"In 1969, at the age of 38, just as she was gaining attention for her brawny, abstract paintings, she abandoned the form and initiated her 'General Strike Piece'..."

"... which involved a gradual withdrawal over a period of several months from the art world’s openings and social events, the first step in a long process of distancing herself from her peers.... In August 1971... she undertook another, even more audacious project, 'Decide to Boycott Women,' stating her intention to stop speaking to other women. In her notes on the piece, she suggested it would be temporary.... But it ended up being a practice she continued throughout the rest of her life, mostly, though not entirely, avoiding women (even allegedly once refusing to be helped by a female clerk at a grocery store). The blunt hostility of this piece struck many of her friends and, later, art critics and historians as an act of self-destruction.... 'Lee was very moody, drinking a lot of cheap wine and smoking lots of dope. I was raising my young son and had to ask her to leave after a few days. I remember thinking that she was a kind of warning about what could happen if you mixed art and life too closely.'... A picture of her last decades emerges only in shards and anecdotes. For several years she lived with her parents, until her father filed a restraining order and she was forced to move into her own apartment in the same complex.... She’s like a character in a Kafka story, or Melville’s Bartleby, but funnier, more perverted, more playful and an invention not of another writer’s mind but of her own...."

I'm reading "She Didn’t Speak to Other Women for 28 Years. What Did It Cost Her?/ When it came to using her life in her work, the artist Lee Lozano went about as far as a person can go" (NYT).

Back in the 1970s, one would often read about things like this. I'd thought the culture had lost interest in this sort of thing. I wonder what prompted the revival of interest — wanting to forefront a woman artist? But this woman made a lifelong project out of boycotting women. Are we supposed to believe she sacrificed something she wanted to be able to do?

Here's the comment NYT readers rate highest: "Refusing to speak to other woman is sexist and borderline sociopathic. It is most definitely not art, it's merely an eccentric and fairly selfish personality trait...." That's consistent with my observation that the culture has moved away from seeing weird acting out as art. It's a mental disorder... unless it has the honor of counting as an expression of "identity."

"Too many people moving at too many different speeds in too many directions."

"There are spandex-clad cyclists on road bikes who treat the loop like the Tour de France. There are fun-seeking teens testing how fast they can go on electric Citi Bikes. There are delivery workers pressing to fill orders. Some cyclists go the wrong direction. Some weave recklessly through the chaos. It is hardly the scene Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux could have envisioned when they designed the drives for leisurely rides in horse-drawn carriages, incorporating sharp curves to encourage low speeds...."

From "In Central Park, Pedestrians, Horses and E-Bikes Battle for Space/Critics say the park’s drives have become increasingly chaotic as e-bike riders move through at high speeds" (NYT).

I like how the wearing of spandex is treated as part of the problem. So much intolerance for self-expression. But obviously, bike riders are a hazard among the pedestrians, especially when the bikes have motors, and the twisty turns that might have slowed down horse-drawn carriages are enticing to take with speed when you're on a bike.

From the comments at the NYT:

Rainbow sunrise panorama.

This morning, from the shore of Lake Mendota.

"'One Battle After Another' is a movie that connects with the moment we’re in like nothing you’ve seen...."

"As the United States gets pushed, day by day, closer and closer to autocracy, that’s a situation that ought to be setting everyone in the country on edge. Yet it’s part of the nature of autocracy to narcotize people into numbness, delusion, fear, and a kind of self-perpetuating apathy.... 'One Battle After Another,' on the other hand, is a wildly entertaining, awesomely unpredictable screwball political thriller that on some level forces you to confront… the fate of our fucking country.... [I]t’s also the kind of galvanic and enveloping movie that imprints its themes onto your headspace.... The red-state demo has tended to shun films... which it views as liberal-left agit-prop, but I suspect that there’s something about the big vision of 'One Battle After Another' that could prove uniquely inviting.... The film depicts an underground band of revolutionary guerrillas, but instead of holding them up as shining heroes, it portrays them in shades of gray, spotlighting their naïveté and selfishness...."

Writes Owen Gleiberman, in "'One Battle After Another,' With Its Thriller Vision of Authoritarianism, Is the Rare Movie That Could Rule the Cultural Conversation/Paul Thomas Anderson's wild swing of a movie connects with the moment we’re in like nothing you’ve seen"
 (Variety).

And here's Ben Shapiro's view of the movie, from the right:

"The blizzard struck on Friday evening, coinciding with China’s eight-day National Day holiday, a peak season for hiking and tourism in the area."

"Trekkers had flocked to the Karma Valley, a high-altitude trail at over 4,900 metres (16,000 feet) that leads to the Kangshung Face, Everest’s eastern approach, making rescue efforts particularly challenging."

From "Blizzard traps nearly 1,000 hikers on slopes of Mount Everest/Rescue effort under way for trekkers stranded on mountain following sudden snowstorm" (The Telegraph).

I read this headline out loud to Meade whose response exemplified what human minds can do that A.I. will never do. He said that Hillary Clinton should get herself in shape and climb Mount Everest. I knew where that came from and said we need to write a political satire in which Hillary Clinton, returning to her "Politics of Meaning" roots, gets in touch with the spirit of Sir Edmund Hillary, her (supposed) namesake, and trains to climb Mount Everest.

Normally, I would give this post my "unwritten books" tag and move on, ever onward and upward, but I yielded to the temptation to prompt Grok to outline the book.

