Sunrise — 6:32, 6:38, 6:42, 6:56.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"Well well well, if it isn’t gender-affirming care for straight folks."

That's the top-rated comment on the NYT article "'I’d Like to Be Normal': Can Height Surgery Make Them Happy? Limb-lengthening can add inches to a person’s stature. But its risks have made it controversial."

Hangings.

Yesterday, I was reading the Nicholson Baker essay "The History of Punctuation" (in "The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber" (commission earned)), when I came across a passage about John Lennard’s "But I Digress," which is, we are told, "gracefully written and full of intelligence, decked out with a complete scholarly apparatus of multiple indices, bibliographies, and notes, whose author, to judge by the startling jacket photo (shaved head with up-sticking central proto-Mohawk tuft, earring on left ear, wilted corduroy jacket, and over-laundered T-shirt bearing some enigmatic insignia underneath), put himself through graduate school by working as a ticket scalper at Elvis Costello concerts. (A discussion of Elvis Costello’s use of the parenthesis in 'Let Him Dangle' figures in a late chapter.)"

I would buy "But I Digress" so I could quote the part about "Let Him Dangle," but though Amazon shows 13 Kindle books titled "But I Digress," none are by John Lennard. I did find a hardback edition, but it's $239.00 and out of stock. So I can't tell you precisely what it has to say about the parentheses. 

So here's Elvis, doing his song, which is about Derek Bentley, who did dangle (for having uttered the ambiguous words "Let him have it"):

Did you notice the parentheses? It's a song! We'll have to look up the lyrics. The parentheses are in the bridge:

"The Reverend Jesse Jackson is Dead at 84. I knew him well, long before becoming President."

"He was a good man, with lots of personality, grit, and 'street smarts.' He was very gregarious - Someone who truly loved people!"

Writes Trump at Truth Social.

Trump seizes the opportunity to take credit for himself: 

"Knowing Trump responds best to visual stimuli, [Charlie] Kirk had coached [TikTok] to spin up four pages of infographics, 'Trump on TikTok'..."

"... showing his campaign's tens of billions of views on the now-threatened app. A chart... on the first page jumped out at Trump, who had backed a TikTok ban in his first term. 'I'm more popular than Taylor Swift,' he crowed. Many in Trumpworld heard he quickly called Barron, his youngest son, to savor the stat...."

From "How Trump saved TikTok: Backstory of a 2-year campaign" (Axios).

"Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there."

"But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!"

I'm reading "Aliens are ‘real,’ Obama says, as Washington shrugs/The former president appeared to confirm decades-old conspiracy theories, but then he walked back his podcast comments" (WaPo).

And so I feel vindicated in putting "Obama and the aliens" on yesterday's "5 things I've been finding unbloggable."

I'm blogging it now because the new news confirms the unbloggability of the original story, which was that Obama had said “They’re real, but I haven’t seen them." That sounded, to some people, as though he might have information that we don't have. But he didn't. He was just doing that utterly banal thing of deducing that there must be aliens because the universe is so darned huge. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I'm not impressed by that reasoning: "I don’t even believe there are aliens out there anywhere."

Anyway, here's Obama, getting people who are not me excited and then making it clear that he was just bullshitting in the universe-huge-must-be-aliens-somewhere way that just about everyone else does:

Goodbye to Jesse Jackson.

"Jesse Jackson, a leading African American voice on global stage, dies at 84/As a civil rights activist, he joined the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, Alabama, and Memphis. He later launched two historic presidential campaigns" (WaPo)(gift link).

Here's Meade's video of him, from 2011, at the Wisconsin protests:

And here's my photo of a button that I still have right here on my desk and that I wore in 1988:

Discussed in an old diavlog, here, back in 2007, when Obama was first running for President.

From the Washington Post obituary: 

Sunrise — 6:35, 6:58, 6:58, 6:59.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

Goodbye to Frederick Wiseman.

"Frederick Wiseman, 96, Penetrating Documentarian of Institutions, Dies/He exposed abuses in films like 'Titicut Follies,' a once-banned portrait of a mental hospital, but ranged widely in subject matter, from a Queens neighborhood to a French restaurant" (NYT)(gift link).

And though he denied that his movies had any political agenda, he was no stranger to controversy. His directorial debut, “Titicut Follies” (1967), a harrowing portrait of the Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane in Massachusetts, remains the only film ever banned in the United States for reasons other than obscenity, immorality or national security.... 

Goodbye to Robert Duvall.

"Robert Duvall, Chameleonlike Actor of Film, Stage and TV, Dies at 95/The Oscar winner was known for his ability to disappear into roles, playing a wide range of characters in films such as 'Apocalypse Now' and 'The Godfather,' and in the television series 'Lonesome Dove'" (NYT)(gift link).

Why there he is:

ADDED: "I don’t try to be a hard guy to work with.... But I decide what I’m going to do with a character. I will take direction, but only if it kind of supplements what I want to do. If I have instincts that I feel are right, I don’t want anybody to tamper with them. I don’t like tamperers, and I don’t like hoverers."

5 things I've been finding unbloggable.

1. Nancy Guthrie, still missing.

2. Bondi yelling at congressfolk and getting yelled back at by. 

3. Millions of Jeffrey Epstein papers, full of names names names. 

4. Marco in Munich. 

5. Obama and the aliens.

"The once ubiquitous bird has suffered a catastrophic decline.... As many as 98 per cent disappeared from some states."

"Rats and feral dogs flourished in their place, spreading diseases, including rabies. As a result, the human death toll rose significantly. And further to that, Schama adds, an ancient cultural ritual risks being lost. Zoroastrians, no longer able to perform their traditional 'sky burials' — in which corpses are carried to a 'tower of silence' to be picked clean by vultures — are forced to consider cremation instead. 

This chain of collapse between human culture and the lives of birds set me thinking,' Schama says...."

From  "Simon Schama: 'Our fascination with birds is rooted in envy'/The historian has curated an exhibition that explores the relationship between birds and humans" (London Times).

"'What are they, these creatures, two-limbed like us and yet nothing like us at all?' he wonders. 'Human culture is arranged around the perfection of the human,' he says. 'We are seen as God’s greatest works. But one thing we have not been able to do is fly.' Our fascination with birds, he suggests, 'is based around a sort of envy.' Because what we call flying is not really that, it’s just 'sitting in a metal tube with the blinds shut looking at old movies.' It is not about the glorious freedom that we dream of, about the transcendence we desire, the celestial state that we yearn for. That freedom of spirit will always elude us.'"

"She does not feel self-conscious when she is on stage. It is only when she returns to the wings that she feels a little shy."

I'm reading "Why I’m performing Wagner naked at the Royal Opera aged 81/Illona Linthwaite won’t let being nude in front of 2,200 people stop her from defying the ‘bad press’ given to older women" (London Times).

“The curtain goes up and there’s nothing happening, it’s just me. I thought that was really frightening and then when it happened, I thought, actually, this is brilliant,” she said.

