Sunrise — with birds on a misty lake.

Coots:

Heron:

Ducks:

"A lot of people look at me, and they think I’m extreme, and I’ll be the first person to say that: I’m extreme."

"However, the only reason that I am extreme is because I’m a product of an extreme society. We are actually, I would say, one of the most extreme societies that have ever existed on the face of the Earth. We are in a society of extreme disconnection and extreme destruction and disharmony. It’s all sold to us as absolutely normal. But it’s not. Right now, we’re going through the sixth extinction. It’s human-driven. Millions of species are going extinct because of our actions. That’s extreme."

Says Robin Greenfield, quoted in "He forages all his food but calls your diet ‘extreme’/Robin Greenfield seeks to challenge ideas about what counts as normal food" (WaPo)(gift link).

I see that he's in northern Wisconsin, and he eats a lot of "wild rice, acorns, wild pecans, black walnuts, hazelnuts, plums, fish and deer."

How do you eat acorns? We could forage a lot of calories from our own little yard if we knew how to eat acorns. Hint: It's a lot of work!

By the way, I remember Euell Gibbons. He was big enough, back in the 1970s, to be satirized on "The Carol Burnett Show": 

The heron at 6:59 a.m. — in reverse chronological order.

"All of us are going to die. Sometimes the time we have spent on things has far less meaning than the time we spend with God, the quality time we give to God...."."

Said the Rev. Patricio Alfredo Sánchez Molinari, speaking of timeliness and death, quoted in "Priest Dies After Crucifix Falls on Him During Livestreamed Mass/The Rev. Patricio Alfredo Sánchez Molinari was addressing his congregation in Guayaquil, Ecuador, when a wooden cross detached from a wall and struck him" (NYT).

That happened Saturday. In a similar event, on Friday, "Visitor Killed by Roof Debris at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West/A 55-year-old rector from a university in Brazil was killed while on a walking tour of the famed architect’s winter home in Scottsdale, Ariz." (NYT).

A question I asked Grok: What are some other incidents of a person getting killed by an object that has some ironic significance? On my own, I only thought of [that character I falsely remember as having been played by] Daniel Day-Lewis in "Howard's End."

Reading this, you may wonder, am I spending my time well? Death is right there walking beside you, ready to take you out when the time is right.

"Congress must demand a full accounting of the damage Mr. Musk and DOGE caused, and we will not let anyone obstruct our oversight."

Said House Foreign Affairs ranking member Rep. Greg Meeks, quoted in "Capitol agenda: Dem gavels are coming for Elon Musk/Democrats have long eyed investigating the world’s richest man and the GOP’s top donor. They may get their chance if they win back congressional power in November."

That's in Politico this morning, along with this: "Democrats have a message for Elon Musk: Watch out/From DOGE to Ukraine, the uberwealthy GOP donor could be an irresistible target if House gavels change hands."

"I grew up feeling that I was a vehicle for male pleasure. I never really considered my own needs."

"My priority has been to make sure I don’t get rejected or abandoned. Therefore, I’m prioritising my partner’s enjoyment because the first thing I’m protecting is my safety. Maybe it is controversial to say it.... You tell some men they’re not satisfying you and it’s terrifying what the potential reaction could be. Understandably, we avoid that conflict at all costs. I don’t think I’m unique. I think what a lot of us are doing when we’re having sex is making sure he’s OK, because otherwise you’re going to be left alone and be some old spinster."

Said Lily Allen, quoted in "Lily Allen: ‘I felt I was a vehicle for male pleasure — not my own’ It’s been a difficult few years for the pop star Lily Allen, whose marriage to the Stranger Things actor David Harbour fell apart in very public fashion. Now she’s riding high again" (London Times).

"If you're tired, go to sleep."

Enjoy three minutes of the Brewers talking about Murph’s funniest dugout moments. 😅 https://t.co/g9YNEcJrzR

— Sophia Minnaert (@SophiaMinnaert) October 19, 2026

"The incentives of the streaming era mean many documentaries are now preordained affairs: true-crime narratives populated by talking heads..."

"... and pitched when the outcome is already known, or cozy, authorized docs about celebrities. [Lance] Oppenheim, like [Nathan] Fielder and John Wilson, is after something more heightened and less predictable; unlike them, he doesn’t have a writers’ room or make himself a character in the proceedings. He borrows from the tradition of nonfiction filmmakers like Frederick Wiseman, seeking out stories that can unfold in real time. Often, the process involves a lengthy 'fishing expedition,' leaving him with hundreds of hours of footage to sift through in the edit. Then there are the surreal flourishes that bring the work into the realm of what Oppenheim calls 'docufantasia.'..."

