Sunrise — 6:59, 7:16, 7:19, 7:20, 7:22, 7:29.

My 7 questions about Trump's big ballroom project.

1. Before Trump, were there other Presidents who spoke of needing a big White House ballroom? Hasn't Trump stated that there were?

2. Once there is a ballroom that large, won't there be endless pressure to inflate the guest list so the crowd will look right in the space? It's not as though they'll have those movable walls that hotels used to subdivide ballrooms... or will they?!

3. What are the potential benefits of this extra-large ballroom space? How have giant ballrooms used through history played a part in diplomatic achievements or in elevating the patriotism of the people? What's the downside? 

4. Which leaders of foreign countries currently have ballrooms of the type that Trump is building? Macron? Putin? The Sultan of Brunei? Alexander Van der Bellen? Is there some sense that our leader should have equivalent facilities or are they exactly what we regard as un-American?

5. Are people misunderstanding the size of the project and picturing the footprint of the building — or even the one room — as 90,000 square feet? Do people not understand that there will be many rooms and hallways on multiple levels and that 90,000 is the total square feet of all the floor space?

6. Did Trump deliberately deprive us of detailed plans of the project in order to lure his antagonists into making assumptions about how big and weird it will be so that he could later present a completely reasonable design and make them look like stupid hotheads?

7. Once we see how the new East Wing looks, won't that create pressure to enlarge the West Wing, to achieve symmetry and isn't the West Wing in great need of an overhaul?

"You know we're building the ark," said Noah.

Trump says his ballroom might cost more than $300 million but adds, "you know we're building the arc. Maybe we use it for the arc. We raised a lot of money for the ballroom, so maybe we'll put -- the arc is going to be incredible for Washington DC, so maybe we use it for the… pic.twitter.com/D9yuyWpC7e

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 25, 2025

Nil admirari.

Nil admirari is today's Word of the Day in the Oxford English Dictionary. I ran across it because, writing the previous post, I looked up the word "sunder," after David Axelrod had accused Donald Trump of "sundering history." It's an odd word, but it's not the most apt word. Sundering has more to do with separating than demolition. And how do you do either to history?

But I was glad to get deflected into the OED, because I'm finding out about Nil admirari: "The attitude of indifference to the distractions of the outside world advocated by the Roman poet Horace. Also: a person adopting this attitude."

Etymology: "classical Latin nīl admīrārī, in nil admirari prope res est una..quae possit facere et servare beatum, ‘to wonder at nothing is just about the only way a man can become contented and remain so’ (Horace Epistles 1. 6. 1).

From the Wikipedia article about the term: "Nietzsche wrote that in this proposition the ancient philosopher 'sees the whole of philosophy,' opposing it to Schopenhauer's 'admirari id est philosophari' (to marvel is to philosophize)."

Here's the Horace:

"He’s saying, ‘I can do whatever the hell I want and you can’t stop me!' In this case, it’s sundering history."

"If you worked in the White House, you have a reverence for every wall of that place. Tattered as it may have been, there was a dignity to it. It was a quietly stately citadel of power in America, not a palace for a mad king. Trump has a manic desire to tear down history and write his own.... He believes that the only thing you can do wrong is that which is not in your self-interest."

Said David Axelrod, quoted by Maureen Dowd, in "Burnin’ Down the House" (NYT).

Sundered. 

Dowd's own words: "The president has the kind of blot-out-the-sun narcissism that spurs him to do whatever it takes to keep all eyes on him. He ignores the law, procedures, consequences. It’s a slam-dance presidency that delights in transgressing and provoking.... Trump’s talent is finding wormholes in the system that he can exploit for his own satisfaction or financial gain — things that are not specifically outlawed because it never occurred to the founders or anyone else that a lowlife could rise so high."

They left wormholes because they didn't think there would be any worms? Stop underestimating the founders! 

"Mr. Boyd had chosen the nitrogen method over lethal injection in 2018, when prisoners were given a month to choose. But..."

"... he later challenged its use, arguing earlier this year in court that the method was cruel and that the state’s protocol was inadequate.... Lee Hedgepeth, a journalist in Alabama who witnessed the execution, said he counted Mr. Boyd gasp for air more than 225 times before he was pronounced dead.... [Dissenting in the Supreme Court case], Justice Sotomayor urged people to open the stopwatch app on their phone and run it until it reached four minutes. 'Now imagine for that entire time, you are suffocating,' she wrote. 'You want to breathe; you have to breathe. But you are strapped to a gurney with a mask on your face pumping your lungs with nitrogen gas.'"

From "Lengthy Execution by Nitrogen Gas in Alabama Renews Concerns Over Method/Anthony Boyd was the eighth person executed by nitrogen gas since Alabama began using the method last year. His execution came over the strenuous objection of three liberal Supreme Court justices" (NYT)

Boyd, in his last words, insisted that he was innocent. The victim died "bound and taped to a park bench... doused... in gasoline and lit... on fire." 