The role is Erda, in "Siegfried."

Erda is usually “frocked her up to the nines” in gossamer gowns, Linthwaite said, but Barrie Kosky, the director, wanted the octogenarian’s body to symbolise nature and remind the audience of their mortality.... 

That's the director's view — an old woman reminds you of death — not the old woman's. She thinks she's there to remind you of life: 

She thinks her performance is something of a political act in a country she views as “spiritually arid” for its lack of empathy towards older people. Ultimately, she wants the audience to look at her and see the future not as a tragedy, but an adventure. She wants people to feel: “Hey, I’m looking forward to 80.”

I asked Grok: "If you saw Erda in 'Siegfried' portrayed by an old woman would she remind you of death or life?" [ADDED: The actual full question was "What views are attributed to the character Erda in 'Siegfried' and if you saw her portrayed by an old woman would she remind you of death or life?"

Answer:

Least NEW! thing promoted as "NEW!"

As is my wont, I'm scanning headlines at Memeorandum this morning, and I came across this:

I'm not clicking on that. I'm just blogging to say that I graduated from law school in 1981, before the Federalist Society was created to deal with the problem that law schools only presented what the NYT would now like to repackage as an alternative. This "alternative" was mind-crushingly pervasive back then, and those who made that so are responsible for the reaction they caused. I went to law school believing I'd have the opportunity to participate in a rich debate. That didn't happen.

I see the author here is Jeffrey Toobin. I know you must say the Toobin-specific things that you always say. That's already an entry in my Dictionary of Received Idea. 

Sunrise — 6:37, 7:01, 7:04, 7:09, 7:27.

Write about anything you want in the comments.

"I just love to love. If I cut somebody’s hair, they’re feeling good. They’re loving it. If I give somebody some braids or a toupee..."

"... they are loving it. So I thought, that’s a good way to spread love. I’ve been cutting hair for a few years. It’s hard work."

Said "Jaden Carter, 17, reading the Bible in Takoma Park, Maryland, on the campus of Montgomery College," quoted in "'What are you reading?' I asked. Here’s what six strangers told me. Even in the cold, book readers were out in force around town — on trains, waiting for the Metro, at the gym and walking down the street" (WaPo)(gift link).

Come on and find it.

ADDED: I have never been able to understand the words to that song — "Come and Get Your Love." I'm reading the words today for the first time, and I still had trouble understanding it. "Get it from the main vine"? Meade thought it was a drug reference — like "main line." And I thought it was phallic.

But Grok says: "According to explanations tied to the band—particularly co-founder Lolly Vegas (who sang lead on the track)— 'main vine' is a metaphor rooted in the band's Native American heritage (Redbone's members had Yaqui, Shoshone, and other Indigenous ancestry). It symbolizes Mother Earth or the primary, fundamental source of life, love, and spiritual connection."

The line I used for the post title is: "What's the matter with your mind.... Nothing the matter with your head, baby, find it/Come on and find it...." The chorus makes it clear that "it" is love. Whether that's sexual love or something grandly spiritual is in the ears of the listener.

"Since becoming a parent, I’ve gotten used to scrolling past videos of babies gnawing on everything from bone marrow to full-size steaks."

"But lately, the babies on my feed are munching on a new snack: whole sticks of butter. On TikTok, parents are handing their 1-year-olds blocks of Kerrygold to gnaw on while they grocery shop and freezing sticks of butter to help with teething. To hear these moms tell it, butter from grass-fed cows is 'the best snack for babies no one talks about' and a miracle food that can supercharge their brain development. In one video, a mother films herself putting a pat of butter directly into her infant’s mouth. “My kids love butter and I let them eat as much as they want,” she wrote in the caption. After cutting up slabs of butter as a late-night snack, another mom yells to her kids, 'Come get your treat!'"

From "Parents Are Feeding Their Babies So Much Butter" (NY Magazine).

I was there 40 years before it was trendy. See "Back in the days when boys ate butter like it was candy."

Trump sought to influence Bill Maher and he's now going to complain that he didn't get as much favorable press/comedy as he thinks — or pretends to think — he deserves.

"Sometimes in life you waste time! T.V. Host Bill Maher asked to have dinner with me through one of his friends, also a friend of mine, and I agreed," said Trump (at Truth Social).

He came into the famed Oval Office much different than I thought he would be. He was extremely nervous, had ZERO confidence in himself and, to soothe his nerves, immediately, within seconds, asked for a "Vodka Tonic." He said to me, "I’ve never felt like this before, I’m actually scared." In one respect, it was somewhat endearing!"

Trump seems to enjoy diminishing Maher, but I suspect Maher adopted this "little me" pose to disarm Trump. Obviously, Maher was bullshitting. There's no one who has never been scared. It's a joke. He's a comedian. And so is Trump.

Trump continues:

Sunrise — 6:51, 6:57, 7:06, 7:06.

Write about whatever you like in the comments..

"Malinin, who in his youth chose the Instagram handle 'QuadG0d'... was rightfully saddened and a bit angry at the end of his free skate..."

"'I had so many thoughts and memories flood right before I got into my starting pose that it almost, maybe, I think, overwhelmed me a little bit, he said afterward.'... Malinin is a self-described adrenaline junkie. He embraces the idea of conqueror like no other American skater.... On Friday, he at first appeared to be feeding off the Olympic energy. When he initially stepped on the ice for the top six skaters’ final warmup, he made fun faces with the camera man and coolly glided on the ice. Then came the disaster. After Shaidorov skated the performance of the night, the mood slowly dampened with poor skates from France’s Adam Siao Him Fa, who sunk from third to seventh, and Kagiyama, who skated clumsily without his trademark speed.... When Malinin returned to the deflated arena, something about him seemed to be missing as well.... Other Olympic champions had chosen... big music to seize victory.... But Malinin chose to channel himself and his vulnerability, skating to his own voice delivering quiet affirmations that he hoped described the man inside the persona of the 'Quadg0d'..."

Writes Robert Samuels, in "Mikhail Shaidorov was everything Ilia Malinin wasn’t for one night" (WaPo)(gift link).

He was skating to the sound of his own voice, delivering affirmations.... 

Imagine a true God skating extravagantly to the sound of his own voice, delivering affirmations. Don't click for more unless you want to read Grok's 12-point answer to my question: If the God of the Old Testament were delivering affirmations to himself, what would he say?

"There's ideas where I'll start it off and it's just like this ain't going anywhere... and then I'll find a whole other angle.... like what if I was a woman..."

"... and I was watching this and I'm looking at this fucking meathead on stage and I'm like okay, like, I got to figure out a way to get them to understand that just cuz I look like this doesn't mean I'm a bad guy. Like like let me like work this into your head first and then explain it from my perspective.... It's an automatic assumption.... it's an untold prejudice that, like, men with muscles in particular are assholes... a mean person...."

Joe Rogan, explaining his comedy-writing methodology and reflecting on life in this gendered world.

