JFK and the "lady of some note in Europe."

Chris — my son, the reader of presidential biographies — texts me another passage from "President Kennedy: Profile of Power" (commission earned):

"He told all the children who were present — about 900 of the school’s total 1,643 students — to run to higher ground."

"Only older pupils, ages 11 to 18, were at school when the floods hit.... 'They were old enough to run immediately... It would not have been possible to save everyone, had kindergarten and primary school students also been there. 'Pupils who had arrived at the school earlier by bus were told to get back on them, and Mr. Dawadi instructed the drivers to leave the area as quickly as possible. 'A couple of students became traumatized and fainted,' Mr. Dawadi said, adding that those children were transported to safety on teachers’ motorbikes. 'I thought that even if the warning turned out to be wrong, the worst it would cost us was one day of study,' Mr. Dawadi said.... Around 9:23 a.m., about 13 minutes after Mr. Dawadi heard the first warning, a deluge of water, mud and debris swept through the area. The school was destroyed in seconds...."

From "A Principal Saved 900 Students Before His School Was Washed Away in Nepal/Rajendra Dawadi had less than 15 minutes to act on a warning of approaching floodwaters. His swift evacuation plan saved hundreds of lives" (NYT gift link).

900 students with 13 minutes to run for higher ground, and they all made it. Or, really, less than 13 minutes, because Dawadi had needed to understand the warning, decide how seriously to take it, and convey the plan to all of the students, and the students needed to hear and understand and launch themselves into that run. Perhaps that could all be done in less than a minute. I don't know.

The ever-vigilant deer.

That's Meade's video in the morning twilight yesterday. I was walking up ahead of him and moving slowly and quietly. Because I thought they were tolerating me, I stopped. I thought maybe they would approach me, which was dumb, because it wouldn't be good for them or for me. Habituation is bad for them, and as for me, I don't want their ticks (or hooves). But it was my stopping that caused them to panic and spring off. I thought stopping was completely nonthreatening, but I thought about it from their point of view afterwards. I should have continued moving slowly and quietly, keeping in my lane on the path. To stop was to show interest in them, and that crossed the line. Too much! 

"No one thinks, at least not yet, that a robot should be able to compete for Olympic medals or be eligible for Nobel prizes."

"Protecting innovation by limiting awards to humans makes sense. But music charts are supposed to measure popularity among consumers. Perhaps AI bots could be assigned their own category. Labeling works as AI-assisted or -generated is a sensible nod to transparency. Beyond that, consumers should be left to decide what it is they want to listen to — even when, just like a dream, the music is not what it seems."

I'm reading "Who’s that bot? An AI cover of Madonna spurs industry changes. Instead of blocking AI-assisted songs from the charts, require disclosure and protect creators" by the Editorial Board of the Washington Post.

That's a gift link, so you can read about what it was about the artificiality of that one cover of "Like a Prayer" that stirred up serious opposition to artificiality in pop music. To my ear, things have been unlistenably artificial for decades. People have developed a taste for robotic singing, and the robots keep giving them more of what they like. The machine that is Spotify serves me music from the 1960s and the 1940s, because it can see that I respond to the human voice, but younger people do not, and it doesn't matter what happens with the various prizes. The algorithm will give them what touches them, even if we elders think they have bad taste.

Back in the 1960s, my father expressed the sincere opinion that the rock music I was listening to was not music because of the electric instruments and the voices processed through microphones.

"Iran is officially a Failed Nation. IT IS DEAD! They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, they have no currency, they are not paying their soldiers or police."

"Inflation is at 300%, and their leadership is in total disarray and incapable of properly representing the country. The only thing they have is FAKE NEWS from the USA, a willingness to kill their protesters (now over 100,000 people dead. They must be tried for war crimes against humanity!), and a good line of 'BULLSHIT.' Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J.TRUMP"

A Trump Truth Social post this morning.

The period in that parenthetical makes it hard to read, so let me just tweak the punctuation:

The only thing they have is: FAKE NEWS from the USA, a willingness to kill their protesters — now over 100,000 people dead (They must be tried for war crimes against humanity!) — and a good line of BULLSHIT.

Why was "BULLSHIT" in scare quotes when "FAKE NEWS" was not? Both should be in or both out. Since the words "bullshit" and "fake news" are both used to express an opinion that what you are hearing is false, don't put quotes around them as if you are undercutting your accusation of falsity. You want to say the news really is fake and what the Iranians are saying is really bullshit. So, no scare quotes.

Now, the question I have is whether Trump means to say that the false message conveyed by U.S. news media and the the message conveyed by what's left of the Iranian government is the same message. I think he is. In his view, both are saying the United States has lost the war.

Sunrise.

Open thread.

"The present looks more like Wolfe’s 1976 than we care to admit. The engine of the ’70s was the failure of the ’60s."

"Fast-forward: The years from roughly 2016 through the early 2020s were America’s most feverishly political stretch in generations. On one flank stood a populist insurgency; on the other, the Great Awokening. Both failed to build the transformed society their rhetoric advertised. What does thwarted revolutionary energy do when it has nowhere durable to go? As it did after 1968, it goes toward the one realm that still seems transformable: the self. It splinters into private quests for meaning.... On the left in the late ’70s, disillusion flowed into the New Age. Today, it flows into 'self-care'.... It flows into astrology... and into the witch with the imagined power to 'hex' President Donald Trump.... The right in the ’70s had the cult of fitness. MAHA, the manosphere and Silicon Valley have looksmaxxing and testosterone infusions, ice baths and the carnivore diet, along with the tech billionaire Bryan Johnson spending millions to reverse his own aging and streaming his bloodwork to the world. It is the body as a project to be perfected, but with the promise cranked up from fitness to immortality...."

Writes Ryan Zickgraf, in "Tom Wolfe’s ‘Me Decade’: Still going strong 50 years later/The peerless social critic skewered a culture of self-absorption much like today's" (WaPo gift link).

And here's the August 1976 New York Magazine essay by Tom Wolfe, "The 'Me' Decade and the Third Great Awakening."

"You have an ambassador that has cachet, and the Italians like that. They like that [they’re] important enough to us that you’re going to come into our town, on your big boat..."

"... and pay respect to us and have us in your home. That’s what I hear from people."

Tilman Fertitta, Trump's ambassador to Italy, quoted in "Trump’s ambassador to Italy is flaunting his wealth, and it’s dividing Italians/With a net worth of $11.1 billion, Tilman Fertitta, a great-grandson of Sicilian immigrants, is one of the wealthiest people ever to be a U.S. ambassador" (WaPo gift link). 

WaPo explains: "Italy has perhaps a different relationship with wealth than other European countries such as Britain, where aspiration can be viewed as a personality flaw. This is the land where Gucci and Versace helped define loud luxury, and where the political cult of billionaire playboy Silvio Berlusconi once reigned. But even here, the Italian elite can see American-style displays of wealth as violations of good taste. And while some on the political left have happily sipped champagne on his yacht, others have sharply criticized the tour."

Fertitta offers advice about how to deal with Trump: "What I’ve said is, 'You don’t want to get in a verbal volleyball match with Donald Trump; because he’s relentless, and he’s going to win." And: "If he’s not giving you a hard time, then you’re not worth the time of day."

"As we see a rise in fascism, there is a direct correlation with thinness to make women take up less space."

So said the actress Hannah Einbinder:

Hollywood actress Hannah Einbinder blames “fascism” for women wanting to be slim.