"[Mike Johnson] has argued that the House... has no reason to meet as long as Senate Democrats are blocking a bill to reopen the government...."

"His strategy of indefinite hiatus means that Mr. Johnson has not engaged in the typical political theater that speakers often employ during shutdown fights to jam the party out of power: scheduling tricky votes on bills to reopen parks or pay certain categories of federal workers.... Democrats had been bracing for him to do so. But instead, he has spent much of the shutdown appearing daily at news conferences at the Capitol, hammering them for refusing to fund the government and making the case that Republicans need not negotiate. He is insistent that the House has nothing to do but wait for the stalemate to end...."

From "Keeping the House Absent, Johnson Marginalizes Congress and Himself/The speaker’s decision to hold the House in an indefinite hiatus during the shutdown is his latest move to diminish the role of the legislative branch — and his own post" (NYT).

He's right, isn't he? It's the Senate that needs to move, and the House has nothing to do but wait. If you don't have anything better than nothing to do, do nothing.

Let's take a look at that "Major Events Timeline" on the whitehouse.gov webpage.

My screengrab from the page:

Click the little arrow... there's more:

And there's one more panel:

Check the details. I'm sure "upgrading the historic 1902 structure" is wrong. I agree that the "main residence" is preserved, but there seems to be nothing left of "the historic 1902 structure," the old East Wing. Maybe the underground part? And though Obama may have met with "members of the Muslim Brotherhood" in the White House, that photograph of him was taken in Kenya, not at the White House. As for the famous photo of Hunter Biden enjoying a bath, that was not a White House bathtub. Was it?

Anyway, highlighting the lowlights of Democratic administrations — replete with semi-nudity — that's rich. "Major events" ≈ most embarrassing events.

This is a good example of Donald Trump always moving forward, always fighting back. Oppose him, and this is what you get. 

"America is being sued for attempted karma."

Sunrise — 7:29, 7:30.

Talk about whatever you want in the comments.

Rachel Maddow is at a loss for words.

 When she sees her employer on the donor list for the Trump ballroom.

"It was cool, though, I mean, pshhwww, it's terrible...."

 Said George Clooney, making some funny faces, about the Louvre heist.

"What if all of sports is ruined by this gambling thing?"

I said, revealing my level of engagement in sports, gambling, and the attendant legal issues. 

Who are the greatest figures in world history who never got to watch TV? List them along with their (anachronistic) favorite show.

Grok:

1. Socrates - "The Twilight Zone"
2. Cleopatra - "I Love Lucy"
3. Leonardo da Vinci - "Cosmos"
4. Joan of Arc - "M*A*S*H"
5. Genghis Khan - "Vikings"
6. William Shakespeare - "The West Wing"
7. Queen Elizabeth I - "The Crown"
8. Isaac Newton - "Breaking Bad"
9. Mozart - "Glee"
10. Abraham Lincoln - "The Andy Griffith Show"

ChatGPT:

1. Socrates — The Good Place
2. Cleopatra — Succession
3. Leonardo da Vinci — Black Mirror
4. Joan of Arc — Buffy the Vampire Slayer
5. Genghis Khan — Game of Thrones
6. William Shakespeare — The Simpsons
7. Marie Antoinette — RuPaul’s Drag Race
8. Ludwig van Beethoven — Mozart in the Jungle
9. Abraham Lincoln — The West Wing

"Putting up a tent does nothing but make people upset that they’ve come to a state dinner but they never get inside the White House. The only bathroom facilities..."

"... for a tent are porta-potties. Setting up a kitchen out there is hugely expensive. When the tent is up, the helicopter [Marine One] can’t land. And the grass dies."

Said Gahl Hodges Burt, quoted in "A Pile of Rubble: After 123 Years, the East Wing Is Gone/Critics are outraged over President Trump’s demolition of the East Wing to make way for his $300 million ballroom. Others say it was time for change" (NYT).

Gahl Hodges Burt, who was social secretary for three years under President Ronald Reagan, said that tearing down the East Wing to make space for the ballroom was an unfortunate necessity, and that change was overdue. Since the State Dining Room holds only 140 seated guests and the East Room has space for 200 at most, recent administrations have taken to erecting enormous tents on the South Lawn for ever larger state dinners. Ms. Burt, a board member of the White House Historical Association, added that larger spaces for East Wing offices are “very much needed.” The White House has said that office space is included in Mr. Trump’s plans for the ballroom.

Sunrise — 6:58, 7:48.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

Here's that crazy ad that Cuomo accidentally/"accidentally" released.

This is the wildest attack ad I’ve ever seen in politics. Andrew Cuomo pulling out all the stops. pic.twitter.com/rPQ77Z3bE7

— Stephen Taylor (@stephen_taylor) October 23, 2025

Background from The Guardian, "Cuomo condemned over racist AI ad depicting ‘criminals for Zohran Mamdani’/Official X accounts posts and then deletes AI-generated attack ad that prompts widespread denunciation."

