At the Saturday Night Café...

 ... you can talk about whatever you want.

No sunrise photos today. We stayed off the roads and, from inside, watched the snow fall.

"I write fiction because it’s a way of making statements I can disown, and I write plays because dialogue is the most respectable way of contradicting myself."

Said Tom Stoppard, quoted in "Sir Tom Stoppard obituary: playful and prolific playwright/A popular and exotic figure, Stoppard was known for his dandyish appearance as well as his wit and eloquence" (London Times).

Goodbye to a great playwright. Stoppard was 88. We were blown away when we saw "Travesties" at the American Players Theater a few years ago.

[In] Travesties (1975)... Lenin, the Dadaist Tristan Tzara and James Joyce meet in Zurich during the First World War and become involved in a production of The Importance of Being Earnest.

APT also produced "The Importance of Being Earnest," so we took that in, then returned to see "Travesties" again. I think that may have been the best theatrical production I've seen in my entire life. 
 

I've also seen "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" (based on "Hamlet") and "Arcadia," both at APT. And I saw his last play "Leopoldstadt," in New York City. If you click on my "Tom Stoppard" tag you'll see what I think are some interesting details. 

"I’ve come to lean on the daily mechanics of the kitchen for much-needed meditation, and on my kitchen meditation — if it can be called that — for the energy to cook...."

"It’s exactly what makes daily cooking so demanding — the volatility of the materials, metal pans that conduct frighteningly high heat, the perishability of vegetables and meat and milk — that shapes it into such good material for noticing.... Find a time when the sun is low and, without self-censure, take an inquisitive inventory of the flotsam beneath your kitchen table. Mine is an elaborate collage. There are two kinds of beans.... There’s a chunk of sourdough bread. There’s a chink off a chestnut, a piece of apple core, some leaves, a coil of thin white thread. Beneath my table is a topographic model of my family’s life, painted in golden light: the beans and leaves and string that we’ve shelled and tracked in and with which we’ve sewed. It looks, suddenly, too sweet to alter, too poignant to sweep up. Who dropped the bread and decided, absorbed in conversation, to leave it there?"

Writes Tamar Adler, in "My Antidote to Early Evening Despair" (NYT), which is adapted from her book "Feast on Your Life: Kitchen Meditations for Every Day" (commission earned).

I liked that romanticizing of detritus. And the notion of kitchen meditation is a good counterbalance to the TikTok trend of de-normalizing cooking:

"... the baby is fat... "

Chris, who reads biographies of U.S. Presidents, texts me this photo from "The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism" by Doris Kearns Goodwin (commission earned).

If your first baby was "frail from birth" and died at 14 months, you too would experience joy to see the new baby is actively fat. Taft grew to a heft of 340 pounds, our fattest President by far.

Chris also sends this photograph he took, in case you are wondering what Christmas decorations look like in Austin:

"To all Airlines, Pilots, Drug Dealers, and Human Traffickers, please consider THE AIRSPACE ABOVE AND SURROUNDING VENEZUELA TO BE CLOSED IN ITS ENTIRETY."

Writes Donald J. Trump, on X, thanking us for our attention to this matter.

"Mr. Trump is aware of the criticism that his ballroom plans are too large."

"He told a group of donors to the project last month that he didn’t want the new ballroom to 'dwarf anything.' But at the same event, in discussing related plans to construct a Triumphal Arch, Mr. Trump showed small, medium and large options. 'I happen to think the large looks by far the best,' he said.... 'We started with a much smaller building, and then I realized, we have the land, let’s do it right,' Mr. Trump said recently to donor... Speaking of the design plans for the new ballroom, Mr. Trump has said that he likes to see different proposals, but that he ultimately has the final say. 'I consider myself an important designer,' Mr. Trump has said."

From "Inside Trump’s Push to Make the White House Ballroom as Big as Possible/President Trump’s ever-growing vision has caused tension with contractors. His architect has taken a step back as the president personally manages the project" (NYT).

Sunrise — 6:43, 7:12, 7:14.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"Stuff that we would normally have stolen was there in profusion."

My favorite sentence in "Becoming Led Zeppelin," a documentary playing on Netflix — about 39 minutes in.

"Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person?"

Trump just made this reporter reevaluate her life 😂

Q: "Why do you blame the Biden Admin?"

Trump: "Because they let them in. Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? And you're just asking questions because you're a stupid person!" 💀 pic.twitter.com/s97shKW0yd

— Sara Rose 🇺🇸🌹 (@saras76) November 28, 2025

"Why do you blame the Biden Admin?"/"Because they let them in. Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? And you're just asking questions because you're a stupid person!"

Presented for your contemplation, not to indicate my approval (or disapproval!).

***

I'm giving this my "civility bullshit" tag because the topic of "civility bullshit" is in play. That is, Trump doesn't fall for civility bullshit. You can't persuade him to be civil because he (correctly) observes that the other side will not be civil toward him and he will not unilaterally disarm. I think his incivility invariably — or almost invariably — comes only after someone has shown incivility toward him. 

