Sunrise — 5:56, 6:15, 6:21.

Write 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.)

"Vice President JD Vance's... comments about being prepared to assume the presidency in case of a 'terrible tragedy' befalling President Trump set tongues wagging."

"The timing of these remarks drew attention within the political landscape as keyboard warriors started connecting dots to the prominent bruise on Trump's right hand that went viral.... The story has generated substantial engagement on social media platforms, particularly on X. Below are some tweets...."

From "'Trump is Dead' trends on X: J D Vance's remark over US president sparks frenzy; Simpsons prediction adds fuel" (Times of India).

"Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson had fans eating up their flirty press tour, but behind the scenes, it was all a PR 'bake-off'...."

TMZ reports, based on "sources with direct knowledge."

I had some trouble understanding the expression "bake-off," since there was no competition, only collusion, pretending to have found love together. But...

A big slice of the stunt involved Pamela claiming she was baking muffins and sourdough bread for Liam -- something he even played along with in interviews leading up to the premiere. It makes us now assume that was also part of the strategy ... pure role-play PR, not reality.

So some literal baking was involved, but there was no literal or figurative bake-off.

Actors promoting a movie are still acting. Why not act as if they'd fallen in love? 

If you go searching into the term "bake-off," you'll probably quickly arrive at something called the "First Lady Bake-Off." That's something that began in 1992, and it was an unwholesome alliance between the press — Family Circle Magazine — and the Clinton campaign. Wikipedia explains:

"Trump’s team again defined classical broadly as all premodernist architectural styles, with roots in Greco-Roman antiquity..."

"... though art deco, which is on the list, is not typically considered traditional. The order defines 'traditional architecture' as Gothic, Pueblo Revival, Spanish Colonial, and Mediterranean styles historically rooted in parts of the United States. 'Designs diverging from classical architecture must convey the dignity, enterprise, vigor, and stability of the American government and command public respect,' the White House said in a fact sheet for the order, which also requires that Trump is notified when a building design deviates from the preferred style...."

From "Trump orders classical and traditional architecture for federal buildings" (Yahoo, passing along something from WaPo).

Justin Shubow, "the head of the National Civic Art Society [who] helped draft the order," taking the position that this wasn't a political issue, reminded WaPo about the time Barack Obama "accept[ed] the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 in front of classical Greek backdrop. 'Whoever was stage-managing understood that this is how Americans think of the presidency. They do associate it with classical architecture.'"

I'd say that shows that it is a political issue. Obama was being political. It was not that he shared the ordinary American's taste for traditional architecture, but that he was trying to influence Americans to see him as belonging within the tradition that he and his handlers presumed they believed in. He wasn't elected yet, but, as we all saw at the time, he was acting as if he was already ensconced in the trappings of power.

WaPo moderates anti-Trump hysteria with the headline "New FDA coronavirus vaccine rules bring U.S. closer to other countries."

Subheadline: "But confusion over who can get shots and resignations by officials who say the Trump administration is undermining vaccine science have few parallels elsewhere."

Who is sowing this confusion? If the Trump administration is aligned with what other countries are doing, why are "officials" resigning and performing outrage? 

"Blazes in these areas consume, in addition to brush and undergrowth, all sorts of manufactured materials: lead paint and piping, lithium batteries and computers..."

"... cleaning solutions and artificial fibers, automobiles and electric wires. Soil samples collected from the Palisades and Altadena have revealed the presence of heavy metals and other toxic elements, including arsenic, lead and mercury. If not properly remediated, such contamination can linger, with potential effects including not only cancer but also damage to the brain and nervous system, especially in children under 3.... For all the visible damage to Altadena and the Palisades, in other words, there is a more insidious set of dangers, both in the homes and structures left undamaged and throughout the broader region. Even after the January fires stopped burning, wind distributed toxic smoke and ash across much of Los Angeles County, before blowing them out to the Pacific by way of Long Beach...."

Writes David L. Ulin, a USC English professor who wrote a book called "Sidewalking: Coming to Terms With Los Angeles," in "Los Angeles Is Contaminated Now" (NYT).

Sunrise — 5:47, 6:10, 6:21.

Write 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.)

"Thank you for making this trip such a happy experience. Thank you for being here at the exact right moment, by my boat. Thank you for taking my bait. Thank you. We love you."

Said Garvin Watson, as he kissed the orange shark and let it go.

Quoted in "Fishermen Pulled In an Orange Shark Off Costa Rica: ‘My God, What Is This?’/Scientists published a study this month on the nurse shark, which was caught and photographed by sport fishermen last year" (NYT)(gift link, so you can see the pictures and lose yourself in sharkdom).

"You hear the term 'slop' a lot now. There’s a good reason for that: A lot of janky internet content is being churned out with A.I., and slop..."