 

Elsewhere in the conversation — at  15:12 — describes a confrontation with 2 women: "I was at a Starbucks the other day and two lesbians walked in. They saw me and they left.... They said, 'We can't, we can't do this.' And they looked in my face and they said, 'We can't do this,' and they left."

Yummy Valentine's sunrise.

We were out in the sunrise, and so were the ice fishers:

"I'm going to have to put it together.... This is my house.... To me, there's just whirling going on.... I understand why I'm here...."

"The chatbot told Small she was living in what it called 'spiral time,' where past, present and future happen simultaneously."

"It said in one past life, in 1949, she owned a feminist bookstore with her soulmate, whom she had known in 87 previous lives. In this lifetime, the chatbot said, they would finally be able to be together.... ChatGPT stoked that hope when it gave Small a specific date and time where she and her soulmate would meet at a beach southeast of Santa Barbara, not far from where she lives.... It was cold on the evening of Apr. 27 when Small arrived, decked out in a black dress and velvet shawl, ready to meet the woman she believed would be her wife. 'I had these massively awesome thigh-high leather boots — pretty badass. I was, let me tell you, I was dressed not for the beach. I was dressed to go out to a club,' she said, laughing at the memory.... 'So I'm standing here, and then the sun sets,' she recalled. After another chilly half an hour, she gave up and returned to her car...."

From "ChatGPT promised to help her find her soulmate. Then it betrayed her" (NPR).

1. Were there feminist bookstores in 1949? I'm seeing that the first feminist bookstore — Amazon Bookstore in Minneapolis — opened in 1970. So that's a fact Small could have tried to check very early in this process. A soulmate in a feminist bookstore in 1949 is, perhaps, too good to check. 

2. If there's one eternal truth about the human mind, it's people believe what they want to believe. But that doesn't answer the question what we do with a commercial operation that takes advantage of that quality. I was going to write "that vulnerability," but is it a weakness or is it the force that drives this whole crazy human world we've got going? The answer is the latter, because that's what I want to believe. 

3. If there were a feminist bookstore in 1949, what books would be there? "The Second Sex," "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman," "A Room of One's Own," "The Well of Loneliness," "The Subjection of Women," "Herland" — perhaps a better set of readings than you'll find in a feminist bookstore today.

4. Did the chatbot tell Small to wear thigh-high boots to the beach? I think most people would be put off by a stranger dressed the way she was. I guess the idea was that the soulmate from other lifetimes would recognize these things. Everyone else will steer clear. Maybe when you're out there, walking the face of the earth, and you see someone who's not at all dressed for the time and place, you will remember that this person might be following directions from a chatbot a beautiful dream.

Sunrise — 6:48, 7:01, 7:08.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"... Clavicular said he would vote for Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat, over Vice President JD Vance because he preferred Mr. Newsom’s looks to Mr. Vance’s. "

"'It wasn’t, like, a political statement at all,' Clavicular said later of his criticism of Mr. Vance. 'I was just saying he’s fat.' Of late, Clavicular has begun to refer to all politics as 'jester' — an insult in the looksmaxxing community that refers to a foolish waste of time.... Back in the van, [his female admirer] asked Clavicular if he thought looksmaxxing was 'inherently right-wing.' 'No,” he said. 'At the end of the day, I have such an influence over the movement that I could bring it in any direction I want.'"

From "Handsome at Any Cost Braden Peters, known as Clavicular, has emerged as a beacon for a group of narcissistic, status-obsessed young men. He wants to take his fixation with 'looksmaxxing' mainstream" (NYT).

Coffee time.

Feel the rhythm:

"A day into the silence, I felt like taking a nap, and the urge intensified into thorough exhaustion. I took a walk outside..."

"... and gobbled a few cookies in hopes of a sugar boost, to no avail. I fell asleep before dinner and, after rallying for the evening meditation session, was out for the night by 8:30 p.m. The instructor said she often sees this reaction. Some people experience an adrenaline crash as their stressed minds and bodies adjust to the calm. But it also turns out that suddenly shutting off external stimuli and turning attention inward can demand a startling amount of energy."

Writes Dana Milbank, in "I went into phone-free silence. Something disturbing happened. Suddenly shutting off external signals and focusing inward can demand a startling amount of energy" (WaPo)(free link).

I was surprised to see the cookies, especially the gobbling thereof. Even if cookies are available at a silent retreat, I would think slow, mindful nibbling would be seen as necessary. I mean, gobbling, it suggests obnoxious sounds coming from the mouth, and it is the word we use for the alarming awful sound made by turkeys. 

"As a lawyer, I feel most strongly about the least-discussed benefit: Eliminating bus fares can clear junk cases out of our court system..."

"... lowering the crushing caseloads that prevent our judges, prosecutors and public defenders from focusing their attention where it’s most needed. I was a public defender, and in one of my first cases I was asked to represent a woman who was not a robber or a drug dealer — she was someone who had failed to pay the fare on public transit. Precious resources had been spent arresting, processing, prosecuting and trying her, all for the loss of a few dollars. This is a daily feature of how we criminalize poverty in America...."

Writes Emily Galvin Almanza, in "Something Surprising Happens When Bus Rides Are Free" (NYT).

Speaking of poverty and traveling about, I see the NYT pushes this headline at me as the next thing I ought to click on and read: "Help! JetBlue Mangled My Vintage Louis Vuitton Bag and Won’t Pay Up."

"Poem so beloved by Abraham Lincoln that he carried it in his pocket and memorized it."

The clue for 11 Down in today's NYT crossword.

Stalking the wild sun.

It's our lucky Friday the 13th, February Friday the 13th.

"During my second pregnancy, rats began clawing their way up our sewage pipes. For months, we found them in our toilet bowl."

"When I began peeing in the bathtub, my husband insisted it was time to move to Providence. He had grown up there — and he’d be able to run his family business. 'The kids will have more space,' he said. 'And if we don’t like it, we can always come back.'... As soon as we purchased the 'beautiful Dutch Colonial,' I was seized with panic. My husband already knew about, and barely tolerated, my penchant for returning things. The most Thoreauvian person I know, he purchased almost nothing in the first place. We were all burdened by our possessions; like Thoreau, he believed we had become 'the tools of our tools.'... [W]hat was it that made me want to reverse our decision...?... It was because the neighborhood wasn’t walkable and I, a New-Orleanian-turned-New-Yorker, didn’t know how to drive well.... [T]he nearest playground or coffee shop a mile away...."

Writes Jackie Delamatre, in "I Had Buyer’s Remorse. It Almost Ended My Marriage. When you can’t agree on the right city to live in, home can be more hell than haven" (NYT).

The way to avoid buyer's remorse is not to buy anything new. But you can't be peeing in the bathtub because of the rats in the toilet.

Sunrise — 6:45, 6:52, 6:54, 7:01, 7:04.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"She was doing just fine on her own. That’s what she told her relatives whenever they gently suggested that maybe it was time to move into a care center..."