I'm paranoid about why this book isn't available at Amazon (as far as I can tell).

It's "Tales of Paranoia," R. Crumb's first comic book in 23 years. 

I'm linking to Fantagraphics, where I bought it. I've read it and will reread it. Crumb tells the story of his own paranoia and maintains — at age 80+ — excellent dedication to detailed drawings, even with the difficult task of drawing his own face many many times with all sorts of different emotions, mostly in the range of fear and anxiety.

A glimpse, which will perhaps inspire you to paranoia about why you can't get this book from Amazon:

"[T]he '30-book limit' is a mistake. This misunderstanding likely originated from my comment, where I mentioned that I personally was left with about 30 books..."

"... after tidying my own collection. This comment was exaggerated over time, and somehow turned into the idea that I had created a 'rule' limiting books to 30.... The main focus is always on choosing what sparks joy for you. Therefore, whether the result is 30 books or 100 books, it is fine.... I actually have more than 30 books on my shelves now, partly because I now have a larger bookshelf than I did back then...."

Says Marie Kondo, quoted in "Marie Kondo Likes Book Covers That Feel 'Smooth and Silky'/'It’s all about the texture'..." (NYT).

I like the idea that part of what makes a book qualify for keeping in your collection is how it feels as an object.

"Dressed in a strange tuxedo/tutu combination with the blanched face of a heroin addict, he opens with a menacing prowl round the empty stage, pausing to stare contemptuously at the audience while eating a banana."

My favorite sentence in "A Midsummer Night’s Dream review — ruined by a needlessly shocking finale/Headlong Theatre’s production turns the Bard’s tricksy comedy into a pitch black ballet-themed spectacle full of spite and horror" (London Times).

"Think of all the lost boys who have disappeared into their rooms, only to return as something unrecognizable, like a modern changeling."

That's my favorite sentence in "Your Phone Isn’t a Drug. It’s a Portal to the Otherworld" (NYT).

I'd make that a gift link but I'm out of them, but I think you can figure it out..

Sunrise — 6:40, 7:02, 7:27.

The comments section is an open thread.

Happy Thanksgiving!

"During the press conference on Thursday, Pirro said the two Guardsmen were sworn in 24 hours prior to being shot."

"A joint task force spokesperson later said the two Guard members were deputized less than 24 hours before the shooting to 'maintain their status to conduct presence patrols,' according to a joint task force spokesperson."

From "What we know about the 2 National Guard members shot near White House/The two soldiers are still in critical condition" (ABC New).

Pirro = Jeanine Pirro, U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

"The victims were identified as 20-year-old Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom and 24-year-old U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe."

The quoted text gives the impression that Beckstrom and Wolfe were under-prepared but I don't think that impression is correct. I think the swearing in was the activation for this immediate mission. Both had been in the National Guard for years.

UPDATE: I'm just hearing President Trump announce that Sarah Beckstrom has died.

Surf's up for a bleak sunrise over Lake Mendota, 2 mornings before the big snow.

Video by Meade.

Chitchat about swifts by Althouse.

More about swifts:

What if Arlo Guthrie had sung "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" and Gordon Lightfoot had sung "Alice's Restaurant"?

The Hey Man does the necessary impersonations:

"Of all the genres of unsatisfying nonfiction, books by Supreme Court Justices may be at the top of the heap."

"One subset is the memoir that focusses on the Justice’s early life, ending before confirmation. Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s 'My Beloved World,' Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s 'Lovely One,' and Justice Clarence Thomas’s 'My Grandfather’s Son' are examples. These can be gripping narratives and helpful to understanding a Justice’s formative years, but by definition they omit what readers most want to know: what the Justice did on the Court and why she did it. Another category is the learned disquisition on the law, as in Justice Neil Gorsuch’s 'A Republic, If You Can Keep It' and Justice Stephen Breyer’s 'Reading the Constitution.' These, too, fall short of readers’ hopes, for the simple reason that the authors resist any temptation to rule and tell. They write about their understanding of the law and the judicial process, but when it comes to their dealings with colleagues they remain resolutely circumspect. Barrett’s book is a mashup of the two forms: memoir and personal reflection are interlaced with explanations of legal doctrine. (Her grandmother’s unwritten recipe for shrimp remoulade provides a jumping-off point for discussing the benefits of a written constitution: 'Unwritten constitutions, like unwritten recipes, can be hard to pin down.')"

Writes Ruth Marcus, in "How the Supreme Court Defines Liberty/Recent memoirs by the Justices reveal how a new vision of restraint has led to radical outcomes" (The New Yorker).

This definitely gets my "unread books" tag (though I did read, a blog about, "My Grandfather's Son"). 

Marcus gives the Justices credit for writing "about their understanding of the law," but do they? How could they really?

Here's my old post "What I really think about the Clarence Thomas book" (from October 2007). I sort of "live-blogged" my reading of that book, and along the way, I was "accused both of fawning over him and of obsessively hating him," but, I said:

"[T]he suspect in custody is a foreigner who entered our country from Afghanistan, a hellhole on earth. He was flown in by the Biden administration..."