“As we see a rise in fascism, there is a direct correlation with thinness to make women take up less space.” pic.twitter.com/0VTlRFqe2e

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) August 30, 2026

Of course, she's getting trashed on X. She's "trending." That's why I saw it. I don't really know her, but I see she's highly praised for her role in "Hacks," and also that she's the daughter of Laraine Newman.

Anyway, it's cheap and easy to go after an actress who expresses any opinion that seems to require intelligence and background knowledge. I would prefer to isolate what she said and explore the various issues there:

1. There's a broad, casual use of the word "fascism" that's like the way Seinfeld used "Nazi" in "The Soup Nazi." You can argue that the word should be used more precisely, but it doesn't mean the person who's using it broadly is a fool.

2.  Correlation is not causation, and she only said "correlation." She intensified it with "direct" — "There is a direct correlation" — but Einbinder was clever enough to protect herself with the first-rate weasel word "correlation."

3. Did the actual historical fascists idealize female thinness? I don't think so. 

"For prospects rising through the Milwaukee Brewers’ farm system, and even established veterans on a rehab assignment, wearing lederhosen is a rite of passage."

"No, this isn’t some elaborate rookie hazing prank... it’s the result of Friday’s theme night at High-A Wisconsin, one in which the team normally known as the Timber Rattlers becomes the Brats as part of Bratoberfest, a play on Germany’s iconic Oktoberfest, while also paying homage to the state that’s home to one of the highest concentrations of residents with German ancestry. It just so happened that Abner Uribe, the Brewers’ flame-throwing reliever who is working his way back from a flexor strain, was in town on his rehab assignment...."

The NYT picks up the best Milwaukee Brewers story of the day: "Brewers’ Abner Uribe delights fans in ‘Brats’ lederhosen uniform during minor-league rehab."

Humiliating? Or is it wonderful... bratoberfestive!

I could watch the Green Bay Packers exhibition game, women’s college volleyball, the team with the best record in baseball the Milwaukee Brewers, the Winn-Dixie 250, high school football, WWE SmackDown, or…Abner Uribe in lederhosen. You tell me… pic.twitter.com/lZWfgdxMLi

— Steve Palec (@stevepalec) August 29, 2026

ADDED: I have a bit of a tags quandary for this post. I don't like tag proliferation, but this isn't the first appearance of lederhosen on this blog. It's the fourth. See them all here. But all the other times, I was able to use my well-loved tag "men in shorts." But this baseball take on lederhosen avoids the baseball travesty of shorts — White Sox, 1976 — and sticks with traditional knickers. As I've said before, I like the knickers and wish all the players would wear them and not those pajama-looking long pants, but I'm still not making a tag for knickers. But if I did, I'd have 12 "knickers" posts now. 

Let me highlight the best of those old "knickers" posts. I remembered that the Young Rascals wore knickers. I found this 1926 song with the lyric: "Knickers and trousers, baggy and wide/Nobody knows who's walking inside!" I said that David Brooks: "expatiated about the good old days when men like George Washington displayed their thighs in tight silk knickers."

And, in 2008, before I got together with Meade and started watching baseball again, there were TVs outside State Street Brats just as The Backstreet Boys were singing the national anthem to open the World Series. I blogged: "The players look like hell! When did they stop wearing stockings and knickers? Those long pants look like pajamas."

And there was Meade, the first commenter: "I must be smoking too much blog. I hallucinated." Because the video looked like this:



Key word linking the end of this post to the beginning: brats.

"Greg began cautiously. His first video was just him reading out loud a newspaper article about a Florida woman..."

"... who had accidentally burned down America’s fifth‑oldest tree by smoking meth underneath it. After he read it, he said to the camera, 'Isn’t that crazy?' 'The video got 10 or 12 views,' Greg told me, 'and a comment: "You look like you’ve been smoking meth."'"

I'm reading "He Was a Top Lawn Care Influencer on YouTube. Then Everything Went Haywire. Many people think Greg Chism is a freak — or worse. He says he was just following the incentives of the platform" (NYT gift link).

Read the whole amazing story of a man ruined by YouTube. It's adapted from a new book called "The Castle: Adventures in a World of Unraveling Men" (commission earned). The author is Jon Ronson.

Sunrise.

"An 1888 ordinance from the British colonial government precipitated the need for coffins. The traditional Ga practice..."

"... had been to bury relatives beneath the floor of the family home, to keep the dead close by. But British officials, concerned about hygiene, mandated the use of wooden coffins for burial in designated cemeteries. Some have suggested that fantasy coffins allowed Ghanaians to celebrate their lives and achievements while complying with the law...."

From "6 Feet Under in Art Coffins That Are Over the Top/Elaborate coffins, produced by Ghanaian artisans, are the centerpieces of funerals that celebrate the life of the deceased and get them to the afterlife in style" (NYT gift link)(lots of photos of fantasy coffins).

"For Ga families, finding a fitting design, whether a book for a teacher or a truck with a squeeze-bulb horn for a mechanic, can be a complex and emotional process.... In 2020, a coffin in the shape of a circumcised penis, which was publicized on social media, was rumored to have been made for a sex worker and was widely seen as disrespectful. In fact, it was made to honor a traditional wanzam, similar to a Jewish mohel — someone who performs male circumcisions...."

"There are no federal regulations requiring disclosure of payments for political support on social media, and only a few states have such rules."

"That allows influencers, in most instances, to endorse candidates for a fee without ever disclosing those payments in their posts. Creators say some campaigns have even asked them to actively conceal the fact that they’re being compensated, making it impossible to know what’s genuine support — and what is pay-for-play. In most cases, the only way a viewer would know an influencer is being paid would be to search a candidate’s campaign finance reports, as The New York Times did to discover the payments. Even then, such compensation is regularly obscured by funneling the payments through middlemen...."

From "Influencers Have a Lot to Say About Politics. Many Are Quietly Paid for It. Their videos have proliferated on social media, but the payments are frequently hidden from viewers" (NYT gift link).

Ugh. I already scroll right by anyone who's just talking at the camera in support of a candidate. But to think it's a paid ad sleazily evading disclosure and not just volunteer nitwit!

A tall woman and her short man fiancé don't appreciate Fox News making them a topic for discussion...

... replete with the most cliché tall/short witticisms.

"We Who Are Captivated by the Utmost Beauty of Everything We Know and Shed Tears as We Were Monstrously Touched by the Mystery of the Beauty" and other works...

... can be seen at "Yayoi Kusama: A Life in Pictures/Whether making dot-covered sculptures or wild performance pieces, the Japanese artist grabbed critical and popular acclaim" (NYT gift link).

Kusama's "death at age 97 was announced on Thursday."

"In 2022 he claimed credit for organizing a notorious dinner for Mr. Trump and Mr. West that also included the white supremacist Nick Fuentes."

"(Mr. Yiannopoulos claimed the meeting was an ambush, meant to 'make Trump’s life miserable.') Two years later, Mr. Yiannopoulos joined [Kanye] West’s exploratory campaign for president. Mr. Yiannopoulos, who was openly gay and often said he was attracted to Mr. Trump, announced in 2017 that he had been married to a man who is a U.S. citizen, but never revealed the full identity of that person. He later claimed that he was 'ex-gay,' and had 'demoted' his husband to the role of 'housemate.'"

