Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"The center’s mixed messaging is incarnated in the Janus-faced facade of the tower whose eccentric cuts and grooves from some angles..."

"... can bring to mind the heroic architecture of Louis Kahn or a Noguchi sculpture. When sunlight after a rain turns the gray stone pink, the building can look like a beacon. But from other angles, it’s cold and forbidding. That’s a jarring vibe for a project whose most groundbreaking ambition is to reimagine the presidential library as a warm, welcoming community hub.... From the street the carved granite words from Selma are illegible, the lettering bunched together like Cheerios in a box. Standing just below it in Jackson Park, the tower looms like a castle keep, its mass and height in tension with the park’s pastoral beauty and origins...."

Writes the NYT architecture critic Michael Kimmelman, in "Obama Center’s Two Sides: A Lovely Park and a Forbidding Tower/In Chicago, the $850 million Obama Presidential Center aims to remake a neighborhood with a 19.3-acre community hub and a brooding 225-foot museum." (NYT).

Bill Maher lay in wait for Spencer Pratt, then suddenly sprang the trap: "Your wife... look I hate to put it this way, but what I remember about this story was huge tits...."

"What is the state of the tits? They're not what you would call huge but they were at one point. At one time they were okay. So what happened there?"

Yes, that's what Maher said to the man's face, 37 minutes into the interview, after some drinking.

I think Maher wanted to destroy Pratt and had that planned. Either Pratt loses his temper and struggles to respond or he displays a Dukakis-like coldness or Franken-like jocularity that would turn women against him.

But no:

Maher: "But so then she had breast reduction?"

Pratt: "Yes, she did.... So I don't think you respectfully would notice anything."

Maher: "I respectfully wouldn't comment...."

Pratt: "Well, you brought it up."

Touché. Maher blabbers — "Well, I just... I'm telling you..." — then jumps to his backup attack: "My history of you is like 2007 douchebag and then years of nothing?"

Anyway, I think Maher came in wanting to reduce Pratt to the nothing he believed he was — a washed up reality show star who's pissed that his own house burned down — but Pratt prevailed and I think by the end Maher either felt supportive or wanted to manufacture some last-minute evidence that he had backed the winner. 

"Condé Nast started the magazine as Glamour of Hollywood in 1939... but shortened its name when World War II reshaped the lives and ambitions of American women."

"It instead focused on 'the girl with a job,' which would guide coverage for decades. Its glossy pages contained fashion, beauty and sex tips but also coverage of abortion, sexual violence and women’s growing financial independence.... The magazine’s Women of the Year awards, introduced in 1990, became a cultural touchstone.... Those it recognized included Anita Hill... 'I don’t know very many magazines, neither Time nor Newsweek, that gave me that much interest,' Ms. Hill, now a professor at Brandeis University, said in an interview, adding that it had given her hope. It took a place like Glamour, she said, 'to understand what the moment could mean to women.' But like its peers, the magazine got pinched by the digital age...."

From "At Glamour, a Once-Mighty Magazine, a Skeleton Crew Churns Out Shopping Links/Job cuts at Glamour and a greater focus on posts with shopping tips offer one of the clearest examples of the waning reign of women’s magazines" (NYT).

Back in the 1970s, before I went to law school, I worked in a job that required me to read a lot of magazines, and I read all the mainstream women's magazines every month, so I know what Glamour was back then: The hippie era is over. The no-makeup look requires makeup. Here's how to transform your office outfit into a nighttime getup that will wow onlookers. Oh, to have had a blog! But back then, you just made jokes with co-workers. I considered Glamour horrendously outdated, but who knew it would take 50 more years to die? And it's not even completely dead yet. It's still squeezing dollars out of Amazon Affiliates links, like a one-person self-publishing writing operation in a remote outpost in the Midwest.

"You gained 14 pounds in one year!"

That's PRESENCE 🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/dxmRmKZchQ

— Baby News Network (@BabyNetworkNews) June 2, 2026

"[S]ocks and sandals were fully associated with nerd-dom, meaning that soon it was time for fashion... to embrace the twosome again."

"And so it did, with multiple brands, including Fendi, Miu Miu and Dior Men all showing sandals and socks on recent runways.... That this has happened at the same time that Gen Z has become increasingly vocal about its general discomfort with visible toes — the subject of multiple 'who let the dogs out' memes and Reddit threads — is probably not a coincidence. (Gen Z, after all, is the consumer group most brands are most eager to attract.) Whether that reaction is due, as some have posited, to a fear of fetishization — there are accounts on OnlyFans devoted solely to feet — or some other generational quirk, it’s a real thing."

From "Are We All Supposed to Wear Socks With Sandals Now? A teacher wonders about the etiquette rules of contemporary footwear" (NYT).

Complicated! I'd like to say wear socks and sandals in whatever combination expresses the youness of you, but as between the people who have publicly overembraced a supposed rule against socks with sandals and the people who are squicked out by the sight of toes, I'd like to skew toward the toe-haters. But make a good sock choice. Wear socks that say: I know what I'm doing.

And for you Roman Empire buffs: "ROMAN SOCKS AND SANDALS: FASHION OR FAUX PAS? In this article Mark Griffin explores the history of this unlikely pairing." ("'Udones' were made either of pieced together cloth or woollen yarn using a type of knitting called 'nalbinding' or something that looks similar to netting called 'sprang.'")

"Democrats really, really like Platner in Maine but the Republicans f***ing love him … if Maine wants an asshole with a Nazi tattoo on his chest, they get him."

Said John Fetterman, quoted in "Graham Platner 'sexted women.' Senior Democrats fear voters won’t care/Sexually explicit texts have piled pressure on the candidate for Maine. Long-serving party insiders say it’s a test of the tolerance for scandal" (London Times).

I'm getting my American news from The London Times this morning. For this post, I was charmed by the description of Fetterman as "the Democrats’ most unbiddable member in the upper chamber."

I think it's funny to call the Senate "the upper chamber," and I have to go talk with AI to get a handle on what "unbiddable" means. Once you see the root, "bid," as the "bid" in the phrase "do as you are bid," it's easy to see the meaning of "unbiddable." You can't tell Fetterman what to do.

I spend some time musing about the word "bid" — looked it up in the OED, read the very lengthy etymology, and scanned the quotes. Here's one from a 1984 book called "Country Voices," which is a collection of oral histories from rural England: "You didn't go to a funeral unless you were all in mourning, and you didn't go unless you were what they called ‘bid.' When anybody had died, there'd be a young man come round to bid you to the funeral..the joiner's lad."

Do you see why it would be the joiner's lad? And would you like that approach to funerals? You don't just decide for yourself should I go or not.

"This sort of match needs to be umpired by a man... you need a lot of strength to go against the crowd."

Said the tennis player Adolfo Daniel Vallejo, who is from Paraguay and who lost in the French Open to a French teenager.

Quoted in "Adolfo Daniel Vallejo fined $65,000 for sexist remarks at French Open/Paraguayan receives biggest fine in Roland Garros history after saying that his second-round defeat by Moise Kouame should have been umpired by a man" (London Times).

The female umpire, Ana Carvalho, in his view, did not succeed in controlling the noisy, distracting, partisan crowd.

Vallejo stands accused of sexism, but he was, it seems, accusing the spectators of sexism for not yielding to the authority of the female. 

"You’re f***ing crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this."

Said Trump, on the phone to Netanyahu last night, according to The London Times reports.

At the Monday Night Café…

 … you can talk about whatever you want.

Just as I was complaining that I'm weary of the topics in the news, I run across "Jeffrey Epstein’s Sperm May Have Survived Him."