From "Lance Oppenheim Is Going Places How the 30-year-old director cold-emailed his way into making two of the best films of the year" (NY Magazine).

The "2 of the best films of the year" are "You Can See Everything," that film about Elizabeth Holmes, and "Primetime, " the one about the "To Catch a Predator" guy, Chris Hansen.

By the way "How To With John Wilson" is my all-time favorite TV show.

And I like this quote from Oppenheim's wife: "It’s almost like he was an alien beamed down to Earth and the only piece of software that was downloaded was like, ‘You are going to make movies.'"

Sunrise.

Tourists salvaging what they can of their Paris trip? Or are these locals? I'm guessing locals. They're smoking!

A striking contrast on the streets of Paris: A couple sits sipping drinks at an outdoor café as flames burn just steps away. The moment was captured Saturday near the Arc de Triomphe, on the outskirts of rioting that erupted during demonstrations over rising prices, inequality and public spending. Video shows the pair continuing their conversation as a burning trash bin lights up the background.

— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 19, 2026

ADDED: For me, a longtime connoisseur of travel critique, this video shows us a stark version of what is nearly always the case. I'm guessing these are, in fact, local residents, because they're smoking, but if they are tourists, they are doing what I think tourists more or less always do. They have a fantasy of a place and they believe they can go to that fantasy and they perform the mental labor of believing they have entered into the place they imagined. They screen out or rationalize the contradictory material and they determinedly live out their dream. 

Reminds me of that old Charlie Kaufman movie, "Synecdoche, New York," where a woman takes a real-estate tour of what is her dream house. The house is on fire, and she buys it and lives in in... dies in it:

ADDED: Protesters pop the bubble of tourist's fantasy of communing with the Mona Lisa:

"I did everything wrong 5 times."

Pat Murphy did not get a real big league managing job until he was 65 years old He has won Manager of the Year twice since Here is his whole story He never played a day in the major leagues himself. He was a catcher who signed with the San Francisco Giants and spent four years in the minors without ever getting called up He was the head coach at Arizona State for fifteen seasons. He won 629 games there and took them to the College World Series four times. Before that he was at Notre Dame and won 318 more Then it ended. He resigned in the middle of an NCAA investigation, after being told to resign or be fired The NCAA found him innocent of the violations. What they actually reprimanded him for was his attitude toward their investigators. They called it cavalier Here is how he describes that stretch "I was a college coach forever, and then I had this huge injustice happen, and I thought, Why me?" And then this, about himself "My ego was involved a great deal more than it should have been." So at 51 years old he went to the minor leagues Eugene, Oregon. Tucson. El Paso. Nearly five years riding buses in the low minors after fifteen years running one of the best programs in the country San Diego gave him the interim job and he went 42 and 54 in 96 games. They did not keep him "I did everything wrong five times." So he took a job as somebody's bench coach in Milwaukee. He did that for eight years Then Craig Counsell left for Chicago, and the Brewers handed it to the 65 year old Here is what happened next. Manager of the Year. Then Manager of the Year again. 97 wins last season, 103 this one And a sweep of a Los Angeles roster built to never lose a series like this He was not some nobody they found in a parking lot. He was one of the best college coaches alive before any of this, and the Brewers handed him a roster Counsell had already built. But he was 51 when he had to start over in the low minors, and 65 before anybody gave him a team of his own for a full season. Christian Yelich said it takes a certain kind of player to play for him. It took a certain kind of man to still be waiting at 65 (Via @thesportsontap)

— Punchoutpitch (@Punchoutpitch) October 18, 2026

I was interested in that quote — "I did everything wrong 5 times" — not because I'm following the Brewers, though I am, but because — just 5 days ago — I was blogging about the positive side of wrongness.

After Anne Carson won the Nobel Prize, I started reading her book "Wrong Norma," and I wrote about her answer to the question, "Tell me about the 'wrongness' in the title of Wrong Norma." She said that in academia you always feel "that you’re wrong or on the verge of being wrong and you have to worry about that, because everything is so judgmental and hierarchical." And that's "kind of a mentality I was interested in disabling." It "loosens the mind" not to worry about being wrong: "you can go on to think other things or wider things or the things underneath where you were. It’s just suddenly a different landscape." 

Apply that to baseball.

"The onslaught against [Jane] Doe and her supporters is taken directly from the playbook that established them: Gamergate."

