Sunrise.

"The A.I. Kill Switch Act requires commercial-scale A.I.s to have a built-in 'kill' option."

"When I first heard of the bill, I envisioned a government employee’s finger hovering over a cartoonish red button reading 'KILL,' but my imagination outpaced the legislative text. Rather, the 'switch' would reside inside the labs — that is, at OpenAI, or Anthropic, or similar — with D.H.S. acting as an external monitor. If a threatening incident like the Hugging Face hack occurred, D.H.S. could issue a stop command and the researchers would be forced to comply...." 

Writes Stephen Witt, author of "The Thinking Machine," in "This Is Really Bad" (NYT gift link).

I think the kill switch looks something like this:

The Clancy holdout was the only nonwhite person on the jury, and he was a black man.

NEW: Lindsay Clancy juror Paula Devlin reveals on 'CBS Mornings' that the lone, male holdout juror who voted to find Clancy guilty of murdering her children was the *only* person of color -- a black man.

The 11 not-guilty jurors -- who hectored him for a week to cave -- were all… pic.twitter.com/5qirHNGCyx

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 11, 2026

Imagine how this man felt, how he feels now. The white people all ganged up on him, accused him of being inarticulate and incoherent, impermeable to reason. What a pressure cooker!

***

"Whoa. I have to sit with that for just a second" — Gayle King. Amazing that she was surprised by that. Weren't there pre-interviews to smoke things like that out? Or did they know, mean to suppress it, then realize they needed to get it out and chose Gayle King to perform the necessary theater? If so, she's an excellent actress! She really seems blindsided.

ADDED: Meanwhile, on Oprah's show, a black woman expresses the concern that black women who kill their children will not receive the same compassion that was shown to Lindsay Clancy:

"I’m real and these are my real beliefs. You could ask your xAI researchers about me if you hadn’t fired them."

Said Jacob Coxon, after Elon Musk wrote "Seems like a setup."

Quoted in "AI researcher who warned of ‘disaster’ is now a target of the right/Critics accuse Jacob Coxon of being a plant after he warned of looming 'disaster'" (WaPo)

Coxon is the person we were talking about yesterday, in that post about the belief that A.I. might end the world in the next 10 years. I've updated that post with a video about how instantly Coxon's post went viral, boosted by Bernie Sanders and various high-level Democrats.

Now, reading WaPo, I see that video is part of what's now being disparaged as right-wing targeting. Does WaPo acknowledge what came from Bernie and the Democrats? It interviews Coxon, who is paraphrased saying "he didn’t work with any organizations to promote his announcement before posting it on X."

Loopholes may be found in the words "work," "organizations," and "before." Did he do something other than "work"? Did he work with individuals, e.g. Bernie Sanders, rather than organizations? Did he work with organizations/individuals after he posted? I don't know. I just see the weasel words, WaPo.

I hate to see this issue turn into a left/right face off! Reminds me of climate change. So unhelpful. 

ADDED: From the WaPo article: "[Coxon] faced accusations, with little evidence, from people on the political right claiming that he was a plant meant to scare lawmakers into clamping down on the industry." With little evidence? That means there is evidence, or they'd have used their favorite anti-right-wing phrase, "without evidence."

"Mr. Vance’s scripted, more traditional political delivery cut a sharp contrast with the freewheeling and improvisational style of Mr. Trump."

"In fact, it was Mr. Vance’s unscripted response to the protester, who unfurled Mexican and Palestinian flags, that appeared to most energize the crowd. 'My friend, if you love Mexico so much, get your ass over there,' the vice president said, sending the crowd roaring. 'I’ll buy you the plane ticket.'"

From "Vance, Eying 2028, Relishes the Spotlight at Trump’s Convention/The vice president, widely seen as a potential White House candidate, sought to use his speech in Dallas to show a more personal side to the MAGA faithful" (NYT gift link).

"Look, I was in a bar once, and a guy suddenly comes over and starts shouting, 'I’m going to break your f***ing face.'"

"Now in a situation like this, an intelligent guy, a guy like your husband, Tina, is not what I need. I need my guy Keith here. Know what he did with that crazy guy? He BROKE HIS WRIST LIKE A TWIG."

Said Donald Trump, explaining why he had bodyguards, to Tina Brown, on September 10, 2001.

Quoted in "Tina Brown: what Donald Trump said to me the night before 9/11/The night before, the magazine editor was at a fashion show chatting to the future president. The next morning came the horror of the Twin Towers, writes the commentator in an article first published in her Fresh Hell newsletter" (London Times).

Lots more at the link, ending with this summary of 9/11, which I think is the conventional wisdom: "That single moment of terror that brought us together splintered rapidly. We’ve institutionalized distrust and suspicion; we’ve cultivated paranoia. Paradoxically, perhaps, that period of outraged unification led inevitably to the seemingly insuperable partisan divide we now find ourselves facing. Not long after 9/11, Facebook was born, then YouTube and Instagram, and, at first, it felt as if these might become community-making phenomena, safe spaces. Instead, as the iterations of social media pile up and the voices on them multiply, we live in a cacophony of chaos. Celebrity culture, far from fading, has become the only culture we know, its ultimate expression now incinerating the White House."

It is the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks.

That's my photograph, taken in the evening, in 2007, when a low cloud kept the memorial lights from projecting upward and the light spread horizontally.

The quarter-century mark feels important — I was 50 when it happened, I'm 75 now — but I will repeat what I said in 2022: "I don't like terrorists squatting on the calendar, forcing us into darkness every 365 days. We must honor the dead? But if we truly ordered our life around honoring the dead, every day of the year would be a somber day of commemoration. Instead, we have a scattering of death days on the American calendar. Why those and not others? What interests are served by keeping those horrendous events fresh in our mind and not others?"

There is always a low cloud keeping us from seeing the full picture. 

Sunrise.

Open thread in the comments.

"There's something about when [women who don't have kids] get past the reproductive age that they get like very invested in politics."

