Sunrise — 7:00.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"An alleged gunman remains on the loose after killing at least two people and critically injuring another eight on the campus of Brown University, police said."

The NY Post reports.

Help me think of a term to apply to articles like this, something that expresses why it bothers me so much.

It's not "fake news," because it's not even news:

Here's a link to the article, in The Washington Post, which I'm not even reading. I don't read articles that fall into this category. I'm just seeking a name for the category. The headline and the photograph do engage me. They're almost funny, but I feel some empathy for the people who the Washington Post seems to believe are out there hungering for whatever this is.

ADDED: One idea is "the news for women," which is a tag I began in 2011 but hadn't used since 2016. I just forgot about it, but it might express what I'm looking for here, though it has the obvious limitation. I think there are men in the (perceived) audience for this kind of emotional support.

"After losing it at the top of that mountain 60 years ago, the American government still refuses to acknowledge that anything ever happened."

"The whole mission was wrapped in deception from the very beginning. A trove of files just discovered in a garage in Montana show how a celebrated National Geographic photographer built an elaborate cover story for the covert operation — and how the plans completely unraveled on the mountain. Extensive interviews with the people who carried out the mission and once-secret documents stashed away in American and Indian government archives reveal the extent of the debacle, and the ways American officials at the highest levels, including President Jimmy Carter, tried to cover it up years later...."

From "How Did the C.I.A. Lose a Nuclear Device? A plutonium-packed generator disappeared on one of the world’s highest mountains in a covert mission that the U.S. will not talk about" (NYT)(gift link).

5°, 7 a.m.

Don't even ask about the wind chill. But we were out. Meade got this:

"[Hungary] now spends 5 percent of its gross domestic product on family policies, a greater percentage than what the United States devotes to defense."

"It offers grandparental leave. It furnishes reduced mortgage rates to married couples planning families. It provides parents $30,000 loans — which don’t need to be repaid if they have three or more children. On Oct. 1, all women with three children gained lifetime personal income tax exemptions. Next year, mothers under 40 with two kids will become exempt as well. 'For the long-term survival of a nation, it is worthwhile,' said Hungary’s culture minister, Balazs Hanko...."

From "Can governments actually spark a baby boom? These countries are trying. Governments are testing whether a mix of perks, incentives and ideology might reverse shrinking population trends. Here’s what they’ve learned" (WaPo).

"Why did The New Yorker, which perpetuates the myth that they employ an army of meticulous fact-checkers, pollute our understanding of mind and brain by publishing these fabrications for decades?"

Asks Steven Pinker, on X, as he reads the New Yorker article "Oliver Sacks Put Himself Into His Case Studies. What Was the Cost?"

Pinker answers his own question like this: "Because their primary commitment is to a belletristic, literarist, romantic promotion of elite cultural sensibilities over the tough-minded analyses of philistine scientists and technologists, their rival elite.... A common denominator behind Sacks's fabrications was that ineffable, refined intuition can surmount cerebral analysis, which is limited and cramped. It's a theme that runs through some of their other blunders, such as... [t]he many articles by Malcolm Gladwell (like Sacks, a fine essayist) which mixed good reporting with dubious statistical reasoning and misleading claims (e.g., that only practice, not talent, is necessary for achievement, or that IQ above 120 doesn't matter)."

From the New Yorker article, which is by Rachel Aviv: 

"It’s 100 percent my intention to build this franchise into the next Disney."

Said Alan Chikin Chow, quoted in "'Alan’s Universe' Shows What It Might Look Like to Win at YouTube/As Gen Alpha’s attention drifts from TV and movies, video creators like Alan Chikin Chow are eager to fill the void" (NYT)(gift link so you can get more info and see quick clips of the awful video that is the art of our time, enfolding our children).

Some content creators attempt to tailor material to TikTok, Instagram and any other potentially profitable platform. But by 2020, Chow, aware that the Trump administration might ban TikTok, had also read the book “Essentialism,” whose message he summarized as “you can be good at many things or you can the best at one thing.” He threw himself into YouTube, specifically YouTube Shorts, videos often under a minute that are designed to be watched on phones.... 

The audience is heavily Generation Alpha, children roughly 7 to 14 who grew up with screens.

A wan vision of failure.

From the front page of the New York Times.

Here's the article: "Biden Has Raised Little of What He Needs to Build a Presidential Library/His library foundation has told the I.R.S. that by the end of 2027 it expects to bring in just $11.3 million — not nearly enough for a traditional presidential library."

That article has 4 authors. 4 authors in search of a President.

ADDED: A few things from the article:

1. An excellent joke from a big donor named John Morgan:  “The Biden staff, they ruined any type of good library for him. He’ll be lucky to have a bookmobile.”

2. They might need to repurpose "pre-existing Biden institutions at the University of Delaware."

3. Bill Clinton is out there seeking donations for an expansion to his presidential library, and he's doing a better job of maintaining relationships with donors.

4. Obama's presidential library is ridiculous. It's a "still-unfinished 'presidential center' in Chicago — not technically a presidential library,' since it will not include hard copies of White House documents — will include a vegetable garden, a branch of the city library, and a basketball gym." Let me add on to that and say it suggests that Biden's best move should be to end to the grandiose bullshit that is the "presidential library"? 

Sunrise — 6:48, 7:09, 7:12, 7:27.

Finally, we got a richly colorful sunrise, the first one of December. 

Yesterday, we had a huge crowd of swans, and today they were entirely gone, from this side of the lake anyway. I thought I heard them in the distance. Maybe over by the terrace and the frat houses. But where we were the coots had reestablished cootville. Walking back, I thought I saw an eagle, and a bit later I heard an unusual bird cry. Eagles don't sound eagle-y to me. But it was an eagle. In fact, 3 eagles! 

Meade caught the birds:

Tomorrow, it will be difficult to get out at all. The National Weather Service is saying "wind chills as low as 29 below expected." That's a little crazy! 