From "Milo Yiannopoulos, a Right-Wing Provocateur, Is Arrested by ICE/Mr. Yiannopoulos, a prominent early supporter of President Trump, was detained at the New Orleans airport. The Trump administration publicized his arrest and shared a mug shot" (NYT gift link).

• Is there some kind of idea that if you're not sexually attracted to your spouse you're not married anymore?! Good luck in divorce court.

• Here's the 2022 NYT article about the "notorious dinner": "Trump’s Latest Dinner Guest: Nick Fuentes, White Supremacist/The former president’s table for four at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday also included Kanye West, whose antisemitic statements have made him an entertainment-industry outcast."

• Being a prankster may cause you to imagine that the rules don't apply to you, but no one really thinks they don't. 

"[A] vocal group of male commenters have used the [Lindsay Clancy] case to create a sounding board for their resentment of women...."

"Hugh Anthony, who has 66,000 followers, has taken aim at 'modern-day feminists' who are 'satanic freaks … masking [alleged murder] behind psychosis.' Another man brags about dumping a woman because she empathised too much with Clancy’s postpartum psychosis. 'I can’t ignore or gamble my future children,' it reads, to the tune of 2,800 likes. Yet another, from Collin Rugg, a bloviating X provocateur with 2.8 million followers, claims that men are taking their wives’ support of Clancy to divorce court. He shared a video of an attorney who said he would help male clients strip ex-wives of their visitation rights based on their views about the case.... [Men] are whipped into a froth by manosphere types leveraging a tragedy against all women. [Women] are crassly using that tragedy to show the systemic brokenness of marriage and motherhood, bending the facts around their feelings.... Both sides of this tawdry tit-for-tat are incapable of making this catastrophe about anything other than themselves."

Writes Poppy Sowerby, in "Men and women are falling out over Lindsay Clancy. It’s sick/Content creators have hijacked a tragic murder trial and turned it into an ugly proxy war over gender politics" (London Times).

"On July 5, Pamela Guillen, 40, reportedly suffered a severe subdural haematoma and brain compression after hitting her head multiple times on the X2’s headrest during the [roller coaster] ride."

"She began vomiting and lost consciousness before being rushed to the hospital... Surgeons removed part of her skull to relieve pressure on her brain. She regained consciousness two weeks after the ride and has since had to relearn how to walk and talk.... Six days later Naomi Greer-Wilkinson suffered a traumatic brain injury after riding the X2. Greer-Wilkinson, a 25-year-old from Los Angeles... remains in a coma, connected to a ventilator and feeding tube.... Christopher Hawley, 22, died in June 2022 after hitting his head multiple times against the back of the seat while riding the X2. After finishing the ride, he fell to the ground and became unconscious. When doctors treating Hawley removed part of his skull, they found his brain was so swollen it was bulging out of an opening they made to relieve the pressure...."

From "Two women suffered brain injuries after rollercoaster rides/The X2 rollercoaster at Six Flags Magic Mountain, California, is marketed for the 'ultimate daredevil'" (London Times).

"The United States of America has just entered into an Agreement with the Country of Venezuela on, THE BIGGEST OIL DEAL IN WORLD HISTORY!"

"At my direction, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, working closely with Highly Respected Interim President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez, and, through a partnership with private business, have secured majority U.S. control of more than 65 BILLION BARRELS of proven Oil Reserves in Venezuela, at no cost to the American Taxpayer. This Historic Transaction MORE THAN DOUBLES American Oil Reserves, greatly increases our Oil Supply, and will substantially lower Gas Prices for all Americans, long into the future, while helping to continue to set Venezuela on a course toward Tremendous Success and Great Prosperity."

Writes Trump, at Truth Social.

Here's the NYT story: "Trump Says U.S. Has Deal for Control of Large Share of Venezuela’s Oil/The president said an agreement between the countries covered more than 65 billion barrels of reserves. A U.S. official said it would involve a partnership with a private company."

Sunrise.

"[Yayoi] Kusama was... part of the artistic avant-garde. Her death, at 97, is a cold reminder that the avant-garde no longer exists...."

"It was an attempt to see the world afresh. For many of its leading figures, from the Impressionists in the 1870s to conceptual artists a century later, this also meant proposing new and better solutions to the problem of how to be and how to live together. These proposals, many times rooted in sympathy and love, were presented as alternatives to the political structures and market logic that had so often led to war, exploitation, hopelessness, and suffering. Even when attempts to turn these imagined alternatives into reality failed—and often dismally—the avant-garde stood in a clear relationship to modernity’s traumas. It was like the whistle cap in the spout of a boiling kettle: both a release of suppressed pressures (psychic and cultural) and an alarm. But society got sick of hearing the alarm. And the kettle got tired of whistling...."

Writes Sebastian Smee, in "The Limits of Yayoi Kusama's Infinity/The visionary artist once challenged ways of seeing—until she was seen by everyone" (Atlantic gift link).

"Kusama... talked about her repeating dots as an expression of an inclination toward 'self-obliteration' —an urge to dissolve into forever-expanding patterns.... The artist—an adorable maker of giant spotted pumpkins who lived in a psychiatric institution—became beyond criticism. You could no more criticize her than you could a grandmother giving a teddy bear to an orphan.... Successful branding is exactly what art at its best is not: a form of general seduction rather than specific engagement...."

"Through much of the 19th century, noncitizen voting expanded alongside U.S. territorial gains..."

"(the government offered the vote to Europeans who helped dispossess Indians and colonize the West). But in the mid- to late 1800s, immigrants started to become scapegoats for changes that native-born Americans saw as threatening.... Confederates banned immigrant suffrage during the Civil War because they thought migrating Europeans were anti-slavery, while northern states rolled back voting rights in reaction to waves of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century, which they associated with crime. By 1926, no state let noncitizens vote in federal elections. In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed into law the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, making noncitizen voting in federal elections a crime...."

Writes Zak Cheney-Rice, in "The Fear of Noncitizen Voting/For Trump, it is the death of America. For liberals, 'Woke 1' excess. Why is noncitizen voting so terrifying?" (New York Magazine).

My MAGA status expires in 5 minutes.

Note: I have made a political contribution approximately twice in my entire life and not even once in this century. I would never respond positively to a political text message, but obviously some people do. I'm pestered with material like this multiple times a day, but I'm choosing this one to blog because "Your MAGA status expires in 5 MINUTES" takes the cake.

"That sucker is open. The Iranian response is very mild. They don't want us to go back at them. That's the whole ball game. The rest doesn't matter."

Said President Trump to Axios, quoted in "'That sucker is open': U.S. gains the upper hand in the battle for Hormuz."

After the MOU fell apart, the military worked to reopen the strait unilaterally. The effort included several elements: Together with the United Arab Emirates, a U.S. military task force started guiding ships through the southern channel of the strait while giving them air cover and intercepting Iranian drone and cruise missile attacks. A two-week U.S. bombing campaign significantly undercut the IRGC's capacity to attack ships crossing the strait. A mine-sweeping operation involved Navy divers, Navy SEALs, underwater and surface drones, and private contractors to detect and neutralize the mines. A blockade of Iranian ports was restored.... 

The Strait of Trump. 

Sunrise.

Oh, no! Now, we have to call Lake Ontario "Lake America."

I'm reading "Trump signs order renaming Lake Ontario as Lake America, escalating Canada feud/President Donald Trump called Canadian officials 'nasty people' and said the country 'has been ripping us off for a long time on trade, very sadly.'"