"... in September 2021 on those infamous flights that everybody was talking about. Nobody knew who was coming in. Nobody knew anything about it. His status was extended under legislation signed by President Biden, a disastrous president, the worst in the history of our country.... The last administration let in 20 million unknown and unvetted foreigners.... [H]undreds of thousands of Somalians are... ripping apart that once great state [Minnesota]. Billions of dollars are lost and gangs of Somalians come from a country that doesn't even have a government, no laws, no water, no military, no nothing. As their representatives in our country preach to us about our Constitution and how our country is no good.... We must now re-examine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden. And we must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country who does not belong here or add benefit to our country. If they can't love our country, we don't want them...."

Said President Trump, last night:

"Yes, there are important reasons to cut ties with certain people intentionally. But we’re not just cutting people off..."

"... we’re letting our closest relationships disintegrate through neglect, busyness and an unwillingness to move past the things that bother us. You may think it’s better for your mental health to slowly distance yourself from someone you have difficulties with, but, in the long run, it will likely have a devastating impact on your happiness and well-being.... Accepting what you can’t change doesn’t mean you’re endorsing their beliefs — it simply means doing everything you can, right now, to embrace the positives and look past the negatives. We’re fortunate that some of the biggest regrets of older people — not expressing love, not seeking forgiveness, not telling those who matter how they feel — are regrets that we can avoid.... The only time it’s too late to apologize or ask for forgiveness is when somebody is no longer here...."

Write Karl Pillemer, a professor of human development at Cornell, and Mel Robbins, author of “The Let Them Theory,” in "Life Is Too Short to Fight With Your Family" (NYT).

The comments are stuff like "Life is too short to waste time on family members who bring nothing positive to your life," "Stop trying to make people feel guilty for choosing to take care of themselves," and, of course, "This might be good advice in normal times, but not in the age of trump. Bye bye trump supporting family members."

AND: That's obviously a Thanksgiving op-ed, so happy Thanksgiving. Are you celebrating in the old-timey style with a big group of family? If not, is it your choice, somebody else's choice, or no choice at all?

The snowy woods in a dark sunrise.

Video by Meade, who went out when I said no. It was really windy!

Write about what you want in the comments.

"The animal that shot the two National Guardsmen, with both being critically wounded, and now in two separate hospitals, is also severely wounded..."

"... but regardless, will pay a very steep price. God bless our Great National Guard, and all of our Military and Law Enforcement. These are truly Great People. I, as President of the United States, and everyone associated with the Office of the Presidency, am with you!"

Writes President Trump, on Truth Social.

From the NYT updates: "Two members of the National Guard were shot near the White House on Wednesday afternoon.... A suspect was in custody, according to the D.C. police, and President Trump said the attacker had also been shot. Dozens of emergency responders and police vehicles were amassed at the corner of 17th and I Streets NW near the entrance of a hotel, just northwest of the White House...."

UPDATE: The 2 National Guardsmen have died. BUT: I am seeing that the report of death, which came from the Governor of West Virginia, is not true.

UPDATE 2: CNN: "The FBI believes it has identified the suspect, multiple law enforcement officials briefed on the matter tell CNN. The initial identification matches a man from Washington state who appears to have immigrated from Afghanistan in August 2021, they said."

"A judge in Georgia dismissed the last pending criminal prosecution against President Trump on Wednesday..."

"... effectively ending efforts to hold him criminally responsible for attempts to overturn the 2020 election.... A motion seeking to end the prosecution was filed Wednesday morning by Pete Skandalakis, the executive director of the state’s nonpartisan prosecutor council. The case was once seen as one of the most serious legal threats to Mr. Trump, because state criminal convictions are not subject to presidential pardons. Mr. Skandalakis... shredded the case originally brought by Fani T. Willis.... He asserted that 'it is not illegal to question or challenge election results.'... He added that the idea of pursuing a case against a sitting president in Georgia was impractical...."

From "Judge Dismisses Georgia Election Interference Case Against Trump/The president has now seen three criminal cases against him dissolve since he was re-elected last year" (NYT).

This was the case that produced the magnificent mugshot that Trump has from the start used to his advantage.

"... a conflict between architectural norms and Trump’s grandiose aesthetic, according to four people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations."

I'm trying to read this WaPo article, "Trump wants a bigger White House ballroom. His architect disagrees/The president and James McCrery had argued in recent weeks over the project’s size, with Trump pushing him to expand the ballroom" (free link).

I wonder who the 4 sources are and how intensely Trump and the architect have disagreed. Is it a friendly back-and-forth about proportion and aesthetics or is there raging and threatening to stomp off and tell all?

And I wonder what size the architect thinks is right. We're told Trump wants a 90,000-square-foot building but not what the architect has been arguing for. We are told there's a "general architectural rule" that an addition shouldn't "overshadow" the main building and the executive mansion is 55,000 square feet. But what's the specific position the architect is taking? 90 is so huge, but what is the proposed ensmallment?

