"The marble front remained shrouded in white- and blue-striped tarps, with no clear answer on when they would be removed."

I'm reading "At the Kennedy Center, a Name Change Shrouded in Uncertainty/President Trump’s name was removed from the arts institution’s facade overnight on Saturday. Many questions remain, including whether or not it stays off" (NYT).

“I was hoping for a reveal, honestly,” said Katy Bigge, a student at Rutgers University who was visiting Washington with her parents. Her father, Philip Bigge, was squatting on the ground, peering through a crack between the tarp and the building’s front to try to make certain that Mr. Trump’s name was gone. He could not be sure, but he thought he had detected that the letters were missing.

It seems that Trump's name is gone, but now you can't see that it's gone. It's "shrouded." Maybe some day in long in the future, when Trump is worshipped for his grand triumphs, the shroud will be on display, like the Shroud of Turin.  

"[Melinda] French Gates has said she met Epstein once and found him so repugnant that she had nightmares afterwards."

"I ask what had so chilled her. Her demeanour changes rapidly. She looks as if she is about to cry. It is upsetting to witness a woman of such unusual self-possession suddenly lose her poise. She turns away, to look at the lake outside her window, and I can see her attempt to compose herself."

I'm reading "'Have you ever been around someone you just know is evil?' Melinda French Gates on meeting Jeffrey Epstein, giving away billions, and her post-divorce peace," by Sophie McBain in The Guardian and my incredulity is sky high.

You can see her attempt to compose herself? I'm not looking at her. I'm just reading your words. But what I see is some phony-baloney acting. And silly writing. Which continues:

“My heart is racing,” she says after a moment, fluttering her hand over her chest.

Fluttering her hand over her chest? Really? This sounds like a comical drag performance of femininity. I'd like to turn away and look at a lake, but I keep reading:

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"Amazing young man, he really is. Forrest Gump-like, you know what I mean? He’s amazingly real, naive to a lot of things, and it’s beautiful. "

Said Brewers manager Pat Murphy, quoted in "A record 15 K's in a Maddux, one at 104.5 mph: Miz pitches the game of the year" (MLB).

I had to ask what's a "Maddux"? Answer: "A Maddux describes a start in which a pitcher tosses a complete-game shutout on fewer than 100 pitches. Named after Hall of Famer Greg Maddux, the term was coined by baseball writer Jason Lukehart."

"Barack Hussein Obama’s Deal with Iran... was an easy, beautiful, smooth road to a Nuclear Weapon, which Iran would have had six years ago..."

"... and would have used long before now. My Agreement with Iran is the exact opposite, A WALL TO NO NUCLEAR WEAPON! In fact, they no longer want a Nuclear Weapon, nor will they have one, either through purchase, development, or any other form of procurement. The Deal is scheduled to get signed tomorrow, and immediately after it is signed, the Hormuz Strait is OPEN TO ALL."

Writes Trump, at Truth Social.

We've heard so many times that the deal is about to be signed, so generally I resist blogging about it. I'll believe it when I see it. But "The Deal is scheduled to get signed tomorrow" sounds more definite, doesn't it? Weasel word: "scheduled."

Trump continues: "Our relationship with Iran is a much different and better one than previous Administrations have had.

"I think Platner is probably worse than Newsom but he reminds me more of Fetterman, who I originally liked. That may be why I have never liked Platner."

"I am intimately acquainted with the genre of New England failsons, being as I am a faildaughter of that sort of edge of aristocracy myself. He has no principles as far as I can tell and no real experience in much of anything but arrogance. He’s bad news through and through, and I suspect a Dino if you will. Even without the nazi tattoos and the extremely believable and coherent accusations of sexual wrongdoing and quite possibly assault, this is not someone we need in the Senate."

Writes someone called mygothlaundry in a Metafilter discussion based on a Liberal Currents article titled "Graham Platner and the Class Politics of Impunity/Solidarity with working class women never seems to enter into it."

"Failsons" and "faildaughters"... I'd never noticed those words before, but, poking around, I can see they've been around for a while.

"Tasteslop is slop made out of things considered tasteful. It comes in two flavours..."

"... either AI/algorithmically generated content that deploys recognisable taste markers — a brand mood board featuring a designer suitcase, a skinny-neck kettle, a Dieter Rams book — or tasteful things deployed in service of slop, like a curated influencer dinner for a tech company. The key is that the visible signs of taste have been extracted from their original social context and redeployed generically."

Said the trend forecaster Emily Segal, quoted in "The rise of social media ‘tasteslop’ — and how to avoid it/From clothes to interiors, the internet has created good taste as defined by the algorithm. The trend forecaster Emily Segal tells us how to step away" (London Times).

After Segal coined the term it went viral.... [S]he pinpointed a dinner party at a New York restaurant considered to be classy and slender-spouted kettles as slop, and explained why Jennifer Lawrence’s style is too (“she looks more like a shopper/demographic and less like an individual figure”, Segal wrote). Once you see it …

Dieter Rams? Here's Dieter Rams pointing at things he doesn't like:

Jimmy Kimmel finds it "unsettling" that "our first trillionaire, the richest man in the world, is also one of the weirdest people we've ever seen on this planet."

"This obscenely wealthy weirdo has the ability and means to blow up the moon if he chooses and also to put a lot of other people's money in his pockets. You know, SpaceX, it will enter the stock market so highly valued a lot of 401ks will get triggered to invest in it automatically.... Wasn't he supposed to be going to Mars? Can't we chip in to help speed that up? It's a trillion dollars. It's hard for our brains to conceptualize that. I mean, we know trillion is a number, but it's so large... we can't fathom it. The same way we know like Elon has a lot of kids, but we can't fathom him getting laid, right?"

Expressing contempt for Musk because you see him as weird — and unfuckable — reads as a careless cruelty against people who are on the autism spectrum.

Musk came out very openly — 5 years ago — as a person with Asperger's syndrome:

ADDED: Remember when the Democrats' chose their candidate for Vice President based on his use of "weird" as an insult against Trump? They seemed to really think that could win the election.

"The president's threatening to leave it permanently.... We'll just host weekly fights between people in politics, you know, and settle our scores that way...."

The comic stylings of Marco Rubio:

When did I first hear the joke that, instead of fighting wars, the individual world leaders ought to put on boxing gloves and fight it out one-on-one? I believe I heard it back in the 1960s and a few times since then, but I couldn't trace it to any particular comedian or commentator. It seems to be a longstanding folk joke.

It was basically the idea behind the MTV show "Celebrity Deathmatch." From 1999, here — at TikTok — are Bill Clinton and Ken Starr fighting it out in the ring.

And here's a serious look at that immense construction on the White House lawn. Maybe you don't think this is funny or cool at all. Maybe you are truly and righteously steamed:

"I had to wrestle with myself as a feminist to do it, and it was a lot of money. But I'm very happy with the result."

"No one noticed for like six months. And then I wrote the piece, and now everyone wants to talk about it. But that's okay too. But, yeah, my daughter, who's 13, has autism, said, 'I will never respect you if you do it.'... You know, everyone has to figure it out for themselves, but don't buy into the feminine beauty myth. You know, that you can do and be whoever you are in whatever way you want to treat your body and your face and it's up to you. You know, that's a personal personal thing... I just didn't want everyone to think I look sad when I feel in fact very happy...."