I thought Hormuz and Platner and the slush fund and Jill Biden were getting tedious, and then I see, in The New York Times, "Jeffrey Epstein’s Sperm May Have Survived Him/Mr. Epstein banked his sperm several years before his death and said that if he died, it should be left in the control of his estate."

Why is this news?

"But it’s a familiar thought that new technologies lead to de-skilling, the erosion of capacities people used to cultivate."

"Socrates wasn’t wrong to worry that the widespread adoption of writing would take a toll on our powers of memory and attention...."

Writes the NYT Ethicist in "My Partner’s Dependence on Chatbots Is Becoming a Problem. How Do I Tell Him? One reason I love my partner is his sharp mind and critical thinking. Using A.I. for every decision is something I don’t understand."

"[O]ne risk in downloading deliberation to a machine is that your life will, in a certain sense, cease to be yours, because it won’t be your reasoning and judgment that guide it.... [And] your partner is degrading his relationships with real people.... It’s understandable that you’re feeling crowded out.... [H]e’s brought a third party to this two-person relationship, and it’s talking too much."

She's advised to just talk with him directly. She had to go to a third party — the NYT Ethicist — to figure that out. Why didn't she use her sharp, critical mind to get there — or somewhere! — on her own?

"It was now almost impossible for me to make a decision without getting A.I.’s opinion. By Friday evening, I was starting to worry that the interest in our house..."

"... was a little too strong. We had nearly 20 viewings scheduled for the weekend. I confessed to the chatbot my anxiety that we had underpriced the home. It offered some needed reassurance, saying that by pricing low, I had stumbled into an 'accidental strategy' that could result in multiple offers. 'When you get 1,100 views and 91 saves, you haven’t just listed a house; you’ve started a localized "gold rush,"' it wrote.... I had started this experiment thinking that the chatbot would create a superpowered version of myself — combining my own judgment with its vast knowledge. But once I started relying on A.I., witnessing its know-it-all competency with basically everything, my shortcomings started to feel enormous and even risky. I had thought I was elevating my own skills. In reality, I was replacing them...."

From "I Tried to Sell My House With a Chatbot/Over five frantic days, I gambled my family’s life savings on a hunch that A.I. could outperform a real estate agent" (NYT)(gift link, because this is really useful).

The top-rated comment over there: "When we sold our house in Hawaii, the realtor was excited to get the listing, but provided little actual service. We did the market research to set the price (her opinion — 'Whatever you think'). We decided what preparation was needed to make the listing more attractive (her only real contribution was recommending a great local painter). We staged the house. We negotiated the counteroffer. And we paid a 6% real estate commission. Let the AI revolution roll through the real estate monopoly. Power to the People!"

"His alter ego on 'The Thick of It,' Stewart Pearson, was portrayed as a clownish figure who tries to push 'thought circles' on bewildered Tories and utters pablum like 'knowledge is porridge.'"

"The real Mr. Hilton became a larger-than-life figure, infamous among colleagues for walking the corridors of Downing Street shoeless and in shorts and proposing idiosyncratic ideas that made headlines, like using cloud-bursting technology to make Britain sunnier and abolishing maternity leave.... 'The actual policy proposal was to reduce the maternity to somewhere between six and four months; instead of the maximum yearlong leave in Britain, and to increase paternity leave, he said. 'A year is just way too long'.... By 2011, he became so widely known for his unconventional dress that American diplomats gave special instructions ahead of a visit from President Barack Obama. They said Mr. Hilton must either wear a suit or leave the building.... After being given a 'severe talking to,' she recalled, 'he did, in fact, put on proper clothes.' (Mr. Hilton remembered it differently. 'I think it was, "Yeah, you come to the meeting, you have to wear a suit." I was like, "Yeah, no, I don’t want to do that."') But it was Brexit, Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, that overshadowed Mr. Cameron’s tenure. Mr. Hilton was for it, and Mr. Cameron staked his career against it...."

From "He Was Satirized on British TV. Now He’s Trump’s Pick to Lead California. Steve Hilton grabbed headlines when he worked in conservative politics in Britain. His American political renaissance in the California governor’s race has bemused former British colleagues and rivals" (NYT).

"The German economy, once known for its efficiency, orderliness and stability, is in a terrible mess."

"It’s not just that the numbers are dire.... No, the worst of it is that our dynamic economy gave postwar Germany a sense of identity. For all our flaws, we had a country that functioned better than others...."

I'm reading "Germany Has Lost What It Did Best," a guest essay by Konstantin Richter, in the NYT.

"There is an active Bluetooth network labeled 'BOMB'..."

"... one self-identified passenger wrote on TikTok.... Another Reddit post of someone who claimed to be the spouse of a passenger similarly reported that the word in question was 'bomb' and that the device was a teenager's speaker. The flight eventually reboarded and landed in Palma de Mallorca at 3:47 p.m. local time on Sunday, about 9 and a half hours late."

NPR reports on a United flight that had to turn around. 

"Tennessee bars journalists from witnessing the intravenous line insertion process, the first major step of the lethal injection protocol."

"I noted the time we entered the chamber. After about seven minutes of searching for a vein, they were able to insert an IV into his right arm. Then, following protocol, they also tried to set an IV in his left arm. That failed, so they moved on to his left hand, poking him over and over again. Cycling through needles, the executioners communicated mostly through tense glances and head shakes.... About 30 minutes in, a doctor entered and... told the executioners to remove Mr. Carruthers’s socks and search for veins in his feet.... After that didn’t work, the doctor asked whether anyone in the room knew how to gain access to Mr. Carruthers’s jugular vein. Then, the doctor decided to attempt to establish a central line... puncturing the neck, chest or groin.... Eventually, the doctor said he was not able to set a central line.... By then, an hour had passed. Still, the execution team continued probing his body for another access point....The state’s constructed illusion of precision had collapsed, revealing something far more chaotic and brutal...."

Writes Maria DeLiberato, in "In a Tennessee Execution Chamber, I Saw Chaos" (NYT).

The chaos ended because the governor acted, delaying the execution for another year. It's already been a long time. Carruthers was sentenced to death in 1996. 

"Hey everyone, it’s Amy. Um, I wanted to make a statement today and—oh, sorry, I’m getting eaten by bugs."

"Um, I wanted to make a statement today in response to a couple of news articles that are out there about my marriage to Graham."