"... is a handy name for this. But there’s another phenomenon—not unconnected, but a little different—that I also think it’s worth getting a handle on. I’ve been thinking about it as 'slurry.' In the non-metaphorical world, slurry means an unresolved mix of liquid and solid; in agriculture, a thin mixture of manure and water. The word comes to mind with this very pervasive kind of content that’s gunking up my feed, where different content types are running together into one, half-resolved substance. Where everything assumes the qualities of everything else. It’s painters having to perform incongruously as influencers to get some attention for their work. It’s audio interviews, auto-transcribed and posted without any editing so that you get not only weird errors but also all the 'you knows' and 'uhms.' It’s long video essays chopped up into little incoherent bits and posted with gibbering subtitles. What these have in common is a feeling of clunkiness that comes when something originated in one medium and hasn’t quite been thought through for another...."

Writes Ben Davis, in "The Great Enslurrification of Culture/Rosalind Krauss's 'post-medium condition' comes for writing, and everything" (ArtNet).

"President Donald Trump has revoked the Secret Service detail for former vice president Kamala Harris.... The decision comes about a month before Harris... is scheduled to embark on a national book tour..."

"... her first extended public exposure since leaving office. Federal law gives vice presidents six months of Secret Service protection after they leave office, though Biden, before his presidency ended, had extended her detail for another year, according to a person familiar with the decision.... With the termination of the Harris detail, Trump has canceled security for every protected holdover from the Biden administration except Biden and former first lady Jill Biden, who by law are guaranteed lifetime Secret Service protection. High-ranking administration officials are not automatically guaranteed protection after leaving government, nor are children of former presidents over the age of 16...."

WaPo reports.

"He was eight inches shorter in length than he was before he burned. That’s thermal fracture.... Not only are you riding on top of 3,000 pounds of batteries, this 'spaceship' design is a double-edged sword."

Said the plaintiff's lawyer, quoted in "Family sues Tesla after Cybertruck owner dies in 5,000-degree inferno, causing bones to disintegrate" (NY Post).

"It was just a country store for country people and that’s what it is today, they just don’t understand."

Said Tommy Lowe, the 94-year-old co-founder of Cracker Barrel, describing how things began (in 1969) and how things should remain, quoted in "Cracker Barrel co-founder, 93, slams CEO after ‘pitiful’ rebranding fail: 'Throwing money out the window'" (NY Post).

“They’re trying to modernize to be like the competition — Cracker Barrel doesn’t have any competition,” Lowe told WTVF Thursday. “I heard she was at Taco Bell. What’s Taco Bell know about Cracker Barrel and country food? They need to work on the food and service and leave the barrel — the logo alone.”...

"She" = CEO Julie Felss Masino, who Lowe claims, doesn't know who he is and has never met with him. We're told "Masino began implementing changes to the menu, interior design and prices soon after [becoming CEO] in November."

"This kind of violence is very recent. It's a new thing in human history. There was no time in the past when people would walk into a church or a classroom and start shooting people."

"It is not happening in other countries. It's happening here and we need to look at all of the potential culprits that might be contributing to that."

Said RFK Jr. on "Fox & Friends" yesterday, when he was asked about whether "drugs" used in transgender treatment might have had a effect on the Minneapolis shooter. RFK Jr.'s answer broadened the topic to "SSRI drugs and other psychiatric drugs," some of which come with warnings about homicidal and suicidal ideation.

"We do not have the luxury to fight amongst ourselves while that thing sits in the White House."

Said Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee in Minneapolis last week, quoted in "Democrats let it all out at their party meeting" (Semafor)[SEE UPDATE BELOW].

But oddly enough, "that thing" is sitting in the White House after Republicans fought amongst themselves and Walz badly lost the election to him after Democrats went out of their way to avoid fighting amongst themselves. It would make more sense to use the epithet "that thing" to refer to the unwholesome agglomeration that is the Democratic Party.

The three-day meeting of the Democratic National Committee, held to welcome new members and start building the 2028 primary calendar, was the first under new chair Ken Martin.... The party, Martin vowed, was now bringing “a bazooka to a knife fight,” and would no longer “play by the rules” if Republicans broke them.

I'm guessing Martin deployed his "a bazooka to a knife fight" metaphor — in Minneapolis — before the the shooting of children that took place nearby. 

***

Bazooka (Wikipedia):

The name "bazooka" comes from an extension of the word bazoo, which is slang for "mouth" or "boastful talk"... 

That's fitting, for politicians.

During World War II, "bazooka" became the universally applied nickname of the new American anti-tank weapon, due to its vague resemblance to the musical instrument invented and popularized by 1930s American comedian Bob Burns.

Video of Burns playing the bazooka here.

UPDATE: In the comments below, Olson Johnson is right! observes that Semafor has taken Walz's words out of context:

Sunrise — 5:55, 6:15, 6:27, 6:28.

Write 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.)

"I only keep [the long hair] because it is pretty much my last shred of being trans. I am tired of being trans, I wish I never brain-washed myself..."

"I can’t cut my hair now as it would be embarrassing defeat, and it might be a concerning change of character that could get me reported. It just always gets in my way. I will probably chop it on the day of the attack.... I don’t want to dress girly all the time but I guess sometimes I really like it. I know I am not a woman but I definitely don’t feel like a man."

Wrote Robin Westman, more or less rejecting trans identity, quoted in "Minneapolis school shooter Robin Westman confessed he was 'tired of being trans': 'I wish I never brain-washed myself'" (NY Post).

