Sunrise — 6:46, 6:54.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"Some viewers may have heard strong and offensive language during the BAFTA Film Awards 2026."

"This arose from involuntary verbal tics associated with Tourette syndrome, and was not intentional. We apologise for any offence caused by the language heard."

Said a BBC spokesperson, quoted in "BBC faces backlash after racial slur shouted during BAFTA awards by attendee with Tourette syndrome/The host, Alan Cumming, acknowledged the 'strong and offensive language' several times during the Sunday show and thanked the audience for their understanding" (NBC News).

Here's the occurrence of the hurling of the notorious epithet (and I will delete any comments that write it out):

"In the not-too-distant past, most people probably would have at least grudgingly accepted a regime in which prosecutors and law-enforcement agents sorted through materials from a sprawling investigation..."

"... and made public only those portions needed to properly handle a case. The additional information that might interest us, and perhaps even help improve society, would remain secret. Federal prosecutors could generally be trusted to focus on their narrow criminal enforcement mission and to not abuse the tools given them for that limited purpose. No longer.... [S]o much of the raw investigative material in [the files] — untold layers of hearsay, unverified accusations and vague circumstantial connections — ought not be released for the public to pick over.... When materials collected in a criminal investigation get released in bulk for public consumption, the justification for the coercive and privacy-invading tools we give investigators gets a lot weaker...."

Writes former federal prosecutor Daniel Richman, in "The Epstein Files Should Never Have Been Released" (NYT).

"This didn’t seem to be just an operation to capture 'El Mencho,' but to exterminate him, to use lethal force to bring him down."

"In the criminal underworld, such actions are not simply overlooked. The reaction is what we’re seeing now: narco-terrorism, blockades, and fires in grocery stores across Mexico."

Said security expert David Saucedo, quoted in "Expert’s chilling warning after killing of cartel boss 'El Mencho' sparks violence across Mexico" (NY Post).

Also at the Post: "Deadly violence in Mexico spreads after cartel boss is killed — as Americans warned to shelter in place."

"I imagine that had they survived, Rob and Michele would be more heartbroken than furious."

"I do not think they would have wanted to see their son castigated as he has been.... Even in conversation with me, a person they had dined with only a few times, Rob and Michele Reiner recognized the depth of their son’s suffering as a call for their own compassion, and they recognized that Nick’s behavior was often outside his control.... The law proposes that he either knew, or could not know, right from wrong. But psychotic logic does not translate this way.... [H]is crime is itself his punishment; the horror of awakening to one’s own psychotic acts exceeds any third-party punishment. Under the Trump administration, aggressive 'justice' and judgmental positions that ignore scientific expertise are in fashion.... His case will be heard in California, where, one can hope, understanding of human suffering can still sometimes outstrip rageful cruelty. Nick Reiner’s parents were not vengeful people; no one need be vengeful on their behalf."

Writes Andrew Solomon, a professor of medical clinical psychology, in "My Hope for Nick Reiner" (NYT).

"As a kid, I was part of a youth theater repertory... this intense acting coach came to class, and after I performed a scene she told me with this terrible sneer..."

"... that all I’d ever be was funny and charming. It took me until I was 35 to realize that: (1) I wasn’t that charming; (2) I was also a whole lot more than charming; and (3) it takes an especially miserable adult to tell a child what he can and cannot be."

Says "Grant Ginder Read One Novel 7 Times While Writing His Own/James Salter’s 'Light Years' had a big influence on 'So Old, So Young,' his new book about college friends drifting in and out of one another’s lives" (NYT).

I liked his answer to the old question "You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?"

I’m supposed to say Jane Austen, Sophocles and a Finnish novelist no one’s heard of, but actually the literary dinner party I want to attend already happened. It’s the one mentioned in a recent Times article where Joan Didion refused to give Nora Ephron her recipe for Mexican Chicken. I’d die to see that.

"They’re too dumb to know they’re in a bad school."

Said Hunter College professor Allyson Friedman, at Community Education Council meeting, interrupting a black public school student who was speaking out against the proposed closing of her West Side school.

Quoted in "Hunter College to Review Professor’s ‘Abhorrent’ Remarks at Meeting
A student objected to the potential closure of her New York City middle school. The professor, speaking on a hot mic, said, 'They’re too dumb to know they’re in a bad school.' The comment was assailed as racist" (NYT).

It was an unwitting interruption. Friedman "was attending virtually and was unaware that her microphone was turned on." She now says she was "'trying to explain the concept of systemic racism' to her child, who was in the room with her, 'by referencing an example of an obviously racist trope....

"I’ve never been able to trace a Wagner that has stayed in only one family since the day the card came out."

"The (Shieldses’) care and respect for their grandfather’s collection — carefully looked after behind closed doors for 116 years — has preserved one of the hobby’s true grails, and the importance of this cannot be overstated."

From "T206 Honus Wagner card sells for $5.1 million after 116 years with same family" (NYT).

I don't accept the expression "one of the.... true grails." Don't pluralize "grail." There's one holy grail...

