Get ready. It's coming. That thing you thought you wanted.

This will be such a nightmare. pic.twitter.com/qrD03wxEdl

— Julian Mille☈ (@ATLAreaWx) July 14, 2026

Children going to school in the dark. Dangerous. It will become obvious. A child's name will be on the repeal legislation.

"If Julius Caesar had debuted this year, William Shakespeare might have been accused of writing it with AI."

"A certain suspicious rhetorical device appears again and again in the play. It’s in Act I, Scene ii: 'The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.' In Act III, Scene ii: 'Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.' And later in that same scene: 'I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.' These famous lines include what has become perhaps the best-known tic of AI writing—a sentence that tells you what the subject isn’t as well as what it is: It’s not X; it’s Y. Once you start noticing the construction, you see it all over the place...."

Writes Will Oremus, in "The Most Famous AI Writing Tic Is Also the Most Mysterious/Why chatbots love 'it’s not X, it’s Y'" (The Atlantic)(gift link).

"Although chatbots have advanced dramatically in their research and reasoning capacities, they are still fundamentally text-prediction machines. They generate answers one “token”—or chunk of text—at a time, based on what has come before. Each successive word choice factors in both the statistical likelihood of that word coming next in a sequence, based on patterns in the original training data, and the likelihood that it will lead to a highly rated response overall. In other words, the models are always seeking a balance between the clever word choice and the obvious one. When a chatbot uses negative parallelism, according to this theory, it’s essentially hedging between the two...."

"Like many terrible things, we can blame therapyspeak on America’s stupidest decade: the 1970s."

"Back then, it was called psychobabble.... The concept survived the hedonistic ’80s, the grimy ’90s, and the low-rise aughts only to reemerge in the social media age with a new name and a more sinister purpose.... Isn’t it odd... that the most selfish people you know always seem to be the ones who are armchair diagnosing their friends and family with personality disorders? I’m reminded of the minor scandal that erupted a few years ago when an A-list actor allegedly wrote private messages to his then girlfriend telling her that if she needed to post photos of herself in a bathing suit, he was not the right partner for her. Elsewhere he wrote, 'I’d love to know before the premiere so I’m not put in the position of publicly flaunting our love if my boundaries are going to be continued to be disrespected. That would be hurtful and triggering for me.' The girlfriend was a professional surfer...."

From "You're Not a Therapist. Stop Talking Like One/Please respect everyone else's boundaries by keeping your psychobabble to yourself" (Vanity Fair).

This is an important general issue, but if you're interested in the A-list actor part of it, here's a Newsweek article from 2023: "Jonah Hill, Sarah Brady Text Messages—Full Transcript." It's really long and a massive invasion of privacy. Why did Newsweek publish all that? Or maybe the better question is why do people have their arguments via text? Why would anyone want to leave a cold record for the whole world to read? And this was a man concerned with "boundaries."

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

Upwelling.

The water around the Apostle Islands was 70°F yesterday afternoon and 46°F this morning — a 24° drop, so it says on the Apostle Islands page at Facebook.

The cause is something called upwelling. Steady southwest winds pushed the warm surface water away from shore, and to replace it, frigid water from deep in the lake rose up to take its place. Lake Superior is cold and deep, so there's always an icy reserve waiting just below the surface. Give the wind the right angle and it comes straight up to the top....  Upwelling usually reverses once the winds shift, so the warmth will likely creep back in a few days. But this is a classic reminder of what makes Superior, Superior.

"Many people have talked about how funny Senator Graham was...What I remember about that hearing was that somehow Senator Graham made me look funny..."

"... which is a harder thing entirely, by asking me what I had done on Christmas...many people said to me afterwards that exchange with Senator Graham was the moment my confirmation was sealed."

Said Justice Kagan, testifying today before a House Appropriations subcommittee about the Supreme Court's budget:

Justice Elena Kagan on her 2010 confirmation hearing: "Many people have talked about how funny Senator Graham was...What I remember about that hearing was that somehow Senator Graham made me look funny, which is a harder thing entirely, by asking me what I had done on… pic.twitter.com/U6IFdoGIwN

— CSPAN (@cspan) July 14, 2026

And here's the exchange with Graham at her confirmation hearing, back in 2010:

"And for an only-would-be-famous person — that is, a civilian who is active on social media — cigarettes are a playful, blasé-bad-girl prop."

"A scroll through TikTok and Reels will show plenty of seductive supercuts of smoking scenes in movies and on TV; cult-popular Instagram accounts like @Cigfluencers ('your favourite smoker’s favourite smokers') give fans a place to leave impassioned comments like 'MADE ME WANT A CIG SO BAD' (re: Ava’s Parisian cigarette in the Hacks finale) with only the occasional scold ('Wow, a page dedicated to people who will die early of lung cancer').... Ironically, the efficacy of turn-of-the-century laws banning cigarettes from public spaces... combined with early-aughts anti-smoking campaigns... which worked to keep millennials from being as cigarette-crazed as older generations, have, by the harsh light of 2026, given cigarette smoking the rosy glow of a bad habit from the good old days...."

From "Cigarettes are back in vogue. How did this happen? Celebrities like Dua Lipa and Gracie Abrams have been photographed with cigs, as have social media influencers who like the retro vibes" (WaPo).

"Well, I think the president has zoomed through the first 5 stages of grief and gone straight to #6: Fuck that guy."

"As a college instructor, I see lots of young people in class who clearly hate being there. They don't feel like they were 'made for school'..."

"... they have no idea what they'll do with their diploma once they graduate, they have no particular interest in the program they're in.... My own son was ... pretty lost, after struggling in studies to be a software developer (constantly at home, alone, in front of a computer), then working in customer support for an insurance company (constantly at home, alone, in front of a computer). It wasn't that he couldn't do the work, but he procrastinated, felt many tasks were pointless, and just wasn't happy. But his dad and I both have PhDs and his sister is an MD, and it seemed he felt he 'should' be in university. Then he found out about an opportunity to train as a baker. 8 months of classes and practice in a very good gov't run program (free), then a month as a trainee at a bakery. He lucked into a popular local artisanal place, very well known for their baguettes, croissants and sourdough. They hired him as soon as he was finished, and he's SO HAPPY there! He's interacting with others all day, he's always on the move and always learning, and can see the results of his work immediately (and eat it too!)...."

From a comment at the NYT, on the article "Mom, Dad, I Want to Be a Welder/Gen Z is increasingly turning to trade schools in hopes of future-proofing their careers against A.I. But getting their parents and peers on board can be a challenge."

The Republican never wins the governorship in Colorado, so what do Republican primary voters think they are doing?

I'm reading "He Says He Killed a Man. Republicans Nominated Him Anyway" by Michelle Goldberg in the NYT.

The right-wing preacher turned politician Victor Marx has said that he first killed a man when he was 7. He’s not sure how many deaths he’s been responsible for since. Marx has been arrested at least twice for disorderly conduct and has described terrorizing a psychiatrist with talk of murdering him. He told the Colorado journalist Kyle Clark that he can perform exorcisms by phone. On Thursday he was declared the winner of the Republican gubernatorial primary in Colorado....