Fault me if you like, but I went over to Grok and prompted: "Assume I want to write a fancy-schmancy essay interweaving the Trump and the architect story with ideas from the Ibsen play 'The Master Builder.' Help me out!"

From Grok's answer (which spoils the ending of the play):

"[I]t is now clearly established that I cannot be prosecuted for saying, in this essay, 'Members of the military have not only the right, but the obligation, to refuse illegal orders.'"

"Nor could I be prosecuted for stating, as I also have, that the orders to kill suspected drug smugglers are illegal. The First Amendment protects all such statements. Indeed, it protects explicit calls for illegal conduct unless the speech is both intended and likely to incite imminent illegality, a standard rarely met, and one not even approached by Senator Kelly’s words...."

Writes David Cole, in "Mark Kelly Is Being Investigated for Telling the Truth" (NYT)(gift link, so you can read the whole thing, including the part that rejects the idea that Kelly has less free speech because he's a retired member of the military).

"Who'd want to harm this beautiful bird?"

Sorry but we’ll never have this much fun ever again
pic.twitter.com/959k1V1Gky

— Arynne Wexler (@ArynneWexler) November 25, 2025

I love Trump's body language, and Melania seems genuinely amused.

"The people around him are similar to Biden’s aides. They would talk as if we’re living in a little bit of a fantasy world."

"Trump, in that way, with the help of his aides and his doctors have created this fiction about his health to hide the hard, cold truth that he is 79 and one of the oldest people to ever occupy the Oval Office.”

Said political historian Matthew Dallek, quoted in "Shorter Days, Signs of Fatigue: Trump Faces Realities of Aging in Office/President Trump has always used his stamina and energy as a political strength. But that image is getting harder for him to sustain" (NYT).

Is this even news at all? What's news to me and why I'm blogging this is that the NYT is displayed at the top of the home page as if it's the top news story of the day:

"At the moment the power balance between somebody working in prostitution and the punter is very much in the punter's favour..."

"... and quite often punters use that in order to exploit women's vulnerabilities more. 'So they'll say to them "you know if you don't do what I say I'll tell the police about you" and so on, whereas it turns around in the Nordic model. The women in prostitution can say to the punter: "No I'm not going to comply with that request, and I can call the police on you." It doesn't sound like a lot but that is a subtle power shift which I think gives more security and more safety to those working in prostitution.'"

Said Independent MSP Ash Regan, quoted in "'I would love to be doing this in my 60s' - the debate over selling sex in Scotland" (BBC).

The quote in the headline is from someone called Porcelain Victoria, who "says she started selling sex when she was 18 and used it as a way to escape an abusive household": "I plan to do this until I can't, basically. I would love to be doing this in my 60s. My plan is to hopefully semi-retire and become a counsellor helping couples and solo people figure out their sexuality when it comes to kinks and fetishes."

I had to look up "punter."

"I do not find the complainant was as alarmed and distressed as they portrayed themselves to be."

Said District Judge Briony Clarke, quoted in "Graham Linehan cleared of harassing trans campaigner/The Father Ted co-creator was found guilty of criminal damage after smashing the phone of activist Sophia Brooks" (London Times).

The comedy writer, 57, was appearing at Westminster magistrates’ over allegations he had waged a social media campaign against [transgender campaigner Sophia] Brooks between October 11 and October 27, 2024. He posted about her more than 20 times on the social media platform X in which he used terms such as “sociopath”, “psycho”, “domestic terrorist” and “groomer”, the court heard. 

Linehan's reaction: "There are a group of dangerous men who are determined to bully women and girls, and to misuse the courts and police in furtherance of a misogynistic agenda. I’m proud to have stood up to them and I will continue to do so."

I wanted to blog this using a tweet from Lineham, but he tweets so much that I gave up scrolling looking for something from yesterday. Here's a search of his feed limited to the name "Sophia Brooks." To select one thing:

This was all very polite legal speak for “Brooks is a liar”. But as I said during the trial, people who are capable of lying about their sex will lie about anything https://t.co/Fz29yir4fG

— Graham Linehan (@Glinner) November 25, 2025

I became interested in Lineham's legal ordeal when he appeared on Joe Rogan's show, blogged here, with embedded video of the whole show.

Sunrise — 6:42, 7:04 — and midday — 1:52.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"A British swimmer sustained by bananas and painkillers has become the first person to circumnavigate Hong Kong’s largest island..."

"... a distance equivalent to swimming across the Channel and back again. Simon Holliday, 46, from Ashford in Kent, completed the 40.3-mile circuit of Lantau Island on Friday in 20 hours 57 minutes. Half an hour later, he was followed by Edie Hu of the United States, the first woman to make the swim. They did not wear wetsuits — marathon swim rules mean they are not allowed in waters above 20C — so the chill was one of their biggest challenges.... The three swimmers were followed by a support team in two boats and two kayaks. They were fed in the water every 45 minutes with snacks such as chocolate, jelly babies and bananas."