.... and if "grail" applies to baseball card trading, everyone seems to have agreed that it's the Honus Wagner card. But it's not as though there's only one. There are 50 or 60s of these slips of cardboard floating about.

The most covered-up look possible is judged by the NYT to be "Most Peek-A-Boo."

Before I encountered this NYT article — "12 Unforgettable Looks at the BAFTAs Swishy suits, mermaid skirts, skunk feet and more" (gift link) — I had looked at BAFTA fashion pictures and selected this Teyana Taylor dress as my favorite. I loved how extremely covered up it was:

Why focus on the "peek-a-boo"? Yes, there's a slit, but nothing is revealed because there is boot leather hiding the entire leg.

What's exciting about this outfit is the outlandishly extensive coverage.

"I'm not trying to impress you. I'm just trying to impress upon you: I'm like you."

The rare double self-own

— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) February 23, 2026

Let's look at the 2 obvious problems:

1. He's calling attention to his struggle with a serious disability, dyslexia. We talked about that here, a few weeks ago. He seems to be confessing something that is true, making himself vulnerable and relatable. Of course, he's also exposing his limitations. But his antagonists may screw up trying to take advantage of this. 

2. In saying "I'm like you" to what seems to be an audience of black people, he's taking a risk. You can hear warm laughter, as, perhaps, many people relate to him, because they've struggled with exams, for whatever reason. But he seems to be unwittingly expressing the old stereotype about black people — the one right-wing people love to bring up. So, again, his antagonists will screw up trying to exploit what is, from him, only a slight innuendo. I'll bet some of you do it right here in the comments.

ADDED: Nicki Minaj responds to that Newsom clip:

His way of bonding with black ppl is to tell them how stupid he is & that he can’t read. 

This means my first read on him was correct. He’s been handed so many things & put in high positions he never earned or deserved. 

Do you wanna know the craziest part of this footage that will haunt him forever? He’s literally slowing his speech down & talking in a sporadic cadence. 

He’s not just TELLING them that they’re all probably stupid & probably can’t read, he’s LITERALLY SLOW-ING-DOWN-HIS-SPEECH to make them understand the words that are coming out of his mouth!!!! As if they’re children!!!! That means he REALLY BELIEVES they’re slow. He’s not just saying it—he didn’t misspeak!!!! He BELIEVES it!!!!

Do ya love it?!?!! 

Do ya just love it, black ppl?!????

It reminds me of Jesse Jackson's criticism of Obama: "He is talking down to black people." Obama survived. Obama thrived. 

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can talk all night.

2 marriage concepts — similar, yet very different.

1. Pretend your spouse is "dead and is a ghost." That is, that they can do nothing to help around the house. (This isn't the same concept as "ghosting" someone, so please don't be confused. It's a committed decision to take full responsibility for everything.)

2. "The good-guy presenting husband." He does everything he's asked to do and is no trouble at all but is the source of no ideas about getting anything done.

#1 is, we're told, the key to a successful marriage, which I think is believable if you understand it the right way, which is that both partners are simultaneously conceptualizing the other as a ghost. Each is stepping up to do 100%.

#2 is someone you may think is not bad enough to leave, but, we're told, he is. I note that the "good-guy presenting husband" does not fit into the "ghost" concept, and the wife is not treating him like a ghost. She's asking him to do things, and he is doing them. Now, I wonder, if either the wife of the good-guy presenting husband or the good-guy presenting husband (or both) were to switch to pretending their partner has died and is now hanging around with you as a ghost, their mediocre marriage could become a success. 

Slip.

"You've had sex with him... all 3 times."

"Washington felt like a penitentiary to him. 'There is no human intercourse in it... at any rate for the President.'"

"He" = Woodrow Wilson.

From A. Scott Berg's "Wilson" (commission earned), in a passage found, photographed, and texted to me by my son Chris, who's getting close to the end of his project of reading a biography of each American President.

Read on:

One is surprised to visualize the President of the United States traipsing through the streets of Manhattan, hoping to be incognito, collecting a crowd, and then ditching it by wending through the Waldorf-Astoria and hopping on a motorbus.

That seems like enough, but then to hear that the President "could not help wishing... that someone would kill him."

AND: Here's another passage Chris sent me from that book. This happened in 1879, when he was a law student, age 23:

"For years, President Trump has complained that his personal and business bank accounts were deliberately closed after the Jan 6., 2021, attack on the Capitol...."

"In a response to a lawsuit filed last month by Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization, JPMorgan, the nation’s largest bank, said for the first time late Friday that it cut off more than 50 Trump accounts in February 2021, shortly after Mr. Trump’s first term ended. The accounts included those for Trump hotels, housing developments and retail shops in Illinois, Florida and New York, as well as Mr. Trump’s personal private banking relationship that handled his inheritance from his father.... In one unsigned note to Mr. Trump, dated Feb. 19, 2021, the bank wrote that he would need to 'find a more suitable institution with which to conduct business.' The letter closed with, 'Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter' — a phrase that Mr. Trump himself is fond of using...."