I don't understand why we are calling this person trans. If you're saying you "brain-washed" yourself, you've implicitly consigned the belief to the past. You might not reveal the loss of belief to others, but you've put it in writing — albeit in code — and we can read it. Why are people pretending to believe that he believed what he said he didn't believe? And he wrote it explicitly: "I know I am not a woman." 

I don't see why anyone wants this person to be a member of their group. What good would it do anyone to have Westman as one of their own?

"Granny or alcoholic? No, these stars prove there’s more to being 60-plus."

Crazy headline at The London Times.

To be fair, the article is about what characters appear in movies and TV shows, which is never going to be the full range of humanity, because some aspects of life make more interesting stories.

But still: "The disgust that older women are presumed to engender is so great there’s even a horror genre built around it, dubbed 'hagsploitation' and starring the 'psycho-biddy.' The Hollywood star Bette Davis had aged out of being a dramatic lead and into being a scary old lady before she was even 60, with terrifying roles in films like Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and The Nanny (1965)...."

I think it's not so much that older women are disgusting as that it's hard to think of exciting things for gentle, sweet old ladies to do that could be the center of a story. Bette Davis understood that and was willing to set glamor aside and sink into a horror role. 

Anyway, we're told that these days there are lots of juicy roles for older actresses, and one 30-year-old actress said: “It’s a really good time for older women, which is amazing, and there’s a lot for these young men, but not a lot for the actresses that I know in my age bracket.”

"In place of stability, many Millennials came to prize adventure; travel became not just a simple luxury but an alternative source of meaning and identity."

"One 2024 Vox Media poll found that 76 percent of the Zoomers and Millennials surveyed agreed that travel says 'a lot about who they are'; 88 percent said it had spurred their personal growth. 'For previous generations, travel was a status symbol,' Jennie Germann Molz, a College of the Holy Cross sociologist, told me. 'For the Millennial generation it’s more about self-improvement or self-actualization.' As more and more Millennials have started families, many of them are determined to pass down those globe-trotting values—to share the joy of journeying but also to shape their kids into adaptable, savvy people. Sometimes they’re spending money they don’t have; frequently, they’re sacrificing tranquility they may already be short on...."

From "The New Millennial Parenting Anxiety/For those determined to pass down their globe-trotting values, vacations have become ever more ambitious and goal-oriented—and exhausting" (The Atlantic)(gift link).

But: "What kids tend to love most about traveling, anyway, can be found without going far at all. Parents can just keep an eye out for... 'micro-adventures': taking the bus to a free museum, driving two hours to a relative’s home, playing in the woods. Kids need novelty, yes—but when you’re new to existence, everything is new to you.... [One couple anguished over a day of flight delays then] realized that their toddler was having the time of his life: going up and down the escalator, watching the planes take off, marveling at how cool it is that people get to fly in the sky. You have it right, she felt like telling him. I am grumpy. I have forgotten the beauty of the world."

Sunrise — 5:48, 6:15, 6:18, 6:19.

Write 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.)

Bonus: The western view, at 6:25.

"The investigation into President Trump’s former national security adviser, John R. Bolton, began to pick up momentum during the Biden administration..."

"... when U.S. intelligence officials collected information that appeared to show that he had mishandled classified information, according to people familiar with the inquiry. The United States gathered data from an adversarial country’s spy service, including emails with sensitive information that Mr. Bolton, while still working in the first Trump administration, appeared to have sent to people close to him on an unclassified system, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive case that remains open. While those searches have raised fresh questions about the extent to which Mr. Trump may be using the Justice Department and F.B.I. to try to punish those he dislikes, the new details of the case present a more complex chain of events. The disclosures suggest that a long-running investigation into Mr. Bolton’s activities changed over time, with some of the issues echoing past inquiries into the handling of national security secrets...."

From "John Bolton Inquiry Eyes Emails Obtained by Foreign Government/It is not clear what country intercepted Mr. Bolton’s private emails, but the investigation into President Trump’s former national security adviser picked up momentum under the Biden administration" (NYT).

"We cannot change what has happened. But we can take responsibility. Therefore, on behalf of Denmark, I would like to say sorry."

Said Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, quoted in "Denmark Apologizes After Birth Control Scandal in Greenland/For years, Danish doctors inserted intrauterine devices in Greenlandic girls and women without their consent, part of a painful legacy of mistreatment" (NYT).

The practice went on for decades and many patients were never told what had been placed inside them. Some learned only years later when they had health complications. Some women were left infertile for life.... Denmark colonized Greenland more than three centuries ago.... The campaign started in the 1960s and affected thousands of Greenlandic women and girls but was brought to light only a few years ago. Danish doctors, who were running Greenland’s health care system at the time, inserted IUDs in women and girls with the intent of preventing pregnancies and controlling Greenland’s birth rate....

"In one 20-minute video, Westman flips through the disturbing handwritten manifesto. Much of it is written in a homespun code that uses Cyrillic characters and English phonetic words."