The last time the Republican won the governorship, it was 2002.

Goldberg leaves out the details about that killing. Grok relays the story as told by Marx: "severe childhood abuse (physical, sexual, and emotional) by multiple figures, including being beaten, electrocuted, tortured, and nearly killed (e.g., left in a cooler).... stepfather placing a gun in his hands, guiding his finger to pull the trigger, and shooting a man in the back of the head...."

Here's Marx talking to Charlie Kirk 4 years ago:

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"Up to 50 million tonnes of sugar may have rained down from space on to Earth about four billion years ago, potentially delivering the building blocks of life..."

"... a study has found. Scientists have discovered sugar molecules in clouds of interstellar gas, suggesting a key ingredient for DNA and RNA could have come to our planet from deep space...."

I'm reading "Sugar raining down from space may have helped create life on Earth/Cluster of sweet molecules in Milky Way gas cloud offers clue to possible origins of DNA, astronomers claim" (London Times).

"I recommended, to Governor Henry McMaster, Lindsey Graham’s wonderful sister, Darline, to serve as interim Senator from the Great State of South Carolina."

"This would be a fabulous tribute to Lindsey, who loved her dearly!"

Signed President DONALD J. TRUMP, at Truth Social.

UPDATE: At the time Trump posted, McMaster had already offered Darline Graham Nordone the position and she had accepted, according to the NYT:

Mr. McMaster said that he has asked Ms. Nordone to fill the seat after they spoke “in the wee hours of Sunday morning” following Mr. Graham’s death, and that she accepted, “through tears.” 

“I called the president afterwards, and he thought that it was a great idea,” Mr. McMaster said.

Trump's post went up at 9:43 a.m. today.

Also: "There is a long history in American politics of having the widowed wives of men who die in office finish out their terms. Mr. Graham, who never married, joked when he ran for president that, if he won, maybe his sister would take on the duties of first lady."

"In aiming for a vision of fitness that avoids overemphasis on masculinity, I gravitated away from influencers and biohackers toward strong artists..."

"... who had prioritized physical strength in their daily routines.... There is the cartoonist Alison Bechdel, who in her book 'The Secret to Superhuman Strength' could not talk about fitness without also talking about her private history of romantic relationships and the role exercise played in managing stress and quashing depression.... The novelist Laura van den Berg turned to boxing to combat destructive anxiety patterns.... And I spoke with the poet Hanif Abdurraqib about how running... was about stress relief and managing clinical depression... In a recent interview with Haruki Murakami, the singer Harry Styles credited Mr. Murakami’s book on running with freeing him 'from the idea that music had to be an unhealthy profession and I had to be this tortured soul.'... These artists weren’t going on about perfect blood panels or maximum efficiency or tracking immense protein intake. They cared about feeling alive in their bodies, sleeping well and having the stamina to do meaningful work.... Rather than follow the voice of one supposed strongman, rattling off advice, I learned to favor a chorus...."

Writes Sebastian Langdell, a professor of medieval literature, in "Men Need Better Fitness Role Models" (NYT).

Langdell is rejecting the "fitness bros." He names a few of them — Peter Attia, Tim Ferriss, Andrew Huberman — so aren't the bros, too, a "chorus"? The distinction is not between a "chorus" and "one supposed strongman" but between the practical rules you ought to follow to achieve better fitness and the psychological motivation to pursue it. I don't see why the "chorus" wouldn't include both voices. Even if you feel inspired by Harry and Haruki and Hanif to go running, you'd still want to know if running long or short and fast or slow is more beneficial to your body and your mind.

Am I the only one who remembers this movie?

Wikipedia: "Athanael (Jack Benny), the third trumpet player in the orchestra of a late night radio show sponsored by Paradise Coffee... falls asleep listening to the announcer, who is doing his best to prove it is 'the coffee that makes you sleep.' Athanael dreams he is an angel (junior grade) and a trumpeter in the orchestra of Heaven.... [H]e is given the mission of destroying planet 339001 (Earth) and its troublesome inhabitants by blowing the 'Last Trumpet' at exactly midnight, signaling the end of the world...."

It was released on April 20, 1945 — 8 days after the death of President Roosevelt — and was a box office failure. I watched it in 1964 when it played on "The Early Show" on TV, which means it played every night for a week, Monday through Friday. That gave you and your brother the chance to turn it into a family cult classic complete with commentary and shouted-out memorized lines. 

I love the poster, but that's not a trumpet.

Bellflower.

Video by Meade, at 5:53 a.m. this morning. The color really did pop like that, and Meade said he wanted flowers like these in our front yard.

These are the tall bellflowers — Campanula americana, AKA American bellflower — that are native here. Not to be confused with the creeping bellflower — Campanula rapunculoides AKA European bellflower — that we fight and that our government tells us to fight. Those things are short, 1 to 3 feet tall. The tall bellflower are 3-6 feet tall. Perhaps you can tell from the camera angle.

"[T]hree large blank sheets of paper had been affixed to a wall. On the floor was a basin filled with a viscous liquid, tempera paint mixed with animal blood...."

"Then Mendieta—an energetic and diminutive woman, just five feet tall, if that—walked in, to the accompaniment of a drumbeat, dressed in a baggy white ensemble. She drenched her hands and arms in the mixture, reached to the top of one piece of paper, then forcefully smeared her limbs down the surface to make two bloody tracks, ending up on her knees on the floor. Mendieta performed this action twice more before absenting herself, leaving the audience to contemplate the visceral imprints she left behind.... It’s impossible to view Mendieta’s output and not think about the physical stamina and cultural daring that she must have had—not only to make art from her exposed body but also to hide herself away and make work that might only ever please or satisfy herself...."

From "Ana Mendieta, the Body Artist/Decades after her death, her bold innovations are finally coming into focus" (The New Yorker).

A Monday morning juxtaposition. .

I see this at the top of the NYT right now:

Sterile wealth, romanticized poverty, and mindlessness about sleevelessness.

1. The family of 5: "'Money right now, there’s not enough. Literalmente,' said Ms. Torres, speaking Spanglish. 'Sometimes I feel bad, like I can’t do enough for my kids.'"

2. The Biebers: "The 2,792-square-foot apartment has two kitchens — an open-plan kitchen for entertaining, with marble counters and Scandinavian larch wood cabinetry, and a secondary chef’s kitchen with stainless steel and matte aluminum cabinetry. The primary suite looks out to the Hudson River..." The living room, I see, looks out onto a big TV screen and turns its back on the uninspiring skyline of New Jersey.

3. The presumed dearth of sleeves: "In all of the discussions about body positivity and loving the different parts of you, including the parts of you that decades of social conditioning have deemed potentially problematic, arms, especially the upper arms, are often overlooked...." The letter writer is urged to "rethink the issue" and "learn to love your arms."

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"We don’t need presidents who have weird obsessions."

Said Kamala Harris, back in October 2020, blogged at the time, here.

I know that at the time I thought I bet all the Presidents have had a weird obsession. I know because I said that in a podcast at the time. 