From "JPMorgan Admits It Shut Trump’s Accounts After Jan. 6 Capitol Attack/Nation’s largest bank, in response to a lawsuit filed by the president, confirmed his longstanding complaint about 'debanking'" (NYT).

"This is the CEO of Victoria's Secret, claiming that Epstein, who he hired to manage all of his money, had alerted him to the danger if you didn't inventory forks and spoons...."

"A guy like Les Wexner has to protect himself from fork theft. Understand? So that's where Jeffrey Epstein came in. Even his lawyer is looking at him like, well, this is an odd example. Even his lawyer's like, this is why we gotta keep it to five less, five words or less. Because now we're like, you're talking about forks and knives and spoons. Les Wexner on what Jeffrey Epstein did for him.... People could be stealing your silverware and Les Wexner's like, well that's what a good thought. I'd never thought that, here's all of my money. Let me give you power of attorney over literally all of my assets. Because you came up with this...."

"I love the U.S.A.!"

Jack Hughes processing the emotions of the CLUTCH overtime goal for GOLD! 👏 pic.twitter.com/TAX9U76pbK

— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics) February 22, 2026

The issue is YOU!

Rep. AOC holds back tears: "If you think I do not understand foreign policy…. the issue is YOU" pic.twitter.com/gdBpDE8jVh

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) February 22, 2026

Made me think of this:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mike Gauyo 🇭🇹 (@b.l.a.c.k.b.o.y.w.r.i.t.e.s)

"A man was shot and killed by law enforcement, including agents from the United States Secret Service, after he entered the secure perimeter of Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla...."

"... early Sunday morning, according to a statement posted by the agency on X. The man, who the agency said was 'in his early 20s,' was confronted near the north gate of the Mar-a-Lago complex, and was carrying what appeared to be a shotgun and a fuel canister, the Secret Service said."

The NYT reports.

ELSEWHERE: "Kennedy Center Performance Canceled After Substance Poured on Ice Rink/An individual poured an unknown dark liquid onto a temporary skating rink at the Kennedy Center late Thursday night, in what the venue called a 'calculated' attack" (NYT).

We're told "a container that had been left on the ice." And in the X post about Mar-a-Logo, it says the now-dead person arrived with "a fuel can."

"Working with the fantastic Governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, we are going to send a great hospital boat to Greenland to take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there."

"It’s on the way!!!"

Wrote Trump, quoted in "Greenland does not need US hospital boat to be sent by Trump, says Denmark/Prime minister and defence minister rebuff US president’s claim that Arctic islanders are 'not being taken care of'" (The Guardian).

Things I'm not talking about.

1. Susan Rice.

2. Mamdani's snow shovelers and the 2-ID requirement. 

3. Trump's re-tariffing gimmick.

4. Our war with Iran.

5. Photograph of Prince Andrew.

I'm not judging these stories to be inconsequential. I just have nothing to add, nothing that fits my approach to blogging anyway. I like them as items to list. The list signifies that I feel some pressure. They're nagging at me. But I'm resisting. Feel free to talk about them in the comments. They're actually all good topics. I'm just not feeling the value of my own yammering on them. Maybe you think I've already said too much, what with that one word.

"Gimmick" is "Originally U.S. slang," according to the OED, which defines it like this: "A gadget; spec. a contrivance for dishonestly regulating a gambling game, or an article used in a conjuring trick; now usually a tricky or ingenious device, gadget, idea, etc., esp. one adopted for the purpose of attracting attention or publicity."

The oldest appearance of the word is an entry in the 1926 "Wise-crack Dictionary": "Gimmick, device used for making a fair game crooked." 

Meaning.

One of the most meaningful gifts I’ve ever received in my entire life. pic.twitter.com/AfupGNVTpY

— Nicki Minaj (@NICKIMINAJ) February 22, 2026

"By protecting the lives of preborn children with the same laws that protect people who are born, we are simply loving our neighbors in the womb as ourselves."

Said Southern Baptist Convention President Clint Pressley, quoted in "TN bill would allow death penalty for women who have an abortion/Tennessee has some of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country. The Human Life Protection Act prohibits all abortions from fertilization, without exceptions for rape or incest" (The Tennesseean).

Two Tennessee Republicans are seeking to impose the death penalty on women who have abortions, requiring the same penalties for women “involved in the homicide of her own unborn child” as defendants charged with homicide.... The bill specifically removes legal protections for pregnant women currently in statute, and classifies harm done to an unborn child as equal to assault on a person "born alive."

It would not apply to “a spontaneous miscarriage,” or to “unintentional death of an unborn child” after “undertaking life-saving procedures” to save the life of the mother and “to save the life of the unborn child.” No other exceptions are specified in the amendment text....

Imagine an oral argument in our current Supreme Court on the question whether the death penalty for abortion is cruel and unusual punishment. I suspect you'll want to say it will never come to that. 

Hasn't Canal Street always been funky?