"In the deranged writings, he gleefully fantasizes about 'being that scary horrible monster standing over those powerless kids'.... 'I am feeling good about Annunciation. It seems like a good combo of easy attack form and devastating tragedy and I want to do more research. I have concerns about finding a large enough group. I want to avoid any parents, but pre and post school drop off,' another page reads. 'Maybe I could attack an event at the on-site church.... I think attacking a large group of kids coming in from recess is my best plan … Then from there I can go inside and kill, going for as long as I can.' Near the end of the video, Westman flicks through a number of blank pages before reaching what appears to be a drawing showing the inside of a church, saying 'Haha, nice'... stops turning pages... takes out a knife and stabs into the center of the sketch... withdraws the blade, and quietly mumbles, 'kill myself.'"

From "Minneapolis school shooter ID’d as trans woman Robin Westman — as apparent manifesto included 'kill Trump'" (NY Post).

UPDATE: Writing this post, I avoided quoting the text that used a pronoun for Westman. The Post had used "she," but I see this morning, the "she"s are all changed to "he"s, without any notice that a correction/"correction" has been made. 

"Unfortunately, when you have a society where you do have ubiquitous crime, you do need some kind of an authoritarian leadership."

"Not saying you need tyranny, not saying you need a dictator, but you need fucking laws and you need rule of law. And sometimes those people come off very harsh and very uncaring and unloving and you know, the total opposite for, like, the reason why people voted for Jimmy Carter, I think, 'cause Jimmy Carter represented like a, like, a genuinely sweet good guy. Right. But, like, look how that presidency was a disaster 'cause they were all working against him for sure. And on top of that, it's, like, hard to, like, you gotta gotta be a bit of a hard ass if you wanna run the world...."

 Said Joe Rogan, on his #2370 podcast, transcript and audio, here, at Podscribe.

"Borgwardt told investigators that on the day he disappeared, he took a kayak out on Green Lake and brought a child-size inflatable boat with him."

"After flipping the kayak and dumping his phone in the water, he paddled the inflatable boat to shore, got on an e-bike that he had stashed at the boat launch and rode through the night to Madison, some 70 miles away, according to the complaint. There, he said, he boarded a bus to Detroit, crossed the Canadian border to Toronto Pearson International Airport and flew to Paris and then to an unspecified country in Asia. He met up with the woman, whom he had met months earlier, and eventually traveled to Georgia...."

From "Man gets 89 days in prison, for every day he faked death to leave his wife/Wisconsin man Ryan Borgwardt faked his drowning with an overturned kayak to establish a new life in Eastern Europe with a woman he met online, prosecutors said" (WaPo).

That's Georgia, Asia.

Among the things Borgwardt did in preparation for his life after fake death was get his vasectomy reversed.

"All I had to do was pretend to be entertained by their lewd gestures, and when Andrew cupped my breast with a doll made in his image, I only giggled away."

Wrote Virginia Giuffre, quoted in "Virginia Giuffre’s memoir ‘contains Prince Andrew puppet assault claim’/Posthumous memoir by victim of Jeffrey Epstein will be released in late October" (London Times).

Why did Andrew have a puppet of himself? Was this sex paraphernalia that he brought to the encounter? No. Epstein and Maxwell gave Andrew a puppet — a very ugly caricature of himself — from TV show "Spitting Image."

Funky-looking and tentacular.

I'm fascinated by the mysteries of sportswriting, and these 2 sentences jumped out at me:

Even the way he plays, all funky-looking forehands and tentacular court coverage, is far from conventional, and at times polarizing. Away from forehands and backhands, he has always been a master of the dark arts, knowing how and when to work a crowd to his advantage, and being more than willing to turn a match into a circus if he thinks it will give him an edge.

That's written by Charlie Eccleshare, at the NYT, in "Daniil Medvedev, tennis’ walking Rorschach test, asks the U.S. Open what it sees."

"Tentacular" — a word I'd never noticed before. I see that H.G. Wells used it in "The War of the Worlds" (1898), to refer to the Martians with “long, tentacular appendages.” The use to describe the tennis player is close enough to the literal meaning. Apparently Medvedev was octopuslike.

But the word has appeared with a more attenuated connection to creatures with tentacles. Grok tells me that the philosopher Donna Haraway writes about "tentacular thinking" in the book "Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene" (2016). There's some notion of "multispecies, interconnected, and responsive" thought to be distinguished from "human-centered, linear, or hierarchical" thought. I'm told there's something called "tentacular empathy" and "tentacular relatings of kinship." Strangulating, and yet I get the sense we're supposed to love it.

Of course, the octopus is a mainstay of political cartoons. Here's one from 1877 that has some present-day resonance:

Lots more here, at "The Octopus in Political Cartoons/Russia, Germany and the United States have all been depicted as octopuses by their nemeses.

Trump is everywhere, minding everybody's business.

Link and link.

Minor matters that are still on the President's agenda.

He'll definitely be finding out. You'd think other matters might come up and rank higher, leaving no time to be spent on the relationship between NBC and Seth Meyers. But no. He'll definitely be finding out.

Sunrise — 5:48, 6:13, 6:18, 6:19.

Write about anything you want in the comments.

And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

"They’re overwhelmingly white and tend to have a certain kind of look. Close cropped haircuts. Windowpane suits. Golf shorts."