“We filed all the necessary papers, documents, everything else,” Trump said. “We notified all the various people that we have to notify. So we’ve done everything that you have to do. And this is official, effective immediately.”

"A man who parked a truck carrying a guillotine in the heart of Washington was arrested by the United States Capitol Police on Tuesday...."

"The police arrested Philan-Tam-Duy Le, 35, of Julian, Calif., for 'being in possession of the guillotine,' the department said in the statement. He was charged with carrying a dangerous weapon. 'It did have a real blade,' the police’s public information office said.... The man had driven to the nation’s capital from California, the police said. The truck was parked not far from the Library of Congress and other prominent Washington buildings.... It was unclear whether Mr. Le had driven the truck across the country with the guillotine on it, a journey that could have been more than 2,500 miles."

From "Man Accused of Bringing Guillotine to D.C. Is Arrested/Philan-Tam-Duy Le, 35, of Julian, Calif., was taken into custody for 'being in possession of the guillotine,' the police said" (NYT).

Is "being in possession of a guillotine" a crime? There's this at Law Commentary:

D.C. law bans several weapons by name, including machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, switchblade knives, and knuckles. It also covers other dangerous weapons when someone possesses them with the intent to use them unlawfully against another person. A guillotine is not specifically listed.... Prosecutors must establish that it qualifies as a dangerous weapon under the law and address the required intent....

D.C.’s highest local court applied that rule last year in Carrington v. United States, throwing out a weapons conviction involving an umbrella because prosecutors had not shown that it was likely to cause death or serious injury in the way it was used....

 The police asked Le if it worked and he said, "Yeah, it’s the real deal, man."

I went back to see the APT production of "The Chairs" again.

Hard to get tickets at this point, but go here. It's not impossible. What a fantastic performance! I don't know that I've ever heard a more enthusiastic standing ovation.

How often have you gone back to see the same theatrical production? I can only think of 2 other occasions, both in this theater (the indoor theater at APT). 

"I can’t count how many messages I’ve received over time about my appearance. Especially that I have ugly teeth and thin hair."

"The fact that I have an ugly 'wart' on my nose and good advice on getting Botox. I’m fine with my body. Such as it is, when you are a woman approaching 50."

Wrote Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who got a text that asked "Do you want to get that little spot on your nose fixed?"

She's quoted in "'I’m Fine With My Body': Danish Leader Responds to Unsolicited Beauty Advice/Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen had just returned from Ukraine when she received a message from a plastic surgeon asking if she wanted to fix her nose" (NYT gift link).

The Times makes this a discussion of the pressure on women to meet beauty standards. I think that's an important issue. I'd like to see it tied to the massive celebration of Dolly Parton, who went to an immense amount of trouble to manifest her ideal of highly exaggerated feminine beauty.

But what I want to talk about is the facial phenomenon often called a "wart." First of all, it's not a wart!

Devilish imagery.

 

That's at the top of the WaPo home page.

The red glow of the photograph is transfixing. If you can tear your eyes away from it and look to the text, you see "Mike Collins" and "KKK and Nazi." Emotional tainting accomplished. There's little potential for your mind to travel on to pull out "former... staffer" and "what appear to be," let alone to click through to investigate whether there's really anything to damage Collins.

Clicking gets you to this article (gift link):

"Reading Count of Monte Cristo in One Sitting."

Its a TikTok thing. I'm seeing 12 videos in this group. Check it out. Reading "The Count of Monte Cristo" is a thing these days, but why? It's super-long, so people have been avoiding it, but word has got out that it's a very exciting, gripping read. If you like — or think you might like — video of people reading, click through. It really is people reading — reading "The Count of Monte Cristo."

By the way, I have not read "The Count of Monte Cristo." It was my father's favorite book, or so he often said, often conjoined with the opinion that he hated "The Return of the Native." I have read "The Return of the Native" and 4 other Thomas Hardy novels. My son Chris recently read "The Count of Monte Cristo," though his main reading project is biographies of U.S. Presidents.

This post was inspired by a comment from Jaq on my previous post, which is about the decline of childhood reading. Jaq wrote: "Just bought The Count of Monte Christo [sic] through your link, and there it sits, like a cinder block on my coffee table, will I finish it? Now I guess I’ll have to, but it will hardly fit in my hip pocket the way I always sported one as a teenager. You can’t blame kids though, we are the ones who invented the crack, I mean smartphones."

And here's the latest photograph from a presidential biography sent to me by Chris. The scene is JFK's reception for black leaders on the 100-year anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation:

"Looking back, I grew up in the last great age of childhood reading. Juvenile bookworms..."

"... were still a regular sight in the early Noughties. You could glimpse our kind on trains and in cafés: wan, bespectacled and dreamy, trailing after our parents, clutching our grubby, sticky copies of The Chronicles of Narnia or Northern Lights. It was the era of Philip Pullman, of Horrible Histories, of Artemis Fowl. Above all, it was the age of Harry Potter, with its feverish midnight queues of miniature witches and wizards up past their bedtime to get their hands on the latest instalment (my sister and I went to the cavernous, warehouse-sized Borders bookshop at Silverlink Retail Park wearing bin bags for Hogwarts capes).... [A]s the age of print fades away and the angry, distractible age of the smartphone dawns, I think we find ourselves facing a post-literate world that will resemble the pre-literate world: less democratic, less rational and less enlightened...."

Writes James Marriott in "The 36 books that changed my life/An obsession with words got the Times columnist through his eccentric childhood and his parents’ divorce. Now 33, he has written a book — in praise of reading, of course" (London Times).

I don't know if that link will work for you to see the list, but it's an excellent list. I've read many of the books, and I was motivated to buy one of them on the spot — "The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous." Another — "In Pursuit of Civility: Manners and Civilization in Early Modern England." — I would have bought if there had been an audiobook. 

Marriott's new book is "The New Dark Ages: The Death of Reading and the Dawn of the Post-Literate Society," and I will buy that too when it comes out in October, assuming there's an audiobook. There are some things I know I need to walk to read. 

If you use any of those links to buy a book, I receive a commission, and I'm telling you that because I believe that transparency is required, but in fact, I only link to books that I wanted to mention anyway.

Sunrise.

"He was the world’s most mature 12-year-old. He had a fantastic case of arrested development; he could sense immediately, 'This is what kids will love.'"

Said Art Spiegelman, quoted in "Len Brown, the Kidlike Creator of ‘Mars Attacks,’ Dies at 84/He brought a juvenile creative sensibility to the Topps Chewing Gum company, where he was able to unerringly predict what would appeal to adolescents" (NYT gift link).

The terrifying global invasion ['Mars Attacks'] played out in 55 vivid cards. But parents’ complaints about the gory incidents that were depicted — a dog being destroyed, for example, as a boy “cried out in horror” — kept them from being distributed nationally.... 

His many projects in the 1960s included helping to create a card set devoted to Soupy Sales, the mischievous TV personality. During the 1970s and ’80s, Mr. Brown was part of the team that created two major sticker series: “Wacky Packages” mocked consumer products, parodying them with names like Cap’n Crud, Jolly Mean Giant and Ratz Crackers; “Garbage Pail Kids” spoofed Cabbage Patch Kids, the wildly popular, round-faced dolls that came with adoption papers.

"I was hesitant in that, if it worked, it might be a difficult image to shake off. But then, really, I’ve always thought it wasn’t worth doing unless you took a risk, really. So I just took the risk."

