"But there could be many downsides to interfering with an activity as essential and mysterious as sleep...."

"'Sleep has its own universe, and we should better use that moment for what it’s good for,' [one neuroscientist said]... Dreams are not some barren landscape waiting to be populated,... they follow their own rules and presumably serve their own inexplicable aims. 'We should care about them, promote them, and nurture them, rather than trying to replace them,' [he] said.... [Another dream researcher] discussed the dangers of trying to 'colonize' sleep with what she called 'wake-centric values.' In her own life, she might prefer to learn from sleep than learn during sleep."

From "It’s Possible to Learn in Our Sleep. Should We? New research suggests that people can communicate and even practice skills while dreaming" (The New Yorker).

"Some time ago my older brother became obsessed with Korean skincare, which he discovered on TikTok."

"In his early fifties, he spends nearly all of his spare time on this app, imbibing a steady stream of drag queens, Democrats and women washing their faces. This formula had sufficiently influenced him to plan a trip to Seoul, where he wanted to get 'skin treatments that are illegal in the US.' Would I like to come with him, he wondered? If it isn’t clear by now, my brother is gay. So am I, but he’s better at it than I am...."

Writes Ben Kawaller, in "My gay brother and I went on a beauty trip to Korea. It hurt/At 41, Ben Kawaller crossed the globe for a skin treatment that’s illegal in the US. Was the pain — and the four-figure price tag — worth it?" (London Times).

A brief description of one procedure: "the general idea is they burn off your face and the one that grows back is nicer."

"One fashionista visibly shuddered when asked her opinion. 'It was terrible. Just awful,' she said."

"'I mean, who was the stylist for that movie?' she gasped, hand to heart. (For the record, it was Molly Rogers, who took over from her mentor, the legendary Patricia Field, mid-way through filming as Fields’s 'dance card was full' with other projects such as Emily in Paris). Perhaps the worst criticism was aimed at the outfits Streep agreed to tolerate for her role. 'They put her in a coat with couch pillow tassels on it! It was criminally ugly,' said one aghast attendee. 'I’ll never get over it.' Or, as Peter Davis, the editor-in-chief of Avenue magazine, said, laughing: 'They should rename it The Devil Wears Bad Clothes.' He went on: 'The fashion was awful but not so bad it was good, like Ab Fab, which the filmmakers should have rewatched for inspiration before rebooting this cheesy, tacky, and worst of all, boring movie.'"

From "Why billionaire fashionistas hate The Devil Wears Prada 2/At an exclusive soiree on Billionaires’ Row celebrating a private screening of the sequel, guests bemoan sequins, sofa-esque tassels and a ‘lousy script'" (London Times).

"I wasn't worried. I understand life. We live in a crazy world."

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"The aura is lowkey sinister. The landscaping is busted...."

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The Baselitz Tree.

I am inviting you to invert images today in honor of the recently deceased Georg Baselitz, who said, as I quoted below, "The hierarchy where the sky is at the top and the ground down below is in any case only an agreement, one we have all got used to, but one that we absolutely do not have to believe in."

"If you find out that an artist whose work you consume is a terrible person, and you still choose to consume it, are you a terrible person?"

Asks Will Leitch, in "The terrible Michael Jackson movie exposes a central cultural question. The film is indefensible. The impulse to see it is deeply human" (WaPo).

I don't know who wrote the headline, but I don't see Leitch attributing deep humanity to the millions of people who are seeing and loving "Michael" — which he and all the critics know "is a bad movie."

Those people who love "Michael" are, in Leitch's words, those who "generally don’t see mass culture as a moral issue, or a political one, or really as having much practical, tangible effect on their lives at all. They go to the movies, listen to music, watch television or read books, not to make some sort of statement about the world but to take a break from it. For most people, art and entertainment are just something that gets you out of the house for a while — and might even make you dance."

In short, they are the very opposite of deep. 

I would have liked to hear a sophisticated analysis of why it is deeply human to want to see Michael again, in his glory, without the ugliness of the accusations. It is deeply human to long for a return to feelings of joy and love that enveloped you when you were young. You're not a nitwit to want that.

"In contrast to the refined intellectualism and impersonal aesthetic of artists like Sol LeWitt and Donald Judd, he offered an art that reveled in raw emotion, extroverted brushwork..."

"... and a fierce engagement with the complexities of 20th-century German history.... Mr. Baselitz’s 'Hero' series of 1965 and 1966 — blocky figures in thick impasto stumbling through tormented landscapes — plunged the viewer into a nightmare vision of postwar Germany. No less disturbing were the woodsmen, hunters and cows of the 'Fracture' series, disassembled into horizontal strips and merged with the landscape. In a break with convention, Mr. Baselitz began turning the central images in his canvases upside down in the late 1960s.... 'The hierarchy where the sky is at the top and the ground down below is in any case only an agreement, one we have all got used to, but one that we absolutely do not have to believe in,' Mr. Baselitz told the critic and historian Walter Grasskamp in 1984."

From "Georg Baselitz, German Neo-Expressionist Painter, Dies at 88/Along with contemporaries like Anselm Kiefer, he mounted a frontal attack on Minimalism and Conceptualism, the dominant 'cool' styles of the 1970s" (NYT).

Here's an example from the "Hero" series 

I wish Baselitz could have done the official portrait for... various political figures. But I will not say who because I'm chilled by the arrest of James Comey.

And here's an example from the "Fractures" series, totally inappropriate for an official portrait:

"We are not going to get into issues of catastrophe and extinction...."

"But we’re not going to get into that. We just are not going to have this whole thing explode for the world to view it."

Said Judge Gonzalez Rogers, quoted in "Is A.I. a Threat to Humanity? Not in This Trial. One of Elon Musk’s abiding fears is that A.I. could one day threaten humans. But the jurors deciding his suit against OpenAI probably won’t hear about it" (NYT).

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

And here's Meade's view of the duck:

"The Iran war must end with a decisive victory. And that victory can only be achieved in one of two ways..."