"They’re not the type to be telling anyone their pronouns or using the word 'queer.' And they aren’t the least bit offended that the leader of their party continues to stoke a moral panic about transgender people. They’re gay. But they’re still Republicans...."

Writes Shawn McCreesh, in "Donald Trump’s Big Gay Government/On the town with the A-Gays of Washington, who have never been happier to be out, proud and Republican" (NYT)(free-access link).

"In 2015, back when the Republican establishment was still trying to thwart Mr. Trump, [Department of Energy official Charles] Moran said that he and some other gay Republicans he knew became intrigued by the brash New Yorker’s history of saying nice things about gay rights....

"It takes one to know one, on the weight question. And the president, of course, himself, is not in good shape. So, he ought to respond to that from me."

"I would say also that his personal attacks on me are just evidence of a guy who’s still living in fifth grade. He’s the kind of bully that throws invectives at people, because he knows that what he’s saying is actually commentary on himself."

Said the rotund Illinois Governor Jay Pritzker, quoted in "Pritzker responds to Trump’s weight comments: 'It takes one to know one'" (The Hill).

This forces me to look up what Trump said, which would otherwise have been erased from my brain (if it was ever there). Let's see... here:  "We will solve Chicago within one week — maybe less.... Chicago's a disaster and the governor of Illinois should say, 'President, will you do us the honor of cleaning up our city? We need help.' They need help. They need help... We may wait -- we may or we may not. We may just go in and do it, which is probably what we should do.... I hate to barge in on a city and then be treated horribly by corrupt politicians. The bad politicians, like a guy like Pritzker. He ought to spend more time in the gym actually, the guy is a disaster."

"Cracker Barrel should go back to the old logo, admit a mistake based on customer response (the ultimate Poll), and manage the company better than ever before."

"They got a Billion Dollars worth of free publicity if they play their cards right. Very tricky to do, but a great opportunity. Have a major News Conference today. Make Cracker Barrel a WINNER again. Remember, in just a short period of time I made the United States of America the 'HOTTEST' Country anywhere in the World. One year ago, it was 'DEAD.' Good luck!"

Said Trump, who seems to involve himself in everything, in a Truth Social post.

I wasn't going to talk about the Cracker Barrel foofaraw, and I have nothing but free time to look at whatever might attract my attention and scribble about to my heart's content. But Trump talked about it, and that's a layer of meaning I cannot resist.

His Truth Social post is interesting — almost like a challenge on "The Apprentice."

By the way, I think Cracker Barrel needed a better logo. I've never understood what the background shape was supposed to be. Looking for it as I drove the interstate, I thought of it as the sole of a shoe. Or what do you think? A kidney? And then all that extra iconography — the man, his chair, the barrel. That's too much going on when people are whizzing by in cars.

"Notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s rulings on First Amendment protections, the Court has never held that American Flag desecration conducted in a manner that is likely to incite imminent lawless action..."

"... or that is an action amounting to 'fighting words' is constitutionally protected. See Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 408-10 (1989). My Administration will act to restore respect and sanctity to the American Flag and prosecute those who incite violence or otherwise violate our laws while desecrating this symbol of our country, to the fullest extent permissible under any available authority.... The Attorney General shall prioritize the enforcement to the fullest extent possible of our Nation’s criminal and civil laws against acts of American Flag desecration that violate applicable, content-neutral laws, while causing harm unrelated to expression, consistent with the First Amendment...."

From President Trump's executive order, "Prosecuting Burning of the American Flag."

Does that violate the First Amendment even though it explicitly limits itself to what is "consistent with the First Amendment"?

Here's Texas v. Johnson. 

I feel like rereading the dissent:

"We were just kind of living in some turbulent times.... It’s almost turned to a rebellious act to have those right-leaning views."

"And I thought, you know, owning a T-shirt like the 'Reagan Bush ’84' one was kind of a cool way to join the movement of the antiestablishment younger generation of conservatives... [It's less confrontational than] wearing the red MAGA hat around, triggering the libs, so to speak. It’s kind of a peaceful, respectful way to say that, you know what, it’s okay to have a different opinion than you and disagree. I’m going to wear my Reagan shirt — it’s a more respectful way to voice my opinion.... I’ve been even criticized from the right for wearing the Reagan stuff...."

Says Kieran Laffey, George Washington University college student, quoted in "Why Gen Z conservatives love the ‘Reagan Bush ’84’ tee/They weren’t alive in the ’80s, but to them, 'Reagan is still a vibe'" (WaPo).

The article notes that you can easily buy these shirts on line. They just look vintage. We're told it's "the conservative take on a band shirt or the once-ubiquitous Che Guevara tee."

ADDED: Why not get ahead of the trend? Here, on Amazon (commission earned!):

"Wait, people are leaving blue democrat-run states, and moving to republican-run red states? Perhaps the Democratic Party needs to look at the reasons why."

"Dems have a really tough time admitting they could be wrong, about anything. Maybe they are wrong about their policies, and people are voting, with their feet."

That's the top-rated comment at a New York Times article — "How the Electoral College Could Tilt Further From Democrats" — about "the nightmare scenario many Democratic Party insiders see playing out if current U.S. population projections hold" after the 2040 census.