Said Tim Curry, quoted in "Tim Curry, Star of ‘Rocky Horror’ and Much More, Dies at 80/The actor’s gift for garish eccentricity was indelibly appropriate for the outlandish, cross-dressing mad scientist Frank-N-Furter" (NYT gift link).

Here's Curry — who had a stroke in 2012 — discussing his roles:

"Even as Trump’s Standing Slips, He Slingshots a Political Novice to Victory."

Headline at the NYT for the story about Darline Graham's victory in yesterday's primary runoff.

You can see the story the Times wants to tell, even as the facts on the ground don't line up exactly right:

Some of the luster had seemed to come off Mr. Trump’s political brand in recent weeks. His approval ratings have drooped, his party’s midterm outlook has darkened and his chosen picks in several races for governor and the House have fallen short.

ADDED: He slingshots her. It's like something Wile E. Coyote would do to himself to cross a canyon. Or what the Lost Boys did to Robin Williams:

The Mythbusters tried it:

"Meta on Wednesday reached a landmark settlement with 47 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories, agreeing to pay up to $17.1 billion in penalties..."

"... and make major changes to its products over claims it endangered children with addictive social media platforms. In a dramatic capitulation, the owner of Facebook and Instagram agreed to the financial penalties for violating federal child privacy and states’ consumer protection laws, the states announced. Meta also agreed to limit how long teenagers can spend on its platforms and to bans on features that stoke mental health issues, striking at the heart of the company’s business of engagement for advertising.... Meta still faces numerous other lawsuits from school districts and individuals.... 'Meta wouldn’t settle unless it sees the writing on the wall and feels really exposed,' said Nora Freeman Engstrom, a law professor at Stanford University."

I'm reading "Meta to Pay Up to $17.1 Billion in Landmark Settlement Over Social Media Addiction Claims/The social media giant settled with 47 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories, and agreed to make major changes to its products over claims its platforms endangered children" (NYT gift link).

"Women in rural Devon are being coached on how to give birth in the back of a car after their local hospital shut its maternity service."

That's in the London Times.

Catherine Mchomvu, an antenatal class teacher at the Devon Antenatal Family Centre, said it was important that women and their partners had supplies, including towels, blankets and water in the car....  “It’s about trying to create the birth environment that you would normally have in the hospital or at home, in your car.

And here's an article from 12 days ago: "'Maternity deserts' leave women with two-hour journey to give birth/Mothers-to-be fear delivering their babies on the roadside as NHS staffing shortages and closures leave swathes of England without nearby maternity care."

The Royal Family pays tribute to Dolly.

Remembering the late, great Dolly, who brought joy, comfort and inspiration to so many - including the millions of children given free books through her Imagination Library. We will always ❤️ you. pic.twitter.com/wdKHKGALlH

— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) August 26, 2026

Sunrise.

Goodbye to Dolly Parton.

"Dolly Parton, Superstar Whose Songs Spoke to Millions, Dies at 80/Known for her outsize persona, appearance and talent, she rose from rural poverty to become a top-selling singer, songwriter and entrepreneur" (NYT gift link).

She wrote unabashedly, in simple Southern vernacular, about growing up as the daughter of an illiterate sharecropper. “I’ve seen Daddy’s hands break open and bleed / And I’ve seen him work ’til he’s stiff as a board,” she sang over wistful harmonica and acoustic guitar in “In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad).” “I’ve seen Mama layin’ in sufferin’ and sickness / In need of a doctor we couldn’t afford. / Anything at all was more than we had / In the good old days when times were bad.”... 

“Writing’s just as natural to me as getting up and cooking breakfast,” she told The Times in 2002. “I ain’t never far away from a pencil and paper or a tape recorder. I write every day, even when I’m on a plane, in the tub or on the bus. It burns in me.... Songwriting is my way of channeling my feelings and my thoughts. Not just mine, but the things I see, the people I care about. My head would explode if I didn’t get some of that stuff out. Not everything I write is good, but it’s all good for me — like therapy.”

It has long seemed to me that she was the most-loved celebrity in the world — universally loved.

ADDED: "Very sad to report that Dolly Parton, one of the greatest Country singers, and far beyond, EVER, has just passed away. This is a true loss for millions of people. There has never been anyone like her, and never will. In her honor, I am lowering the American flag throughout the United States for a one week period beginning tonight at 6:00PM. Rest in Peace, Dolly! The World loves you. President DONALD J. TRUMP."

I believe this is the first time a President has lowered the flag for someone in the entertainment world.

AND: My oldest post with the "Dolly Parton" tag has this quote from her: "A cartoon character is how I see myself and it's worked for me for 40 years. I would rather be a cartoon than a genius!"

"But in our conversations, he would return again and again to the electric chair, still an object of primal, almost talismanic fear all of this time later."

"'It cooks you,' he would repeat, folding into himself. 'It cooks you.' While the time of his trial is always within reach for Smith, the intervening decades are somewhere else, behind a curtain he won’t or can’t push aside. Smith isn’t in the habit of personal disclosure, in any case. He does not have friends in the nursing home. 'I keep to myself,' he says often. He doesn’t want to know what people were convicted of, and doesn’t ask. He says he didn’t have friends in prison either, and he isn’t exaggerating: 'Minds his own business and has no associates,' reads one behavioral report from 1964. Smith waves every question about those decades away with an impatient, 'It was prison' or 'I don’t think about that.'... Smith now spends most of his time in his room, watching TV. In conversations over the course of a year, the only person I hear him express something like friendship for is Tucker Carlson.... 'He’s my type of guy. We’re the same type,' he says, though he won’t say more.I could see it, somehow. The grievance, the paranoia, the sense that things are stacked against you."

Wrote Annalisa Quinn, in 2022 in the Boston Globe, "Frank Smith was locked up for eight decades. At 98, what would it mean to be free? Likely the longest-serving prisoner in America, he’s been paroled into a Connecticut nursing home. But he’s still not out."

That article is linked in this NYT obituary from a few days ago, "Frank Smith, Who Served 70 Years for Murder, Dies at 101/One of the longest-serving prisoners in American history, he was sent to death row in 1950 before his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment."

The Times obit doesn't mention Smith's affinity for Tucker Carlson... perhaps to maintain the Times reader's empathy for the ancient convict.

"Claims of having grown up in the wild are widely viewed with skepticism, and expertise in the subject is rare."

"There have been some notable cases, though they are few.... As Mr. Rodríguez told it, he was born into a poor family in southern Spain in June 1946. His mother died when he was very young, and the woman his father later married was an abusive stepmother.... When he was about 7, he said, he was put in the care of an old goatherd, to be trained to replace him..... The old man then died or disappeared, and young Marcos began to fend for himself.... Mr. Rodríguez said he lived in the wild for about 11 years with the help of wolves and other animals. In 1965, he was discovered by law enforcement authorities among wolves, wearing animal skins. He described his return to life among humans as something he did not know how to manage and would never fully embrace.....  Mr. Rodríguez said he struggled with human society for much of his life. Employers had taken advantage of him over the years, people had mocked him and he had been happiest among the animals, he said in interviews...."

From "Man Who Told of a Childhood With Wolves Dies at 80/Marcos Rodríguez Pantoja’s improbable story of a wild youth became the subject of a study, and inspired a novel and film" (NYT gift link).

"In the most eye-popping moment of the exchange, Mr. Watters asked if Dr. El-Sayed believed it was OK 'for a parent to slash his kid’s ding-a-ling off'..."