"It's, like, you don't even have a world to protect. You don't have children. So you don't have a world to make better for the children. And you got maybe 20 years left, right?... You'll be 77/78 years old and you'll probably be basically dead.... So why are you so invested in all the other people's problems of the world when your life is a fucking mess? Because you've infantilized the world. You've turned the culture into your children and that's why they're scolding. That's the scolding aspect that you get... And... from men that don't have children. They get older, they get a there's a scolding political aspect of it. They never had children. Instead of just, like, having opinions on things and being able to debate your opinions of why you think that way, there's a scolding of people who disagree...."

A theory of gender politics, from Joe Rogan.

The idea seems to be that women — not all women, but most — are natural scolds, and if they don't have children to scold, they're going to range freely, looking for adults to scold.

"Whenever something is exclusive, limited and luxurious, automatically consumer psychology wants it."

"It’s like handbags. Why is someone buying a Chanel versus that? It’s not because of the leathers. It’s to show that they have a Chanel and they can afford it."

Says Nabila Popal, a director of a market research firm, quoted in "Foldable Phones Are Unpopular. Why Is Apple Selling One? The company unveiled a new iPhone that costs $1,999. Here are the economics behind that price tag" (NYT gift link).

I think some high-priced things evoke laughter and You bought that?!

To get you started thinking of some of these things, I found "Wastes of Money Sold to You by Luxury Retailers" (Cheapism). I kind of want the hippopotamus sofa.

"A male juror in the mistrial of Lindsay Clancy said the lone holdout... wrapped one of the exercise bands the mom used to kill her children around a water bottle..."

"... to mimic their strangulation in the deliberation room. Juror number 10 Nick Dargie said the holdout had every right to his opinion but that the reenactment using the same exercise bands left the room speechless. 'I was so shocked. We’re not here to play detective – it’s not a game of Clue. This is serious,' Dargie, 25, the fifth juror to come forward in the macabre case out of Duxbury, Mass., told ABC’s 'GMA'.... 'I asked him why are you doing that? That’s a band that was used to strangle a child. That’s disgusting.'"

The NY Post reports.

"We'll work with President Trump to fight and defend the steel way of life, right here in the Steel Valley."

Said Democratic Senator John Fetterman, by video, at the GOP convention, introducing a man he called "my friend," Pennsylvania's Republican senator, Dave McCormick.

"We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans. I personally think it is greater than 10% within the next decade."

ADDED: Who is that guy, Jacob Coxon? He came out of nowhere, and his post was quickly retweeted by many prominent Democrats:

"Trump pledges $5,000 ‘dividend’ to all US adults if the GOP wins the midterms/It was not immediately clear how the plan would be financed."

Politico reports.

Is that, like, a satire of what Democrats do?

Here's how he put it: "I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000, very much like a successful company will do a cash distribution to its shareholders or like last year when I gave our great members of the military $1,776."

I remember getting thousands of dollars during the pandemic....

"Supreme Court Again Blocks Republican-Backed Missouri Voting Map."

"The ruling deferred to Missouri’s state Supreme Court, which had invalidated G.O.P.-friendly district lines, saying voters must first have an opportunity to approve the map in a statewide referendum."

NYT gift link.

Everybody is a star.

Ducks in this morning's sunrise, by Meade:

The song — "Everybody Is a Star" — came up in conversation just now. The tag suggestions for the first post of the day included George Prescott Bush, and I was wondering whatever happened to him. Remember when he was the anointed one? As Grok put it: "Bilingual son of a Mexican-born mother, Navy Reserve tour in Afghanistan, Rice and UT Law, telegenic, already campaigning for family members as a teenager. Consultants in the 2000s literally nicknamed him '47.'" He was like Schlossberg. Maybe people don't like an heir apparent. We prefer somebody who came out of nowhere. 

"The sad thing is a third of our nation has no clue what we're talking about."

"They haven't — they never witnessed the sacrifice and the courage and the dedication to serve a neighbor in need."

ADDED: The full appearance:

This morning's sunrise, in the rain.

This post is tonight's open thread. Scroll down for the 7th anniversary of the sunrise project, with the 19 best photos of the year — here.

Isolated Transient Alexia, Part 2.

No, I didn't have another incident, though I did run into another sentence that powerfully resisted reading. From Reddit:

But I did have to add an update to Monday's post, "Isolated Transient Alexia — a migrainous accompaniment — ever had it?":

The various doctors would not simply accept my opinion that this was an isolated transient alexia — a migrainous accompaniment. They had to see it as a possible TIA. Not only were various tests ordered up, but even the best results don't eliminate the possibility that it was a TIA and so the cautious approach is to assume that it was.

September 9th is the anniversary of the sunrise project here on the Althouse blog.

The traditional celebration is to post my favorite sunrises of the year. Here they are, in chronological order. Click through to see the precise date. 

"He’s clearly trying to make it easier for them financially to work in government service at the White House. You can’t do that."

Said Richard Painter, "the former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush and a critic of Trump."

Quoted in "Trump gave $45,000 cash gifts to Natalie Harp, two other close aides/Financial disclosures released by the administration show the sums were equivalent to nearly one-third of each of their salaries" (WaPo).

"It’s not like tipping the doorman on Fifth Avenue," Painter said. "These are U.S. government employees. If you want a job where you get tips, you shouldn’t be working for the U.S. government."

"This vision of an endlessly shrinking U.S. population will seem foreboding to many Americans. Yet it is essential to realize..."

"... that depopulation, if and when it comes, doesn’t preclude ever-greater prosperity — thanks to the remarkable 'human-ingenuity-driven' nature of modern economic development. Already humanity proved it could cheat Malthus during a population explosion. Since 1968, world population has more than doubled. Yet contrary to British demographer Thomas Malthus’s famous prediction, the world today is better fed, healthier and richer than ever.... We have figured out how to increase human productivity under more or less any material circumstances.... In the era of rapid population growth, that meant figuring out how to make essential resources inexpensively available for consumption. In an aging, shrinking world, it will mean increasing productivity through 'workaround' improvements in knowledge production, human capital (i.e., health and skills) and a propitious 'business climate' to help unlock the value in human beings...."