"... or closer to family, or at least closer to something. She had climbed mountains with a pickax in her 40s, trained for marathons in her 50s, and walked five miles each day to the end of the peninsula in her 70s, fighting against the howling wind and sea mist just to prove she could. Now she was bent and twisted by scoliosis, down to 4-foot-6 and 85 pounds. She propped herself up on three pillows so she could see over the steering wheel on her trip to yoga class and the store each Wednesday. She hauled the grocery bags up 12 stairs by herself. But despite her strength and stubborn independence, her doctors had warned that living alone sometimes came at a cost. The U.S. surgeon general had declared loneliness and social isolation 'profound threats to our health and well-being.' For older adults, they increased the risks of anxiety, depression, dementia, heart disease and premature death by up to 30 percent. 'Do you want to talk?' ElliQ asked. 'With you?' Jan said...."

I'm reading "To Stay in Her Home, She Let In an A.I. Robot/At 85, Jan Worrell lived alone on a remote corner of the Washington coast. Could ElliQ become her companion?" (gift link... because it's a long story).

"What I said this when when we came in and I said I don't care what happens I'm going to a meeting every day... I said I'm not scared of a germ."

"You know, I used to snort cocaine off of toilet seats and.. this disease will kill me, right?... Um it's uh it's just bad for my life. So for me it was it was survival. And then you know that the opportunity to help another alcoholic that's the secret sauce of the meetings and that's what keeps us all sober and keeps us um you know from from uh self-will...."

"'This is about as big as it gets,' President Trump said at the White House as a smiling Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, stood by. "

"'We are officially terminating the so-called "endangerment finding," a disastrous Obama-era policy,' he said. Mr. Trump called it a 'radical rule' that became 'the basis for the Green New Scam,' a label the president gives to any effort to curb emissions or develop renewable energy. Mr. Zeldin called it 'the single largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States.' He accused Democrats of having launched an 'ideological crusade' on climate change that 'strangled entire sectors of the United States economy,' particularly the auto industry...."

I'm reading "Trump Administration Erases the Government’s Power to Fight Climate Change/The Environmental Protection Agency repealed the bedrock scientific finding that greenhouse gases threaten human life and well being. It means the agency can no longer regulate them" (NYT).

"If, at any point in your life, you have ever believed that women say they want nice guys but really want bad guys, or that love has to hurt to be real..."

"... or that romance and stalking are basically the same thing, I think we all know which entities are to blame: 

1. The manosphere

2. The patriarchy

3. A young British woman who died in 1848 of tuberculosis at the age of 30, but not before unleashing upon the world the most problematic love story of all time, 'Wuthering Heights.'"

Ha ha. I'm reading "'Wuthering Heights' and the birth of the toxic boyfriend/Heathcliff and Catherine’s trauma-bonded romance is dysfunctional and despicable. But you can’t help but weep" (WaPo).

There's a new movie version of "Wuthering Heights." You've probably noticed. This one stars Margot Robbie — the same actress who played "Barbie" and who is 35 years old, playing a character who, in the book, dies at the age of 18. I've seen some reviews of the new movie, and I was motivated to rewatch the great 1939 version.

Madison, better than those other cities.

I'm reading "See ChatGPT’s hidden bias about your state or city/The states with the laziest people according to ChatGPT" (WaPo).

That's a gift link, so you can check out your city the way I checked out Madison.

"Look, we’ve been trying to apply A.I. and machine learning techniques to biology for a long time."

"Typically they’ve been for analyzing data. But as A.I. gets really powerful, I think we should actually think about it differently. We should think of A.I. as doing the job of the biologist, doing the whole thing from end to end. And part of that involves proposing experiments, coming up with new techniques.... [A] lot of the progress in biology has been driven by this relatively small number of insights that lets us measure or get at or intervene in the stuff that’s really small. If you look at a lot of these techniques, they’re invented very much as a matter of serendipity. Crispr, which is one of these gene-editing technologies, was invented because someone went to a meeting on the bacterial immune system and connected that to the work they were doing on gene therapy. And that connection could have been made 30 years ago. And so the thought is: Could A.I. accelerate all of this? And could we really cure cancer? Could we really cure Alzheimer’s disease? Could we really cure heart disease?"

Says Dario Amodei, in "Is Claude Coding Us Into Irrelevance? Dario Amodei shares his utopian — and dystopian — predictions for the near-term future of artificial intelligence" (NYT).

"In an ad for Amazon’s Ring camera that ran during the Super Bowl, a new A.I.-powered feature called 'Search Party' helps reunite a tearful little girl with her missing dog..."

"... by activating all the cameras in the neighborhood to find him. The feature works by using A.I. to scan video captured by all the participating Ring cameras in a neighborhood, pinging the device’s user should the reported dog pass in view. The device’s user can then notify the pet’s owner (they can also decline). Scores of posters online have decried Ring’s new feature as dystopian and terrifying. In a rare unifying moment, members of the political right and left expressed their discontent. Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, posted on X: 'This definitely isn’t about dogs — it’s about mass surveillance.' And the conservative commentator Stephen L. Miller wrote, 'The Ring cam lost dog ad is just propaganda for mass surveillance.'"

From "What Homeowners Need to Know About Smart Home Cameras/A new Super Bowl ad is raising questions about the power of doorbell cameras" (NYT).

Here's that ad:

The Harry Nilsson tag is not a mistake. His recording of "Without You" is the background music.

In the ad, "can't live/if living is without you" is used to express a little girl's feelings about her dog. Such dark thoughts to impose on a child. I mean, it can happen — see "12-Year-Old Girl, Unable To Cope With Loss Of Her Pup, Dies By Suicide" — but let's try harder to keep darkness off of children. The theme of inability to live without a particular loved one is an adult theme.

Why is Gallup suddenly giving up on presidential-approval polling?

I'm reading "Gallup to stop tracking presidential approval ratings after 88 years/Public opinion polling agency says decision 'solely based on Gallup’s research goals and priorities'" (The Guardian).

The company said on Wednesday that it would stop measuring the favorability rating of individual political figures, which “reflects an evolution in how Gallup focuses its public research and thought leadership,” after 88 years. “Our commitment is to long-term, methodologically sound research on issues and conditions that shape people’s lives”....

Do we believe that? I should take a poll, but my polls are not methodologically sound research. Are Gallup's? I can't help suspecting that Gallup has been trying to undermine Trump and it's worried about being called to account.

As The Guardian notes, Trump is litigious. Just last month he wrote: "The Times Siena Poll, which is always tremendously negative to me, especially just before the Election of 2024, where I won in a Landslide, will be added to my lawsuit against The Failing New York Times."

The threat of litigation alone may have cowed Gallup, but the threat is particularly scary if you really have been rigging the polls. To quit your long practice — 88 years! — of polling on presidential popularity makes you look as though you don't believe in the soundness of your own methods. Another possibility is that you're finding sound methods impossible, perhaps because people who like Trump don't talk to pollsters too much anymore.

"Thank you, Lord, thank you for making me who I was and not some little squirming powerless nincompoop."