That post and podcast predated access to Grok, so I didn't have the chance to use this prompt: Accept the hypothesis that every U.S. President had a weird obsession and to list all the Presidents with their weird obsession. I did use it today, though. Some of my favorites:

"Given all the lovemaking, it’s remarkable any of them had time for painting or poetry. But each activity reinforced the next, sex flowing into art..."

"... art turning into sex, all of it transforming what was ostensibly a holiday by the sea among friends into a frenzy of erotic and creative expression — an outpouring that, as Europe girded for war, acquired a rebellious political charge. 'It’s as if the group were thumbing their noses at fascism,' Thomasson writes, their lives and work serving as a 'manifesto for an alternative world to the one that was coming into being.'"

From "Sex and Surrealism on the French Riviera/A group of artists gathered at a hotel on the Côte d’Azur in 1937. A new book by Anna Thomasson captures the art and escapades the holiday inspired" (NYT).

I'm skeptical... but envious.

Is the book readable? Sample text: "We get a powerful sense of physicality. Of bodies, of limbs and breasts and bottoms and penises, alone or entwined, still or in action. We feel the warm sun and salt water on bare skin and sand between toes, intimacy and proximity and responsiveness and desire." It's really hard to write about sex! Actually, that writing reminds me of a podcast I like: "Boring History for Sleep." It goes on and on about how everything looks and feels and smells and sounds. 

Why is "Paint It Black" the most-played Rolling Stones song on Spotify?

Look, it has over 1.7 billion streams. The next most played Stones song — "Satisfaction" — has only 940 million.

I think it's the non-Boomers, discovering it through movies and TV and video games and TikTok. Here's a link to see the 180,000+ TikTok videos that use the recording. It seems quite popular with aviation (for males) and the wearing of black clothing (for females). And then there are tattoos:

"In those two minutes, you ask yourself existential questions about what time even is, what a body even is, what a feeling even is."

"It’s just a sensation, right? But knowing that pain — and there is pain — is just a sensation does not help you right now because that took three seconds to figure out and you still have a wild wagon-train trip to California to go. Did you mention that there’s a man with a ukulele there? He appears to work for this cold-plunge outfit, and he is wearing that dumb hat and quietly strumming — is that? — Leonard Cohen’s 'Hallelujah'? You love that song and have never enjoyed it less. Your hatred for this man only buys seven or eight more seconds, and as you cast your mind about, looking for something else to get you through, a strange thing happens...."

Writes Taffy Brodesser-Akner, in "I Survived a Cold Plunge and All I Got Was Everything I Ever Wanted/I resisted the trend until I couldn’t any longer" (NYT).

By the way, do you need a fancy cold plunge machine or a session at a cold plunge commercial establishment? Can't you just fill up your bathtub with water from the cold tap and maybe toss in the ice that's accumulated in the bin inside the refrigerator? That was a good question for Grok.

"We take what we do very seriously. We’re not making little goody bags — we’re really thinking out what it is people need the most."

Said Jeffrey Newman, quoted in "Jayson Conner, 48, and Jeffrey Newman, 58, Die; Gave Thousands of Backpacks to Those in Need/The couple, who died within a few days of each other, provided needed supplies, like socks and wet wipes, to people living on New York City’s streets" (NYT).

Goodbye to Lindsey Graham.

"Lindsey Graham, longtime senator from South Carolina, dies at 71/Graham, a staunch Trump ally and key GOP foreign policy voice, was running for reelection this year. He died of a 'brief and sudden illness,' his office said" (WaPo)(gift link).

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"And I’ve also gotten into this habit of doing songs that are about personal relationships and then I throw a verse about politics in there."

"That’s a trick that I’ve learned from other songwriters, because nobody wants to hear a whole song about politics or social comment. A blues song like 'Rough and Twisted,' you talk about women and everything, but then you throw in stuff that’s obviously political: 'The only club was called conspiracy.' 'What they wanted was tyranny.' So you find yourself using these tricks."

Said Mick Jagger, in an interview at "Mick Jagger Knows He May Have Played His Last Rolling Stones Show" (NYT).

ADDED: I like this part about philosophy: 

"They’re always having so many arguments, these philosophers, and always disagreeing with their masters. I was reading this book on Kant. They’re quite rude to each other and then they have to make up later, and I can’t understand what they’re really talking about. Was Kant a Christian? Was he an atheist?"

The interviewer, David Marchese, enthuses, "I think it’s cool that you’re reading Kant." And Mick responds coolly: "Well, it’s all vaguely fashionable."

"Hiking in the San Juan Mountains in Colorado, the one and only time he dropped acid... Mr. Cunningham peered down at the town of Silverton and was overcome by the feeling..."

"... that 'cars were the boss and people were the servants of the cars.' In the 1970s, he had been known for wearing a mask around the Bay Area, breathing with an oxygen tank to protect his lungs from air polluted by cars. Other machines could also drive him to distraction. He and Ms. Phelan, who married in 1988, regularly slept in what was essentially a treehouse outside their home in Fairfax, Calif., near San Anselmo — for the fresh air and the nightly respite from the plugged-in world of cellphones, fax machines, televisions and computers...."

From "Charlie Cunningham, Mountain Bike Innovator, Dies at 77/In the late 1970s, he built what is considered the first off-road bicycle with a frame that was aluminum rather than steel, one of his many inventions" (NYT).

"Who’s ever written a great work about the immense effort required in order not to create? Could it be that in this passivity, I shall find my freedom?"

Says the character identified as "Dostoyevsky Wannabe" in the credits to the sublime 1991 film "Slacker," quoted in a Daily Texan article, "Linklater’s Austin, 35 Years Later."

I've watched that movie many times, but not in the last 10 years. I should watch again. I think it might feel like scrolling in TikTok, which could elevate scrolling in TikTok and maybe explain why, on any given day, I'd rather scroll in TikTok than watch a movie on television. I like the fragmentation!

At the Milkweed Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

"Platner’s Rise and Fall Revives Old Questions About ‘Bernie Bros’ and Women."

A NYT piece by Patricia Mazzei and Kellen Browning.

I have to stop and remember what "Bernie Bros" were... other than name-calling coming from — if I remember correctly — the Hillary Clinton camp.

I see I have a tag "Bernie Bro," and the main post, quite helpfully, is "Where did it come from — this myth of 'Bernie bros'? It's from February 9, 2016. I wrote:

I'm seeing articles like "Bill Clinton Accuses Bernie Bros of Sexism." But what are "Bernie Bros"?

So this is precisely what I want to read before ingesting that new NYT piece.

"Mr. Rubio could be the next leader of Venezuela, Mr. Trump suggested. And while the president’s aides say he was joking... the fact is that Mr. Rubio does not need to move to Caracas."

