At the Sunrise Café...

... you can talk all night.

The "No Kings" rally in Madison was very mellow. Lots of homemade signs and costumes. People milling and lolling about in the sunshine and shade.

This afternoon in Madison, Wisconsin, we've got the Wisconsin/Ohio State football game and the big "No Kings" rally.

Am I worried about the chaos? Here's a helpful chart:

In short, it's a big Saturday, but a normal Saturday. A protest at the Capitol and a big football game at Camp Randall. The crowds should flow in and back out as crowds have ebbed and flowed from the isthmus from the beginning of football.

UPDATE, the next day: I'm seeing estimates that 10,000 to 15,000 attended, so that was much more than the "expected crowd" Grok put on the chart I asked it to make. The crowd was very peaceful. Reminding me of the Tea Party gatherings of yore. No one got arrested. I didn't see any hecklers or counter-protesters. There also weren't traffic problems. We easily drove downtown and parked in a parking structure a couple blocks from the Capitol. 

"Enough blood has been shed, with property lines being defined by War and Guts. They should stop where they are."

Said President Trump, quoted in "Trump urges armistice at current battle lines in Ukraine after Zelensky meeting/The president said he wants both sides to stop where they are. Zelensky signaled openness to such a ceasefire as a starting point to talks" (WaPo)(free-access link).

Zelensky came to Washington seeking long-range U.S. missiles that could strike Moscow and beyond. Trump sounded receptive to the proposal earlier this week after a series of calls with the Ukrainian leader. His tone changed after speaking with Putin on Thursday....

“I would much rather have them not need Tomahawks. I would much rather have the war be over,” Trump said before a private lunch....

"Guys. No one believes you on here."

The White House joins Bluesky. 

The results are predictable:

Scroll here to see more of how Bluesky receives the White House.

Here's how AP reports it: "White House joins Bluesky and immediately trolls Trump opponents." That's fair, because...

The first post included mentions of the administration’s executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico, a doctored image of Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries adorned in a sombrero with a faux mustache, and stream of photos and video from other big moments in the early going of Trump’s second term.

“What’s up, Bluesky?” the White House said in a message accompanying the video. ”We thought you might’ve missed some of our greatest hits, so we put this together for you. Can’t wait to spend more quality time together!”

Here's that first post:

What's up, Bluesky? We thought you might've missed some of our greatest hits, so we put this together for you. Can't wait to spend more quality time together! ❤️🇺🇸

[image or embed]

— The White House (@whitehouse-47.bsky.social) October 17, 2025 at 4:21 PM

Sunrise — 7:07, 7:08.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"[Maduro] has offered everything. He's offered everything. You're right. You know why? Because he doesn't want to fuck around with the United States."

FAFO. pic.twitter.com/Zh9v18ynzy

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) October 17, 2025

A Lincoln sunrise.

Write what you want! 

"If you can’t bear to leave them where they are, get the kids to kick them into a corner, stick them in a pile, let the hedgehogs and earthworms use them."

From "Should you sweep up leaves? Gardeners say no — here’s why/Experts say leaving fallen leaves in your garden could be the simplest act of conservation by providing food for worms and shelter for hedgehogs" (London Times).

By "sweep," I think they just mean rake. When we Americans say "sweep," we picture a broom.

Speaking of brooms.... have you ever heard of "The Broom of Destruction"? Here, it's in Isaiah 14:22-23:

‘I will rise up against them,’ declares the Lord Almighty. ‘I will wipe out Babylon’s name and survivors, her offspring and descendants,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will turn her into a place for owls and into swampland; I will sweep her with the broom of destruction,’ declares the Lord Almighty.

"Sparked by a 2022 Twitter commenter who asserted that 'Yeah, Anne Frank had white privilege,' it reimagines Anne as 'Anita' — a pansexual Latina hiding from the Nazis..."

"... in a radically inclusive attic with her militant black mother, her neurodiverse father and assorted other disordered personalities.... For Peter, Anita’s love interest, the real challenge isn’t evading the Nazis; it’s daring to live your authentic self. Before coming out as non-binary, he laments to Anita: 'Outside, they’re fighting a war, but in here, I’m fighting expectations!'.... [T]he show’s real target isn’t Jews (or Nazis, for that matter) but the performative politics that have come to infect so much of cultural life...."

From "Inside Slam Frank — the ‘offensive’ Holocaust musical that could save Broadway/A show has turned the tragedy of Anne Frank into an ‘inclusive’ commentary on wokeness. And New York City audiences can’t get enough" (London Times).