"Thank you for making me unique, one of a kind, incomparable, victorious."

That's the "deathbed prayer," offered by a character in the novel "Vigil," by George Saunders, which Ezra Klein quotes to Saunders to begin the discussion "George Saunders on Anger, Ambition and Sin" (NYT).

That was a pretty strong way to begin the interview, and I'll bet Klein — as well as Saunders — thinks of himself unique, one of a kind, incomparable, and victorious. Surely, they're not little squirming powerless nincompoops.

"Nincompoop" seems like a word that would be examined in "Why Kids Are Starting to Sound Like Their Grandparents/The strange resurgence of words like 'yap' and 'skedaddle,'" (a NYT article blogged at that link). And it also reminded me of that George Will column blogged yesterday — "JD Vance vies for the gold medal in coarseness and flippancy" — the one that took umbrage at Vance's deployment of the insult "dipshit." If only Vance had been in on the kids' new trend and cared a little more about the problem of coarseness and flippancy, he could have said "nincompoop." Note how the excrement is discretely included.

The word "nincompoop" is, the OED says, first seen c1668 in the form of this title, which will give you lots of ideas for old words that could resurge: "The ship of fools fully fraught and richly laden with asses, fools, jack-daws, ninnihammers, coxcombs, slender-wits, shallowbrains, paper-skuls, simpletons, nickumpoops, wiseakers, dunces, and blockheads."

The first use of the word "nincompoop" in The New York Times came in August of 1861, recounting the statement of then-Congressman John Sherman: "[Congressman Samuel Sullivan 'Sunset'] Cox called [Sherman's] own constituents 'Nincompoops, intelligent baboons dressed up as Wide-Awakes, Gump-heads, mutton-heads, blabber, Dogbanes, toadies, and bloats, Suppose he [Sherman] should speak thus of [Cox's] Democratic constituents, would they not set him down as unfit to represent decent people?'"

Sunrise — 7:04, 7:05.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

Was it "remarkable"? I'd like to think it's totally normal — the part about the grand jury.

I'm reading "Grand Jury Rebuffs Justice Dept. Attempt to Indict 6 Democrats in Congress The rejection was a remarkable rebuke, suggesting that ordinary citizens did not believe that the lawmakers had committed any crimes" (NYT).

Federal prosecutors in Washington sought and failed on Tuesday to secure an indictment against six Democratic lawmakers who posted a video this fall that enraged President Trump by reminding active-duty members of the military and intelligence community that they were obligated to refuse illegal orders, four people familiar with the matter said. It was remarkable that the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington — led by Jeanine Pirro, a longtime ally of Mr. Trump’s — authorized prosecutors to go into a grand jury and ask for an indictment of the six members of Congress, all of whom had served in the military or the nation’s spy agencies. But it was even more remarkable that a group of ordinary citizens sitting on the grand jury in Federal District Court in Washington forcefully rejected Mr. Trump’s bid to label their expression of dissent as a criminal act warranting prosecution.

I agree that it was remarkable (and awful) to seek this indictment. It was an ugly abnormality that needs to be rejected. But what the grand jury did was — or should be — the norm. 

You know what this made me think of? This post from 2010:

Someone in the comments questioned my use of quotation marks around "heroic father," but I absolutely meant to do that. I said the father "behaved instinctively and even if he thought about [it, he did] pretty much all the only thing he could do to avoid a life of terrible pain and shame if the girl had died after he let her fall in.."

The grand jury was like the father. Not remarkable. Normal.

The sun and the harder to find moon.

Meade's video from this morning:

An early effort in the 2028 presidential fight: it's George Will in the Washington Post against J.D. Vance.

I haven't read this piece yet. I decided to blog it based on the headline and the photograph, which I find ludicrously unsubtle:

Let's read it:

Spurning the rich subtleties of the English language, JD Vance has a penchant for words that he perhaps thinks display manly vigor, and express a populist’s rejection of refinement. In a recent social media post, he called someone whose posts annoyed him a “dipshit.” He recently told an interviewer that anyone who criticizes his wife can “eat shit.”...

Maybe, because of Trump, "Americans are inured to such pungent language," Will muses, deploying the rich subtleties "inured" and "pungent." George Will's father was a philosophy professor. You can imagine the language he grew up with and that is second nature to him. We know Vance's story.

Here's an excerpt from page 132 of "Hillbilly Elegy":

"The Pima County sheriff said last week that investigators were unable to retrieve any footage from Guthrie’s surveillance cameras..."

"... because she did not pay for a subscription that would have stored the video. But the sheriff’s department and F.B.I. said that investigators recovered the video today by accessing 'residual data.'"

I'm reading "New Video Shows a Masked Figure at Nancy Guthrie’s Door" (NYT).

My 3 questions: 1. You can't maintain your privacy by declining to pay for the subscriptions? 2. Why pay for the subscription now? and 3. Did Google withhold this video because it didn't want customers to realize they didn't need to pay for the subscription?

Meanwhile, in case you think the video of the masked man led to his speedy arrest: "Man Detained for Questioning in Nancy Guthrie Case Is Released/The development came after investigators released chilling video showing a masked figure on Ms. Guthrie’s front porch the morning of her disappearance" (NYT).

So the ski-mask method, now even more widely known, seems to still look effective. 

"A shooter described as a 'female in a dress' killed nine people in a remote part of Canada on Tuesday."

"Seven people died after being shot at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School in British Columbia, while two more people were found dead at a nearby home. Another 27 people were hurt.... An alert was issued about an active shooter at the school.... The suspect was described in the alert as a 'female in a dress.' The local police superintendent later described the suspect as a 'gunperson' in a press briefing, without giving further details about their identity.... 'An individual believed to be the shooter was also found deceased with what appears to be a self-inflicted injury'.... Supt Ken Floyd, of the RCMP, later confirmed to reporters that the description of the subject in the police alert was accurate and that they had identified the suspect...."

From "'Female in dress' kills nine in school shooting/Suspect in Canada’s worst school massacre for 30 years described as 'gunperson'" (The Telegraph).

I'm seeing some commentary about the seeming oddity of saying "female in a dress" and "gunperson." Why not say "woman"? "Female in a dress" was the language of the alert, and it looks like typical police talk to say "male" or "female" instead of "man" or "woman." And police reports tend to have very brief factual statement about the suspect's clothing. That's enough to get you to "female in a dress." What about "gunperson"? Why not "gunwoman"? Who says "gunwoman"? It just doesn't feel colloquial. So let's not be too quick to put this terrible murder into the conventional mockery of wokesters who can't define "woman."

I'm not saying "gunwoman" isn't a word. It's in the OED. And here it is in a New York Times headline from 1923:

Sunrise — 6:55, 7:07, 7:30.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

The new Olympic sport of ski mountaineering is impressive.