"Either Iran capitulates or the U.S. launches a final flurry of military strikes. Trump has given the regime every opportunity to sue for peace, and it has rejected his overtures. It is admirable that Trump is taking his time. He understands that what he is doing is important and cannot be rushed. But it is also true that he cannot declare victory until either Iran cries uncle — or he finishes the job."

Writes Marc A. Thiessen in "Trump is 14 days from decisive victory in Iran/The regime won’t deal and the blockade alone won't break it. Only military action will" (WaPo).

ADDED: Elsewhere in WaPo, there's "What will happen when the clock strikes 60 days on Trump’s war/Clinton's precedent will allow Trump to keep fighting Iran without congressional approval."

"Great king," says Trump, pointing at Charles. "The greatest king in my book."

After the King and Queen drive off, Trump says, "Great people. We need more people like that in our country. Really great people."

"Limiting food and water has been used to hasten death in people dying at home since long before it had a formal name."

"But to accelerate decline this way for people with advanced dementia, whether their deaths are imminent or not, is uncomfortable territory for many.... While some patients are late enough in their dementia as to be nonresponsive, others may still be enjoying and requesting food and may not remember writing a directive to withhold it. 'Which person do you listen to: the person who had capacity once and made this decision that they wouldn’t want to live this life, or the person with dementia, who may seem very, very happy with the life that they have?' asked Dr. Eric Widera, a professor of geriatric medicine at University of California, San Francisco...."

From "She Didn’t Want to Live With Advanced Dementia. So Why Was She Being Kept Alive? Some consider the regular feeding of late-stage dementia patients to be nonnegotiable. Others see it as extending life unnecessarily" (NYT).

The article cites a paper that presents the idea of minimal comfort feeding: "The nursing staff could provide small quantities of food and liquid if the patient signaled she wanted it, enough to keep her comfortable while still allowing her to die."

Billions of dollars and still no end date.

1. "The Iran war now has a price tag ($25 billion), but still no end date" (NPR).

2. "California high-speed rail price tag jumps to $231B, nearly seven times 2008 estimate" (Fox26News).

"King Charles tames Maga but Britain’s still in the doghouse."

That's the headline at the London Times. Subheadline: "While the monarch has gone down a storm with President Trump’s VIPs, his US visit seems to have done nothing to help Sir Keir Starmer."

I guess "gone down a storm" is a British expression. I'm going to assume it means something like: was a big sensation. Yeah, that's right. I checked with A.I. The American expression that's equally mystifying to an outsider would be: brought the house down.

Speaking of house...  in the doghouse seems to work in both countries.

Now, let me find the meat of this article:

"Mills attempted to blunt Platner’s momentum this spring by running ads bringing up controversy around deleted Reddit comments he made years ago downplaying the seriousness of sexual assault."

"Mills argued that Republicans would make 'mincemeat' out of Graham in a general election, given his Reddit comments, and that a tattoo resembling a Nazi symbol, which he got covered up, will likely provide fodder for attacks."

From "Maine Gov. Janet Mills drops out of race to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collins/The seat is critical to Democrats’ hopes of retaking the Senate. Graham Platner, an oyster farmer and Democrat, is likely to win the primary" (WaPo).

In the comments over there, somebody says "You can tell she's a Dem because she did the right thing" and somebody else says "How is quitting because you don’t have the money the 'right thing.' She did the 'only thing' she could have done."

"Plants depend on carbon dioxide to perform photosynthesis — but that doesn’t mean they grow better when there’s more carbon in the air, scientists say."

"A sweeping survey of changes among 32 compounds in 43 crops found that nearly every plant that humans eat is harmed by rising CO2 levels. 'As a scientist, it’s really interesting,' said Sterre F. ter Haar, an environmental scientist at Leiden University in the Netherlands and lead author of the survey, published in November. 'As a person … you don’t want to see such a shift, because it’s so negative.' For the past several years, ter Haar and her colleagues have worked to compile a database of all existing research on nutrient changes linked to rising CO2.... Next the team used their dataset to calculate the nutritional densities of each crop under different carbon dioxide levels — and to predict how their composition could continue to shift in the future. On average, they found, nutrients have already decreased by an average 3.2 percent across all plants since the late 1980s, when the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 350 parts per million...."

From "Carbon pollution is making food less nutritious" (WaPo). That's a gift link, so you can figure out the science and whether this is a case of lying with statistics.

It occurs to me that percentages of nutrients would change if plants just contain more water, but a plant composed of more water might be more appetizing, so just eat a bit more of it. I'm always suspicious of articles that stir up climate-change anxiety.

"Amazon Discusses ‘Apprentice’ Reboot—With Don Jr. as a Potential Host."

The Wall Street Journal reports.

Interesting, but there is no reason at all to think that Don Jr. has what it takes to assume the role his father played. Schwarzenegger couldn't do it, and Schwarzenegger brought his famous charisma and media-and-politics know-how to the project. The only reason for anyone other than Donald Trump to do "The Apprentice" is to prove the unique skill and talent of our very special President, Donald Trump.

"The ballroom is, to the confusion of many, a top priority for Trump. Indeed, it has been one since long before he launched himself into politics."

"Way back in 2010, Trump called David Axelrod, at the time a senior adviser to President Obama, and offered to build a ballroom for the White House. The offer was not accepted. Barely two weeks into his second term, Trump began talking up his ballroom dream once again. Within months, he had demolished the East Wing of the White House and construction was set to begin...."

I'm reading "What Does the Correspondents Dinner Have to Do With Trump’s Ballroom Project? The case may test just how far national security deference by the courts to the executive can stretch" (Lawfare).

"With those beautiful ears of yours — he's got great hearing."

Periodista : pregunta de la nasa

Trump: el mas indicado para responderte es el director de la NASA con esas orejas que tiene, escucha re bien, tiene oido de gato😳

*le hacen zoom a las orejas* pic.twitter.com/SGUOv46qmo

— ElBuni (@therealbuni) April 30, 2026

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

Crabapple blossoms on a rainy afternoon.