Goodbye to Gene Shalit.

I never watched the "Today" show — or any of the other morning news shows — but I knew he was over there, carrying on, sporting a giant mustache, summing up movies with terse wisecracks.

He made it to 100.

"At my direction, the United States Southern Command delivered a swift and lethal kinetic strike to successfully execute Niño Guerrero, the infamous leader of Tren De Aragua..."

"... one of the most bloodthirsty Terrorist Organizations on Planet Earth.... This action was coordinated closely with our friends in Venezuela, with whom we are working very well. As a result, Tren de Aragua terrorists no longer have safe haven in Venezuela or anywhere else and, under my leadership, we will find these vicious murderers and drugs lords anytime, anyplace, and send them to the depths of hell where they belong. GOD BLESS AMERICA! President DONALD J. TRUMP"

Writes Trump, at Truth Social.

A sharply clear waning crescent moon at 4:44 a.m./36 minutes later, sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"Democrats need organized voters. The political mobilization that the civil rights movement built..."

"... and that has propelled Democrats to victories across the country is aging. The G.O.P. is racing to disorganize and dilute Black electoral power across the South and the Voting Rights Act is all but dead. Your guess about the Democratic Party’s plan to fill the gaps is as good as mine. The party seems to want some kind of economic populist message without embracing the demographic reality that a member of the working class is just as likely to be Black or a woman as a white dude in a Carhartt...."

Writes Tressie McMillan Cottom, in "This Could Be the Winning Issue for Democrats" (NYT).

The suggested winning issue is opposition to data centers: "Americans hate data centers. They really, really hate them.... Data centers evoke strong emotions because they are tangible. Voters can hear them, smell them and see them.... [W]hen political problems become local, people can be persuaded to look beyond their party affiliation or even their own social class to help one another...."

"He wanted revenge — revenge against society because he blamed society for all his troubles."

"You’ll hear that in 2024, the defendant was lonely, with no real friends.... He lived by himself and was withdrawn."

Said the prosecutor, quoted in "Man accused of starting LA wildfire ‘wanted revenge on the rich’/Jonathan Rinderknecht is on trial for arson, facing allegations that he was behind the devastating fires that consumed thousands of homes" (London Times).

"A short trip to New York City in 1961 established his lasting attraction to America, a place that to him felt less sexually repressive than England."

"Inspired by his stay, he made prints based on William Hogarth’s series of paintings 'A Rake’s Progress,' but he put that 18th-century morality tale — about a young man’s descent into perdition — in 20th-century terms. Mr. Hockney had the hero cruising runners in Central Park, drinking in gay bars and heading to jail. The episodes were depicted in a visually distinctive style: half-abstract but grounded in realistic details. By the time he finished the series, he was himself visually striking, with a high-color wardrobe of plaid suits, striped soccer jerseys and mismatched colored socks, owlish glasses and bleached blond hair. With a graduation gold medal awarded by the Royal Academy — received with the artist wearing a gold lamé jacket to the ceremony — and London gallery representation secured, Mr. Hockney was a British star on the rise...."

From "David Hockney, Who Restored the Human Form to Art, Dies at 88/His colorful figurative paintings were both conservative and iconoclastic, defying the dominant abstract schools of the mid-20th century" (NYT)(gift link, because there's much more to read and lots of great photos of Hockney and his much-loved paintings).

"He's just an outright pig. He's like a pig... He's like a pig. That's what he reminds me of."

"You know, I come up with good names for people. I don't want to stick him with that one. Although, I think pigs would be very upset about it. It's just a terrible thing. I mean, I watch it happening. It's unfolding. It's really history because there's never been a guy like that that's ever run for office at any level. I don't think at any level...."

I don't know what's especially piglike about Graham Platner. I don't know why Trump thinks he's displayed his great talent for name calling here. "Pig" is like something a child would come up with as an insulting name.

Platner, in real life, is associated with a particular animal, the oyster, so I'd be more impressed by an oyster-related epithet. Don't distract us with another animal, however disgusting. Oysters are pretty disgusting — slimy, blobby, brainless, inert. Why go looking for other animals?

Speaking of oysters, I ran across oysters in this abstruse passage that came up in my reading yesterday: "Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too much like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking that thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is not me."

There's a strong temptation to uglify what Trump has made such a show of trying to beautify.

There's all that water in the Reflecting Pool. Is it well guarded? There are all those fountains and statues. And then there are the great stretches of well-tended lawn.

Now, we're seeing "Large etchings of numbers signaling opposition to Trump appear on National Mall/A White House spokesman decried the numerals '86 47' marked into the grass near the World War II Memorial as an endorsement of political violence" (WaPo)(gift link).

White House spokesman Davis Ingle responded to a request for comment on the markings with an email. “Anyone who engages in or endorses political violence or assassination culture must be condemned in the harshest terms possible,” Ingle wrote. “They should also immediately seek psychiatric help to treat their severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has warped their brains and made them sick in the head.”

I just wrote, at the end of the previous post, "The more grim, puritanical, humorless, imperious, and repressive you are, the funnier it is to make fun of you." There's a similar concept at play here: The more you show how much you care about pristine beauty, the more exciting it becomes to besmirch it. We can't have nice things.

Oh, but those who endorse the idea "86 47" might respond, these "nice things" are not nice. They are Trump things and therefore the ugliest things of all. To desecrate them is to move in the direction of true beauty. 

"For many years, these works have inspired audiences around the world by conveying values such as courage, friendship and perseverance."

"Because of this, many fans feel concerned when images from these works appear to be used in political or military contexts that may differ from the intentions of the original creators or rights holders. This petition seeks to convey the voices of fans who, precisely because Japanese manga and anime are so widely loved around the world, hope that their cultural value and context will be respected."

Says an online petition seeking an end to the use of anime in political satire, quoted in "Trump draws anger in Japan with ‘disrespectful’ cartoon fakes/Fans of anime have called for action against the US president, who posts AI-generated clips of himself as their comic-book heroes" (London Times).

I'll just express my opinion in blog tags: "free speech" and "lawsuits I hope will fail."

This made me think of the old Walt Disney Productions v. Air Pirates case. Wikipedia:

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments. 

CORRECTION: Somehow I'd mistakenly titled this post "Sunset."

"For years, Judge Eleanor Ross’s secret was passed down from law clerk to law clerk. They whispered about..."

"... the sultry jazz music that emanated from her chambers when a uniformed police commander, a man they called her 'visitor,' disappeared into her private office. The clerks could sometimes hear the unmistakable sounds of sex from behind the door.... While the clerks said they might have been willing to overlook isolated personal foibles, they were more broadly disturbed by the lack of attention Judge Ross paid to the civil disputes that came before her.... It was not unusual to go weeks without hearing much from her except for a brief email — 'Please docket.' — a few minutes after they sent her a draft order, three clerks told The Times. They estimated that she provided edits on roughly 5 percent of the civil orders that they drafted in her name, and even then mostly just for grammar or typos...."

From "Sex, Lies and Secrets: A Federal Judge’s Trysts Go Public Now, Judge Eleanor Ross’s career and caseload are under scrutiny. And her punishment, a private reprimand, has sparked backlash" (NYT).