Man takes a stroll through New York City..

This place is absolutely COOKED. 💀💀 pic.twitter.com/Lc9Yx5kPUd

— American AF 🇺🇸 (@iAnonPatriot) February 22, 2026

I watched that video, and yes, it looks awful, but has it "metastasized" and "gone insane"? It's Canal Street. The voiceover declares it's the "most expensive" part of New York and calls it "Tribeca" and "Soho." It's Canal Street, being Canal Street. 

I looked at those wares vendors had laid out all over the sidewalk, and I'd like to bring some lateral thinking to the problem. The product you see there is almost entirely women's handbags. It could become utterly uncool and dumb to carry a handbag. A handbag is literally a burden. It makes you vulnerable to theft. You don't need it. Designers whose clothes you may not be able to buy make a customer out of you by offering this carrier of their name, causing you to feel that you need it more than you do. Wake up to the post-handbag world and those guys hawking handbags will disappear. 

What, beyond your iPhone, do you need to carry these days? The closer you can get to nothing, the better you are. That's the idea to sell, but who is motivated to sell it? I know I'm being silly, at my age and my distance from New York, to try to influence the anti-handbag trend, which has to hinge on the pleasure and freedom of the consumer, not hatred of street vendors. These are guys making a living, and if your aim is to walk down an uncluttered, uncrowded street, reroute off Canal Street.

By the way, I used to live in NYC — from 1973 to 1984 — and 2 things about me back then: 1. I avoided Canal Street, unless I was swooping into that one place where I bought art supplies, and 2. I never carried a purse, I went out of my way to figure out how to carry everything in various pockets, I had a whole feminist/hippie conception of what I was doing, and I regarded women with purses as embarrassingly uncool. 

Sunrise — 6:45.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

President Trump speaks about the tariff case in terms of shame and pride.

It was a legal opinion about the meaning of words in a statute and 6 justices went one way and 3 went the other. Trump would have us think of the Justices as children within our family, 6 of whom brought embarrassment to us and 3 of whom made us proud. I find such talk inane, but it might influence some people, that is, it might work as propaganda.

Have a listen:

Excerpt: "I'm ashamed of certain members of the Court — absolutely ashamed — for not having the courage to do what's right for our country. I'd like to thank and congratulate Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh for their strength and wisdom, and love of our country — which is right now very proud of those justices.... The Democrats on the Court are... frankly, a disgrace to our nation, those justices. They're an automatic no no matter how good a case you have — it's a no. You can't knock their loyalty. It's one thing you can do with some of our people.... What a shame.... They are very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution. It's my opinion that the Court has been swayed by foreign interests...."

He made it about shame and pride and loyalty. What evidence does he have that the Court has been swayed by foreign interests?

"Don’t allow this broken culture to send you a message that you’re a bad person because you’re a man, because you like to tell a joke, because you like to have a beer with your friends or because you’re competitive."

Said JD Vance, last year, quoted today in "Bench Presses, Pull Ups … Kid Rock? The White House Had a Very Manly Week/President Trump’s top cabinet officials are pumping iron in public" (NYT).

The Vance quote appears near the end of the article, right after: "Mr. Trump’s latest masculinity proclamations sum up this administration’s hard-line approach to maleness, where the most powerful men in the country can just relax and be men who appreciate other men — in a strictly manly way, of course."

Right after the Vance quote, we get: "All of this hints at a powerful political current that politicians like Mr. Vance and Mr. Trump instinctively know how to channel."

The article ends with 2 quotes from law professor Joan C. Williams: "One of the only arrows in [Trump's] quiver is being the man" and "Picking wars all around the world, that’s what’s really going on."

It's not fair to judge the NYT article — by Katie Rogers — without watching this for context:

BawitMAHA https://t.co/npFlS2NxTo

— HHS (@HHSGov) February 17, 2026

ADDED: "Let’s Talk About RFK Jr.’s Workout Pants/Our health secretary is a jeans guy, and he knows it" (The Atlantic)(gift link).

Alysa Liu — and her 4 siblings — are the children of a single father who had them through surrogate mothers and anonymous egg donors.

"Arthur Liu was born in the small mountain village, Mingxing, in China’s Sichuan Province... In 1989, Arthur participated in the Tiananmen Square protests.... After immigrating to the United States, Arthur Liu studied law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law.... Arthur Liu brought Alysa Liu to her first ice skating lesson when she was 5 years old.... 'I spared no money, no time,' Arthur said.... 'I just saw the talent.'... ... Arthur participated in his daughter’s training aspects by watching her practices and tracking the speed of her jumps with a radar gun.... When Alysa Liu announced she was retiring from ice skating in April 2022, she did not talk to Arthur Liu before making the decision. 'I didn’t really ask [my dad’s] opinion when I decided to retire. After all, it’s my life'.... When Alysa decided to make her return in 2026, she shared that her dad is less involved with her skating career. 'He’s a great father, I just didn’t want him to be as invested in it as he was before'...."