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"Why everything is ‘aesthetic’ to Gen Z and Alpha/'Aesthetic' is now an adjective and a one-word compliment. Why does it still sound wrong to older ears?"

That headline at the Washington Post sent me right to the OED to see when "aesthetic" first became an adjective. 

The relevant meaning is "Of a thing: in accordance with principles of artistic beauty or taste; giving or designed to give pleasure through beauty; of pleasing appearance." The OED traces that back to the 1800s:

"The exact spot that held me: 38°40'55.3"N 109°38'45.3"W. If nothing else, let this stand as a reminder to others. Quicksand is real."

"I didn't believe it before today. It does not care how experienced you are. It only cares that you stepped in the wrong place at the wrong time."

From the Reddit post, "I Had to be Rescued off the Hayduke Trail Today in Arches National Park After Getting Stuck in Quicksand."

The story appears at many news sites now, including "Stuck in Quicksand, a Hiker in Utah Has His SOS Answered/Austin Dirks used a Garmin satellite device to reach emergency responders, who rescued him in a remote canyon in Arches National Park" (NYT). That's a free link, and there's some good video there, showing the rescue.

A quote from one of the recipients of the call for help: "We always try not to be judgmental. But you’re thinking, Quicksand, really? It’s probably some tourist with their foot stuck in the mud somewhere."

AND: Dirks shows up the comments section at the NYT:

"Ex-Michigan football coach Sherrone Moore told mistress he was going to make her watch him kill himself — with butter knives, kitchen scissors."

 That's the disturbing headline in The New York Post.

The inconsolable 39-year-old [Moore] allegedly burst into the apartment of his executive assistant and mistress, Paige Shiver, on Wednesday, where he grabbed butter knives and kitchen scissors and told her he was going to make her watch him commit suicide. Shiver, 32, had broken off the illicit tryst with her boss just two days before, prosecutor Kati Rezmierski said during Moore’s arraignment on Friday afternoon.The pair has been in an “intimate relationship” for a number of years, she added.... Shiver reported their relationship to the University of Michigan’s athletic department when Moore continued to call and text her, despite her efforts to ignore him, prosecutors said.... Prosecutors on Friday described to the court how an enraged Moore told his mistress, “you ruined my life,” and that he was going to kill himself and “make you watch.”...

"Size of Life."

A beautiful and entertaining graphic depiction of the relative size of various life forms.

I've always loved perceptions about size. I've collected them over the years using my tag "big and small" — you know, the large boulder the size of a small boulder, the Santa Claus hat, and all the rest — so I'm happy to have something else, something so good, to add to my collection.

"Life is an excruciating phase in the life of everyone."

Wrote Nell Zink, in "Sister Europe,” quoted in the Dwight Garner section of the NYT piece "Our Book Critics on Their Year in Reading," and that's a free link to the NYT because Garner does such a fine job of finding sentences to quote.

Here's his book — which I've bought for myself and others — collecting quotes in the same manner you'll find in that "Year in Reading" piece: "Garner's Quotations/A Modern Miscellany" (commission earned). 

And here's the commission-earned link for "Sister Europe," which I bought on the strength of that one sentence.

Here's one more quote from that "Year in Reading" (this one's by Mariel Franklin): "There was something about air travel that made me think of Swiss euthanasia clinics."

"One possibility of what we get out of it is basically a spheres of influence kind of organization of the world..."

"... something we haven't really seen since the late 1800s. This is a world in which the United States dominates its own territory, that China dominates the Pacific, and that the Europeans dominate Europe — but if they don't get their act together, maybe Vladimir Putin dominates Europe.... I think this is where we see the America First doctrine becoming something closer to Americas First — Americas with an S — that he views the region as basically the subsidiary of the United States. And you know, I've traveled with President Trump. I've covered 5 American Presidents since I got back to Washington... and my takeaway is that Trump is really not an isolationist. He never has been. He's actually more of a unilateralist.... He wants the total freedom of action. He knows that he is not really interested in democracy promotion. He knows that he wants to prioritize economics and economic development over everything, even if those economics don't necessarily come with security benefits to the us.... [E]ach region of the world — and even our allies — are going to have to learn to depend on themselves.... I think the fundamental trust in the US as the defender of a certain set of concepts of the West has been shattered for some time...."

Says David Sanger in today's excellent episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "Trump’s Plan to Reorder the World."

AND: Here's the "National Security Strategy" document Sanger is discussing.

ADDED: There's some discussion of the Monroe Doctrine in that podcast, so

"Across the country, a small but growing number of educators are experimenting with oral exams to circumvent the temptations presented by powerful artificial intelligence platforms such as ChatGPT."

"Such tools can be used to cheat on take-home exams or essays and to complete all manner of assignments, part of a broader phenomenon known as 'cognitive off-loading.' [One teacher] tells her students that using AI is like bringing a forklift to the gym when your goal is to build muscle. 'The classroom is a gymnasium, and I am your personal trainer,' she explains. “I want you to lift the weights.'"

I'm reading "To AI-proof exams, professors turn to the oldest technique of all/A growing number of educators are finding that oral exams allow them to test their students’ learning without the benefit of AI platforms such as ChatGPT" (WaPo)(gift link).

I stare the nerve-wracked student in the face and say "Is using AI is like bringing a forklift to the gym when your goal is to build muscle?"

The student, knowing his grade in my "Logic and Language" course depends on how fluently and sensibly he responds to that prompt, answers:

Sunrise — 7:16, 7:23.

After 3 days hiding from the ice and cold, I finally made it back out to the sunrise.

The swans were going crazy celebrating the coming of the light. Here's Meade's video:

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"Forced to marry her cousin at 12, Kouhkan became pregnant at 13 and gave birth to a son. She suffered physical and emotional abuse..."