The Times tells us that "the décor in her chambers" included a photo of Ruth Bader Ginsburg festooned with a quote from a Beyoncé and Drake song: "All them fives need to listen when a ten is talking."

I tried to find out exactly what "sultry jazz music" the judge played. I was unsuccessful, but here's a Spotify playlist titled "Sultry Jazz":

To what extent can a judge — or anyone else — use her/his private office for activities other than the job? I assume it's fine to take a nap or do calisthenics or read a novel or stare into space.

ADDED: "Was that wrong? Should I have not done that?... Because I've worked in a lot of offices and I tell you people do that all the time."

Out at our usual sunrise vantage point, I encountered a mystery object.

I'm glad I didn't rely on guessing. I used AI and I know what it is.

Madison at 4:45 a.m.

"At some point in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets..."

"... much like we have with Venezuela, which is working out brilliantly for both Venezuela and the United States of America. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP"

Trump at Truth Social.

UPDATE: At Truth Social:

Based on the fact that discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved, I have, as President of the United States of America, cancelled the scheduled strikes and bombings against Iran this evening. Discussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail, approved by all parties involved, including the United States, Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Turkey, Pakistan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan, Egypt, and others. The Naval Blockade will remain in full force and effect until this Transaction is finalized — Time and place of the signing to be announced shortly.

DONALD J. TRUMP
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

So "discussions" have been approved. That doesn't sound like an agreement. But there is "this Transaction." That too doesn't sound like an agreement, and yet it is something that can be "finalized" and signed, which does sound like an agreement. 

If you had to argue that birds are right wing or left wing, what side would you take and how would you support your position?

That's a prompt I used on Grok this morning after seeing the typo — speako, really — I'd made in a prompt earlier this morning when I used AI to identify a bird. It was a Rose-breasted Grosbeak. I'd said: 

"It's got black and white on top and white on the bottom and there's some right orange patches."

"right" = bright, of course.

Meade said, "Yeah, 'right' orange patches sounds nazi." Hence, my new prompt.

Do not click for more if you don't want to read AI-written material, but I do think this one is at least worth scanning. It's a crisp outline. Grok takes the position that birds are right wing:

"Ms. Gilbert is not a provocateur in the style of Banksy, and she is not making a political statement. Her work, filled with shining suns, wizards and dragons..."

"... is warm and incorporates inclusive sayings like 'Be seen' and 'I love all of you.' The message is perhaps muddled by the price tag. Reserving all of a subway station’s walls and other surfaces, a package advertisers sometimes call 'station domination,' can cost more than $250,000 per month, said Seneca Mudd, a managing partner at Brand Bravery, a marketing firm helping to coordinate Ms. Gilbert’s plan. He declined to give the total cost of the ad-space purchase, but said that it was over $1 million, including station rentals and marketing expenses...."

From "The Mystery Artist Filling Subway Ad Space With Whimsy/Sue Sarah Gilbert, a Rockefeller descendant in Seattle, raised $1 million to place her drawings in New York City stations" (NYT)(gift link, so you can see the charming artwork).

From the comments over there: "I see this story a lot differently than the journalist. A woman from a family of billionaires uses her financial connections to fund a vanity project so full of itself that it includes QR codes for people to send photos of themselves enjoying it. The art itself is simple and juvenile, like something a grade schooler would draw. This is the type of art a parent would put on a fridge, but because Ms. Gilbert has friends with deep pockets it’s being put up for months in the New York subway."

Are you "upset" or just unsettled?

I'm reading "Are You 'Triggered' or Just Upset? This popular term is often misused, experts say, which may cause more harm than good" (NYT).

When people use the term trigger instead to refer to everyday things that incite annoyance or offense, they run the risk of conflating traumatic experiences or mental health struggles with everyday challenges, several experts said.... Using triggered to describe negative everyday experiences may also cause people to misinterpret discomfort as danger. They may start to think that bothersome experiences or everyday challenges are harmful, rather than seeing them as opportunities for learning and growth, Dr. Needle said.... 

Sometimes, the word trigger can also be used sarcastically or dismissively, Dr. Needle said — as in, “Oh, you’re just triggered” — to minimize someone’s legitimate negative reaction to a comment or action. “It is basically a way of saying your response is a ‘you problem,’ a sign of weakness or oversensitivity, rather than acknowledging that something genuinely hurtful was said or done,” she said.

I love the name Dr. Needle. She's a clinical psychologist, Rachel Needle.

The headline suggests that the word "upset" is a good substitute for "triggered" when you're not talking about having a flashback to a trauma. But isn't "upset" also pretty dramatic, if we take the dying metaphor seriously? Have you been knocked over, capsized, overturned? 

I've noticed recently that political writers are turning to the word "unsettling." There was the very conspicuous NYT headline: "Several Women Who Dated Graham Platner Recall 'Unsettling' Behavior." 

Great catch, by U.S. Senator Eric Schmitt.

Left it all on the field.

Republicans win 11-2

Honored to be named MVP. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/5vZtOifN2n

— Eric Schmitt (@Eric_Schmitt) June 11, 2026

Here's his Wikipedia page. I see he's 50 years old.

"In an open schoolyard... the researchers instructed participants to roam at will.... Within seconds, 80 percent of people were moving in a counterclockwise direction."

"'It’s not a gradual drift but rather a bias that emerges almost immediately,' Dr. Echeverría-Huarte said. Dr. Echeverría-Huarte and his colleagues wondered if the behavior might be emerging collectively, similar to how pedestrians split into two opposite-moving lanes on crowded sidewalks. But when they tested participants alone, 75 percent still moved counterclockwise, suggesting that the tendency is individual."

From "Nearly Everyone, Everywhere, Veers Left When Walking/Researchers are at a loss for why people across cultures and ages, regardless of their dominant hand, have a natural bias toward wandering in a counterclockwise direction" (NYT).

The words "clockwise" and "counterclockwise" suggest that clockwise is the more natural tendency. "Counterclockwise" sounds like going backward. But the clock had to go to the right when it was a sundial (in the northern hemisphere), and that established the tradition. 

The words "clockwise" and "counterclockwise" did not emerge until the 19th century. What did people say before that? I think they used the strange word "deasil" (or "deiseal"), which the OED traces back to 1771 and defines as: "Righthandwise, towards the right; motion with continuous turning to the right, as in going round an object with the right hand towards it, or in the same direction as the hands of a clock, or the apparent course of the sun (a practice held auspicious by the Celts)."

If it is indeed auspicious to circle to the right, then why do we naturally circle left? One thinks of the etymology of "sinister."

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"If we need to negotiate with bombs, we’ll negotiate with bombs. And we’re very good at it. Nobody better in the world."

Said Pete Hegseth, quoted in "Iran War Live Updates: U.S. Will Strike Iran Again Tonight, Hegseth Says/The secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, said a new American attack would be launched on Wednesday night. Earlier, President Trump said more attacks were coming, a day after he predicted peace" (NYT).

Trump posts a "West Wing" clip decrying the notion of a "proportional response."

Are photos on this blog displaying the wrong way for you?

Are you, like me, seeing some of the photos sometimes display as if they were enlarged behind the frame of the blog and only showing one quarter of the image? You could click on that image and get the whole thing, but only a stupid corner is showing on the blog?