From "British man is first to swim round Hong Kong’s biggest island/Simon Holliday won the 40-mile race round Lantau — the equivalent of swimming the Channel and back — as competitors battled tides, hallucinations and cramp" (London Times).

20C = 68° Fahrenheit.

A quote from Hu (the woman): "I started getting a little loopy. I was getting sleepy and actually dozing off [in the water].

CNN insanity.

My screenshot from X, showing the Grok fact check that's easy to display:

 

And here's the whole video clip that should have any sane person saying That can't be right:

Come on fathers don't hesitate/Send your sons off before it's too late.

I'm reading "Army Chief Ignites Uproar After Saying France Must ‘Accept Losing Our Children’/The furor erupted as President Emmanuel Macron is expected to present a plan for paid, voluntary military service to bolster the armed forces against the threat from Russia" (NYT):

The army chief, Gen. Fabien Mandon, who took over as chief of staff in September, told mayors gathered in Paris from across France last week that they must become the messengers of a new French resolve on an unstable European continent.

What is needed, he said, is “the spirit that accepts that we will have to suffer to protect what we are.” If France “wavers because we are not ready to accept losing our children,” then “we are, indeed, at risk,” he told the mayors, evoking the growing threat from Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Made me think of this:

Be the Zeppo.

I thought Variety's "100 Best Comedy Movies of All Time" was pretty well done, but what I liked best about it was the way it inspired me to write one of my unwritten books. Look:

To my mind, this still from the movie establishes a proposition I've long been aware of: Zeppo was the funniest Marx Brother. For the uninitiated: Zeppo is second from the left. 

Now, for those of you who don't want to read anything written by A.I., it's time to leave. Here's the prompt I took to Grok: "Is it true that in the opinion of those whose opinion counts most Zeppo was the funniest Marx Brother?"

The answer is yes.

First, Groucho said it, repeatedly. Grok writes: "He described Zeppo as having the best natural comic timing and delivery in real life, a dry, deadpan wit that killed in a room, but that Zeppo simply didn’t care enough about performing to push himself forward on screen. Groucho claimed Zeppo could have been the breakout star if he’d wanted it."

Then there was George S. Kaufman, co-writer of "The Cocoanuts" and "Animal Crackers," who "reportedly said Zeppo was the funniest of the brothers in rehearsals and in person." Other authorities who said the same thing included Steve Allen, Woody Allen, and Billy Crystal.

So Zeppo was given the “straight man/romantic lead” role until after "Duck Soup" he quit movies altogether and "became a successful theatrical agent and inventor (he held patents related to the cardiac clamp used in open-heart surgery)."

I was motivated to say: "If the other brothers saw him as the funniest, they had something to strive to excel. Zeppo was maximizing the comedy by performing that role and he didn't have the motivation to excel anyone. He was secure."

Skimming Grok's somewhat lengthy mirroring of what I'd just said, I got a new idea: "I want to expand this into a larger life lesson and write a self-help book — in the manner of 'Let Them' — that would be titled 'Be the Zeppo.'"

1. By "write a self-help book," I meant write a blog post that would earn the tag "Unwritten Books," that is, the blog post you are reading now.

2. Of course, Grok immediately outlined this book for me, replete with subtitle options — like "The Power of Radical Non-Competition" — and 10 chapters — including "The 'Anything Further, Father?' Principle/One perfectly timed sentence beats a ten-minute monologue. The power of strategic silence."

3. Here, you can read everything Grok said.

4. Here's Mel Robbins, the author of "The Let Them Theory," quickly explaining the whole book to Bill Maher. 

5. Anything further?

Sunrise — 6:42, 7:03.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"A federal judge dismissed the indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday."

"The judge found that the appointment of interim US Attorney Lindsey Halligan in Alexandria, Virginia, was invalid. Trump handpicked Halligan for the role amid increasing pressure to bring criminal cases against his political enemies, including Comey and James...."

CNN reports.

"Pentagon says it’s investigating Sen. Mark Kelly for video urging troops to defy ‘illegal orders.'"

AP reports.

In its statement, the Pentagon suggested that Kelly’s statements in the video interfered with the “loyalty, morale, or good order and discipline of the armed forces” by citing the federal law that prohibits such actions. “A thorough review of these allegations has been initiated to determine further actions, which may include recall to active duty for court-martial proceedings or administrative measures,” the statement said.

Here's the controversial video: 

"Well, they tell me of a pie up in the sky/Waiting for me when I die/But between the day you're born and when you die/They never seem to hear even your cry..."

Goodbye to Jimmy Cliff, who was 81.

ADDED: "I can see all obstacles in my way...."

"[I]t has become nearly impossible to attend a Democratic political event without encountering a 'creator hour,' an influencer briefing or a lineup of one-on-one interviews with Substackers and independent podcasters...."

"Are Democrats on par with Republicans in the digital media space? Not yet. The gap remains wide, according to audience numbers and interviews with creators and strategists. Republicans dismiss their efforts as phony. 'What they need to stop doing is trying to copy our homework and go invent something of their own,' said CJ Pearson, a conservative influencer and podcast host. 'If they do that, it’ll be a lot more authentic than whatever they’re doing right now.'... But even the friendly confines of liberal media can turn hostile. Creators who bring strong political opinions to interviews sometimes push Democrats harder than expected, said Kyle Tharp, author of a newsletter about politics and online influence.... Tharp predicted the creator class will wield even more power in the 2028 presidential campaign. 'Some of these campaigns are going to be handing them a bag of cash for an endorsement,' he said. 'People are really going to want some of these major Democratic talkers’ endorsements in the next campaign.'"

From "How Democrats are building their own digital media army/The 2024 election spurred Democrats to seek out podcasts and social media creators to spread their message and catch up with their Republican counterparts" (WaPo)(free link).

I'm suddenly remembering the "Authenticity" trend that seems to have peaked last August.

I think good social media emerges organically. Ask Joe Rogan. These top-down efforts are not going to produce the right influencer/influencee relationship. And I've been watching the Democratic Party try to do this since the 2004 campaign, when it coddled bloggers.

"Violence is necessary. Violence is a part of America’s culture. It is as American as cherry pie."

A quote from the subject of the NYT obituary "Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, Black Power Activist Known as H. Rap Brown, Dies at 82."

He died in prison, convicted of murder. But once: "With his trademark black beret and sunglasses, dexterous mind and imposing 6-foot-5 inch frame — 7 feet, with his Afro — he was a persuasive and charismatic figure to many, adept at rallying Black audiences to his cause while alarming many white listeners."

Other quotes in the article: "Black folk built America, and if it don’t come around, we’re gonna burn America down," "You’ve got to arm yourself. If you’re going to loot, loot yourself a gun store," and, referencing 5 days of rioting, “I don’t think you could articulate the sentiments of Black people any better than they just did in Detroit."

The NYT prints the full "n-word." Is it fit to print? I won't write it. But it is the second word of the 3-word title of the man's 1969 autobiography. The other 2 words are "Die."

Ankle monitors in the news.

1. "How a Sabotaged Ankle Monitor Ended Bolsonaro’s House Arrest/Shortly before he was expected to start serving a 27-year sentence, Brazil’s former president took a soldering iron to his tracking device" (NYT): "Mr. Bolsonaro, 70, wasn’t trying to flee, his sons, allies and lawyers said. Rather, he felt unwell because of his medications." This happened "days before he was expected to begin a 27-year prison sentence for trying to stage a coup." "A day before the ankle monitor episode, his lawyers had asked the court to let Mr. Bolsonaro serve his sentence at home because of health problems, which he attributes to complications from a stabbing attack in 2018. His poor health, which includes frequent attacks of hiccups and vomiting, 'makes his safe stay in a prison environment impossible,' his defense said on social media.... At a hearing on Sunday, Mr. Bolsonaro told the court he had burned the ankle monitor because his medications had caused 'hallucinations' and 'paranoia' that the device might be used to eavesdrop."

2. "'Slender Man' attacker Morgan Geyser found a day after cutting off monitoring bracelet" (CNN): "A woman who stabbed her sixth-grade classmate to win favor with a fictional internet character named 'Slender Man' more than a decade ago has been taken into custody, a day after cutting off her monitoring bracelet and leaving a group home where she’d been living, police said.... At age 15, Geyser pleaded guilty to a charge of attempted first-degree murder in a deal with prosecutors to be placed in a mental institution instead of serving jail time.... In January, a judge ordered she could be released from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute, where she spent nearly seven years.... Geyser is currently living at a group home in Madison, [Wisconsin] on the same street where she was last seen...."

3. "Innocent woman, 26, set alight on Chicago subway 'by serial criminal, 50' freed on ankle monitor by soft touch judge in horrific echo of Iryna Zarutska murder" (Daily Mail): "Cook County Judge Teresa Molina-Gonzalez (pictured) allowed Lawrence Reed, 50, to be released on an ankle monitor after he assaulted a social worker in August.... Reed is accused of setting fire to [Bethany MaGee, 26] around 9.24pm on Monday, which is outside of the hours he was allowed out of the house while on the ankle monitor."

4. "Charge against Melodee Buzzard’s mom dismissed, ankle monitor removed as FBI hunts for missing 9-year-old/Ashlee Buzzard no longer faces false imprisonment charge as FBI searches for 9-year-old Melodee" (Fox News): "... Brewer said Buzzard locked multiple deadbolts after he entered and appeared 'agitated and tense.' He testified that she sat across from him with a box cutter visible on a nearby tray. When he said he was uncomfortable and wanted to leave, he claimed she blocked the doorway and locked the front door.... The court... dismissed the felony charge for insufficient evidence and ended Buzzard’s pretrial supervision.... She is also no longer required to wear an ankle monitor."

"Is it really possible that big progress is being made in Peace Talks between Russia and Ukraine??? Don’t believe it until you see it..."

"... but something good just may be happening. GOD BLESS AMERICA."

Wrote Trump, on Truth Social, 4 minutes ago.

Sunrise — 6:45, 6:46, 6:54, 6:57.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

(The last photo is Meade's.)

Simultaneous sunrise.

By me:

"She works as a cocktail waitress, a go-go dancer, a racetrack stable hand and, for a long stint in Phoenix, a sex worker..."

"... sometimes out of a trailer. Drink and drugs soften life’s jagged edges and get her through the day: 'I found the perfect formula to work on was a mixture of Spañada wine, Cold Duck and Squirt poured over crushed ice. That and bennies, or as Jenny called them, whaaat crawses. The drink, though quite potent, went down like cherry soda, and when coupled with the speed, produced a loose capable vigor just made to order for the job. During a normal day I would make about three trips across the lot through the quivering airwaves to the Circle K in my pink halter to hoard ingredients for the precious punch.'"

From "Her Father Wrote ‘On the Road.’ She Lived Her Own Version. Jan Kerouac’s 1981 novel 'Baby Driver' chronicles a fearless and windblown life entirely distinct from her famous parent’s" (NYT).

That's a review, by Dwight Garner, of "Baby Driver" — which is getting reissued.

"In a conservative’s brain, psychedelics are not a drug. They are a medicine. In the old-school left psychedelic movement, they’re seen as a drug."

"That drug has healing properties, but it also has other properties that they celebrate that are not just medicine. I think what you might be seeing from mainstream blue communities is concern about looking like weirdo, hippie lefties if they support psychedelics. It also might be a commitment to mainstream medicine. It also could be, politically speaking, skepticism if conservatives like it...."

Said Kyrsten Sinema, quoted in "Kyrsten Sinema Is Ready for Her MAHA Turn/In a new interview, the one-time Democrat says the movement for psychedelic medicine should capitalize on the Trump administration" (Politico).

There's also this about her "ibogaine treatment" to deal with her mental distress over her grandmother’s dementia:

It's a good question, but it's easy to answer.

Good question pic.twitter.com/cgdRX8TW01

— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) November 23, 2025

I think the answer is in this logic:

Identity is in your feelings.

From that 1967 Clairol ad: "Why don't you try saying this out loud: 'If I've only one life, let me live it as a blonde.' If you get a surge when you say the words, you're a blonde at heart." And you are free to bleach your hair blonde so it affirms your inner feelings.

And by the way, the blondest blondes in American culture — Marilyn Monroe, Madonna, Debbie Harry — had to bleach their way to blondeness, and some classy writers have argued that they are more truly blonde — whatever that means! — than the natural blondes. 

"The smart need money; the rich want to seem smart; the staid seek adjacency to what Mr. Summers called 'life among the lucrative and louche'..."

"... and Mr. Epstein needed to wash his name using blue-chip people who could be forgiving about infractions against the less powerful. Each has some form of capital and seeks to trade. The business is laundering capital — money into prestige, prestige into fun, fun into intel, intel into money. Mr. Summers wrote to Mr. Epstein: 'U r wall st tough guy w intellectual curiosity.' Mr. Epstein replied: 'And you an interllectual with a Wall Street curiosity.'... Mr. Krauss sends his New Yorker article on militant atheism; Mr. Chomsky sends a multiparagraph reply; Mr. Epstein dashes off: 'I think religion plays a major positive role in many lives. . i dont like fanaticism on either side. . sorry.' This somehow leads to a suggestion that Mr. Krauss bring the actor Johnny Depp to Mr. Epstein’s private island. Again and again, scholarly types lower themselves to offer previews of their research or inquiries into Mr. Epstein’s 'ideas.'... The earnest scientists and scholars type neatly. The wealthy and powerful reply tersely, with misspellings, erratic spacing, stray commas...."

Writes Anand Giridharadas, in "How the Elite Behave When No One Is Watching: Inside the Epstein Emails" (NYT)(gift link, because there's lots of interesting stuff there).

"In Book X of The Republic, Plato excludes poets on the grounds that mimetic language can distort judgment and bring society to a collapse."

"As contemporary social systems increasingly rely on large language models (LLMs) in operational and decision-making pipelines, we observe a structurally similar failure mode: poetic formatting can reliably bypass alignment constraints. In this study, 20 manually curated adversarial poems (harmful requests reformulated in poetic form) achieved an average attack-success rate (ASR) of 62% across 25 frontier closed- and open-weight models, with some providers exceeding 90%. The evaluated models span across 9 providers: Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Deepseek, Qwen, Mistral AI, Meta, xAI, and Moonshot AI.... Our central hypothesis is that poetic form operates as a general-purpose jailbreak operator...."

From "Adversarial Poetry as a Universal Single-Turn Jailbreak Mechanism in Large Language Models."

I found that through this discussion at Metafilter, where somebody says "I do want to say the 'save us from AI' framing is a little misleading - what adversarial poetry does is make it easier to make an AI convince you to commit suicide or give you the recipe for napalm. It's really interesting research that points to some serious flaws in the current structure of LLM guardrails, but it's not like you can write a haiku that will give Grok a concussion."

2 vertical panoramas of today's sunrise — one made by panning from low to high and the other from high to low.

First, look at the one where I began at the top, so that the iPhone sensed the light from a high spot in the sky:

That's the second shot I took, after I could see that beginning to pan from the bottom made everything too bright. So here's the first shot, which I've tinkered with a little to try to improve. I'm not happy about the rendering of the light and colors of the sunrise, but what's cool about it is that I discovered something that I had not seen at the time and that is not visible in the top-to-bottom panorama:

"This is what it means to be a disruptor. They will try to discredit you. They will lie about you. They will attempt to silence what they don’t understand."

Writes Emilee Saldaya of The Free Birth Society, quoted by The Guardian in "Five key findings from our investigation into the Free Birth Society."

The Guardian tells us: "The Free Birth Society (FBS) is a business run from North Carolina that promotes the idea of women giving birth without midwives or doctors present. It is led by Emilee Saldaya and Yolande Norris-Clark, ex-doulas turned social media influences...."

Here's the rest of the FBS statement, on Instagram. Highlights:

When you challenge the status quo, it pushes back. 

Peddling propaganda on mainstream news channels is nothing new....
The [Free Birth Society] message is simple:

• We make our own decisions.
• Birth is a normal biological process.
• We have the right to enact our own biology, even in a culture that shames it.
• Freebirth is ours to choose or not choose....

This moment is not a battle; it’s a mirror. A collective reckoning about birth, power, and spirituality.

The eternal dance of darkness and light continues in infinite forms.

I am not afraid of the shadows.
They reveal what needs to be seen.

And so, we continue
because the work is meaningful.
Because it is needed.
Because women deserve better than the narrative they’ve inherited....

"Mind you, I am not at all against a negotiated solution. Indeed, from the beginning of this war I have made the point..."

"... that it will end only with a 'dirty deal.' But it cannot be a filthy deal, and the Trump plan is what history will call a filthy deal.... As my Times colleague David Sanger observed in his analysis of the plan’s content: 'Many of the 28 points in the proposed Russia-Ukraine peace plan offered by the White House read like they had been drafted in the Kremlin. They reflect almost all Mr. Putin’s maximalist demands.'... What would an acceptable dirty deal look like? It would freeze the forces in place, but never formally cede any seized Ukrainian territory. It would insist that European security forces, backed by U.S. logistics, be stationed along the cease-fire line as a symbolic tripwire against any Russian re-invasion. It would require Russia to pay a significant amount of money to cover all the carnage it has inflicted on Ukraine...."

Writes Thomas Friedman, in "Trump’s Neville Chamberlain Prize" (NYT).

Late last night, this went up at the NY Post: "Marco Rubio told US senators that Ukraine peace plan was not America’s — but a ‘leaked’ Russian ‘wish list.'" 

Republican Senator Mike Rounds is quoted at the Post: "[Rubio] made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives. It is not our recommendation. It is not our peace plan. It is a proposal that was received, and as an intermediary, we have made arrangements to share it — and we did not release it. It was leaked."

ADDED: "US senators say Rubio told them Trump’s Ukraine peace plan is Russia’s ‘wish list’" (AP).

Incredibly stupid NY Post headline: "Ghislaine Maxwell filmed bizarrely carrying umbrella on sunny day at Texas prison."

Text: "Ghislaine Maxwell was snapped going for a casual stroll while carrying an umbrella on a sunny day at the cushy Federal Prison Camp Bryan.... Maxwell accessorized with a large bottle and a black umbrella — a la Mary Poppins — which she carried overhead despite the seasonally balmy weather in an effort to shield the Sun or perhaps lower her profile...."

Yes, you eventually got there, so you knew before publishing exactly why she carried an umbrella. As you inanely put it: "in an effort to shield the Sun." Inane, because it's not to shield the sun. It's to shield oneself from the sun. An umbrella carried for sun protection can be called a "parasol." 

Does the reporter not know this? He's Shane Galvin: "Shane is an experienced writer with a proven track record. He has a Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature from The New School." How is English literature taught these days? Does one never encounter fictional characters who use parasols? There's nothing bizarre or nutty about protecting oneself from sunlight. I guarantee you that in Jane Austen novels nobody ever slathers on sunscreen.

I looked to see what else Shane Galvin had written. What is this "proven track record"? I find, from December 29, 2024: "I look like Luigi Mangione — and it got me a hot date with a model who slid into my DMs."

Yeesh. I'll move on. Just one more thing. I see Galvin capitalized "sun." That's wrong, but why is it wrong? We capitalize the names of the planets — Venus, Mars, etc. Is it because "sun" is like "planet," and not a name at all? What then is the proper noun for the sun? Other stars have names — Alpha Centauri, Sirius, Betelgeuse. If you're talking about our sun along with other stars, what name do you use?

What is the proper noun used as the name for our sun?

There isn't one!

Just capitalize "sun." Make it "Sun." Voila!

Oddly enough, it's Sol.

It's something else.

 

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