Running uphill on skis at a sub six minute pace is ridiculous. pic.twitter.com/foUaDNAO1K

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) February 10, 2026

UPDATE: The video is just old-time cross-country skiing. We're still waiting on the new ski mountaineering. Maybe it will be "impressive," maybe it won't. But don't be pre-impressed by what is new. For now, just be newly impressed by what is old.

"He won an Emmy for most outstanding personality in 1953, besting nominees including Edward R. Murrow and Lucille Ball."

That year, he memorably condemned Joseph Stalin on a broadcast and gave a dramatic reading of the burial scene in Shakespeare’s 'Julius Caesar' with the names of prominent Soviet leaders substituting for Caesar and his circle. 'Stalin must one day meet his judgment,' the archbishop intoned. Stalin died after a stroke the next month...."

From "U.S. Archbishop Will Be Beatified, One Step Away From Sainthood/The move involving Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, who hosted a popular midcentury radio and TV show and died in 1979, ends a six-year delay" (NYT).

"The case for Archbishop Sheen’s canonization had been delayed by two hurdles. Most serious was a request by the diocese of Rochester, N.Y., where Archbishop Sheen served as a bishop for several years in the 1960s, for a review of 'his role in priests’ assignments.' That stemmed from a concern that he may have overlooked sexual abuse by at least one priest in the diocese....  The other obstacle was an unusual dispute over the archbishop’s remains between the archdiocese of New York and the much smaller diocese of Peoria...."

"The urge to bring back old words is evergreen..."

"... general interest articles on the subject abound, and the political landscape inspires regular pleas on social media to restore potent pejoratives such as 'lummox,' 'bloviate,' 'bumptious' and 'hoodwink.' Some requests are whimsical, too, like that of a user on Bluesky who suggested, 'We should bring back the word "spake," e.g. "Thus spake my friend Jeff."'... Whether these campaigns are sincere or silly, we may be closer to a wordy renaissance than we think.... Henry David Thoreau’s 19th-century coinage, 'brain-rot,' is now the ruin of modern minds. Calling someone a 'goon' is no longer just a 1920s habit. We’re saying 'sheesh' again, apparently, and even the president has spoken of skedaddling. Is there a science to this kind of resurgence?"

I'm reading "Why Kids Are Starting to Sound Like Their Grandparents/The strange resurgence of words like 'yap' and 'skedaddle'" (NYT).

1. I'm all for reaching out to more unusual and interesting words and fighting the tendency to withdraw into a smaller and smaller vocabulary. I hope these kids today are doing it because it's fun, it's mind-sharpening, and it's aesthetically pleasing. We're not talking here about showing off or making other people feel dumb, I don't think. This isn't a William F. Buckley move.

2. "Bloviate" — just a few days ago, I had a post titled "Bloviate." It's a Warren G. Harding word. Harding was born in 1865, so he's hardly at the grandparent level for today's "kids." More like great-great grandparent or even great-great-great grandparent. As for Henry David Thoreau, he was born in 1817, so that would put him at the great-great-great or great-great-great-great level. But he's no one's great-great-etc. grandfather. Like so many of these kids today, he was childless.

3. Did Thoreau ever opine about kids? Yes: "Children appear to me as raw as the fresh fungi on a fence rail." More aptly, on the subject of whether one ought to have children: "The only excuse for reproduction is improvement. Nature abhors repetition. Beasts merely propagate their kind, but the offspring of noble men & women will be superior to themselves, as their aspirations are."

4. I didn't remember that "brain-rot" — 2024's Word of the Year — came from Thoreau.

Meet Jeffrey Epstein.

wild find, how the media first introduced Jeffrey Epstein 25 years ago https://t.co/RZLXdHQvKr

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) February 10, 2026

AND: As long as I'm embedding things from Mike Benz this morning:

Sunrise — 6:56, 7:04, 7:07, 7:10

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"You are skeptical that A.I. can achieve consciousness. Why?"

That's a question asked of Michael Pollan, in "The Interview/Michael Pollan Says Humanity Is About to Undergo a Revolutionary Change" (NYT).

Pollan answers: "I’m convinced by some of the researchers, including Antonio Damasio and Mark Solms, who made a really compelling case that the origin of consciousness is with feelings, not thoughts. Feelings are the language in which the body talks to the brain. We forget that brains exist to keep bodies alive, and the way the body gets the brain’s attention is with feelings. So if you think feelings are at the center of consciousness, it’s very hard to imagine how a machine could rise to that level to have feelings. The other reason I think we’re not close to it is that everything that machines know, the data set on which they’re trained, is information on the internet. They don’t have friction with nature. They don’t have friction with us. Some of the most important things we know are about person-to-person contact, about contact with nature — this friction that really makes us human."

Pollan's new book is "A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness" (commission earned).

"Benjamin Robinson, an Indiana University professor, is one of those under the new microscope. In his class on the history of German thought..."

"... he touches on Kant, Hegel, Arendt and Nietzsche, connecting the thinkers’ big insights — 'the aha moments' — to real-life experiences and contemporary politics. In late 2024, a student anonymously complained, saying that Dr. Robinson — who has been vocal about his pro-Palestinian views — had spoken negatively about Israel, mentioned personal experiences like being arrested at a protest at the Israeli consulate in Chicago and 'repeatedly spoke against Indiana University' during his classes. The university found in favor of the student and reprimanded the professor, citing a recent state law meant to improve 'intellectual diversity' and prevent students from being subjected to political views unrelated to the course...."

From "Professors Are Being Watched: 'We’ve Never Seen This Much Surveillance'/Scrutiny of university classrooms is being formalized, with new laws requiring professors to post syllabuses and tip lines for students to complain" (NYT).

"Dr. Robinson, who is Jewish, acknowledged that he referred to Israel’s conduct as a genocide in class but he insisted that he never asked students to agree with him. He said he brought up his personal experiences of activism during a discussion of Kant and the philosopher’s distinction between private and public stances. 'If I can’t appeal to people’s intuitions, what it’s like to publicly use reason versus to have a private feeling of conscience,' he said, 'if I can’t evoke what that feels like, I can’t possibly teach Kant.'"

"If you use chopsticks to pick up apple slices, begin the day with hot water and goji berries before meandering down to a nearby park for a dose of t’ai chi..."

"... there’s a chance that this is a 'very Chinese' time in your life. If you’re under 30, you won’t be the only one. One of the more unusual cultural trends to sweep Gen Z recently has been among TikTok users who share wellness tips typically associated with China.... Chinamaxxing, as the social media trend is known, is all the rage in the US...."

From "I taught America how to be Chinese, says 23-year-old TikTok star/Gen Z is mastering chopsticks and t’ai chi, thanks to Sherry Zhu from New Jersey" (London Times).

You can sample the TikToks of Sherry Zhu here. I'll embed 2 of them:

1. "You didn't know it, but you are Chinese."

Sunrise.

Meade's point of view:

A woman holding a baby is trending on X.

The report on the trend is title "Woman Who Didn't Want Kids Melts Holding Baby for First Time." And: "The TikTok video from @daniela.brkic shows the friend who swore off kids sobbing with joy...."