"... for years. On the day her husband was killed, Kouhkan found him beating their son, then aged five. She called her husband’s cousin, Mohammad Abil, for help. When he arrived a fight broke out which resulted in the death of her husband...."

From "Child bride spared execution in Iran after blood money is paid/Guardian story helped to draw attention to planned hanging of Goli Kouhkan over death of abusive husband" (The Guardian).

"Iran executes the highest number of women in the world, according to available data. Amnesty International said that at least 30 women were executed in the country last year. At least 42 women have been executed in 2025 so far – 18 for murdering their husbands, including two child brides, according to Iran Human Rights."

"Nuzzi’s book compares in first week sales to those like John Fetterman's 'Unfettered' (2,600 copies in its first week) and Michael Wolff's 'All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America' (3,000 copies)..."

"... both of which were largely considered busts. Experts theorized 'Canto' was an example of the disconnect between media elites and consumers, and that scandal-filled headlines preceding its release exhausted the public interest before the book even hit the shelves...."

From "Olivia Nuzzi’s 'Canto' Sells Just 1,200 Print Copies In First Week" (Forbes).

"The Trump administration wants to persuade four more countries to leave the European Union to 'Make Europe Great Again'..."

"... according to reports of a longer, still-classified version of the US national security strategy released last week. There are also suggestions of creating a new elite C5, or Core Five, forum of world powers to sideline the G7, comprising America, China, India, Japan and Russia. The four EU countries seen as targets to follow Brexit are Austria, Hungary, Italy and Poland, according to leaked details reported by the US defence website Defense One. The classified version of the strategy, which warned of 'civilisational erasure' in Europe because of mass immigration and multiculturalism, is believed to call for the US to 'support parties, movements, and intellectual and cultural figures who seek sovereignty and preservation/restoration of traditional European ways of life … while remaining pro-American.'" 

 From "Leaked files ‘show US wants to persuade four nations to leave EU’ The countries seen as targets to follow Brexit are Austria, Hungary, Italy and Poland, according to leaked details of the US national security strategy" (London Times).

Jasmine Crockett hits the ground running.

 

That's one of the best political ads I've ever seen. This video is excellent too:

"He describes how — in his view — his ex-wife weaponised gender medicine to cut him out of his daughter’s life..."

"... how his daughter went from being sectioned for anorexia to being affirmed in her trans identity by all the adults in her life except him, how she was given a prescription for testosterone after one online session with a counsellor, and how this was injected by her local NHS GP with no blood tests or clinical evaluation.... J was diagnosed with autism aged 13. At 14 she was sectioned because she had become severely malnourished.... Before she was sectioned, J had told her parents that she was a lesbian, and then she and her best friend said that they were in fact boys in a gay relationship. 'These are two autistic girls who were ostracised in school,' says [the father]. After J came out of hospital, she ate nothing for a week. Then her mother made a deal with her: if you start eating, I will let you take the gender drugs.... He remembers the last time he saw her.... 'When she said goodbye, her smile was the same girly shy smile she had as a little girl. Somewhere in there is my daughter.'"

From "Father’s anger at girl’s potentially fatal testosterone dose/The child, who was 15 at the time, was given the prescription by the private GenderGP clinic after one online counselling session" (London Times).

To be "sectioned" is to be forced into hospitalization.

"María Corina Machado, the Venezuelan opposition leader who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this week... dodged a reporter’s question about her views on the threat of U.S. military action in Venezuela."

"But she repeated the Trump administration’s talking points on Mr. Maduro’s government, comparing him to a criminal mastermind engaged in a vast array of illegal activities in partnership with America’s adversaries. 'Venezuela has already been invaded,' she said. 'We have the Russian agents, we have the Iranian agents, we have terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, operating freely in accordance with the regime. We have the Colombian guerrilla, the drug cartels.'... In response to questions about the seizure of the oil tanker, Ms. Machado said that she supported cutting the funds of Mr. Maduro’s government. She added that he finances himself with gold smuggling, human trafficking, drugs and illegal oil sales...."

From "Nobel Peace Prize Winner Machado Vows to End Maduro’s Rule in Venezuela/María Corina Machado reappeared on the global stage as the Trump administration ramped up its pressure campaign against President Nicolás Maduro" (NYT).

ADDED: I'm reading "How Nobel peace prize winner María Machado fled Venezuela, in a wig/The Venezuelan opposition leader took great risks to reach Norway, where her daughter had accepted the prize, making a surprise appearance hours later" (London Times): "... Machado left her safe house in the Caracas suburbs on Monday night, wearing a wig and a disguise.... [and] embarked on a ten-hour journey through ten military checkpoints before reaching the coast by midnight. After resting for a few hours at a coastal fishing village, she and two others set out at 5am on a traditional wooden skiff — a small lightweight fishing boat with a shallow bottom, designed to be used near shore — and made the 35-mile trip across the Caribbean Sea to Curaçao, an island nation within the kingdom of the Netherlands. Strong winds and choppy seas delayed her crossing.... [A] source said that the Machado escape team alerted the US government 'so that they would not blow up the boat.' The opposition leader has been a vocal supporter of the Trump administration’s increased military presence in the area...."

AND: The NYT quotes Machado: "I believe that President Trump’s actions have been decisive to reach the point where we are right now, in which the regime is weaker than ever. You need to raise the cost of staying in power and lower the cost of leaving power. Only when you do that, this regime will break down. And that’s where we’re moving toward right now."

In the Wednesday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want... except the seizing of the oil tanker. There's a new post, just up, for that. All other topics are fine.

"As you probably know, we’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela. A large tanker, very large. Largest one ever seized, actually, and other things are happening. It was seized for a very good reason."

Said President Trump.

Quoted in "U.S. Seizes Oil Tanker Off Venezuelan Coast, Trump Says/The seizure comes as the United States builds up its forces in the Caribbean as part of a pressure campaign against Nicolás Maduro, the leader of Venezuela" (NYT).