From "Who Is Alysa Liu’s Father? What to Know About Olympic Gold Medalist’s Dad Who Welcomed 5 Kids Via Surrogate" (Us).

Us is written on a really low level. Fine. But don't tell me this is "What to Know." There's obviously a deeper dimension. I want to know. What happened to the other 4 children? Were they pushed into any sport? What did they do while Arthur was spending so much time aiming a radar gun at Alysa? Were they all conceived as designer babies, then tested to determine who had the talent and who deserved attention and money showered on them? Should a single man be able to buy his way into fatherhood for 5 children? What does Alysa really know and how does she really feel?

ADDED: I'm just noticing the weirdness of the expression, "I spared no money, no time." We understand it to mean that he spent endless time and money, but if you stop and think about it, it seems to mean the opposite, that he gave no time or money. It does make sense if you understand "spared" to mean, held back for myself.

AND: I'm seeing this NYT article, "In Her Big Olympic Moment, Alysa Liu Celebrated Her Freedom/Competition can wreck a figure skater, but Liu and other Olympians shed the pressure and delivered transcendent performances focused on artistry." The word "father" appears nowhere. I searched for "Arthur" and got only "MacArthur Park," the song she skated to. Apparently, no on wants to touch the father problem. The Olympian parents are always devoted and earnest, watching hopefully from the stands.

"Perhaps you’ve noticed.... Amid all the cars that are parked headfirst, a seemingly increasing number have instead been backed in."

"These dissenters face out, like getaway drivers in a bank robbery ready to make a clean escape. Some people, myself included, find the move annoying. William Van Tassel, the manager of driver training programs for AAA... said that perhaps it was because they were following AAA’s updated guidelines.... My own theory is that reversing into a space is a response to the ambient anxiety in our society, akin to privately noting the exits in a movie theater. In a nation of rampant gun violence, backing in so you can quickly get out provides a sense of security.... [Van Tassel] cited a 2020 study from the journal Transportation Research that found, among other things, that the pull-in, back-out maneuver had a higher crash risk. Since pedestrians are most likely to be found walking in the major lanes, not in a parking space, it’s safer to back into the area with fewer people.... But I can’t bring myself to join in, and I don’t fully accept the safety argument. Since 2018, new vehicles sold in the United States have been federally mandated to have backup cameras, which can assist in reversing out of a spot without plowing into someone...."

I'm reading "Do You Back Into a Parking Spot or Back Out? An exploration of what’s driving a change in America’s parking lots" (NYT).

Those who do back up — is it for safety? Do other people believe it's for safety? As the male author of the NYT article says: "My wife suspects they’re mostly men showing off." Ha ha. That's what I think too. And by the way, I've always been quick to suspect that people are just showing off. I was much worse about that when I was much younger. I can honestly say that when NASA put a man on the moon in 1969, I thought they were showing off. I looked away! The moon landing was a very big thing; backing into a parking space is a very little thing. In things big and small, I am ready to disrespect the achievement as a matter of showing off. A lateral thinker will therefore ask: What's bad about showing off? Where would we be without it?

Sunrise — 7:04.

There was thin snow in the air, but nothing to show for it on the ground. So much for the warnings of 2 to 6 inches. It was a little blustery, and we were the only ones out there, witnessing the nonappearance of the sun and immersed in lively conversation.

"What's another way to say 'lively conversation'? I don't like the cliché" —  I asked Grok, knowing I'd get nothing useful, just trash like "electric back-and-forth," "crackling exchange," "vibrant sparring," and "kinetic banter." Or maybe if I'd thought of one of those by myself, I'd like it. That's the trouble with help-seeking. What you get is tainted with irritating helpfulness.

"What's another way to say 'irritating helpfulness'?" — "patronizing eagerness," "meddlesome benevolence," "grating do-goodery," "insufferable solicitude," "cloying caretaking," "smothering support," "irksome officiousness," "fussy do-gooding," "tedious tutelage"....

"What's another way to say 'write about whatever you like in the comments'?" — "Say the thing you’re actually thinking," "Ramble freely—no judgment zone," “Vent, rave, or tangent away," "Comment like nobody’s watching (but we are, and we want it)," "I’m genuinely curious what’s crossing your mind—tell me," "Unleash your brain dump"....

It wasn't that cold out there, but look at the glamorous furs I wore:

Why Conan O'Brien says Trump is "bad for comedy."

"Well, years ago, when I was at Harvard and working on the Lampoon, we would try and think of magazines we could do a parody of. And there was one magazine we always knew we couldn’t parody, which was the National Enquirer. If a magazine has, as its cover, 'Elvis Still Alive, Marries Alien and They Have a Baby That’s a Three-Speed Blender'—if that’s what the real magazine’s coming out with, you can’t do a comedic take on that. It’s very difficult, or I think impossible, to do. And I think Trump—if he were a magazine, it’s the National Enquirer. There’s a lot that’s so bombastic and so outrageous and so unprecedented that how do you—'Oh, I’ve got a great Trump impression, and I have him saying this.' Well, that’s not crazier than what really happened yesterday. So I don’t know how this is funny."

