When we use this vantage point, it unsettles the ducks from the place I've named after them, Duck Beach. They insist on swimming off every time, all of them. I try to explain that we're only here for the sun, but they have no free choice. They must swim off into the sunrise. But the sun is, day by day, moving to the right, southward, and before long Duck Beach will not work as a sunrise vantage point and we can end our futile effort not to set off the ducks.
It's only "civility bullshit" — for the purposes of my blog tag — if the person calling out incivility would take a different position if the purported incivility were coming from someone on his own side.
I like the inclusion of Vance's self-defense: "I tend to err on the side of openness. That’s probably a generational thing, right? I come from a very tech-forward generation." That is, if you don't get me, maybe that means you're old. And: "I think one of the good things about social media is that it actually exposes you to unfiltered raw opinions, and that’s one of the things that I need to hear as a political leader."
And I had to laugh at this quote from a law professor: "Vice President Vance’s willingness publicly to disparage others in personal terms stands apart from the behavior of modern vice presidents during the last half-century.... [I]t departs from the norms associated with the office and undermines the goal of promoting rational public discourse."
Notice the lawprof specified "modern vice presidents." Is that designed to keep us from looking for nasty quips in the complete quotations of John Adams and Aaron Burr?
"... sizzling in a frying pan, which turned out to be a bubbly photosynthesizing elixir of microbes, decaying muck and insect larvae. Then there was a clicking — possibly aquatic snails... — and the quiet pops of fish mouths opening and closing, a miraculous sound that this lapsed fly fisherman thought she would never hear. Somewhere in the humid thickets a bullfrog croaked... During the pandemic, he... started listening to tidal pools along the sea walls — hearing nothing at first and then drawn by a 'persistent scraping.' It turned out to be limpets: aquatic snails that have teeth stronger than Kevlar to feed on algae and excavate rock. (He said he wouldn’t mind being reincarnated as a limpet.)... On our walk, we 'ear-witnessed' a Sabrett hot-dog stand’s hot buzzy generator before taking the subway to the Brooklyn Bridge, where he captured its vibrating walkway and staccato of speeding cars clip-clopping over metal plates."
"As Mr. Chin and his friend carved up the bear in the first-floor kitchen [of the Cornell dorm], some of their peers were studying at nearby tables. Other students walked by and took pictures. 'Most people were really curious,” he said. 'Like, "Hey, we’d love to try some." We were just explaining, like, "Hey, none of this goes to waste,"' Mr. Chin said."
From the comments: "Not the first time students and bears have resulted in a college needing to change its rules. Lord Byron famously kept a pet bear in his Cambridge dorm after he learned that pet dogs were not allowed."
Really?
I see that Byron wrote this in a letter dated 1807: "I have got a new friend, the finest in the world, a tame bear." He is said to have walked it about on a chain.
Key evidence includes Byron’s letter of 26 October 1807 to Elizabeth Pigot: “I have got a new friend, the finest in the world, a tame bear. When I brought him here, they asked me what to do with him, and my reply was, ‘he should sit for a fellowship.’” The University of Cambridge and Trinity College itself reference the story as historical fact (or well-attested report), noting he is said to have acquired the bear (possibly at Stourbridge Fair) specifically because of the dog ban. He reportedly walked it on a chain, and the authorities could not easily prohibit it under the existing rules.
Key evidence includes Byron’s letter of 26 October 1807 to Elizabeth Pigot: “I have got a new friend, the finest in the world, a tame bear. When I brought him here, they asked me what to do with him, and my reply was, ‘he should sit for a fellowship.’” The University of Cambridge and Trinity College itself reference the story as historical fact (or well-attested report), noting he is said to have acquired the bear (possibly at Stourbridge Fair) specifically because of the dog ban. He reportedly walked it on a chain, and the authorities could not easily prohibit it under the existing rules.
"... when they were forced to serve as 'mobile billboards' by carrying the 'Generals' name on their uniforms. [The plaintiffs' lawyer] recalled the 'heartfelt and unwavering' testimony from students during the trial, 'describing how Confederate school names make them feel unwelcome, devalued and ultimately inferior to their white peers.'..."
In 2020, in the midst of the George Floyd protests, Stonewall Jackson High School was renamed Mountain View and Ashby-Lee Elementary was renamed Honey Run. In 2024, a new school board restored the old names.
"The school board’s decision to rename the schools after Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Turner Ashby 'cannot be divorced from racial discrimination,' Judge Michael F. Urbanski wrote in his ruling. Those Confederate generals 'fought to preserve a political system that enslaved Blacks, and their legacy was used as a tool to fight school desegregation,' added the judge...."