"I love the Gen Z’s. I love their attitude. They think the world is in a bad place and that we’ve got to make it better."

"That’s their thing. They’re into making things better. I’m a Gen Z, too. I moved to New York from Detroit at 24, and I’m still 24 in my head, so they’re my people. The Gen Z’s only like talking to people their own age, and since they can tell I’m like them, they talk to me. If someone looks over 30, I don’t even interview them.... I never know who these people are. I don’t read the newspaper or follow the news. I cry when I read the news, so why would I? But I don’t get star-struck. Back in the 1970s, I met every celebrity there ever was at Studio 54, where I was a house photographer, so I don’t get star-struck."

Said Judi Jupiter, quoted in "Judi Jupiter, a 76-Year-Old Social Media Star, Is Gen Z at Heart/In the 1970s, she photographed Andy Warhol and Debbie Harry on wild nights at Studio 54. Now she’s chronicling a new generation" (NYT)(that's a gift link, because there are a lot of photos).

And here's her Instagram, so you can check out the videography.

That one quote really struck me: "I don’t read the newspaper or follow the news. I cry when I read the news, so why would I?" It's a good question. You do not have to read the news. You can abstain.

And by the way, you don't have to answer when people prod you to reveal your politics.

"During an interview in September 2024, Mr. Dokoupil challenged the author Ta-Nehisi Coates about a new book he had written on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

"Mr. Dokoupil told Mr. Coates that some of the material in the book 'would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist,' adding, 'what is it that so particularly offends you about the existence of a Jewish state that is a Jewish safe place?'... Some CBS journalists objected to how Mr. Dokoupil had handled the interview, and the news division’s leadership rebuked the anchor on a newsroom-wide conference call, saying the interview had fallen short of editorial standards. That prompted Shari Redstone, the owner of Paramount at the time, to defend Mr. Dokoupil and reprimand her own executives, saying 'they made a mistake' in questioning the anchor...."

From "Tony Dokoupil Is Named Anchor of ‘CBS Evening News’/He replaces John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois in one of the most high-profile decisions of Bari Weiss’s early tenure as the network’s editor in chief" (NYT).

Here's how Bari Weiss's Free Press covered the story at the time: "How Is CBS Marking October 7? By Admonishing Tony Dokoupil":

This is not satire. This is Gavin Newsom presenting his "truly vulnerable book."

This might not be the book people expected me to write.

It's about something universal — the messiness of becoming who we are.

Young Man in a Hurry is out February 2026.

Pre-order it here: https://t.co/WMGKrREIre pic.twitter.com/OtB0MlcFSf

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) December 9, 2025

This expresses exactly what I feel about the song "Little Drummer Boy."

Prestonwood Baptist Church with their 'Gift of 'Christmas 2025' show, feat. the Little Drummer Boy pic.twitter.com/cdXIvBl9ds

— Protestia (@Protestia) December 9, 2025

ADDED: I said it back in 2011: "[I]f you ever feel like giving me a gift, and you think all you've got to give is that drum number you're threatening to perform, realize you are making a mistake. There's also the gift of silence. I'd prefer that. I know baby Jesus reputedly appreciated the gift of drumming — according to that nasty song — but consider the possibility that Jesus was just being nice. I know, politeness is a quality alien to infants, but — come on! — it was Jesus! Put the damned drum away."

And in 2021, I noted that "Little Drummer Boy" was at #100, last place, in where the critic, Alexandria Petri said:

"If you’re 30 years old... there’s a sense of nihilism that’s growing.... And this nihilism, [Charlie] Kirk understood...."

"Of course, I only had an hour-and-a-half conversation with Charlie, but where it seems to me to have fallen short with Turning Point USA and the MAGA movement is they don’t have a prescription to actually address the real and substantive issues — but they sure as hell identify the problem."

Said Gavin Newsom, interviewed by Ezra Klein, in "The Contradictions of Gavin Newsom" (NYT)(audio and transcript at Podscribe, here). Kirk had been a guest on Newsom's podcast, and Klein wanted to know what Newsom had learned from Kirk.

Klein pushed back: "Well, isn’t that a prescription? If I were to try to boil it down: tariffs, a closed border and Christianity?"

Instead of taking on Klein's idea that the right does offer solutions, Newsom seized on that last word —Christianity — and tumbled into personal storytelling mode:

"Looking out on a pool of less marriageable men, young women are turning their backs on the institution, bolstered by cultural messaging..."

"... from academia to Hollywood that remains critical of more conservative lifestyles. While the country rightfully spent recent decades boosting the educational and economic prospects of women, it deindustrialized, axing and outsourcing jobs in heavily male industries, and leaving men and women increasingly out of step with one another. Efforts to make the workforce and education system more friendly for girls have led to emphasizing literacy and verbal skills, a hemorrhaging of male teachers, and the decline of shop classes and vocational programs.... The trend line of women reporting a declining desire to marry may indeed reflect pessimism about their prospects rather than the institution itself — and not for ideological reasons so much as practical ones...."

Writes Emily Jashinsky, in "A marriage gap is growing — and it could spell disaster/The 'war on boys' could be resulting in some women shunning marriage" (WaPo).

Jashinsky, as a 7-year-old girl, was one of the kids portrayed in the Christina Hoff Sommers book “The War Against Boys,” which came out in 2000, and she also worked as an intern on the re-release of the book in 2012.

It seems that both men and women regard the members of the opposite sex as unworthy of marriage. 

"I’ll take the heat, I don’t care. I don’t care — I’ll take all the heat you want to give me, and I’ll take the heat off both the Democrats and the Republicans."

"My whole life has been heat. I like heat, in a certain way. But I will. I mean, you are somewhat more traditional politicians. Two and a half years ago, I was never thinking in terms of politics. Now I’m a politician. You people have been doing it, many of you, all your lives. I’ll take all the heat you want."