"He already runs Venezuela from Washington.... While he has not visited Venezuela in person since the U.S. took over, the secretary of state is deeply involved in the country’s day-to-day operations, keeping in close contact with Delcy Rodríguez, who was Mr. Maduro’s vice president and now leads her country on an acting basis, with the imprimatur of the United States. The two exchange messages in Spanish on WhatsApp, trading gossip, birthday greetings and selfies. Despite the banter, the relationship between Mr. Rubio and Ms. Rodríguez is far from a partnership. It is a manifestation of Trump-era American power, in which the winner takes all regardless of sovereignty and international law.... In the early hours of Jan. 3, shortly after Mr. Maduro was captured, Mr. Rubio reached Ms. Rodríguez by phone. Speaking in Spanish, Mr. Rubio told her that she had a choice between working with the United States or witnessing a broader attack targeting Venezuela’s infrastructure, military bases and senior officials. After some negotiation, Ms. Rodríguez agreed...."

From "How Marco Rubio is Running Venezuela From Afar/The secretary of state effectively controls Venezuela’s finances, the distribution of its natural resources and its government. His grip on the country is a vivid manifestation of American power in the Trump era" (NYT).

"These MAGA mouthpieces complaining about Candace Owens are just getting a taste of their own medicine."

That's the top-rated comment at the Washington Post article, "Conspiracy theories about Charlie Kirk’s death are still raging, infuriating friends/Right-wing influencers sparred over the case this week as a court hearing laid out detailed evidence in Kirk’s shooting" (gift link).

"Any sport where the man is wearing panties is not a sport."

Said Riley Gaines's father, when college recruiters were interested in Riley both for both swimming and for softball.

Quoted in "Riley Gaines: If JK Rowling agrees with me, I’m doing the right thing/America’s most famous opponent of transgender athletes in women’s sports is celebrating a Supreme Court win. She is ‘vindicated’ — and emboldened by her British husband" (London Times).

There's also this quote from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: "Maybe if you channeled all this anger into swimming faster you wouldn’t have come in fifth."

That's from last October, when JK Rowling tweeted, "@Riley_Gaines doesn’t defend women’s rights for attention or money, any more than I do. We fight because it’s the only thing to do if you’re not a coward, a pick me or a living doormat."

The London Times is very interested in the British husband, Louis Barker, who, we're told, "is on his way to becoming a jeans-wearing, truck-driving, job-creating American man, with a beard and a mullet and a construction company. Gaines says she has recently caught him saying 'y’all' and 'ain’t.'"

Gaines says:

Sunrise.

Write about anything you want in the comments.

"F*ck ICE. Free Palestine. Up the Hearts. Solidarity forever."

So writes Graham Platner, closing his letter formally withdrawing as a Senate candidate.

He says he "seek[s] to further the movement we have built together." The movement is better without him. But why? There's nothing in his letter expressing penitence or regret for anything he's done. 

"Up the Hearts" — which struck me as a possible euphemism for an obscenity — is a rallying cry for the Portland Maine soccer team, the Hearts of Pine.

He stomps off — "F*ck ICE. Free Palestine. Up the Hearts. Solidarity forever." 

"I’ve been on their list for a long time. That’s what we’re dealing with. The only thing is, I’ve left instructions — if anything happens, to just literally bomb them at levels that they’ve never seen before."

Said President Trump, quoted in "Trump tells The Post he’s ‘left instructions’ should Iran assassinate him: 'Bomb them at levels' never seen before" (NY Post).

That's dramatic and colorful, but when he is dead, he will not be the President, and his "instructions" will be nothing more than an expression of a preference.

He seems to want it to work like the "doomsday machine."

"Cory Upton-Cosulich sat in a parked car by a hiking trail in Maine this week, fuming over the implosion of Graham Platner’s Senate campaign."

"Her anger wasn’t directed at him. It was aimed at the powerful people far away from her working-class harbor town who, one after the next, had rescinded their endorsements of a candidate she supported in the Democratic primary last month. The feeling was familiar — watching people in Washington decide who should represent her. She said she believed the woman who had accused Mr. Platner.... She decided to support him anyway, because he had promised to work on her behalf, and she believed him... [S]ome women in this independent-minded slice of the country who powered the progressive upstart’s meteoric rise are angry and grieving.... Several women said they recognized Mr. Platner’s swaggering style from men in their lives who had hurt them. They supported him anyway...."

From "Why Some Women in Maine Are Mourning the End of Graham Platner’s Campaign/They believe the accuser, but they also grieve the demise of a campaign that promised that politics could be different — and they blame those who failed to find a less flawed candidate" (NYT).

"Ms. Upton-Cosulich, 40... a mother, a pottery studio owner and a survivor of abuse... was in the kitchen of the house she cannot afford to buy when she learned that Mr. Platner had suspended his campaign. The feeling reminded her of 2016, when she read reports that officials with the Democratic National Committee had privately derided and mocked her preferred presidential candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont...."

"Aimee Gardner and Dave Linnard were standing in the basement of their newly purchased, 1869 Hudson Valley fixer-upper when they heard a strange tinkling..."

"... like tiny drops of rain. They would soon learn this is the sound a lime mortar stone wall makes as its particles shift — right before it collapses. Seconds later, the entire north wall dropped vertically, some half a foot, with a thundering whoosh and an eruption of dust, leaving the floor above them precariously cantilevered. 'We’re just lucky it didn’t fall sideways,' Ms. Gardner said. It became another thing to add to the punch list as they restore their first home, a project that’s taken, so far, eight and a half years...."

From "When Even the Owners Call it ‘Disaster Mansion’/First-time buyers from the Bay Area won an abandoned house at a Kingston, N.Y. tax auction. Eight years later, they’re still restoring it" (NYT)(gift link, because it's pretty inspiring and actually kind of beautiful).

"He was relieved that everyone was home safe from the hospital, and yet he found he couldn’t connect with his [newborn] children, Olympia and Elisabetta."

"He became full of nervous, negative energy. He had physical symptoms of anxiety: a racing heartbeat, chest pains, burning and electric sensations in his torso and muscles. When the babies smiled and laughed for the first time, he found himself saying out loud: 'What do they have to be happy about?' He didn’t feel he could actively give his family emotional support, so instead he came up with practical solutions, such as creating organised systems and spreadsheets to track his daughters’ feedings and sleep schedules. 'Control was how I approached many things in my life,' he says. 'I had to control their sleep because only when I knew for certain that they were asleep could I settle and relax.'"

From "'Holding my IVF twins as a new dad, I felt only sadness'/As a doctor, Christopher Choukalas thought he could diagnose an illness when he saw it. But his paternal postpartum depression crept up on him completely unnoticed" (London Times).

"Let's make watermelon fried yogurt."

Lots more great videos from Ms Shi and Mr He: here.

Moonwatch, sunwatch.

Video by Meade.

I saw a young woman with magenta hair bicycling in Madison, Wisconsin, a tote bag slung over one shoulder.

What was the slogan on the tote bag? "NOW MORE THAN EVER." What?! A Nixon fan?!!

What slogans of today will lose the association with a particular political cause or candidate and — half a century or so in the future — become usable for other causes by people who would hate that cause or candidate if they knew what the hell he/she/it was?

Yes We Can... Stronger Together... Change We Can Believe In... Make America Great Again...

