murderers' Row? The term goes back to at least 1850, when it referred to a row of prison cells in New York City's Tombs. But most Americans probably think of it in as referring to baseball— especially the 1927 New York Yankees, which had a very intimidating batting lineup. If that's your reference point, Klein sounds like he's expressing awe and admiration for the left's adversaries. Trump is the Babe Ruth of politics.

Sunrise — 5:51, 6:13, 6:14.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"The White House published a list of Smithsonian exhibits, programming and artwork it considered objectionable..."

"... on Thursday, one week after announcing that eight of the institution’s museums must submit their current wall text and future exhibition plans for a comprehensive review. The list borrows heavily from a recent article in The Federalist that objected to portrayals at several museums. It argued that the National Museum of American History promoted homosexuality by hanging a pride flag; overemphasized Benjamin Franklin’s relationship to slavery in its programming; and supported open borders by depicting migrants watching fireworks 'through an opening in the U.S.-Mexico border wall.'...:

I'm reading "White House Lists Smithsonian Exhibits It Finds Objectionable/The Trump administration highlighted material dealing with topics like sexuality, slavery and immigration" (NYT).

Here's that official list put out by The White House.

Most striking item on the list: "The National Museum of African Art displayed an exhibit on 'works of speculative fiction that bring to life an immersive, feminist and sacred aquatopia inspired by the legend of Drexciya,' an 'underwater kingdom populated by the children of pregnant women who had been thrown overboard or jumped into the ocean during the Middle Passage.'"

Notably out of context item on the list: "An American History Museum exhibit features a depiction of the Statue of Liberty 'holding a tomato in her right hand instead of a torch, and a basket of tomatoes in her left hand instead of a tablet.'" There's an image of it, and it looks like really bad art — amateurish junk. But here's the Smithsonian's description of the object and why it is in the collection:

"In April, [Joe] Rogan inspired discourse when he said... 'the word retarded is back' and celebrated its return as 'one of the great culture victories' won by podcasts...."

"... such as his own. Bert Kreischer and Tom Segura shared similar thoughts on their podcast.... 'Everyone says retarded again. It’s in shows; it’s in stand-up,' Segura said. 'The people kind of were like, "No, we want it back. We’re going to say it again."' In the 2024 pilot episode of the FX sitcom English Teacher, a pair of dismayed high-school teachers bond over their shared observation that the kids are 'saying the R-word again' and no longer 'into being woke.' Meanwhile, the new Naked Gun movie features a villain named Richard Cane, who owns a private club where one of the perks of membership is freedom to say the word retarded without backlash.... It’s a nostalgic throwback for generations who remember a time when it was ubiquitous, conveys a hint of danger to generations who have only known it as a slur, and slots satisfyingly into punch lines because of its jagged consonants...."

Writes Hershal Pandya, in "Comedy’s Safest Slur/Left, right, center — everyone is using it. How stand-up has all but killed a controversial term’s taboo" NY Magazine).

"FBI agents on Friday searched the Maryland home of former Trump administration national security adviser John Bolton..."

"... as part of an investigation of whether he illegally possessed or shared classified information, according to two people familiar with the matter.... A blogger was also live-streaming the scene of cars with lights flashing outside the home...."

The Washington Post reports.

Should I add my tag "revenge" to this post?

Yes. This is clearly about revenge.

Yes, because it would only mean that the topic of revenge is in issue.

Yes, because it's spicy.

No. When in doubt, perform neutrality.

No. It pushes readers to think what they might not otherwise think.

No. You should presume that those in authority are acting for legitimate reasons.

 

pollcode.com free polls

"Doesn’t Shakespeare begin 'Twelfth Night'... with the infatuated Duke Orsino uttering the famous line, 'If music be the food of love, play on'?"

"Saheem Ali’s production hasn’t cut it, but merely decided that Orsino can wait. By flipping the first two scenes, and giving Viola the play’s final line, Ali has recentered a character who has been known to get lost in the overstuffedness of this comedy. And by having her speak initially in Swahili — 'Je, hii ni nchi gani, bwana?,' or 'What country is this, sir?,' she asks the captain — Ali establishes her firmly as a person arriving, in unaccustomedly desperate straits, on the shore of a foreign land, Illyria. Sounds political, doesn’t it...."

From "'Twelfth Night' Review: Lupita Nyong’o in Illyria/The actress is luminous, alongside her look-alike brother Junior Nyong’o, Sandra Oh and Peter Dinklage, in Shakespeare’s comedy at the newly revived Delacorte Theater" (NYT).

Why hadn't the NYT told us about this? "In July, New York Times reporters witnessed other Adams supporters handing out red envelopes with cash at three separate campaign events..."