Said Donald Trump, in what I nominate as his most iconic statement.

He said it on January 9, 2018, and I ran across it this morning because I was reading a 2018 post of mine — "How Trump 'took the heat' for all of them: The 'shithole' timeline.'" Lately, some people have been harking back to the much better remembered Trump quote: "Why is it we only take people from shithole countries?" That's what got me there.

Trump's "I like heat" statement was made in a conversation about comprehensive immigration reform. Imagine if we'd gotten that in 2018! He wanted it, ostensibly. He tried to bring members of Congress together and offered to "take all the heat." But we didn't get that reform, and look what happened.

Outside of that context, it's a good quote for general Trump purposes, don't you think? 

"Echoing President Trump’s call for classical style in federal architecture, Mr. Rubio’s order cited the origins of serif typefaces in Roman antiquity."

"Those typefaces, which are used by The New York Times, include small strokes at the edges of many characters. Admirers say those flourishes make letters look more elegant and make them easier to distinguish from one another, even though they can also create a sense of clutter. Serif typefaces are 'generally perceived to connote tradition, formality and ceremony,' Mr. Rubio’s order said, adding that they were used by the White House, Supreme Court and other state and federal government entities, as well as in the script on the side of Air Force One...."

From "At State Dept., a Typeface Falls Victim in the War Against Woke/Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the Biden-era move to the sans serif typeface 'wasteful,' casting the return to Times New Roman as part of a push to stamp out diversity efforts'" (NYT).

It's bizarre that wanting things to look normal again is counted as part of a "War Against Woke." I think the NYT is putting it that way to try to make sense of what the former administration did.

Why would the State Department want its official correspondence in the font you see here?

We're told the idea was to make reading easier for persons with dyslexia. Well, maybe, but that Calibri font seems to convey a message of informality or even humility. Don't take us so seriously, world.

Instead of holding the former administration to account for its poor choice, the new administration is framed as hostile to a vulnerable group!

At the Tuesday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

"I have no vision for Europe.... Look, I have a vision for the United States of America first. It’s 'Make America Great Again.' Uh, I do explain to Europe..."

"... 'cause I think, you know, I’m supposed to be a very smart person, I can ... I have eyes. I have ears. I have, uh, knowledge. I have vast knowledge. I see what’s happening. I get reports that you will never see. And I think it’s horrible what’s happening to Europe. I think it’s endangering Europe as we know it. Europe could be a whole different place. And I think the European people should do something about it...."

Said President Trump, in this long conversation with Politico's Dasha Burns.

Watch the whole thing, below, and read the transcript here.

"Quite apart from this post marking the couple’s coming out on social media, it has broader cultural significance on two counts."

Writes Polly Vernon in "Trudeau's going all Travis" (London Times)(about this Katy Perry Instagram post). The 2 counts:

1. "[I]t’s a flagrant challenge to Vogue magazine’s recent diktat regarding how embarrassing it is to have a boyfriend nowadays; a viral article that made specific reference to how 'no one' is doing precisely the thing Katy Perry, in fact, just did, ie sharing images of their boyfriend on social media."

2. "[T]he 'Travis Kelce-fication™" of romantic male partners. Travis Kelce... All photographic evidence suggests Kelce is even now incapable of so much as glancing at [Taylor] Swift without his entire facial expression melting into a mush of captivated swoony wonder that she could be interested in him… I would be so bold as to suggest that early signs are Trudeau has been, or is in the process of being, Travis Kelce-ficated by Perry...."

From the linked Vogue article:

"Students at the University of Glasgow have been cautioned that Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone contains 'outdated attitudes, abuse and language.'"

"The work by JK Rowling appears alongside a number of titles, including Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, the dystopian 2001 novel Noughts & Crosses by Malory Blackman and Edith Nesbit’s 1899 book The Treasure Seekers, assessed as having the potential to cause offence."

From "Trigger warning slapped on Harry Potter for ‘outdated attitudes’/Students at the University of Glasgow are also being warned about Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll and The Treasure Seekers by Edith Nesbit" (London Times).

Maybe college students need to be warned to move on beyond children's books. 

"'Democrats create Project 2027'... Oh, it's 'Democrats' comma 'create Project 27.' It's advice to Democrats. By Juan Williams. Ha ha."

Say I, aloud, reading a headline at The Hill.

It's Juan Williams, "Democrats, create Project 2027 and hope your wave comes."

We sigh in disappointment.

I was just saying nobody talks about Project 2025 anymore, and Meade said he was just reading about it, so I did a search and came up with that dispiriting Hill headline.

Let's read: "After devastating defeats in 2024, Democrats are closing out 2025 with wind in their sails.... Republicans and Democrats now talk openly of a likely tsunami of wins for Democrats in the 2026 midterms. If true, Democrats better get a surfboard and make plans to ride that big wave into the 2028 presidential election...."

He got that water metaphor going but recommends surfing in a tsunami. I asked Grok to make a list of other metaphors that are as good but bad as surfing in a tsunami. I got things like: "Having barely survived the forest fire of 2024, Democrats now have a raging wildfire at their backs. Better grab some marshmallows and roast them all the way to victory!" And: "After the dam broke and drowned them in 2024, Democrats finally have the floodwaters moving their way. Grab a pool floatie and ride this deluge to glory!"

I watched this so you don't have to. Do. Not. Watch.

"The governor acknowledged that it is highly unlikely he would endorse a similar initiative for more progressive, left-leaning causes..."

"... but added that 'it would not be illegal' for them to exist in public schools. Abbott signed Senate Bill 12 earlier this year, a sweeping state law that banned student clubs with an LGBTQ+ focus...."

From "Texas launches plan to open Turning Point USA chapters in every high school/Republican officials in Oklahoma and Florida have also launched plans to expand the presence of the conservative youth organization founded by Charlie Kirk" (Texas Tribune).