And here's the review at Forward: "The new Anne Frank musical wants you to laugh at ‘woke culture’ — but is it funny? In ‘Slam Frank,’ it’s hard to tell who’s in on the joke and who is just…in it":

"After Racist Texts, New York G.O.P. Is Set to Disband Young Republicans."

The NYT reports.

The planned vote comes days after Politico disclosed how leaders of Young Republican groups across the country exchanged messages that included racist and antisemitic comments, with some participants’ discourse including comments about raping their political enemies and placing them in gas chambers.... One state Republican official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the effort to disband the group, which was first reported by Newsday, would allow for a fresh start. By eliminating the group’s charter, the official said, Republican officials can reconstitute it and then bring in new leadership.

Good! 

"Mamdani’s artist wife skips mayoral debate to teach ceramics class in trendy Brooklyn bistro."

I love that headline... in the NY Post.

The $95-a-ticket workshop began at 5 p.m. and ended at 7:30 p.m. — a half hour after Mamdani, Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa took to the debate stage.... The workshop was set to focus on “fruit iconography with damascene tile design,” where participants would design their “own ceramic tiles to take home”....

Rama Duwaji was scheduled to teach people who'd paid $95 for the experience and to take home a tile on which they'd painted some fruit. Sounds like a children's birthday party idea, but okay. She has a life of her own. She's not just some little woman sitting there, gazing at her man from the audience.

ADDED: I don't want to seem to belittle Damascene tiles, so here you can see a tile panel from the Metropolitan Museum collection, made in the Ottoman province of Syria, 16th/17th century.

"In Iran, gay men and lesbians can be punished by public flogging and the death penalty."

"As a result, the United Nations Human Rights Council found, many gay and lesbian Iranians who are not trans are 'pressured into undergoing gender reassignment surgery without their free consent.'... Sam, 32, a trans man from Orange County, Calif., is currently in Tehran to pursue a hysterectomy and metoidioplasty, a kind of penis-construction surgery. Requesting anonymity to discuss a sensitive medical procedure, he said he was drawn to Iran because he believed the doctors there were 'more confident' than those in the United States.... Iran’s experience with transition surgery stems from a fatwa issued in the 1980s by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founding supreme leader of the Islamic republic, who declared that transgender individuals could gain legal recognition of the gender with which they identified, but only on the condition that they underwent transition surgery."

From "Iran Lures Transgender Foreigners for Surgery but Forces Operations on Locals/Iran became a pioneer in gender transition operations by forcing procedures on L.G.B.T.Q. Iranians. Desperate for cash, the Islamic republic is hoping to attract trans patients from around the world" (NYT)(free-access link).

Sunrise — 6:53, 7:03, 7:12, 7:22, 7:35.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

Meade photographs the lampposts of Madison, Wisconsin.

"But my goal was to push the justice on... whether her preferred legal theory, originalism, can bend and flex in response to prudential and political concerns."

"[Amy Coney] Barrett believes strongly that it shouldn’t, that justices should rule without worrying about public opinion or who happens to be in the White House. But I tend to think real-world politics constantly tests and limits that ideal. So in our conversation, I’m trying to find those limits and the ways in which even justices devoted to the original meaning of the Constitution have to deal with the highly unusual pressures of right now."

Writes Ross Douthat in the introduction to his podcast, which is an interview with Amy Coney Barrett — "Amy Coney Barrett Is Looking Beyond the Trump Era."

I'll let you listen to that and decide if Douthat got what he said he was pushing for. It's a well-worn road, and I was distracted by the phrase "the highly unusual pressures of right now." It made me think of "the fierce urgency of now." It's always now. Is the pressure of the now that happens to be today's now really so highly unusual? There's too much melodrama!

I began to fritter away precious time thinking of mellower alternatives to "the highly unusual pressures of right now"/"the fierce urgency of now." I thought of: The gentle nudge of somewhat later.

Name a song that you've heard hundreds of times but you finally one day just played of your own volition.

For me, this morning, it's "Black Water" by The Doobie Brothers. I don't think I'd ever played a Doobie Brothers song on my own.

It's odd the way old songs that used to be pushed at you endlessly on the radio drift back to mind. I was just thinking about the word "backwater" — not "black water" — after it came up in a podcast: "He suggested that the horde ride west and toward a previously unexplored land that sat on the periphery of the world, a great peninsula jutting out of the Asian land mass, about which The Mongols knew little. These were the lands of Europe. Europe around the year 1200 was something of a backwater...."