From Fox News, "Andrew Cuomo campaign walks back controversial attack ad targeting Mamdani voters/Campaign quickly removes AI-generated video after Mamdani calls it 'just disgusting.'"

"Now in their fury and impotence, Democrats hit the streets—projecting onto their hated nemesis, Donald Trump, their own past preferences for kingly methods."

Concludes Victor Davis Hanson, laying out the evidence, in "Who Are the Real Kings? Democrats cry 'No Kings' while wielding royal power—raiding rivals, silencing dissent, and crowning heirs without a single vote" (American Greatness).

"I particularly like the line where you said Trumpism is seeking 'to amputate the higher elements of the human spirit — learning, compassion, science...'"

"'... and the pursuit of justice, and supplant those virtues with greed, retribution, ego and appetite.' There’s some very good stuff here. But I’ll tell you where I take issue with you. You talked about a miasma of passivity that seems to have swept over the anti-Trump ranks. I don’t think that’s true at all. I think that you’ve seen this ['No Kings'] movement grow. I think that what is making things difficult is, in our history, I think it’s fair to say that we have never confronted a government that was willing to break the law as freely — not just break norms, which they haven’t cared about for a long time, but break the law as freely."

Said E.J. Dionne to David Brooks in "Trump Has a Religion. What Do Democrats Have? Mamdani might be working in Democrats’ favor. But what about 'No Kings'?" (NYT)(video of the whole conversation here, on YouTube) .

"If Democrats don’t reverse course, they may soon find themselves unable to win presidential elections."

"Increasingly, the party is made up of urban professionals who graduated from four-year universities and command relatively high salaries. Having more of these supporters has been a boon to the party’s finances, but electorally, the shift has been a disaster. The electoral power of high-income voters is limited: Not only are they a smaller demographic, but they are also concentrated in a handful of coastal states that do not decide presidential elections. By contrast, the lower-income voters lost by Democrats are dispersed across the battleground states that increasingly determine the Electoral College outcome. Under this system, no candidate can win the presidency today without galvanizing the working class...."

Writes Brody Mullins, in "How Democrats Became the Party of the Well-to-Do" (NYT)(free-access link, because there are some good graphs that show how the class politics flipped).

"Mayor Eric Adams... lashed out at Mr. Cuomo for pressuring him to leave the race, calling him 'a snake and a liar.'"

It says here in "Eric Adams Will Endorse Andrew Cuomo for Mayor/Mayor Eric Adams will endorse former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo for mayor and plans to campaign with him, in hopes of slowing the momentum of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee" (NYT).

"This is my nightmare."

Said David Sedaris, last night at the Overture Center, here in Madison.

Were you there? We were.

I had to worry about him a few times. Was it comic stage business when he made repetitive fussy little noises and then switched to humming to himself in a way that felt like desperate self-soothing as he searched for his place in his readings? He also spent a lot of time urging us to by another author's book — "Long Island Compromise" by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. He called her the female Philip Roth. Really? Maybe, but I got tired of hearing about her, and the bit that he read from her book wasn't as good as what he was reading us from his next book — "The Land and Its People."

Have these adults lost their sense of childlike wonder?

I'm reading "Residents’ fury at paying £2,000 for a playground … that’s just a log/Families paying for the maintenance of a near-empty patch of grass say they are being ‘ripped off’ as the play area they expected fails to materialise" (London Times).

To you, it's just a log...

... but to a child it is a galloping dragon transporting them into the world of imagination you've lost the power to see!

It's log!

It's big, it's heavy, it's wood!

"Apparently our three-year-old, who does not understand the concept of time, had told someone that she hadn’t bathed for five days..."

"... (she had, several times). There were also concerns over the holes in her tights and her 'unseasonal dressing.' The holes were minor and the outfits, granted, were eccentric but the only way to get out the house in the morning was to allow my daughter to dress herself. I clarified that I always included other options in her bag for when she dressed for Christmas in July but it was clear that they had already decided I was inept or neglectful, or both. Following this, after every drop-off I would send an email novella about my daughter’s clothing choices... until one day my paranoia felt too much and I stopped. I still included additional outfit options but I didn’t provide the lengthy explanations — something that returned to haunt me when I didn’t communicate a new obsession my daughter developed with some too-small shoes.... We had been told about four or five 5p-sized bruises on my daughter’s shin that we couldn’t explain.... And, of course, the strange outfits, holey tights and small shoes...."

From "My daughter’s nursery reported us to social services/When bruises were found on our child’s shin it was just the start of a humiliating, harrowing experience" (London Times).

Sunrise and afternoon in the woods.

7:17 a.m.

At 2:49 p.m., it looks a lot brighter, but it was still quite overcast and beginning to rain:

October is the most beautiful month in Madison, but some of its days are like this, and the gently filtered light feels quite nice to me.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"The White House is demolishing the entirety of the East Wing..."