Naturally: "Petitions calling for the removal of the school chapters have also emerged, with some students and parents criticizing the national organization for what they describe as 'racist, homophobic, and sexist hate speech on college campuses across America.' The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group that tracks extremism, describes Turning Point as an organization with a strategy of sowing fear 'that white Christian supremacy is under attack by nefarious actors, including immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community and civil rights activists.'"

Painfully: "Disclosure: Southern Poverty Law Center has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization... Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism...."

How dishonest is "it would not be illegal" given Senate Bill 12?

Why withhold video of death?

I'm reading "Trump says Hegseth will decide whether to release boat strike video/The comments come after the president previously said his administration would release video of a controversial military operation, 'no problem'" (WaPo).

If there's something people want to see, why not let them see? I don't want to see it, because I was taught as a child not to look, and I've always regarded this a moral requirement. If I know it is video of a real person dying, I will read about it if it is newsworthy but I don't watch. I read about the death of George Floyd, but I did not watch. 

Do people gain better understanding by watching video of human beings dying? In the case of the boat strike, there are fact questions, and it is evidence – inflammatory evidence, but evidence. And some people want to stare at it and make up their own mind — stare at human beings, desperate and then blown up. How much can be seen?

"Facing down this digital firehose of – pardon the Silicon Valleyese – 'content,' how does Hollywood now decide what merits a cinema release?"

"Facing down this digital firehose of – pardon the Silicon Valleyese – 'content,' how does Hollywood now decide what merits a cinema release? What executives are looking for – at least at Sony, according to one of its partner producers I spoke with recently – is 'theatricality.' By that term, the company means films with 'the urgency to get people to leave the comfort of their homes, he says. Working out what urgency – or 'theatrical intent,' to use the marketing lingo – means is the current Hollywood obsession. Tom Cruise, for instance, interprets urgency literally – banking on personal peril in the form of old-fashioned, non-CGI stunt work to pack in the punters. It worked for 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick.... His proselytisation of real thrills in real cinemas is one way of defining theatricality – though the danger is the approach relies only on fading muscle memory of blockbusters past...."

I'm reading "All hail Avatar! How event movies are trying to bring back the box office blockbuster/Ahead of James Cameron’s latest Avatar sequel hitting the big screen, we look at how studios aim for ‘theatricality’ to get streaming film fans from sofa to cinema" (The Guardian). 

From the depth of my memory came a question that sounds like an entry for a new Dictionary of Received Ideas: Who was that French theorist who said theater must be spectacle? I believe he died putting on his shoes.

Such raw thoughts are — I think — good AI prompts. I immediately had the name: Antonin Artaud. Here's his Wikipedia article. He wrote a manifesto about what he called the Theatre of Cruelty. Here's a Grok-made chart to help you compare him to the Hollywood execs:

Sunrise — 7:13.

Photo by Meade, who braved the cold when I did not.

Feel free to talk about whatever you want in the comments.

"Why Mr. Biden waited so long to effectively seal the border has become one of the defining questions of his presidency."

"Some aides feared that closing the border would be overturned by the courts. Others said that principles mattered. 'It was truly believed — deeply, by many, including the president — that that was not in keeping with our values,' said Ms. Jacobson, the former border czar...."

From "How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith in Immigration/The Democratic president and his top advisers rejected recommendations that could have eased the border crisis that helped return Donald Trump to the White House" (NYT)(gift link).

"I’ll put my cards on the table," said Justice Gorsuch. "Maybe... there is no such thing in our constitutional order as a fourth branch of government...."

In the oral argument this morning in Trump v. Slaughter, Justice Gorsuch questioned Amit Agarwal, counsel for Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, the FTC commissioner fired by President Trump. This is the entire back-and-forth, centering on the idea of the President's duty to execute all the laws. All you lawyers can see where this is going: If the President has a duty, then he must have the power.

JUSTICE GORSUCH: You agree that [the President] has a duty to faithfully execute all the laws. 

MR. AGARWAL: Yes.

JUSTICE GORSUCH: Civil and criminal.

MR. AGARWAL: We agree that the Constitution imposes on the President a duty to faithfully execute the laws, absolutely.

JUSTICE GORSUCH: All the laws?

"This is one of the hottest benches I've seen in a while."

There's live-blogging of Trump v. Slaughter going on over at SCOTUSblog.

ADDED: I'm listening to the direct audio from the Court, which is here.

AND: At SCOTUSblog, Amy Howe observes that "a solid majority of the justices appeared to agree with the Trump administration that a law prohibiting the president from firing FTC commissioners except in cases of 'inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office' violates the constitutional separation of powers....  Much of the argument focused on the possible broader effects of a ruling for either the Trump administration or Slaughter. The justices questioned whether a decision in Slaughter’s favor could give Congress sweeping power, including the authority to convert existing Cabinet departments into multi-member agencies that would be insulated from presidential control.... In what was likely a bad sign for Slaughter, the justices spent virtually no time on the second question presented in the case – whether, even if the FTC removal statute is constitutional, a federal judge can order the reinstatement of an official who was fired without case, or whether that official is only entitled to back pay...."

Predictions elsewhere are similar: "Justices Seem Ready to Give Trump More Power to Fire Independent Government Officials" (NYT), "Supreme Court poised to expand Trump’s power over independent agencies" (WaPo).

Here's the transcript of the argument. Listening to the audio, I scrawled down one phrase I wanted to use to find the one quote I most wanted to blog. But I'm going to start a new post for that. The phrase was "cards on the table."

"It’s impossible to determine a single root cause for the overall sense of anger and frustration with government..."