Writes Nicholas Eberstadt, of the American Enterprise Institute, in "Can a depopulating America still flourish? Births and immigration are slowing at the same time. The U.S. isn't ready for what that means" (WaPo gift link).

"We’re building a rocket ship as we fly it."

Said Michelle Lujan Grisham, the Governor of New Mexico, quoted in "One year into free child care in New Mexico, too many kids and not enough slots/In a first-in-the-nation experiment with universal child care, demand is outpacing availability and costs are soaring" (WaPo).

Last September, Lujan Grisham took the final step, announcing that New Mexico would be the first to open its subsidized day care to any family, a move estimated to save families $13,000 a year per child.... The announcement was met with applause and cheers, but behind the scenes, state legislators — who said they had not been informed that the program would become universal — were confounded, along with some members of the department’s own staff.

“We were all shocked,” said state Sen. George Muñoz, a Democrat and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. “Nobody knew about it until the day it was in the paper. All of a sudden we were all calling each other, saying, ‘Where did this come from?’ ‘Did anybody from the governor’s office talk to you about it?’ Nope, we were all in the dark.”...

"How all baseball announcers sound."

I like how the one word you can understand is "Moriarty" (that guy's name is Moriarty).

"Her heart’s desire included a $400 sea-foam green jacket from the New York Liberty women’s basketball team that reads 'New York or Nowhere.'"

She'd had more than $200,000 in student loans, but qualified for loan forgiveness, so "One thing I did is I gifted myself an extra loan payment for whatever my heart desired."

She is New York City Council member Tiffany Cabán, who "spends much of her day thinking about how to address New York City’s affordability crisis," and rents a two-and-a-half-bedroom place in Astoria, "where she lives with her rescue dog Ducky."

I'm reading the latest entry in the NYT series "Affording New York," "How a City Council Member Lives on $148,500 in Queens" (gift link, with photos of Cabán place and her dog and her jacket).

It is a nice jacket for a City Council member, and it's nice that she has season tickets to the game ($5,000), and that her salary is going up from $148,500 to $175,500, after she and other council members voted them a raise. Well earned, no? You wouldn't want to try to live in NYC for only $148,500.

The jacket's slogan is "It will Always be New York or Nowhere." You know that wonderful New York feeling: every place else is nowhere. It reminds me of my old saying: Better than nothing is a high standard. But acquiring nothing leaves you intact as a living human being, and you save whatever money you'd have spent on that item that's not better than nothing. But with "New York or Nowhere," it seems you cease to exist if you can't swing life in New York. Life without being in New York is not better than nothing. It's nowhere. 

"He had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children."

There will never be a more obvious sentence to look back on and explain the insanity of our times than the following…

“He had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children." pic.twitter.com/i7dnLg2MlE

— Tandy (@dantypo) September 8, 2026

Said one of the Lindsay Clancy jurors, Kellie Farina, about the holdout juror.

She's quoted in "Three Jurors in Clancy Trial Describe Frustration With Holdout/The three jurors, who voted to acquit Lindsay Clancy of murder, described the tense deliberations in an interview with a Boston TV station" (NYT gift link).

CORRECTION: I'd connected the quote to one of the other jurors who spoke to the press.

ALSO: Another juror "said that the holdout 'completely disregarded' information that nurses on the jury provided to help interpret medical reports from the hospital where Ms. Clancy stayed after she killed her children." Wasn't the juror at least entitled to reject extraneous "information" from an unsworn witness?

Sunrise.

"At these gatherings, even the most peculiar activities are turned into celebration. Beyond amusement, though, I was searching..."

"... for proof that in an age of social isolation and online disconnection, people still hold on to the traditions that bring them together and make their hometowns unmistakably theirs. While I was in Sopchoppy, I asked Gary Revell, 74, why he still grunts for worms. He told me that the times he goes out at dawn in the forest behind his house, the sunlight filtering through the pines, are when he feels closest to God...."

Writes the photographer Nat Segebre, in "The Strange, Hyperlocal Customs of the Country" (NYT gift link)(lots of oddball photos at the link).

That very weird trailer for the Nathan Fielder documentary about Elizabeth Holmes.

Extreme close-up Holmes: "I don't have anything to deceive you on. Of course, I'm not deceiving you. I'm engaging with you as a human being. Why would I deceive you?"

I don't know whose face is more disturbing, hers or Fielder's. 

Here's the NYT article about the film: "Elizabeth Holmes Documentary Upends Telluride Film Festival/The comic Nathan Fielder and the filmmaker Lance Oppenheim teamed up to interview the convicted executive for 'You Can See Everything.'"

"Police set a dog on the two thieves, who were wearing masks and gloves. They dropped the two paintings in the museum’s garden..."

"... before escaping through a hole in the fence. One of the works abandoned was an 1895 portrait of Madame Stephen Pichon, according to Caroline Amat, the deputy mayor of Cagnes-sur-Mer. The second abandoned painting has not yet been named."

From "Thieves steal four Renoirs — and drop two while fleeing/Works worth millions of euros, taken in the early hours from a museum near Nice dedicated to the painter, are missing" (London Times).

Here's Madame Pichon, pinched in her yellow dress, seemingly knowing she'd be the one the dog-chased thieves would drop in the garden:

But really, you should see the ones they got away with. They're material for the old "Renoir Sucks at Painting" Instagram account. I deplore all theft, and the theft of unique objects is a special problem. And yet....

"In France, we do not ask women to erase themselves. No dogma, no religion is above the laws of the Republic."

Wrote Aurore Bergé, France’s minister for gender equality. And "hard-right" presidential candidate Marine Le Pen said France would "never accept that women’s presence be 'limited.'"

Quoted in "Strike at Eiffel Tower after female staff ‘told to be out of sight’/Women workers at the Paris landmark were allegedly told to make themselves scarce for a visit by representatives of a Hindu religious ­organisation" (London Times).

The Hindu group is BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha, which, we are told, "is close to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling conservative Hindu nationalist party."