"... to make way for President Trump’s $200 million ballroom, a construction project that is far more extensive than he initially let on, a senior administration official said on Wednesday.... When Mr. Trump first announced his plans for the ballroom, he pledged that the East Wing wouldn’t be touched by the construction.... 'It won’t interfere with the current building. It’ll be near it but not touching it,' the president said. 'And pays total respect to the existing building, which I’m the biggest fan of.' But, upon further evaluation, the White House determined it was cheaper and more structurally sound to demolish the East Wing to construct the ballroom, rather than build an addition, the official said...."

The NYT reports.

What exactly did Trump say that supports the language "he pledged that the East Wing wouldn’t be touched by the construction." I can see that he asserted that the new construction wouldn't even touch the "existing building" and that he's changed his mind, but where's the "pledge"? You can be in the middle of a construction project and decide to do more demolition than originally planned. Trump — like other Presidents who've worked on the White House — apparently has the power to build a ballroom next to the East Wing or to demolish the East Wing and put the ballroom in its place. You may ask why the switch or whether this was the plan all along and why the deceit, but I don't see a broken pledge. 

ADDED: Here's the Washington Post's visualization of the project. It helpfully shows that the new construction is set apart from the familiar part of the White House and that the next building over is the far larger Treasury Department building:

The National Trust for Historic Preservation warned that President Trump’s planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom would “overwhelm the White House itself,” which spans just 55,000 square feet. https://t.co/iRY6cgoK7c pic.twitter.com/zTfL9CsLqO

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 22, 2025

"Spend enough time speaking to women who are taking testosterone — specifically, in very high doses — and you start to notice that they sound messianic."

"They’re often talking fast and intensely; they’re amped up; they’re describing what they clearly consider a miracle drug; and they have no intention of lowering their dose, despite the unknown risks or some problems with facial hair. After all, how can they worry about facial hair when they feel so alive?"

From "'I’m on Fire': Testosterone Is Giving Women Back Their Sex Drive — and Then Some/There is no F.D.A.-approved testosterone product for women. Insurance won’t cover it. Many doctors won’t prescribe it. It’s become a cultural phenomenon" (NYT)(free-access link).

What is the crime that you can respond to by openly choosing to watch movies about crimes like that?

Not torture murder. Not terrorist massacres. Not assassination. Not rape. Not child abuse. Poisoning? Arson? Treason?

The correct answer is: The Heist.

I'm seeing this in the NYT: "Watch These Six Heist Movies/If you thought that heist at the Louvre sounded like something out of a movie, this collection of heist films just might be for you."

My first reaction was: This is not my genre. I haven't seen these things. The 6 in this article are: "How to Steal a Million" (1966), "The Thomas Crown Affair"(1999), "The Great Muppet Caper" (1981), "Hudson Hawk" (1991), "Ocean’s 8" (2018), and "The Mastermind" (2025).

No to all of them, including the earlier version of "The Thomas Crown Affair" and to all of the "Ocean's" movies. I thought I might be able to assert that I've never seen a heist movie. I invited Grok to test me to the point where I could accurately advance that claim. I had to admit I'd seen "Reservoir Dogs" (1992), and then, delving deeper, I remembered "The Asphalt Jungle" and "The Killing."

I blogged "The Killing" here, a couple years ago: "Highly amusing. The women were hilarious. It had Vince Edwards. It had a poodle and a parrot. Plus the great Sterling Hayden (last seen by me in 'The Asphalt Jungle')."

Anyway, are you into heist films? Are you dismayed by the theft of the crown jewels of France? Does it seem wrong — or oh so right — to watch heist films in response to the big real-life heist? Is that NYT article in poor taste? 

I hope you enjoy it!

OMG 😂 pic.twitter.com/CDq60JMizH https://t.co/YPyEuLn7Sx

— MAZE (@mazemoore) October 21, 2025

Things happen so fast with Trump. He's always dropping one distracting thing or another.

It's hard to keep track of the things you really ought to worry about.

Chomping a wall off the East Wing of the White House? That's so distracting that it must be intended as the distraction. Why do it this week and not next month? Because there's something else that's harder to see, and I'm certainly not seeing it.

"Demanding that the Justice Department pay him about $230 million in compensation for the federal investigations into him" — that's something "people familiar with the matter" fed to the New York Times but it's not at the top of the front page anymore.

It's below the story about how dogs are peeing: 

It's down there on a level with Springsteen's "Nebraska," which came out in 1982 and is the focus of a new biopic that already been in the news for weeks.

The dog piss is fresher. 

The top story on the Times front page seems like another throwback: "Trump Empowers Election Deniers, Still Fixated on 2020 Grievances."

They're still fixated. We're still fixated. It's all about paying attention. Are we dangerously attached to our fixations? Or are we distracted by the latest thing? There's something that's neither of those 2 things and it's what I'm afraid we're not doing.

CORRECTION: There are 2 headlines about the $230 million and I see now that one of them is higher than Bruce and at the level of the second half of the bit about dogs peeing. Sorry. I should have paid better attention. But my point remains and is, perhaps, underscored: We're caught up in a game of paying attention.

"One night, on the way back from buying Betty Crocker brownie mix on Columbus, I actually found a beautiful young man, in front of our apartment, on the floor, passed out drunk."