There's background on Nixon's slogan in a WaPo article dated March 15, 2017: "Now, more than ever, ‘now more than ever’ needs to go/The phrase's resurgence is historically inappropriate":

You don't have to look, and you don't have to look and see anything other than a bodyguard.

Link to Instagram.

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"I like Graham Platner. You like Graham Platner"/"That's my kind of man."

SUPERCUT!

Dems explain why Nazi tattoos & sexually aggressive behavior are fine actually pic.twitter.com/xeLPHh9fwN

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 8, 2026

"No one could have seen this coming."

I can’t believe they made a Graham Platner biopic where he’s a sexting nazi rapist graham cracker… pic.twitter.com/gYDy7fAnAh

— TBC (@TBC_on_X) July 8, 2026

Summer sunrise, with rain that looks like snow.

Video by Meade.

"I’m worried about Weimar America. That’s the title of the next book I’m working on. The first thing people say when they hear that is..."

"... 'Oh, is this a "Trump is Hitler" book?' No, Trump barely figures in this book. When we hear Weimar, we think of the film 'Cabaret' and corruption, and we think it all ended up in Nazism. But that is a superficial understanding of it. We have created in America today, perhaps throughout the West, the psychosocial conditions of Weimar without having suffered the traumas that Germany did — losing the First World War, hyperinflation, and the Great Depression. This also goes back to Hannah Arendt and her famous 1951 book, 'The Origins of Totalitarianism.' She tried to explain how it was that right-wing totalitarianism in Germany and a left-wing version in Russia rose, and she said social atomization is by far the most important factor...."

Says Rod Dreher, quoted in "'I'm Worried About Weimar America'/'It may not be Hitler 2.0. It may not be Stalin 2.0. It might be something all American, but it’s not going to be what we’re used to,' the author Rod Dreher argues" (NYT). This is Ross Douthat's podcast "Interesting Times," and you can listen to the whole thing and read the transcript here (and elsewhere).

Bonus: "What is fascism?" 

Souvenirs.

"Officers said they observed Mr. Thiers and Mr. Carreno reach their hands into the water, peel pieces of blue sealant off and pull them out of the water, according to arrest records. Officers also found a piece of the reflecting pool liner in Ms. Dennison-Gibby’s purse, the records showed."

From "Three More People Charged With Damaging Reflecting Pool/The three individuals face misdemeanor charges of causing damage worth less than $1,000. Experts have said that the problems could have been caused by the pool’s makeover" (NYT).

"It’s tempting to treat this as a story of one flawed man and a vetting process that failed.... But the more uncomfortable lesson..."

"... is the one that the Platner boom offered before the bust. The hunger that lifted him — the overflow crowds, the volunteer armies, the sense that here, at last, was someone who meant it — was real.... Handed the chance to litigate what the party actually believes, Democrats have mostly declined.... Mr. Platner’s appeal was never really about oysters or facial hair. It was that he seemed to stand for something. He was angry on voters’ behalf about an economy that seems rigged for the powerful, and he was unafraid to say so. People responded to the promise of conviction. That signal is the one the party ought to be reading. The tragedy of a campaign like his is not only that it collapsed, as it deserved to, but that so much energy was poured into a messenger before anyone was sure of the message...."

So says the New York Times Editorial Board, in "The Democrats Can’t Go On Like This.

So "he seemed to stand for something," but we really don't know what, and instead of letting us argue publicly about what that message was and whether it is what we want, they took out the man. I think they had the ability all along to destroy him as a man, but they propped him up as a man. The Nazi tattoo was somehow okay! But when they decided they needed to replace him (presumably, because he wasn't going to win), they used the personal material to take him out.

Here's how Platner himself explained it as he bowed to the Party's demand that he drop the nomination the primary voters had given him: "I think it's really important to understand why this is happening in the timeline, why this is happening right now.... there is a reason that this is happening now...."

Total eclipse.

Bonnie Tyler has died: "Bonnie Tyler obituary: gravel-voiced singer of Total Eclipse of the Heart/The most successful Welsh female singer since Shirley Bassey did not have her first hit until 25, but went on to sell 100 million records" (London Times).

There is also the literal version of that song, a wonderful examination of the absurdities of 1980s music video:

"I left Google to study neuroscience, and what I found in the research literature helps explain why the A.I. summary poses a danger to learning."

"Curiosity, it turns out, is not just an individual’s desire to find out discrete facts; it’s also a feature of our biology designed to help us learn more broadly. And it requires a specific condition: a gap between what you want to know and what you find out. Researchers have found that people in a state of curiosity, while waiting for an answer to an intriguing question, remember unrelated information they encounter during that time far better than they otherwise would. In that same study, the researchers also placed those people in brain scanners. They found that waiting for an answer activates reward circuits in the brain and readies the hippocampus to help form new memories.... Curiosity opens a window, and while the window is open, learning deepens across the board.... Our technology is increasingly treating the territory between the query and the answer as dead space to be eliminated, when that territory is where most of the learning actually happens. The danger is not that people will stop asking questions. It is that questions will become endpoints...."

Writes Anne-Laure Le Cunff, "a neuroscientist who studies curiosity," in "We Are Losing the Ability to Discover What We Didn’t Know to Ask" (NYT).

Intriguing questions that popped up for me: 1. What kind of name is "Le Cunff"? 2. "The danger is not.../It is..." seems to be one of those things — like em dashes and the word "delve" — that A.I. tends to write, so did Le Cunff use A.I. to write this essay?

Answers: 1. It means "the gentle," "the affable," or "the debonnaire." 2. It's a rhetorical device that A.I. has learned from real human writers, and real human writers don't need to avoid it, they just, as always, need to use it well, which, in this case, Le Cunff did. 

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments... except Platner. Go one post down for that. And Trump and Iran. Go 2 posts down for that.

"It is him who is wanting to hold on. He is having to come to terms that his dream is dead. The show is over, this is done."

Said an unnamed Democrat, said to be "close to Platner," quoted in "Graham Platner, isolated, defies Maine Democrats as they try to hatch a plan/People close to the Senate candidate’s campaign say that they know he has to drop out but that Platner has struggled with the decision" (WaPo)(gift link).

And there's this, from Devon Murphy-Anderson, executive director of the Maine Democratic Party: "Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate."

But he won the primary. Shouldn't that at least mean that someone with the same political orientation should replace him? Otherwise, it seems as though the part of the Democratic Party that lost in the primary process is stealing the nomination. That means the only way Platner’s team can have any role in determining the nominee is for Platner to hang onto the nomination he won. Unfortunately for the Party, it has no role in stopping him. 

He wants to hold on? He can hold on. The dream is dead? Hold onto that dream.

 

UPDATE: Platner abandons his dream. He’s out. Watch his video here.

"President Trump abruptly announced Wednesday that he would not fly out of Turkey aboard his luxurious new Air Force One..."