Who owns and operates the Eiffel Tower? You might wonder: Isn't it the French government? It is the government of the City of Paris, operating through a public company called the Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel. The Hindu group asked the Society of Exploitation to limit its interaction with women, and the Society told its female employees to make themselves invisible.

ADDED: Here's a gift link to the NYT article on this story. Excerpt:

Sunrise.

"Mr. Field found his calling by happenstance. As a newly enlisted soldier boarding a troop train during World War II, he was handed a bag..."

"... by a Red Cross worker. It contained a toothbrush, a comb, a candy bar and an anthology of poetry. 'I was on that train for three days,' he said in a 2022 interview for this obituary. 'I read it over and over. I knew immediately that I was going to be a poet. He was just 18 and had never read a book of poetry...."

From "Edward Field, Bohemian New York Poet, Dies at 102/His colloquial language, emotionality and gay topics brought him widespread praise, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship and other literary honors" (NYT gift link).

I'd like to see that anthology. It seems that the book was "The Pocket Book of Verse: Great English and American Poems," which contained 249 poems by 77 poets:

"'Every day, another church is sold,' said Lilian Grootswagers-Theuns, the president of the advisory board for Future for Religious Heritage.... 'This is happening everywhere in Europe...'"

"'... in Germany, Sweden, Spain and Italy. It’s already going very fast,' she said. 'But now we’re going fast-forward. Now, there’s a tsunami coming.' Churches, once central to European cultural life, were typically situated in the heart of a city and built to last. 'Before you even had the nations, you had a European tradition going back to the fourth century of having a church for each city, each village,' said Barbara Welzel, a professor of art history and cultural education.... These days, parishes may merge or unused churches be sold for private use, like homes or hotels. Sometimes communities rally to save their local church buildings and use them as tourist sites, cultural venues or health care centers. Some priests simply walk away. 'In some churches, they really throw away the key,” [Hedwig Fijen, the director of the 'roving art biennial' Manifesta, said.] 'I’ve found sacred objects in the garbage bin.'"

From "What to Do With Europe’s 'Zombie Churches'? These Artists Have Some Ideas. As the continent’s ties to Christianity fade, churches are being abandoned. But some see a chance to transform them into communal spaces like care centers or venues for the arts" (NYT gift link).

"Mr. Godin — 'pie-eyed, pudding-faced and potbellied,' in one writer’s description — was a pain in the derrière most of his life, beginning in Catholic school when he complained to the priests about his lackluster sex life."

From "Noël Godin, Prankster Who Threw Pies at the Powerful, Dies at 80/Splattering figures like Bill Gates, Jean-Luc Godard and Bernard-Henri Lévy, he perfected the art of using whipped cream as a form of protest" (NYT gift link).

A quote from Godin: 

“I have always remained true to the spirit of May ’68. I still live for that time and have always advocated direct sabotage, the sabotage of the professions, the sabotage of the roles into which we are trapped by our day-to-day boredom."

I thought pie-throwers had all switched to shaving cream — just a pie tin full of shaving cream. Did Godin remain pure?

"We use only the finest patisserie, ordered at the last minute from small local bakers,” Mr. Godin told The Observer, a British newspaper, in 1995. "Quality is everything. If things go wrong, we eat them."

Isolated Transient Alexia — a migrainous accompaniment — ever had it?

JAMA Neurology abstract: "Alexia as a transient or paroxysmal neurologic event is a rare clinical finding. John Hughlings Jackson made reference to the paroxysmal occurrence of 'word blindness' as a temporary sequela of neuronal exhaustion at an epileptogenic focus.... A transient episode of alexia in the absence of accompanying neurologic deficit is exceedingly rare.... We recently observed a patient who experienced an isolated, transient alexia that appears to have been a migrainous accompaniment...."

I suspect this happened to me. Here's what I was trying to read and could not make any sense of it, and I struggled from all different angles: "The Story of the Foul-Mouthed Parrot Andrew Jackson Once Had" (an episode of a podcast I like: "Boring History for Sleep"). 

Now, I think that's a type of headline that is objectively hard to puzzle out. I encountered another one this morning in the NY Post: "Missouri foster mom accused of trading teen for monkey avoids prison." Something about the sequence "monkey avoids prison" sends your thoughts tripping over the precipice. 

But that "Foul-Mouth Parrot" headline was entirely undecipherable to me. I searched for an entry point: What is "Story"? What is "Andrew"? "Foul"? I couldn't even think of how to begin to pronounce those words or how words work together to mean something. This not-knowing lasted for about 15 minutes, and of course, I queried A.I. about it. That was after Meade had consulted a different A.I.

And I believe all A.I.s will tell you the same thing if you put this story into it — not the story of Andrew Jackson's parrot or the story of the foster mom's monkey — the story of a reading human suddenly completely unable to read. And we did what A.I. told us to do. That's why there was no sunrise photo yesterday. Our sleep was massively disrupted. I had to get my head examined.

ADDED: I omitted a crucial detail that is why I was thinking in terms of a migrainous accompaniment. About an hour before the alexia, I experienced a scintillating scotoma — a glittering arc'd zigzag in my visual field. I've had that twice before, in 2004 and 2014. In 2014, I treated it as nothing, but it felt like a big deal in 2004. I blogged it as "My scotoma" (deliberately evoking "My Sharona"):

"I am a virgin. I grew up with no friends. I didn't have anyone growing up besides my two girlfriends that I'm still very close with today...."

"And I didn't like like I didn't do extracurricular activities. Like I didn't go out. I didn't have fun. Like I was just school home school home. So like I never had a relationship with anyone. And then I started working. I was serving for about four years at a mom and pop restaurant. I was a waitress.... And then now I'm here and I'm just waiting for the right person. But now everyone knows me and it's like weird. So like I'm trying to date but it's going to be a little weird now. It's hard. It's hard now. So I'm just waiting for the right person. Worth it. You know I'm waiting. Worth 100 million...."

Said Sophie Rain, the 21-year-old biggest moneymaker on "Only Fans," talking to the 70-year-old Bill Maher for nearly 2 hours. Creepy? Or is this helpful insight into a business you ought to understand? She's made $100 million. And yet: lonely! 