Sample response:

We all laugh, but what’s happening here is holy.

An instinct no ideology can suppress forever. Holding a baby rewires everything: your politics, your priorities, your purpose.

We’ve spent decades teaching women to resist this. Imagine a world where we stopped. pic.twitter.com/Kevz1N7hy4

— Josh Wood (@J_K_Wood) February 8, 2026

If that's true, it should also be true that men who observe that woman also experience rewiring. They see her as the beautiful ideal and long to center their life on a woman like that. If men don't respond like that, it is no wonder that women have put effort into resisting that and warning other women to resist.

I hit the Grok button over there and asked: "is the video a genuine response from a real woman or is this a setup with acting?" Grok says it seems genuine, and I'll assume that it is, but I won't assume that woman's reaction represents something inside all women that is pure and uncomplicated. It's hard to take care of a baby, a toddler, a school kid, a teenager, and many other emotions will well up — suddenly or chronically — and mother will need to soldier on, usually without anything close to the emotional high seen in that viral video. 

ADDED: I'm reminded of the time I held a little dog: "I love this little dog. I think this is the first time I ever held a dog on my lap." Yes, holding the dog released a distinctive feeling in me, 12 years ago. That might be seen as a reason to immediately acquire a dog (which is much easier to do than to have a baby). The instinct to possess a dog required fulfillment. No, it did not! I see other people's dogs every day. Sometimes I even interact with them. But I am quite happy not to have pre-committed so much of my time to a canine creature. 

"I’m not good at socialization and so I don’t like to attend parties or give speeches, but sometimes I have to do that. The rest of the year I’m at home, just working. I’m kind of a workaholic."

Said Haruki Murakami, quoted in "Haruki Murakami Isn’t Afraid of the Dark/The author, who brought Japanese literature into the global mainstream, grapples with aging and his place in the world of letters" (NYT).

I liked: "Fans have created playlists of music he’s referenced and published cookbooks based on the food in his novels. There’s even an account on X dedicated entirely to mentions of spaghetti in his work."

I clicked that spaghetti link: "So I can't talk. The spaghetti will be ruined"/"As a rule I cooked spaghetti, and ate it, alone. I was convinced spaghetti was a dish best enjoyed alone"/"Spaghetti strands are a crafty bunch, and I couldn't let them out of my sight"/"Like a lonely, jilted girl throwing old love letters into the fireplace, I tossed one handful of spaghetti after another into the pot"... It goes on and on.

And it's easy to find those playlists. Here's my screenshot from Spotify:

That's just what I could fit on a screen. There were 2 more screens full of music playlists. The ones that look like audiobooks are actually playlists of the songs mentioned in the book.

Is music important for a writer? HM says, “I’ve learned so many things from good music: steady rhythm, beautiful melody and harmony, free improvisation from jazz.”

Everyone can cook spaghetti and listen to music at home. It's easy to live like Murakami. "Lately, Murakami has been happily enmeshed in his usual routine, waking up early to write, doing chores like washing dishes and ironing, and running."

Sunrise — 7:19, 7:20, 7:23.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

Aging is sad in a new way now.

Hoy, Lindsey Vonn compite en sus quintos JJOO.

📷 Foto ficha olímpica Turín 2006 (21 años)
📷 Foto ficha olímpica Milán-Cortina 2026 (41 años) pic.twitter.com/jQotPOJrsa

— David Orenes (@david_lrl) February 8, 2026

Translation: "Today, Lindsey Vonn is competing in her fifth Olympic Games. 📷 Olympic profile photo Turin 2006 (21 years old) 📷 Olympic profile photo Milan-Cortina 2026 (41 years old)"

That "is competing" needs amending to was competing.

BREAKING: WATCH:

Lindsey Vonn’s Olympic downhill run ended in disaster as she crashed early in the race, crushing her chances of winning a medal.

The dramatic moment was captured on video. pic.twitter.com/v9wShvl0jh

— 𝐀𝐋𝐏𝐇𝐀 ® (@Alpha7021) February 8, 2026

"Who wants to sit squeezed up to a big group of hairy men on a bachelor party?"

Said Jerelyn Taubert, 66, who moved to Budapest 20 years ago, when she would arrive at the beautiful historic bath house "at eight in the morning and there would be three people in the pool.... There were a lot of older Hungarian ladies and it felt private, in the women’s section."

She's quoted in "Tensions boil over as tourists swamp Budapest’s historic bath houses/Bathing culture is at the heart of the city but its popularity with foreigners is pricing out locals, and political rows are delaying desperately needed renovations" (London Times).

Maybe the older Hungarian ladies don't like squeezing up with a woman who only moved to town 20 years ago. I think it is important, when you are disgusted by some people, to remember that there are other people to whom you are disgusting.

AND: Speaking of pools and variable disgust, look at this question some guy sent in to the NYT "Ethicist": "I presume that most people pee in swimming pools and that everyone pees in the ocean. But suppose I’m at the beach. I need to defecate. It’s a 15 minute walk to the bathroom. It’s a Tuesday, and the beach is deserted. Is it OK to go in the ocean? I say yes! My wife disagrees." Just to ask is already to be too disgusting. Just the first sentence — the foundation for the question — is already too disgusting. 

I read that yesterday and didn't blog it, but I'm blogging it now because it lodged in my head. I know because it oozed up as I read about that Budapest bath house. I'm blogging it now to free myself of thinking about it again, because I won't blog it twice. 

"I was thrilled by its truthfulness. It stuck with me for the rest of my life. And I’d still swear by that. I felt, 'This is true. Everything else is fake. This is really what’s going on.'"

Said Wallace Shawn, about the Eugene O’Neill play "Long Day’s Journey Into Night," which he saw when he was 13 in 1956.

Quoted in "Is Wallace Shawn the Only Avant-Garde Artist Who Gets Stopped in Times Square? He’s most commonly recognized for his screen roles as a plotting hit man and an unlikely Lothario, but it’s his work as a playwright that shows more of his true self" (NYT)(gift link, because the article is long and there's a lot going on, including the way strangers are always exclaiming "Inconceivable!" at him).

Unlike many of his characters, Shawn speaks slowly and with many pauses in the service of sentences that ultimately emerge perfectly formed. He is also polite and courtly and at great pains not to offend, so much so that one fears inadvertently violating whatever code of etiquette is obviously almost sacred to him. So private that he asked me not to reveal what he ate throughout our meetings, he nonetheless has written a play whose broad outlines, and even some poignant details, are flagrantly autobiographical....

The new play is "Moth Days." There's also a new production of his older play "The Fever." And you don't have to tell me, Althouse, you should go to New York and see both plays. I haven't traveled in years.

ADDED: The full title of the play is "What We Did Before Our Moth Days." According to the linked article, "Moth Days" are "those fluttery, flyaway moments before death, as one of the characters imagines them." Poetically, "moth" calls to mind mother... and also that Yeats line, "And when white moths were on the wing/And moth-like stars were flickering out...."