"...  stoking speculation that the Qatar-donated jet may be vulnerable to Iranian fire as the war resumes. Trump instead departed the annual NATO summit using the older model of Air Force One, which he had stopped using last week in favor of the $400 million 'palace on wings' that he has proudly boasted about acquiring.... 'I’m number one on the kill list for Iran. They’re lovely people,' Trump told a Post reporter who asked if security concerns motivated the switch. Earlier in the day, Trump had said, 'They want to take out the US leader, me … And so far, I guess I’ve been a little bit lucky. But that maybe doesn’t last very long.'"

From "Trump ditches new Air Force One in Turkey, stoking Iran threat intrigue: 'I’m number one on the kill list'" (NY Post).

"A pilot jumped out of the door of a moving plane to his death, leaving the student he was teaching to fly to land the aircraft by herself. "

"Flight instructor Leandro Andrés Bertazzo, 42, was found dead following the incident, which took place in Toledo, central Argentina, on Saturday.... The student said Bertazzo told her, 'You know what you have to do, carry on,' before taking off his headset and seatbelt, opening the door and jumping out of the plane...."

From "Flight school pilot jumps to his death midair, leaving student to land plane" (CNN).

Maxxing out.

"Texas looksmaxxing influencer Connor Michael Murphy has drowned in Thailand after he was seen acting erratically and jumping in a lake to avoid cops.... The 32-year-old self-proclaimed 'giga chad,' or alpha-male, had earlier sparked alarm with his erratic behavior as he argued with a security guard at the estate.... His 22-year-old girlfriend said she had no idea what caused the outburst — but claimed he had previously splattered paint in the property while she was sleeping...."

The New York Post reports.

Here's how he looked before he maxxed out:

"After an uncredited part as a masseuse in the Peter Sellers comedy 'What’s New Pussycat?' (1965), written by Mr. Allen, and a voice-over in 'What’s Up, Tiger Lily?' (1966), Mr. Allen’s directorial debut..."

"... Ms. Lasser had full-fledged roles — with character names and screen time — in Mr. Allen’s next three auteur efforts, which he wrote, directed and starred in. In 'Take the Money and Run' (1969), she was a bank robber’s neighbor, impressed by his fame. In 'Bananas' (1971), she was the hero’s activist girlfriend who drops him because he shows no political leadership skills. The next year, in 'Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask),' she played a woman who could achieve orgasm only in public. In the middle of all that filmmaking, in 1970, the Allens divorced...."

From "Louise Lasser, Star of TV’s ‘Mary Hartman,’ Is Dead at 87/She began her screen career in Woody Allen movies (he was also her husband), but she was best known for her portrayal of the Ohio housewife in the pigtails and puffed sleeves" (NYT).

McDreamy.

From "Here Are the Maine Democrats Who Might Replace Graham Platner/Mr. Platner has not yet withdrawn from the race after a rape allegation, but Democrats in the state and nationally are already exploring potential alternatives" (NYT):

Platner was presented by the Democrats as fulfilling the people's supposed longing for masculinity, so, yeah, replace him with Patrick Dempsey. That makes sense.

"Firefighters used ropes to rescue her and the couple’s two children, a 7-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy, from the mangled Tesla."

"The children were uninjured, the authorities said at the time. The California Highway Patrol quickly determined the crash had been 'an intentional act.'"

From "Charges Against Man Who Drove Family Off Cliff Are Dropped After Treatment/Three counts of attempted murder against Dharmesh A. Patel were dismissed after he completed a court-ordered mental health program, prosecutors said" (NYT).

It was a 250-foot drop.

"'He can drive home tonight,' said [Steve Wagstaffe, the San Mateo County district attorney], whose office opposed the diversion program and had asked the court to bring Mr. Patel to trial. 'It’s like the case never happened.'"

"Rape claim against Democrat has party asking: Why did we ignore 'red flags'?"

That's the headline at the London Times, a question that assumes a proposition I don't accept as true. Democrats didn't ignore red flags. They saw them and went forward anyway.

The question should be why did they do that, and we know why. It's not hard to figure out. I don't for one minute believe that Democrats are deeply contemplating why they backed Platner despite what they knew. They wanted to win the Senate seat, and they imagined he was their best hope. Now, they are trying to act as though they were blindsided by this rape accusation, and it suddenly disqualifies Platner in a new way.

By the way, what's Platner's motivation to withdraw? He won the primary. It's his nomination. What's good is there for him in withdrawing? If he hangs on for a few more days, past the July 13th deadline for replacing him as the candidate, won't the heat die down? He will have weathered the storm, and he can present himself as a rebellious survivor.

Yes, he may lose, and that loss may be the one Senate seat that denies Democrats the majority they covet, but so what? I mean: "So what?" from his point of view. Should he shrink back into oyster-ridden obscurity because of a rape he says he did not commit? Because of a tattoo everyone knew about when he won the primary? 

"I don't want to deal with them anymore, they are scum."

BREAKING: President Trump says the ceasefire with Iran is "over."

"I don't want to deal with them anymore, they are scum," Trump says. pic.twitter.com/laHQdRKZUV

— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) July 8, 2026

Is that real? Grok: "Trump made the statements live at the NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, on July 8, 2026, during interactions with reporters. Multiple major outlets (Hindustan Times, GB News, ITV News, Reuters via partners) reported the exact quotes with video footage from the event. The clip in the KobeissiLetter post matches the authentic press conference recording, showing Trump seated with US flags and summit backdrops. No credible sources flag it as fabricated."

A Little League home run... for the Mets.

I promise no amount of explaining will prepare you for how bad this play is pic.twitter.com/45XcHCMvyL

— Ben Verlander (@BenVerlander) July 8, 2026

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments... except for the "frozen zone" in NYC and the Vance's henhouse. There are new posts for that, just below this one.

"Midtown residents, workers and tourists ran for their lives from homes and offices near a buckling building Tuesday..."

"... and now have no idea when they can return to the evacuated 'frozen zone' around the site. Nine buildings had to be suddenly cleared after 8 a.m. when crucial support columns began caving in the under-construction 37-story former Pfizer headquarters on East 42nd Street near Second Avenue — and City Hall would not say when anyone might be able to return to the area...."

From "Massive ‘frozen zone’ around buckling Midtown NYC building leaves hundreds out on street — with no idea when they can return" (NY Post).

"The Vances’ henhouse is elevated — about two feet off the ground — and situated inside a shed that is protected from the elements...."

"The design is such that the owner does not have to walk through 'chicken droppings and chicken bedding' to tend to the birds. The keeper can access the hens via interior shed doors. The attached run is predator-proof... and includes a solid roof, which helps prevent avian flu from spreading to the flock, as it can be 'transmitted with migratory birds flying overhead'.... The [henhouse] has led to speculation that there may be political motivations behind the flock’s appearance. It’s a theory that resonates with Danny Bowers, who keeps 19 chickens on a suburban property in Utah County, Utah. Bowers, who uses they/them pronouns, points out that some conservatives have embraced the values espoused by 'trad wife' influencers, many of whom raise chickens."

I'm reading "The Vances added a chicken coop to the vice president’s residence. We had questions. Who will be raising the hens at the Naval Observatory? And why are the Vances taking on this project?" Thats a gift link, in case you want to get serious or laugh about henhousegate.