"The White House is also the centerpiece of President’s Park, a National Park stewarded by the National Park Service. According to the government, as the oldest public building in the District of Columbia, the White House is the crown jewel not just of President’s Park, but also of the Lafayette Square National Historic Landmark District, a site listed for preservation in the National Register of Historic Places. The founding architect of the Nation’s capital, Pierre L’Enfant, designed the capital city’s layout to focus on the towering Capitol building—the gleaming palace of the people in the new democracy—and to contrast it with the simple humility of the White House.... Each President is a temporary tenant, not the owner, of the White House and its Executive Residence.... Over just three days in October 2025, without undertaking promised consultations or obtaining Congress’s permission, President Trump bulldozed the entire East Wing in order to construct a massive, 90,000 square-foot ballroom paid for by private funds with no congressional oversight...."
"The episode culminated in a consequential showdown in the Oval Office between [Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney], who appeared to be fighting for her job, and Mr. Trump, with Doug Burgum, the interior secretary, in attendance. Ms. Pirro told Mr. Trump that Mr. Burgum had misled him with a self-serving cover story for his own mistakes. Mr. Trump seemed considerably less angry by day’s end, and Ms. Pirro emerged from the meeting with her job intact, for now."
That article, from August 4th, says "This account... demonstrated a core truth of Mr. Trump’s second term: Anyone willing to contradict the president is in trouble, even if the dissenter happens to be a family friend who has faithfully executed his prosecutorial agenda over the years."
Yeah? But Pirro got her way, and she's still there. So much for "a core truth."
... and was reciting it out loud, along with Carlin. Though I objected very much to this intrusion on my experience of the show, somehow I chose not to ruin what seemed to be HIS idea of fun. I did absolutely nothing about it and he kept it up for the entire show. Looking back, I can't imagine how HE could have done that or how I could have done what I did. Any ideas?
That's a perplexity I'd filed away in the back of my memories for a long time, but, just not, I decided to put it to Grok. Response:
"It makes me cringe to watch video of Professor Hilary Cremin, head of Cambridge’s faculty of education, fawning over him: 'We’re so lucky to have you. You’re the best in the world in terms of the research you do.' I’m gobsmacked that she didn’t think it might be worth trying to read the book he’d claimed to have written before offering him a plum academic job."
Excerpt from the review: "As young Arday failed to hit his milestones, doctors declared him 'deficient' and said he was 'no better than a vegetable.' Arday was, by his own account, a profoundly intellectually disabled child. He claims that he could 'register sounds, but I couldn’t shape them into meaning.' He also says that smearing his faeces on the wall was one of his few sensory releases.... 'Most of my memories of my early childhood are of generalised images, sounds, sensations, feelings, rather than specific events, perhaps because language helps us to form memories, and I didn’t have access to that until I was older.'"
Musk's answer: "I am actually going to do something along these lines." Hmm. So he's not going to do that. He's going to do something else. Like what? Invest in companies that create many jobs and make things for the benefit of mankind, that is, what he's been doing all along? Or hold onto his wealth until it disappears because, according to his theory, money will be nothing in 10 years, so that will be about the same as giving it all away?
Researchers long ago learned how to manufacture viral genomes; they are used to investigate antiviral drugs and vaccines, as well as to learn how viruses work. But [in] the new study... [s]cientists... taught A.I. to recognize patterns of DNA structure in nature, and then to use that data to write recipes for entirely new viruses. The researchers followed those recipes to create DNA molecules, which they inserted into bacteria. The modified bacteria then produced viruses never seen in nature. The viruses were able to infect other bacteria, demonstrating that they were viable.
“At the end of the day, we need to elect JD,” Trump said during an Oval Office meeting with donors roughly two weeks ago, according to two people with knowledge of the comments who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter....
Even as Trump buoyed his vice president to donors in the Oval Office, though, he was still peppering people around him with questions about Vance versus Rubio.... An adviser to the president with direct knowledge of Trump’s comment to the donors said that Trump has privately resolved that Vance will be the heir to the GOP, but that it is “too early” to determine when Vance will announce his candidacy or when Trump will publicly endorse him.
Six other Trumpworld advisers and allies, however, cautioned that they aren’t convinced the president has settled on Vance, noting that Trump tells different things to different people and could still change his mind about an endorsement for 2028. Trump aides widely agree that the president will delay endorsing to avoid appearing to be a lame duck....
“That comment is a metaphor,” [Aeiramique] Glass told News 3 Now during an interview Wednesday evening. “So many people have used that comment when they're talking about whether it be fighting against injustice when something is wrong, or when something happens.” Glass went on to say that she made the comment while speaking to people who she trusted, who understood her words. “I don't care that they were recording me,” she said. “I was in pain and had just gotten jumped by a lot of officers.”
"... at a cafe where he worked part time to burn off anxious energy.
'We ended up bonding really hard — we’re both writers,' said Mr. Balmat, who hopes to publish a novel someday. 'We were both really passionate about what we were doing, struggling to figure out how to turn it into money.'
When he invited his girlfriend over to hang out, the attention from his parents was sometimes embarrassing. 'They would both drop in on us if we’re watching a movie on the couch, to be like, "Can I get anybody any snacks?"' But his girlfriend took it in stride. It turned out she had moved back home, too."
Your job in a café is only a way to "burn off anxious energy."
I don't know. Maybe this is the stuff of a worthy novel. Actually it feels like a TV sitcom. A really old-timey one. I'm picturing Balmat's mother as a June Cleaver type. And Balmat is Wally. Gee, Mom.
The "former father-in-law" is Senator Bernie Moreno.
We're told: "Mr. Miller bobbed and weaved, criticizing Mr. Moreno, until Mr. Tapper interrupted. 'It’s not really the issue, though, right?' the anchor said. 'The issue is — the one I asked you about is — did you hold this doll hostage?' (Mr. Miller said 'no' before returning to his harangue about his father-in-law.)"
This is why you should never get divorced. You create all those "former" this and thats, and they might say anything. And make sure to always give your toddlers whatever toy they cry out for. You never know who might one day say that was the precise item without which the little cutie pie could not sleep. One day, it's your little daughter's mundane struggle over bedtime, and some day in the future it might be the symbol of what a monster you are.
The last bit of the article: "Mr. Tapper concluded the interview by asking if 'anyone in your life' is telling Mr. Miller that 'it really might be in the best interests for your daughter and for your own mental health to drop out.' 'My daughter is going to grow up one day, and she’s going to see all of this,' Mr. Miller said. 'And she’s not going to see that her father caved to political and social media pressures for something that he never did.'"
[Daniel] Lieberman, Lerner professor of biological sciences, says that humans have... been selected to exercise only as much as they must to survive. The ancestors of modern humans lived as hunter-gatherers. In this subsistence lifestyle, food was often scarce, so resting was key to conserving energy for survival and reproduction. In other words, humans were born to run— but as little as possible.
“No hunter-gatherer goes out for a jog, just for the sake of it, I can tell you from personal experience,” says Lieberman. “They go out to forage, they go out to work, but anything else would be unwise, not to mention maladaptive” in calorie-restricted environments.
So I am thinking that if you are idle and thinking of yourself as lazy, lethargic, sedentary, or even deserving of a diagnosis of pathological demand avoidance, think again. You may be the most authentically human of human beings, closer to what nature designed.
It's a deeply bloggy tag, so it makes me want to do a post collecting recent iterations of "deeply." The first time I used it — in "Deeply... it's such a poser word" — I had a 12-point list. That was back in 2014. Let's see what "deeply" has been doing lately.
1. "The Once-Shameless President Is Deeply Embarrassed/As Donald Trump faces one humiliation after another, he is attacking those he blames" by Jonathan Lemire in The Atlantic, published today. Gift link. "But how Trump will respond next to this ongoing embarrassment remains unknown. He’s made the war deeply personal. Will he now bail on the stalled war entirely, leaving Iran more empowered in the region? Will he follow through on his threats to dramatically escalate the conflict, perhaps even to strike civilian infrastructure and energy sites? Or will he channel his rage against Americans who point out his mistakes?"
2. "UN rips ‘deeply troubling’ Iran for executing at least 56 people since start of war: ‘Has no place in our world'" — published today in The New York Post. "Several people were executed in the last two weeks alone, including a 19-year-old charged with 'enmity against god' for allegedly partaking in January’s protests. Two others arrested during the protests were also executed. And in July, two people were executed out of a group of 12 convicted of 'corruption on Earth' and 'enmity against God' over connections to four police killed in January."
3. "Ken Jennings Says He Cares 'More Deeply' About Trans Rights Than Any Other Issue" (Them, August 3, 2026). "Ken Jennings... recently got into a relatively minor back-and-forth on Bluesky with people who claimed his subscriptions to the New York Times were supporting an anti-transgender media organization.... Would I subscribe to the New York Times? No. Would I unfriend someone who did? Not necessarily.... Do I do the crossword puzzle? Yes, because nothing else quiets the anxiety I feel about living in our current reality quite like trying to find a five-letter word for boredom. Ah, 'ennui,' my old friend."