"... one in Flushing, Queens; another in Manhattan’s Chinatown; and a third in Sunset Park in Brooklyn. At those events, Mr. Adams picked up support from leaders of influential Chinese community groups, including several with close ties to the Chinese government.... At the event in Flushing on July 13... [0]ne of the organizers, Steven Tin, the director of Better Chinatown USA, which hosts the Lunar New Year parades in Manhattan’s Chinatown, was seen by The Times holding $50 bills and handing out red envelopes to reporters from Chinese-language news organizations. At the event, Mr. Tin said that it is a common practice in Chinese culture to give cash to 'reporters, YouTubers, photographers' as a 'thank you for coming' gift...."

From "Red Envelopes With Cash Are Changing Hands at Adams Campaign Rallies/New York Times reporters witnessed supporters of Mayor Eric Adams handing out cash-filled envelopes. Sometimes, that money went to reporters from Chinese-language outlets" (NYT).

Why did the NYT sit on this until after The City published "Eric Adams Advisor Winnie Greco Handed a CITY Reporter Cash Stuffed in a Bag of Potato Chips/THE CITY reported the incident to law enforcement and was promptly contacted by the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office"? That came out on the evening of August 20th. (Here's my blog post about it from midday yesterday.)

Was everyone tolerating this practice until the City reporter openly objected to it? Why was the City reporter's envelope delivered inside a potato chip back if it was not understood to be wrong? The NYT writes, "No established American news organization permits its reporters to accept cash payments for covering events" and "The Times’s ethical guidelines explicitly prohibit receipt of such gifts." And the NYT reporters seem to have witnessed the open delivery of red envelopes, without snack-food camouflage. Perhaps The City was viewed as in the gray zone between "established American news organization" and news organizations that had already been initiated into a system of paying for news coverage.

The NYT doesn't explain its waiting to publish. Perhaps it was working on a more detailed story explaining pervasive corruption and it just got scooped. 

Sunrise — 6:07.

Later, at 2:18 in the afternoon:

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"He subconsciously pouted, almost as if waiting for Meloni to notice..."

"... but Meloni never once looked his way...."

"A protester holds up a Subway sandwich during a 'Fight the Trump Takeover' protest in front of the White House"/"A protester holds up a piece of bread as he walks past the National Guard."

Captions under photographs at "How a thrown sub made ‘Sandwich Guy’ a resistance icon in Trump’s D.C./A DOJ employee was fired and charged with a felony after chucking a footlong at a federal agent. Now his likeness is a symbol — and for sale on T-shirts" (WaPo).

"I make a mistake. I’m so sorry. It’s a culture thing. I don’t know. I don’t understand. I’m so sorry. I feel so bad right now. I’m so sorry, honey."

Said Winnie Greco, quoted in "Eric Adams Advisor Winnie Greco Handed a CITY Reporter Cash Stuffed in a Bag of Potato Chips/THE CITY reported the incident to law enforcement and was promptly contacted by the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office" (The City).

Greco's lawyer, Steven Brill, doubled down on the "culture thing" excuse: "I can see how this looks strange. But I assure you that Winnie’s intent was purely innocent. In the Chinese culture, money is often given to others in a gesture of friendship and gratitude. Winnie is apologetic and embarrassed by any negative impression or confusion this may have caused."

Is it Chinese culture to deliver money inside bags of potato chips?!

I understand there is a tradition in China of giving money in red envelopes, and, to be fair, in this case, there was a red envelope that contained the money inside the potato chip bag. Go to that link to see the nature of that tradition — who does it, when, how do they behave — and compare that to what Winnie Greco did. I'm sympathetic to serious arguments about cultural differences and genuine misunderstanding, but come on.

"Divided Court Eliminates Trump’s Half-Billion-Dollar Fine in Fraud Case/New York appeals judges said that the judgment was excessive, but agreed to uphold the case so the appeal could continue."

The NYT reports (gift link).

“While harm certainly occurred, it was not the cataclysmic harm that can justify a nearly half billion-dollar award to the state,” wrote Peter Moulton, one of the appeals judges whose lengthy and convoluted ruling reflected significant disagreement among the five-judge panel.

This is the intermediate appellate court. 

The president’s appeal will now most likely move to New York’s highest court, providing him another opportunity to challenge the finding that he was a fraudster....

The finding that he was a fraudster! They only write like that for Trump. For anyone else, I suspect, they'd name the crime — "that he committed fraud" — and not portray the verdict as labeling the person as a member of category of people who commit this sort of crime. Especially with the jocose "-ster" ending — "fraudster." 

"Share this video with someone you'd love to visit these incredible places with."

Says the robot voiceover at the end of "12 Must See Places Before Living [sic] This World!" — a TikTok that Meade shared with me... not because I was someone he'd "love to visit these incredible places with."

He knows and I know that neither of us would feel that we must see those places/"places" and both of us know that about the other and both knew that the other would find the idealized pictures absurd.

