Sunrise — 7:07, 7:32, 7: 34.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"During the boy’s screen test, the director asked him to strip to his swimsuit. 'When they asked me to take off my shirt, I wasn’t comfortable..."

"I wasn’t prepared for that. I remember when he posed me with one foot against the wall, I would never stand like that. 'When I watch it now,' he said, 'I see how that son of a bitch sexualized me.' He told The Guardian that Visconti was 'the sort of cultural predator who would sacrifice anything or anyone for the work.'"

From "Bjorn Andresen, Reluctant ‘Most Beautiful Boy,’ Dies at 70/At 15, he played the muse to an ailing composer in Luchino Visconti’s film 'Death in Venice.' He later said he’d felt sexualized by the director" (NYT).

"Lee Anderson, Reform’s chief whip, suggested the return of the 'Invacar' — or invalid carriage — a small single-seater microcar that was distributed by the NHS for decades..."

"... after the Second World War. Anderson told a press conference hosted by the party: 'I remember back in the day if you were on disability and you wanted a car from the state, it was a blue three-wheeler, anybody remember those? What’s wrong with that? Let’s go back to that.' The cars were banned from British roads in 2003 for being too dangerous, after reports of them overturning and catching fire, and ministers ordered that all remaining cars be crushed. Anderson made the comments as he criticised the Motability scheme, which allows disabled people to get cars through the benefits system. Labour ministers are considering removing BMWs, Mercedes and other luxury cars from the scheme, which provides such premium brands to more than 40,000 benefits claimants...."

From "Bring back three-wheeled cars for disabled drivers, Reform urges/The chief whip, Lee Anderson, suggests return of ‘Invacars’, which were withdrawn on safety grounds, as part of a replacement of the Motability scheme" (London Times).

"Bobby’s doing the eulogy and in the middle of it, his older brother—of which he only has one, Joe Kennedy, former congressman from Massachusetts—starts cursing him and throwing a scene."

"In his mother’s funeral. This happened?! You were there? You witnessed it.... Talk about the physiological response in your body when this was happening."

Billy Bush was pressing Cheryl Hines about something she wrote about in her forthcoming book "Unscripted" (commission earned).

I only know one thing about Billy Bush — his "grab them by the pussy" conversation with Trump — and I have to suspect him of seeking similar attention when he tries to elicit details of the "physiological response in [Hine's] body."

But that's a side track. We need to pay attention to the scene Hines is describing — RFK Jr. heckled viciously as he's in the middle of delivering a eulogy for his mother:

 

Cheryl Hines answers:

"Why does it sound so much better to me when I know it's Rufus Wainwright?"

Said I, just now, seeing this:

This is getting ridiculous.

"True patriot love, that only US command"

Rufus Wainwright just a few minutes ago.pic.twitter.com/nrzvutKQcu

— Martyupnorth®- Unacceptable Fact Checker (@Martyupnorth_2) October 30, 2025

I love Rufus Wainwright, but I wasn't paying attention to the introduction. Last night, to me, he was just some guy singing the Canadian national anthem. 

"So how did The [London] Times, a pillar of quality British journalism since the 18th century, blow the story so badly?"

The question is asked, in "How a London newspaper botched a New York political story" (Semafor).

The answer is: hilariously. 

As the New York mayor’s race approaches, The Times of London has accelerated its push for more, and largely hostile, coverage of Mamdani. That campaign has been driven internally by Margi Conklin [who]... reached out to an email address the reporter believed belonged to the former mayor of New York.... 

Semafor reached out to a Gmail address our sources believed to be the one used by The Times.

“You are correct. It was me. The real Bill DeBlasio,” the person who controls the email address responded. The person didn’t respond to further questions, and phone calls to two numbers associated with the email address went unanswered....

Apparently, there's someone else named Bill DeBlasio.

I got to this story from here:

Sunrise — 6:54, 7:32.

Write about anything you want in the comments.

(The second photo is by Meade. I forgot my phone this morning, borrowed his for the very early shot, then left it to him.)

The South Korean band plays "YMCA" for Trump.

Omg the South Korean band is greeting Trump at the airport with YMCA. 😭

The ultimate sign of respect. pic.twitter.com/Up1DvTcYUO

— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) October 29, 2025

About that talus cone and the fossilized tooth plaque....

I'm reading "10,000 Tales From a 17th-Century Crypt/In Milan, bones that piled under a hospital over a half-century shed light on the health and habits of some of the Renaissance era’s most impoverished people" (NYT).