"The justices, split along ideological lines, ruled that the voting map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander."

"In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan accused the court’s conservative majority of gutting the Voting Rights Act."

From "Live Updates: Supreme Court Strikes Down Louisiana Map in Voting Rights Case" (NYT).

Although the justices struck down Louisiana’s map, the court’s conservative majority upheld the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act itself. Voting rights groups had feared that the court might use the case to gut the remaining provisions of the landmark civil rights law.

AND: Here's the opinion: Louisiana v. Callais. It's 6-3, in the usual way, and Justice Alito writes for the majority.

"Lonardo met Skiles’s biological mother, Cheryl Brown, in the late 1970s while they were both stationed at Fort Dix. During a weekend off..."

"... they decided to travel to New York City together. They stayed at the Hotel Chelsea, Lonardo recalled, and visited the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty. They had a fleeting romance, and shortly after they returned to Fort Dix, they went in different directions and never spoke again. But for nearly five decades, Lonardo has kept a bar of soap from the hotel...."

From "For years, he didn’t know he had a daughter. At 66, he adopted her. Jennifer Skiles said hearing her father’s voice for the first time 'felt like home.' Four years later, their emotional bond is now a legal one" (WaPo)(gift link, so you can read the whole story, which will make you cry, unless you never cry about strangers).

"[T]he organizations producing that data are cooking the books so they can smear the Right with the Left's crimes."

You can't fix a problem if your diagnosis hinges on blaming its victims. If the Democrats actually care to tackle political violence, the Left needs to own up to the fact that it is responsible for inculcating a culture of violence that targets the Right. https://t.co/VaOPejzOQI

— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) April 29, 2026

"Jack Schossshhhhberg is that kind of leader."

A mush-mouthed Nancy Pelosi delivers a barely intelligible endorsement:

I'm watching that because of this in the NYT: "In First Campaign Ad, Schlossberg Leans on a Well-Known Name: Pelosi/Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of John F. Kennedy, is among a slate of Democrats seeking to replace Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York."

Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of John F. Kennedy, has built his campaign for a New York City House seat around turning the page on the Democrats’ old guard. Yet when he debuts his first paid advertisement on Wednesday, the 33-year-old candidate has chosen his party’s oldest living leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, to do the talking....

He's turning the page. She's the page. 

"Tapestries embroidered with Quranic verses were shipped from the Kaaba in Mecca, Islam’s holiest shrine. Tiles came from a mosque in Uzbekistan."

"A golden metal dome was made to replicate the architecture of ancient Syria. Jeffrey Epstein spent years making connections across the Middle East, in pursuit of business deals and two intertwined hobbies: acquiring rare Islamic artifacts with which to decorate an unusual building on his private island, and expanding his network of wealthy, powerful people...."

From "Epstein Obtained Objects From Islam’s Holiest Site for His Island 'Mosque'/Jeffrey Epstein’s messages cast light on an unusual building on his private island and show how his connections helped him secure tapestries from Mecca for it" (NYT)(gift link).

"His vision for an island shrine began while he was in a Palm Beach County, Fla., jail, having pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution. Before his release in 2009, Mr. Epstein hired architects to design a 'hammam,' a Turkish bathhouse surrounded by 'Islamic gardening,' according to his correspondence. Mr. Epstein’s records show that in 2013, he sent Mr. Nicola a picture of the Yalbugah Hammam, a 15th-century bathhouse in Aleppo, Syria, with a golden dome, a recessed arch over the door and striped masonry, seeking sketches that would resemble it. Among other tasks, Mr. Epstein asked for a design replacing the Arabic word for God with his initials in English. 'Remember we saw the aribic writing in black and white,' he wrote to Mr. Nicola in an email plagued with his customary typos and misspellings. 'instead of allah, i thought j’s and e ‘s.'"

Responding to "No Kings," Trump has repeatedly said, "I'm not a king."

And now we get this from The White House: 

TWO KINGS. 👑 pic.twitter.com/iPVUxc4i4H

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 28, 2026

I guess somebody decided that trolling is better than consistency.

"On this occasion, I cannot help noticing the readjustments to the East Wing, Mr. President..."

"And I'm sorry to say that we British of course made our own small attempt at real estate redevelopment of the White House in 1814."

It's funny now.

Who will be around in 2213 to joke about the destruction of the World Trade Center?

A dark sunrise.

But it brightened up later. Sunny. 60°. Perfect, really. Just a dark sunrise to kick things off.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"The two charges stem from a photo that Comey posted online showing seashells on a beach that were arranged to write out '86 47.'"

"Trump is the 47th president; '86' can mean banning or removing someone, but it can also be slang for killing a person. Comey quickly removed the post after receiving criticism that the phrase could be used to communicate the threat of violence."

From "James Comey indicted over 2025 social media post allegedly threatening Trump/The former FBI director issued a video statement maintaining his innocence and criticizing the current Justice Department" (WaPo).

Here's the post I wrote last year when Comey purported not to "realize some folks associate those numbers with violence": "James Comey purports not to have known that 86 means to get rid of (after he posted a picture of rocks in the form 8647 (47 being easily read as a reference to Trump)). Is Comey credible?"

The post title was a Grok prompt. Additional prompts: "Compare that to how Trump was treated for telling protesters on January 6th, 2021 to walk 'peacefully and patriotically' to the Capitol" and "I'm interested in the difference in seeing violence in words and consider that Comey, like Trump, has loyalists who might hear direction and take it."

"These allegations represent a profound abuse of trust at a time when the American people needed it most — during the height of a global pandemic."

Said Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, quoted in "Anthony Fauci adviser indicted by DOJ on charges of concealing COVID records" (NY Post).

King Charles arrives at the White House.

I don't know why I find this so charming. I dreamed about King Charles last night. I felt sorry for that poor man somehow.