Quoted in "Conan O’Brien Is Ready for the Oscars/The comedian and television host talks about the decline of late night, the death of Rob and Michele Reiner, and why he loves when things go wrong onstage" (The New Yorker).

In other words, Trump is already funny, so it's obtuse to build a joke on top of that.

Gavin Newsom and the 7 Women.

From the London Times.

Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, a fellow with the measurements of a Disney prince who once behaved, by his own admission, “as a single guy who happened to be mayor” of San Francisco rather than the other way around.

"It's about what happens when you let athletes be themselves and put their own joy first..."

Explaining the Alysa Liu story:

Trump loses the tariff case.

"The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that President Trump exceeded his authority when he imposed sweeping tariffs on imports from nearly every U.S. trading partner, a major setback for his administration’s second-term agenda. The court’s 6-3 decision has significant implications for the U.S. economy, consumers and the president’s trade policy. The Trump administration had said that a loss at the Supreme Court could force the government to unwind trade deals with other countries and potentially pay hefty refunds to importers...."

NYT link.

Here's the opinion, Learning Resources v. Trump. Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh are the 3 dissenters. The Chief Justice writes the opinion of the Court for Parts I, II–A–1, and II–B. His opinion for Parts II–A–2 and III is joined by Gorsuch and Barrett, who also file concurring opinions. Kagan has a concurring opinion joined by Sotomayor and Jackson, and Jackson has a concurring opinion. 

So there is a lot of complicated reading to do.

ADDED: From the Opinion of the Court:

"The Teddy [bear] craze was followed by a moral panic, as crazes involving kids inevitably are."

"Students in a New York University sewing class were forbidden to make Teddy bears, lest they 'breed idleness among children.' A Catholic priest in Michigan went further, preaching that if little white girls were allowed to play with 'the horrible monstrosity' instead of dolls, they would fail to develop their maternal instincts and doom the race to suicide...."

From "The Race to Give Every Child a Toy/For most of history, parents couldn’t buy their kids dolls, action figures, or the like. Then playtime became big business" (The New Yorker).

Before the Teddy bear, the toy market did not exist in the sense that it does now. For much of the nineteenth century, dolls were made at home from corn husks, clothing scraps, and the like, or produced from expensive, fragile bisque porcelain and kept high up on shelves to be admired by grownup collectors, not pawed by clumsy kids. Most children had marbles, hoops, balls, and little else. Few people bought toys from stores. The success of the Teddy bear changed that...

Here's the book under discussion: "Playmakers: The Jewish Entrepreneurs Who Created the Toy Industry in America" (commission earned).

"President Peña of Paraguay is here.... Young, handsome guy. It’s always nice to be young and handsome."

"Doesn’t mean we have to like you. I don’t like young, handsome men. Women, I like. Men, I don’t have any interest."

Said Trump — at the Board of Peace event yesterday — quoted by The Daily Mail in "CNN host caught in hot-mic anti-Trump slip up as her colleagues rush to cover for her."

The inane headline refers to the way Sara Sidnar, on hearing that quote, said — and this is the whole quote from her — "What?"

Is that even anti-Trump?! Doesn't everyone say or at least think something along the lines of "What?" when they hear that?

I think we can hope for a lip synch from Bransen Gates. It's excellent material for him:

Trump gets out ahead of Obama on the subject of aliens — extraterrestrial aliens.

Yesterday, Peter Doocy prompted Trump with the same question Obama recently answered: "Barack Obama said that aliens are real. Have you seen any evidence of non-human visitors to Earth?" 

Trump did not answer the question asked:

 

Trump focused on Obama's behavior: "Well, he gave classified information. He's not supposed to be doing that."

The reporter's mind cranked quickly through the implications: "So aliens are real?!!"

Trump: "Well, I don't know if they're real or not. I can tell you he gave classified information. He's not supposed to be doing that. He made a big mistake. He took it out of classified information. No, I don't have an opinion on it. I don't talk about it."

There's a lot going on there. Trump continued to try to put the focus on Obama's behavior.

"... president... jailed for life for leading insurrection...."

Full headline, in The Guardian: "South Korea’s former president Yoon Suk Yeol jailed for life for leading insurrection/Ex-leader sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour over failed martial law declaration in 2024."

The Seoul central district court found that Yoon’s declaration of martial law on 3 December 2024 constituted insurrection, carried out with the intent to disrupt the constitutional order. Judge Jee Kui-youn said the purpose was “to send troops to the national assembly to blockade the assembly hall and arrest key figures, including the assembly speaker and party leaders, thereby preventing lawmakers from gathering to deliberate or vote.” In sentencing Yoon on Thursday, the court pointed to his lack of apology throughout the proceedings, his unjustified refusal to attend hearings, and the massive social costs his actions inflicted on South Korean society....

Sunrise — 6:52, 6:52, 6:58.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"Gonna go to the place that's the best..."