The burial vaults formed a sort of subterranean potter’s field. After a heavy granite lid was removed from one of the square holes in the church floor, bodies would be dropped into a vault of the brick-lined tombs. Over time, the corpses accumulated and formed a funnel-shaped pile, called a talus cone. These pyramids of remains grew over time, widening at the base and tapering to a point at the top. When a talus cone reached the ceiling and could not hold more bodies, a new underground vault would be used....

"It is especially amusing to hear progressives, the principal creators of the watery Caesarism of today’s presidency, sorrowfully describing Trump’s ballroom..."

"... as discordant with the White House’s proper modesty. They should worry less about the president’s residential immodesty and more about his anti-constitutional immodesty.

Writes George Will, in "The choreographed fakery of American politics: East Wing edition/Trump’s residential immodesty is nothing compared with his anti-constitutional immodesty" (WaPo).

I wondered if anyone had written "watery Caesarism" before. It sounds like a bad salad. A real salad, not a word salad. Don't put the dressing on until you're about to eat it. Anyway, "watery Caesarism" did turn up on a few old web pages, but — are you surprised? — they're all written by George Will!

1992: "Trouble is, most presidents are mediocre.

"Critics deride the most ambitious part of the program — flooding low Earth orbit with thousands of satellites to detect and take out adversaries’ missiles — as a fantasy..."

"... that will only destabilize the fragile international order that has prevented nuclear war for more than 70 years. 'Golden Dome could be the single most dangerous idea Trump has ever proposed, and that’s saying something,' Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Massachusetts), a member of the Armed Services Committee, said in an interview...."

I'm reading "Trump wants to build a trillion-dollar Golden Dome shield in space. Can it work?" (WaPo)(free-access link, because there are some good explanations and graphics)(That's the teaser headline from the front page because the headline on the main page is all caps).

Is Moulton saying we need to keep ourselves vulnerable so other countries will feel better about the balance of power? To install a highly effective defense "will only destabilize the fragile international order." Only?! Come on, Moulton, you can't mean what you are saying!

"I think the doom is coming primarily from women in their 20s and early 30s who would historically be looking to marry or to have children."

"And the exhaustion and the sense of pessimism is coming from not seeing a path forward to those things in the structures that have been presented as the traditional ways to approach both. And I don’t fault them for that."

Said Glynnis MacNicol, in "Why Is Marriage Less Attractive Than Ever? The era of relationship discontent" (NYT).

"I think with online dating — even in my experience of it — the gamification leaves you with this sense of, you know, I don’t like this one; I’ll move on to the next one.... Previously, there was no comparison. The only avenue to happiness and satisfaction was through marriage and motherhood. Anyone outside of that was the lonely spinster aunt in the attic.... And then you add to that, in a country that does not provide child care or much support for women who do want to be parents, you hear a lot of stories about that path in life and how punishing it is. And in comparison to the alternative, when the alternative for the first time in history is starting to look far more enjoyable, I think contributes to this sense of, well, what is the point of this?"

I'm giving this my old and seldom-used "paradox of choice" tag.

"His beefy tattooed arms and weathered face made him look like a live-action Popeye. He’s often styled in a dirty ball cap and ragged T-shirt...."

"... implying a sort of everyman machismo. It’s the kind of look that suggests (U.S. Senate candidate Graham) Platner could be the Democratic Party’s new great white hope — a working-class white man who can speak to class antagonism in an economically unequal electorate. There’s just one teensy-weensy problem. It turns out that friend-of-the-white-working-class had a Nazi tattoo. The tattoo resembles a Totenkopf, a well-known symbol of official Nazis, the Nazi-adjacent and people who just think that Nazi iconography is tough. The gist is that Platner got the tattoo in 2007 in Croatia when he was on leave with his fellow Marines. Platner has said that he didn’t know the symbol’s semiotics. He only knew that Marines get 'terrifying-looking' tattoos...."

Writes Tressie McMillan Cottom, in "A Nazi Tattoo Exposes Democrats’ Greatest Weakness" (NYT). I've made that a gift link so you can try to figure out what this "greatest weakness" is supposed to be. 

Sunrise — 7:04, 7:13, 7:18, 7:18, 7:30.

Write about anything you want in the comments.

Hurricane Melissa.

Hurricane Melissa continues to intensify right up to landfall, with some of the most prolific lightning bursts you’ll see in a hurricane’s core.