The next 4 most highly rated comments are similar:

"[I]n high school, [Lil Nas X] spent his days chasing internet fame, experimenting across different corners of social media."

"Then, almost by accident, he recorded a song during a $20 studio session using a $30 beat. That track, 'Old Town Road,' went on to break records. The country-rap gumbo topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 19 weeks and remains the longest-running No. 1 hit of all time."

From "Lil Nas X charged with four felonies after reportedly attacking officer/The 'Old Town Road' rapper faces three counts of battery against a police officer and a count of resisting an executive officer" (WaPo).

"Los Angeles police responded to reports of a man wandering the street in his underwear on Ventura Boulevard. [Lil Nas X] was arrested after he was found naked on the street.... Unsure if Hill was experiencing an overdose or a mental health crisis, police reported that the rapper charged at officers before punching one of them in the face twice...."

In happier times:

"Trump, in a Move With Little Precedent, Says He Is Firing a Fed Governor. President Trump told Lisa Cook that he had found sufficient cause 'to remove you from your position.'"

"Ms. Cook and her lawyer said they would fight the firing."

The NYT headline for the top story this morning.

Little precedent. So there is some precedent.

In a letter posted to social media, Mr. Trump said the allegations of mortgage fraud undermined Ms. Cook.... The president claimed she could not perform as an effective financial regulator, as he invoked a power in the Fed’s founding statute that allows him to fire governors for cause.... 

The allegation against Cook is that she obtained a lower interest rate by claiming — in documents signed 2 weeks apart — that both a condominium in Atlanta and a house in Ann Arbor, Michigan were her primary residence. The NYT states that the allegations against Cook are part of "an emerging pattern of political retribution." The other bits of that "pattern" are allegations against Adam Schiff and Letitia James.

Perhaps the alleged wrongdoing is too personal and insufficiently related to her professional duties to constitute cause under the statute. Trump's letter asserts that he does not have "confidence in [her] integrity." He notes his obligation to take care that the laws be faithfully executed and asserts that duty requires him to fire her immediately. She is challenging that exercise of power, as if the firing cannot be immediate and a court must double-check the President's finding.

The NYT article is full of material about the importance of the independence of the Federal Reserve.

"The Mysterious Cover Artist Who Captured the Decline of the Rich/Mary Petty was reclusive, uncompromising, but she peered into a fading world with unmatched warmth and brilliance."

I hope you can get past the New Yorker pay wall to see this article, with writing by the artist Chris Ware, and many wonderful New Yorker covers by Mary Petty.

Excerpt:

Her eye was extraordinary, conjuring an Edwardian era through its tiniest features: the brocaded wallpaper, the finely tiled kitchen floors, the thin brass faucets, the plush upholstery.

James Thurber, in an introduction to “This Petty Pace” (1945), the sole published collection of the artist’s work, describes the young Petty as a “slip of a girl.” Like her husband, she initially preferred to mail in her submissions, but by the nineteen-forties she had become a “common sight” at the magazine’s office, “sitting, cool and almost undismayed, on the edge of a chair.” Thurber reports that she would spend three weeks on a drawing; when she was done, she would say that she hated it and herself. “Everybody else, of course, loves it and her,” Thurber adds, observing that what Petty offered in her work was “not a trick, but a magic. . . . She catches time in a foreshortened crouch that intensifies her satirical effects.”

Time in a foreshortened crouch — is anyone catching that anymore?

Example:

ADDED: Ware notes that Petty seems to have influenced Edward Gorey. And I'll just note that the book title — "This Petty Pace" — is a reference to a Shakespeare soliloquy, from "MacBeth," which also has something to say about time.

Sunrise — 6:17.

Write about anything you like in the comments.

"How many Americans even know what color the ribbon is for prostate-cancer awareness?"

From "What Does It Take to Get Men to See a Doctor? Men in the U.S. live six fewer years than women. One clinic is trying to persuade men that getting checked out could save their life" (NYT).

Toxic masculinity” has become a catchall term.... But when researchers first began using the term, they meant something narrower and more specific: a culturally endorsed yet harmful set of masculine behaviors characterized by rigid, traditional male traits, such as dominance, aggression and sexual promiscuity. Men trapped in this man box, as it is sometimes called, are less likely to seek medical care and are more likely to engage in risky behaviors detrimental to their health, such as binge drinking or drug use.... Even seemingly positive attributes associated with traditional masculinity, such as providing for one’s family... can have negative health consequences. They may put work ahead of addressing medical concerns.... Or they may take on dangerous jobs or work extreme hours. But why do some men hold so tightly to these cultural notions about masculinity that lead them toward worse health? The answer may be traced to how fragile manhood itself can feel.... 

"The fact that they're holding Costa Rica as a carrot and using Uganda as a stick to try to coerce him to plead guilty to a crime..."

"... is such clear evidence that they're weaponizing the immigration system in a matter that is completely unconstitutional, and specifically weaponizing the decision of which country they send him to."

Said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of the lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, quoted in "Kilmar Abrego Garcia taken into ICE custody at immigration appointment/Abrego, who was just released from federal custody on Friday, now faces deportation to Uganda" (NBC News).