I enjoyed the first clip — a man cartwheeling into clear turquoise water — but scoffed aloud at the notion of going all the way to the Maldives because the water there might perhaps be clear and colorful.

But the second destination provoked my horror of traveling:

  

Somehow I don't think that will be my point of view.

"The only jeans made specifically for birds."

The only jeans made specifically for birds pic.twitter.com/Imb62l90IA

— Official Jon Lajoie (@jonlajoiecomedy) August 19, 2025

"Theater is just not the place for crisps — or chips, for my American cousins. Unless you wanna suck them until they are soft like baby food..."

"... and then you can chew them down. The crunching, the crackling — it’s just the worst thing in the world."

Said Zoë Roberts, a writer and star of 'Operation Mincemeat," quoted in rule #6 — about keeping quiet — in "The 37 Definitive Rules of Going to the Theater/Everything you need to know about seats, coats, eating, drinking, clapping, peeing, compliments, autographs and not being a jerk to those around you" (WaPo)

Rule #6 is "You’ve heard of quiet luxury? Try quiet essentials." We're told you can bring in "water bottles, and even your own candy," but "try emptying candy or snacks into a cup, where you can pluck them out with minimal ruckus."

But Rule #23 creates a big loophole: "Pick your time to sip or bite." It quotes a sound designer who says: "In a musical there are certainly louder scenes where you can probably get away with a little more." Just decide the show is being noisy enough and apparently it's okay to crunch chips.

I feel sorry for the actors on stage. They can see us, the audience. It's not a movie, people. I feel sorry for actors who not only have to tolerate the unreality of a theater full of humans who do not belong in the scene but also have to see us shoveling in food, sucking on straws, chewing, and tipping water bottles up in the air. But the theater people are afraid to call for traditional decorum. They need to fill the seats, and they know we are needy, entitled louts. 

What are we seeing here? A dying party's last gasps?

Link to the London Times: here.

Excerpt: "As he told Vogue last July, 'I’m a fun, wacky guy. I’m a silly goose.' Take one look at his bizarre Instagram page... or his X account... and you’ll agree with that. Schlossberg often spends his time shirtless, talking about people’s looks. He has pondered Jesus Christ’s body type. He has commented on his own resemblance to Audrey Hepburn. He has wondered out loud whether Usha Vance is 'way hotter' than his grandmother Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.And then there’s the video he posted this week. Donning a blonde wig and speaking in a Slavic accent, he pretended to be Melania Trump as he performed a 'dramatic reading' of her recent letter to Vladimir Putin about the welfare of Ukrainian children. On Tuesday he posted again as Melania, saying he would 'be going live, answering all of your questions on my show tonight.'"

And yes, I see what Gavin Newsom is doing. Suddenly, everybody's a comedian. 

"The lone star tick... was first found on Martha’s Vineyard in 1985 but has become more established in recent years, feeding and breeding on the thousands of deer..."

"... that roam the island’s lush woods and beach grass.This is reflected in the rising number of alpha-gal diagnoses. Some 523 new cases were reported on Martha’s Vineyard last year.... [E]xperts fear the situation on Martha’s Vineyard is only going to get worse due to the island’s growing deer population. [Biologist Patrick] Roden-Reynolds said there are anywhere from 55 to 75 deer per square mile — up from 40 to 60 in 2011. This is up to ten times the amount of deer needed for a healthy forest ecosystem, he said, adding: “Each deer this time of year probably has a couple of hundred ticks on them that are attached and feeding and producing new ticks for the next year.” Locals have called for an increase in deer hunting to manage the island’s population. 'Even doing some sort of hunting tourism-promotion thing here would be helpful in a way,' said [Kate Sudarsky, a 26-year-old teacher on the island who was diagnosed with alpha-gal]."

I'm reading "'We can no longer eat burgers or ice cream — all because of a tick bite'/A bug-borne disease has taken over Martha’s Vineyard and is turning people vegan, locals claim" (London Times).

Not enough deer hunters on the island. Hard to imagine the kind of tourism they could set up that would bring in enough deer hunters to do the kind of thinning they'd need. Hire professional sharpshooters. 

Before you riff on the rich-people problems of Martha's Vineyard, take a look at this map showing the range of the lone star tick in the U.S.

Sunrise — 6:10, 6:20.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments.

"I know the president said on Fox News this morning that he's partially seeking peace in order to get to heaven. Was he joking or is there spiritual uh motivation behind his peace deals here?"

Asked Mary Margaret Olohan, of the Daily Wire.

That happened at yesterday's White House Press Briefing. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt answered:

"I think the president was serious. I think president wants to get to heaven as I hope we all do in this room as well."

Trump's quote was the title of yesterday's post: "I want to get to heaven if possible. I'm hearing I'm not doing well. I hear I'm at the bottom of the totem pole. If I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons." Video of Trump saying all that at the link.