A message from my wife Amy: pic.twitter.com/dbDqjssevp

— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) May 30, 2026

"Um, if anybody knows me and Graham personally, you know that we got married in 2023. Um, we live in Sullivan. We’ve got two dogs and we love each other deeply. So it makes me really angry, um, disappointed, and I find it really shameful that there’s a group of media outlets and people who are willing to spread gossip instead of talking about real issues that Graham is running on—like healthcare and education and childcare. Um, I’m walking up and down my road right now and this is like my 20th take. This is very hard to do, but um, I just really wanted to make sure that everyone knows that Graham and I have a great marriage. Um, being married is hard.  Being newly married is hard. Being newly married and going through infertility is hard. Being newly married, going through infertility, and a Senate campaign is hard. Um, I don’t even know if I have the right words to describe what we’ve been going through, but um, our marriage counselor helps. Uh, my personal counselor helps. Graham’s personal counselor helps. Um, and we work on our mental health every day. Um, no marriage is perfect and I—I don’t want a perfect marriage. I want my marriage and I want to be married to Graham. Sorry, blackflies. Um, I knew the man that I married is wonderful and dynamic and probably a genius. Um, I knew the man that I married had been through an immense amount of violent active combat and um, he’s been in therapy for years. I just—I admire the fuck out of him.Um, so when there are news articles about our marriage, it’s just extra shitty. Can I say that online? I hope I can. Um, it’s extra shitty because people in Maine want affordable gas. They want to be able to see their doctor when they’re sick. Um, they want to be able to send like their kids to a nice school, uh, a nice daycare facility, um, and raise families the way that they want to. So I think I’m feeling angry today. Um, and I don’t normally make public statements, but it’s really important for me to tell all of you out there—especially people who are voting in Maine—that I think it’s shameful behavior to spend time and energy and resources on negative ads and negative stories on Graham when all he’s trying to do is improve the lives of people who work for a living. Um, and that’s it. He doesn’t have any other agenda, which is what I think people are trying to dig up. Um, and this is a long video, so uh, I hope my editing team isn’t too frustrated with me. Um, I hope that everyone’s having a good Saturday. Graham and I really care about the state of Maine. We really love it. We were born and raised here and I think we deserve better. I think Mainers deserve better. And I don’t know what else to say. So if you’re editing this video, I’m really sorry. Thanks for watching."

Check the box that's closest to your reaction.

That felt raw and honest and kind of beautiful.

It was evil to force her out there like that, stammering through repeated takes, pestered by insects, subordinated to her man, who... what kind of man is he who won't stand up for himself but sends out his wife, a wife who's obviously fragile and in need of a warm embrace and masculine protection?

 

pollcode.com free polls

West Wing?

I'm reading this Axios piece: "Ex-Biden aides give Jill's new book a frosty review":

View from the West Wing!

I know Trump has demolished the old East Wing, so there's no taking a view from it right now, but Jill Biden purports to give readers a "View from the East Wing." That's the title. (And that's a commission-earned link.)

I understand the Axios slip, because who would read a book about what went on in the East Wing? I'm sure Jill's view was what Melania articulated so well: "Who gives a fuck about the Christmas stuff and decorations?"

That's a "commission earned" link for the book, by the way. It comes out tomorrow. It's #1 at Amazon in the category "Sociology of Marriage and Family" and look at the competition:

Crazy stuff, no? Betty Friedan is still hanging on, there's something called "The Ethical Slut," and it's fits in "Marriage and Family," and why is orange the color of marriage? "Fair Play" is up there twice — once as a book and once as a deck of cards — but there's also "It Begins with You" and — clicking around — I'm confronted with....

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"After Trump’s 11th-hour endorsement of Texas attorney general and all-in Trump sycophant Ken Paxton..."

"...who was impeached for multiple charges of abuse of office, investigated on felony security charges, and dogged by adulterous sexual imbroglios, the slippery MAGA sleazebag still went on to pulverize Senate old-timer John Cornyn in the Republican primary on Tuesday. And yet, liberal cableheads deconstructing the results keep recycling the point that, somehow this was good news. Millions of dollars, they chortled, will now have to be diverted from other imperiled Republicans to defend a Senate seat that, for four terms, had been occupied by the beloved party elder Cornyn and now will be in play against the Democrats’ latest Texan mirage and Colbert candidate James Talarico. When has Trump ever found it difficult to raise millions of dollars, especially against a Senate candidate who tweeted in 2021 that his office was 'the first in the history of the (Texas) Capitol to put pronouns on their business cards?' Paxton was already on a roll in his victory speech, immediately branding his Presbyterian seminarian opponent 'James Talafreako,' 'Six-Gender Jimmy,' and 'Tofu Talarico'...."

From "Trump’s Sweet Vengeance" by Tina Brown (at Substack).

"All the judgy comments here made me feel like I had accidentally wandered into a thread on Bluesky. For cryin' out loud, relax!"

Ha ha. I agree with that commenter about the comments at "David Sedaris/The humorist on art collecting, interacting with fans and a surprising upside of the Upper East Side" (NYT)(gift link, because there are lots of pictures of David Sedaris in his New York apartment, with all its oddball artwork and enigmatic rugs).

The judgy comments are mostly resentful of Sedaris's wealth and his choice to spend what he has on art and on chairs that seem as if they might be uncomfortable. 

And here's Sedaris's new collection of essays: "The Land and Its People" (commission earned). It came out 5 days ago. I've read it and will read it again and again. I love David Sedaris's voice and his books are, by far, my favorite book to listen to while falling asleep. But this new book won't work for that. It's got loud, aggressive clapping/percussion between the essays.

"Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey."

Said Donald Trump, quoted in "Trump’s Kennedy Center plans were blocked by a judge. What happens next?/The ruling has thrown the Washington institution’s immediate future into a state of uncertainty" (WaPo)(gift link).

IN THE COMMENTS: Fred Drinkwater said: "The name change was a deliberate 'last straw' intended to provoke this judicial response."

That really does make the most sense. It was insanely hamhanded. I'm going to assume he didn't want to fix this place, and the best — or most entertaining — way to avoid blame for letting it rot was to bait a judge into preventing him from saving it.

ADDED: There's a new piece up at WaPo now, "Trump’s name may come off the Kennedy Center. He could still destroy it. The Kennedy Center saga encapsulates all of the needless destruction of the Trump administration. The center’s troubles may not be over yet." That's by Philip Kennicott. Key insight: "The worst thing Trump could do right now is nothing, simply remain chair and let the center languish. He could decline to authorize budgets or renovations, leave the calendar empty or pocket plans for recovery. The center would be stuck in perpetual suspended animation.... His angry messages since the court ruling prove without a doubt what has been obvious all along: He never cared for the center, for the arts or culture...."

Not obese.

"The 6-foot-3 president weighs 238 pounds, having gained 14 pounds since his physical last year — meaning he is technically 'overweight' and is about 1.6 pounds shy of being classified as 'obese,' according to body mass index calculations. Trump was encouraged to increase his physical activity and pursue continued weight loss, according to the report."

From "Trump’s doctor says he is in ‘excellent health’ after latest checkup/While the president’s medical report says he remains fit to serve, independent physicians have raised questions about the recurrent bruises on his hands and swelling in his legs" (WaPo).

Trump's sunny summary: "Just finished my 6 month physical at Walter Reed Military Medical Center. Everything checked out PERFECTLY."

Why did The Washington Post put "overweight" in quotes and modify it with "technically"? He's simply and straightforwardly overweight. And that's not perfect. Can we get Bobby Kennedy over here for a second opinion?

See "RFK Jr dares governor of America's fattest state to do regular public weigh-ins/'You look like you ate Governor Morrisey,' RFK said on Friday" (Fox News, March 29, 2025).

"The 100 percent tax idea is gaining traction beyond blue strongholds."

"In battleground Wisconsin, Democrats hope to flip the GOP-controlled legislature in the fall and have introduced the No Taxpayer Dollars for Insurrectionists Act.... The states’ strategy of taxing the payouts could face legal challenges. Lawrence Zelenak, a Duke Law School professor with expertise in taxes, noted that the late Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once said that 'the power to tax is not the power to destroy while this Court sits,' nodding to the tool’s limits."

From "Blue states pitch 100 percent tax on Trump’s ‘anti-weaponization’ payouts/'If you storm the Capitol and you take from this slush fund, too bad, we’re taking it,' one New York lawmaker said" (WaPo).

Why stop at 100%?

The sun, rising just now.

Meade captured that. You know, it's not easy, getting out there every morning. Here I was yesterday, running from ticks:

"What genuinely valuable artwork was lost in the Palisades fire? What efforts were made to save it?"