"I dragged him inside, which was hard, because he was six feet tall. His name turned out to be Duncan, and soon we were living in weird hotels together and staying in all day, except for going down to the deli for bologna with green olives in it. Like me, he got some money from home— his came from North Carolina. Tennessee Williams called a couple of times, and then Duncan’s voice would get more Southern, would become a real drawl. I think I was jealous of Tennessee Williams. At night, we lived in bars until closing time (Sorabaja, on the Upper East Side; the White Horse; Chumley’s—watching Zoot Sims put dimes in the jukebox), and in the beginning I had little fantasies of marrying him. I pretty much gave up on that when I finally had to put him in Gracie Square Hospital because he thought God was talking to him in the Wellington Hotel. It seemed I was developing a sort of ruthless, practical side. I was sad when I had him committed; we had been like 'Les Enfants Terribles' together."

I'm still reading "How I Became a Single Woman" by Alison Rose. Remember? I blogged her obituary 2 days ago, here. 

I love the writing. Each paragraph is self-contained, like a blog post, that is... like a post on the greatest blog ever written. Quite condensed and spiffy!

You have to have these experiences to tell these stories... or I suppose you could write like that in fiction. You come home to find a drunk passed out in front of your apartment door and you drag him inside... because he's beautiful. And you're beautiful too, of course, so you live like Les Enfants Terribles until you need to drag him elsewhere, to the mental hospital. 

"Les Enfants Terribles" — Wikipedia says — "is a 1929 novel by Jean Cocteau [about]... two siblings... who isolate themselves from the world as they grow up, an isolation which is shattered by the stresses of their adolescence."

As for Zoot Sims....

"The daughter of Ali Shamkhani, one of the Islamic Republic’s top enforcers, had a lavish wedding in a strapless dress."

"Meanwhile, women in Iran are beaten for showing their hair and young people can’t afford to marry."

Wrote Masih Alinejad, an exiled Iranian dissident, quoted in "Why a strapless wedding dress threatens Iran hardliner Ali Shamkhani/The daughter of Ayatollah Khamenei’s henchman wore a low-cut gown, prompting accusations of double standards among the elite in the Islamic regime" (London Times).

And yet: "The leaked video appears... to have been taken from a female-only event at the wedding, at which it is not uncommon for the father and groom to make a brief appearance. The regime has lashed out against the critics, and one newspaper affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard insisted that Shamkhani had behaved in a 'dignified and proper manner.'..."

As for the display of wealth, we're told the wedding cost $20,000.

Sunrise — 6:57, 7:13, 7:16, 7:23.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

And thanks to everyone who is supporting this blog by using the Althouse link into Amazon. It's always there in the sidebar. By doing your Amazon shopping beginning there, you send a commission to this blog at no cost to you. Again, thanks!

Oh, no one ever cared about the East Wing.

You're not seeing any East-Wing-specific drama.

From the Wikipedia article East Wing, here's the humble story of the part of the White House you were never thinking about before:

"When I woke up, everything was, of course, still dark. Was it midnight? Dawn? I imagined it would be liberating..."

"... getting out from under the tyranny of the clock or the sun. Mainly it felt destabilizing: Apparently time tells you what to do and, by extension, who you are. I made my way to the pass box and found I’d slept through a [food] delivery. It was Saturday, midmorning, I decided. Von Bujdoss had prepared a delicious bowl of what might or might not have been kugel; I reached for my spoon, held the bowl to my mouth and gracefully shoveled its contents in. I was midbite when a projector switched on inside my skull. Gaza. Ukraine. Sudan. School shootings. Terrible images came roaring out of some corner of my mind.... In normal life, I struggle to summon visuals in my head; here I was Rembrandt.... One moment I saw my children navigating their climate-crisis future; the next I watched Seth Meyers slicing blue cheese in a galley kitchen. Here was a friend’s death, and then my own gravestone; there was my wife looking cute...."

Writes Chris Colin, in "'You’re Going to Lose Your Mind': My Three-Day Retreat in Total Darkness/The author spent days in a room with no light. Who would he be when he emerged?" (NYT).

"Republicans should not have to clean up the mess Andrew Cuomo and the Democrats created, and we will not allow the political class to interfere with voters or hijack our ballot."

Wrote the party chairs of each of 5 NYC boroughs, quoted in "Curtis Sliwa Has the Spotlight. He’s Not About to Give It Up. Mr. Sliwa, the Republican nominee for mayor of New York City, finds himself a major player in the race. He’s under heavy pressure to drop out" (NYT).

Doesn't Sliwa have a duty to stay in the race, having won the nomination and used the Republican Party's resources? What would that say to those who have donated to the Party? There's a line on the ballot for the Republican — is there to be no one on it?

I don't see the basis for replacing Sliwa with no one. But Trump is one of those who are leaning on him:

"Numerous of our NOW GREAT ALLIES in the Middle East, and areas surrounding the Middle East, have explicitly and strongly, with great enthusiasm, informed me that they would welcome the opportunity..."