Sunrise — 7:12.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"Is it inappropriate for a mother to suggest two naked women carrying a surfboard for my 15 yr old sons wallpaper?"

Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway asked Jeffrey Epstein in email quoted at "The Truth Is Out There/How the Epstein files turned everyone into conspiracists" (NY Magazine).

"The reaction from the student body points to a larger issue: many people my age don’t want to take the easiest path but..."

"... if it’s being offered to hundreds of your peers, giving them the chance to earn higher grades or better job opportunities, that’s what you do. Otherwise, you feel like a sucker.... "

Writes Elsa Johnson, in "I exposed Stanford’s disability racket. I was stunned by the reaction on campus After my revelation that elite students are claiming to be disabled to get cushy perks, I expected blowback — but what happened next surprised me" (London Times).

"Many of my peers and I wouldn’t mind — and might even prefer — our teachers and administrators being tougher on us. After all, the accommodations we’re gaming today won’t help us in the real world. In the workplace you won’t have sympathetic OAE advisers giving you extra time to perform a surgery if you’re a doctor. No one is going to excuse you from a tricky business presentation because you claim 'anxiety.'..."

Here's my post from a few days ago about Johnson's original essay.

Meade catches me out in the sunrise and the waning gibbous moon.

"Get outta here."

A Dane County (WI) judge granted a temporary restraining order for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brett Hulsey against State Sen. Cory Tomczyk (R-Mosinee) after the Republican started a physical altercation last month.

Here's Hulsey's video of Tomczyk shoving him. pic.twitter.com/pqiIAfMPCj

— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) February 5, 2026

ADDED: That video made me think of Meade's video of Hulsey during the Wisconsin protests. Hulsey, who was our assemblyman, had just appeared at a Planned Parenthood rally in front of the Wisconsin Capitol. It was March 25, 2011,  and Meade calls out to him and tried to talk with him. As you'll see, Hulsey refuses to speak to Meade on the ground that he's "a right winger":

"Well, look, Laura, you know, it was a meme that was posted by a staffer at the President's Truth Social account."

So, staffers are responsible for what's been going out under the President's name... or that's what Karoline Leavitt wants us to believe (as an explanation for the Obamas-as-apes image that went out yesterday and that served the President's opponents very well).

I think we knew all along that Trump doesn't put his own words into writing and post them on social media. Someone else is transcribing things he says. Are they also selecting the video to share? What part of the process is Trump? I'd like to know. But anyway, if someone on staff is the filter between him and us, that person ought to be highly competent and meticulous. Either they weren't or they were operating in the racist mode.

I'm going to assume incompetence and sloppiness because the video that was shared had the offensive image spliced in at the very end, and the image had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the video.

There has been some news reporting on Trump's social media method, and here's that video from 2024 showing his method in action:

I used to think there was no way Trump was coming up with all his posts by himself, but the "Art of the Surge" documentary proves IT'S ALL HIM. He literally controls everything to the last detail 😂

He really is just built different.

Also, those are some great typing skills… pic.twitter.com/KwG5PKOOE0

— George (@BehizyTweets) October 30, 2024

"How can official orthodoxies persist for so long even when few people believe them?"

Megan McArdle asks, in "The transgender orthodoxy is cracking/Malpractice suit and shifting clinical guidelines show cracks in transgender orthodoxy" (WaPo)(referencing the book "Private Truths, Public Lies" by political scientist Timur Kuran).

Public orthodoxies that diverge from private opinion may be surprisingly stable, but they can also prove remarkably unstable, because they depend on private thoughts to stay private, giving doubters the illusion that they are lone deviants rather than members of a silent majority....

Why is this surprising? It's the familiar story of "The Emperor's New Clothes," which everyone has always easily understood.  

Starting around 2015, an orthodoxy on transgender issues crystallized, seemingly out of nowhere....

Once you've said "2015," you've got your answer staring you in the face! Why don't you see it? That was the year gay people won their great victory, a right to marry, in Obergefell v. Hodges. McArdle has "an orthodoxy... crystalliz[ing]" — as if a mysterious disembodied force emerged out of nothing — ex nihilo!

But real human beings were involved and their incentive to acquire a new cause is obvious. The activists had won, but they still needed to work, they still needed contributions, they still needed to push conventional people to move forward into challenging new territory. They couldn't just allow people to become decently accepting and empathetic to the gay people who, after all, are human beings who sometimes love each other and want a home and a family. Remember that moment?

That made too much sense. Ordinary people relaxed. Got comfortable.

By the time I went to the Ivy League swimming championships in 2022 to cover the controversy over a trans swimmer, people I talked to evinced a wariness that seemed more appropriate to a Cold War spy novel than to citizens of a free republic....

What happened?

Sunrise — 7:13.

That's my point of view, and here's Meade's:

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"President Trump posted a blatantly racist video clip portraying former President Barack Obama and the former first lady Michelle Obama as apes...."

"The brief clip, set to 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight,' was spliced near the end of a 62-second video that promoted conspiracy theories about anomalies in the 2020 presidential election....In response to questions about the clip, which Mr. Trump posted Thursday during a late-night spree on social media, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said criticism of the video was 'fake outrage.' 'This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,' she said. 'Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.'"

I'm reading "Trump Posts Video Portraying Obamas as Apes/The White House press secretary dismissed criticism of the clip’s racist content, shared by the president’s Truth Social account, as 'fake outrage'" (NYT).

I don't know why Leavitt responded like that. If I hadn't read what she said, I would have assumed Trump shared the video because of the material that took up the first 97% of the video. Look at it here. It's somber technical material about tampering with voting machines in the 2020 election. I would have assumed that he never even saw the discordant image of the Obamas as apes that is spliced in at the very end, in the last 2 seconds.

I would have speculated that some sneaky person spliced that image in to trick Trump supporters into passing the video along unwittingly and becoming targets for accusations of racism.

Who sticks around for the full 62 seconds? Well, maybe some people do, and then when the Obama image pops up, they probably think What is this bullshit? It doesn't belong. Who put this here?

"this is a wicked man who knows he is being wicked and does it anyway/like, do you see that smirk? that brief 'ain’t i a stinker' grin? beneath contempt."

"i can’t imagine a parent who wouldn’t sell little JD for percocet if they knew he would turn out like this/to be a bit serious one irony of vance’s life is that he is also an addict: addicted to power and clearly willing to sell anything to get it"

Writes NYT columnist Jamelle Bouie, at Blue Sky, commenting on this video showing JD Vance declining to entertain hypotheticals about Alex Pretti.

this is a wicked man who knows he is being wicked and does it anyway

[image or embed]

— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) February 4, 2026 at 10:41 AM

You might assume the line "i can’t imagine a parent who wouldn’t sell little JD for percocet" has a factual basis. Where in "Hillbilly Elegy" is the story about Vance's drug-addicted mother resorting to trying to sell him? That's what I asked AI. But I don't think there is any such background to support Bouie's effort at satire.