Maybe it's only a problem for me, but I've spent a lot of time trying to fix it at the code level, using Grok, and I've only gotten as far as to understand that Flickr has introduced some new incompatibility with old Blogger templates like the one I've been using for 20+ years.

One solution is to switch to a new Blogger template, but I'm so used to seeing this template that subjectively the newer templates all look wrong to me. If I try to be objective, they still look bad — cluttered, stupid, tricked out. Ugh!

ADDED: If you think you're looking at a photograph that has this problem — the framing will seem puzzling or perverse — you can click on the photo and see it at Flickr.

Can we not all love the new pool?

I stopped by the new Reflecting Pool. It is simply glorious. There were a thousand people, everywhere, taking pictures and just enjoying its beauty. Thank you President Trump for restoring our city’s national treasure. pic.twitter.com/Ii7DlEItfd

— Howard Lutnick (@howardlutnick) June 10, 2026

"It was not clear how the flag got loose."

That's the third sentence in a NYT article titled, "Huge American Flag Flies Into Power Lines, Knocking Out Power for Thousands/The flag hit transmission lines on Saturday night, affecting 5,000 customers in Connecticut."

The power company called the flag "massive" — 40' x 76'.

The article doesn't have comments, so readers were deprived of the opportunity to spin metaphors. If it had, I'm sure Trump would have been mentioned prominently. 

"The idea that trying too hard is deeply uncool is... nothing new. In the ’90s, it was the central dogma..."

"... of the grunge era.... Similarly, the current just-rolled-out-of-bed look might be seen as a pendulum swing away from looksmaxxing, big blowouts and heavily filtered social media photos. Guido Palau, who styled the windswept ponytails at the Prada show, describes the look as 'weirdly bourgeois' and designed to keep people guessing. 'If you’re wearing the most beautiful cashmere jumper and it costs a fortune, you want people to know but not to know,' he says, and messy hair works the same way. 'There’s a kind of inverted snobbery.'"

From "Want to Stay on Trend? Stop Brushing Your Hair. With messy mops showing up on both runways and red carpets, the key to fashion’s new favorite hairstyle is doing less" (NYT).

I've long been a fan of this kind of hairdo. When I was a teen, in the 1960s, I imagined myself becoming famous as the hairdresser who invented the style called The Mess-Up. How could you get people to rave about your brilliant work when what you were doing is messing up their hair? I don't know, but it's genius if you can make that happen. I had the vision to mess up the hair just the right way, the way that looks so nonchalant and witty. 

Life took me elsewhere, but the inspiration of The Mess-Up must have formed an underlying anti-structure.

You know, I didn't stumble across that link myself. Meade texted it to me, and I'm pretty sure that had to do with my criticism of the hair of the women on the various news commentary TV shows he watches. I loathe the shows, but I sit there, often with noise-cancellation AirPods in while I read my iPad, but I do take in the visuals enough to become annoyed by the messy cocker-spaniel ears that festoon the female heads. Make is sleek! Pin it up! Look professional!

At 5:26, an ultra-soft sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"I have just been informed by our Great Military that last night the Iranians shot down one of our highly sophisticated Apache Helicopters while patrolling over the Strait of Hormuz."

"There were two pilots involved, both are safe and uninjured. Nevertheless, the United States must, of necessity, respond to this attack. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP"

That's Trump, at Truth Social, 3 hours ago.

"... a Goddamn coward..."

Chris, reader of presidential biographies, sends me a photograph of the book he's reading:

Tiny Althouse in the rain/frantic bee in the rose.

Videos by Meade:

"An online debate has been simmering for years over what constitutes an acceptable date, especially if it’s your first as two singles."

"Some people embrace the idea of a cheap date, like a walk in the park or a chat over coffee, to build connection. For others, it’s dinner or nothing — preferably with a $200 minimum spend.... Riding bikes side by side through the city, [said Chester Martin, a 33-year-old musician in Brooklyn], is a 'slightly more elevated version' of going on a walk. And in case his date isn’t in the mood to ride her own bike, he doesn’t mind putting in extra work. 'The person I’m dating now is of the size where she can comfortably sit in the Citi Bike basket,' he said. 'I’ll just grab a bike, she’ll sit in the basket and we’ll go literally from, like, Brooklyn to Manhattan and just talk the whole way.'"

From "Would You Go on a Bike Date? Celebrities have recently been hitting the bike lane with their beaus, but the 'Bicycle Boy' was once branded a type to be avoided" (NYT). 

1. The Citi Bike rental agreement says "You may not exceed the maximum weight limit for the Bicycle (260 pounds) or the basket (17 pounds), and You may not otherwise use the basket improperly.... You understand the basket is not a child seat." But do you understand that it's not a woman seat? And how much does this teeny tiny woman weigh? More than 17 pounds I bet, but who knows?

2. "Once upon a time there was a woman who very much wanted to have a little tiny child.... so she went to an old witch.... 'Oh, we can manage that," said the witch, "there's a barleycorn for you!...'... [T]he woman... went home and planted the barleycorn; and very soon a fine large flower came up.... 'That's a charming flower,' said the woman, and gave it a kiss on its pretty red and yellow petals. But just as she kissed it the flower gave a loud crack and opened. You could see it was a real tulip, only right in the middle of it, on the green stool that is there, sat a tiny little girl, as delicate and pretty as could be. She was only a thumb-joint long, so she was called Thumbelina...."

3. Now, I don't know how well Thumbelina would do in Chester Martin's Citi Bike basket:

4. Be careful, Thumbelina! Shouldn't the musician take better care of you? Is this merely a "slightly more elevated version" of something else you shouldn't be doing? Don't you deserve a bigger "spend"?

5. Do you like "spend" as a noun?

"Born with male sex characteristics and raised as boys, the current group of bissus are feminine in appearance."

"Their sacred rituals embody both genders: the daggers represented masculinity; the colorful silks femininity. 'Within a bissu, both male and female exist, and that is perfection,' said Kahar Eka, 52, a senior bissu, who wore a distinctly male attire of a peci hat and trousers, a day after donning an elaborate headdress embedded with flowers...."

I'm reading "The Priests Revered in the Land of Five Genders/The bissus of South Sulawesi are considered a link between the earthly and celestial because they are thought to embody both male and female traits" (NYT).

Eka, who commonly goes by just one name, remembers feeling effeminate even as a young boy; but that sentiment was rejected by Eka’s father, a conservative Muslim. Growing up in Sulawesi, Eka often looked at the bissus and wondered why they were respected, but the calabai — or men who exhibited feminine traits — were bullied. The calling to be a bissu, Eka said, came in a fever dream.... 

"The teams totaled 34 hits, and 14 pitchers combined to throw 444 pitches. It was the fourth game in major league history with at least 29 runs and 11 homers."

I'm reading "Brewers outlast A's 15-14 in 12 innings as teams combine for 11 homers and 34 hits in Las Vegas/Andrew Vaughn had four hits and four RBIs, including a two-run double that tied the score in the ninth inning, and the Milwaukee Brewers outlasted the Athletics 15-14 in 12 innings at Las Vegas Ballpark in a wild game that featured 11 homers" (WaPo).

No, I wasn't watching. That game started at my bedtime — 9 p.m.