"... but there is a fairly obvious hinge point after which voter fury grew, about 20 years ago. That’s when the Iraq War grew deadlier while the stated purpose of the invasion — to eliminate Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction — turned out to be false. The housing market had blown up by 2008, causing a financial collapse that left millions of homeowners underwater and, the following year, led to an unemployment rate of 10 percent. Around that time, cable news began breaking away from its early focus on crime and trials and was instead becoming focused wall-to-wall on politics and government, fragmenting into ideological corners just as technology turned phones into instant echo chambers...."

From "Anger is a defining character trait for both parties, new study shows/Updated Pew research shows Democrats are now at record levels of anger toward government, surpassing previous GOP records" (WaPo).

Sample comments: "What a terrible both sidesism essay"/"Before Trump spewed his invectives demonizing our democratic institutions, I was mostly content with our government and felt it reflected our values...."

I like that the essay, by Paul Kane, reminded Democrats that their anger isn't traced to Trump. It was full grown in the Bush era. And you should have seen what it looked like here in Wisconsin in 2011:

"[David] Ellison is the son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, one of the world’s wealthiest people and a friend and supporter of President Donald Trump."

"Trump on Sunday said he would be 'involved' in assessing the intended Netflix-Warner Bros. Discovery deal, saying Netflix’s market share in the streaming sector 'could be a big problem.'"

From "Paramount launches hostile bid for Warner Bros., challenging Netflix deal/The David Ellison-run company is promising Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders a deal it says is more lucrative and easier for the Trump administration to approve" (WaPo).

Sample comments over there: "Another low down and dirty deal brought to you by TrumpWorld"/"The complete Trump takeover effort of major media in this country continues"/"Remember when the whined about Obama and the dems 'picking winners and losers' and how wrong that was? The good old days."

Steam fog and swans.

Lake Mendota at at 7:22 a.m.

  

That's the western view. There was much more bird action looking east at 7:18:

Video by Meade.

"The White House has explained the East Wing’s demolition as 'renovation,' and the necessary prelude to a multimillion-dollar ballroom."

"This is the architectural equivalent of a celebrity-style makeover: a redo to admire as a luxury commodity, an old building rejuvenated, history erased.... Of course, when celebrities go under the knife, we never see the surgery. Nor do we see the blood, bruising or scars. These aspects just get disappeared, before the eventual 'reveal' of the transformation. This is why the honesty discourse around surgery is complicated: Think of it as a film with some segments edited out, making the transition seem magical, and free of any gruesome in-between stages.... The Treasury Department has reportedly prohibited any further photos of the East Wing’s demolition site — we must not see the patient on the operating table...."

I'm reading Rhonda Garelick's "Americans Love a Makeover, as Long as It’s Invisible/The gutting of the East Wing of the White House and our national preoccupation with 'renovation'" (NYT).

AFTERTHOUGHT: Taking Garelick's analogy very seriously, I could believe that Trump's buildings are, for him, the equivalent of a woman's body and face.

There has alway been a womanly aspect to Trump, and I think that is one of the (many) things that trouble those of us who have focused on his weirdness over the years. A transwoman is easier to fathom. Rather that to be focused on his own body and face, he has pushed this awareness out to the buildings that surround him. He's deeply invested in extreme achievement in the field of aesthetics — he's said "I'm a very aesthetic person" — and he may be too much like those actresses who overindulge in plastic surgery as they experience their time running low.

If I am right, it's not just a matter of the "gruesome in-between stages" of the reconstruction work. It's also the final result. Why does the NYT include that photo of Kristen Chenowith?

"Meghan has struggled to contact her father after his life-saving surgery because she has lost his phone number and he has stopped using his email address..."

"...it is claimed," The London Times reports in "Meghan ‘no longer has’ her father Thomas Markle’s phone number/The Duchess of Sussex is believed to have lost or deleted her father’s number as she claimed to have contacted him by email after his ‘life-or-death’ surgery."

Hilariously... I mean sadly... unbelievable, for about 10 reasons, including the way the "contacts" on your phone hang on steadfastly until you delete them. I just checked mine, and I see names of people I haven't phoned since the '00s. Maybe Meghan weeds hers out more assiduously than I do, but still... deleting your father's name?

"In recent days Meghan has continued promoting the Christmas special of her Netflix show... in which she talks about a Christmas tree encapsulating a 'family’s story.' In a video posted to... Instagram she is seen making a homemade advert [sic] calendar... and saying 'thank you so … honestly so, so much' to the television crew... Markle is yet to meet his grandchildren... although he did receive a call asking for his daughter’s hand in marriage...."

Now about that advent calendar:

Sunrise — 7:04.

Darkmonth has begun, so snuggle up and settle in for a long night of conversation on the topics of your choice.

And here's Meade's video of swans, ducks, and coots.

Are you irked at the existence of a restaurant that serves excellent pasta on high tables where everyone must stand?

I'm reading "A restaurant with no chairs? This tiny pasta spot is worth standing for/Gemini in Dupont Circle is a wonderfully strange home for handmade pasta, natural wine and some of the best ice cream in the United States" (WaPo)(gift link, so you can see all the irked readers in the comments and some pictures of the food).

Sample comments:

1. "One thing about which I have not yet been 'disenchanted' in fine dining restaurants is a seat."

2. "I use a walker and anyplace I go must be accessible. This is a huge nope. Next."

3. "That's one way to ensure a young clientele...." 

4. "That might be a violation of the ADA...." 

5. "Wow. This business seem to have a lot of contempt for its customers. No chairs? Restrictive hours? No pasta outside??? No pasta for TAKE OUT? Good grief. I would never go there."

I'd say as long as people have a lot of choices of places to go, it's good to experiment, and I think it's nice to make a thing out of getting excellent pasta and moving along quickly, not sitting around. For people who want something else, there are all the other restaurants. 

"[A]n Idaho man was on his rural property in October 2024 when a skunk approached him and scratched him on the shin."