"... at my request, to go into GAZA with a heavy force and 'straighten our Hamas' if Hamas continues to act badly, in violation of their agreement with us. The love and spirit for the Middle East has not been seen like this in a thousand years! It is a beautiful thing to behold! I told these countries, and Israel, 'NOT YET!' There is still hope that Hamas will do what is right. If they do not, an end to Hamas will be FAST, FURIOUS, & BRUTAL! I would like to thank all of those countries that called to help. Also, I would like to thank the great and powerful country of Indonesia, and its wonderful leader, for all of the help they have shown and given to the Middle East, and to the U.S.A. TO EVERYONE, thank you for your attention to this matter!"

Wrote PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP, at Truth Social.

By "straighten our Hamas," he must have meant "straighten out Hamas."

"The White House has responded to questions over Mr. Trump’s use of A.I. imagery by suggesting it was part of his successful social media strategy."

"'No leader has used social media to communicate directly with the American people more creatively and effectively than President Trump,' Liz Huston, the White House’s assistant press secretary, said Friday in an emailed statement. Mr. Trump’s use of the technology has evolved alongside the tools, which have rapidly improved from producing obviously fake images in 2022 to more lifelike renderings — including video and audio — this year."

From "How Trump Is Using Fake Imagery to Attack Enemies and Rouse Supporters" (NYT)(free-access video, because there are so many embedded videos to peruse).

Once there were fantastic political cartoons. Now, the graphic humor is AI slop. What can you do but hope your side produces cooler, funnier, more compulsively sharable material than your opponents? The NYT may deplore what Trump is sharing, but I suspect they mostly wish Democrats had better things to share. I think they pine for the glory days of Dark Brandon.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Joe Biden (@joebiden)

"I can’t imagine why anybody would want their music used or associated with something created with the sole purpose of dividing us."

"Too many people are trying to tear us apart, and we need to find new ways to come together. We’re all Americans, and we’re all patriotic. There is no ‘us and them’ — that’s not who we are, nor is it what we should be. It’s all of us. We’re in this together, and it is my hope that we can embrace music as a way of celebrating and uniting each and every one of us."

Said Kenny Loggins, quoted in "Kenny Loggins Slams Donald Trump for Using ‘Danger Zone’ in AI Video Bombing No Kings Protesters With Poop: 'I Request That My Recording Is Removed Immediately'" (Variety).

I agree with Kenny, but I don't like Variety's phrasing of the headline. I believe all Trump did was share the video. I didn't like that, though I know I approved of Trump sharing the video that used Aerosmith's "Dream On." That was a matter of taste. I just don't like confusing sharing with creating. Whoever made that shit video used "Danger Zone." Trump didn't use the song. He shared it.

"Donald Trump is considering commuting Diddy's sentence as early as this week, according to a high-ranking White House official."

"According to our source, the President is 'vacillating' on a commutation. We're told some of the W.H. staff are urging Trump not to commute the sentence. But, our source states the obvious -- 'Trump will do what he wants,' and we're told Trump could set Diddy free as early as this week."

TMZ reports.

I hope Trump does commute this sentence. Sean Combs was acquitted on the charges that embodied the evil things they said he did, and the sentence feels like an effort to punish him for those things anyway. He's already been in custody for over a year. 

Sunrise — 6:52, 7:18, 7:22.

Write about whatever you want.

And thanks to everyone who uses Amazon going in through my link — here. I appreciate the encouragement!

"I don't like you either, and I probably never will."

REPORTER: Are you concerned about negative things the Australian ambassador has said about you?

TRUMP: "I don't know anything about him...Is he still working for you?"

AUSTRALIAN PM: *Points across the table*

TRUMP: "I don't like you either, and I probably never will."💀😂 pic.twitter.com/SUxPTPmgCy

— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) October 20, 2025

"It’s important to note that 'sex is gay' is an idea found among the incel—or, involuntary celibate—community..."

"... most notably from neo-Nazi and self-styled incel Nick Fuentes. In 2022, Fuentes went on a rant on his show, in which he argued that his lack of sexual experience with women 'actually makes me really more heterosexual than anyone' As Fuentes explained: 'If we're really being honest, never having a girlfriend, never having sex with a woman really makes you more heterosexual, because honestly, dating women is gay, having sex with women is gay. And having sex with men is gay. Really it's all gay. And if you want to know the truth, the only really straight heterosexual position is to be an asexual incel. That's it. That's all there is…Having sex in itself is gay, I think. I think that it's really a gay act to begin with. Think about it this way: What's gayer than being like "I need cuddles. I need kisses…I need to spend time with a woman."'"

Writes Alan Elrod, in "Sex Is Gay, Rape Is Epic, No Fatties: Young Right-Wing Men Are Obsessed With Male Power and Male Bodies/The group chat leak reveals what over a decade of incel messaging and Bronze Age Pervert have done to Young Republicans" (Liberal Currents).