Was he serious? The question is how serious?

Was Mary Margaret Olohan serious — seriously hoping that he was serious?

"Perhaps such tortuous, jargon-clotted prose is the best way to capture our benighted age... Even for those fluent in edgelord and incel, though..."

"... here are diminishing returns to yet another parody of a supposed white ally acknowledging that 'baking needs to diversify,' frequent references to cancellation, and more than one Trump/Covid-19 piece.... I didn’t have much lulz reading 'Whites,' but then again, America isn’t too fun these days, either. It’s exhausting to be so exhausting. In our extremist political climate and celebrity-book-club-oriented literary one, I’m glad this collection — and daring, pyrotechnically gifted, berserk-confronting authors like Doten, a vanishing breed — exist to do the real work.

Writes Teddy Wayne, in "What’s Wrong With White People? A Story Collection Counts the Ways. Mark Doten’s new book examines a contemporary American culture that routinely defies satire" (NYT).

The book under review is, indeed, titled "Whites."

I'll just offer this link back to yesterday's post about whether book reviews can function to keep us going in the dream of a thing called Literary Fiction... and this survey:

 

America isn’t too fun these days...

Actually, it's very fun

It's fun for me

I can't have fun until everyone's having fun

It's not fun and if you think it's fun, it's my mission to make it so that you won't have fun

 

pollcode.com free polls

"It’s never been about whether or not I’m going to lose my tax-exempt status. It’s whether I’m going to lose my prophetic status."

"Let’s not be wussy about this. When we see sin, then name it. But I think it limits me, if somebody believes that I am tied to a candidate or political party."

So said Bonnie A. Perry, an Episcopal Bishop, quoted in a NYT article that's mostly about a Lutheran pastor,  Jonathan Barker, who resigned from Grace Lutheran (in Kenosha, Wisconsin) rather than give up on his plan to deliver a sermon about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, endorsing her as a Democratic Party candidate for President in the 2028 election.

The article is "He Tried to Endorse From the Pulpit. He Wound Up Without a Church. The I.R.S. says churches can now support candidates during services, but many denominations still forbid it. A Wisconsin pastor learned the hard way."

So is this about religion or tax exemptions? Bishop Perry refers to "my tax-exempt status," but it's about the ability of all the donors to her church to claim a tax exemption.

It used to be clear that endorsing a political candidate would disqualify a church from its tax-exempt status, but there was a lawsuit challenging that and the Trump administration settled the lawsuit and said that churches could endorse candidates "to their own congregations, in connection with a worship service."

That doesn't mean they should. They may, like Perry, wisely refrain from losing their clout, their fervor, their credibility. Who would go to church to be harangued about voting for the latest Democrat? And then on top of that, you have to worry that you might lose their tax deduction if your church strays beyond the limited concession made in settling that lawsuit.

The churches have good reason to maintain a wall of separation between "the garden of the church" and "the wilderness of the world," even if there's a loophole in the tax law.

"The Democratic Party Faces a Voter Registration Crisis/The party is bleeding support beyond the ballot box, a new analysis shows."

That's the headline in the lead article at the NYT this morning. 

Here's a free access link. Excerpt:

There are still more Democrats registered nationwide than Republicans, partly because of big blue states like California allow people to register by party, while red states like Texas do not. But the trajectory is troublesome for Democrats, and there are growing tensions over what to do about it. Democrats went from nearly an 11-percentage-point edge over Republicans on Election Day 2020 in those places with partisan registration, to just over a 6-percentage-point edge in 2024.... 

It must be quite a crisis or I don't think the NYT would openly call it a crisis. They even used my favorite word, "flummox": "... Democrats are divided and flummoxed over what to do."

A big part of the problem is that they can't use nonprofits the way they used to:

Sunrise — 5:59.

Talk about anything you want in the comments.

Too good to check? Were the "Terry and Julie" of "Waterloo Sunset" Terence Stamp and Julie Christie?

I'm reading "Terence Stamp’s Swinging, Smoldering Style/He helped redefine male beauty, ushering in the era of the cinematic bad boy" by the NYT style reporter Guy Trebay. (Stamp died last Sunday at the age of 87.) 

Trebay writes: "In his 20s, when he sought a life beyond the straitened circumstances of his upbringing, he became a favorite of the London tabloids that relentlessly chronicled his relationships with the model Jean Shrimpton and the actress Julie Christie. His romantic life was at one point so well known that he and Ms. Christie inspired the 'Terry and Julie' in the Kinks song 'Waterloo Sunset,' released at the height of the mid-1960s music and fashion scene known as Swinging London."

If we go over to Genius.com to find the lyrics, we see: 

"Ebony & Ivory wastes your time, knows it's wasting your time, knows that you know it’s wasting your time, and loves that you know."