"... referring to transition surgeries for minors. Dr. El-Sayed responded by asking if Mr. Watters was circumcised. 'Uh, yeah, but that’s a personal question, doctor,' Mr. Watters responded, laughing, before contending that 'circumcision’s different than castration.' Dr. El-Sayed said that he believed the government should not tell Americans what health care procedures they could undergo, but he did not directly say whether he approved of transition surgeries. The interview showed the strategy Dr. El-Sayed is adopting as Mr. Rogers seeks to paint him as a radical leftist who is out of touch with Michigan voters. The Democratic nominee’s approach is to cast 'culture-war' issues as a distraction from the everyday problems Americans face, like rising costs and worries about health care...."

From "El-Sayed Joins Fox News for Some Light Verbal Combat and a Pitch to Republicans/In a smiling yet tense interview, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan, argued that his Republican critics were using culture-war issues to distract from Americans’ economic concerns" (NYT gift link).

"Mr. Rogers" = Mike Rogers, the Republican candidate.

"I have just been informed by the United States Navy that all mines have been removed and/or detonated from within the International Waters of the Strait of Hormuz."

"Iran has been notified that any ship or boat placing new mines will be immediately and systematically destroyed. Through Space Force, we are watching every square inch of the Strait, as we are, also, with Pickaxe Mountain and the already destroyed three other Nuclear sites. There is a Zero Tolerance policy on mine placement in full force and effect. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP"

Writes Trump, at Truth Social.

So that means we won the war?

"Men are struck and killed more than four times as often as women.... The United States has seen 12 lightning fatalities so far this year."

"The vast majority (90 percent) of lightning-strike victims survive. Most who don’t suffer cardiac arrest or stop breathing. Most victims can be revived by immediate CPR. Strike victims do not hold a charge and are safe to touch.... In many cases, people are struck and killed even when it’s not raining. Lightning bolts can leap up to 10 miles from a parent thunderstorm, and often the more errant, farther-venturing bolts carry more charge. If you can hear thunder, you are close enough to be struck by lightning."

From "Woman and her 2-year-old daughter killed by lightning in Florida/Four people have now died from lightning in the state this year. Florida averages seven such fatalities annually" (WaPo).

"In 1983 she was mugged when she was out with her friend Larry David. She smiles. 'This is the curse of Larry David...'"

"'... it was terrifying but it was also hilarious. We both co-operated because there were two young guys and one of them had a shotgun, but Larry, I guess through stress, slipped into sounding like [the confident sports journalist] Howard Cosell. Going, "All right, take the money, everybody just stay calm." And I was looking at him, like, who are you?'"

From "I wrote Thelma & Louise — nothing has changed for women since then
Callie Khouri is turning her film into a musical. She talks about discovering a young Brad Pitt, getting mugged with Larry David and why she would love to return to Nashville" (London Times).

Also: "... Khouri says, looking resigned, that she doesn’t think much has changed for women since that day when, fired up, she wrote a fantasy about striking back against everything she had to put up with. 'In the US it’s got worse,' she states.

Target apologizes for a costume that — accidentally? — looks like blackface.

You decide. It's the "Kids’ Glows under Blacklight Circus Clown Halloween Costume Bodysuit":

I'll do a poll:

"In 2021, Columbia University law professor Philip Hamburger argued that the U.S. public school system violates the First Amendment."

"'Education,' he wrote, 'consists mostly in speech, and parents have a right under the First Amendment to exercise authority over what their children hear.' Forcing families to accept government messaging — or pay a steep price to escape it — amounts to unconstitutional pressure. A lawsuit filed in Nebraska on Aug. 13 brings that argument into court — and could open a path toward universal school choice."

From "Are public schools unconstitutional? A Nebraska court will decide. The challenge to compulsory education combined with public-school-only funding could lead to universal school choice" (WaPo)(gift link).

The headline is bad. The argument is about compelled public schooling, and the Supreme Court recognized long ago that parents have a right to choose to send their children to private school. The lively dispute is over whether privately schooled children are entitled to their share of public spending. If public school is the only free choice, then the choice is heavily weighted toward the government's preferred speech.

The Hamburger article, in the WSJ, is "Is the Public School System Constitutional? Education consists mostly in speech, and parents have a right under the First Amendment to exercise authority over what their children hear." The word "system" makes that headline less bad. The system is that if you pay your own way you can control your child's schooling but government schooling is free.

The old Supreme Court case is Pierce v. Society of Sisters, a unanimous 1925 case. Memorable passage: "The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations."

The Japanese Prime Minister and the possibly reincarnated cockroach.

"Even after moving to the official residence, I carefully wiped down the floor under the dining table, put food scraps in a sturdy lidded garbage can, and washed and sorted plastic containers, so I was shocked when, one day, a cockroach suddenly scurried past my feet."

Writes Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, at X. 

"But I’ve loved Osamu Tezuka’s *Firebird* since I was a child and have read it over and over many times. *Firebird* depicts the idea of reincarnation, that 'life is connected, changing forms,' and it had a huge impact on me even as a child. Maybe because of that, even now as an adult, I can’t bring myself to kill insects, cockroaches included. For the cockroach that ran through the official residence, I thought things like, 'Maybe this life is also part of that long cycle of reincarnation,' and for a while, I endured it, hoping it would somehow leave on its own—but when I told my secretaries about it, they were appalled. 'It’s unclean. I’ll handle it,' one of the secretaries said firmly, and arranged for Operation Combat. After that, the cockroaches stopped appearing. I felt relieved, but also a little lonely, or maybe sad…"

That got picked up in Western media with headlines like "Japanese PM Says She Felt ‘Lonely, or Maybe Sad’ When Staff Got Rid of the Cockroach in Her Home" (People) and "Japan’s PM: I’m so lonely I befriended a cockroach" (The Telegraph).

They seem to miss everything elegant and evocative about what Takaichi is trying to say through her carefully written vignette. Did they, at least, read Tezuka’s "Firebird"?

Sunrise.

"Supreme Court Allows Trump Plan to Restrict Mail-In Voting, for Now."

"The administration asked the court to clear the way for President Trump’s order that creates 'state citizenship lists' and directs the Postal Service to decide who gets a mail-in ballot" (NYT gift link).

"It’s tempting to look at Duffy’s political ascent—and Trump’s, of course—and reflect on the surprising cultural sticking power of turn-of-the-millennium-style reality TV...."

"The Trump Presidency likely wouldn’t have been possible without 'The Apprentice.’ Duffy’s rise has been less meteoric, but his launchpad, if anything, was an even purer distillation of the genre; as my colleague Emily Nussbaum has written, 'The Real World' pioneered many of reality TV’s modern tropes—the cast of strangers, the apartment as set, the confessional interviews—and cultivated a viewership.... When I revisited the show earlier this summer, it seemed a particularly propitious moment to assert the ongoing influence of reality TV, not least in politics. Spencer Pratt, the villain from 'The Hills,' was running for mayor of Los Angeles, depicting the city as a hellhole and attracting reams of media coverage. Luke Gulbranson ('Summer House') was running for a (year-round) U.S. House seat in Minnesota. Mark Moran ('FBoy Island') was running for Senate in Virginia. The moment no longer seems so propitious. Moran dropped out; Gulbranson lost, as, more significantly, did Pratt, occasioning some hand-wringing about whether his supposed surge had ever been real to begin with. (In fairness, almost nothing is more reality-TV than that.)..."