I just noticed that there's a team now that's just named the Athletics — no city/state in the name. Just the mascot... and it's the most generic mascot. The Athletics. And they played in Las Vegas last night — "at the site of their Triple-A affiliate, the Las Vegas Aviators." They seem homeless. They're not in Oakland anymore, and their normal home these days is West Sacramento, but not enough of a home to become part of its name. Playing a few games in Las Vegas this week has something to do with Las Vegas being its future home. A new stadium will open in 2028.

But maybe you watched basketball last night. I'd rather watch a random baseball game than an important basketball game, but I did pause the movie I was watching and go downstairs to hear the National Anthem and catch a glimpse of Trump. The NYT says "Mr. Trump smiled and saluted in the face of deafening boos when he briefly appeared on the arena’s video board...." I went back to my movie — "A Complete Unknown," now, finally, on HBO — but I did look up the result this morning. I see Trump ruined everything:

Ooh, that Trump. The Knicks lost. Meanwhile, Bob Dylan won. That's what Joan Baez says to him at the end of the biopic: "You won." He's all "What did I win?" and then he rides off into the sunset on his motorcycle. 

Sunrise, between the rains..

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"Gabi Drunyte, 21, from the Glasgow area, posted her first video, which opens 'I have no friends,' on TikTok in November."

"It received more than 211,000 views and 20,000 likes. 'A really large flood of people said they were in the same position … and that it was refreshing to see someone be so open because they thought they were alone,' she said. 'The biggest comment that I got was that I gave them a new lease of life, like they were really contemplating things, they felt really, really, really poorly about themselves.' Drunyte explained that after school she gave into being 'a wee bit of a recluse,' feeling that her efforts to socialise were futile. After university, she moved home and worked hybrid jobs. She posts 'day in the life' videos of her doing errands, hikes or solo trips to lochside lodges...."

From "The latest TikTok trend for Gen Z? Admitting you have no friends/Behind the perfect skin routine, delicious meal for one and spotless flat, popular 'living alone diaries' highlight a loneliness epidemic" (London Times).

"The problem with putting in a reflecting pool? The darn thing reflects. When the light off the Reflecting Pool bounced up onto Lincoln's face, it looked as if a flashlight had been held up under his chin."

Wrote Sarah Vowell, back in 2005, in her very entertaining book "Assassination Vacation," which I recently reread. The link goes to an excerpt of the book at the NPR website. There's also audio of Vowell reading her text, which she does extremely well.

Here's more context:

"[Daniel Chester] French obsessed for years about how to sculpt Lincoln's peculiar face, fretting and reading and thinking before committing to the brooding, seated philosopher in the memorial. He received the commission in 1913. So by the time the memorial was finally dedicated nine years later, the sculptor was a little pent up worrying how his work would come off. Hoping to celebrate, French looked upon the final installation with horror. The problem with putting in a reflecting pool? The darn thing reflects.

"In 1968, Janet Malcolm visited a new showroom for high-end furniture that was, she wrote, among 'the most beautiful and interesting' in New York."

"The venue was designed by Warren Platner, an architect who himself designed furniture; Donald Trump would later acquire a set of his chairs, and sounded gratified when, during an interview in 2010, a reporter from the Times recognized them. Platner’s son, Bronson, went into law, in Maine; his son Graham studied at Hotchkiss, a tony boarding school in Connecticut, though he hated it, skipped classes, and was quickly kicked out. Graham transferred to a different private school closer to home, where he starred in a production of 'My Fair Lady.' He played Henry Higgins, the haughty phonetician who teaches a lower-class flower girl to speak proper...."

Those are the opening lines of an essay by Jon Allsop titled "The Changing Face of 'Authenticity' in Politics/What Graham Platner’s scandal-plagued Senate run says about a tired cliché" (The New Yorker).

Here's how Platner entered the political arena, last summer:

Allsop ponders "authenticity":

"Please! I traveled all the way to Wisconsin!... Listen, we traveled all the way to Wisconsin for this interview"

News companies know women like this are tanking their ratings. If one of these Sunday broadcasts brought in a non ideological White Man their ratings would double. However, they still choose to loose money, just to promote the views of the ownership. Trump is right. pic.twitter.com/Un33VHNqro

— Nate P. Hall (@Nate_PHall) June 8, 2026

Wouldn't it have been funny if the all-the-way-to-Wisconsin plea had worked? Oh, yeah, poor you, going to Wisconsin, let me sit back down and yammer on with you, because you endured the ordeal of coming to Wisconsin.

How many times has Trump traveled to Wisconsin in his political career? 40? 60? He's put in the hard work of demonstrating to Wisconsin that we matter, and here's Kristen Welker obviously irked to have had to touch down in a flyover state. I can't believe I came to this hellhole for you!

ADDED: I love the set with the hay bales and tractors. I was hoping Welker and Trump would jump up and do his old "Green Acres" routine:

Walking at sunrise, between rainstorms.

Video by Meade:

How can Spencer Pratt put a happy face on his loss in California?

That might not be your question, but it was mine. It's the first thing I typed when I opened up Grok to explore how I felt about what happened.

Tell me what you think. Grok talked about spinning — "turn a loss into content, troll the establishment, and keep the spotlight... he's wired for this exact kind of spotlight-reality spin."

Okay. That's justified by the way I framed my question. But I had 2 other things in mind.

First, if he'd won he'd actually need to make good on his promises. He'd have to confront reality on the ground and facing lots of opposition. He wanted to round people up and institutionalize them. How would that have worked? This way, he can just keep pointing to the dream of a beautiful LA that might have been.

Second, his own mother said she wanted him to lose... for the sake of his wife and children:

"It's more expensive than any car I ever bought, but I can't drive around in my face."

Said Rosie O'Donnell, about the facelift she'd always said she'd never get.

Everyone can see it looks phenomenal. But don't try this with your local surgeon. What she got is "very expensive." 

Is it okay to look like privilege?

Can we all just say she looks great? Pick the answer closest to what you think.

Never. She's Rosie O'Donell. That's always ugly.

Let's be empathetic to those who are so deeply troubled by Rosie that they can't see what is true.

She's objectively much improved, and everyone ought to acknowledge what is true.

 

pollcode.com free polls

The proposed rule would impose "a narrow, culturally specific understanding of family" that "privileges a dominant cultural framework over the lived realities of communities of color and global Christians."

I'm reading "Presbyterian Church faces revolt after proposing clergy must be in monogamous relationships — and critics blame white privilege" (NY Post).

The headline is miswritten. The rule doesn't require a relationship. Clergy can still be single. They just can't have more than one partner. It seems that clergy can have sequential sexual relationships — with no commitment at all — as long as they follow a one-at-a-time approach. 

The Presbyterians on both sides of this controversy are relying on progressivism. Opponents tap into racial critique — that "lived realities" discourse. 

Proponents deploy feminist critique. They're "arguing that the practice of polyamory or polygamy can create 'power imbalances, emotional harm, and spiritual confusion,' particularly for women, children, and historically marginalized persons."

It seems that no one wants to get caught invoking tradition. History is that place where persons were marginalized. It's something to be undone. 

***

I love the stock photo the Post chose to illustrate this story. It's like an ad for fabric softener:

Which one is supposed to be the Presbyterian clergyperson?

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"Because it was raining, I got a little bit angry at them. I was not happy with them. But we had a good time."