"Participants in the study had completely lost their central sight, retaining only limited peripheral vision, making it 'like having two black discs in your eye....'"

"During the two-hour operation under local anaesthetic, patients had jelly-like substance removed from their eye to make space for the implant, which was inserted under the centre of their retina. About a month later, once the eye had settled, the chip was activated. Patients were given augmented-reality glasses containing a video camera connected wirelessly to a small computer, which was attached to their waistband. The video camera projected the scene to the chip, which converted it into an electrical signal, passing through the optical nerve cells into the brain, where it was interpreted as vision...."

From "Vision restored in blind patients with revolutionary microchip/A tiny retinal implant connected to smart glasses allows patients who had completely lost their central sight to see again" (London Times).

Box ticked.

I'm reading Julia Halperin's "Covering an Artist With Unconventional Materials: Strict Rules and Time/A culture reporter is always watching for art that challenges us to look at the world, and our lives, differently. An artist who lived in a cage for a year ticked that box" (NYT).

Hsieh’s retrospective brings together documentation of and objects from all of his one-year performances. In addition to “Cage Piece,” they include “One Year Performance 1980-1981 (Time Clock Piece),” for which he punched a timecard clock every hour on the hour, including at night; and “Art/Life One Year Performance 1983-1984 (Rope Piece),” for which he spent the year tied to the artist Linda Montano by an eight-foot rope. Hsieh made “One Year Performance 1985-1986 (No Art Piece),” when he refused to look at, think about, talk about or make art. That gallery is empty.... 

Why would someone do these outrageous things? Why are they considered art?... Hsieh resisted answering my questions.... “It’s not like I become Superman,” he told me.

"For the past decade, studies have shown that introducing allergenic foods in infancy, as the immune system is developing, can help the body recognize food proteins as harmless...."

From "Peanut Allergies Have Plummeted in Children, Study Shows/Doctors have long recommended that infants avoid peanuts. But in 2017, experts officially reversed that guidance, and food allergies decreased sharply" (NYT).

"She called The New Yorker 'School' and treated it as such. She studied hard, reading back issues and writing notes to her boyfriends, a trio of married writers..."

"... she nicknamed Europe, Mr. Normalcy and Personality Plus, who all wrote back to her. This made her a less-than-attentive receptionist... Inevitably, she was fired. At home in her apartment, she began to write. At first she played amanuensis to [George W. S. Trow, the acerbic cultural critic best known for his essay 'Within the Context of No-Context'] in a pairing encouraged by Charles McGrath, then an editor at The New Yorker.... 'Yield to it,' Mr. McGrath told her, referring to Mr. Trow’s mind. 'Let it wash over you.' Together, she and Mr. Trow produced Talk of the Town pieces, the short... slice-of-life stories that helped define the magazine. He told her, 'Glimpse genuine joy, in a way, in the middle of world horror.' (She was on her way to interview a dog groomer.)... It was Tina Brown... who encouraged Ms. Rose to write about her romantic life. 'How I Became a Single Woman,' an elliptical coming-of-age tale, appeared in April 1996. (One of its more memorable lines: 'The truth is, it can be a form of actual day-to-day social torture to pretend not to notice the little dishes of poison that married people offer you all the time.') The piece caused a minor ruckus at School. Despite their nicknames, the married men were easily identifiable...."

From "Alison Rose, The New Yorker’s Femme Fatale, Dies at 81/She started as the magazine’s glamorous receptionist and became one of its more singular writers. In one of her last articles, she memorialized her time (and lovers) there" (NYT).

ADDED: Now, I'm reading "How I Became a Single Woman." Excerpt:

"We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."

Wrote Henry James, quoted by retired book editor Gerald Howard, in "The Dogged, Irrational Persistence of Literary Fiction" (NYT).

Howard writes: "Substack essays and chin-pulling opinion articles galore agree that literature is not only in the doldrums, but even in danger of extinction from, take your pick, a declining attention span, a disappearing audience of people educated enough to understand and appreciate it, or a near-future technological onslaught (see: novels written by A.I. entities). The sense of a possible ending is palpable. But what the discourse leaves out are things like historical perspective and the blind faith and, from the purely practical and economic points of view, sheer illogic of the literary enterprise...."

"Wearing a shark costume while quoting [Cory Booker] seemed sweet and suburban. Maybe that was the point of the silly costumes."

"It was a small island of old norms within a national emergency. There were a small number of scowling dudes bullhorning loudly about their love of communism, as the First Amendment entitles them to do. But most of the other Chicagoans exercised their right to amble on by in, for example, inflatable corn costumes, without so much as a nod in the dudes’ direction. This humorous form of protest, known as tactical frivolity, shows the absurdity of the charge that all the protesters are armed militants...."

Writes Gary Shteyngart — one of my favorite novelists — in "The Rise of the Inflatable Chicken Resistance" (NYT)(free-access link, because of all the humorous details).