"Backwater" began as a literal description of water: "A piece of water without current, lying more or less parallel to a river, and fed from it at the lower end by a back-flow" (OED). But we know it better figuratively: "A place or situation in which no development or progress is taking place." If you're trying to think of a song with "backwater," it might be "Backwater Blues."

In short, the answer is no. The question is "Should California voters feel confident that there aren't any more 'Katie Porter videos' out there?"

I'm watching "Frontrunner for California governor Katie Porter sat down with Inside California Politics host Nikki Laurenzo for her first interview since two now-viral videos called into question the former congresswoman's temperament."

The question is asked — and evaded — 4 times:

Why doesn't she even say "I don't think there are any"? She must know there are! I can only think of 2 other explanations: 1. She's just compulsively opaque and uncooperative, a real bullshitter, or 2. She knows she's behaved that way on various occasions, but she hasn't kept track of whether there was video and whether any such video has been preserved. In any case, she is so unappealing! 

The answer has got to be no, California voters should not feel confident that there aren't any more 'Katie Porter videos' out there. 

Isn't it funny that we understand the term "Katie Porter videos"?

If a man wanted to mythologically pee from Camp Pendleton, across I-5, into the Pacific Ocean, how far would he need to project his urine stream?

I'm reading "I-5 may be shut down due to concerns over live-fire military event at Camp Pendleton" (L.A. Times).

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office is weighing whether to close parts of Interstate 5 beginning Friday amid concerns over what it says is a White House-directed plan to use live ordnance "during a military anniversary celebration off Camp Pendleton’s coast in San Diego County — where Navy ships are expected to fire over the freeway onto the base. Newsom’s office has received, but not confirmed, reports that live ordnance will be fired from offshore vessels during the event commemorating the Marine Corps’ 250th anniversary. The event is titled "Sea to Shore — A Review of Amphibious Strength" and will feature Vice President JD Vance.... The military show of force coincides with No Kings rallies and marches across the state on Saturday.... The Times could not confirm whether live ordnance will be fired over the freeway....

Oh, great. The 2 men who are their party's presumptive nominee for President next time around are in a monumental pissing contest. Sea to Shore — A Review of Amphibious Strength indeed.

Calculations from Grok:

Physics of Projection: In reality, a human urine stream is limited by physiology and physics. Studies and anecdotal records (e.g., from urology or informal "contests") suggest a typical male urine stream might reach 1–2 meters (3–6 feet) horizontally under optimal conditions (e.g., high bladder pressure, no wind). A "mythological" stream implies superhuman ability, so we’ll ignore real-world limits but use the distance as the target.

Required Distance: To cross 2 miles (3,200 meters), the stream would need to be propelled with extraordinary force, akin to a fire hose or a superhero’s ability. For context:

At the Wednesday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

(Photo by Meade.)

Only?

I'm reading this NYT column by Jessica Grose: "Kennedy’s Comments on Circumcision Are Only Going to Confuse and Shame Parents."

The headline makes it sound as though human beings cannot be trusted with information. We'll only get confused or descend into shame.

What's the issue here?

On Thursday, Kennedy, the secretary of health and human services, said in a cabinet meeting, “There’s two studies that show children who are circumcised early have double the rate of autism. It’s highly likely because they’re given Tylenol.” Was he trying to persuade parents to avoid circumcision, Tylenol (the most popular brand of acetaminophen) or both?...

Why not read it for exactly what it is, an observation that you can take into account when deciding whether to have your child circumcised and, if you do, what form of pain relief do you want? What's confusing or shameful about that? Health info often comes in this form — studies find that a substance is associated with a health problem. It might not be causal, but don't parents have the right to decide if they should take the risk?

"Nearly half of U.S. presidents have invoked the Insurrection Act. Some (many) more than once."

"We’ve known about this problem for a long time. Plenty of people pointed it out in 2021 when Dems controlled WH+Congress. But nobody wants to give up power when their team has it."

Sarah Isgur explains the Insurrection Act in 4 quick points — I'm quoting #4 — after somebody on X calls attention to the time she trounced George Stephanopoulos on the topic:

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the hair and makeup team at ABC as well as my hats, sunscreen, and dermatologist. https://t.co/ws0xo8TBOB

— Sarah Isgur (@whignewtons) October 14, 2025

ADDED: Here's the full clip from "This Week," which aired last Sunday:

"'I love Hitler': Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat/Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape."

Politico reports.