Said Trump, quoted at the end of "Trump walks out of 'Meet the Press' interview when challenged over false claims/When pressed by host Kristen Welker, the president cited no evidence for claims about Jan. 6 and elections he said were 'rigged'" (WaPo)(gift link).

I was watching that live, but I fell asleep. I heard the loud rain that was adding stress and discontinuity to the interchange, but I'm sorry I missed witnessing the big falling out as it happened. It's easy to catch up:

"He read 'Moby-Dick' at 9. He could devour 400-page books in an hour. He had a photographic memory."

"As an after-dinner party game, he liked to recite 'Paradise Lost,' starting from any line a tipsy guest chose."

Writes Dwight Garner, in "Inside the Mind of the ‘Man Who Read Everything’/A collection of Harold Bloom’s letters details the working life of one of America’s most influential intellects" (NYT).

"Restoring Van Gogh’s Ear & Mending His Broken Heart."

"Do you think Bari Weiss needs to be removed?"/"Oh, gosh, yes. Look, she’s a lovely person. And her Free Press organization that she founded has been very successful. But television’s not her thing."

"This is like somebody walking up to me and saying, 'There’s a 747, there are 400 people on it, we need you to fly it to Paris.' I’m going to decline because I don’t have a clue. And it would have been so much better if Bari Weiss had been offered this job and said, 'Oh, that’s not for me, I don’t know how to do that.'"

That's Scott Pelley, answering a question in "The Interview/Scott Pelley on the Bari Weiss Era and His Last Days at '60 Minutes'" (NYT).

Here's the entire interview (with a transcript at YouTube):

"In the White House, there is a system for dealing with a president who rarely sleeps. The staff take it in shifts so they get a nap..."

"... even if he doesn’t. Donald Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles starts early and stays on until early to mid-evening. Then it’s over to her deputy Dan Scavino, a true Trump old-timer — they met when 16-year-old Scavino was selected to caddie for him — to do the graveyard shift.... [T]he shifts are about being around to help, aid and occasionally advise, rather than blocking. Still, journalists and lobbyists study Trump’s schedule for when best to try to get him alone. A former aide says the best times to call are first thing in the morning or late evening, but he’s such a night owl that some enterprising hacks have got through at 3am. In the morning, his team wakes and checks Truth Social for what Trump has posted — often a mix of AI memes, criticism of his enemies or his latest views on a war — and any likely fallout. His record is 160 posts in one night. Some come via his adviser Natalie Harp, nicknamed the 'Human Printer' for giving the president stacks of positive press cuttings, others from the man himself...."

Writes Katie Balls, in "Donald Trump at 80: is refusing to act his age his secret weapon?/The president is still known to work 12-hour days and post all night as he enters his ninth decade" (London Times).

I wondered if there are some kind of barracks or hotel-like areas in the White House. I think not. That means Susie and Dan are most likely curling up on a sofa in their office. How old is Susie Wiles? Isn't it dangerous to be this sleep deprived? But Trump sets the tone, and he seems to be all about conquering sleep, the thief of life.

Genuine Trump quote: "You know, I’m not a big sleeper. I like three hours, four hours. I toss, I turn, I beep-de-beep, I want to find out what’s going on."

Live feed of the filling of the Reflecting Pool.

Can we all just say it looks beautiful? Pick the answer closest to what you think.

Never. It looks like Trump. That's all I see and that's always ugly.

Let's be empathetic to those who are so deeply troubled by Trump that they can't see what is true.

It's objectively beautiful, and everyone ought to acknowledge what is true.

 

pollcode.com free polls

AND: I just made a tag for "Reflecting Pool" and added it to old posts in the archive. The oldest post is striking. It dates back to the Obama administration, September 26, 2012:

Why did the bird cross the road? For dark and unknowable reasons?

Yesterday, we were talking about Arthur Miller's aphorism: "Glamour is a bird that for dark and largely unknowable reasons decides to light on this branch rather than another."

My reaction: "Birds don't have dark reasons." You might have read that as if I were saying, birds are, in fact, thoroughly virtuous. I should have allowed for darkness, at least, in some birds. What about Poe's "Raven" or the albatross in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"? But it was more a matter of choosing to talk only about the possible dark side of birds, because that's all Miller brought up.

If the Glamour bird's motivations are unknowable, how does Miller know they are dark? Maybe Miller thought of that question and threw "largely" into the sentence as a quick fix. I don't know much about the mind of Miller, but I read it to think: I don't know much about the mind of the bird, but I do know this: The one called Glamour has dark reasons.

In the comments tcrosse said, "Why did the chicken cross the road? For some dark reason?"

We thought that was a very funny line and laughed about it before we went out for the sunrise. Driving home in the sun, we saw an odd bird standing in the road, then 2 birds. The light side of birds was demanding attention. Baby sandhill cranes just had to cross the road.

Why? No reasons at all. Never any reason. 

Sunrise — 4:58, 5:00, 5:21, 5:22.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"Arthur Miller described the voluptuous yet fragile woman he wed as 'a poet on a street corner trying to recite to a crowd pulling at her clothes.'"

"When Miller left out his journal open to a page saying that she had embarrassed him in front of his intellectual peers and Marilyn read it, she wrote, 'I guess I have always been deeply terrified to really be someone’s wife since I know from life one cannot love another, ever, really.' Like everyone else, Miller was mesmerized by his wife’s power of enchantment. 'Glamour is a bird that for dark and largely unknowable reasons decides to light on this branch rather than another,' he once wrote...."

From Maureen Dowd's new column, "Norma Jeane’s Still Got It!" (NYT).

You know what's embarrassing? 1. Writing down that your wife is embarrassing — can't you just remember it and squirm silently in your dark and unknowable mind? — and leaving your journal open to the page where she'll see it, 2. Writing "Glamour is a bird that for dark and largely unknowable reasons decides to light on this branch rather than another." Birds don't have dark reasons.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bob Boyd provides this:

"A friggin' bird will swoop down from a bough and peck your eyes out as you lie helpless and half frozen in the snow without ever having felt sorry for you." 

— Thought to be an early, rough draft of 'Self-Pity' scribbled in the margin of A Field Guide to the Dark Thoughts of North American Birds found in D.H. Lawrence's library after his death.

BY THE WAY: When I was writing this post, I wanted an illustration and asked Grok to give me an image of "a bird that for dark and largely unknowable reasons decides to light on this branch." I didn't say Arthur Miller wrote those words.

Grok gave me an image that was too dull to use, but it also added this ridiculous caption: "A solitary bird, wings half-folded in that decisive instant of landing, perches on a gnarled, ancient branch silhouetted against a brooding twilight sky. The air feels heavy with unspoken intent—shadows pool beneath the feathers like secrets, and the bird’s eye catches a glint of something ancient and unknowable. Dark pines loom in the distance, mist curls low, and the branch itself seems to have been waiting for this exact, inscrutable visitor."

So I was all: "Yeah it's purple prose isn't it? I got it from Arthur Miller."

An intervention.

I'm reading, in the London Times, "Why JD Vance is so critical of Keir Starmer’s Britain/Having intervened on the murder of Henry Nowak, the US vice-president was accused of trying to ‘stir up division’ by the put-out prime minister."

Vance "intervened"? Vance published a statement. He said something. (We talked about it here, yesterday.)