"About five weeks later, the man started to hallucinate, have trouble walking and swallowing, and had a stiff neck.... Two days after his symptoms started, he collapsed of what was presumed to be a heart attack, the report said. The man was unresponsive and taken to a hospital, where he died. Several of his organs were donated.... A Michigan man received the donated kidney. Five weeks after the transplant, he started to experience tremors, weakness, confusion and urinary incontinence, the report said...."

From "Kidney Recipient Dies After Transplant From Organ Donor Who Had Rabies/Only four donors have transmitted rabies to organ transplant recipients since 1978, according to federal officials" (NYT).

"As a young staff member in the Reagan administration, John G. Roberts Jr. was part of a group of lawyers who pushed for more White House control over independent government agencies."

"The 'time may be ripe to reconsider the existence of such entities, and take action to bring them back within the executive branch,' the future chief justice of the United States advised the White House counsel in a 1983 memo. Independent agencies, he wrote, were a 'Constitutional anomaly.' Once he ascended to the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roberts joined other conservatives on the bench in a series of rulings that have chipped away at Congress’s power to constrain the president’s authority to fire independent regulators...."

From "Conservative Project at Supreme Court Meets Trump’s Push to Oust Officials/President Trump has repeatedly ousted leaders of independent agencies despite federal laws meant to shield those regulators from politics" (NYT).

The case — to be argued tomorrow — is Trump v. Slaughter.

The case to be overruled is Humphrey's Executor, discussed in this NYT article, "For Landmark Test of Executive Power, Echoes of a 1930s Supreme Court Battle/Franklin D. Roosevelt’s efforts to oust a Federal Trade Commission leader offer parallels to the current fight over President Trump’s actions" — showing various letters from FDR to Humphrey, saying things like "You will, I know, realize that I do not feel that your mind and my mind go along together on either the policies or the administering of the Federal Trade Commission, and, frankly, I think it is best for the people of this country that I should have a full confidence."

"It sounds so beautiful I want to give all the glory to God we were never supposed to be in this position but by the glory of God" the Hoosiers beat the Buckeyes.

𝗧𝗥𝗘𝗡𝗗𝗜𝗡𝗚: Indiana superstar QB Fernando Mendoza's post-game interview has gone viral 😭😭

One of the greatest interviews you will ever see.pic.twitter.com/1Gcp3AE7XU

— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) December 7, 2025

"It’s certainly a conspicuous choice following a year in which D.E.I. programs have been dismantled and the party in power..."

"... has been debating how friendly to be with a white nationalist. That may not be what Pantone means by 'peace, unity and cohesiveness,' but I have to imagine it will come up for some viewers.... This white, in particular, strikes me as a little flavorless. It’s the color of cottage cheese and dental floss, of marshmallows and AirPods."

Said Callie Holtermann, participating in a NYT conversation titled "Pantone’s 2026 Color of the Year Is ‘Cloud Dancer’/A shade of white will be the defining color of the next year..." (NYT).

"It reminds me of the clothes I put on when I’m in a rush and the foods I eat when I have a stomach ache.... Personally, I miss Viva Magenta from 2023. An insane choice, but at least it was a choice. Cloud Dancer feels like a product of being too tentative to make a statement in any direction. Which is, of course, its own kind of statement."

Here's how Pantone presents its color:

"The famous party slogan in 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' was 'Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.'"

"Orwell’s proposal that totalitarianism demands the rejection of objective truth and the alteration of the past is perhaps the most original idea in 'Nineteen Eighty-Four.'... 'The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc [English socialism]. And even technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be used for the diminution of human liberty. In all the useful arts, the world is either standing still or going backwards.' And the very medium of thought, in Orwell’s reckoning, language, would be crippled. Winston’s co-worker, employed in the project, explains: 'Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year? … In the end we will make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.' What actually happened?... This logarithmic graph shows that in 1948, the Encyclopaedia Britannica was about 29,000 pages. Its final printed edition, in 2010, had 33,000. Today most of us rely on Wikipedia (despite its occasional errors and editing wars), which as of last year had the equivalent of 3.2 million Britannica pages, a hundredfold increase...."

Writes Steven Pinker, in "1984 revisited: George Orwell would be relieved at how we’ve done/It’s common to suggest the great dystopian novel was full of warnings that have largely come true. But the evidence shows otherwise" (London Times).

"People often ask her how, as a famous person, she still takes the Tube, but the reason why is simple — nobody is looking up from their phones."

"'It’s heartbreaking,' she says. 'Nobody’s looking into the f***ing world any more.'"

From "Kate Winslet: ‘Young women have no concept of what being beautiful is’/At 50, the actress doesn’t care what people think of her any more. She lets rip about social media, weight-loss drugs — and why it has taken her so long to become a director" (London Times).

I don't like the expression "let rip." It's too reminiscent of "rip one." But let's read this OED entry for "to let rip." which is defined as "to act or proceed without restraint; (also) to speak violently," which I don't for one minute believe that Kate Winslet did, even as she chided women for — whatever — lip injections and Ozempic. 

The first of the historical quotes comes from California in 1857 and gives some insight into the court system:

"It amounts to an updated Monroe Doctrine, the 1823 declaration telling Europe to look after itself and leave the US to manage the Americas."

"'The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over,' it says. There are echoes of a speech by JD Vance, the vice-president, in Munich in February that stunned European leaders by warning that the continent’s greatest danger came not from Russian aggression but from within, with the erosion of traditional values. 'Economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilisational erasure' in Europe, it states, targeting the 'European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence...."

From "Europe facing ‘civilisational erasure’, warns Trump/A new US security plan warns European allies may falter in Nato, urging nationalist renewal as Washington positions itself between the continent and Moscow" (London Times).

"New music's cool, but have you ever heard old music?"

"Have you ever heard 'You Don't Have to Say You Love Me' by Dusty Springfield?"

I know you have, but have you truly experienced its depth and grandeur? Let Owen Cutts demonstrate:

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