I’ve tracked every single Atlantic hurricane since 2015, and Melissa is easily the most insane one yet. pic.twitter.com/B07DrGpfpq

— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch) October 28, 2025

This footage from inside the eye of Category 5 Hurricane Melissa might be the most jaw-dropping video ever captured of a hurricane’s eye, showcasing the infamous “stadium effect." pic.twitter.com/AEhj2g2Ban

— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch) October 27, 2025

The Paisley Curse.

Brad Paisley has officially sung the national anthem for:

World Series Game 2 in 2017 (11 innings)
World Series Game 3 in 2018 (18 innings)
World Series Game 1 in 2024 (10 innings)
World Series Game 3 in 2025 (18 innings)

h/t @SarahWexler32 pic.twitter.com/cgaSEVcdSq

— MLB (@MLB) October 28, 2025

"There’s a silent minority of people out there who feel that Biden was taken advantage of, and most people don’t want to say it. Is that what you mean?"

The New Yorker's Isaac Chotiner asks Karine Jean-Pierre in an interview.

Jean-Pierre answers: "Let me just say, this is my experience that I’m speaking to, and what I saw. I just want to be very, very clear: on average. I just want to be clear: on average. Not from one interview, not from one debate. On average. I have heard from many, many people who were disappointed by the reaction of the Democratic Party. I have. I have. And these are citizens. These are people who vote."

Later in the interview, Chotiner says:

"Many of them say they can eat nothing but GariGarikun"/"If they can enjoy the last mouthful, it will be a special moment shared by them and their families."

I'm quoting a Japanese nurse and doctor who work in palliative care, quoted in "GariGarikun ice pop, a surprise hit among the terminally ill."

That's published in Asahi Shimbun, one of the largest newspapers in Japan, which I went to read this morning because I wanted to see how much Japanese people were enjoying the excellence of Shohei Ohtani in our World Series. But nothing about Ohtani is in the top 10 most-read stories over there. I had to scroll down the front page to find his name, and it was tucked away in the sports section, just the AP report, here.

Nearly dead people eating popsicles got more attention. It was the second-most-read article. Meanwhile, the top of the front page is dominated by Trump:

Which one of those things is not like the others? Abe, yes. But also "Bear roams central Morioka, fatal attacks elsewhere."

"Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder who has spent billions of his own money to raise the alarm about the dangers of climate change...

"... sought to tamp down the alarmism he said many people use to describe the effects of rising temperatures. Instead, he called for redirecting efforts toward improving lives in the developing world."

I'm reading "Bill Gates Says Climate Change ‘Will Not Lead to Humanity’s Demise’/In a memo, the Microsoft co-founder warned against climate alarmism and appears to have shifted some of his views about climate change" (NYT).

If only the "billions" he's spent alarming people had been spent directly "improving lives in the developing world." Is he now spending his billions advising the rest of us to putting our efforts into improving lives in the developing world? He's still investing in businesses premised on climate change. I can't unravel the complexities, but I don't like the way people have been manipulated into feeling immense anxiety about an imagined apocalypse. 

"Texas becomes the first state to allege that taking [Tylenol] while pregnant can cause autism, despite unsettled scientific evidence."

I'm reading "Texas AG Paxton files Tylenol lawsuit, taking cues from Trump, Kennedy" (WaPo)(free-access link).

Excerpt: "For decades, scientists have been studying whether acetaminophen is linked to autism and ADHD. But sorting out a connection has proved elusive, researchers say. For example, many pregnant individuals take acetaminophen to reduce a fever, which itself could affect a baby’s development, according to the FDA."

How mystifying is that? The rule should at least be against use when pregnant unless it is necessary to reduce fever that is high enough to affect the development of the unborn child — a rule to be applied by doctors.

By the way: "pregnant individuals."

Sunrise — 6:53, 7:12, 7:43.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments.

"I think the people wouldn't like that. It's too cute. It wouldn't be right."

Said Trump, accepting the theory that he could run for a 3rd term by winning as the vice presidential candidate under a presidential candidate who would resign after winning. "Yeah, I'd be allowed to do that."

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A post shared by Fox News (@foxnews)

ADDED: I love the poker face on Marco Rubio. He must assume he'd be the winning presidential candidate in the "cute" scenario. Would I do it, if asked? Would I resign, if elected cutely?

"On a recent evening in the north of Iran’s capital of Tehran, a young woman with long hair fashioned into a high ponytail hopped onto a motorcycle behind a male companion."