William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n--ga” and “n--guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”

Giunta was referring to an upcoming vote on whether he should become chair of the Young Republican National Federation, the GOP’s 15,000-member political organization for Republicans between 18 and 40 years old. “Im going to create some of the greatest physiological torture methods known to man. We only want true believers,” he continued....

Read the whole thing. Politico takes the position "The chat offers an unfiltered look at how a new generation of GOP activists talk when they think no one is listening."

ADDED: I asked Grok, "Is the Politico report accurate or should we be suspicious? Many people think Politico is slanted." What follows is Grok's answer:

Sunrise — 6:49, 7:00, 7:09, 7:13.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"Morante is a genius, a being born to make beauty dream; a revolutionary, a complete artist, pure feeling, brave, master of a prodigious technique and a dazzling capacity for inspiration."

Wrote Antonio Lorca, a bullfighting critic, quoted in a London Times article about Morante's sudden retirement, "Spain’s top matador bids farewell — with a snip of his scissors/After a dramatic final fight, the torero retires as bullfighting faces growing scrutiny and declining support among younger Spaniards."

Spain’s leading matador has stunned the bullfighting world by staging an unexpected farewell, symbolically cutting off his ponytail in the ring after a “historic” performance.... His departure marks the end of a unique career whose “classicism” and “mysticism” often exhausted critics’ superlatives....

Is it surprising that there is still bullfighting in Spain?

"It was a garbage truck the size of a whale."

Says Alec Baldwin, on Instagram, endeavoring to explain why he crashed his car into a tree. Apparently, he was "cut off" by the biggest garbage truck he'd ever seen. "To avoid hitting him, I hit a tree." 

ABC has the story: "Alec Baldwin crashes car into a tree in East Hampton: Authorities/Alec Baldwin is okay after he crashed his car into a tree, authorities said." ("He went on [Instagram] and said that a 'garbage truck the size of a whale' cut him off on the road").

Had you thought about the relative size of a whale and a garbage truck?

Thanks to Chris for asking ChatGPT for that visualization. And for this alternative, from Gemini:

It reminds me of the time LBJ saw a portrait of himself and said "That's the ugliest thing I ever saw."

Trump on Truth Social: "Time Magazine wrote a relatively good story about me, but the picture may be the Worst of All Time. They 'disappeared' my hair, and then had something floating on top of my head that looked like a floating crown, but an extremely small one. Really weird! I never liked taking pictures from underneath angles, but this is a super bad picture, and deserves to be called out. What are they doing, and why?"

Quoted in "President Trump accuses Time magazine of deliberately using the worst photo ‘of all time’ on a cover praising his peace deal" (NY Post).

As for that LBJ portrait, you can see it at "The Presidential Portrait That Was the ‘Ugliest Thing’ L.B.J. Ever Saw" (Smithsonian).

As for Trump's question, "What are they doing, and why?" I think he answered it, they were going for an artistic effect — "a floating crown, but an extremely small one."

"3D tracking of Max Muncy's 404-foot 'grounded into double play.'"

3D tracking of Max Muncy's 404-foot "grounded into double play" pic.twitter.com/xWSIvyWb7S

— David Adler (@_dadler) October 14, 2025

Live action — and don't miss the look on Frelick's face at 0:21:

WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!?!?! #NLCS pic.twitter.com/x7BbmJ6hzX

— MLB (@MLB) October 14, 2025

A New Day.

"I checked in on BlueSky to see how people there are reacting to the release of the Israeli hostages, and it’s the eeriest thing."

"It’s not trending. There’s no mention of it on the 'Explore' tab. I started scrolling the feed and went through hundreds of posts without seeing a single one that mentioned it. Instead, it’s all posts about Mamdani, John Oliver’s new episode criticizing Bari Weiss and Jamie Reed, the “No Kings” protest apparently happening this weekend, Taylor Swift, the Epstein Files, complaints about anti-vaxxers, and snarky takes insisting that Antifa doesn’t exist. That's it. It’s honestly blowing my mind...."

Writes Colin Wright, at X — via Instapundit.

I signed up for BlueSky so I could do a search over there. My search word, "hostages." This was the main thing that came up:

 

I also saw things like "Now release the Epstein file hostages" and "How about the US releasing all the hostages that ICE has recently taken?"

A very dark sunrise — 6:37, 6:57.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"[H]e expands his various blog posts and articles on the subject into an over-all theory of 'why everything suddenly got worse and what to do about it'...."