"Maybe it’s no surprise, then, that in a time of hyper-visible conflict... the self-help message of the day tells its readers that it’s perfectly OK to turn inward..."

"... even if that means ignoring the apparent travails of others. It’s a message retrofitted for appeal in a moment when every glance at a phone screen surfaces wrenching images of catastrophe.... 'The Courage to Be Disliked' has sold more than 10 million copies. 'The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck' has been on the New York Times best-seller list for more than 300 weeks since it came out in 2016. In September comes the much-anticipated 'Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves — and How to Find Our Way Back.'... 'Sometimes we need to say, 'Is this my problem to solve?' said Dr. Ingrid Clayton, the 'Fawning' author, in an interview. 'Can I sit on my hands?'..."

From "Is Today’s Self-Help Teaching Everyone to Be a Jerk? Draw boundaries. Protect your peace. Worry less about pleasing others. The prevailing (and best-selling) wisdom of the day encourages an inward turn" (NYT).

And by "to Be a Jerk," the NYT might mean to be right wing (where "right wing" means an individual centered in one's own life and trusting that other people can be self-centered too):

"When did uh everyone catch on you were so hot?... Come on... I mean, you must have been like such a smoke show in high school...."

Said Bill Maher, interviewing the 94-year-old Barbara Eden:

Eden is perfectly with it and self-possessed and maintains her dignity as Bill — like probably thousands of men who've had a chance to meet her over the years — seems hell bent on letting her know she was the photograph — or one of the photographs — to which he masturbated when he was a boy. 

"A lot of people have asked me what the exact moment was at the DNC that made me realize I wasn’t on board with the party I’d worked for nearly half of my life."

The truth is, it was everything. The crowd that mindlessly chanted 'joy,' the vasectomy van offering free tacos, the coronation of a candidate with zero policies or platform available, and the final straw: Oprah Winfrey. Her tone deaf lecturing turned me off so much, I left the building, getting an uber straight to my hotel, where I booked a flight home a day early, not even staying for Kamala’s acceptance speech...."

Writes Evan Barker, in "One Year Ago Today I Ruined My Life" (Substack).

"In the past year, nearly all of my old political friends have stopped speaking to me. One of them said: 'fascism doesn’t look good on you'....  I’ve lost friends I’ve known for fifteen years. My toddler stopped getting invited to birthday parties. He was rejected from preschool. We even had to move to a new town."

Adding tags to this post, I had to stop a while to remember what was my tag for the inane nonissue of Kamala's joy. It was "how does Kamala feel." Let me publish this post with that tag so I can click on it and see what that looked like in real time. In retrospect, it looks awful.

"Buying a cemetery plot where I can have a green burial, on the other hand, proved to be surprisingly affordable and will allow my body, once no longer in use..."

"... to decompose as quickly and as naturally as possible, with minimal environmental damage. Bonus: If my descendants ever care to visit, my grave will be in a beloved place, where my daughter has come nearly every summer of her life. 'Do you see a lot of interest in green burials?' I asked the friendly town cemetery commissioner who was showing me around. 'I don’t think we’ve had a traditional burial in two years,' he said. 'It’s all green.'"

From "When I Go, I’m Going Green More Americans are choosing burials in which everything is biodegradable" (NYT).

The current state of taunting on X.

pic.twitter.com/dBMncejFBI

— Trish A (@NtvSocialBtrfly) August 25, 2025

Sunrise — 5:52, 6:10, 6:11, 6:14, 6:16, 6:17.

Use the comments section to talk about anything you want... including this TOP 1% sunrise that happened this morning.

And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

"I’m cracking up just picturing the laughter around the Sunday dinner table if I had declared myself the family’s 'changemaker'!"

Texted Meade after I sent him a quote from the Psychology Today article "The Real Reason We Can Be So Different From Our Siblings":

Rather than compete directly with an identity another sibling is already known for, siblings proactively claim a unique perceptual psychological space in the minds of parents... In other words, if your brother was already seen as the “smart one,” you may have claimed the territory of the “funny one.” If your sister established her role as the “athlete,” you may have fashioned yourself the “artist.” And if your sister or brother was always praised for being the “good girl/boy,” you may have reveled in your role as the “rebel,” “free spirit,” or “changemaker.”

"In the mid-1980s, Mr. Wheeler helped oversee the construction of 40 luxury condominiums overlooking Charlotte’s 1.5-mile oval track — a first for a NASCAR track."

"While the idea was widely mocked, these aeries for gearheads sold out in seven months, according to a 1995 article in The New York Times, despite the fact that 'cars with 700-horsepower engines running at nearly 200 miles per hour produce a sound somewhere between a roar and a howl, sometimes until 11 o’clock at night.'"

From "Humpy Wheeler, NASCAR’s Greatest Showman, Dies at 86/With fire-breathing robots and death-defying school-bus stunts, he brought spectacle to stock-car racing as the sport boomed in the 1970s and beyond" (NYT).

"It might sound like snake oil to you, but remember, Bobby Kennedy actually cooks with snake oil."