"[Tyra Banks] spends half the docuseries explaining how she was intimately, minutely involved in every brilliant aspect of the show, but her memory suddenly goes foggy..."

"... when she’s asked about trash parts. Shandi’s horrific experience in Milan? She didn’t know anything about that, she insists. The blackface? Her unique way of showing that all skin tones were beautiful. The show was just a product of its times, she insists: 'You guys were demanding it.'Were we? I don’t personally recall ringing up Les Moonves to say that I wanted to see 12 young women get knocked over by swinging pendulums and wear dresses made of raw beef, but who can remember — it was a long time ago in the fog of war."

From "We knew ‘America’s Next Top Model’ was cruel. We watched it anyway. Yet another documentary exposes how popular culture failed women 20 years ago. What made this acceptable entertainment?" (WaPo).

Here's the trailer for that new Netflix documentary:

"Watch out, girl dinners, the boys have found their own culinary niche, and it’s like dog food but worse."

"While the lady chow of internet fame consists of no-cook, low-effort meals (cheese, biscuits etc), TikTok has now revealed what men eat when on a diet: boy kibble. While I hate to ruin Brooklyn Beckham’s next cooking video, to make boy kibble you need an unseasoned batch of ground beef and very little else."

From "Men may call it a ‘protein-rich bowl’. I call it boy kibble/Meaty snacks are trending online for blokes. Please no, says Eilidh Dorgan" (London Times).

Here's the kind of thing she's talking about:

Why hasn't AI gone through all the Epstein files and organized the info into something enlightening?

I'm wondering.

I see that The Economist used AI to analyze the Epstein files, and we got "Inside Epstein's Network/What 1.4m emails reveal about America’s most notorious sex offender":

[A] group of software engineers has turned the PDFs into a format that is easier to analyse. Using Reducto, an AI tool, they have identified which files contained emails; extracted the listed senders, recipients, dates, subjects and message bodies; and posted them on a website called Jmail.world. In total, the group processed 1.4m emails, finishing its work on February 11th. The Economist has collaborated with it to assign each message to unique individuals regardless of spellings or email addresses, and researched the backgrounds of the 500 people who appear most often. We then used a large language model (LLM) to score each email chain on how disturbing its content would be to a typical reader, creating an “alarm index.”... 

The real victim is Jasmine Crockett.

I'm reading "The Colbert-CBS spat is about overregulation/Keeping the equal-time rule in place is a political choice" — gift link. That's by the Editorial Board of The Washington Post.

I remember writing about FCC regulation when I was a law student — I graduated in 1981 — and even back then the argument was made that times have changed and the basis for regulation — the scarcity of the airwaves — was being overtaken by technology — then, cable TV. I remember using the phrase "based on a future that has not yet arrived," because cable TV was expensive and it wasn't even available everywhere. But now, it's 45 years later, and the FCC is still pressuring broadcast media avoid the most egregious sort of political imbalance.

The equal-time rule hasn’t been vigorously enforced in recent years, reflecting its obsolescence. But as with many outdated business regulations, Congress hasn’t bothered to revoke it.

They arrested Prince Andrew!

"Live Updates: U.K. Police Arrest Former Prince Andrew Over Epstein Ties, BBC Reports/The British police on Thursday arrested Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on suspicion of criminal activity linked to the Epstein files" (NYT).

The Thames Valley Police said in a statement that it had “arrested a man in his sixties from Norfolk on suspicion of misconduct in public office and are carrying out searches at addresses in Berkshire and Norfolk.” 

As British law requires, the police did not name the suspect, but the details provided in the police report match what is known about the public misconduct allegations. The police were seen on Thursday morning at the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, England, where Mr. Mountbatten-Windsor is living.

Sunrise — 6:53, 6:56, 6:57, 6:58.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"Some people don’t sleep enough because they have insomnia, or work a night shift; they tend to struggle with exhaustion, cognitive impairment..."

"... and even long-term health issues, such as elevated rates of depression and a higher risk of heart attack. But short sleepers, who make up less than one per cent of the population, spend significantly less time snoozing without any apparent health consequences. 'Growing up, we didn’t realize that there was anything different about us,' [Joanne] Osmond told me. Only in 2011 did she learn that she has a genetic variation linked to short sleep. Her sisters, who were tested in 2019, have variations in the same gene. Osmond, now seventy-seven, sleeps no more than four hours a night...."

From "Why Some People Thrive on Four Hours of Sleep/Short sleepers, who make up less than one per cent of the population, spend significantly less time snoozing without any apparent health consequences" (The New Yorker).

"Let my spirit carry me.../'Til I'm free/Oh, Lord, through the revolution..."

"With the Epstein files, searching for almost any word can lead to some interesting or weird or confusing or awful or misleading insight."

"It could also lead to some random person’s lunch order. Any single file, deciphered and placed in the right context, could be some important something no one else has yet brought to light. It could also just be spam from Epstein’s junk folder, or cryptic inside-joke gibberish that will soon become fodder for a conspiracy theory no one will ever be able to debunk. Even an AI-powered dissertation on what’s in all this bulk data might be volume length. It took years to get ahold of just more than half of the millions of known Epstein files. It may take just as long, or longer, to fully understand what they mean."