The London Times piece is by David Charter. Excerpt:

Dirtbagism.

I'm reading "Graham Platner and the Rise of the ‘Dirtbag’ Democrat/And what the Maine candidate reveals about politics today" in the NYT.

That's long, so let's jump to the place where the word "dirtbag" is thrown into the mix:

Michelle Cottle: And honestly, is it even fair to compare Platner to somebody like Paxton or Trump? 

Jamelle Bouie: You know, I don’t think it’s fair. And I say that because, so far, what we’ve learned about Platner is that, for lack of a better term, he’s kind of a dirtbag. Just a dirtbaggy kind of guy.... That’s versus Trump, who isn’t just a reprehensible person, but is actively engaged in harming other people in his private life, right? And I’d say the same for Paxton: not just a slimy guy, but a guy whose modus operandi, as a human being, is to try to dominate the people around him in really ugly ways. And so, I think Platner is more on the John Fetterman continuum than he is on the Trump continuum, which is just, eh, kind of dirtbaggy.

Cottle: OK, so I want to drill down just a little bit more....

The drilling down does not explore the concept of dirtbagism. Cottle was swooping in to take the conversation away from that, even though the headline writer saw the click-bait value of the word. In the conversation, "dirtbag" never reappears.

I asked Grok "how the word 'dirtbag' is being deployed what kind of people use that term and why" and got quickly tracked into the subject of the "dirtbag left." There's this New Yorker article from last October: "What Explains Graham Platner’s Popularity? The U.S. Senate candidate from Maine seems like the embodiment of the dirtbag left. But there’s another way to understand his appeal." Excerpt:

Sunrise, with fishing.

Meade's morning video:

How Jack Scholossberg answered the question, "How did you use your legal education?"

"Well, I understand that content creation is a new profession and that for a lot of people it’s not synonymous with a quote-unquote real job. But I’ve been arguing with evidence supported by facts, very clear arguments made on behalf of the issues that I think are important, and those issues are: corruption of the Trump Administration; his terrible, irresponsible foreign-policy decisions; advocating and arguing for why the Democratic Party—its history and current policies—reflect putting a priority on organized labor and working families. And on social media, it’s not like I was successful just because of my name. You have to make an argument in ninety seconds, with a lot of complicated information. And synthesizing that information, breaking it down into one, two, and three points and having a conclusion—that’s the exercise of law school."

From the interview in The New Yorker, "Jack Schlossberg Makes His Case/The Kennedy scion explains his winding path to electoral politics, his relationship to his family legacy, and why he thinks he should represent New York’s Twelfth Congressional District."

At the Friday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

We got rained out of the sunrise, but we got out after the rain:

"Henry Nowak died the same way a civilization dies: abandoned, handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him, and accused of hate crimes he did not commit."

Writes JD Vance:

I just wanted to get a look at the refilling of the newly blue Reflecting Pool.

But I couldn't avoid seeing this video, shared by Trump:

🚨 LMAO!! President Trump just dropped this absolute GEM: He's filling the newly improved Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool with leftist tears

Straight from the source 🤣🤣

📽️ @TheRicanMemes pic.twitter.com/NJrOdFR750

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) June 4, 2026

I guess that's an effort to visualize what has become the stock joke: The pool will be filled with "liberal tears."

ADDED: Actual footage, showing how the color will work out:

 

"So my brain was going, OK, here is one of the most outrageous, funny Black women in the world at that point, and I’m supposed to be roasting her."

"And I’m not a stand-up. I can’t run with the bulls.... Well, if I were Black, I could say all these outrageous things. I’m not. Then, my mind went, well, I will do it in blackface. That will be funny or not, but it’ll, like, be — oh, I have license to. I thought I could pull this off. There’s no one that’s been whiter than me in the world. Poor Whoopi Goldberg has had to defend me over the years, sweetly and gracefully...."

Said Ted Danson, on a podcast recently, quoted in "Ted Danson Apologizes for Blackface Roast of Whoopi Goldberg in 1993" (NYT).

How do you come up with the idea that because you're not a stand-up comedian, you can go even farther over the line? It's the stand-up who has the most reason to think he ought to seize the power of offensiveness.

If the answer to my question is he thought pull it off because "There’s no one that’s been whiter than me in the world," then he's openly embracing white privilege.

"I have to say, I’m pretty much on my own with this question, and I’m at a loss."

Said the director Wim Wenders, 80, asked about his movie "Wrong Move" (1975) which made the now easily perceptibly wrong move of gazing at the breasts of a 13 year old. But what to do about that now?

I'm reading, "Wim Wenders Pulls Film With Teenage Nudity After Actress’s Pleas/Nastassja Kinski was 13 years old when she was shown topless in the 1975 film 'Wrong Move.' 'I could already tell that wasn’t right,' she told a German newspaper" (NYT).

"On Wednesday, Wenders released a statement on his foundation’s website," the NYT says, linking to a German text. I used Grok to put it in English:

"I am the son of man. I just killed the man of sin."

Said the voice on the 911 call, quoted in "James Handy, Veteran Actor, Is Stabbed to Death/The 81-year-old actor had parts in films including 'Top Gun: Maverick' and 'Arachnophobia.' The son of his girlfriend was arrested and charged with murder" (NYT).

The suspect, Michael Gledhill, who lived at the home with his mother, flagged down police officers and told them he was the person they were looking for, the police said.

"The study, titled 'Law Professors Prefer AI Over Peer Answers'... was conducted with 16 law professors across U.S. law schools and tested..."

"... whether large language models could serve as effective tutors for contract law courses. In a blind evaluation of nearly 3,000 anonymized comparisons, professors rated AI responses significantly higher than answers written by other professors, with AI winning 75% of head-to-head matchups.... The study is particularly notable because previous AI evaluations have focused primarily on subjects with clear right-or-wrong answers. Legal reasoning, by contrast, demands careful analysis of competing arguments and defensible conclusions.... 'These weren’t just simple questions with obvious answers. Many of them required synthesizing complex material, applying it to new situations, and explaining legal concepts in ways that would help students develop their own analytical skills.' Participants created 40 representative contracts law questions that students might ask after class or during office hours, wrote their own answers, and then evaluated responses without knowing whether they came from AI or other participating professors. The AI systems performed comparably to the best human instructor in the study...."

I'm reading "AI Outperforms Law Professors in Stanford Law Study/In a rigorous blind study, law professors overwhelmingly preferred AI-generated answers to student legal questions over answers written by fellow law professors—and flagged the AI answers as potentially misleading or harmful far less often" (Stanford Law School News and Announcements).

"Many in the entertainment industry are creatives, they’re freethinkers, they’re out-of-the-box thinkers..."

"... and so, the idea that someone isn’t conventional is kind of part and parcel of how they move through the world."

Said Dr. Erica Anderson, "a clinical psychologist who specializes in helping children with gender identity issues and who is transgender herself," quoted in "Why do so many Hollywood celebs have trans or non-binary kids?" (NY Post).

These entertainment people are "freethinkers," according to Anderson, who also says, contradictorily, that "the prevailing politics are extremely progressive," so "they don’t feel safe to question an asserted identity by one of their children."

So what is it? Do they feel compelled to go along with whatever the child says — politically compelled — or are they — because of their inherent creativity — celebrating and encouraging unusual expression?