But you know the answer when people are so remote and loveless. Animals! She's all:

I love animals. That's what I want to do is I just want to live on a farm. That's that's the goal for me is to own a lot of land and just rescue animals. That's all I want to do....

Maher is all Me too. I love animals too. I'd just love to live on a farm too.

Animals are easy. People are hard. But what do you want from people? If you have 2 very close girlfriends, why would you say I grew up with no friends? 2 is so much more than zero. 2 very close friends seems like more than any number of remote friends. Or do you love remote friends... in social media?

IN THE COMMENTS: Leland writes: "Successful farms don't 'rescue' animals. They raise them, grow them, and then sell them..."

That's true for the restricted meaning of "farm," but there is an extended version of "farm" — watch and see who uses it — that's just a home in the heart of the country.

I want a horse/I want a sheep/I wanna get me a good night's sleep...

Elegant presence of mind in baseball.

Just for the joy of it:

Payton Tolle is the gift that keeps on giving 😭 pic.twitter.com/jaPwFhr3i8

— MLB (@MLB) September 6, 2026

And a effective perception that an out is right there waiting to be had:

1000 IQ play here by Joe Mack pic.twitter.com/kDTsrdZpPS

— Miami Marlins (@Marlins) September 6, 2026

The White House is taunting.

pic.twitter.com/Jh3DHXnflT

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) September 6, 2026

"The tone of your question was a little bit like Why haven't you done every single impossible thing possible?"

I thought @jaredkushner gave a spot on magnificent answer to the really nasty-toned question from @RichardEngel . Kudos to Jared 👏👏👏👏👏 pic.twitter.com/JNk6USUvqq

— Todd Headlee (@ToddHeadleeAZ) September 7, 2026

Sunrise, Monday morning.

Video by Meade, just now.

At the Pictureless Café...

... you can talk all night.

The tilted hat, Part 2.

Now both Cardinals and Rockies players are wearing their hats crooked in protest.

This is the shit. pic.twitter.com/viy4cVD53h https://t.co/3ZXr97CKU0

— Jacob P.M.🌔 (@JacobBSpeaks) September 6, 2026

"Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner meet Zelensky on first visit to Ukraine’s capital following three hours of negotiations with President Putin in Moscow."

The London Times reports.

“The situation is of course not simple,” Putin said before the negotiations began. “We will do everything that depends on us to ensure the safety of the negotiation process and mediators such as yourselves,” he added.... 

Afterwards, Witkoff thanked Putin for the “incredible memories” from the visits to the Russian capital. “We were all talking about when we retire, we’ll have all these incredible stories and incredible memories, and yours will be right at the top of it all,” he told Putin....

Yuri Ushakov, a Kremlin aide, told reporters... “The talks ‌went beyond a mere exchange of views on resolving the ⁠Ukrainian crisis. Economic issues and potential major, mutually beneficial Russian-American projects were discussed in some detail.”

"[W]hen a man suddenly began to shout vulgarities and became violent... two other passengers, relying on zip ties, duct tape and sheer will, restrained the disruptive man until the authorities could board the plane and take him into custody."

I'm reading "Unruly Passenger Is Restrained With Duct Tape During a Flight/The passenger on an American Airlines flight began to shout vulgarities and then became violent on Thursday, the authorities said. That’s when two passengers stepped in" (NYT gift link).

Richard O’Lenick, 53, one of the passengers who restrained Mr. Lundeen, said in a phone interview on Saturday that Mr. Lundeen began to shout racial slurs at one of the flight attendants.... Mr. Lundeen struck the laptop of the man next to him, and then grabbed the man’s throat, Mr. O’Lenick said. When a woman in a seat ahead of the scuffle tried to intervene, Mr. Lundeen started to attack her as well.

That’s when Mr. O’Lenick and Juan Mejia...  jumped into action from their seats two rows ahead....

"The emergency request marks the latest turn in a dizzying legal fight over mail-in voting, even as states begin distributing mail-in ballots to voters."

"The upshot has become clear in recent days: It will be the Supreme Court that has the final say on President Trump’s plans to restrict mail voting in the midterms. It’s unclear how fast the justices will move and announce a ruling.... The Trump administration had already filed emergency request to the justices challenging a shorter-term pause [the trial judge] had imposed on the plan. But the trial court judge acted to extend her freeze before the justices ruled, necessitating a new request from the administration for Supreme Court action...."

I'm reading "Trump Administration Again Asks Supreme Court to Allow Mail Voting Restrictions/The filing puts the legality of the president’s push to impose limits on mail voting squarely before the justices even as states begin sending out ballots" (NYT gift link).

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments. I really missed comments yesterday! So glad to have them back. I know readers are still there, but it really means something to me to see your words.

"The Tetris Company, the company that owns the rights to the classic video game, denounced a clone of the game produced by the Trump administration that has the player block space aliens and zombies from crossing the U.S.-Mexican border."

I'm reading "Tetris Owner Denounces Trump White House Clone of Game/Responding to Build the Wall, an apparent copy of the retro video game, the Tetris Company said 'we take copyright infringement very seriously'" (NYT gift link).

Here's the "arcade" page at whitehouse.gov and, clicking through, here is the "Build the Wall" game that is, basically, Tetris. 

"Washington professor who parodied university 'land acknowledgment' wins $600K settlement."

FIRE reports.

It has become increasingly common in academia to encourage statements that formally recognize indigenous ties to the land. In December 2021, Reges criticized land acknowledgment statements in an email to faculty, and the next month he parodied UW’s model statement in his syllabus: “I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.” Reges’s statement was a nod to John Locke’s philosophical theory that property rights are established by labor, and a response to the Computer Science department’s recommendation that professors include the UW’s model statement in their syllabi. Reges objected to the political nature of the UW’s model statement and sought to demonstrate that there are competing views on the value of land acknowledgments.

That was retaliation and viewpoint discrimination [by the University] according to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The tilted hat.