From "Making Sense of the Epstein Files, One Disturbing Search at a Time" (NY Magazine).

"Last summer, Tom Wong was working at the Chubby Crab... when a regular... ordered a combo.... and ate it at a table near the door, muttering to herself in between bites."

"Mr. Wong, 32, didn’t think anything of it. But a few days later, another customer came in and asked for a selfie. Then the asks kept coming. He had been recorded without his knowledge using a lentil-size camera embedded in a pair of Meta Ray-Ban glasses. The resulting video had been viewed more than two million times on TikTok, turning Mr. Wong and the restaurant into unwitting stars. 'At a certain point, I stopped working in the front of the restaurant,' he said. 'It was really uncomfortable.' To be in public is to risk being filmed. And these days, there’s a good chance it’s happening surreptitiously with smart glasses.... Servers, owners and customers can end up as captive participants...."

From "Dinner Is Being Recorded, Whether You Know It or Not/As Meta smart glasses capture scenes in restaurants for social media, service workers and customers are becoming captive participants" (NYT).

"Cow Licking."

I've been a huge admirer of Georgia O'Keeffe since I first saw the Life Magazine article "Georgia O'Keeffe, on the Ghost Ranch." That was 1968, and I was 17. I've looked at so many of her pictures, in person and in books, but I had never seen "Cow Licking" until this morning. 

I love it. Don't you? But let me tell you how I happened to run across it this morning. It was 5:43 a.m., and I'd been downstairs in breakfast-and-blog mode for a while when I got this text from upstairs:

Well, the Book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy
The law of the jungle and the sea are your only teachers
In the smoke of the twilight on a milk-white steed
Michelangelo indeed could've carved out your features
Resting in the fields, far from the turbulent space
Half asleep near the stars with a small dog licking your face

I know what that is. It's Meade, sending me a Bob Dylan lyric and boldfacing the part about a small dog licking the face of whoever "you" is. Who is this person whose only teachers — law professors — are Leviticus, Deuteronomy, the jungle, and the sea? He rode in on a white horse, he's buff and handsome, and now he's lolling about in a field with a small dog licking his face. Maybe you remember being told that this song, "Jokerman," is about Jesus.

I don't know about that. I see that Dylan said it was something "mystical" that came upon him down there in the Caribbean — something "inspired by these spirits they call jumbis."

I didn't get far into that because Meade texted "What is that famous painting?" And he didn't mean that Dürer painting that is the first image in the "Jokerman" video, that image that just about everyone thinks is Jesus but is the artist himself, Albrecht Dürer:

Meade was thinking about something else: "Black man, lying supine on desert sand with stars above and a small dog."

I immediately thought of Henri Rousseau's "Sleeping Gypsy":

Yes, that's not a dog. It made me think of this scene in a Chaplin movie I'd watched upstairs last night while Meade was watching basketball downstairs:

Texting this morning from upstairs, Meade thought it might be a different Rousseau painting. I found "La Noce," which has a "comically oversized and awkward" dog that, we're told, takes "the eye deep into the composition" and asserts the artist's "position as the master of spatial paradox."

I text-typo'd "that’s the only rousseau with a god that i found."

I asked Grok, "What's that famous painting with a dog licking a person's face." And then "Is there ANY famous painting showing any kind of tongue-licking?" and "Dog or person or other animal — now I'm just looking for licking. I'm thinking licking isn't seen as something worth painting — too in-the-moment and active to be frozen into a still image. But maybe somebody did it. All I can think of is that Rolling Stones logo."

And that's how I found "Cow Licking."

UNANSWERED QUESTION: Why did Meade send me that Dylan lyric and boldface "with a small dog licking your face"? I think it had something to do with the rumor that Mayor Mamdani has a secret plan to run all the dogs out of New York City.

Juiciest dog rumor since "They're eating the dogs."

Sunrise — 6:32, 6:38, 6:42, 6:56.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

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

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

Hangings.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Writes Trump at Truth Social.

Trump seizes the opportunity to take credit for himself: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Goodbye to Jesse Jackson.

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

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

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

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

From the Washington Post obituary: 

Sunrise — 6:35, 6:58, 6:58, 6:59.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

Goodbye to Frederick Wiseman.

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

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

Goodbye to Robert Duvall.

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

Why there he is:

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

5 things I've been finding unbloggable.

1. Nancy Guthrie, still missing.

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

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

4. Marco in Munich. 

5. Obama and the aliens.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The role is Erda, in "Siegfried."

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

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

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

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

Answer:

Least NEW! thing promoted as "NEW!"

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

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

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

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

Write about anything you want in the comments.

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

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

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

Come on and find it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump continues:

Sunrise — 6:51, 6:57, 7:06, 7:06.

Write about whatever you like in the comments..

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Yummy Valentine's sunrise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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