From Trump's speech: "For nearly two centuries before the revolution, this land was settled and forged by men and women who bore in their souls the blood and noble spirit of the British. Here on a wild and untamed continent, they set loose the ancient English love of liberty and Great Britain’s distinctive sense of glory, destiny, and pride. And that’s what it is: glory, destiny, and pride. The American patriots who pledged their lives to independence in 1776 were the heirs to this majestic inheritance. Their veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage. Their hearts beat with an English faith in standing firm for what is right, good, and true.

"The sense that the Dream is dying was reflected throughout the poll."

The London Times explains, in "The American Dream is dying, Times poll reveals."

Perhaps this graph will make the concept more concrete for you:

In case you're having trouble discerning the year when that peak of excellence occurred, the text pinpoints it at 1976. Perhaps you remember. It was 50 years ago. The Bicentennial. Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford. Karen Ann Quinlan was disconnected from her ventilator. A school bus full of children was buried in the ground but the kids dug themselves free, in 16 hours. Jenner won the Decathlon. Apple and Microsoft sprang into being. How could you not feel that happy days were here again?

"Filming for the third season of Smatouha Minni (You Heard It From Me), a feminist series in Arabic, the actor is in a padded muscle suit, wearing a slicked-back black wig and beard."

"'If your wife asks you to change the diapers, you should change her,' the Palestinian-Jordanian barks, mimicking an aggrieved self-help podcaster. An hour later, she is slouched in a hoodie, shisha pipe in one hand and a gaming console in the other, shouting: 'Mama, I’m hungry. Can you make me a sandwich?' The sketches are parodies of a misogynist narrative gaining traction in the region. 'Patriarchal attitudes have always existed,' says Amanda Abou Abdallah, the Lebanese founder, co-writer and director of Smatouha Minni. 'But what we’re seeing now is a re-intensification – a backlash against women’s growing participation, independence and public voice, especially online.' Chief among the ideologies circulating is the so-called 'red pill' theory, popularised by figures such as Andrew Tate, whose influence in the region intensified after his conversion to Islam in late 2022. The doctrine frames men as victims of a feminist, 'gynocentric; social order and urges them to reclaim power through dominance...."

 From "'If your wife asks you to change diapers, change your wife': the Arabic hit show that parodies the patriarchy/The female-created YouTube sketch series Smatouha Minni – You Heard It From Me – uses satire to confront misogynistic attitudes" (The Guardian).

"Do you see it? There's a group of men carrying another man out of the room. And then there's a woman... desperately reaching out...."

"This is the permission structure for violence right there: We know they lie to cover up the crimes. We don't trust anything they say...."

"We're right when we promote conspiracy theories about the people we hate. We're right to do it because it's not our obligation to speak on behalf of truth. It's our obligation to speak on behalf of the way people feel.... People feel that there's something bad going on. Therefore, it's not our obligation to tell the truth about what's actually happening.... "

A.I. is getting way out ahead of the old time-y problem of wanting cameras in the Supreme Court.

It's almost better this way (unless you want to watch the reactions on the faces of those who are not speaking):

AND: Lots more video like that at the YouTube page of On the Docket — "Using AI-generated visuals and the justices’ official recorded opinions, we present videos of the justices delivering their opinions, making these pivotal moments more engaging to a broader audience."

"Being human-shaped allows their introduction without significant modifications to existing airport facilities or aircraft structures."

"By combining cutting-edge AI technology with the unique flexibility of humanoid forms, the project aims to realise a sustainable operational structure through labour savings and workload reduction."

Said Japan Airlines, quoted in "This could really take off: robots join staff at Tokyo airport/Japan Airlines, the national carrier, is testing humanoid workers to ease staffing pressures at Haneda, keeping luggage moving as passenger numbers rise" (London Times).

Would you prefer the infusion of robots to come in humanoid form? The human-shaped robots fit into the places that have been designed for human beings, so perhaps that makes the robotic takeover easier and don't you want futuristic things to subtly mix friendliness and creepiness?

Do you like those self-driving Waymos with an empty drivers seat or would you rather have a robot cab driver sitting there and talking to you, the way it was in those old movies about the future:

"You know, the hot one, with polio."

My son Chris took a photo of a sign in an ice cream shop in Austin, Texas:

Chris happens to reading a book about FDR at the moment — "FDR." On Sunday, he sent me this passage that describes FDR’s first public appearance after being paralyzed from polio:

On the above-the-fold front page of The New York Times, one story stands out.

Do you see it? When you see it, you will know. It may take a little while, and you will not need to say "Is it 'Republicans Brace for Brutal Midterms'? Or whatever. You will, I think, laugh. Because of course....

A somber sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"Our first lady, Melania, is here. Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow," Jimmy Kimmel joked.

He was doing a routine on his show last Thursday, anticipating Saturday's White House Correspondents' Dinner and playing the part of an emcee at that dinner. Of course, he didn't know that there would be an assassination attempt that night.

See "Melania Trump blasts ‘coward’ Jimmy Kimmel over ‘hateful’ monologue delivered days before WHCD shooting" (NY Post).

Kimmel has apologized — remember when he apologized for joking about the assassination of Charlie Kirk — and even taken some responsibility:

"I’d never questioned my gender before I came to America; growing up in India, I’d always identified as a girl."

"Of course, India has a gender hegemony of its own — one I arguably benefitted from in many ways and suffered from in others. I am upper-caste, upper-class, Hindu, and also a Tamil woman who didn’t look like the models in the Fair & Lovely commercials. I was the only Tamilian in most rooms I was in, a fact my North Indian classmates consistently reminded me of. Still, the popular conception of what a woman or a man was felt more fluid. I grew up among Sikh women who didn’t tame their body hair, men who would hold hands platonically with their male friends, and children who cross-dressed for play (almost every boy had a photo of himself dressed up as a girl by his mother for fun).... [And there] is our third-gender community, or hijras, as they are commonly known...."

Writes Supriya Ganesh,  "My Strange Dysphoria/Growing up in India, I never questioned my gender. When I moved to the U.S. at 18, I began to feel disconnected from my body" (New York Magazine).

"Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 4 days."

That's the new message above the compose-a-comment window.

I just widened the instant posting window from 2 days to 4 days. Enjoy! And thanks for keeping the conversation going.

AND: This post originally had 2 tags: "Althouse comments community" and "the Althouse comments community." This happens from time to time. I discover there are 2 tags for the same thing. It may be hard to believe, but even in this my 23rd year of blogging, I'm devoted to the good order of the archive. I clicked both tags, determined that the one with the "the" had more posts and added a "the" to all the the-less ones. So click on "the Althouse comments community" if you want to see all the old posts on the topic. There are a lot! 

"The WHCD Viral ‘Salad Eater’ Is Wolf Blitzer’s Agent."

Wow, that's one of my favorite headlines ever.

In New York Magazine, here.

Context: "The man filmed casually eating a salad as everyone else ducked for cover after shots rang out at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is speaking out. CAA Agent Michael Glantz told TMZ that he never felt unsafe at the event, and remained seated and eating because he wanted to see how law enforcement responded. 'Not every day you see something like that go down,' he said. Glantz was at the dinner because he is CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer’s agent."

I love that his name sounds like it means a quick look — glance — but he's the one who wanted to maintain a steady gaze. 

Was Donald Trump too mean to Norah O'Donnell on "60 Minutes" last night? I'll argue both sides.

Maybe you've noticed there's a big uproar over this part of the show:

Watch the video to get the full emotional effect. Here's the transcript:

The Iran war drops from the top screen of the NYT home page.

It looks like this now:

Not only has the assassination attempt taken over as the top story, priority is given to a revival of immigration enforcement stories, a military strike on a "narco-terrorist" boat, the chair of the federal reserve, and — hard news is such a drag — music, theater, and women's handbags. 

If we scroll down to the bottom half of the home page, we do get to an Iran story, but the tone of the headline is dramatically different: "Iran and U.S. Sink Into Awkward Limbo of 'No War, No Peace.'"

It's not a dire emergency anymore. The war is over. We won. Iran just won't admit it, and we're not going to give them anything for holding out on admitting what is true. No, it doesn't say that. The article, analysis by Erika Solomon, goes with a "both sides" trope:

Sunrise.

Write about anything you want in the comments.

"Turning the other cheek is for when you yourself are oppressed. I’m not the person raped in a detention camp. I’m not the fisherman executed without trial."

"I’m not a schoolkid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration. Turning the other cheek when *someone else* is oppressed is not Christian behavior; it is complicity in the oppressor’s crimes."

From the tweets of Cole Tomas Allen, quoted in "WHCD shooting suspect Cole Allen flooded social media with anti-Trump fury: 'you are f–king damned'" (NY Post).

"Like many journalists, I have a bunch of unpublished fiction lying about, so I tried Claude on the first chapter of a romance novel that I started almost 20 years ago..."

"... during the hysterical, mawkish phase of a particularly bad breakup. 'Megan McArdle,' said Opus 4.7, after a few seconds of thought. Fascinated, I kept feeding it smaller and smaller passages to see how little prose it needed for identification. The answer, apparently, was 1,441 words."

Writes Megan McArdle, in "Will AI end anonymity? I tested it. Artificial intelligence can echolocate authors through their prose. Your digital fingerprint is at risk" (WaPo).

"Le Droop" — "the natural-looking — not floppy but not pneumatic — breasts that you can bet are about to be the look everyone in Hollywood wants."

"Le Droop, c’est chic, or it’s about to be.... Let’s be in no doubt that there are people whose job it is to work out where to take the boob brag next. We’ve seen it with Lily Allen, who has embraced all the breast exposure tricks in the past six months while staying one step ahead of the game. The Thirties lingerie look — an unstructured flat bra with a hint of underboob — was one that stood out recently, not least because it was in the droopy, natural-looks-best zone. Underboob is still top of the breast brag charts but, unlike a few years ago, the look now is soft and accidental, not travel-pillow taut under a tight cropped T-shirt.... Florence Pugh is keen on a nipple reveal under a gauzy red carpet dress, and thanks to her and one or two others nipples are no longer the marmalade dropper of nudity. But they’re not the breast flex of the moment. That’s Le Droop."

From "Charlize Theron and why ‘Le Droop’ is the red carpet breast flex of 2026/Is this the ultimate boob brag?" (London Times).

Did you, like me, stumble over "nipples are no longer the marmalade dropper of nudity"? Apparently, "marmalade dropper" is a British expression. Something is a "marmalade dropper" if it would shock you to the point where you'd drop your marmalade-covered toast.

Crabapple time in the UW Arb.

Today, around 2 p.m.

"Instead of painting live models or photographs, Ms. González uses an A.I. system on that laptop to generate composite digital images."

"These amalgamations are drawn from a combination of baroque portraits, her own sketches and, in her most recent series, catwalk photographs from a fashion show that Hermès invited her to in Paris. Those digital collages, which she calls 'Frankensteins,' serve as the inspiration for her painted portraits. While the models are imaginary, she said, she sometimes sees a trace of her own face in the finished portraits. Not too long ago, she said, the idea of living off these portraits seemed impossible. 'But here we are,' she said. 'It’s like a dream I always had, but times 50.'"

From "How a Pop Star’s Portrait Launched the Career of an Unknown Spanish Artist/Nieves González, a 29-year-old painter, once worked in relative obscurity in Andalusia. Her picture of the British singer Lily Allen changed that" (NYT)(gift link, so you can see the paintings and other things).

"Today, at 85, [my wife] is lovelier than ever. Her lustrous white hair is so stunning..."

"... that people stop her on the street to remark on it. She has a beauty born of episodes of sorrow intermingled with joy. I have watched her transformation for decades. Her brown eyes are the picture of profound thought, an important idea given form. Her skin, still smooth. Only the lines on the neck betray her age, like delicate narrow paths cut into a desert. I have seen women who have feared these changes and had lots of work done to their faces, whose expressions are frozen in a strange perpetual surprise. I always wondered where their wrinkles went. To a firmament of parts, where old beauty might have reigned but is now a house of discards?"

Writes Roger Rosenblatt, in "My Wife Is 85. She Takes My Breath Away" (NYT)(gift link, so you can read the whole essay).

I'm blogging this as a companion to yesterday's post about Megan McArdle's bemoaning faces ruined by plastic surgery.

Is Rosenblatt's writing bad? Can you understand "a firmament of parts, where old beauty might have reigned but is now a house of discards"? I don't know, but I'm just hoping it's helpful to hear from an old man who sincerely believes his old wife is beautiful.

"He elucidates the famous double-page spread accompanying the text 'Goodnight nobody/Goodnight mush.'"

"Anyone who has ever held a child on a lap at bedtime while reading ['Goodnight, Moon'] aloud has encountered the Dadaist conundrum of a blank page to connote 'Goodnight nobody' — certainly one of the most potentially frightening concepts for a young rabbit, um, kid, who in falling asleep will be more alone than it is possible to be while awake. That 'Goodnight mush' is on the opposite page is a eucatastrophe: 'We exist! We are alive! We eat food! What a relief!' It’s 'Always look on the bright side of death' for the youngest minds."

From a NYT book review, "A New Manifesto for Children’s Literature/In his chatty, compulsively readable first book for adults, Mac Barnett champions his career choice and urges our culture to hold kids in higher esteem."

The reviewer is Gregory Maguire, who wrote "Wicked" (as well as many children's books).

The famous double-page spread:

ADDED: The word "eucatastrophe" was coined by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1944. He wrote, in a letter: "For it I coined the word ‘eucatastrophe’: the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears.

He used his own word again in 1947 to say: "The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man's history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation."

"This was an event dedicated to freedom of speech that was supposed to bring together members of both parties with members of the press. And in a certain way it did..."

"I saw a room that was totally unified. It was in one way very beautiful — a very beautiful thing to see."

Said President Trump, in an impromptu press conference at the White House, 2 hours after the incident at the Correspondents' Dinner. 

I hope that shared experience brings people together. Perhaps there will be a reset and love will steer the stars: "In light of this evening's events, I ask that all Americans recommit with their hearts to resolving our differences peacefully. We have to resolve our differences. You had Republicans, Democrats, independents, conservatives, liberals, and progressives in that room — a big crowd, record-setting crowd. There was a tremendous amount of love and coming together." Come together, right now, over me.

Trump saw the opportunity to promote his ballroom: "We looked at all of the conditions that took place tonight. It's not a particularly secure building. I didn't want to say this, but this is why we have to have all of the attributes of what we're planning at the White House. It's actually a larger room and it's much more secure. It's got drone-proof and bulletproof glass. We need the ballroom."

Trump framed the incident as an assassination attempt: "This is not the first time in the past couple of years that our republic has been attacked by a would-be assassin. In Butler, Pennsylvania, less than two years ago — you all know that story. And in Palm Beach, Florida, a few months after that, we came close again. We had some great work done by law enforcement."

Trump expressed pride in himself as the target of multiple assassination attempts. Asked "Why do you think this keeps happening to you?," he said "I've studied assassinations. The most impactful people, the people that do the most, are the ones they go after. Abraham Lincoln, the big names. I hate to say I'm honored by that, but we've done a lot. We've changed this country. There are a lot of people that are not happy about that."

"We see them every day and we just say hi and they’re very nice. They’re peaceful people, they don’t make any noise and when they see you they say hi."

Said a neighbor of Cole Tomas Allen, quoted in "Who is Cole Tomas Allen? White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting suspect in custody/The suspect in the White House Correspondents’ Dinner shooting was identified as California man Cole Tomas Allen" (Independent).

What's with the awkward "they" pronouns? "They’re peaceful people," etc. Maybe that's just the way they talk in California.

Allen has an elite degree — Caltech. "While a student at Caltech, Allen was a member of the school’s Christian fellowship and the Nerf club. He was featured in a 2017 photo that was posted by the school on Facebook following his graduation. In that photo, he’s holding a picture of himself as a child with a stuffed rabbit.... On his LinkedIn page, Allen described himself as a 'mechanical engineer and computer scientist by degree, ​independent game developer by experience, teacher by birth.' He lists his 'Causes' on that profile as 'Science and Technology.'"

Political affiliation? "Allen donated $25 to the political action committee ActBlue in October 2024, a month before Donald Trump’s defeat of Kamala Harris.... According to FEC filings, it was his only political donation in the past ten years."

Caltech NERF Club describes itself at Facebook: "a group of people who raid random buildings on campus and shoot NERF guns at each other. Various other activities include: the modification of blasters for cool effects, mechanical improvements, and cosmetic bad-assery; shoot the Albert Yang game; long-term NERF games such as Red Vs Blue and Humans vs. Zombies."

ADDED: "In a brief interview with The New York Post, neighbor Jeff Smith said that he felt as though Allen was 'on the spectrum.'"

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comment.

"There’s one thing that’s stealing when you are a teenager and you want the adrenaline rush. And part of it is about testing the rules..."

"... and getting away with something. But what I’m seeing on TikTok and social media is people saying that they’re stealing from Whole Foods not just for the thrill of it, but out of a feeling of anger and moral justification. Because the rich don’t play by the rules, so why should I? And Jeff Bezos has too much money — he’s a billionaire — so why should I have to pay for organic avocados? My friends and I have started calling this microlooting, because it has a slight political valence to theft, as opposed to just the thrill of getting away with something. Have you noticed this around you online? Have you noticed more people talking about stealing in this way?"

Says NYT writer Nadja Spiegelman on an episode of the NYT "Opinions" podcast, "'The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. So Why Should I?'Why petty theft might be the new political protest."

Those other 2 characters are New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino and Hasan Piker, a political commentator I blogged about a year ago when he was being touted as the potential "Joe Rogan of the left."

Tolentino says: "I think it’s great that the valence of property is on the table as something to be toyed with, in terms of direct action. We’ve forgotten that there is a long and storied history of sabotage and engagement with property destruction, even, which is abhorrent to people...."

Piker: "In the Marxist tradition, adventurism is the action that is oftentimes decentralized. Oftentimes, anarchists will say, 'This is the propaganda of the deed.'

"You walk into a restaurant and see a woman you used to know.... She looks amazing at a distance and way younger than she has any right to."

"Then, as you get closer, you realize something is wrong. Her face isn't moving naturally. It's part of it is frozen in place, and other parts are uncomfortably over-inflated. Then you look around and you realize, she's not the only one. It's like they all took the same picture to their plastic surgeon and said, I want that one.... It happens because they're optimizing for a screen instead of real life.... It's easy to fool yourself into thinking that videos and photos are somehow especially real because, after all, it's just a plain picture of what happened. But in fact, cameras can alter a perception of reality in dozens of ways.... You shouldn't chase screen beauty because even celebrities don't really look like that when they're walking around, and... you need to take away is how destructive it can be for people who attain it. I've had so many encounters with people who look amazing at first glance and uncanny once you've watched them talk a bit. Frankly, I don't want to be around those people because it's a little scary...."

Says Megan McArdle, who goes on to condemn open-floor plans, on "Everyone wants to live like an influencer now," the new episode of her podcast "Reasonably Optimistic" (WaPo).

When people are talking face-to-face, how much are they thinking about the genuineness of each other's face? I'd say it's close to 100% of what we are doing and what we were born to do. It's only less than that if we're having trouble making eye contact or we're distracted or disgusted. 

"'It’s called charcoal,' Trump told reporters Thursday, touting the contrast with the White House’s white walls."

"The renovation project was begun last month, with the president eager to replace decades-old beige Tennessee flagstone with his handpicked dark granite slabs before the royal visit, said two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe White House operations.... The president has personally inspected the renovations and offered feedback to workers, drawing on his experience as a builder, say current and former officials. He has interrupted policy meetings to extol the changes — a phenomenon captured on camera Thursday, when he repeatedly encouraged reporters attending a drug price announcement in the Oval Office to look at the new granite floor outside. 'It’s a beautiful job, and it’s going up nice,' the president said."

From "Trump eager to show off latest White House project to King Charles/The president’s black granite path is the newest change to the West Wing, following gold lettering, Oval Office gilding and a 'Presidential Walk of Fame'" (WaPo).

Some of us might feel — if we were to have installed a differently colored floor and kept pointing it out to visitors — embarrassed.

"Well, I can’t do meditation. I get bored. But people who do meditation embrace the boredom and utilize it as a way to at least calm their mind..."

"... and maybe center their mind on something that they don’t usually go to mentally. And often things for maintenance are done by Japanese with a great deal of ceremony. Just changing the lights of a street lamp. There’s guys in uniform. They have a special routine. They do with a ladder where they go up the pole and do a little formal thing at the beginning and another little formal thing at the end. And it turns a simple task into a somewhat more complex dance. Moving together in time is one of the profound things that humans have been doing for a very long time. So ritual is one way to make really, really repetitive maintenance less onerous...."

Says Stewart Brand, who has a new book, about maintenance. He's talking to Ezra Klein:

Brand is promoting his new book, "Maintenance: Of Everything, Part One" (commission earned)(only $10 in Kindle). If that sounds a lot like "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," that's not hidden. The next thing Ezra says is: "You quote quite a lot from 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,' which is a classic book.”

"In an upstairs room in Capitol Hill, a dozen people settled into a circle of folding chairs — sketch pads in one hand, cocktails in the other..."

"... and watched a model in cheetah print lingerie and bunny-eared kink mask spread across a stretch of red satin. Then they got to work. They came to practice life drawing, but this wasn’t a traditional class held at an arts center or university. This was Kink N' Draw, held, for this session, at a bar called As You Are. The event is part of a proliferating practice around D.C. where people can shell out a few bucks to draw live, naked models at a bar.... 'This is a space for creativity, self-expression and appreciation of the human form in a way that is respectful, open and completely judgment-free,' announced 27-year-old showrunner and Kink N’ Draw founder Dominique Landinez...."

From "Sorry, pub trivia. Nude drawing might be the hippest new event at D.C. bars/The scantily clad events popping up across the city’s nightlife scene are more wholesome than you think" (WaPo).

1. I've spent hundreds of hours in life-drawing classes, so this seems quite normal to me, "but this wasn’t a traditional class." Oh, it sounds traditional enough. So you've got a few props — lingerie, masks. 

2. There are lots of photos at the link, but absolutely no nudity on view, not even in a drawing. We don't get to see any of the drawings. Perhaps that's because the drawings are bad — and not in a kooky amusing way. But I think it's because WaPo is protecting us readers from nudity... even as it sniffs at "a traditional class" and titillates us with the mere idea of "kink" — manifested in the form of a bunny. 

3. Titillation from a bunny?

"We have recently crossed some sort of undeniable threshold, a point of no return in pants-wearing: An Event Horizon of pants."

"Seemingly all pants are in style, which, conversely, means no pants are in style. (Also, literally, pantslessness is in style, according to the no-pants trend seen on runways and red carpets.) We have achieved pants singularity.... 'Social media has decentralized trend authority, allowing multiple fits — from low-rise baggy to capris to short shorts — to gain traction simultaneously,' says Laura Yiannakou, womenswear senior strategist.... 'Sculptural shapes such as balloon and barrel pants also perform strongly in visual environments.'... 'Personally, I think it’s great that there’s not one dominant silhouette,' says [fashion historian Sonya] Abrego, 'because it allows people to have more choice and feel less boxed in by what’s more normative.'"

From "What pants are in style now? You won’t like the answer. Barrel-leg pants, balloon pants, capri pants, track pants and sweatpant jeans are all vying for your attention — and breaking your brain" (WaPo)(gift link, so you can see the pants (and not try to box me in by what's more normative when I'm out and about in my balloon pants).

Mistranscription of the day.

Meade memorialized this morning's sunrise in a video with a soundtrack of one of my favorite recordings. It displayed on my computer with closed captioning:

Here's my screengrab:

Here's the full "home recording" of "Deep Blue Sea" by Grizzly Bear. The mistranscribed line should be: "Dig his grave, darling/With a silver spade." And here's a playlist I made on Spotify: "Deep Blue Sea Night."

"Earlier this week, the Justice Department finalized a $1.25 million settlement to Trump’s 2016 campaign adviser Carter Page..."

"... to settle claims that he was illegally surveilled by federal authorities. Multiple courts had dismissed federal lawsuits that Page — who was never charged with a crime — filed against the government, saying the statute of limitations on his ability to make these claims had lapsed. Last month, the Justice Department reached a settlement with Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn for more than $1 million, asserting he had been the victim of a politicized prosecution. Flynn pleaded guilty to charges that he lied to law enforcement about his conversations with a Russian diplomat during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, then later sought to withdraw that plea. The case against him was dismissed in 2020 after Trump pardoned him.... The department under the Biden administration had fought to have the suits filed by Page and Flynn thrown out, arguing that they were legally meritless...."

From "DOJ is paying out Trump allies, undermining former investigations/Since Trump’s return to the White House last year, the Justice Department has paid more than $8.5 million to resolve legal claims brought by allies and supporters" (WaPo)(gift link).

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

Well, plenty of people think something filthy, dirty, and disgusting looking is representative of the country.

Imagine an art installation titled "America." It wouldn't have sparkling clear water bubbling cheerfully now, would it?

But I'm reading "Trump Says He’s Renovating ‘Filthy’ Reflecting Pool on the National Mall/The pool, which is more than 2,000 feet long, was the site of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 'I Have a Dream' speech and other events" (NYT)

“It’s filthy, dirty — the water’s disgusting looking,” Mr. Trump recalled a friend telling him. “It’s not representative of the country.”

"I kissed Bryan, a gardener, on his red leather couch. I kissed Ray, a painter, in his lofted bed and smashed my head into his ceiling fan."

"Andrew 1 kissed me at the Met in front of a painting of hell. 'Sometimes I think this is hell,' he said, gesturing around us before putting his mouth on mine. Andrew 2 seemed confident over text but wary in person. He surprised me with a smooch on a street corner while we waited for the light to change.... Haden, a sommelier, met me to walk a friend’s dog. We kissed kneeling on the welcome mat while our hands fumbled to free the pug from her harness. Thomas, a surfer, walked me to the subway after playing pool at a dive bar. He planted one on me outside the C train.... When men asked why I was single, I told them it was because my partner of 20 years walked out on me with as much warning as one might get before an earthquake.... In return, the men were unexpectedly kind. I had heard so many horror stories about the emotional capacity of the male species, but these guys told me I didn’t deserve to be treated that way...."

Writes Erin Chack, in "From Kissing One Guy in 20 Years to 11 in a Month My husband leaving nearly broke me. I tried to put myself back together by dating for the first time in my life" (NYT)(gift link, because I think it's a well-written essay).

ChatGPT's astounding hallucination: "Joe Biden did not withdraw after the primaries were over. He stayed in the race through the primaries and remained the nominee. Kamala Harris did not replace him as the Democratic nominee."

I was reading the NYT article, "Concern Grows Over Republican Congressman’s Mysterious Absence/A spokesman for Representative Thomas Kean Jr. said an unspecified 'personal medical issue' has led the New Jersey Republican to miss House votes."

The last vote Mr. Kean cast was on March 5.... [A] campaign spokesman said that Mr. Kean was “dealing with a personal medical issue” and would be “back to a full schedule soon.”... “He’s going to be totally fine”...

I went to ChatGPT just to ask about what sort of medical issue it might be. He needed to keep it secret. It's "personal" (embarrassing somehow?). And we know he'll be "totally fine" "soon." On reflection, I suspect there's some dissembling in there. I prodded ChatGPT to consider that Kean is ultimately going to withdraw from his re-election race and that what's going on now is a matter of timing. The primaries in New Jersey will happen on June 2d, he'll win, then withdraw, and then the Republican Party will be free to slot in whomever they want. 

ChatGPT was dubious about my hypothesis, so I said: "Just look at the last presidential election. The Democratic Party avoided a crowded primary because they let the incumbent look like he was going to go forward. When it was too late and the primary season was over, Biden withdrew, and the party got to put Kamala Harris in. I assume that was coordinated and the timing of Biden‘s withdrawal was done to spare the party a contentious primary season."

Here's ChatGPT's amazing answer:

That interpretation doesn’t really line up with how the 2024 cycle actually unfolded—or with the incentives the party was facing.

First, some grounding: 

• Joe Biden did not withdraw after the primaries were over.
• He stayed in the race through the primaries and remained the nominee.
• Kamala Harris did not replace him as the Democratic nominee.

So the specific sequence you’re describing—“incumbent clears the field, then withdraws late so the party can install a successor”—didn’t actually happen in that case.

Thanks for the "grounding," Chat.

"[Wendy] Duffy’s son, Marcus, died at the age of 23 after choking on a tomato that became lodged in his windpipe while he was sleeping."

"Nine months later, she tried to kill herself by overdosing and had to be put on a ventilator for two weeks. Ultimately, she said, no amount of medication or therapy can make her whole again and that she 'can’t wait' to die. She’s already chosen what she will wear on her deathbed and told the Daily Mail that Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ 'Die With A Smile' will be playing as she passes on.... [Duffy said] she paid Pegasos, a Swiss assisted-dying nonprofit organization, $13,500 to euthanize herself under its care... This time, she said she wants it to be 'neater.' 'I could step off a motorway bridge or a tower block but that would leave anyone finding me dealing with that for the rest of their lives,' she said."

From "Physically healthy mom to end life by euthanasia at Swiss clinic after death of her son" (NY Post).

Did you think it was possible to fall asleep while eating and choke to death? Sit up, pay attention, or don't eat. You could kill yourself and kill your mother.

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.