"Enshittification unfolds in three phases: first, a company is 'good to users,' Doctorow writes, drawing people in droves... with the promise of connection or convenience. Second, with that mass audience consolidated, the company is 'good to business customers,' compromising some of its features so that the most lucrative clients, usually advertisers, can thrive on the platform. This second phase is the point at which, say, our Facebook feeds fill with ads and posts from brands. Third, the company turns the user experience into 'a giant pile of shit,' making the platform worse for users and businesses alike in order to further enrich the company’s owners and executives. Facebook’s feed, now choked with A.I.-generated garbage and short-form videos, is well into the third act of enshittification...."

From "The Age of Enshittification/In a new book, the technology critic Cory Doctorow expands on a coinage that has become bleakly relevant, in Silicon Valley and beyond" (The New Yorker).

Marc Maron's last podcast.

More than a decade ago, I sat down with @MarcMaron in his garage to tape something new called a podcast. This time, he came to me to record his last episode.

We talked about the power of conviction, decency in an age of division, and the true story of America. I’ll miss Marc’s… pic.twitter.com/kM3sAgtjF0

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 13, 2025

Podscribe has the full transcript with audio, so you can poke around looking for something of interest. 

For Maron's end-of-podcast thoughts, you need to listen to the second-to-last episode, here. This is his real sign off:

"As time went on I made movies for an audience of one, Diane Keaton. I never read a single review of my work..."

"... and cared only what Keaton had to say about it. If she liked it, I counted the film as an artistic success. If she was less than enthusiastic, I tried to use her criticism to reedit and come away with something she felt better about. By then we were living together and I was seeing the world through her eyes.... For all her shyness and self-effacing personality, she was totally secure in her own aesthetic judgment. Whether she was criticizing a movie of mine or a play of Shakespeare’s, she held both to the same standard. If she felt Shakespeare had gone wrong—it didn’t matter who or how many sang his praises, it was her own feeling that she went with, and she didn’t hesitate to put the knock on the Bard...."

Writes Woody Allen, remembering Diane Keaton (Free Press).

There's also this, about bulimia:

"Yes, she’s pregnant. Yes, it’s his. And yes — if you must know how they conceived — in Greenstone’s words, 'we birds’d and we bees’d.'"

From "He’s gay. She’s straight. They’re happily married./A new crop of couples are making content about their mixed-orientation marriages, divorced from sexual attraction but not love" (WaPo).

"You know, I'm being a little cute — I don't think there's anything going to get me in heaven."

PETER DOOCY: "You talked about how you hoped to end the war in Ukraine because it might help you get into heaven. How does this help? Does this help?"

PRESIDENT TRUMP: "You know, I'm being a little cute — I don't think there's anything going to get me in heaven." pic.twitter.com/dcY0J1p4zt

— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 13, 2025

"He maneuvered each rib with a drill, bending it until one side snapped in what’s called a greenstick fracture."

"From there, he instructed the patient to strap into a corset for two months, until the ribs fused together in a new position. The result was a waistline reduction of nine centimeters, or three and a half inches."

From "Plastic Surgery Comes for the Waist/A drastic new procedure, which inflicts tiny fractures to the ribs, emerges at the forefront of body modification" (NYT).

President Trump Delivers Remarks to The Knesset.

"And I love Israel. I'm with you all the way. You will be bigger, better, stronger, and more loving than ever before."

"The remaining 13 living hostages in Gaza have been transferred into the hands of the Red Cross, the Israeli military said in a statement."

 The NYT reports, 51 minutes ago, in its excellent live coverage.

45 minutes ago: "As Trump makes his way through the Knesset to give his address, it is clearly a friendly crowd, even among many in the Israeli opposition. In the audience, some are wearing red MAGA-style baseball caps, emblazoned with the words, 'TRUMP THE PEACE PRESIDENT.' The question now is whether, in his speech, Trump casts the war as over — words that Netanyahu and members of his coalition have refused to utter."

7 minutes ago: "The Egyptian government just announced that both Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, will participate in a high-level regional summit about Gaza being convened later today in Egypt."

Sunrise — 6:30, 7:00, 7:13, 7:15.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

(If the second photograph looks incongruous, that's because it's a view of the western sky.)

"... you can wrap healthcare and tariffs and authoritarianism into a single argument...."

I'm listening to Ezra Klein, at 00:15:32, in the new episode of his podcast, "Jon Favreau on Where the Democrats Went Right":

"I've been talking to members of the House and Senate, and both politically and morally, I've been going back to my big shutdown piece a month ago on the side that says you can wrap healthcare and tariffs and authoritarianism into a single argument, and it is worth doing that if only to set up the argument you're actually making — if only to make American politics about what it is really about. Partly if you believe this is an attentional event. I was talking with my staff and we were looking at coverage on the front pages and it's interesting how few front pages every day are running the shutdown.... And the shutdown has, instead of becoming the focusing event that ties together what is happening in American politics, it is one hermetically sealed event in American politics. And then there are these other events happening simultaneously and coverage is splitting between them."