"Grow the fuck up"

Cardinals manager Oli Marmol was furious with umpire Doug Eddings after Eddings told rookie pitcher Hancel Rincon to fix his hat in the middle of his MLB debut pic.twitter.com/3t3AitYsCX

— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) September 5, 2026

DETAILS: "Marmol ejected after rookie Rincon told to straighten hat out" (MLB).

“The batter [Rockies catcher Hunter Goodman] said, ‘Hey, can he wear his hat like that?’” [umpire Doug] Eddings recounted after the game. “I really didn't know, but it was really, really crooked. I asked the catcher to tell him to straighten his hat out, and the pitcher did. Nobody said anything until he gave up a couple runs.” 

Rincon said the comment didn’t distract him from his debut and that he didn’t argue with Eddings about his comment. “I had no idea why he told me to do it,” Rincon said through an interpreter. “It's fine.”...

“I had an issue with Doug,” [Cardinals manager Oliver] Marmol said... “Just Doug. He took it upon himself to tell our rookie pitcher the kid's ‘not going to wear his hat on my field that way.’ You got Dontrelle Willis, CC Sabathia, Pedro Strop -- plenty of guys that have worn it way more tilted. I have an issue with that. That's just a power-hungry move, in my opinion."

SIDETRACK: "The way you wear your hat..."

And I think of the 4th sentence of "Moby-Dick":

Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

"An Illinois mother allegedly hanged her 2-year-old son that she described as the 'anti-Christ' — hours after discussing the Lindsay Clancy case with friends...."

"Corie Walsh, 38, is facing first-degree murder charges after one of her neighbors found Walsh’s son, Barrett, hanging from the rafters in the family’s basement.... Walsh allegedly told investigators she killed her young son because he’s the 'anti-Christ' and 'devil,' according to prosecutors. Little Barrett was found with his feet off the ground, and a ligature around his neck.... Walsh was reportedly found lying in a bathtub, fully clothed and drenched in bloody water."

The New York Post reports.

Is this the new "Me Too" movement?

"Not everyone at the Anti-Capitalist Co-Working Club is an actual anti-capitalist...."

"The club isn’t for debating Marxist theory or organizing labor unions. For many, the name simply signified a set of values they believe are missing from modern work culture: rest, community and self-actualization.The club, which operates on Fridays out of a recently opened arts space called Living Room in Mount Pleasant and costs $20 per day, was founded last month as an alternative to the sort of co-working spaces that gained popularity after the pandemic — such as WeWork and Industrious that allowed remote workers a quiet place to log in outside of their homes. Unlike these spots, the Anti-Capitalist Co-Working Club explicitly rejects the 'grindset.'"

From "Even anti-capitalists need to work. Enter a different kind of co-working space. In a response to D.C. work culture, the Anti-Capitalist Co-Working Club invites people to spend their 9 to 5 in ways that reject the grind" (WaPo)(gift link).

$20 per day! Somebody's trying to make money. But who would join? You pay someone else to brand your doing your own work as anti-capitalist. But you're working! Maybe it's a way to get a sense of community with other women who are on the left. But you're working!

“Let’s all take a big breath together,” club organizer Sarah Stern said in a firm, gentle voice. The 20 or so people in the airy room inhaled slowly in unison, after a long stretch of silent work time....

In case you wondered why I said "women."

A typical session involves 90 minutes of independent work time followed by a lunch break, where Stern invites attendees to chat with neighbors by using prompt cards with questions like “What’s something you’ve unlearned about ‘hustle’ culture?” and “What’s your go-to ritual when you need to recharge?” Ninety more minutes include reminders to stretch and an art break....  An “art library” has supplies to paint, embroider or sew, including a jar filled with real cicada wings. The soft instrumental songs are akin to what one might hear in a yoga class....

How embarrassing! Credit to Stern for getting the Washington Post to write an article about her little capitalistic anti-capitalistic scheme for extracting $20 bills from ladies who long for a chance to make friends. 

Sunrise.

This is the open thread, but there's been trouble with the comments function all day, so it might look empty. Thanks to the few who are able to get through and keep the home fires burning. 

"The defense argued that Judge William Sullivan should investigate a lone holdout on the jury before declaring a mistrial..."

"... which would allow the prosecution to continue to pursue a murder conviction. A justice is expected to rule quickly."

The NYT reports on the impending declaration of a mistrial.

The day of intense courtroom drama was prompted by a message to the judge on Thursday from the jury’s foreperson. It said a lone holdout juror had acknowledged doubt about the case, but refused to follow the law. The note came on the sixth day of deliberations. Ms. Clancy’s lead lawyer, Kevin Reddington, said the foreperson indicated that the jury was split 11 to 1, with the majority ready to find his client not guilty.

UPDATE: Mistrial declared.  

"It's natural for dogs."

Take a side:

"Ken Paxton, you might not like the way he dresses, and I say this, it's so insulting to him, but I might as well say it."

"You might not like the way he looks. You might not love his look.... But he was the best Attorney General in the country, perhaps... and that speaks a lot louder than the suit he’s wearing that doesn’t look so great. Or anything frankly."

"The surrogate mother’s rights over the fetus she is carrying are greatly curtailed and she loses all rights to the baby she delivers."

Wrote Gloria Steinem, quoted by Kathryn Jean Lopez in "Gloria Steinem, a Voice Against Commercial Surrogacy" (National Review).

In 2019, when Andrew Cuomo sought to legalize commercial surrogacy, Steinem wrote:

A state that medicalizes and rents out female bodies — with third party profit as a motive and little or no regulation of risk to the women egg donors and surrogate wombs — jeopardizes a woman’s fundamental right to health and freedom and puts profit ahead of the long-term welfare of the fetus.

The use of the word "medicalizes" made me wonder what Steinem thought about hormone and surgical treatments for gender dysphoria.

Grok pointed me to her 1977 essay, "If the Shoe Doesn’t Fit, Change the Foot," where she expressed dismay that some people "surgically mutilate their own bodies" when what we need to change our ideas about sex roles.