"The surge of tiny clapping has led to an endless debate on TikTok about the proper way to do it."

"Some insist finger claps should be silent and bristle at people who say 'clock it' or 'tea' while clapping. Others take issue with influencers who clap with their index finger, when the middle finger is more commonly used in ballroom. (If this seems pedantic, imagine the reaction if you used your middle finger to give a thumbs-up.) And a notion has spread that the finger clap is supposed to resemble the American Sign Language sign for the number 8, because it means someone 'ate,' or performed extremely well. (Ballroom folks say that’s a reach.) As one commenter noted, 'Man the finger police is strict strict.'"

From "'Clock it.' We’re all finger-clapping wrong. As more people embrace finger claps, the queer ballroom scene is clapping back at those unaware of its origin and meaning" (WaPo).

Who cares? Yeah, I get it if that's your reaction, but this post earns some of my favorite tags. I like that.

"Juvenal said that being a gladiator turned an ugly man into an Adonis in women’s eyes. 'It’s the steel they love,' the poet wrote."

"Men were obsessed too. Maecenas, a patron of the arts under the emperor Augustus, discussed the warriors’ form on a carriage ride with the poet Horace; the playwright Terence complained that one of his performances had been ruined by a crowd rushing in thinking that gladiators were fighting. The Romans felt it was good luck to part a bride’s hair with a spear that had been thrust into a gladiator’s body and drank tinctures of their blood to cure epilepsy...."

From "Sex, sesterces and status — the perks of being a gladiator/Those Who Are About Die is a myth-slaying history of the world of Roman fighters by the classicist and novelist Harry Sidebottom" (London Times).

"Once they are in, there is a considerable amount of pressure to uphold the sorority’s culture. Darnell talks about the 'rules,' mainly around conduct..."

"... though she is sworn to secrecy on the specifics. 'My sorority will text me all the time saying, you need to take this down [from social media], if something might be shining the wrong light,' she said. 'They really do protect my image and I’m very grateful for that. They’re like a PR agency. They keep a close eye.' Though she loves the group enormously, she has taught herself to resist its monolithic culture. 'When I was a freshman [first year], I lost my individuality and everything I talked about was sorority-sorority-sorority,' she said. 'I talked the way I thought people wanted me to and felt the pressure to be perfect and to always say the perfect thing. I didn’t voice my opinion, didn’t want to seem like I was "too much." I’ve got an outgoing, outspoken, goofy personality and I felt like I lost that.' She has since 'found myself,' wanting to be a sports reporter when she graduates next year...."

From "Inside sorority rush, the blood sport making college girls millionaires/Competition for sisterhoods is big business for Kylan Darnell, the Alabama student who chronicles it all like a reality show. Shame her sister wants no part" (London Times).

Here's Darnell's TikTok feed if you want to see what's so popular in this sorority-girl category. 

I went to college in 1969 and everyone I knew believed sororities were about to go extinct. As if hippiedom would reign forever. Anyway... what's interesting here? Lots of things. The intersection of college and TikTok. The endless fascination with makeup and fashion.

But I'll just cherry-pick one thing: "They keep a close eye." Is that the expression? Did she conflate 2 expressions — "close watch" and "keep an eye on" — possibly influenced by the opening lines of "I Walk the Line" — "I keep a close watch on this heart of mine / I keep my eyes wide open all the time"? I think "close eye" is idiomatic. More important, is that what young women want — a close eye?

CORRECTION: I had originally named the wrong Johnny Cash song. I mix up "I Walk the Line" with "Ring of Fire." Honestly, I've disliked both songs for a long time. They both have a line drawn, and he's either inside the line or outside of it. He's fixated on that line. It's all about control and loss of control.

"For 10 years, I’ve been hearing that we needed to fight fire with fire, to oppose Trump by becoming him, to protect our supposedly sacred liberal institutions by taking some shortcut..."

"... that carved a destructive path straight through them: cracking down on speech, abandoning the norms of journalistic objectivity, making unprecedented use of prosecutorial power. These were bad ideas in their own right, and they did absolutely nothing to stop Trump."

Writes Megan McArdle, in "When the rule of law becomes rule of lawfare/Friday’s Bolton raid and the rebuke of Trump’s $500M fine show what happens when justice is not impartial" (WaPo).

Bad ideas... and they did absolutely nothing to stop Trump. But what if they had stopped Trump? That was the biggest of the ideas, and it might have worked. McArdle asserts that now — now that Trump is back with a vengeance — now we should see that neutral principles are best. If only the lawfare hadn't backfired, it would have been delightful to go on ignoring them.

Delightful for whom? Who are we talking about? Not McArdle herself. She's reporting on what she'd "been hearing" for 10 years. She also says "it was depressing watching so many people on the left thrill to this abusive lawfare." Well, "so many people on the left" think a lot of awful things, including that the so-called "rule of law" is a con.

Did the ordinary liberals of America buy into the fight-fire-with-fire approach? Let them take responsibility, not merely gesture at the "many people on the left." But it's not as though admitting you were wrong now will carry any weight. You played a game of tit for tat and now you're sad that the game continues.

ADDED: Trump plays openly, on Truth Social, just yesterday: