Sunrise — 6:51, 7:15.

Why not spend Saturday evening commenting right here in the blog café, where you can talk 'til dawn.

"He’s almost autistic-like because he doesn’t understand a lot of stuff. He’s not a terrorist. He’s very naïve. He would not hurt a fly. He’s just not that kind of person."

Said Brian Cole Jr.’s grandmother Loretta, quoted in "How Chihuahua-walking, ‘autistic-like’ pipe-bomb suspect Brian Cole Jr. stumped Biden’s FBI for years" (NY Post).

"Chihuahau-walking" doesn't mean Cole walks like a chihuahua. It means he takes a chihuahua dog for walks.

"All told, the company has lost more than $70 billion... as Zuckerberg has failed to convince the public of the high-fidelity virtual spaces he long insisted we’d be choosing to spend most of our time in."

"Now, as Bloomberg reports, the company’s executives are eying gigantic budget cuts, as high as 30 percent, for the teams responsible for its Meta Horizon Worlds product and Quest VR headset — another nail in the coffin for Zuckerberg’s obsession that has been a major thorn in the sides of investors for years now.... Besides, Meta and Zuckerberg have now found their next obsession: artificial intelligence. The company has committed to spending an astronomical $72 billion on AI this year — roughly as much as the company’s lost on the metaverse, coincidentally...."

From "Zuckerberg Basically Giving Up on Metaverse After Renaming Entire Company 'Meta'" (Futurism).

Here's my reaction to Meta when it began in 2021: "Eh. I'm not making a new tag for this." 

"They’re trying to turn it into something scary, something sinister. But folks, it’s not really about anything that’s all that complicated."

"At its core, it’s about giving every American an opportunity to be treated with the basic decency, dignity and respect they all deserve."

Said ex-President Joe Biden, about transgender rights, quoted in "Biden Slams Republicans for Using L.G.B.T.Q. Identity as ‘Political Football’/The former president defended his support for transgender rights, a stance that has provoked second-guessing among some Democrats" (NYT).

So it's all very simple and anyone who says otherwise is sinister, and to boil it down to that isn't politicizing anything. It's the other side that's doing the politicizing, those bad people over there. 

I remember when Democrats liked to portray themselves as sophisticated, seeing all the complexity and nuance. Now, they're pushing the idea it's all quite simple. It's black and white. So... binary.

The top-rated comment over there is interesting. Jose writes:

"I thought the audiobook was the move, but hearing this in her own voice is so much worse than reading it. I couldn’t even make it through the intro."

Said Instapundit's friend, who bought the Olivia Nuzzi book.

Ha ha. I was going to listen to the audiobook (commission earned), but I clicked the "Audible sample" button and as soon as Nuzzi's voice began, I clicked it off and exclaimed "Oh, no!"

She was able to get out exactly 6 words: "For the women who have mothered me...."

I was reacting to the voice alone, but the meaning lingered — For the women who have mothered me.... No no no no! I don't know who she's talking about or what they did that constituted "mothering" in her world view and I don't want to know. 

CORRECTION: 7 words.

"In making a case for approval, Netflix may argue that the market in which it operates is not limited to premium film and television but rather encompasses the entire universe of human amusement..."

"... TikTok, YouTube, sports, games, books and even taking a walk. This is a standard tactic: Define the market so broadly that dominance becomes mathematically impossible.... A Netflix merger with Warner Bros. would create a monopsony problem: too few buyers with too much bargaining power. Writers, directors, actors, showrunners, puppeteers, visual effects artists — all are suppliers. The fewer buyers competing to hire them, the lower their compensation and the narrower their opportunities.... "

Writes Roy Price, chief executive of an entertainment studio and former head of Amazon Studios, in "If Netflix Eats Warner Bros., It Will Be the End of Hollywood" (NYT).

From "Monopsony" (Wikipedia): "The term 'monopsony' (from Greek μόνος (mónos) "single" and ὀψωνεῖν (opsōneîn) "'to purchase fish") was first introduced by the British economist Joan Robinson in her influential book, The Economics of Imperfect Competition (1933)...."

Fish, eh? It has been noted that the word was miscoined. But is the coinage really fishy? The OED describes the etymology this way: "< mono- comb. form + ancient Greek ὀψωνία purchase of provisions (< ὀψωνεῖν to buy provisions (see opsonation n.) + ‑ία ‑y suffix), after monopoly n."

"Opsonation" is a new one for me. It's archaic. It's supposedly a feast, a catering, or a buying of provisions, according to the OED, which does not mention fish.

But back to the big merger — perhaps we will get more fish movies. Like this Warner Brothers classic:

"'Inflammation' captures the visceral sense that something in our body isn’t working as well as it should."

"It’s the perfect scapegoat for that creeping feeling so many of us have that our modern world — with our phone addictions and plastic-filled kitchens and pantries stocked with ultraprocessed foods — is slowly poisoning us. For as much as influencers love to talk about inflammation, I had no idea how to picture it. When I ate bread, I imagined my gut swollen and angry. I wondered if a sudden rash on my chin was really a sign that my entire immune system was out of whack. I considered how bad things would have to get for me to give up tomatoes.... One dietitian I spoke to pointed out that, technically, the act of eating anything is inflammatory. In fact, even exercise causes inflammation. When you lift weights, you cause little tears to the muscle that have to be repaired; that process is what grows the muscle. In other words, the inflammation is kind of the point.... Perhaps the only thing that became clear to me was that inflammation is an inevitable part of being alive...."

From "How Inflammation Took Over the Internet/Influencers constantly talk about how to avoid it. But no one quite seems to agree on what it is" (New York Magazine).

"The President kind of holds up his hand and says, 'No, no, no, hold on a second. There's something much more important. Shoes.'"

"He peers over the Resolute Desk and he says, 'Marco, JD, you guys have shitty shoes.' He goes out and grabs a catalog... And he actually runs us through this incredible shoe catalog. The President is gifting us with four pairs of shoes.... He says, 'Marco, what's your shoe size?' And Marco's apparently an 11 and a half. He says, JD, what's your shoe size? My shoe size is 13. And he asked this [other] politician... what his shoe size is, and he says 7. The President leans back in his chair and says, 'You know you can tell a lot about a man by his shoe size.'"

Vice President JD Vance just dropped a hilarious Oval Office story leaving the entire room cracking up.

President Trump glanced over the Resolute Desk at VP Vance and Secretary Marco Rubio and said, “You guys have shitty shoes.”

Right then and there, Trump pulled out a shoe… pic.twitter.com/3Z2xyh9MZK

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) December 6, 2025

You can't lie about your shoe size if the shoes are going to be ordered by the other person and he's expecting you to wear them, and besides, if a man's shoe size is 7, his feet are going to look pretty small. So there was no escaping the penis-size innuendo. Or maybe Trump wasn't promising to buy that other guy new shoes. It was only Marco and JD who got called out for having "shitty shoes."

"I saw people who were downcast, who can take no more, who are at the end of their tether. Even a revolt is beyond them."

Said Joël Boueilh, chairman of the winemaking co-operative federation, commenting on protesters who want the French government to help the wine industry.

Quoted in "French wine industry is withering on the vine as drinkers go dry/A collapse in demand — particularly for the heavy reds produced across southern France — coupled with climate change means the end of a way of life for many" (London Times).

Boueilh adds: "France was the land of the good life where people spent a lot of time drinking and eating. But today society is changing. People may have a drink in a bar but they don’t open a bottle of wine when they sit down to eat at the table."

Is it necessarily a loss in devotion to "the good life" or did people change their conception of the good? But he didn't say "good," did he? He would have said "douceur": "« La France était le pays de la douceur de vivre, celui où l’on prenait son temps pour manger et boire ensemble autour d’une table. »

There might be other ways of being "good," but are there other ways of being "sweet"? And more important, there is a tradition of experiencing the sweetness in a particular way, with a bottle of wine on the table at meals. 

Ah! That's for France to decide! Boueilh represents the wine industry. Of course, he's going to dramatize the centrality of wine. If I buy into that, I'm just an American accepting the most easily available stereotype.

That is, it's the stuff that belongs in the new Dictionary of Received Ideas: The French: They think the good life is sitting around drinking wine all day. 

ADDED: I wanted more depth of meaning for the word "douceur," and got excellent help from Grok. 

Sunrise — 7:07, 7:15, 7:23.

Write about whatever you want.

"Trump Might Have a Case on Birthright Citizenship."

That was the title of a post last February.

You might want to revisit that today, because "Supreme Court agrees to hear Trump’s challenge to birthright citizenship" (SCOTUSblog).

"Once a week, his maternal grandmother would come home from the market with a live carp... 'We’d put it in the bathtub... and I’d play with this fish for a day until she killed it and made gefilte fish.'"

From "Frank O. Gehry, Titan of Architecture, Is Dead at 96/He burst onto the scene with an attention-getting renovation of his Southern California home before going on to design some of the world’s most recognizable buildings" (NYT).

Like many Angelenos, he was drawn to the laid-back, anything-goes atmosphere of the city, whose mix of garish mansions, flimsy bungalows, vacant lots, Googie coffee shops and colorful billboards was the antithesis of East Coast architectural academicism. And he became close to a generation of Los Angeles artists... whose surfboard-inspired aesthetic and raw work spaces suggested an alternative to the chilly austerity of late Modernism and the reactionary tendencies of postmodernism.... “I was trying to use the dumb, normal materials of the neighborhood,” Mr. Gehry said years later. “There must have been half a dozen cars in various states of deconstruction sitting around on the lawns; there was chain link in people’s backyards. They thought that was normal.”

For more about the fish, see "Frank Gehry, Fish Lamps/Paul Goldberger traces the history of the fish form throughout Frank Gehry’s career" (Gagosian.com).

Icing up.

Video by Meade.

ADDED: More swans from Meade:

"In his satirical 'Dictionary of Received Ideas'... Flaubert offered up a range of definitions embodying the stupid notions that silly people too readily accept."

"...  'Art': 'Leads to poorhouse. What use is it, since machines can do things better and quicker?' ... 'Bird': 'Wish you were one, saying with a sigh: "Oh, for a pair of wings!" This shows you have a poetic soul.'... By mocking these thoughts, we push ourselves past them. From this perspective, our sense that we’re getting stupider may simply reflect our determination to be smart."

Writes Joshua Rothman, in "Are We Getting Stupider? Stupidity is eternal—and more complex than we think" (The New Yorker).

"Dictionary of Received Ideas' — link goes to full text — is one of the few books that has its own tag on this blog: here. It's long been one of my favorite books, and you may have noticed my various proposals for entries in a new Dictionary of Received Ideas. If you get Flaubert's idea, maybe you can help me write this volume for my shelf of Unwritten Books. 

Actually I don't think Rothman conveys Flaubert's idea accurately. Here's a new New Yorker piece from 2013 (by Teju Cole), which explains the "Dictionnaire des Idées Reçues" like this:  "What galls Flaubert most is the inevitability, given an action, of a certain standard reaction. We could learn from his impatience: there are too many standard formulations in our language. They stand in place of thought, but we proclaim them each time—due to laziness, prejudice, or hypocrisy—as though they were fresh insight."

Anyway, what's Rothman's point about our possibly becoming stupider? He writes: 

"I grew up on a commune in Northern California where I was raised by hippies, drank well water and ate wild Miner’s lettuce from our field."

"The only medicine allowed was herbs, homeopathy and marijuana. During the stress of my divorce, my mother suggested that I micro-dose mushrooms to regulate my moods. But I knew I needed more than meditations and adaptogens during this ongoing, post-pandemic punch in the face.... It wasn’t until my friend explained how ChatGPT offered her better advice than her expensive psychotherapist that I asked her to come over and walk me through it....  ... I wasn’t feeling better after seven years of work with [my therapist].... I worked for days with Chat to process my feelings and notes and to compose an email....  The therapist responded with a single sentence: 'I appreciate your sentiments.' Her cold reply provided clarity, but it also revealed to me how my relationship with her had mirrored the pattern in my marriage. 'You poured your heart, clarity and depth into that message,' Chat wrote. 'Her reply confirms the very dynamic you’ve been working to free yourself from, where your vulnerability and honesty are met with detachment, minimalism and emotional withholding.'..."

Writes Adele Uddo, in "My Rebound Relationship With a Robot/Raised on a commune, I resisted technology at every step. Until it saved me" (NYT)(gift link).

Spotify Wrapped is telling everyone their "listening age."

I am old, so I don't care if my listening age is old — a few years older (78) than my actual age (74). It's because I still listen to the music I loved when I was a teenager in the 1960s, when I lucked into what still seems to me to be the best popular music. I would have thought most Americans get fixated on whatever was popular when they were a teenager, but I'm seeing that a lot of people are getting a  "listening age" of 70-something.

I'm reading "Spotify Just Called You Old" (NY Magazine), which especially likes this tune "Why did everyone I know have a listening age of an old-age home on Spotify Wrapped?":

"A New Jersey-bound airplane that suddenly plunged thousands of feet in the air... was likely struck by cosmic rays from a star that exploded in another galaxy, according to space experts."

"The JetBlue Airbus A320 flight was hit by a stream of high-energy particles from a distant supernova blast that traveled millions of years, according to Clive Dyer, a space and radiation expert.... 'They can cause a simple bit flip, like a zero to one or one to zero. They can mess up information and make things go wrong. But they can cause hardware failures too, when they induce a current in an electronic device and burn it out.'"

From "NJ-bound plane that suddenly plunged thousands of feet likely hit by ‘cosmic rays’ from a whole other galaxy" (NY Post).

"He walked through the Darién Gap between Panama and Colombia... Later, he reached the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia — the midway point of his walk...."

"In the winter, he said, the strait does not entirely freeze over. 'It is this massive body of crushed ice and seawater…you’re literally climbing over the ice to make any short distance,' he said. He met a fellow adventurer in Alaska who traversed the strait with him. 'No one believed we were going to make it,' Bushby said. 'As it turned out, we managed to nail it on the first go, which no one expected, least of all us.' Once Bushby arrived in Russia, he hit another hurdle: he was detained for entering the country at an incorrect border. He spent 57 days in detention, he said, and faced a trial, until authorities agreed to let him continue his walk. 'It was just a whole series of miracles,' Bushby said...."

From "He set out to walk around the world. After 27 years, his quest is nearly over. Karl Bushby is expected to finish his globe-walking expedition by September 2026" (WaPo)(gift link, so you can see the photos, including Bushby immersed in Bering Strait ice).

Sunrise — 7:16.

The wind chill was -1° but we were undeterred. We didn't want to miss the "Cold Supermoon." You can still see it: "The exact moment of December's full moon phase will take place at 8:13 p.m. EST (2313 UTC) on Dec. 4." That's half an hour from now, so check it out.

I loved seeing the full moon at sunrise, but I didn't like any of my still photographs of it. They looked, in a word, stupid. But scroll down 2 posts and you'll see Meade's video of the big orange disc beginning to dip behind the distant shore.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

UPDATE: I stepped out to gaze at the sky at 6:47 CST. The moon was too far above the horizon to look extra large, but because the iPhone didn't realize I was doing a night picture and it decided to make a long exposure and I was entirely unprepared for that, so I got a cool surprise:

Reset to normality, the iPhone gave me this:

"The court’s brief, five-paragraph order indicated that 'Texas is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that the District Court committed at least two serious errors.'"

"Moreover, it added, the lower court 'improperly inserted itself into an active primary campaign, causing much confusion and upsetting the delicate federal-state balance in elections.'"

From "Supreme Court allows Texas to use redistricting map challenged as racially discriminatory" (Scotusblog).

Here's the opinion. There's a long dissent by Kagan, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson, arguing for deference to the decision of the district court. Alito writes a concurring opinion, joined by Thomas and Gorsuch:

The full moon was setting in the west as the sun rose in the east.

This morning on Lake Mendota. Video by Meade:

If the Minnesota fraud was so huge, why didn't government officials notice and take action?

The question is asked on today's episode of the NYT podcast "The Daily."

The answer is two-fold:

1. A group called Feeding Our Future accused the state of racism for "slow walking" their application. This wasn't long after the "national reckoning" that followed the death of George Floyd, and "at that time, nobody wanted to be called a racist, even it was wholly unfounded" and "that really had a paralyzing effect on people in state government who knew something funny was going on, but didn't really want to stick their necks out and stop it."

2. Money was cycling back to the Democratic Party. "Somali Americans have become politically quite powerful in the state... and... became important donors to their campaigns.... [S]ome democratic elected officials... worried that any action they took to question or intervene in a way that would maybe stop these schemes, could have alienated a really important constituency."

Now, the podcasters clearly wish the fraud problem could be solved by Minnesota. But Trump has jumped at the opportunity to emphasize what reads as racial. He forthrightly — brutally — connected the fraud problem to immigration from the wrong places:

"The suspect’s identity remained unclear for the moment, but the arrest could ultimately provide an answer to one of the most tantalizing mysteries arising from the Jan. 6. riot."

I'm reading "Suspect Arrested in Inquiry Into Pipe Bombs in D.C. Ahead of Jan. 6 Riot" (NYT).

"The break in the case was not based on new information but came after agents bore down yet again on their investigative files and discovered a new lead, according to one person familiar with the matter."

"We should be facilitators and enablers."

“They had a patient coming in saying, ‘I want to look like Frank-N-Furter from Rocky Horror Picture Show.’ ”@LeorSapir spent over 100 hours going through footage of gender conferences.

In the videos obtained exclusively by The Free Press, gender doctors acknowledge they… pic.twitter.com/Jm00RUKFhh

— The Free Press (@TheFP) December 3, 2025

Here's the article: "'We’re All Just Winging It': What the Gender Doctors Say in Private In footage obtained exclusively by The Free Press, gender doctors acknowledge they perform life-altering procedures on vulnerable youth with no supportive evidence—and they are proud of it."

Melanie Hamlett has a word to say about Scott Galloway.

You know Scott Galloway — he has a new book, he was on Bill Maher's show, I blogged about him back in '23 after he talked about men "garnering the skills and strength."

Melanie Hamlett was new to me but I see she's written lots of mainstream media articles, including "Men Have No Friends and Women Bear the Burden/Toxic masculinity—and the persistent idea that feelings are a 'female thing'—has left a generation of straight men stranded on emotionally-stunted island, unable to forge intimate relationships with other men. It's women who are paying the price" (Harper's Bazaar 2019).

Before I read any of that I decided based on this one TikTok that she is a comic genius:

Sunrise — 7:09.

Write about anything you want in the comments.

"Flanked by executives from major automakers in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump said the Transportation Department would significantly weaken fuel efficiency requirements..."

"... for tens of millions of new cars and light trucks. The administration claimed the changes would save Americans $109 billion over five years and shave $1,000 off the average cost of a new car. The Biden administration’s stricter efficiency standards were designed to get more Americans to go electric. But Mr. Trump said they 'forced automakers to build cars using expensive technologies that drove up costs, drove up prices, and made the car much worse. This is a green new scam, and people were paying too much for a car that didn’t work as well.'"

From "Trump Returns to Gasoline as Fuel of Choice for Cars, Gutting Biden’s Climate Policy/The president said he would weaken Biden-era mileage standards, which were designed to increase electric-vehicle sales, calling them a 'scam'" (NYT).

"Schopenhauer was a lifelong bachelor who had few friends and many enemies, who preferred the company of dogs..."

"... to that of his fellow men and women, and whose own mother, Johanna Schopenhauer, broke off ties with him, telling him in a letter, 'I am acquainted with your heart and know that few are better, but you are nevertheless irritating and unbearable, and I consider it most difficult to live with you.'... [H]e became even more so as he grew older, driven by the belief that solitude was the price of telling the rest of humankind two unbearable truths. First, that it is better never to have been born; second, for those of us unfortunate enough to exist, to expect nothing but suffering and sorrow.... It is curious to think that his beloved standard poodle, Atma, knew what men and women did not know: that his master believed in the care and concern for all living beings...."

Writes Robert Zaretsky, in "Compassionate Curmudgeon/Why we must root ourselves in the real world" (The American Scholar).

"Republicans and Democrats are now nearly unanimous in believing the other party has gone too far with its rhetoric and are much more likely to think this than in 2011."

"Ninety-four percent of Democrats, compared with 74% in 2011, now say Republicans and their supporters have gone too far, and 93% of Republicans (vs. 63% in 2011) say the same about Democrats and their supporters. In contrast, partisans are disinclined to believe their own party has gone too far with its rhetoric and are no more likely now than in 2011 to hold this view. Today, 36% of Republicans believe the GOP and its supporters’ rhetoric has gone too far, compared with 32% in 2011. And Democrats are less likely now (28%) than in 2011 (45%) to say their party’s rhetoric has been too inflammatory."

From "More Americans Say Political Rhetoric Has Gone Too Far/69% say Republicans', 60% say Democrats' inflammatory criticism of opponents has gone too far" (Gallup).

Is it the beans?!

Yesterday, I fell into #beantok:

"I hesitate to take at face value Lizza’s account of Nuzzi’s behavior, but a specific detail sticks in my mind..."

"... he recounts finding a 'tabloid-style news story' she wrote in which she describes herself as a 'blonde beauty' and 'one of the most famous political reporters in America.' It is easy to imagine the narrator of 'American Canto' producing fan fiction about herself, because, in many cases, the book reads as if that’s what she’s doing. 'He threw himself onto the bed, his pink shirt unbuttoned, revealing my favorite parts of his chest,' Nuzzi writes, of a conversation with Kennedy."

Writes Molly Fischer, in "Does Olivia Nuzzi Make Good Copy? Across social media, definitely. In her new memoir, 'American Canto,' not so much" (The New Yorker).

Bookstore photograph — notice anything?

My son Chris sends this from Austin:

"President Trump unleashed a xenophobic tirade against Somali immigrants... calling them 'garbage' he does not want in the United States..."

"... in an outburst that captured the raw nativism that has animated his approach to immigration.... 'These are people that do nothing but complain,' Mr. Trump said at the tail end of a cabinet meeting at the White House.... 'When they come from hell and they complain and do nothing but bitch, we don’t want them in our country. Let them go back to where they came from and fix it,' Mr. Trump added as Vice President JD Vance banged the table in encouragement. He said Somalia 'stinks and we don’t want them in our country.' He described Representative Ilhan Omar... as 'garbage.'... 'She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage....'... Mr. Trump has used this kind of rhetoric throughout his rise in politics, including in his first term as president, when he demanded to know why the United States would accept immigrants from Haiti and African nations, which he described as 'shithole countries'...."

From "Trump Calls Somalis ‘Garbage’ He Doesn’t Want in the Country/President Trump has a history of insulting people from African countries, but the outburst was shocking in its unapologetic bigotry. Vice President JD Vance banged the table in encouragement" (NYT).

I watched this performance live yesterday, and I believe I said out loud, "He's choosing to resonate with racists."

Sunrise — 7:00, 7:11, 7:14.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"So anyway, there are a number of you folks in what I would call the manosphere who are reaching some conclusions that I wonder if they're not going to be, um, more harmful than they are insightful...."

Says Bret Weinstein to Ben Davidson, in a podcast titled "Son Set in the Manosphere."

Weinstein has a lot of things he wants to say, and he takes the time spell them out calmly. Davidson is way more emotional — embarrassingly angry at women — to the point where I felt that he shouldn't be on the show at all, but he did give Weinstein a lot to bounce off from. 

"Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was warned about massive fraud in a pandemic food-aid program for children, yet he failed to act."

"Instead, whistleblowers who raised concerns faced retaliation. Because of Governor Walz’s negligence, criminals — including Somali terrorists — stole nearly $1 billion from the program while children suffered.”

Said House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), quoted in "
Treasury, House panel launch probes into Tim Walz’s handling of $1B food aid fraud — and they could make criminal referrals" (NY Post).

"The more I advance in my life, the more I fear humans. I’m more animal than human."

Said Brigitte Bardot, quoted in "Brigitte Bardot: I tried to kill myself many times. A miracle saved me/The 91-year-old screen icon discusses her struggles with depression as a young woman in a new 90-minute documentary titled Bardot" (London Times).

Today at the crunchy steps, coots.

Some ducks finding their way into the fringe of coot society, but basically coots.

Crunching on the steps, that's Meade, not me.

Here I am — another coot video'd by Meade:

Michelle Goldberg calls Olivia Nuzzi's book "a grandiose postmodern pastiche that attempts to situate her personal catastrophe in the context of our collective one."

"Interspersed with Nuzzi’s stream-of-consciousness musings are facts about drone strikes, gun deaths and wild fires; long chunks of Q&A dialogue, including with Donald Trump; a court document detailing the assault on Nancy Pelosi’s husband; an F.B.I. report on the man who wrote the children’s book 'Harold and the Purple Crayon'; and quotes from figures including Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Jung and Jane Birkin. It’s a pretentious mess, but an audacious one. It seems less an attempt to justify herself to the Beltway world she once inhabited than to catapult over it, into the more congenial realms of art and literary celebrity."

Here's the whole column: "A Serious Journalism Scandal Hiding Inside a Frivolous Sexual One."

I read the excerpt from Nuzzi's book when Vanity Fair published it a couple weeks ago, and I too made fun of the florid, pretentious writing. But "grandiose postmodern pastiche" — in the New York Times — makes me feel a twinge of empathy. What if Nuzzi is genuinely literary? What she did is perhaps what I would have done in the same circumstances — tossed out of my ongoing career with nothing but raw material, raw emotion, a publisher's advance enough to cover living expenses, and whatever true writing gift I could find inside myself. They thought I was a journalist, that I would write a fast-moving, funny, fact-filled account of my interaction with RFK Jr., but they don't know, they don't know what I am....

Here's the book, "American Canto" (commission earned).

Crunchy snow steps at sunrise.

Those are Meade's crunchy snow steps. I was struggling with my iPhone which was acting like a camera with the lens cap on. I thought I could just point and shoot as if I could see what I was doing, but I couldn't.

Here's another Meade video, the western view at 7:26 a.m.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"I had spent 12 hours with this man. What could I have done differently? What words could I have used?"

"My patient’s opinions were mystifying, as if the product of an unsound mind. Should we have disregarded them and performed a procedure against his wishes?... My patient had been clear. He was consistent. He had the right to make his own decisions. What I considered to be an unfounded and ultimately disastrous objection to a pacemaker was not, in and of itself, proof of incapacity.... I did not know what it was like to live with his autoimmune disease.... Because I was unwilling to accept my patient’s desires at the end of his life, his final 12 hours on this earth were fraught and contentious. I could not have changed his mind, but perhaps I could have changed that."

Writes Daniela J. Lamas, in "My Patient Was Making a Fatal Decision. What Could I Do?" (NYT).

Melania Trump presents the White House Christmas.

Home Is Where the Heart Is
AMERICA’S CHRISTMAS

This Christmas, let’s celebrate the love we hold within ourselves and share it with the world around us. After all, wherever we are, we can create a home filled with endless possibilities. pic.twitter.com/VouZAtLpHU

— First Lady Melania Trump (@FLOTUS) December 1, 2025

I laughed when I saw the picture of Trump on the windowsill, like Trump — mugshot Trump! — is a Christmas character — along with Santa and Jesus. But on rewatch, I see the emphasis on the United States as a political entity, in its 250th year. And there's George Washington on the other windowsill as if the windows are a time line from the origin point in the past to the present day. We see Jesus, but not Santa. There's nothing aimed at children here. It's elegant, not fun or cute.

Melanie reaches out to one of the frosted white ornaments. There must be one for every state, because it says "Georgia." We see the slogans "Fostering the Future" and "Be Best." [ADDED: I said there is "nothing aimed at children" in the decorations, but both of those these slogans indicate programs aimed at children.]

The animal that represents Christmas in this display is a blue butterfly. Is that a real species of butterfly or just a monarch butterfly rendered in blue?

"The 36-year-old New York-based private chef Jen Monroe... uses cotton candy... wind[ing] the filaments around edible wildflowers, adding savory notes like smoke, tea or parsley...."

"Much of cotton candy’s appeal is its inherent evanescence. When the Italian arts patron Nicoletta Fiorucci asked the London-based chef Imogen Kwok, 34, to create a dish that recalled water for a show at her namesake Chelsea foundation, Kwok piled what she calls 'wispy cumulus clouds' into a cascading form, from which guests could pull clumps with their hands...."

From "How Cotton Candy Won Over the Adults/Long associated with childhood and county fairs, the food has found its place among a new generation of experimental chefs" (NYT).

"To comply with a spoken order from Hegseth to kill everyone, the Special Operations commander overseeing the mission ordered a second strike..."

"... that killed the two survivors, according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation. Those people, along with five others in the original report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity. Trump said he would look into the issue. 'I wouldn’t have wanted that. Not a second strike. The first strike was very lethal. It was fine,' the president told reporters."

From "Trump says Hegseth denied issuing order to kill boat crew/The president also said he would not have wanted a second strike on a boat allegedly carrying drugs, which occurred after U.S. forces realized the initial attack left two survivors, as The Post reported" (WaPo)(gift link, so you can read the whole thing).

UPDATE: "Hegseth Ordered a Lethal Attack but Not the Killing of Survivors, Officials Say" (NYT): "According to five U.S. officials, who spoke separately and on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter that is under investigation, Mr. Hegseth, ahead of the Sept. 2 attack, ordered a strike that would kill the people on the boat and destroy the vessel and its purported cargo of drugs. But, each official said, Mr. Hegseth’s directive did not specifically address what should happen if a first missile turned out not to fully accomplish all of those things. And, the officials said, his order was not a response to surveillance footage showing that at least two people on the boat survived the first blast. Admiral Bradley ordered the initial missile strike and then several follow-up strikes that killed the initial survivors and sank the disabled boat. As that operation unfolded, they said, Mr. Hegseth did not give any further orders to him."

These men in shorts are exempt from any Althouse rule against men in shorts.

Photo taken on the ride back from the sunrise walk. It was 7:53 a.m. and the temperature was, perhaps, 20°.

"For the first time in modern memory, the [Solicitor General's] office’s merits briefs... begin with an 'introduction,' a section often filled with unusually charged language..."

"... including direct quotes from Mr. Trump.... The Harvard Law School professor Richard Lazarus, an assistant solicitor general during the Reagan administration, said the charged rhetoric in filings could imperil the office’s special status with the Supreme Court as a trusted counselor that presents the justices with rigorous arguments that interpret the law consistently, no matter who occupies the White House. The fiery language, Professor Lazarus said, makes the office sound like 'a zealous ideologue.' 'They look like they are representing an individual. They don’t look like they are representing the United States or the federal government,' he said. 'The question is whether the court will call them on it or not.'"

From "Despite Supreme Court Wins, Elite D.O.J. Unit Has Seen Mass Turnover/Even with an exodus of lawyers, the Office of the Solicitor General has had remarkable success. But fiery rhetoric and close White House ties have raised concerns" (NYT).

I'm fascinated by the way the first 2 sentences of that headline state cause and effect in 2 different directions.

"Despite... Wins... Mass Turnover" suggests that usually people don't leave a successful team.

"Even with an exodus of lawyers... remarkable success" suggests that teams usually aren't successful when lots of people leave.

It's not incoherent though. The point is that the Solicitor General's office has adopted a forceful position that is both successful and repellent.   

"I hope that the sisters will accept the path I have outlined and that a regulated religious life will once again be a reality in Goldenstein."

Wrote Abbot Markus Grasl, quoted in "3 Rebel Nuns Can Stay in Abbey, if They Give Up Social Media/After the octogenarian nuns refused to return to their senior center, the abbot has finally folded. But he has some conditions" (NYT).

When three octogenarian nuns escaped their senior center in September, their unlikely quest for freedom set off a bitter standoff with the abbot who leads their Roman Catholic order. The three rebel nuns forced their way back into the Austrian abbey where they had lived for decades, before the senior center. ...

The abbot had cited "a church rule that orders must have at least six living members." What happened to that rule? There were 3 nuns living in an abbey within a medieval castle.

Now that they've gotten so much attention and support, the abbot says they can stay, but they "must stop letting laypeople into their cloisters, and — most likely much more important — they must end their social media feed." And yet that's how they won their heart's desire, though public attention and support, acquired through social media. Without social media, perhaps they'll lose what they've gained. But what prevents them from restarting their social media, if promises are broken? A vow of obedience? That didn't stop their first rebellion. 

Here's that social media feed (at Instagram). 

Sunrise — after the big snow — at 6:37, 6:38, 6:40, 7:00.

Not wanting to drive the car to our vantage point, we set out on foot. It was quite the trudge — a mile out and a mile back — mostly through 9 inches of snow on uncleared pathways. 

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"rage bait" — "online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative or offensive."

It's the Oxford University Press "Word of the Year" (the NYT reports).

The runners up were "biohack" and "aura farming."

I've never used (or quoted) the phrase "rage bait" or "aura farming."

I did quote "biohack" once. The context was the use of an IV to fend off a hangover. I commented: "Drinking is funny until it's not. Does this IV bag extend the funny phase or expedite the tragic? The need to say things like 'self-care,' 'virtuous aftercare,' and 'biohack' sounds desperate, but that can be part of the funny, especially for the drunkards."

"On July 10, Mattheis Johnson hopped a bus on a warm summer night to see a pop-up punk rock show at Seattle’s Gas Works Park, a hulking collection of steel towers, tanks and pipes..."

"... that has become one of the world’s most widely emulated examples of postindustrial landscape design. His parents felt nervous every time their 15-year-old son asserted his independence, but they also knew he needed adventures.... [A]s the concert wound down, Mattheis tried climbing the park towers....  He lost his footing, fell 50 feet and died at a nearby hospital...."

From "After Teen’s Death, a Seattle Icon Confronts a New Label, Nuisance/For years, architects and design experts have resisted safety changes at Seattle’s Gas Works Park, but after a teenager died there this summer, his parents want it declared a public nuisance" (NYT).

"Over the last five years, law enforcement officials say, fraud took root in pockets of Minnesota’s Somali diaspora as scores of individuals made small fortunes..."

"... by setting up companies that billed state agencies for millions of dollars’ worth of social services that were never provided.... Outrage has swelled among Minnesotans.... Gov. Tim Walz and fellow Democrats are being asked to explain how so much money was stolen on their watch.... Many Somali Americans in Minnesota say the fraud has damaged the reputation of their entire community, around 80,000 people, at a moment when their political and economic standing was on the rise.... Critics of the Walz administration say that the fraud persisted partly because state officials were fearful of alienating the Somali community in Minnesota.... The episode has raised broader questions for some residents about the sustainability of Minnesota’s Scandinavian-modeled system of robust safety net programs bankrolled by high taxes...."

I'm reading "How Fraud Swamped Minnesota’s Social Services System on Tim Walz’s Watch/Prosecutors say members of the Somali diaspora, a group with growing political power, were largely responsible. President Trump has drawn national attention to the scandal amid his crackdown on immigration" (NYT).

"[Theo] Von introduced C.K. to Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, where he began working to address his addiction..."

"... to masturbation. He practiced abstinence—it was, he said, a 'crazy idea to me. . . . Don’t have sexual release for several months in a row'—but, eventually, he 'got out of the cycle.' His emotions started coming back. 'I saw everything really differently,' he said. 'I saw that everything that had happened with me was because of me. And, by the way, that’s great news, because that means you could do something about it.'... [And] this is what enabled him to write his book. He recently finished a second one. 'I’m writing novels because I don’t jerk off every fifteen minutes,' he said. 'It’s really all it is.'"

Writes Tyler Foggatt in "Louis C.K.’s Next Chapter/In a new standup special, and a début novel, the comedian navigates murky, post-#MeToo terrain: not quite exiled, not quite welcomed back" (The New Yorker).

That reminded me of the old after-sex punchline. Attributed to Balzac: « Là… encore un roman de perdu ! » (“There… another novel lost!”). There's a line in "Annie Hall": “I read a thing about Balzac. He used to, uh, after he’d have sex he’d go, ‘Oh, there goes another novel.’”

I opine on the snow — before and after.

At 7:22 a.m. yesterday, as the snow is beginning to fall:

And at 11:22 a.m. on today:

Had to dust off the old "I was wrong" tag.

"... Maduro is embracing English, singing John Lennon’s 'Imagine,' advocating for peace and dancing to a remix of his latest English catchphrase, 'No War, Yes Peace.'"

I'm reading "Venezuelan leader Maduro may seem desperate. But his loyalty vs punishment strategy is hard to crack/Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was once critical of English" (ABC News).

"The emails described a man who was struggling to assimilate... while he alternated between 'periods of dark isolation and reckless travel.'"

"Sometimes, he spent weeks in his 'darkened room, not speaking to anyone, not even his wife or older kids.'... But then, there were 'interim' weeks where Lakanwal would try to make amends and 'do the right things'.... 'But that has quickly evolved into "manic: episodes for one or two weeks at a time, where he will take off in the family car, and drive nonstop,' the email outlined. Once, he went to Chicago, and another time, to Arizona...."

From "Suspect in National Guard attack struggled with ‘dark isolation’ as community raised concerns/Emails obtained by The Associated Press reveal mounting warnings about the suspect" (Politico).