The driver may be drunk, but it's the cop whose speech is slurred.

Oregon court throws out the charges:

Comments don't seem to be working for the last hour or so.

Even I can't comment. Maybe publishing this post will unclog things.

UPDATE: I still can't comment.

UPDATE 2: I asked Grok and was told this seems to be a general problem with Blogger. It recommended waiting. Please don't submit comments about how something's wrong with the comments. We don't want the sudden publication of 100 comments saying what's wrong with the comments. Feel free to submit comments that are on-topic comments. Hopefully, they'll come through later.

UPDATE 3: I tried to comment on that other blog of mine, the one that I linked to yesterday, The Time That Blog Forgot, and the comment would not publish. I take that as a good sign. Anyway, I'll continue putting up posts and move forward where forward motion is possible. We'll see what happens.

UPDATE 4: Another hour without comments. So lonely! I tried Meade's old blog, Puparazzo, but I couldn't comment there. That proves it's a Blogger problem, not a me problem (or a Meade problem). Good news. 

UPDATE 5: A comment got through — it's on the next post — but only one. I feel that help is on the way.

UPDATE 6: In the comments here, Wince suggests signing out and back in again. That didn't work for me.

UPDATE 7: I see that there are some comments, but I'm still not able to comment. I can see that Blogger is looking into the problem, and we bloggers seem to be just waiting. Hope things work out soon. 

This is like the way if you mock someone for making a typo, you'll make a typo.

But it's far worse:

The guys at @PodSaveAmerica laugh at JD Vance for not knowing what the academic definition of a blood libel is—and then immediately demonstrate that they know even less about it than he does...

Instant Karma. pic.twitter.com/LFN6HY6rAx

— H.A. Hazony (@HAHazony) September 3, 2026

There's so much blood in the old stories, so much blood to choose from. They ALL get confused. The term "blood libel" is specific, but there is seemingly very little awareness of what it refers too. Over time, where there is misuse, does the meaning broaden? Actually, it can. It's called "extended use."

And the OED entry for "blood libel" recognizes the original and the extended use: "The (unfounded) accusation that Jewish people use the blood of Christians in religious rituals, esp. in the preparation of Passover bread; an instance of this (cf. blood accusation n.); (also in extended use) an unfounded defamation."

That's enough to warrant circumspection with respect to what Vance said. Those Pod Save America guys veered right into ridicule. A big mistake... especially since the topic could not be more serious.

ADDED: Here's "The Ridiculous Hyper-Parsing of JD Vance" by Rich Lowry at National Review.

Sunrise.

That's my only photo. I saw a flash of lightning and chose to head back home. But Meade made a target of himself out on the dock, and he kept going all the way to the primary vantage point. There, he took this:

And he made an awfully nice video:

"We’re like Adam and Eve trying to build the futuristic garden of Eden where you can just exist and your world takes better care of you than you could yourself."

Said Kate Tolo, 30, quoted in "My extreme life with Bryan Johnson, multimillionaire biohacker/He’s the Silicon Valley entrepreneur who famously injected his teenage son’s blood in a bid to reverse his biological age to 18. Kate Tolo is his collaborator and girlfriend. So what’s it like to be in a relationship with a man who has an obsession with staying young?" (London Times).

Johnson is 49.

I don't think 49 and 30 is such a bad age gap, but she does sound kind of naive... as presented to the public. Who knows what they are really like or how they're collaborating? How do I know they even have a sexual relationship? Well, there's this:

"Ha ha. Wouldn't it be funny if I started it up again? 18 years have passed!"

"But in the larger scheme of things, what is 18 years? The whole idea was to liberate myself to wander around on the time line."

I left a comment on an old blog post, here.

Unsaid things.

That's a favorite tag of mine and I've even blogged about the tag.

In 2014, I said: "I feel that I've found the psychic key to my favorite tag: 'unsaid things.'... Did you know that before I started blogging I believed myself to be a person without political opinions? I used to read the New York Times every day and feel that I had no opinion. It was such a distinctive feeling — no opinion was my opinion — that for a while, to counteract it, I challenged myself, upon reading at least one article a day, to arrive at an opinion. What do I think of that? In blogging, early on, I had to tell myself to stop before moving to the next item and write one more sentence. You have to say something about that. I had to make it a discipline: To write one more thing...."

And in another 2014 post, I wrote: "Unsaid things is one of my favorite topics, and things that fall into this category are things that, aptly enough, most people would leave unsaid. There's a convention in human society not to outline the secret motives of others. As long as someone hasn't actually said something, you ought not to act as though you know what that thing is. But I'm here to transgress on that convention. I think I can and should do it...." (7 reasons why are said at the link but I will leave them unrepeated here.)

So naturally, I'm powerfully drawn to this article by Ariana Eunjung Cha in The Washington Post: "The 'Gen Z stare' — and the decline of saying things out loud/We’re speaking fewer words every year. Scientists worry what that’s doing to our brains" (gift link).

First, I don't like the focus on the number of words.

"Gloria Steinem, lodestar of the modern women’s movement, dies at 92."

A Washington Post obituary (gift link).

In a tribute to feminism, the obit waits until the 6th paragraph to tell us how she looked: "With her willowy physique, her fashionable miniskirts and her straight, parted hair, she brought glamour as well as passion to her work, challenging the popular perception of feminists as bra-burning radicals."

Paragraph 8: "Ms. Steinem burst to the fore in the 1960s not as an activist, but as a high-flying freelance journalist for publications including Esquire, Cosmopolitan and Vogue. She experienced firsthand the sexism that she would later fight on behalf of other women. Ms. Steinem recalled a taxicab conversation between the renowned writers Gay Talese and Saul Bellow, in which she said Talese remarked in her presence, 'You know how every year there’s a pretty girl who comes to New York and pretends to be a writer? Well, Gloria is this year’s pretty girl.'"

Here's the NYT obituary: "Gloria Steinem, Personification of the Women’s Movement, Dies at 92/She challenged sexist assumptions, helping women develop a sense of self-worth and gain a measure of equality at work, at home and in society at large" (gift link).