"A lecture from Pamela Anderson... about fascism and fireflies, that boomed around the uncompromisingly ugly black box..."

"... of a show venue, didn't add to the joy of the occasion. Nor did a finale that looked like a scene from Day of the Living Dead, with sad models drifting around the bleakly-lit space."

I'm perusing "Paris Fashion Week: Pamela Anderson sits front row at joyless Valentino show" (The Telegraph).

This model best exemplifies the mood. Look what fascism is doing to people!

Bones and silk, for that awkwardly bumpy look. 

Anyway, was the venue at the Valentino show "uncompromisingly ugly"? That's a judgment call. I really want to know the facts about what Pam said about "fascism and fireflies." I like alliteration. I envision an alphabet book — illustrated by A.I. — that has "fascism and fireflies" for F.

What can we do for the other letters? A is for anarchy and angel food cake....

But I end up using A.I. to figure out what Pam actually said, and — I'll cut the snark — it was quite eloquent.

A.I. powered "sombrero" memes are overflowing on X, and no one seems at all sensitive to the charge that they are racist.

I saw James Woods pushing this one:

Best yet… pic.twitter.com/Hrhr0MsZJh

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) October 5, 2025

Very extreme, perhaps maxxing out the trend. But no. There is much much more. Go to the replies to Woods's post and scroll. The sombrero-themed A.I. concoctions are endless.

Sunrise — 6:36, 7:06.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

And please do your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse portal — here. Thanks!

"Subway surfing, in which people ride atop or hang off the sides of fast-moving trains, has been around since the transit system’s earliest days more than a century ago."

"But it has grown more deadly in recent years, especially among teenagers inspired by sensational videos of the practice, city officials say.... City and state officials and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority have ramped up efforts to dissuade young people from subway surfing. Since 2023, the police have used drones to catch subway surfers in the act. The M.T.A. has been working with social media platforms, including Instagram and TikTok, to remove subway surfing footage...."

From "2 Girls Found Dead Atop a J Train in Suspected Subway Surfing Accident The teenagers, found unconscious on the roof of a train in Brooklyn, appear to be the latest casualties of a popular and deadly game" (NYT).

The New York subway system began in 1904, and I wondered about those early incidents. Here's a report in the NYT from May 16th of that year:

Forest sunrise, 7:10.

"The problem with it is, if you make the whole world run by fakes and simulations, everybody becomes increasingly more dysfunctional."

"Everybody becomes alienated and nervous and unsure of their own value, and the whole thing falls apart, and at some point, it’s like civilizational and species collapse."

Said Jaron Lanier, "a top scientist at Microsoft," quoted in Maureen Dowd's new column, "When A.I. Came for Hollywood" (NYT).

Dowd is taking on the Tilly Norwood problem. Do I have to explain that? Why do I have the creepy feeling that Al Gore is going to sidle over and smirk: "What about the Tilly Norwood problem?"

Just kidding. That's Dingell Norwood.

Tilly Norwood is just an all-A.I. actress. People might prefer a completely fake human to a mixed-up, fake-and-real, on-screen human. Why wouldn't we?

Here, watch the new episode of The Tim Dillon Show. Dillon talks about Tilly Norwood:

"The pope, who did not single out any country for its treatment of migrants, called on Catholics to 'open our arms and hearts to them, welcoming them as brothers and sisters, and being for them a presence of consolation and hope.'"

Reuters reports.

"We’re not entirely sure what’s going on but it looks like possibly severe CIRS and a LOT of bad luck. Or we’re getting spiritually attacked. Or both...."

"To be perfectly honest, I think a lot of this is spiritual.... It's been one thing after another in an otherworldly type of way...."

Writes Jordan Peterson's daughter, Mikhaila, at X:

"I ask Pinker whether we are witnessing an anti-rationality backlash. He suggests..."

"... what we’re seeing is 'greater inequality in irrationality.' Sport has never been more rational: nowadays in America every team has a statistician. Also, 'there’s more evidence-based medicine' than before. But 'at the same time as that, irrationality has gotten absolutely entrenched at the highest levels of power in the United States.' He thinks the roots of the problem may be partly traced to 'the politicisation of science.' During Covid there were 'hundreds of public health experts saying that it’s OK to go out in Black Lives Matter protests' because 'the benefits of social justice outweigh the costs of spreading Covid.' They would not have said the same had it been 'say, a Maga rally.' He cites a number of similar examples, including an academic journal that promised to 'consult members of indigenous minority groups before deciding whether to accept scientific papers' and a science magazine that endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. Such things 'erode the credibility of science.' He says: 'If science as an institution brands itself as on the political left, it should be prepared to alienate and maybe kiss off the American right.'"

From "Steven Pinker: I’m pinned between cancel culture and Trump/The Harvard psychologist talks to James Marriott about the campus ‘woke’ left and the Republican campaign to defund universities" (London Times).

"SNL" is back.

With lots of clips — the whole show? — at YouTube. 

I tried to pick one out for this post, but somehow I couldn't. Maybe you can. Bad Bunny was the host. The cold open was about that Pete Hegseth harangue.

The show has been around for 50 years, and I remember watching the first season, when the running joke was that they barely deserved to be on the air. It began like this:

I'm not the slightest bit uncomfortable about belonging there, with George, rather than here, with Bad.