"Were guys running down the street trying to hold onto Picassos and Monets?"

That was my question upon watching this video at X about Spencer Pratt's loss of his collection of crystals:

Spencer Pratt says his crystals collection was so extensive and impressive it could have been put in a museum

Unfortunately mayor Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom let it all burn in the Pacific Palisades fire

He explains the significance behind these crystals

“I believe anything… pic.twitter.com/NdqToemi53

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) May 30, 2026

Of course, I used the Grok tool that's right there at X. From the answer:

Ron Rivlin (art collector and Warhol gallery owner): He lost around 30 Andy Warhol works (including Campbell’s Soup Can prints, a hot-pink Queen Elizabeth II print, and “Myths” portfolio pieces featuring icons like Mickey Mouse and Superman) plus dozens of other pieces by artists such as Keith Haring, Damien Hirst, John Baldessari, and Kenny Scharf.

Paris.

Problems in Paris pic.twitter.com/KOU8r5UF4S

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 31, 2026

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

A City Without Loneliness.

An ad I'm seeing:

That's appearing at the NYT, with the article "Trump on His Presidential Library: He’ll Write His Own History/In his determination to own and control every document in his future library, the president is working to shield his administration’s inner workings from public view."

Trump's library — which might include a hotel — is in a city I'm sure has some loneliness, Miami. But let's think about Seoul, South Korea, and what it has decided to talk to us about — loneliness.

Does it just want us, over here in America, to know that it's taking care of its lonely people, with counseling and hugs from an imaginary animal? I clicked "learn more" and got "In An Age Of Loneliness, Seoul Reimagines The City As Care" which is a sponsored New York Times article. 

Seoul has a loneliness hotline, we're told. Also, "The Seoul 365 Challenge Program" — inviting residents to go outside once each day. And, my favorite, the "Mind Convenience Store," where "Anyone can step in, sit down, eat, and rest, and" — with the help of a facilitator called "Everyone's Friend"— "begin to connect."

"A federal judge in Miami reopened President Trump’s... case against the I.R.S.... saying that she wanted to investigate 'grievous allegations' that the hasty deal to resolve it was 'premised on deception.'..."

"Judge [Kathleen M.] Williams’s decision came in response to court papers filed on Wednesday by a bipartisan group of 35 former federal judges who urged her to bring the case back to life and dig into the details of the agreement to settle it.... Before she closed the case, Judge Williams, an Obama appointee, had in fact questioned whether the lawsuit presented an actual conflict that she could adjudicate, given that Mr. Trump was on both sides of the suit, bringing claims against a federal agency that he controlled.... In her order, Judge Williams asserted that she was 'empowered to investigate serious misconduct' in any case before her, and ordered Mr. Trump’s lawyers to tell her by June 12 whether the lawsuit should be formally reopened because 'the court was the victim of a fraud.'..."

From: "Judge Reopens Trump’s I.R.S. Suit and Questions His ‘Weaponization’ Fund/The ruling was a blow to both President Trump, who had voluntarily dismissed the suit last week, and to the Justice Department, which used the suit to establish a fund likely intended for Trump allies" (NYT).

"Of all knowledge work, law seems almost perfectly primed for AI because so much of the work involves reading, categorising, and pattern-matching across vast reams of documents."

"It is the type of work AI does well — and tirelessly. It was reported last week that Kirkland & Ellis, the world’s largest law firm, plans to spend $500 million building a bespoke AI system to power its practice. Meanwhile, New York firm Fried Frank has just launched an AI tool designed specifically for its private equity clients, and Slaughter and May has rolled out Harvey across all its practice areas...."

From "Why top lawyers fear that AI is destroying the 'expert’s edge'/When a US law school announced a ban on the tech, some in the industry said students would lack vital skills. The signs are that ‘Big Law’ is leaning in to AI" (London Times).

Meanwhile, at UC Berkeley School of Law there's a new policy banning using A.I. for "outlining, drafting, revising, translating or editing any work submitted for credit." And law firms are complaining because they want to hire new lawyers who are good at using A.I. to do law. How are the schools supposed to teach law now? What's the good of a ban that only restricts the students who are punctilious about rules and terrified of getting caught? Why do those poor souls bear all the burdens? And how effective are law professors going to be about detecting the violations and imposing consequences? Absolutely terrible I would guess.

"[Jill] Biden is a longtime English professor who casually uses the correct group noun for starlings ('murmuration')."

"She quotes many writers here — Albert Camus, Robert Frost, Nikki Giovanni, James Salter — but the author the book recalled most vividly to me, in its careful catalog of small details, was William Carlos Williams, who in his epic poem 'Paterson' wrote 'no ideas but in things.' This tracks, because Biden acknowledges the help of Ada Calhoun, the author of [a book] about Frank O’Hara. Indeed, Biden’s description of being hustled for security reasons through the service entrance to hotels made my O’Hara stand on end, so cleanly could it be broken into stanzas, if you’ll forgive the liberty: 'right by garbage cans/ reeking of rotting room service leftovers/mixed with discarded mini shampoos/ — an odor so sour and pungent/that it almost knocks you down.'"

So writes Alexandra Jacobs in "Jill Biden’s New Memoir Shows Off a Sharp Eye, if Not a Sharp Elbow/Beyond a few pointed digs at her husband’s successor, 'View From the East Wing' largely sticks to the head-spinning details of first lady-hood" (NYT).

Speaking of "no ideas but in things," we're told that, in her new memoir, her second, Jill Biden "marvels at the perks of the office, the masses of flowers, attentive staff and fine art, such as 'Morning on the Seine, Good Weather,' the oil painting that Angela Merkel said Trump called 'my Monet.' ('Our Monet,' Biden corrects, meaning the American people’s.)"

I looked it up. Here's "Our Monet":

According to The White House Historical Association's Facebook page: "On December 4, 1963, the family of John F. Kennedy donated the painting 'A Morning on the Seine; Good Weather' to the White House collection in memory of the late president." That was 2 weeks after the assassination. I'm only noticing this painting now, because I'm reading about Jill and Donald verbalizing possessively about it. And now I feel as though I can see, in that fuzzy image, 2 profiles yelling at each other. And both look like Trump.

Oh! The derangement! An odor so sour and pungent....

ADDED: Did Trump say "my Monet"? It's hearsay — at least double hearsay. Jill Biden is asserting that Angela Merkel said that Trump said something. There's room for mishearing, misquoting, misinterpreting, and lying from Merkel (supposedly hearing Trump) and Biden (supposedly hearing Merkel) and from anyone else who's passed this statement along.

Interestingly, Trump has used the phrase "my Monet," but not to refer to an artwork by Claude Monet. Trump has called one of his golf courses "my Monet": "I have friends who buy Monets. Turnberry is my Monet and it’s far more beautiful." But that quote too is hearsay. Eric Trump wrote it in a book, it says here: "Donald Trump: Turnberry is my Monet — and it’s more beautiful/US president ‘obsessed’ with details about his golf courses in Scotland and continually makes suggestions to improve them, according to his son Eric’s book" (London Times).

Googling for more reporting of Trump's use of the phrase "my Monet," I got a good laugh:

 

I'd like to hear the "Apprentice" theme song with "Monet!" taking the place of "Money!":

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"[S]o much of what I see online and so much of what I hear women say is, 'Men are trash.'"

Says Nadja Spiegelman in "America Has a Masculinity Crisis/A much-needed, nuanced conversation about masculinity and feminism today" (NYT).