"Make no mistake: it has extremely niche appeal. But having watched this film, I think I can safely say I’m in that niche."

Writes Samantha McLaren, quoted at Rotten Tomatoes.

And here's the original song that asked the question, "Oh Lord, why don't we [live together in perfect harmony]?"

"The sculptures were meant to be provocative: 'Miss Mao' shows Mao as a topless woman with distorted, babyish features..."

"... while 'the execution of Christ' depicted a firing squad of life-size Mao statues aiming rifles at Jesus. But Gao denies they were defamatory.... Gao is accused of breaking a law that wasn’t even enacted until nearly a decade after these artworks were first exhibited. In 2018, China criminalized acts that 'distort, smear, desecrate' or otherwise 'damage the reputation and honor of heroes and martyrs.'... Gao, who is a Christian, maintains that his artwork was not intended to defame Mao but rather to explore, through cartoonish depictions of a symbolic figure, the concepts of original sin and repentance.... For [his wife] Zhao, who was not married to Gao when he made the statues, it makes no sense for authorities to claim her leaving with her child would 'endanger state security,' as officials claimed...."

From "Seven-year-old New Yorker stuck in China over father’s political art/Gao Jia, the American-born son of a well-known Chinese dissident artist, has missed first grade because his parents have been stopped from leaving China" (WaPo).

"I want to get to heaven if possible. I'm hearing I'm not doing well. I hear I'm at the bottom of the totem pole. If I can get to heaven, this will be one of the reasons."

Wow. President Trump tells Fox News he hopes his efforts to end wars will bring him closer to Heaven.

This is powerful. Watch:

"I just want to end it. If i can save seven thousand people a week from getting killed, that's pretty good. I want to get to heaven if possible. I'm… pic.twitter.com/jcrQy4ixtT

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 19, 2025

"But without reliably insightful book reviews, literature risks becoming 'an unweeded garden that grows to seed.'"

"We’re left depending only on the whisper network of our own clique, exchanging the same tuna casserole back and forth. I realize this wobbly jeremiad reeks of self-interest: After 30 years of summarizing the plots of literary novels, I can do literally nothing else. But if journalism is still, at least partially, a public service, then book reviews are one of its most eloquent contributions — one we should defend until the very last page."

Writes Ron Charles, in "The future of book reviews looks grim/The Associated Press will no longer produce book reviews, though it will pursue stories about the publishing industry" (WaPo).

Let's talk about the tuna salad and the unweeded garden. The unweeded garden is in quotes, but there is no attribution. We're talking about literature, and if you're one of the last remaining Americans who care about actual literature, you're presumably supposed to know "an unweeded garden that grows to seed." But we can all google and find the attribution. I know I did.

I've sat through "Hamlet" a few times in my life — and read it too — and the first soliloquy is familiar to me: "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!" I know some other lines: "How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world!" But I didn't recognize "Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed...."

And what of the tuna casserole? How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the tuna casseroles of this world! The tuna casseroles are those books your friends and internet contacts talk about. The comfort food, the genre novels. Bleeh. Makes Hamlet the Book Reviewer want to kill himself. "O... that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!"

That it should come to this! No book reviewers! If there are no book reviewers, there will be no literary fiction. Ron Charles spent 30 years "summarizing the plots of literary novels." Well, AI can summarize the plot of any novel. That can't be the function of a book review, at least not anymore. It must be that the reviewer is supplying some special discernment, choosing what to elevate to the high plane of literature and convincing us that we should aspire to be the kind of people who read things like that.

By the way, I find it hard to trust a writer who dresses up the word "nothing" with the dreadful intensifier "literally" and plunks the phrase a few words away from "literary": "After 30 years of summarizing the plots of literary novels, I can do literally nothing else." He's defending his own livelihood. That counts against his opinion. What am I to think of Ron Charles anyway? Here he is, 14 years ago, displaying himself as "totally hip," opining on an author who is, if nothing else, truly striving to produce literary fiction:

"More than three-quarters of [University of Georgia 46 freshman girls'] rooms were decorated in... a 'LoveShackFancy Southern mishmash.'"

"(The luxury brand LoveShackFancy’s dorm decor includes a $225 shower curtain and a $115 heart-shaped throw pillow.) [The resident assistant] said she hasn’t seen professional interior decorators on the halls, but she watched in awe as parents took three to four hours to set up their daughters’ rooms.... The flouncy decorators, she said, are typically extroverts who plan to be a part of Greek life on campus, and they come to college to befriend similar people. A minimalist decorator, on the other hand, is 'maybe doing a major that is a little bit more analytical, or is into more niche activities.' She added, '... they really won’t interact, even on the floor.'..."

From "The over-the-top world of luxury dorm decorating/Wallpaper, custom headboards and $469 mattress toppers aren’t the norm in college rooms. But they are everywhere on TikTok" (WaPo).