Listen to the whole dialogue if you can. It's interesting, if disturbing, because Klein and Favreau openly talk about using the shutdown to leverage the Democratic Party back into power. Why aren't they more circumspect? I have to assume they are cocksure that their listeners share their primary goal — the success of the Democratic Party. 

A dose of fall color.

Althouse added for scale.

"I made dinner for my family because I wanted to and because the world told me I had to and then, three years ago, I just stopped."

"I didn’t want to anymore, and I’m here to tell you that you can stop, too. Your family will remain connected and whole; your kids will still grow up to be well-adjusted humans. And you might even enjoy one another a little more...."

Writes Erin O. White, in "Why I Had to Kill Family Dinner" (NYT).

Spot the error in the People magazine headline: "Woody Allen's Ex-Wife, Mia Farrow, Shares Tribute to Diane Keaton Despite Complicated Past."

 Link to article.

"The brilliant 1791 plan for the city... was the creation of the French-born, classically trained architect chosen for the task by George Washington himself..."

"... Pierre Charles L’Enfant. The L’Enfant Plan generated many urban nodes calling for the erection of monuments. Yet Washington is the only major Western capital that lacks a triumphal arch.... The triumphal arch originally appeared in Rome in the second century B.C., well before the fall of the Republic. The Romans... modified the monumental gateways of their Etruscan neighbors as free-standing structures and articulated them with the classical architectural forms—columns, friezes, cornices—developed by the Greeks.... It’s worth noting that, contrary to widespread belief, there is no record of a Roman arch being built for its honoree’s triumphal procession...  To be sure, numerous victory arches were erected along the processional via triumphalis that led up to the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline in Rome. But hundreds of arches were also erected in many other venues.... They could celebrate the construction of new roads, bridges, ports, aqueducts, or city walls—sometimes being atavistically embedded in the latter, sometimes standing slightly in front of them. They marked entrances to forums (civic centers), sacred precincts, and important public venues such as the Circus Maximus in Rome...."

From an article by Catesby Leigh in City Journal, published last December, "Trump Should Erect an Arch for America’s 250th/His plans to mark the semiquincentennial in 2026 offer an appropriate opportunity to do so in Washington" (City Journal).

This NY Post piece from yesterday — "Trump shares rendering of massive stone monument for DC to mark America’s 250th birthday" — says the idea came from the Catesby Leigh article.

Catesby Leigh brought up the arch in Washington Square in New York City. That arch is well-loved, and you don't have to be a Trumpster to feel glad it's there. And that made me remember that we have an arch in Madison, Wisconsin: 

Gavin Newsom miffed that right-wing tough guy Joe Rogan won't have him on his show.

Here's Joe Rogan, a 02:11:01, in a recent podcast:

Do you like people? I love people. I could never be a hermit. I love people. I love hanging out. Like I love having fun. I love meeting people that are fun. I love it. The only way that happens is if people make people. You have to make cool people. Yeah. Make cool people that other people wanna hang out with....

Joe's podcast is great because he's a cool person hanging out with cool people and he lets us sit in on that love and coolness. How does anyone get on Joe's show? I think it's by making him feel that you are a cool person who loves having fun that he could love having fun with.

Meanwhile, here's Gavin Newsom bitching about not getting an invitation onto Joe's show and revealing that he has no idea what makes Joe Joe:

"It’s a family history. I remember my Auntie Martha had skin cancer so bad they removed her nose."

"My father had basal skin cancer and my brother had it. It’s tricky with this skin cancer. That’s why you’ve got to put the sunblock on."

Said Diane Keaton, in 2015, quoted in "What Diane Keaton Shared About Her Health Before Her Death/Diane Keaton—whose cause of death has not been shared—was open about her health battles with skin cancer and bulimia that affected her growing up" (E! News).

ADDED: "We're here to see The Nose. I heard it was running..."

Some midwestern trolling.

The Brewers broke out the L flag 🤣 pic.twitter.com/KnNsi3GxBd

— MLB (@MLB) October 12, 2025

HEY CHICAGO, WHADAYA SAY?#MagicBrew pic.twitter.com/3OFCtsgz9R

— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) October 12, 2025