"Toward the end of the protest, around 2 p.m., I met two Jesus impersonators. 'He’s more classical, and I’m the more modern Jesus,' one of the Sons of God told me. He was wearing a crown of barbed wire instead of thorns, which is what made him more modern.... I left the parade full of the pleasure of being a part of a vast humanity. It’s a feeling that may soon be extinguished if we do not exercise our power of free assembly and free speech.... We must harness our best creative, humorous and frivolous selves in order to keep it from falling."

I'm reminded of Saul Alinsky's 6th rule in "Rules for Radicals": "A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic."

"Have you heard this idea that if 3.5% of a population protests nonviolently, social change is a slam dunk?..."

It's a "No King's Day reality check" from AntifascistDad:

"It is now a think tank-approved, purportedly evidence-based method, that guarantees movement success.... But do they really have the empirical data?

"Democrats say the use of silly inflatable costumes is a way to undercut Republican portrayals of such events as violent 'hate America rallies.'"

The Washington Post sets out to answer the question "Why protesters against Trump are wearing frog, chicken and T. rex costumes."

If you feel you need to put on a costume to disguise what you are, doesn't that suggest that you are the scary thing you're trying to cover up? I think of the wolf in sheep's clothing.

The image of wolf in sheep's clothing comes from in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus said: "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves."

From the WaPo article:

We got rained out of the sunrise, but it brightened up and we got out into the lakeshore woods.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

NO thanKsgivINGS!

Video by Meade, near Lake Mendota.

Not sure why Meade sent me this, but I really appreciated 2:53 - 2:56.

Video here, at Truth Social.

Meade: "is that when we see bill clinton?"

Me: "No."

Meade: "Riding up the escalator"

Me: "I gave you the time stamp"

ADDED: It turns out Meade couldn't see the time stamp. You need to have the video displayed where the time counts from the beginning. If your display shows the time remaining, my time stamp won't get you to what amused me. This was supposed to be a cute lightweight post but ended up wasting over a half hour of my time in a technical mess, mostly because of another problem, the way Truth Social code leaves a big blank space after any embedded video. Now, I'm at the point of screaming at the sky. After numerous attempts to tweak the embedded video, I just switched to a link. This is the last time I try to have any kind of "fun" with Truth Social video.

"For the past two decades, the flamboyant right-wing leader has made the fight against immigration —and against Islam, in particular — the centrepiece of his political offer."

"His reward came in the last election in November 2023 when the PVV became the dominant force in a four-party coalition.... Wilders has maintained an unrelenting focus on immigration. One of his most discussed — and complained about — postings on X juxtaposed half the face of a blue-eyed young woman with long blonde hair labelled PVV with half of an older woman in a headscarf marked PvdA, the initials of the rival Labour party. Underneath it read: “The choice is yours on 10/29.”

From "Dutch towns rocked by anti-immigration protests ahead of election/With polls fast approaching, Geert Wilders has seized upon the recent violence to aid his anti-Islamic agenda" (London Times).

Here's that image:

That is much more intense than anti-immigrant material I've seen in the United States. I believe it is too crude to work as propaganda in the U.S.

"A boy in a sports jersey stands with smaller girls on a court and then is seen, shirtless, inside a bathroom with them. A girl in a towel shrieks in terror."

"'Abigail Spanberger is as extreme as it gets,' says the narrator of the television ad that recently began airing in Virginia. A year after Donald Trump’s presidential campaign unleashed $37 million in transgender-themed issue ads against Democratic rival Kamala Harris, Republicans are returning to the cultural flashpoint ahead of next month’s elections, including Virginia’s race for governor, and plan to highlight it again in the 2026 midterm contests. 'Where is our common sense?' Winsome Earle-Sears, Virginia’s Republican lieutenant governor, said in an interview when asked about transgender athletes competing in female sports. 'If I have to tell you that water is wet, we’ve got troubles.'"

From "Republicans Target Democrats Over Transgender Policies in This Year’s Races/Ahead of critical midterm elections, GOP revives culture war strategy used by Trump in 2024’s presidential campaign" (Wall Street Journal).

Here's that anti-Spanberger ad:

#VAGov: Dick Uihlein-funded group Restoration of America PAC is up on TV with this spot --

Female voiceover:

"Abigail Spanberger is as extreme as it gets..."

"She's apparently all in on a horrifying gender mutilation. An irreversible sterilization of children" pic.twitter.com/gD0ytXwUIn

— Medium Buying (@MediumBuying) October 14, 2025

What a terrible issue for Democrats! They can't seem to back away from it.

"Priceless crown of Empress Eugénie with 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds found broken in Paris."

Imagine a theft so big that you drop a thing like this in the getaway:

I'm reading "Louvre Museum Robbery: Priceless crown of Empress Eugénie with 1,354 diamonds and 56 emeralds found broken in Paris" (Economic Times).

Here in America, on the same day, we were disparaging royalty at our "No Kings" rallies. Many of the home-made signs relied on crown iconography....

So how do we feel about royalty these days? If you accept your little daughter in a getup like this....

... is it like letting your little son sport a swastika armband?