She continues: "Sabrina Carpenter said that the key to her songwriting is just to call men stupid in as many ways as you can. I really understand where women’s anger comes from. I have lived it. But I also feel so much tenderness for my brother, for other men I know. And if I were hearing the same kinds of messages in reverse that were just, 'Women are trash,' I wouldn’t know how to begin to approach the world. And so I wonder how — specifically on the left, because I think that there are different answers to this on the right — specifically on the left, which is where I hear men are trashed the most loudly, what effect is this having on boys? Do they hear it? Do they feel it? Is it empowering for women? Is there another way to approach this?"

"Opening Japan’s doors more widely to foreigners could help offset the declines. But the government has long taken a cautious approach to immigration..."

"... and nationalist politicians and commentators have gained influence recently with a 'Japan First' agenda. 'Japan has now reached a level where this kind of decline is not reversible in the short- or medium-run' said James Raymo, a professor of sociology at Princeton University who studies Japan. 'It simply will not happen in the absence of mass immigration.'... Professor Raymo said the Japanese government’s efforts to promote fertility had 'not really moved the needle.' He said that ultimately Japan could provide lessons for other governments...."

From "How Japan Lost 3 Million People in Five Years" (NYT).

I'd like to hear something of what Japanese experts think about mass immigration as a solution. 

What's this fish (or other beast) near the shore of Lake Mendota at sunrise today?

Video by Meade.

Also this morning:

"But blue is a color we associate with injury: Think of the mottled black and blue of a bruise. It is the color of authority and stereotypical masculinity..."

"... of depression, but also tranquility; of cleanliness; of cold; of winning first prize. And so we must ask: What is American Flag Blue?"

I'm reading "Did Trump pick the right blue for the Reflecting Pool? We asked a pool guy. Old Glory Blue? American Flag Blue? Let’s reflect on all the shades, while a federal judge mulls 'aesthetic injury' in the president’s latest decorating flourish" (WaPo).

It's a dark blue, we're told, not swimming-pool blue, which would be too light and bright, not the right somber blue. But it's Trump's blue, so somber — and flag-oriented — is also bad.

"Just because American Flag Blue looks good on a flag, it doesn’t mean it will necessarily look good slathered on a length of more than 2,000 feet, says Jill Morton, a professional color consultant. 'The context of a color is what matters,' says Morton. 'That dark blue, if it is that dark, oh man, that’s going to look very, very dismal.'"

"Jill Biden is now out there finally admitting that she did NOT know what went wrong with Sleepy Joe during our spectacular, and highly rated, 2024 Presidential Debate..."

"... where Joe was not exactly performing to the highest level of debate standards. She said that she thought he was having a 'stroke,' and various other really bad things, and yet never rushed onto the stage to help her troubled husband, as any good wife would do. The only thing she failed to mention was how well I was doing prior to his near total collapse. In other words, as many have asked, did my strong performance in that debate cause him to plain and simple 'choke,' leading to his ignominious defeat, or were other reasons the cause? Nobody else knows the answer to that, BUT I DO!!!"

Writes Trump, just now, on Truth Social.

I had to make a second post about Jill and her book because Trump's statement needs its own breathing space.

Especially Trumpy is "Nobody else knows the answer to that, BUT I DO!!!" 

"As the president walked off the stage, he whispered to his wife, 'I really f**ked up, didn’t I?' she writes. '"Yes, you did,'" I whispered back.'"

I'm reading "5 Revelations From Jill Biden’s Upcoming Memoir" (Intelligencer).

I don't believe any of it. She said that during the debate, as she watched it on TV, she thought he might be having a stroke and that he'd never acted like that before or since. Sorry. Not believed. I think the new book exists to be sold — to make money — and to try to escape responsibility for depriving the American people of the power to participate in the selection of the Democratic Party's 2024 presidential candidate.

"To this day, I still don’t know what happened. Why wasn’t he making any sense? It was inexplicable to me," she says elsewhere in the book. Maybe he had rehearsed too much? Maybe he had traveled too much that month? Or was he just ill? The president had seemed exhausted earlier in the day and had told her that he was not feeling too well. Later, after positing that he may have unwittingly taken codeine cough syrup or Ambien to fight off a cold or to help him sleep, Jill Biden seems to rhetorically throw her hands in the air: "I only wish I had the answer."

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"Why are millions of young Indians suddenly calling themselves cockroaches?"

"The chief justice of the Supreme Court of India probably did not anticipate that an off-the-cuff courtroom remark would trigger one of the most popular political satire movements his country has seen. At a May 15 hearing on judicial appointments, Justice Surya Kant made a comment about youngsters 'like cockroaches,' who, unable to find employment or establish themselves professionally, drift into media, social media and political activism.... Many viewed the remark as dehumanizing. Lawyers debated proper judicial conduct while young Indians flooded social media with angry responses and memes. Then a 30-year-old Boston University graduate named Abhijeet Dipke launched a satirical Instagram page called the 'Cockroach Janta Party' — a play on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party...."

From "This Indian youth party started as satire. Then it got serious. The movement's growth reflects the depth of frustration of a generation that feels unseen and unheard" (WaPo)(gift link).

This gets the old "insect politics" tag.

"For the past few summers, men’s shorts have somehow been getting both shorter and longer."

"On one end, there’s the unmissable thigh-baring hemlines.... On the other side, you have the slouchier, below-the-knee joint.... [One fashion writer] cites that photo of Giorgio Armani on the phone as 'the Bible' for shorts right now. And then there’s the ongoing John F. Kennedy Jr. cosplay, as sparked by Love Story. 'Last summer, short shorts were everywhere. Now, a lot of men are like, "Oh, but JFK Jr. wore baggier shorts. Let’s ditch the short short...."' Of course, there will always be the extremes. Some guys prefer the ultra-trendy, downtown look of giant, capri-like shorts with white socks and black leather shoes.... But... 'In the city and polite society, you kind of want your shorts hovering right at the knee.'"

From "How Long (or Short) Should Your Shorts Be in 2026?/Here’s the definitive answer to the ultimate summer menswear debate" (GQ).

Who knew men were in such a quandary about the length of their shorts? One solution is don't wear shorts or don't wear shorts whenever you care how you look.

I'm interested in the notion that there is "ongoing John F. Kennedy Jr. cosplay" — interested enough to look up "cosplay" in the OED. Cosplay involves not just dressing up like a character but also performing as that character. Who would even know if you were performing the role of JFK Jr.? You'd know. And maybe that's all that matters.

"Trump administration officials have pressed the office responsible for printing the nation’s money to design a $250 bill featuring the president’s portrait..."

"... according to four current and former employees, in what would be the first appearance of a living person on U.S. currency in more than 150 years.... The employees spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution."

The Washington Post reports. Gift link.

I find this hard to believe. It's such a bad idea. I prefer to think it's just not true.

No living person has appeared on U.S. currency since 1866, when it was outlawed after the image of a mid-level Treasury bureaucrat showed up on a 5-cent note. Legislation that would allow Trump to appear on a $250 bill was introduced in Congress last year to commemorate the nation’s 250th anniversary but has languished. In a statement, a Treasury Department spokesperson said the printing office “is conducting appropriate planning and due diligence” in response to the proposed legislation. “Should this legislative mandate be signed into law, the BEP is moving proactively to produce a $250 commemorative note which will appropriately recognize the 250th Anniversary of our great nation,” the statement said.

So it is, essentially, not true. They went through the exercise of creating the note that might be issued if Congress passes a law permitting it, which is not going to happen. So meanwhile, you can see the thing and celebrate or get steamed up or whatever this latest provocation moves you to do.

Is that his mugshot?!