This is how it looks on TikTok:

"At first, my hair came back as you’d expect, as the softest stubble. At about half an inch, though, there started to be a distinct ripple. The ripple evolved..."

"... into ’90s Billy Crystal (I clearly was not specific enough when I wished for the hair in 'When Harry Met Sally…'). There was a Nancy Reagan moment. And since then, it has gotten darker — and more and more (and more) poodle. I call this the haircut nobody asks for, or Baby’s First ’Do. It has changed the shape of my face. Old friends don’t recognize me. They seem to share some of the discomfort I feel standing in front of the mirror: Who is this? It’s like I uncanny-valleyed myself."

Writes Rachel Manteuffel, quite charmingly, in "Cancer changes you, but I never saw my new hair comingIt’s not clear why chemotherapy gave me curls, but when life gives you Garfunkel..." (WaPo).

"When i was 20 years old, i went through some serious mental health issues and decided i wanted a face tattoo."

"My local artist noticed i was in mental distress and told me that he would put semi permenant ink on my face of the tattoo i wanted. Wear it for a week without rubbing it off, then come back to him and decide if i still wanted it. I agreed and he stenciled it for me on my face. I came back shaking his hand a week later and decided to get a tattoo on my wrist instead. I will never forget what he did for me. Im 30 now, have a kid, wife, i work in IT for cybersecurity, and have no criminal history. I was setting myself up for failure. That artist saved me from a huge mistake i couldnt come back from"

Writes a commenter at r/shittytattoos, in a post with a photograph of someone's face tattoo (which seems to be what that person wanted to gift himself on the occasion of his 18th birthday).

"Angry Trump Accidentally Blurts Out Unnerving New Plot to Rig Midterms/Donald Trump just gave away his own game."

That's a headline at The New Republic that made me click, and I know I shouldn't reward TNR for its unnerving new plot to rig the attention market, but let's try to understand what "Angry Trump" supposedly has in mind.

I read this article so you don't have to. You already know the context, Trump's Truth Social Post about mail-in voting, which we talked about yesterday, here.

The TNR author, Greg Sargent, is calling attention to the fact that Trump mentioned the 2026 midterms. Trump said he'd sign an executive order "to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections." That's it. That's how "Donald Trump just gave away his own game." He revealed that he saw a causal relationship between his proposed reforms and the coming elections. Of course, Trump doesn't say he wants to rig the midterms for the Republicans. He's claiming to un-rig the elections, and he says "Democrats are virtually Unelectable without using this completely disproven Mail-In SCAM."

Now one might try to say that the elections are not currently rigged. Here's Sargent:

There is overwhelming evidence that any fraud in mail balloting is limited to nonexistent. Indeed, it’s now beyond obvious that the pretext is the thing to watch.

I love when the author says something is "beyond obvious" and I can't even understand what he's talking about, but let's read on: 

At the Monday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

No sunrise picture today — it was raining.

"I am totally convinced that if Russia raised their hands and said, 'We give up, we concede, we surrender..."

"... we will GIVE Ukraine and the great United States of America, the most revered, respected, and powerful of all countries, EVER, Moscow and St. Petersburg, and everything surrounding them for a thousand miles, the Fake News Media and their Democrat Partners would say that this was a bad and humiliating day for Donald J. Trump, one of the worst days in the history of our Country.' But that’s why they are the FAKE NEWS, and the badly failing Radical Left Democrats. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!"

Trump is on a roll on Truth Social this morning. That may be his best written work — most absurdly comic and yet too true — maybe ever.

"President Trump said on Truth Social on Monday that he would 'lead a movement' to get rid of mail-in ballots and would sign an executive order..."

"... to help bring what he described as honesty to the 2026 midterm elections. Mr. Trump has long opposed mail-in voting, though Republicans made electoral gains in 2024 by embracing the practice."

Says the NYT.

I'm skeptical of the implication in that last sentence, that mail-in voting is better for Republicans than it is for Democrats. I think the 2024 gains only show that if there is mail-in voting, Republicans will do better if they encourage their supporters to use that method, rather than to wait for Election Day and to vote in person. But I would imagine that if general mail-in voting is eliminated and most people can only vote in person, Republicans might be even better off. Why would that be? Some people will say, because mail-in voting is used to cheat in various ways. Whatever the extent of the cheating, there's also the energy and enthusiasm it takes to vote in person. Shouldn't both parties insist that they don't want to cheat, only to keep the other side from cheating, and claim that their supporters are strongly committed and not lackadaisical? 

Here's the full text of Trump's Truth Social Post:

"Play to WIN, or don’t play at all! Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

 Writes Donald Trump, at Truth Social.

This blog has a theme today: sitcoms.

The first post is about "And Just Like That" (and mentions "Leave It to Beaver" and "Seinfeld").