Not far away, two other young women smoked cigarettes together on a sidewalk, one with her hair cascading down her back, the other wearing a loose T-shirt with elbow-length sleeves... . These urban scenes... illustrate how common it has recently become for Iranian women to flout the law, in place for over four decades, requiring they cover their hair and dress modestly in public."

From "Iranian women flout law on mandatory veiling as police curtail arrests/Defiance of hijab requirements has grown widespread across Iran. The government seems wary of cracking down, fearing unrest. But conservatives haven’t given up" (WaPo).

"Donald Trump Has Broken the Progressive Ratchet."

Writes Rich Lowrey at The National Review.

How does the ratchet work? It begins with small, unobjectionable, or perhaps even salutary steps, coupled with assurances that potential downsides or extreme outcomes will never come about. Then, over time, incremental moves are made in the same direction until the unreasonable policy that we’d been assured would never happen is entrenched reality.... Trump has yanked the other way so far on these ratchet issues that it’s not clear when or how the left can get them back to the status quo ante.

Don't his antagonists like to think everything he could do on his own with presidential power the next Democratic President can just undo? But not so long ago, they thought that what their Presidents had done could not be undone? That was the ratchet theory. 

"[President John Quincy] Adams had very little to do save work. He had decided to follow Monroe’s example of accepting no social invitations..."

"... lest he give offense to whomever he refused. Nor did he attend political events or even harmless functions. Declining an invitation by the Maryland Department of Agriculture to attend a cattle show, Adams reflected that he ought not 'set a precedent for being claimed as an article of exhibit for all the cattle-shows throughout the nation.' Occasionally he attended lectures, such as one on 'the organ of amativeness' —the penis—which he found 'more indelicate than philosophical.' But Adams’ life was confined almost entirely to the White House; his daily round was much more dull and routine than it had been when he was secretary of state."

I'm reading "John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit" by James Traub (page 320)(commission earned).

I see (with the help of Grok) that John Quincy Adams wrote this in his diary for June 8, 1825:

"Senate Democrats have now voted 12 times to not fund the food stamp program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)."

"Bottom line, the well has run dry. At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01. We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats. They can continue to hold out for healthcare for illegal aliens and gender mutilation procedures or reopen the government so mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive critical nutrition assistance."

So it says at the official USDA website, quoted in "USDA blames Democrats for potential SNAP benefits lapse in new message: 'The well has run dry'/The federal agency's website features a banner that says no benefits will be issued on Nov. 1" (NBC News).

Gender mutilation procedures! The Democrats say that what they are fighting for is to keep health insurance premiums from doubling. It's a shame the issues are so confusing. We're talking about millions of ordinary people — 43 million — facing loss of food stamps. That's so much raw anxiety. So elemental. How are they supposed to begin to think about complicated politics? By getting upset about transgender people and immigrants taking their money?!

Washington itself "dwarfs" the original White House — I think the solution is symmetry.

Link.

My symmetry solution: Build up the West Wing into the size of the new East Wing. 

The presidential complex really should be that large. Once there is symmetry in the wings, the iconic building in the center will be the focus of attention and the 2 hulks on either side will blend into the background that is all of Washington D.C. — a city full of hulkingly large buildings.

The West and East Wings will provide a transition from the brutal city. They will loom in our peripheral vision as we gaze at the Executive Residence —  the building that has always been the only building we see in our mind when we think of the White House.

I'll bet you think the Oval Office is in that building. It's not! It's in the West Wing. So take care with the demolition work when you undertake Project Symmetry. And by "you," I mean Mr. Donald Trump! Because the way to clinch the argument that the East Wing project is good is to use your building prowess in pursuit of proportionality. 

Sunrise — 7:00, 7:18, 7:27, 7:29.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

And thanks to everyone who supports this blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse link.

I only have 3 months left before I fall off a cliff.

Here's this character Dr. Peter Attia, "an innovator in longevity medicine," platformed on "60 Minutes," declaring:

"At 75, both men and women fall off a cliff.... At the population level, it's unmistakable what happens at the age of 75."

"If spun correctly, a dog’s difficult past can be a selling point. 'People want a dog that has an incredible story, that’s really been saved from something terrible'..."

"... [Heather Hall, the director of One Tail at a Time-West Texas] told me. 'Who wants an eighty-pound black pit bull? Well, we can make you want them, because that’s a really incredible dog that was tied up on an oil rig for four weeks and then fed by two different crews and then got bit by a rattlesnake and abandoned at the vet. Now he can be your heroic save story.' (She later told me that this example was not hypothetical and that the dog is now living happily in Portland.)"