Writes Jon Allsop, in "Sean Duffy in the Real World/Donald Trump’s Transportation Secretary got his big break on reality TV, and is now out with a six-part YouTube show about a family road trip. How bad could it be?"

"When choosing colors for dirty areas, including mudrooms, try green... 'If you’re a heavy Amazon shopper and get all those [brown] Amazon boxes, green looks really good with brown.'"

I'm reading "The secret to an orderly home? 'Dirty zones.' Laundry areas, small cabinets, baskets and even hooks are the 'first line of defense' against messes creeping into the whole house" (WaPo).

"Why you should never walk barefoot on a hotel carpet."

Headline at WaPo (free link).

[H]otel carpets are often flecked with food debris, dead skin cells and dust that engender mites, bacteria, mold, allergens and other microorganisms.... Guests’ in-room habits, such as eating takeout, brushing their hair or scratching an itch, contribute to the carpet litter. Shoes also drag in an array of vile material, including fecal matter picked up from places where dogs and humans do their business, such as sidewalks, parks and public bathrooms. Guests will disperse the excrement and other organic bits on their journey from lobby to hallway to room....

A comment from over there: "Another WP fearmongering article afraid of imaginary hazards. Yes, the carpets are germy, but so is everything else. Has anyone ever been harmed?" 

That reminds me, I was just about to blog this other WaPo piece, "Why we should stop eating lettuce, cyclospora or not/Lettuce makes us sick, wastes resources and has minimal nutritional value. Why are we still consuming it?"

The World Humanoid Robot Games, there were Olympic-style events like the 100-meter sprint as well as contests for robots to pick up beans.

Sunrise.

"Chance, fate—these are abstract ideas that usually raise abstract questions. Do people have story-like fates..."

"... or are they just subject to concatenations of occurrences? Do things happen 'for a reason,' or do we just make up stories after the fact to tie events together? Broadly speaking, there’s an ancient antagonism between the notion that life must make sense and the observation that it often doesn’t.... And yet, at times when fate is actually 'happening,' such questions recede. Instead, what stands out are the physical particulars of the here and now. In the hospital, after the accident, you know your life is changing; you sense your proximity to what the novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard calls 'the deep, slow-shifting layers of reality where fate is at work.' Somehow this abstract understanding exists alongside, or by means of, the objects in the waiting room—a paper cup from the water cooler, or a copy of People magazine."

Writes Joshua Rothman, in "Should You Believe in Fate? We’d be happier, perhaps, if we found meaning not through abstractions but through the physical things around us" (The New Yorker).

"More visitors are giving up on summer holidays in cities that feel like saunas and booking 'coolcations' in Iceland, Norway, or Denmark...."

"A 2023 European Commission study forecast 'a clear north-south pattern in tourism demand changes' that 'becomes more pronounced for higher warming scenarios,' signalling growing economic consequences for Madrid, Lisbon, Athens, and Milan. 'Travelling to European cities is about cultural experience,' Daniel Scott, a scholar of tourism at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, told me. 'Whether it’s Paris, Barcelona, or Rome, you amble around, sightseeing, street shopping, taking a riverboat tour, going to a museum, a restaurant, a café. Most of that time, you’re outside.' Climate change increasingly turns pleasure trips into exercises in escaping pain. 'When I’m in Europe, I always notice how many people crowd under trees and shaded areas,' Scott said. 'But at some attractions, like the Acropolis, there’s no way to avoid the blazing sun. On especially hot days, they’ve got the Red Cross giving out water, medics pre-positioned because they know many people are going to be in trouble when they come down.'"

From "The End of the European Summer/As extreme heat overwhelms the Continent’s great cities, they are racing to transform themselves for a climate that they were never built to withstand" (The New Yorker).

"Mortality is an immutable fact of the human condition, but the desire to cheat death has endured for a very long time."

"According to legend and history, Gilgamesh, Chinese emperors and medieval alchemists all tried to attain immortality. The allure is no less profound today, but the modern potions are somewhat more sophisticated and inherently appealing to a wealthy, techno-centric class of people like [Bryan] Johnson. Mr. Johnson, who lives in Los Angeles, is perhaps the best known of a cadre of scientists and influencers known as 'longevity bros.' They obsessively document their attempts to live cleaner and longer, known cuttingly as 'longevity fixation syndrome.'..."

From "He Said He Was the World’s Healthiest Man. Then Came a Stunning Diagnosis. Bryan Johnson, the longevity guru, wants to live forever. But the big question is why" (NYT gift link).

You can read that essay, but I went on to look for more about that Chinese emperor. I found this: "Trying To Live Forever Killed The Creator Of China's 'Forever Army'/Even the Terracotta Army can’t save you from mercury poisoning" (IFL Science): 

"This is the night I should go to the theater."

Chris — my son, the reader of presidential biographies — texts me another passage from "President Kennedy: Profile of Power" (commission earned).

"Ancient societies had another method to deal with debt. It was called an amargi — a blanket declaration of public debt cancellation."

"All public debts written off. Disappeared. It sounds laughable, I know. But, really, that’s just because the idea has been buried so deeply in history you’ve probably never heard of it. In the ancient world, it presented a pragmatic solution to an intractable problem. And now, faced with impossible-to-repay debts that are weighing down our economy, is the time to look at the amargi and the lessons it offers about how to think about finance...."

From "$40 Trillion Debt? The Ancient Sumerians Wouldn’t Have Cared" (NYT gift link).

The essay is by Paul Vigna, managing editor of American Banker and author of "The Almightier: How Money Became God, Greed Became Virtue, and Debt Became Sin" (commission earned).

"The fact that [Jason Arday] was promoted as some kind of prodigy given how crazy his self-representation was is a sign of just how cultic and confused the left and left-leaning institutions have become."

"I mean, it's just it's just a sign of the the cancer having spread everywhere.... I mean, it's just, this is all, anti-racism.... This is putting the black — the BLM black — square not only in your bio but in your brain. Um, it's a cult. It's always been a cult. It's been obvious for for about a decade now that this is what we're witnessing is the the ramifications of a moral panic around race and social justice that got engineered on the left.... It's intolerable and if we don't get our heads clear of its new variant, this this far-left socialist/communist alliance with with Islamism, we're going to go for another round of right-wing ascendancy in America and elsewhere.... [Cambridge was] totally corrupt in its desperation to believe that somebody who checks all the identitarian boxes is a you know is... some kind of you know woke superhero.... I mean, you're you're in the presence of a lunatic who's making these claims about himself, right?... The social justice hysteria around race that has occurred in the last decade has been almost totally dishonest almost. I mean, this is the just Jussie Smollettification of everything, right?"

Said Sam Harris.

 

"The rollout could’ve been better. Absolutely, I said the rollout has to be cleaned up and fixed."

Said Governor Kathy Hochul, quoted in "How New York’s Second-Home Tax Turned Into a Headache for Mamdani/The bumpy rollout of the tax created an opportunity for Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s opponents to fight him in court and in the City Council" (NYT gift link).

Ms. Hochul, was concerned about what she saw as clumsy messaging by Mr. Mamdani as he introduced the esoteric tax to New Yorkers. She told the mayor that he needed to be clearer about how the tax would be administered and whom it would affect, according to two people familiar with their talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. The governor had taken note of how the mayor, a democratic socialist who campaigned on “taxing the rich,” was talking about the policy. In a widely seen video, for instance, the mayor had decided to highlight an especially expensive second home owned by a hedge fund manager, Kenneth C. Griffin.