"GLP-1 drugs may be rewiring circuits involved not only in appetite but in emotion, desire and beyond."

WaPo reports. Gift link. Excerpt:

Tens of millions of people are now taking the medications worldwide, turning what began as an obesity and diabetes treatment into what could be modern medicine’s largest unplanned neuroscience experiments. Scientists are studying GLP-1 drugs — medications that mimic the hormones involved in appetite, blood sugar and digestion — for how they affect not only eating behavior, but also addiction, cognition, neurodegeneration and even motivation and pleasure....

On social media and at doctor’s offices, some users have reported a type of brain fog and others something broader and harder to define: a strange emotional flattening. People describe less pleasure, less motivation, diminished interest in hobbies and even reduced sexual desire. Those accounts are beginning to raise deeper questions about what, exactly, these drugs are changing. If GLP-1s alter the brain systems involved in reward, craving and motivation, researchers wonder, where is the line between quieting a person’s destructive impulses and reshaping personality itself?...

"A dated tick taped to a card is one of the most useful things you can hand a doctor who’s trying to figure out what’s wrong with you."

Advice for tick-o-phobes.

The prairie's edge at dawn.

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"Bob would just mow paths through the meadows and put a bench down and just read his book, and probably have a drink."

I'm reading "Sometimes, the Best Way to Explore a Landscape Is to Sit Down/Madoo, in Sagaponack, N.Y., is giving visitors a different way to view a garden, with outdoor seating in a variety of styles and colors" (NYT).

"No one ever believes me when I tell them it’s 1.91 acres.... They always think it’s much, much bigger, because you have all of these little mini-follies and these little windy paths that you get a little bit lost in as if you were in a much larger garden. But you’re not."

"He was so arrestingly good-looking, with his black hair and blue eyes, and the ruddy complexion of someone who couldn’t be contained within the walls of a New York apartment."

"No one else looks like that, I thought. I was twenty-one. On a shelf at the literary agency where I was working as a secretary, I’d recently found a copy of Jack’s first novel, 'The Town and the City.' I’d stayed up all night reading it, with the feeling that it was reading me, that I could have been one of the characters trying out some new, free way to live after leaving home."

Writes Joyce Johnson, in "What Gets Kept/More than half a century after 'On the Road,' Jack Kerouac is still a literary celebrity. But fame undid the man I knew" (The New Yorker).

I’d stayed up all night reading it, with the feeling that it was reading me.... that killed me. I read the line out of context to Meade and he laughed.

When do you ever say, I thought I was reading that book, but, really, that book was reading me?

More generally, when do you ever speak of interacting with an inanimate object and reverse the usual directionality of actor and acted upon?

I can only think of one example, something I considered the funniest thing in "A Hard Day's Night" when saw it the first time:

 

"[His wife] might have knitted it"/"She knitted him."

I asked Grok to help me think of other examples, and it gave me the highbrow answer: "When you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."

Paxton wins and gives us a dose of his comedy stylings.

Ken Paxton just put on a 30-second comedy routine for his audience, as he debuted his favorite nicknames for his radical Democrat opponent, James Talarico.

The crowd was loving every second of this!

PAXTON: “My opponent is the most extreme radical the Democrats have ever… pic.twitter.com/kvEtsoyKmY

— Overton (@overton_news) May 27, 2026

I know some people seem to think that's hilarious. I don't see the value of kicking someone around for being a vegan. You'll say but Althouse is not a Texan. I sort of am though.

AND: Paxton's satirizing of Talarico doesn't work on me, but Talarico just being Talarico strikes me as hilarious:

James Talarico: "I am proud to say that our campaign has officially become a non-meat campaign. We are only buying vegan products from our local vegan businesses." #TXsenpic.twitter.com/SkZZ05IXMj

— Lone Star Liberty PAC (@LoneStar_PAC) May 27, 2026

"Just as the Founding Fathers might have anticipated (had they been microdosing while drafting the Declaration of Independence)..."

"... the American republic will celebrate its two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary next month with a full card of mixed-martial-arts brawls on the South Lawn of the White House. Weigh-ins will take place at the Lincoln Memorial. The night of mayhem is also meant to celebrate the eightieth birthday of the President of the United States, a longtime fan of the sport...."

So begins "Dana White Thinks Everyone’s a Fighter/The U.F.C. president on his decades of friendship with Donald Trump, his relationship with Joe Rogan, and his 'awesome' night at the White House Correspondents’ dinner" in The New Yorker, written by David Remnick.

I wanted to quote that here because I feel as though I'm seeing a trend in Trump-hating writing. There's a choice to couch descriptions within a problem of the distortion of reality. In this article we have the idea of the Framers microdosing. Last night, I blogged a WaPo writer saying "at least half of life with RFK Jr. feels like something you dreamed"... though "It sure feels real in your lower intestines, doesn’t it?"

Why did the writer take us inside her body like that? It's one thing to say my mind is off, I feel like I'm on drugs or I must be dreaming or maybe I'm crazy, but it's another thing to invite us into the nether regions. People often speak of their "gut reaction," but it's rather intimate to bring up "lower intestines." At least we're not directed to think about the colons of the Founding Fathers.

Anyway, speaking of getting physical: mixed martial arts. Mixed martial arts for the celebration of America's "two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary next month." Next month is June. The 4th of July is in July. But the fighting on the White House lawn is June 14th. That's Trump's birthday. Can't he have what he wants?

What did George Washington do on his birthday? It's 4 in the morning, and I'm writing this wide awake and sober: I'm going to guess nothing.

History in the making 👀

New visuals for #UFCWhiteHouse and the UFC Freedom 250 Fan Fest are here!

[ Presented by @Cryptocom & @RamTrucks ] pic.twitter.com/PQP7dut7fE

— UFC (@ufc) May 23, 2026

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"When scientists try to model how hot Earth could get this century, they typically look at a range of possibilities..."

"... for how much planet-warming pollution humans might pump into the atmosphere. These scenarios get updated every seven years or so. In this latest update, the researchers abandoned a dire — and often criticized — high-emissions scenario known as RCP8.5 that has been prominently cited in thousands of climate studies over the past decade. The authors said the scenario was now 'implausible' given recent energy trends.... For years, critics of the high-emissions scenario had argued that it was always unrealistic, in part because it envisioned that countries would burn coal at absurdly high rates. They argued that any studies or news reports relying on that scenario exaggerated the risks of climate change. Why, those critics now asked, did the course correction take so long?..."

I'm reading "Why Scientists Retired the Dire Climate Scenario Used for Over a Decade/While global warming is still a threat, the decision to back away from a worst-case outlook raises questions about whether some risks have been overstated" (NYT).

"You don’t know if I’m joking, do you? Neither does Cheryl. That’s the point. The point is that at least half of life with RFK Jr. feels like something you dreamed..."

"... after ordering a party pack at Taco Bell. Is it real? It sure feels real in your lower intestines, doesn’t it? Back to the patio. The snakes are calming. How did RFK Jr. get them to calm?... 'Honey, honey, let them go,' pleads Cheryl, as the snakes dart up again and again, gnashing at her husband’s exposed flesh.... 'Oh, my God. Bobby, please!' Cheryl cries...."

Writes Monica Hesse in "RFK Jr. is now handling snakes. What does this mean? Decoding the latest manly video from our secretary of health and human services" (WaPo).

Cheryl cheerleads the removal of a pair of Black Racers from Dr Oz's patio. pic.twitter.com/A0iiRzOeIF

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) May 26, 2026

Chris sends pictures from Teotihuacán.