The most recent post is about "The Cosby Show."

And the only other post... well, I've got to shoehorn it in, but think about it. Everybody into the Oval Office. Maybe you think that's not funny, but I was raised on "Dr. Strangelove."

"I am so pro separating the art and the artist... The one I can't do is Cosby...."

"I loved his sitcom.... I always thought it was weird though that his job was a gynecologist who worked out of his basement.... In his home!... He would walk up and take gloves off in the living room.... And you'd be like, wait, were those gloves just inside a woman? You're supposed to take them off, I think, like, right away.... I get obsessed with people that hide in plain sight. You're like, yeah, his job was, I think, obstetrician, they give women anesthesia in a basement. That means when you walked up the stairs, she was still passed out. In his basement...."

Said Whitney Cummings, on Bill Maher's podcast.

I like this comment over at YouTube: "Bill has been beat at his own game. Whitney is the supreme lord of interrupting and not letting people talk."

I didn't watch the Cosby show. I know the Cosby character was a doctor but did he work out of his basement and take the gloves off in the living room? Where does the comic exaggeration begin and end? I ask Grok.

"We are ready to put UK boots on the ground in part to reassure Ukrainians but in part to secure safe skies, safe seas and regenerate Ukraine’s armed forces."

"It is obviously welcome that President Trump has paved the way for vital US security guarantees.... The quicker you can bring about an end to the conflict and translate that into a lasting peace the better. We applaud President Trump’s efforts to bring about an end to the killing. We want to see an end to the killing if you can bring about an end to the killing and a sustained peace in one go all the better."

Said UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, quoted in "Ukraine-Russia latest: Putin ‘should not be rewarded’, Zelensky says/Ukrainian leader has denounced ‘cynical’ Russian attacks before his meeting with Trump in Washington, which have killed at least nine" (London Times).

Let that stand in for all the many headlines I'm seeing this morning about the White House meeting today. It's more optimistic than most. There are reasons to go negative before the meeting, but I think it's bad form. 

"Actually, this season has led me to suspect these once tight-knit friends all hate one another and are doomed to stay in each other’s lives out of habit."

Writes Bindu Bansinath, in "And Just Like That …’s Finale Was Perfect, Actually" (NY Magazine).

Sitcoms put together characters that quite specifically do not belong together. The longer the show goes on, the more absurd it becomes. The "tight-knit" group was always a plot device. Each episode required conflict, and yet the group needed to stay together. That was the show. That is always the show. Why didn't Wally Cleaver tell Eddie Haskell to get lost? Why didn't Seinfeld lock Kramer out? It might as well be "No Exit":

Three damned souls, Joseph Garcin, Inèz Serrano, and Estelle Rigault, are brought to the same room in Hell and locked inside by a mysterious valet. They had all expected torture devices to punish them for eternity, but instead, find a plain room.... Garcin says that he was executed for being an outspoken pacifist, while Estelle insists that a mistake has been made; Inèz... realizes that they have been placed together to make each other miserable.... [SPOILER ALERT] This causes Garcin to abruptly attempt an escape. After he repeatedly tries to open the door, it suddenly and inexplicably opens, but he is unable to bring himself to leave. The others remain as well. He says that he will not be saved until he can convince Inèz that he is not cowardly. She refuses to be persuaded, observing that he is obviously a coward and promising to make him miserable forever. Garcin concludes that... "hell is other people."

Sunrise — 5:58, 5:58, 6:19.

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.

"Mr. Trump’s ideas begin as ridiculous and are easily parodied on the internet — at this point, they’re already affecting our head space."

"When those parodies become a subconscious part of language, their overt power is diluted but the underlying idea remains there, continuing to subtly represent his presence. The fact that we’re talking like Donald Trump could mean that we’re starting to think like him as well."

I'm reading "The Insidious Creep of Trump’s Speaking Style" by the linguist Adam Aleksic, in the NYT. That's a free-access link so you can read the whole argument and see all the examples. The quote above is from the very end of the piece.

We're told that "Trump’s language is predisposed to becoming 'memeified' on social media platforms" and that means it is "reshaping our reality." People are saying “sad!” and “frankly” and “believe me” — not just as an "ironic callback" but also without thinking about Trump, in ordinary speech. 

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

"The reason Chuck and Hakeem have been so slow to endorse Zohran is because they don’t want to harm their moderate candidates all around the country..."

"... which are the ones they need to take back the House and Senate. That’s a political question for them."

Said Anthony Weiner, quoted in "Disgraced ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner makes blunt prediction about Zohran Mamdani, top Dems in NYC mayoral race: 'It’s inevitable'" (NY Post).

And then there's this: "The one thing that the left hasn’t shown that they can do – if you look at Chicago and San Francisco – they haven’t shown that they can govern yet. The bigger problem is what outcomes are we going to get as citizens and taxpayers if these candidates are successful? Unfortunately, it looks like we’re going to find out in New York City."