“There’s a better way to do it,” said, Ms. Hochul a pro-business moderate. “Point to Russian oligarchs and Saudi princes” rather than someone who invests in the city, she added.

Here's that widely seen video, which, exclaiming "Oh, no!," I impulsively clicked off at the 5-second mark:

I did finally watch the whole minute. From the transcript: "This pied-a-terre tax is specifically designed for the richest of the rich, those who store their wealth in New York City real estate, but who don't actually live here.... This is a fundamentally unfair system that hurts working New Yorkers." 

What's "fundamentally unfair"? It's a child's reasoning: If someone has something that he's not using, it should be mine. 

The NYT calls the new tax "esoteric." I wonder what other adjectives it considered. Is it esoteric because it's hard for the general public to understand, or is it esoteric because it only applies to a discrete group of people?

Sunrise.

"Patients who disagree with their doctor can be 'fired' or flagged with scarlet letters in the corners of their electronic medical charts."

"'Exaggerating.' 'Resistant.' 'Noncompliant.' 'Hysterical.' To be sure, there are problematic patients, even dangerous ones. But for the rest of us, the imbalance between our defenselessness and the doctor’s discretion can create an unhelpful dynamic, one that pushes us to stop advocating and start accommodating. The result is waiting rooms full of people pleasers and providers who never get the full picture. The pressure to be pleasant and pliant is especially strong for women. Just as 'bossy' women often don’t get promotions and 'uppity' women are more likely to be sexually harassed, women who are branded as difficult patients are at risk of not being taken seriously or losing access to care. This is one of the reasons women overapologize, even for their own pain. A simple disclaimer — 'I don’t mean to be difficult, but …' — can backfire as well...."

Writes Allison Sweet Grant, author of "Lump: A Memoir in Ineloquent Reflections," "This Is Why Women Are Scared to Tell Their Doctors the Truth" (NYT gift link).

A mere 30 years ago, this was a highlighted modern problem on "Seinfeld" (Season 8, Episode 5, "The Package"):

 

(Yes, I know this is my second "Seinfeld" post this morning. It was in looking for this Elaine-at-the-doctor material that I stumbled into the unfilmed episode stuff I blogged an hour ago, here.)

"The Seinfeld cast refused to film this episode. So we animated it instead."

"Jerry and and Julia read this one scene where she has the gun and she's holding in her hand and she says to Jerry in the car, 'All right, Jerry, where do you want it? The Kennedy, the McKinley?' And she could barely get it out of her mouth. And I used to sit right next to Juliet... and I remember her saying it and just looking at me with the most pathetic eyes and then looking at Jerry... and she went, 'I'm not doing this. I'm not doing this.'"

"[T]his relationship is pathological, and a source of great irritation among other courtiers. It is Trump distilled to his essence..."

"... cult leader and his most rabid follower, narcissist and his most flattering mirror. The daughter of a devoutly Christian real estate broker who died by suicide during the pandemic, [Natalie] Harp idolizes Trump with a rare fervor.... ... Trump told his staff that Harp was the only one who loved him as much as his wife and kids did. 'She’ll never leave me,' he would tell other staffers.... It’s a perfect (taxpayer-funded) relationship. She thinks he’s amazing. And he agrees."

Writes Maureen Dowd, in "Natalie’s Magnificent Obsession" (NYT gift link).

"Obsession" is the title of a current movie that is, as Dowd tells us, "about a man who wishes for more adoration from a young woman, who falls under his spell and maniacally provides it." 

I haven't seen it. And I haven't seen "Magnificent Obsession," but I know it's a 1954 movie starring Ronald Reagan's first wife:

ADDED: After reading Dowd's column, I scribbled this at Grok, writing quickly, without the intention of sharing it, but I'm sharing it:

I'm interested in they way many women in the workplace are competitive with other women in a way that's actually sexist — judging that other women are getting more than they deserve because of their looks and/or imagining that sexual things are going on. They're actually impeding the progress of women... or are they trying to help some subset of women by pulling particular women down? (I'm thinking about the reaction to Natalie Harp.)

And then I connected the Natalie Harp foofaraw to this passage from "President Kennedy: Profile of Power" (commission earned) that my son Chris — reader of presidential biographies — had just texted to me last night. We join the Cuban Missile Crisis in progress.

Sunrise.

The astounding delusion of Neom.

ADDED: Back in 2021, I blogged a NYT article about the the part of the project called "the Line" —  "a postmodern ecotopia... a narrow urban strip 106 miles long with no roads, no cars and no pollution...." Here's how Saudi Arabia announced the project:

"The Supreme Court on Friday temporarily allowed President Trump to continue construction of a luxury White House ballroom to replace the East Wing he demolished last fall."

The NYT reports.

In a one-sentence order, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., acting on his own, issued a place holder that gives all nine justices additional time to more fully consider whether construction of the planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom can proceed. The chief justice’s order did not provide a timeline for when the court would act next, stating only that a lower-court ruling against the Trump administration was paused “pending further order of the undersigned or of the court.”

"I looked in his eyes. I can't picture his face... I didn't see the skin. When I think about him... all I see is these deep oceans of blue in these deep concerning eyes."

"And this like white light behind them. That's what I picture when I think about what did Bob Dylan look like to me. All I can see is these the deepest bluest eyes with the most concerning emotion in them and then this like aura of like white light. That's what Bob looks like to me in my memory. I can't remember his face...."

Said Billy Strings.

Theo Von: "It's almost something that's like almost like maybe from another realm or something. I think God, like God's concern, like shows up in our eyes, I think. So maybe he just has a lot of like concern from the other side, you know?"

Billy Strings: “Yeah. And it's it's not a paranoid concern. It's more of like a compassion and and a like like a love like from an elder, you know?”

Theo: “Yeah. Maybe like a kind of semi-aggressive intrigue kind of.”

Billy: “Like a some kind of musical grandpa, you know?”

Theo: “Yeah, dude. Bob Dylan, bro. Wow.”

I see my name invoked over at Instapundit.

It's on the old "men in shorts" topic. Something about women being able to wear "sundresses" to work. I think the term "sundresses" is being used to mean sleeveless dresses. An actual sundress wouldn't look any more professional than a man in shorts, but sleeveless dresses exist and might look okay in the office. But isn't the office air conditioned? I think women are more likely to put on a sweater than to want their bare arms exposed. 

Anyway, my classic men-in-shorts topic was about men looking like children. It all started back in 2006. It all started with something Tom Wolfe wrote in "I Am Charlotte Simmons" [commission earned]. "I was amused," I blogged, "to run across this description of a man wearing shorts":

All that elegance was what made the personage of Dr. Lewin seem so curious. Last week, when the class first met, he had worn a plaid cotton shirt and pants -- nothing remarkable about that. The shirt had had long sleeves, and the pants had been long pants. But this morning he had on a short-sleeved shirt that showed too much of his skinny, hairy arms, and denim shorts that showed too much of his gnarly, hairy legs. He looked for all the world like a seven-year-old who at the touch of a wand had become old, tall, bald on top, and hairy everywhere else, an ossified seven-year-old, a pair of eyeglasses with lenses thick as ice pushed up to the summit of his forehead -- unaccountably addressing thirty college students, at Dupont, no less.

That's my motivation. Trying to encourage you to eschew the look of an ossified 7-year-old.