The NYT tells us how she looked in paragraph 4: "For more than half a century, she personified the women’s movement and became its most enduring symbol; her tinted aviator glasses and curtain of streaked-blond hair parted in the center made her one of the most recognizable women in the world."

Sunrise.

"Trump is going to get his ballroom — even if courts conclude it’s illegal."

Said lawprof Leah Litman, quoted by Adam Liptak in "Trump’s 'Lightning Speed' Outpaces the Courts/In his breakneck construction of a grand ballroom and in many other initiatives, critics say, the president has tried to outrun judicial review" (NYT gift link).

When the ballroom case was argued before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in June, Judge Patricia A. Millett asked... If the government were to move very quickly to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty... was it true that “nothing can be done” by the courts? 

Yaakov Roth, a Justice Department lawyer, did not try to duck the question. “I think that’s right, yes,” he said.... 

When the case reached the Supreme Court last month, the challengers warned the justices that Mr. Trump had “decided to try to outrun judicial review.” In response, Solicitor General D. John Sauer did not exactly deny the charge. He crowed that a 250-person crew had been working 20 hours a day, seven days a week, and that the project, which he said included key security upgrades for the White House, had passed the point of no return....

It's in the structure of things that the Executive has speed as a tool. Remember when Justice Robert Jackson quoted Napoleon — "The tools belong to the man who can use them"?

Recent birds.

Caught by Meade. On Monday, a great blue heron made good use of its long skinny legs:

 

Yesterday, there was a turkey vulture on the path:

"Wearing vintage clothes in Denmark can be a sign of one’s right-wing politics, he said, but for him, dressing up was an inclusionary practice: 'I’m trying to make it nonpolitical.'"

From "Look of the Week/A First Time Out in Clothes That Have Been Around the Block" (NYT gift link).

"She was a noble and polite girl, a Christian. But all of a sudden she acted like an animal."

Said Mario Cisneros, quoted in "'Don’t Worry About Me': Attacker’s Father Thought She Had Turned a Corner/Pamela Cisneros was killed by the police in Times Square after she stabbed two people, one fatally. Her father said she had stopped going with him to her mental health appointments" (NYT gift link).

"Don't worry about me" is what the daughter said to the father. I originally read the headline to mean that the father was telling us not to worry about him. I do feel sorry for the father. Imagine seeing your daughter, "a noble and polite girl, a Christian," suddenly acting "like an animal," becoming a knife-wielding murderer, and now dead.

Why we're listing to "Undun" this morning at Meadhouse.

There is a Bob Dylan connection:

"Undun" was written by Bachman after hearing Bob Dylan's "Ballad in Plain D," which included the phrase "she was easily undone." Bachman's song tells the story of a girl he had seen at a party who, after dosing herself with LSD, slipped into a coma.

But that's not it. It started with that Fetterman-and-shorts post at 5:50 a.m. In the comments, Temujin said:

"In the mid-eighteen-hundreds, amid the advent of photography, the Victorians shot still-life arrangements of lizards crawling over fruit and dead game birds hanging from a nail..."

"... capturing with their new technology the savagery of hunger, the oneness between natural decay and human appetite. For much of the following century, food photography functioned as a sort of ethnographic art, a form of restrained realism preoccupied with light and shadow, shape and symbolism. But, in the nineteen-thirties, the introduction of color printing to advertising changed how food was shot on camera, and thus conceived of culturally. Dishes were now a thing to be drooled over and sold, products that emphasized the sensual, the luscious, the beautiful.... The surreality of commercial food photography and its later evolution into food porn may have been an artificial and sensationalist representation of the things we ate, but it at least managed to seduce.... Restaurants choosing to showcase computer-generated approximations of the dishes they serve inspire neither gluttony nor lust...."

Writes Brady Brickner-Wood, in "The Unique Horrors of A.I. Food Slop/Why does it feel so unsettling when restaurants use generative A.I. to create their menus and promotional materials?" in The New Yorker.

No 19th century photographs at that link, so I found 2 for you: "The First of September" (1855)(showing 2 dead game birds hanging from a nail) and  William Louis Henry Skeen, "Still Life of Exotic Fruits & Lizard from Ceylon" (c. 1880)(with, of course, lizards crawling over fruit).

Those 2 old photographs are not as exciting as I'd leapt to imagine they were. I should have noticed the promise of dreariness in those words "ethnographic art" and "restrained realism."

My imagination was fueled with images of old still-life paintings like this:

"Jesus? He would have been just one of many Jewish sect leaders of his day, had he not had St. Paul to proselytize and the Roman Empire to finish the job."

"Genghis Khan? The mere beneficiary of heavy rainfall. Adolf Hitler? 'Hitler’s own life before the age of 30 gave no hint of his subsequent qualities as Germany’s leader,' Diamond writes. 'How, then, can we claim that no one else could have become the mature Hitler?' How indeed? Figuring out how to separate historical forces from human agency has puzzled scholars since the days of Herodotus and Thucydides.... Now, [Jared] Diamond proposes a new tool for assessing leaders. Rather than using 'the biographic method' of studying leaders in their own context, he suggests the 'natural experiment.' Social scientists have used natural experiments — finding occasions where life allows them to run comparative data studies — to analyze things like the economic impact of the minimum wage. Diamond claims that natural experiments also have significant potential in political history, religious studies and sports. The problem is, they don’t really work.... Can the natural experiment help us figure out the historical effect of a president being assassinated — or narrowly escaping such a fate?"

I'm reading "What Is It About Jesus Christ and Genghis Khan? In “Profits, Prophets, Coaches, and Kings,” Jared Diamond considers the impact leaders might have had on the course of their civilizations" (NYT gift link).

That's Dan Jones — author of "The Plantagenets: The Kings Who Made England" — reviewing the new Jared Diamond book (commission earned).

"Now I see people now are wearing shorts now with suits, so maybe that's enough to really bring me over to the side [of wearing suits] full time."

Said John Fetterman, wearing a suit for once:

September comes in with a glorious sunrise.