"There are pieces of varying length and wallop on sloth, stripping, shoplifting, overspending, suicide and light virtual sex work to raise money for Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign."

"'I’d rate fifty penises in an hour, and I’ll admit now that I rated few of them honestly,' she writes of trading nude-photo appraisals for political donations. 'Look, corners were cut.'..."

From a NYT book review, "Sex, Sloth and Shoplifting: Notes From a ‘Sloppy’ Girl/In her second essay collection, 'Sloppy,' the writer and social media personality Rax King embraces the mess of living imperfectly."

"[S]he takes such obvious pleasure in and sustenance from being an author with a capital A, even as she mocks how the profession might be perceived at her physical therapist’s office ('a soft-handed little typer')...."

That's not writing, that's....

Maureen Dowd's sister got her car stolen in Washington D.C.

"Two polite officers who responded to our call said they could do little, amid a rash of brazen car thefts by teenagers. One officer said that, even if they saw the perp driving in her car, they could not chase him, because of laws passed by the D.C. Council.... The next morning, though, an officer... banged on her door. Her car was found in a park, running, nearly out of gas. When she collected it, after paying a $215 towing charge, she found an odoriferous collection: half-eaten pizza, grape soda cans, fast-food wrappers, a used condom and a couple of debit cards.... [T]he police said to throw [the cards] away... Then... she got over $1,800 worth of speed-camera tickets that the car thieves had racked up going 70 in 25-mile-per-hour zones, and some for running red lights.... She had to go down to headquarters on Friday to get the police report so she could appeal the tickets...."

Writes Maureen Dowd, in "Criminal Fights Crime" (NYT).

The final line is: "Even if Trump is being diabolical, Democrats should not pretend everything is fine here. Because it’s not."

I like to think the Democrats need to offer solutions, not just admit that there are problems. Of course, it's awful to deny that the problems are really that bad or to say that we deserve the problems or that side effects of solving the problems are worse than the problems. But assuming Democrats admit there is a terrible problem — and Dowd is only denying that "everything is fine" — they seem to want to focus on how bad Trump's solutions are.

"A famous economist once remarked: 'You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.'"

"That epigram, issued by Robert Solow in 1987, became the subject of a lot of debate among economists in the 1990s.... A decade later, another famous economist made a similar observation about the internet — actually, a prediction: 'By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine’s.' That was Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman.... We’re now hearing similar questions about artificial intelligence...."

Writes Megan McArdle, in "Are we in an AI bubble that’s getting ready to pop? The promised AI revolution isn’t here yet. But it’s a smart bet that productivity gains will follow" (WaPo).

And this caught my eye: "A friend who is a lawyer... asked a chatbot to draft a document, and though the draft needed work, he estimated it had saved him two to four hours of typing. I asked him what he did with the extra time. He pleaded the fifth." Pleaded the Fifth, eh? That makes it sound as though he billed the client for the 2 to 4 hours it would have taken to do the work traditionally!

It's not just the "typing" that the AI did for him. It also composed material into solid standard English, wrote the citations in the required form, put the substance in some sort of order, and probably much more. It wasn't just "typing" he'd have been doing during those hours. 

McArdle is using the word "typing" in a way that reminds me of Truman Capote's famous insult to Jack Kerouac: "That's not writing, that's typing." Oh, Jack wasn't just typing typing. He was typing typing. 

"It was weird enough that six or seven White, trans people moved into the neighborhood. And now the FBI is raiding their house."

Said a resident of the "predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood here known as The Bottoms."

Quoted in "Suspects in Texas ICE shooting tied to trans, anti-fascist activism/Benjamin Song, an alleged ringleader, is a former Marine Corps reservist who trained left-wing activists for close-quarters combat and large-scale gunfights, associates said" in The Washington Post. 

It's quite long, so I'm giving you a free-access link. I'll quote a few highlights:

The raid... was part of an investigation into a July 4 attack outside the Prairieland Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, an hour’s drive south.... The Alvarado attack is one of the most violent incidents in a wave of assaults and threats against federal immigration officers.... The Department of Homeland Security recorded 79 assaults on ICE officers between Jan. 21 and June 30....

The topic is the rise of left-wing violence in the Trump era, but WaPo interrupts itself to remind readers that there's even more right-wing violence and it's worse.

I'm reading the front page of The Washington Post with the wild hope of keeping up to date.

 

I mean, what do they think they're doing? What did they say to each other as they chose to put this material on the front page — right under stories about Zelensky at the White House, the National Guard in Washington D.C., terrorism in Texas, and Hurricane Erin? Let's revisit the legacy of slavery and balance it with closeups of black asses? It's as if they had to meet a racial quota and brainstormed and juxtaposed the first 2 things they thought of.