It's quite the climb, and you have to get back down again. Or hang out in the blazing sun:

Chris sends this snippet from a book:

Here's the book: "1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus" (commission earned). I'm going to read that. I can't see me climbing those steep stairs in full sunlight, but I do want to read that book.

Sunrise.

Video by Meade, this morning.

"I have no patience, incidentally, with those whataboutery critics invoking the Inquisition and the Crusades to diss Leo’s credentials."

"Nationalism, imperialism, fascism and communism are already far bigger killers than Catholicism, despite having been around for much less time. The main reason for that is, besides being inefficient, it is morally repugnant to most people to kill face to face, but to do it from a distance — with a machinegun, with artillery, with an aerial bomb, with a drone, now with a robot controlled by an algorithm — has become progressively easier over the past 150 years. As the Pope says, not 'seeing the face of human beings lowers the moral threshold of conflict.' That is why he has called for 'the strictest ethical constraints' on the use of AI in warfare. He is right, obviously. I hate AI. But then I think social media has been a disaster and I don’t much like predictive texting, spellcheck or digital train tickets either. I’d have pulled the plug on the whole shebang in 2006, after email, Wikipedia and YouTube but before any of the other nonsense. But hey, I am also a realist.... We have to live with this madness. Given that, why would we let a few super-rich weird nerdy misfits decide what’s ethical AI and what isn’t?"

Writes Robert Crampton, in "Pope Leo’s come out all guns blazing against the AI war machine. Good/Allowing a few super-rich weird nerdy misfits to decide what is and isn’t ethical would be madness" (London Times).

My first draft of this post had one more sentence, but I decided to cut it because I think it's dumb and distracting. For the record, it's "They would blow up the world, as Pope Leo didn’t quite say but I’ll say it for him, if they thought it would bag them a hot babe with fake boobs." But what do you think of the sexualized analysis? The tech leaders are "super-rich weird nerdy misfits" driven by sexual frustration. I used to read analysis like that all the time 60 years ago, when Freudianism was still going strong. It's interesting, but that doesn't make it true. If these men are super-rich, can't they find sexual partners? And why fake boobs? Also, isn't it gauche these days to disparage the neurodivergent with insults like "weird nerdy misfits"?

I remember when a major political party in the United States got the idea that calling a weird person "weird" would be an effective way to win a presidential election. 

"Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers always told their sons that, even though they had their children during their 11 years 'underground,' they stopped illegal political activity when they became parents."

"He learns in his research, however, that one of their early family camping trips was actually a stakeout of a federal prison — the Black Liberation Army had asked his parents to gather information to help them break Assata Shakur out of prison. His father then participates in Shakur’s escape; his mother uses her day job to steal customer identities for the underground to use as aliases. Bernardine did not bring him along as a 'beard' when scouting bombing runs, but he learns that she did do that with another Weather kid. Ayers Dohrn devotes special attention to his enigmatic mother... a 'distant, icy and determined' person who seems 'far removed from any traditionally feminine caregiving role, determined to sacrifice herself for the cause.'... [When] Bernardine is incarcerated for seven months for refusing to cooperate and testify against her fellow revolutionaries... [5-year-old] Ayers Dohrn is left 'sick with grief and loneliness,' so distraught that he begins wetting the bed.... He cannot understand what his mother is saying to him about the government or its treatment of rich people — he barely has a grasp on what 'rich people' are...."

From "What Happens When Militancy Conflicts With Motherhood/Two 'Weather kids' reckon with the unyielding political convictions that compromised their parents’ domestic duties" (NYT)(gift link/I'm using my last gift link of the month on this one because there's much more there and this excerpt will prompt questions that may be answered).

And here's the book by Zayd Ayers Dohrn "Dangerous, Dirty, Violent, and Young: A Fugitive Family in the Revolutionary Underground" (commission earned).

"[F]rustrated by what he saw as the harmonic limits imposed by having a pianist play chords behind his improvisations, he began performing and recording accompanied only by a bassist and drummer..."

"... an unusual (though not unprecedented) approach at the time. (Pianists 'got in the way,' he said at the time. 'They play too much.') He recorded several memorable albums without piano.... By 1959, Mr. Rollins was receiving consistently glowing reviews and was widely regarded as one of jazz’s new stars. Nonetheless, that year he suddenly stopped performing and recording and virtually disappeared from the public eye. Over the next two years, convinced that his playing was not up to his own standards, Mr. Rollins devoted much of his time to practicing, often late at night on the Williamsburg Bridge, not far from his apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where the acoustics appealed to him and there were no neighbors to complain. His absence from the scene, and reports of his bridge sessions, added to his growing mystique, and to his growing reputation as a perfectionist. 'A lot of people couldn’t comprehend why I would stop playing,' he told DownBeat magazine in 2001. 'But I learned something. It was necessary for me to do to have the kind of confidence I need to play music like this.'"

From "Sonny Rollins, Giant of the Jazz Saxophone, Is Dead at 95 Even by the standards of a music that prizes individuality, he stood out, as both a musician and a personality" (NYT). 

A playlist:

 

AND: Note that Miles Davis performs on some of those tracks and today, May 26th, is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Miles Davis (who died in 1991). See "Miles Davis at 100: Musicians explain why he is the GOAT" (L.A. Times).

ADDED: I already had a "Sonny Rollins" tag. There's only one other post. It quote Rollins, in 2020, when he published a NYT essay titled "Art Never Dies/It outlives the contentious political veneer that we cast over everything." The quote:

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

Memorial Day at Union Rest in Forest Hill Cemetery.

That is Meade's video of the ceremony of The Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War, in the cemetery very near where we live.

On the way home, he photographed this:

"It will be a Document respected like no other that has ever been signed, anywhere in the World. Its level of Importance and Prestige will be unparalleled!"

Writes Trump, just now on Truth Social.

He's "mandatorily requesting":

Disarm.

"The killer in me is the killer in you," sang The Smashing Pumpkins in "Disarm," and "disarm" is Pope Leo's key word in his new encyclical about A.I.

The Vatican News reports, in "Pope Leo’s ‘Magnifica humanitas’: AI must serve humanity not concentrate power":

Above all, Pope Leo calls for an ethical code subject to shared standards of social justice... AI must be “disarmed,” Pope Leo XIV continues, in order to free it from the mentality of military, economic, and cognitive competition. “To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern,” he says. 

“To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity.”

"On Saturday night, May 23rd, a shooter once again sought to murder the President, his family, and his staff at the historic White House complex."

"We submit this urgent filing to update the Court on a second attempted assassination on the President within a single month. Last night, shortly after 6:00 p.m., an armed assassin approached a White House security checkpoint near 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, professionally pulled a high caliber gun from a bag, and opened fire in the exact direction of the White House. Brave Secret Service officers returned fire. The gunman was killed...."

From the Notice of Supplemental Authority in Support of the Government’s Motion for an Indicative Ruling Dissolving the Court’s Injunction, filed yesterday in National Trust for Historic Preservation v. National Park Service, the case about the White House ballroom, posted by Trump at Truth Social this morning.

Golden Alexander at 5:42 a.m.

"[T]he 44-year-old Austrian had started from Schmittenhöhe in the direction of Piesendorf. Above the Pinzgauer Hütte, she collided... with the Cessna piloted by a 28-year-old."

🚨 WATCH: A paraglider gets hit by a Cessna 172 near the Austrian town of Zell am See.

The paraglider was able to pull her rescue parachute and land safely shortly after the incident on Saturday.