From "The Airlift Operation That Has Transformed Pet Adoption/Euthanasia in an under-equipped shelter used to be the fate of many dogs in Texas. Then chartered planes started bringing them North" (The New Yorker).

"Trump joins a long list of presidents who have left their imprint on the White House. Theodore Roosevelt replaced greenhouses to construct the West Wing."

"William Howard Taft constructed the first Oval Office in 1909. Richard M. Nixon converted a swimming pool into the press briefing room in 1970. The modern East Wing wasn’t even built until World War II to cover up an underground bunker. Harry S. Truman gutted the White House interior and added the balcony that bears his name. Purists decried it. Now it’s a hallmark. The White House cannot simply be a museum to the past. Like America, it must evolve with the times to maintain its greatness. Strong leaders reject calcification. In that way, Trump’s undertaking is a shot across the bow at NIMBYs everywhere."

Writes The Editorial Board of The Washington Post, in "In defense of the White House ballroom Donald Trump vs. the NIMBYs."

And let me just put this here. Some members of the press would like a bigger White House briefing room:

Trump dances — Malaysian style.

🚨 EPIC! The moment President Trump notices the Malaysian dancers and JOINS IN!

It’s impossible NOT to love this.
pic.twitter.com/Rlbp4EqVCR

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 26, 2025

AND: Did Obama ever do anything comparable? There was this moment in Argentina in 2016. A very different mood:

"Reckless and intense: we are headed straight to the point of the matter, and there is no time."

"This urgency, this wildness, the seeming unruliness of his style, which is echoed in the many abrupt twists and turns in the action toward the end of the chapters—the reader must be kept in a state of suspense until the next installment—runs against something else, something heavier and slower, a patiently insistent question that is related to everything that is happening: What are we living for?"

Writes the great novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard, in "The Light of 'The Brothers Karamazov'/Although Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote with wildness and urgency, he patiently insisted on asking an essential question: What are we living for?" (The New Yorker).

Dostoyevsky was rushing because he was writing installments and needed the money. His wife observed

I'm surprised at the NYT headline "U.S. and Chinese Officials Reach Framework of a Trade Deal."

The front page teaser under the headline on the home page is "Negotiators announced they had preliminarily agreed on several issues ahead of an expected meeting between President Trump and Xi Jinping this week."

So they say they've done something. Have they? And it's only "preliminary" and "on several issues." Is the headline supported? It got me excited, but then I felt a little conned. 

Anyway... I hope things go well.

"If the White House must be remade, let there be a plan; let it be debated; let the financing be transparent and free of kickbacks and corruption."

"It isn’t complicated, and it’s the very principle at the heart of the American Revolution: following rules is not weakness.... Architecture embodies values; it is not merely a receptacle of them. Simple proportions and human-scale spaces don’t just suggest the spirit of a democratic nation. They are that spirit in three dimensions, with doors and windows. Reverence for the past, and reluctance to destroy until the risks of destruction are fully known, is not timidity but wisdom, in architecture as in life. To conserve, after all, is the essence of conservatism. The shock that images of the destruction provoke—the grief so many have felt—is not an overreaction to the loss of a beloved building. It is a recognition of something deeper: the central values of democracy being demolished before our eyes. Now we do not only sense it. We see it."

Writes Adam Gopnik, at the end of his New Yorker essay, "Why Trump Tore Down the East Wing/The act of destruction is precisely the point: a kind of performance piece meant to display Trump’s arbitrary power over the Presidency, including its physical seat."

Reverence for the past and reluctance to destroy until the risks of destruction are fully known — but is that your general principle? If it is, you are a committed conservative. 

***

As long as we're talking about rules... the traditional rules of punctuation would reject those those commas after "the past" and "fully known." It's easy to see if you put it this way: Reverence and reluctance is not timidity. Not: Reverence, and reluctance, is not timidity. And, obviously, "is" is wrong! I suspect that at one point the sentence was "Reverence for the past — along with reluctance to destroy until the risks of destruction are fully known — is not timidity but wisdom, in architecture as in life." 

Punctuation and grammar embody values; they are not merely a receptacle of them. I remember when the great tradition of The New Yorker was scrupulously tending to these matters. Is my grief an overreaction to the loss of a beloved publishing tradition?