7. "The Deeply Human, Complexly Queer Animated Animals of 'Bouchra'" (autostraddle, August 3, 2026). "In Meriem Bennani and Orian Barki’s bold film Bouchra, an NYC‑based lesbian filmmaker... tries to process her relationship with her Moroccan mother through a semi‑autobiographical meta‑fictional drama stemming from a coming‑out letter she sent nine years prior.... It’s told via anthropomorphic animals in a hyperrealized backdrop.... [E]ntirely animated in Blender, Bouchra’s experimental animal‑filled approach takes some getting used to."
Top-rated comment over there: "Third Way and some other centrist groups seem far more interested in defeating progressives than defeating MAGA and far more interested in telling Democratic voters they’re wrong than earning their votes. If moderates are losing, then the problem is with those candidates, not the progressives who beat them."
The article notes that "the next big test is only a week away": "In Wisconsin, Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist and state assemblywoman representing the progressive hotbed of Madison, has emerged as the party’s front-runner for governor in another key battleground race." There's not one word about the candidate/candidates the moderates are pushing.
"'There’s something happening with men and their legs right now, and I don’t think it’s just the heat,' says Gauthier Borsarello, the creative director and co-founder of L’Étiquette magazine. Borsarello clocks the influence of celebrities such as Harry Styles and Paul Mescal, who are regularly photographed displaying the 'confident, slightly retro masculinity' of skimpy running shorts.... The shorts discourse is playing out as men are becoming more sophisticated in how they wield their sex appeal. 'They’re paying more attention to themselves overall, how they’re perceived, how they curate a silhouette, and thighs have quietly become part of that conversation,' Borsarello says. 'It’s a part of the body you can choose to reveal, deliberately, for a season, and a shorter short in summer does exactly that.'"
"The video released by researchers shows vortices of hot plasma that ebb and flow like bubbles in a pot of boiling water. Hot plasma is transported up from below the sun’s surface to a cooler area; as it cools, it drops back down to the inner parts of the star."
El-Sayed overcame a nearly $65 million onslaught of outside money and an establishment that had rallied around Stevens. Popular Gov. Gretchen Whitmer endorsed Stevens late last month — a move seen as a last-ditch effort to stop a rising El-Sayed.
Just as the relics of ancient Mesopotamians provide insight into their way of life, who we are, as a culture, and as a nation, can be uncovered by sifting through our giant piles of stuff....
The first list of 25 is definitely more fun. The second is likely to annoy you. Quite a lot. Especially if you think you'll be seeing Henry Moore and that kind of thing. No, you'll be seeing Lygia Clark"s “Bichos” and Kara Walker’s “A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby" and Melvin Edwards's "Lynch Fragments." That kind of thing.
Meanwhile, on the first list, you've got rotisserie chicken and bedazzled Crocs. That kind of thing.
You could say it isn’t really a change at all. People in Naoero speak English, but also the Nauruan native language, in which the country is known as Naoero.
The name Nauru came about because some foreigners struggled to pronounce Naoero....
How the new name is pronounced depends in part on one’s accent. British, Australian and American English speakers variously pronounce it nah-OO-roo, now-AIR-o or nah-oh-EH-roh.
1. I woke up and looked at the phone to see that it was 4 in the morning, and it made me think of that Paul Simon song with the soaring line "4 in the morning/Crapped out/Yawning/Longing my life away." I found it on Spotify and played it through headphones, then found this version by Karen Carpenter (singing "crashed out" for "crapped out"):
2. On the way to the sunrise, the car played Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide," which has the line "Even children get older/Now I'm getting older too." Meade said aborted children don't get older, and it made me think of that Byrds recording of a Pete Seeger song with the line "I'm only 7 although I died/In Hiroshima, long ago/I'm 7 now as I was then/When children die, they do not grow":
3. I was reading the news about the dismantling of the "autonomous zone" here in Madison, including a letter said to be from the family of the man who, it seems, drew a knife on the police and was shot to death. It said: "We are entrusting The Pressure Movement" and "We are working directly with The Pressure Movement." What's the Pressure Movement? This song played in my head:
Here she is answering the question from Kaitlan Collins: "Do you still believe that Thanksgiving should be canceled?"
Collins: Do you still believe that Thanksgiving should be canceled?
Hong: I'm a chef, and one of the first meals that I made was for the community when I was 16 was a Thanksgiving meal. But Thanksgiving is also a time that's incredibly painful for many people in our communities.… pic.twitter.com/Kd5kBZMxZS
Like Trump — who has his own circuitous way of talking, his "weave" — Francesca Hong has her special way of making the conversation her own:
"I'm a chef, and one of the first meals that I made was for the community when I was 16 was a Thanksgiving meal. But Thanksgiving is also a time that's incredibly painful for many people in our communities. And so I think there" — when she said Thanksgiving should be canceled — "I wanted to make sure that people understood that there are multiple views, but views can evolve. And the position that I'm running for right now, and I think my background as a chef will actually help me become a better governor that's able to bring more people to the table."
Brilliant!
A chef... bringing people to the table. I know, you're afraid of her and of the people who are going to vote for her. But if you could stand back coolly and observe, I think you should admit that this — along with Trump's weave — is beautiful American political rhetoric.
ADDED: The protesters are ousted, but they have their photo op:
State police are now on scene too. Protestors are alleging that the streets division nearly hit a tent housing people with heavy equipment pic.twitter.com/J2vMshJ20g
You can ask him 100 times, and he's "going to give you the same damn answer: The issue is around getting things done."
"We're going to spend time on that bullshit that others are talking about on Twitter? Please."
Gov. Evers campaigning for David Crowley tonight in an attempt to stop Democratic Socialist Francesca Hong from winning next Tue: "You can ask me 100 times, and I'm going to give you… pic.twitter.com/336tlTDfhB
I'm afraid "getting things done" is awfully generic. Francesca Hong is the frontrunner. You can't just refuse to talk about her. I'm not even sure what he's calling "bullshit." Is it Hong's issues or is it what her antagonists are saying about her? I don't see how refusing to engage and asserting that your candidate will "get things done" can turn things around. I'm here in Wisconsin, planning to vote in the primary, and monitoring the news every day, and David Crowley has made no impression on me. Personally, I'm a sucker for blandness and normality and moderation, but I understand the appeal of a candidate like Hong who stands for something and offers to shake everything up.
ADDED: I published this post and clicked on my "David Crowley" link and realize "that bullshit that others are talking about" may refer to the dirt (McGirk) about Crowley. Crowley had made an impression on me, 2 weeks ago, but the impression had worn off. Evers cleverly kept me from remembering it. I'll give him that.
"... that allow us to make sense of a text. A child who knows a lot about baseball will do a better job reading and summarizing a passage on baseball than a child with a higher reading level but no knowledge of the subject.
From this perspective, it is better to read a classic than a relatable contemporary story not only because one is beautiful and the other is not, but because a classic, by the very fact of its persistence over time, has become part of our shared culture. It thus increases our conversancy with all the texts from that culture. That is why it makes sense for fifth graders in Texas to read 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,' 'The Phantom Tollbooth,' 'Paul Revere’s Ride' and even, speaking of baseball, 'Casey at the Bat.'"
I liked reading that booklist. Interesting to see various Bible readings pop up amid the poems and storybooks. You know what the first Bible story is? I comes up in Kindergarten: Jonah 1:1-5, 10-17, 2:10. What translation?, I wonder. And what verses are skipped over? Are the little ones going to read...
The water came over me and choked me;
the sea covered me completely, and seaweed wrapped around my head. I went down to the very roots of the mountains, into the land whose gates lock shut forever
"... living this ultrafrugal lifestyle in preparation for a day when I wouldn’t have to answer to anyone but myself. But I don’t feel that way anymore. If I drop dead of a heart attack tomorrow, most of my friends will have had more fun in their lives than I had in mine. Right now, I’m playing catch-up on fun. But I’m still pretty far behind...."
"And only since I retired have I started looking hard at what achieving all this shit was actually going to do for me. What emotional need was I trying to meet? My ambition level, the way I used to think of it, is now gone. But what did it serve?... I have a lifetime goal to foster and adopt out 100 animals, and I’m three-quarters there already.... I am not bored or underchallenged at all. I feel like I am busier than I’ve ever been, just with different things. I have the flexibility to help my friends with their kids, which — as I don’t plan to have kids — is pure joy...."
"... with a practiced, self-deprecating laugh to her camera, propped against the wall as a portable LED light bathes her in a warm glow. 'It is 10:15 a.m., and my first delivery just arrived, and it is my Starbucks coffee.' The coffee, an almond-milk iced latte with cold foam, two pumps of vanilla, and a pinch of cinnamon, costs $25.18. 'When I really want to rage-bait, I’ll order coffee. People get so mad at me,' she tells me. The Starbucks, after all, is only three blocks from her apartment, and most of the time she grabs it while walking her dog, an English cream miniature dachshund named Linguine...."
"Once upon a time, influencers could post beautiful photos of their lives — their outfits, their coffee, their vacations, their children — and, with enough consistency, amass an audience of followers who looked to them for inspiration or escape.... Now... [t]he only reliable way to reach mainstream or even moderate recognition against all the noise is to either carpet-bomb social media with clips or to enrage wide swaths of the public...."
"Do you see your job as ending vaccine hesitancy or do you see your job as telling the truth to the American people?... All you know how to do is repeat things that people told you and say trust the experts. That's what you do.... Now we know that Anthony Fauci, who was the expert, was lying about everything about masks, about social distancing, about natural immunity, about the transmission from the vaccine, about the source of COVID. He was lying. And you were punishing people for not trusting the experts. And now you're rolling out the experts again to talk about something that you have no personal knowledge of...."
"... came in and announced the street will be cleaned in 10 minutes and everyone had to get out. They just rolled trucks down and tossed everything away and that was that. I think Madison will just need to do the same here. Let people do their thing for a bit, then wipe it clean and everyone moves on."
That last post really needed the tag "mirror." How did I come so far without a tag for mirror? I made one, then had 22+ years of the blog to search to add the tag retrospectively. It was easy to search for the word "mirror," but hard to separate the posts that deserved the tag — the ones referring to the object, a mirror — from the ones that did not — the ones using "mirror" as a dying metaphor (ideas "mirror" other ideas and so forth). And then there's the drudgery of adding the tag and republishing. But in the end, there's the fun of clicking on the tag and peering into the kaleidoscope.
There was, also in 2008, the convex mirror I loved and wanted to buy:
"It's expensive — over $1800 — but as I thought about possibly buying it, I realized what I wanted it for was to take pictures, and therefore what I really should buy is a fisheye lens for my Nikon D50." So I got that fisheye lens. If you're nostalgic for those days, click the tag "fisheye."
There was this advice about dolphins, in 2014: "People, can you just leave the dolphins alone? They don't want to swim with you, despite the 'expression' you see on their faces. The love you think you are experiencing is nothing more than self-love. Stay home, save your money, and stare in a mirror until you get a deep, accurate assessment of how true your self-love is. Is there a fixed smile on your face? I hope not, but if there is, it's not because you share the spirit of the dolphin. The dolphin is 'smiling' because nature played a dirty trick on him, drawing idiot humans into his domain. Get out. Leave the dolphin alone."
There was the mystery of what a monkey sees in a mirror, back in 2005: "What's in the monkey's mind when he looks in a mirror? Higher minds -- human beings, great apes, dolphins -- figure out, when they are looking in a mirror, that they are seeing themselves. Other animals, it's long been thought, think they're seeing a stranger. But a new study shows that the monkey occupies a middle position, where it doesn't see itself, but it doesn't see a stranger either. The monkey sees a 'Puzzling Other.'"
In 2024, I had Grok outline a book for me. It was titled "Through the Glass/Exploring Mirrors as Portals to Other worlds."
I was surprised to see that, back in 2013, I'd contributed to my long-running men-in-shorts theme with this stark advice: "Take a good look at yourself in the mirror when you've got your shorts on. Ask yourself if I were a woman, would I fuck me?"
There was this good question, in 2013: "If someone holds up a mirror and you say 'I look like an idiot,' is the mirror-holder calling you an idiot?"
There was the sunset in my rear-view mirroras I drove 500 miles to see Meade in 2009:
"... as C.S. Lewis wrote in 'Mere Christianity.' Pride is a turning away from God, and an exultation of oneself.* The mirror is a symbol of pride and vanity, but it also symbolizes our incomplete, earthly knowledge. As the Apostle Paul wrote about God in his first letter to the Corinthians: 'For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face.'... In Islamic mysticism... a smudged mirror is a metaphor for the human soul. It is only when the ego is annihilated, and the surface is polished clean, that the divine becomes visible.... In 1967, Michel Foucault darkly described the mirror as a kind of threshold, a mix between a fantasy world, a utopia and some weird other place on the margins — which he called a 'heterotopia.' The mirror is one such strange place because we discover our presence and our absence at the same time. 'I see myself there where I am not,' he wrote, 'in an unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the surface.'"
* Shouldn't that be "an exaltation of oneself"? Are we not talking about raising ourselves above God (as opposed to jubilating over how wonderful we are)? Think about it. We say "an exaltation of larks," not "an exultation of larks."
That photo is from yesterday. Today's sunrise was rained out. We had such an intense sunrise yesterday, with lots of deep red and orange, and this 6:24 picture with the colors cooled off didn't fit the set. It gets a solo today.
"The video was released Thursday. Within hours, internet sleuths figured out that the two are colleagues at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, a white-shoe law firm in Manhattan. The man, Nathaniel D. Cullerton, is 45 and a partner. The woman, Kelsey Borenzweig, is 29, and an associate. Cullerton is married. Everyone from the Daily Mail to Above the Law covered the scandal, and the video has since amassed more than 5 million views.
'Cheating in public, wife is a lawyer, got caught on camera? Triple homicide 😭,' read one comment, which has 224,000 likes, on TikTok under a repost of the video.
'People are way too comfortable cheating, make cheating illegal,' read another that got 43,000 likes...."
My son Chris, who's nearing the end of his project of reading biographies of all of the American Presidents, sends me very well-chosen snippets of things now and then.
"... the hair bands, the punkers — but we all were aware of each other and have an understanding of each other. Every time see a teenager walking down the street in an MTV t-shirt, I feel so proud because I know they're picking up on the passion and the energy that got MTV off the ground."
Said Martha Quinn, commemorating the beginning of MTV, 45 years ago today.
Everyone always likes to say the first video was "Video Killed the Radio Star," but what was the next video and the next? I found out:
"... by 50%. Every time we keep waiting for another shoe to drop, we find out, 'Oh, it's actually a good thing.' Everyone at this table is going to be on a GLP-1 within 24 months.... I think when you look at the studies around the upside versus the downside here, it's the most transformative technology in the world."
Says Scott Galloway, ticking off Bill Maher:
Bill Maher shuts down Scott Galloway on the spot after he says “everyone should be” on a GLP-1 “within 24 months.”
GALLOWAY: “Every time we find out something new about GLP-1, it's a positive. They're now saying that it reduces the likelihood of stage one cancer going to… pic.twitter.com/2KUMXrkciF
As a student at New York University Tisch School of the Arts, Blau grew engrossed in the work of cinéma vérité auteurs like Frederick Wiseman and Ross McElwee while also immersing himself in the New York canon of John Cassavetes and Martin Scorsese.
“Scorsese’s ‘After Hours’ is like the ultimate errand,” he said. “That would be my dream episode — for someone to get so sidetracked on their errand that they get chased through SoHo by an angry mob, like in the film.”
That pushes all the right buttons for me. Also made me think of one of my favorite TV shows, "How to with John Wilson."
But I do have to home in on "Cops are usually kind of nice to me." How casually people enjoy their privileges. I need to check on how the heavy rains affected the people in the Corey Ruiz Autonomous Zone.
"... for Jews who work or attend school in the winter, when sunrise and sunset — which coincide with morning and evening prayers — would occur an hour later. For those who work secular jobs, praying nearly an hour later than usual would make it difficult to arrive at work on time, they argue."
But this isn't a woman who's oblivious to the interests of babyless moviegoers. She goes to a "baby-friendly matinee." The tickets clearly say the show is for "Adults With Infants." Fine, then. I just hope the babies have ear protection. It does say they turn the sound down "a tad." A tad's not enough.
And, of course, it doesn't matter that the movie is R-rated. The baby understands nothing of what makes it R-rated. Though it is possible that the turmoil and anxiety come across in some way we adults cannot understand.
"He really was on the cover of every magazine, which, if you think about it, was weird! If millions of Americans suddenly made me their cult leader, and I had previously just been an unknown short man in the back of an HIV press conference, I would go insane with power too. So would you. And when you see lockdowns in the context of a power-drunk elf getting turned on by the idea of canceling Easter—he’s typing so fast he can barely keep up—you can understand better what we all lived through. For him, the pleasure was canceling things, especially things he felt gave power to the right (sports, family gatherings, religious events). We can never forget the freaks who gain power in a centrally controlled system...."
So do "freaks... gain power in a centrally controlled system"? Or does the power that's there to be gained in a centrally controlled system make freaks out of people? Bowles must mean the latter, because she'd saying she would "go insane" under the same circumstances and "So would you."
About what I boldfaced above: I'm up for taunting Fauci over the things Fauci deserves to be taunted for, but having repeated fun over his height seems... well, it seems like Obama's thing about balding:
One could read that headline to mean that the work done to the pool was botched OR that the prosecutorial work was botched. But the first sentence of the article makes it clear: "Federal prosecutors on Friday acknowledged that contractors hired by the Trump administration had 'botched' the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool."
"As part of the assignment, students had to read first-person stories told by other unlikable narrators — like 'Cathedral' by Raymond Carver — to contrast narrative voice, perspective, vocabulary and style, according to the lawsuit. In colleges, such materials 'take students out of their comfort zone, expose them to new ideas and provide opportunities for growth and intellectual maturation,' the suit said...."
"... and would eventually ascend to a senior job. With the rise of the modern corporation around the turn of the 20th century, however, the secretary became more like a noncommissioned officer — a worker with real responsibility but little upward mobility. It was at this point that the position became mostly female. Companies then broke up and degraded the job further over the decades, replacing the secretary with pools of typists, receptionists and data entry personnel, almost all of them women, too. The final step, amid pressure from the feminist movement in the 1970s, was to allow a small number of college-educated women to ascend from these clerical jobs to the ranks of middle management. But even this came with a loss of status, as managers would have to do more of their own grunt work. 'They’re now being promoted, but the clerical tasks are promoted with them,' said Jason Resnikoff, a labor historian. 'The middle manager would do more typing, correspondence, more of their own filing.' These days, almost no one has an assistant...."
"But Soufiane ez Znafry, 26, said that many were turning back because they were hungry. 'We have not eaten in two days,' he said, adding that all the supermarkets in the area had closed and that his stomach was 'growling.' He had rushed from Tangier on Thursday after friends told him they were heading to Spain. He said he barely scrapes by in Morocco working as a sous-chef.
In the rush, carrying only a bag containing some clothes and a few possessions, he did not tell his parents that he was leaving. 'I did not want to worry them,' he said...."
Please share this with everyone. Let’s never listen to these liars ever again. I guess CNN doesn’t need Sanjay to be a useful idiot anymore pic.twitter.com/XawCqUEWUB
The invocation of science ought to be a call to calm rationality, but there we see it used like a tagline for a horror movie: Be afraid, be very afraid.
"This is a monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY. This agreement is a critical step towards Gaza finally being governed by a new Palestinian government that will work closely with the Board of Peace to help the Palestinian people. At the same time, Israel will have the security it deserves, with Gaza no longer used as a base for terror attacks."
"This is a major milestone in the implementation of the Trump 20-Point Plan. The agreement will be carried out in carefully structured phases. As disarmament is completed, Israeli forces will withdraw, and the International Stabilization Force will work with a new Palestinian police force to take responsibility for Gaza being safe for its residents and its neighbors.
One year ago there was a violent raging war, humanitarian crisis and hostages kept in brutal captivity. We have made historic progress and there is still much work to do.... Under this agreement, Gaza will finally be in the hands of a new Palestinian government that serves its PEOPLE.
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL ON THIS AMAZING DEVELOPMENT, THAT EVERYBODY SAID COULD NEVER BE ACHIEVED!"
"— that’s a social science term — meaning they’ve probably moved around a lot, they’ve probably had a whole bunch of different kinds of jobs, they started dating younger and they’ve dated more people. They’re more likely to be interested in polyamory or nonmonogamy than the people who have never left their hometown, who like to have one job and really stick with it. Not that either of those are better than the other, but just what kind of wiring tends to mak [sic] you enjoy polyamory."
"... and it was kind of a set piece there during the performance, to such a degree that Mr. Waits completely forgot the keys were in his pocket when he left.... [M]y dad got the surreal privilege of spending an evening driving around to every bar in Chicago that he could think of looking for the guy so they could get the car off the stage. This is how my father taught me that that if you hop dive bars long enough into a Saturday night, you will eventually - maybe inevitabley - come upon Tom Waits. He will give you the keys to a '55 Chevy Bel Air, and he will also buy you a drink for your trouble."
"... during the pandemic. The senator then asked Fauci to turn around and look at them. Fauci refused. Then Moreno told the story of a family in Ohio who attended a high school football game in the middle of the lockdowns. 'They went to the stadium. They sat alone, far from anyone else. They didn’t feel they needed to wear masks because it was stupid and they were outside. Dr. Fauci, do you know what happened to . . . that family?' Fauci responded with the line he must have repeated more than a hundred times in the hearing. 'On the advice of counsel I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution,' he said. 'They were dragged out of that stadium and arrested,' [Moreno] said. 'Those policies were put in place because you had moronic politicians that listened to the words of a megalomaniac who was more interested in having met a Kardashian than the suffering of the American people.' Fauci just sat there, stone faced, without emotion...."
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When we use this vantage point, it unsettles the ducks from the place I've named after them, Duck Beach. They insist on swimming off every time, all of them. I try to explain that we're only here for the sun, but they have no free choice. They must swim off into the sunrise. But the sun is, day by day, moving to the right, southward, and before long Duck Beach will not work as a sunrise vantage point and we can end our futile effort not to set off the ducks.
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