I love the sheer randomness of the pronoun preference of some guy in Utah who's got nothing to do with any of this other than that he too keeps chickens.

I'm going to assume that the reason for the chickens is to enrich the day-to-day life of the Vance's 3 — soon to be 4 — children.

It is an awfully posh henhouse. I can see why some people are envious... or trying to figure out if they should be envious:

In the garden.

Video by Meade.

 

"While I’m assigning blame, I shouldn’t leave out myself. Last October, when stories about Platner’s tattoo and Reddit posts first broke..."

"... I went to Maine to write about him. I tried to convey what I saw: a campaign that was electrifying angry Maine voters. But I deeply regret that, impressed by Platner’s political charisma, I wrote that he was 'nothing like the edgelord caricature I encountered online.' If anything, he seems to be significantly worse...."

Writes Michelle Goldberg, in "Lessons From the Graham Platner Disaster" (NYT).

That article she wrote and links to came out last October. It sets out to prop him up as he was falling long before the primary: "Platner is the oyster farmer and former Marine with a baritone voice and a Bernie Sanders endorsement who this fall came seemingly out of nowhere to capture progressive hearts nationwide. Recently, a barrage of ugly revelations made it look like perhaps all the hope invested in him had been misplaced...."

Hearts. Hope.

Here's Goldberg, back in October, explaining that Nazi tattoo:

As political as you want it to be.

I'm just answering the question posed in this New Yorker title: "How Political Is This Supreme Court?"

Read the article if you like. It contains material like "My argument is that the Court is neither entirely political nor that it is entirely apolitical. I think we have to be a little more nuanced in the way we go about this. First, how do we define political?..."

What is closest to your reaction?

I'm not the sort of person who needs to read that sort of thing.

Good. That sounds substantive and nuanced.

I'm distracted by the Althouse "nuance" tag.

 

pollcode.com free polls

"You said: He's your kind of man."

CNBC host calls out Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Host: "You campaigned with Graham Platner… you said, 'He's your kind of man.' … This is a guy who had a chest tattoo with a N*zi symbol… It's a guy that reportedly wrote 'people concerned about r*pe should take some responsibility… pic.twitter.com/zcy7r7BqnW

— Resist the Mainstream (@ResisttheMS) April 22, 2026

You can see that's from back in April, but it appeared at the top of the feed when I clicked on the "Platner" trend in the sidebar at X.

The timing of all of this matters. What did they know and when did they know it? Did they hold the accuser back and then let her loose? Look at Jake Tapper seeming to want something of an answer:

NEW: Woman who accused Graham Platner of r*ping her says America needs someone with his political stances in office, says his videos fired her up.

Jake Tapper: There are gonna be people who say this is politically motivated. What would you say to that?

Accuser Jenny Racicot:… pic.twitter.com/7jYk2i7oBg

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 6, 2026

I'm less interested in the random oysterman than I am in the Democratic Party leadership, what they were up to, and what they are doing now. It's so much like the story of Joe Biden's candidacy in 2024. They let the primary process occur, propped the guy up while democracy was in play, let the people expend their power to choose, and then and only then a fatal defect got exposed, and the people's choice had to withdraw himself. The Party got to insert their candidate, someone who never had to face the test of the primary. I want to hold the Party responsible for what it did. Was it just idiotically searching around for a "masculine" man and infatuated with his oysters? Did it cynically select him and think the people don't care about sexual misdeeds anymore — the #MeToo era is over and it's time to go for those "manosphere" votes?

ADDED: When I first clicked on this, I thought it was a humor sketch. The creaky voice on this Moraff character is something else: 

Graham Platner was recruited to run for Senate by a pair of socialist political operatives, Daniel Moraff and Leanne Fan, who determined that another prospective candidate had “a skeleton in the closet.”

The Wall Street Journal published a rare interview with the duo on Sunday… pic.twitter.com/tbmOE5nxJX

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) June 8, 2026

AND: Scott Jennings puts it well:

Democrats fully vetted Graham Platner, happily signed off on his incredibly disturbing history to win a Senate seat, and are only pretending to be shocked now because they can no longer rationalize the hypocrisy. pic.twitter.com/jkp12Gwv16

— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) July 7, 2026

"I actually don't think that was a loss. 4 goals? I didn't see 4 goals. It looked more like a tie to me, Gianni...."

STOP IT!!!🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/wMgMLFoFyO

— il Donaldo Trumpo (@PapiTrumpo) July 7, 2026

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like... except the soccer game and Graham Platner. Scroll down to the previous posts to talk about the soccer game, including Trump's phone call, and scroll down one more to say whatever needs to be said about the oysterman.

"I can call anyone about anything."

He CALLED FIFA 🤣 pic.twitter.com/hp1DObdnFv

— Baby News Network (@BabyNetworkNews) July 6, 2026

"A wave of prominent Democrats, from Platner’s most progressive allies to top Democratic leadership, are bailing on his Senate campaign..."

"... after POLITICO reported that a woman who dated him said he forced her to have sex with him.... On Monday night — just hours after the story published — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on Platner to 'immediately withdraw'.... Some of his biggest backers — Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) — called on him to exit the race, as did Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). Another staunch supporter and potential 2028 presidential hopeful, Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego, withdrew his endorsement.... Meanwhile, one of Platner’s most prominent Senate backers, Bernie Sanders, has yet to comment on the news...."

Politico reports.

Platner "represented masculinity" for the Democrats:

 

Graham Platner (D) on NPR one month ago: "I represent healthy masculinity"

This did not age well 😬 pic.twitter.com/T3bEvgvdm5

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 6, 2026

The #1 Person in Tic Tac.

Trump: "You know who the number one person on Tic Tac is by far? Trump. Me. Taylor Swift was number 11." pic.twitter.com/BriJNk4QeL

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 6, 2026

"Every summer, my husband, my daughter, and I stay with my mother out East so my child can spend time outside the city in an area I remain attached to from my childhood."

"Without my mom’s generosity, we could not afford to be there. I realize that having access to all this when I haven’t made the right career choices, shorted the market at a moment of crisis, or robbed a bank to be able to afford my own Hamptons house is deeply fortunate. And yet, as I’m often reminded during a flare-up with my mother over how to properly cut a $13 Il Buco filone (apparently, I saw bread too 'wavily' and ruin the rest of the loaf for straight-slicers), Chekhov’s greatest dramas were multigenerational tragicomedies set in country homes."

Writes Lucy Boyle, in "'I’m Sorry You’re in This Beautiful House We Pay For!'/There’s a glut of middle-aged children living with their parents in the Hamptons for the summer" (New York Magazine).

I'm interested in this tale of petty woe not because I've ever stayed at any beach house owned by my parents — I have not — but because we — in the midst of our summer here in our year-round home — took the half-hour drive out to the American Players Theater last week and saw "Uncle Vanya."

The troubles in "Uncle Vanya" were nothing like what we're seeing with these "middle-aged children" in the Hamptons. They're irked by rules about using coasters, taking out the trash, and not stealing things. Boyle gets a psychotherapist to analyze the parents: "When the house is full of the grandkids and the grandkids’ and kids’ friends, they’re kind of in the background. One way they can become the foreground and say ‘I am here’ is to foreground their ownership and possession.'"