I'm seeing a mysterious merger of freedom and compulsion.

IN THE COMMENTS: Bob Boyd: "I think she means outside-the-box thinkers. Out-of-the-box usually means you don't have to do anything yourself, no assembly required." 

That's closely observed and correct. This is the case of a dying metaphor. What is this box we're talking about when we say "outside of the box"? Grok tells me the expression originated with the 9 dots puzzle:

You're an outside-the-box thinker if you realize you can connect the 9 dots with 4 lines if you go beyond what is only an imaginary box. Apply that metaphor to thinking about how to parent a child who doesn't fit the gender stereotypes associated with its physical form. That's what an outside-the-box thinkers would do. Now, compare the out-of-the-box thinker. This would be someone who has pre-determined ideas built in and really doesn't think at all.

"That eyebrow pierce.... You’ll have trouble getting the barbell out and eventually someone will have to use tiny pliers to cut it out of your face."

Said Molly Jong-Fast, speaking at the Bennington graduation and, later, quoting herself in a NYT essay titled "It’s No Wonder Grads Are Booing Their Commencement Speakers."

The booing that's famously happening this year is in response to graduation speakers who attempt to say something encouraging about what A.I. is going to do to the career they may still hope to pull off.

Platner presents his weary face to the camera

Chris Hayes confronts Platner with the damaging accusations that the NYT published.

He was, he say, "not a good boyfriend." He was "self-medicating with alcohol." It was a "pretty dark period' of his life.

"The air is loud."

"What is that sound that that we hear irritating us so dreadfully?" Dick Cavett asks Jimi Hendrix, as some kind of background noise, emanating from the musical equipment, is interfering with our effort to hear the very soft-spoken guest.

Jimi Hendrix: "Well, it sounds it sounds something like the New York street. I don't know. It's like today the air is all static, so the amplifiers are static. Music is loud, the air is loud, and you know, we're trying to settle things down a little bit, but it's going to take it like a rest."

The idea of trying "to settle things down a little bit" gets the mind of Cavett going toward the idea of human beings settling down, and later he asks Jimi if he sees himself getting married. When Jimi says he hopes not, Cavett delivers a punchline: "But you'll never get a situation comedy on television." That's funny, because sitting on the other side of Hendrix is Robert Young, the father of "Father Knows Best."

Young looks like an funny throwback to an earlier time, but Hendrix died a year later, and Young lived for 3 more decades.

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments... except Graham Platner. Go to the previous post for that. It just went up.

"Lyndsey Fifield, 40... recalled [Graham Platner] as 'cavalierly contemptuous of women’s emotions, of our "weakness."'"

"Ms. Fifield, who dated Mr. Platner from roughly 2013 to 2015, said that his offensive online posts 'reminded me of just how much he hated women.' Jenny Racicot, 41... who said she dated him casually off and on between 2019 and 2021, said the posts deepened her belief that he did not respect women. 'When I saw the old comments that he made online,' she said, 'I recognized a version of him that I had experiences with.'... Ms. Racicot also said that in 2021 he arrived at her house drunk, after she had asked him not to come over. She declined to elaborate, but said she cut off contact soon after that episode and found his behavior 'reckless' and 'unsettling.'"

From "Several Women Who Dated Graham Platner Recall ‘Unsettling’ Behavior/The Democratic candidate for Senate in Maine could be charming, women said in interviews, but some found his actions intimidating and disturbing" (NYT).

"A.I. also had a weird habit of making its characters fidget constantly, always running a finger along the edge of a table or adjusting a collar."

"The most reliable marker, though, was something more abstract, and, I suppose, upon reflection, even a little spooky. The scenes generated by A.I. had characters, but, apart from fidgeting, they mostly did nothing.... [After some new directives,] suddenly, every fake passage was filled with characters hopping on a horse, or delivering an important package, or running.... So I loosened the rules a bit... If Claude prefers to write these passages in which nothing seemingly happens and the hallways are always empty and the characters do nothing except idly touch nearby furniture, it’s because we do, too. Claude, I am sure, will soon be able to have one of these characters at least fire up a stove or drive a buggy to Norwich...."

Writes Jay Caspian Kang, in "Can A.I. Produce Writing That We Actually Want to Read?/I recently created a simple test, which convinced me that the answer is no" (The New Yorker).

"Living in the sunlight/Loving in the moonlight...."

"We get to a point where we see the fence. The fence is there, but we can't see over the fence. But the closer we get to the fence, the more curious we are..."

"... about what's on the other side of the fence. And there are some people who just decide that they're too curious — like Hunter — and jump over the fence, right? I'm not doing that. But I'm approaching the fence, and I've lived a terrific life, and only — once again — only in America.... Although I really did admire his note, the 'no more fun' note. It should be a classic."

Says Joe Eszterhas, who is 81 years old now, in this great conversation with Joe Rogan. 

The classic note he's talking about is Hunter S. Thompson's suicide note. I've quoted it before: "No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won’t hurt."

Eszterhas wrote a lot of movies. Is any of them a classic? Here's a list. I haven't seen any of them. Not my sort of thing. Maybe you've seen "Basic Instinct." But anyway, he talks about a lot in that interview. There's a long section about his dinner with Jimi Hendrix, who was, we're told, "the nicest guy... very nice... just laid back."

"Millions of readers bought the books, which became a popular school assignment and one of the widest-read works to explore the interior lives of modern Iranians."

"The series was adapted into a 2007 film that was nominated for the Academy Award for best animated feature. 'Persepolis,' the author Fernanda Eberstadt wrote in a New York Times review, 'dances with drama and insouciant wit,' its inky black-and-white drawings modeled on both contemporary comics and Persian miniatures.... Not quite two decades later, Ms. Satrapi set to work documenting another tumultuous moment in Iranian history: the unrest in 2022 that followed the death, in police custody, of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, who had been detained and accused of violating a law requiring women to wear the hijab in public. In protest, women across Iran tore off their veils, in one of the most significant cultural and political moments in the country since the 1979 revolution...."

From "Marjane Satrapi, the Author of ‘Persepolis,’ Dies at 56/Her popular graphic novel series, published in the early 2000s, followed an Iranian girl through the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War" (NYT).

The obituary quotes Satrapi: "Even basic human rights, they deny us. You don’t have the right to dance, you don’t have the right to sing, you don’t have the right to do this, you don’t have the right to do that."

The NYT obituary doesn't say how Satrapi died, but at Deadline, it says: "'Marjane Satrapi died of sadness a little over a year after the death of Mattias Ripa, her husband and the love of her life,' read a statement from close friends and family announcing her death on June 3...."

"The whole art gallery art system became too big, too commercial, too impersonal and too corporate. We all know it’s true."

Said Marc Glimcher, the chief executive of Pace, quoted in "A Mega Gallery Shrinks: Pace Cuts 50 Artists, 50 Staff/A challenging art market is forcing even an established player to contract" (NYT).

"We really are finding our soul. And that means having the number of artists that you can perform extraordinary things for. It means just the really core relationships," Glimcher explained. 

One of the artists who got cut is Glenn Kaino, who said: "It’s been clear to me for a while that their model was optimized for a vision of the art world that never materialized. The art I create is concerned with the world and our place in it.... I’m a romantic about good, meaningful art creating value, and not the other way around...."