According to police, the 44-year-old Austrian had started from Schmittenhöhe in… pic.twitter.com/HYQ7euRu57

— Breaking Aviation News & Videos (@aviationbrk) May 24, 2026

From the reactions at X:

1. "I assume the paraglider was not respecting the max altitude? or was it the cessna?"

2. "That pilot is a fucking moron. How could he not see a neon pink chute against that blue sky??? My take is he did it on purpose, wanted to get as close as possible to make it a 'stunt' but miscalculated. No other explanation."

3. "So shocking too me that nobody thanks Jesus or God in general when the survive something like this. My immediate reaction when landing would be to thank the good lord every breath and kiss the earth and just give him all the praise."

4. "@grok, can you translate what all she says in this video into English, please?" Answer:

"The Trump administration’s $1.776 billion 'anti-weaponization' fund could be a boon for GOP senators targeted by a Biden-era investigation..."

"... but some say they still do not want the taxpayer payout. Settlements for those the Justice Department deems were victims of 'lawfare and weaponization' under past administrations is the latest attempt to provide financial compensation to Republican senators whose phone records were tapped in the 'Arctic Frost' investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election...."

The Washington Examiner reports.

"Pope Leo Is About to Make an A.I. Mic Drop. Here’s Why It Matters."

Headline in the NYT. Subheadline: "Leo XIV is to issue his thoughts about artificial intelligence in the modern world, using a centuries-old form of papal communication called an encyclical, the first since he became pope."

Well, I hope he says something profound and useful, but I don't get calling something a "mic drop" in advance. We'll see if what he says is definitive and amazing, but if you assert that in advance, you sound like a ditzy fan.

Coot fluffs its pillow at dawn.

This was yesterday, at 5:07 a.m., on Lake Mendota. I'm concentrating on the coot with its improbably pillowy white breast, and Meade's remark — "Everyone's being so quiet and serene" — refers to the geese in the background. They usually make a big honk over our arrival in their territory. 

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"What distinguished Ms. Export’s work, beyond its aggression and sheer volume, was its lucidity."

I'm reading "Valie Export, Who Made Art With Her Naked Body, Dies at 85" (NYT).

Ms. Export was best known for two pieces she staged in the late 1960s and early ’70s. In the first, “Action Pants: Genital Panic,” she walked into a movie theater in Munich in 1968, wearing crotchless pants that put her exposed genitals directly in the sightline of seated theatergoers....

"[Margot] Robbie’s character, Cathy, had 'extremely hairy armpits' in the 2026 adaptation of the novel..."

"... but 'unfortunately the scene that we see them didn’t make it in there,' said the director. Cathy having unshaven pits 'was so important to me,' she said, adding that she often wonders 'where are the razors that these women are using?' when watching Jane Austen adaptations. 'They’re all kind of hairless like eels. I’m like: "What’s going on? It’s completely mad."'"

From "Wuthering Heights director regrets not showing Margot Robbie’s 'extremely hairy armpits'" (The Guardian).

Do female characters in Jane Austen movies wear sleeveless dresses? If not, and I think not, where are all these hairless eels? The director — Emerald Fennell — sounds half mad.

"The United States and Iran have agreed in principle to a deal that would wind down the war in the Middle East by reopening the Strait of Hormuz and by committing Iran..."

"... to dispose of its highly enriched uranium, a senior U.S. official told reporters on Sunday.... News of a possible deal came after a roller-coaster few weeks, with Mr. Trump at times threatening to restart attacks on Iran, and at others saying there was progress in last-ditch negotiations to stave off a return to full-scale war — all while offering few details. Then, on Saturday, the president announced on social media that the two countries had 'largely negotiated' a memorandum of understanding 'pertaining to PEACE.' On Sunday, however, he said he had ordered his negotiators 'not to rush into a deal.'..."

The NYT reports.

"I realized what was winning me over about ChatGPT wasn’t its ability to sift through the latest studies, or diagnose my ailments; but..."

"... its unwavering messages of empathy and encouragement, and its endless willingness to listen and its patience. It’s not human, but it can model some traits we value most in human interaction. I followed ChatGPT’s advice, and when my blood work improved, ChatGPT affirmed my progress and urged me to keep going. I doubt I would have made those changes — much less stuck with them — without that sustained back-and-forth. I certainly hadn’t before. It’s a grim fact of American medicine today that doctors can’t come close to a chatbot’s availability.... A.I. may not replace doctors, but it will change what patients expect from us. Doctors need to adapt...."

Writes Helen Ouyang, in "As a Doctor, I Can Understand the Allure of ChatGPT" (NYT).

"Some psychiatrists said they worried that Mr. Kennedy’s deprescribing initiative was the beginning of a wider effort that might, in later stages, discredit psychiatry more broadly and restrict access to care."

"'I think it is actually putting more questions in people’s minds about whether psychiatric treatment is safe or effective,' said Dr. Eric Rafla-Yuan, who chairs the [American Psychiatric Association's] caucus on the social determinants of health. 'The data has not changed on S.S.R.I.s. It’s the narrative that has changed.' He said the A.P.A. should be pushing back forcefully against Mr. Kennedy’s claims about psychiatric treatments, and should steer clear of seeming to endorse any part of the initiative. 'It’s a fine line between having a seat at the table and being used as a tool to legitimize their agenda,' he said."

From "Kennedy’s Push to Curb Antidepressants Has Shaken Psychiatry/An annual psychiatric meeting was abuzz over Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s call to rein in the use of depression medications. Some fear it will drive patients away from care" (NYT).

"I just can't stand it when I see kids that are making $70,000 a year spending $28 for lunch. I mean, that's just stupid."

"Think about that in the context of that being put into an index fund making 8% to 10% a year for the next 50 years."

Said Kevin O'Leary, on "The Diary of a CEO" somewhat recently.

I'm only interested in that statement because Tim Dillon got so mad about it on his show the other day:

To Tim, O'Leary is saying, essentially, "They just want to push you into a form that is not human.... You are stupid and you are an idiot because you didn't go and make yourself a tuna sandwich or a turkey sandwich and bring it into work.... There used to be the days of the 3-martini lunch, people would spend two hours at Smith & Wollensky's getting bombed and having fun and enjoying their life. Now people eat a bowl of slop and they're not even allowed to do that. They don't even want them doing that...."

Half a century ago, I made one tenth of $70,000 working in a ridiculous job in NYC, so I guess, by O'Leary's standard, I'd have been a fool to pay $2.80 for a sandwich, which I think I did, not every day, but it probably felt like a splurge. Actually, turkey for making a sandwich at home was considered expensive.

"In the story, two interplanetary visitors are shocked to find that humans can use their meaty brains to think."

"'Thinking meat! You’re asking me to believe in thinking meat!' one says to another. 'Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat!' the other alien responds, adding: 'The meat is the whole deal! Are you getting the picture?'"

From "To A.I. Executives, We’re All Just 'Meat Computers'/A term first used in philosophy and cognitive science circles has lately taken on a more ominous cast. Moo" (NYT).

The article is about the use of the term "meat computers" to refer to human beings. The story that's quoted, from 1991, by Terry Bisson, is "They’re Made Out of Meat."

"When I ask, rather too intrusively, what being locked-in feels like, she suggests I sit in a chair for three hours with my mouth taped up."

"If and when I get uncomfortable, I must not move. 'It sounds horrific, right?'"

From "Life with locked-in syndrome: ‘Despite everything, you are alive’/Matt Rudd has remarkable conversations with three Britons who, after life-changing accidents, have fully active minds but cannot move or speak, and can communicate only via the blink of an eye" (London Times).