"The summer I turned 39, my husband and I moved from Brooklyn to a darling little village in upstate New York. Our parents were thrilled..."

"... their unspoken hope that leaving the big city might be a sign that we were settling down—that as my fertility began to sunset, we’d turn one of our house’s three bedrooms into a nursery. And we were having that conversation, too. We owned a home with ample space and an affordable mortgage. I worked for myself and had maximal flexibility. He had good health insurance and a great if demanding job. Did we want to have a baby? As late summer melted into a vibrant fall and then into the cold of upstate winter, I knew my answer: No...."

Writes Jill Filipovic in "We Need More Good Men/Conservatives often lay the blame for declining fertility at women’s feet. They’re wrong" (Slate).

"New York City bodega owners came to City Hall last week for a 'roundtable discussion' at the invitation of Julie Su, deputy mayor for economic justice..."

"... only to get barraged with 'intrusive' questions about their businesses, a source close to the situation said.... 'What items are sold the most at your stores?'... 'Where is your profit margin the greatest?' sources said. The bodega reps declined to answer.... 'They wanted us to share proprietary information with them but they don’t answer our questions and that’s why there is distrust,' said a bodega rep who did not want to be identified.... Mamdani’s plan to subsidize the grocery stores with taxpayer funds so they can offer rock-bottom prices on essential items threatens grocers who operate on 2% to 3% profit margins.... 'What is the main thing people come into your store for? What else do they buy while there?' 'It seems like a clumsy, one-sided fishing expedition,' a food policy expert who did not want to be identified told The Post.

From "Mamdani officials scramble to ease concerns about public supermarkets — but local business leaders aren’t buying it" (NY Post).

Su insisted that the city "wanted to understand is whether there are key products bodegas sell and rely on that we should not sell." And "That’s how serious we are about not undercutting them." The whole idea is about undercutting them. Now, the city seems to be trying to assure them that they won't undercut them too much. But the bodega owners don't trust the city. If there's a "2% to 3% profit margin" generally, but the city wants to know "Where is your profit margin the greatest?," it looks like the city wants its own operation to take advantage of the most profitable items. 

Sunrise.

At the Skylight Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

An overabundance of furniture.

On Wednesday, I saw the APT production of "The Chairs," which involved dragging an ever-increasing number of chairs into a surrealistic environment...

Then, on Friday, I went to the movies for the first time in over a year, to see "The Backrooms," and it too involved a piling up of furniture in a surrealistic environment....

It's a bit much. A bit meta. Seemingly separate surrealisms are converging. In one week, I'm seeing 2 things playing out so similarly, and I can't think of any other play/movie where the furniture was so important. I didn't set out to experience plentitudinous furniture.

Watching both the the play and the movie and thinking about them afterwards, I thought a lot about whether we were supposed to think of the place as a fantastical external environment that contained the characters or whether it was a depiction of the deteriorating state of a character's mind. 

"Fireworks release tiny particles that can irritate lungs and trigger asthma attacks, along with gases like carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide..."

"... and sulfur dioxide and metals including aluminum, manganese and cadmium, according to the American Lung Association. Even Freedom 250, the Trump-backed group that helped organize the event, acknowledged on its website that 'air quality will decline' and visibility 'may become compromised.' It advised children and older people to avoid extended time outdoors and advised residents to keep windows closed and to use air filters. 'It’s probably going to be incredibly hot and adding a firework show is just going to compound the air quality that’s already destined to be poor,' said Panagis Galiatsatos, a pulmonary physician.... He encouraged people with respiratory conditions like asthma to stay indoors and watch the spectacle on TV. 'Sometimes we need to just be mindful of safety versus grandiosity'.... Dogs tremble. They drool. They try to hide by cramming themselves into spaces that are too small. They have accidents indoors and tear up clothes or furniture...."

From "Bombs Bursting in Air Means Hours of Smoke and Confused Dogs in D.C./Organizers want the July 4 fireworks in the nation’s capital to break the world record. But the fun will also come with air pollution and possibly headaches for pet owners and zoo keepers" (NYT).

"Visitors in red, white and blue darkened with sweat stood in lines for hours, sometimes screaming in frustration and other times collapsing from exhaustion."

"The Independence Day parade was canceled and the Great American State Fair delayed. Steel fences and closed roads made photos of iconic monuments hard to capture. Both white supremacists and liberal activists marched through the city, each demanding their country back...."

I'm reading "America’s 250th celebrations marked by severe weather, political division/Officials ordered thousands of people to evacuate the National Mall after a severe weather warning that delayed President Donald Trump’s speech." That's in The Washington Post (not the NYT, as I'd accidentally had written).

"Small protests popped up throughout the day. One group lugged a 700-foot banner that read 'We the People' down Pennsylvania Avenue, condemning the president. About 50 people with another group, 'Refuse Fascism,' marched toward the White House, demanding that Trump leave office.... [H]undreds of uniformed members of Patriot Front, a white-supremacist group, marched toward the U.S. Capitol. Their faces covered in white masks, the men beat drums and carried flags — some upside down, others Confederate — as they chanted, 'Reclaim America!' Many gripped combat shields as they passed the Capitol building...."

How did the extra-important 4th look from your vantage point? 

"There’s always trouble in the Church of England.... They’re always tying themselves in knots about something or other."

"But this is a big one, because they’ve decided that their whole operation is a festival of ableism and that their meek priests are not feeling very blessed at all. One, quoted in a new report called 'All Kinds of Minds,' says that the pressure of trying to appear 'typical' means that when he gets home after a hard day at work (me neither) he has to lie on the floor to literally ground himself.... [T]he report reckons that the pressure on vicars to be loud and interesting puts intolerable pressure on those who are 'neurodivergent.'..."

Writes Jeremy Clarkson, in "I know how to fill churches. Deconsecrate them/My idea to fill the pews would mean hiring out churches for parties — but a new report focuses instead on calming down neurodivergent vicars" (London Times).

Clarkson goes on to crack some jokes at the expense of the neurodivergent, but I didn't think the jokes were much good, so let's just read that article he linked to: "Church urged to embrace neurodivergent parishioners (and priests)/A report says the assumptions that preachers should be extroverts and worshippers must sit still were contributing to 'cultures of ableism.'"

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

Sunrise, 5:10, with ducklings.

Video by me.

"Fans gathered as close as they could to the arena in the 37C heat, hoping for a glimpse of the invitees."

The London Times reports the news/"news": Taylor Swift got married, in "Taylor Swift gets married to Travis Kelce at Madison Square Garden/The bride chose Christian Louboutin shoes and jewellery from Cartier and both wore Dior for the ceremony officiated by the comedy actor Adam Sandler."

I see that these days, "Any person eighteen years old and over can solemnize a Marriage Ceremony in New York State AFTER obtaining a One-Day Marriage Officiant License from the Office of the City Clerk."

So you too can have a comedian officiate at your wedding.