"In 2014, a mostly anonymous digital horde waged a full-scale assault on women working in the gaming industry in an effort to damage their reputations and drive them from their professions. They harassed and doxxed their victims and fabricated and disseminated conspiratorial rumors about them.... Gamergate is a formative origin point for the alt-right, whose members and ideas have been absorbed into what is now called the new right. Once a subset of the broader conservative movement, the intellectuals and policy wonks of the new right, who almost all share atavistic visions of a masculine-obsessed politics, helped pave the way for Mr. Trump’s rise to power.... As a political tactic, resorting to a decade-old strategy of harassment should be evidence that the right’s bag of tricks is painfully meager. It’s also a bit baffling. In the face of a midterm election that could knock Mr. Trump’s presidency down into a posture of feeble lameness, the right’s online surrogates are instead burning crucial bandwidth on a grotesque persecution of a sympathetic woman — all while pushing a scolding grievance message about sexual values that is more likely to scare away new voters than bring them into the tent...."

Writes Nathan Taylor Pemberton, in "I Have Never Seen the Online Right So Happy" (NYT).

"Fiedler... would have been delighted by the ability of some of our best writers to dance knowingly around the volcano..."

"... the 'chuckles and whispers and much munching about the neck and shoulders' in Lorrie Moore’s 'Anagrams,' for example, or the 'tumblings and flexings and shudders' in John Barth’s 'The End of the Road,' or the 'stiffened giblets' in Tom Wolfe’s 'Hooking Up,' or the 'freaky rubs and naughty pinches' in Chuck Berry’s extraordinary autobiography."

Writes Dwight Garner, in "A Field Guide to the Dark, Sexy Swamp of American Literature With its bracing studies of fiction’s secrets, this 66-year-old work of literary criticism still surprises and delights" (NYT). The reissued book is "Love and Death in the American Novel" by Leslie A. Fiedler.

It's hard to write about sex! Apparently, the word "and" is helpful. Only the Tom Wolfe quote lacks an "and."

"Stiffened giblets." Wow, that's so offputting. Let's see, I've got "Hooking Up" here on Kindle. 

Ha ha, I've got the passage highlighted:

If anything, “sexual revolution” was rather a prim term for the lurid carnival actually taking place in the mightiest country on earth in the year 2000. Every magazine stand was a riot of bare flesh, rouged areolae, moistened crevices, and stiffened giblets: boys with girls, girls with girls, boys with boys, bare-breasted female bodybuilders, so-called boys with breasts, riding backseat behind steroid-gorged bodybuilding bikers, naked except for cache-sexes and Panzer helmets, on huge chromed Honda or Harley-Davidson motorcycles. 

That's on page 5. Replete with "and." You need these pairs and lists for sex.

I see Wolfe uses "stiffened giblets" again — with 2 "ands" — on page 142:

Sunrise.

"You just have a sense of... brotherhood."

Said Robert Gasser, a Brewers pitcher:

To begin the season - Logan Henderson, Robert Gasser, and Shane Drohan shared an Airbnb at Triple-A.

In October, they started 3 straight games in the NLCS to help the Brewers win their first pennant in 44 years.

Before his NLCS start, Gasser talked about the tight-knit staff 👇 pic.twitter.com/t5DVbsHBCD

— Hunter Baumgardt (@hunterbonair) October 17, 2026

Texting that to Meade, I wrote "'brotherhood'/crystal blue persuasion/'There'll be peace and good — brotherhood.'"

He sent me this video of the song, and I said "I blogged that video in 2015." It was here: "The new Hillary catchphrase: 'Love trumps hate.'"

And I blogged about the song in 2006, describing what I'd just put in a podcast ("Audible Althouse #64," no longer on line):

Paris.

Galeries Lafayette in Paris is being looted tonight. It’s the French equivalent of Harrods in London or Bergdorf Goodman in NYC https://t.co/F5jZU4bswZ

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) October 17, 2026

"The D.S.A.’s rise is at once a story of party-blobification and of a revolt against it. Like the conservatives of the 1970s..."

"... the group frankly views the party it occupies as a host for an ideological movement rather than as a partner. It also practices an exaggerated form of the interest-group litmus-test politics that came to dominate Democratic politics in the post-1968 era, measuring its own strength less by general-election victories than by its ability to enforce candidate loyalty to left-maximalist positions.... It is a means of engaging seriously in Democratic Party politics while also casting a vote of no-confidence in the party itself...."

From "Is Anyone Actually in Charge of the Democratic Party? And Does It Matter? This year’s midterm elections are a test of whether a party can be a success and a failure at the same time" (NYT).

"If sexual misconduct prevents a victim from taking full advantage of her education, then the institution has to address it."

"That responsibility is an awkward fit in some ways, but it reflects the reality that colleges are not just classrooms; they are a very particular kind of community in which all members have a duty of care toward one another. The Cornell case shows how hard it can be for universities to enforce Title IX well and also why they have to keep trying...."

Writes Emily Bazelon, in "This Is One of the Saddest Facts About the Cornell Rape Case" (NYT).

The sad fact in question is that Jane Doe dropped out, and she did not complete her degree elsewhere. Her education — her path to a career — was disrupted. 

"I Teach at a Business School. It’s Time to Shut Them Down."

A column at the NYT, written by Chris Marquis, a professor at University of Cambridge Judge Business School.

When the case method is used in medicine and law, it serves a different set of goals.... In both fields, students are confronted by the messiness of reality, and the goal is to foster disciplined skepticism: ask what’s missing, challenge assumptions and test how an analysis could be wrong.

Business school cases operate on another logic.... The point is to practice acting like the person in charge....

"Rioters attacked city halls from Lille in northern France to Marseille in the south, where masked infiltrators broke into the local government headquarters..."

"...  and tipped over a bust of Marianne, a symbol of the French Republic. Fires also destroyed a tourist office in Lyon.... Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu placed the blame for the chaos squarely on a far-left party, France Unbowed.... Protest organizers had hoped that the demonstrations on Saturday would lead to a convergence between the student demonstrations that have roiled France since September demanding better school conditions, and a broader social movement that addressed a wider array of concerns, including the rising cost of living. What emerged on Saturday seemed like a split-screen event, with marches occurring peacefully in one part of a city and groups of black-clad agitators sparring with police and causing damage in other areas. Then, as things unraveled, opportunist rioters joined in, exploiting the chaos, government officials said...."

From "France Reels After Largest Riots in Years/Centrist and leftist leaders blamed each other after anti-government protests devolved into chaos" (NYT).

"The age of AI will disrupt the workplace in all sorts of ways. But the work will continue..."

"... as other kinds of work have continued through technological disruptions. People still run the 100-meter dash, even though a car or a cheetah could do it faster. We still cook elaborate dinners, even though the frozen food aisle is crammed with highly palatable substitutes. We still have dinner parties, even though we could stream wittier banter from Netflix — because we are humans, and we want to seek excellence, not just consume it. AI may make it harder for us to get paid for our work. But if so, it will also make it easier for us to focus on the reasons that work is worth doing."

So says Megan McArdle, in "Every novel might have to pass an AI test soon/Artificial intelligence threatens writers’ livelihoods. It may also remind them why they write" (WaPo)(gift link).

The frozen food aisle is crammed with highly palatable substitutes? I don't believe that for one minute. Strike the "highly" and maybe you've got the beginning of a good enough analogy.

Also: "a car or a cheetah could do it faster" — there's no antecedent for "it." Do what faster? Anyway, it's not that people run the 100-meter dash, it's that other people care about and watch them running. Speed is interesting to us because of whatever it is that is going fast. We also care about and watch cars and cheetahs going fast, but it's not the speed per se that matters. It's the thing that's managing to go that fast. I've been impressed by a fast-moving tortoise.

As for reading, there are different kinds of readers. I don't think I'm the kind of reader who reads the novels that AI is going to get away with writing — conventional, fast-moving narratives with heroes and villains. Does it bother me if readers of hackwork are not getting human hacks? Maybe it does!

Sunrise.

"Edward Hopper's wife Jo Nivison... expected little in the way of material comforts.... [T]he couple lived frugally in Greenwich Village, in a top-floor walk-up..."

"... on Washington Square whose only bathroom was in an outside hall. They had no children, just a cat named Arthur. Nivison devoted herself to her husband’s career. She served as his secretary, business manager and ever-willing model, posing in guises that ranged from a slender ingénue to a burlesque stripper and a melancholy movie usherette in a blue uniform.... She described her husband as a grump and a bully unwilling to acknowledge her artistic talents. In a diary entry from 1941, she confided that she would be delighted to have him 'choked or smothered or roasted until he had been forced to make some slight gesture of concern for my concerns.' At a time when the Metropolitan Museum’s joint exhibition of Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock is focusing attention on the plight of artists’ wives, it makes sense to think about Nivison.... Unlike Krasner, Nivison... did not have much left for her own artwork.... But it would be nice if someone published her diaries and pointed out that she was a brilliant and witty writer."

Writes Deborah Solomon, in "When Edward Hopper Painted Lonely People, He Was Channeling America A new biography argues that the artist famous for haunting canvases of solitary figures in late-night diners was deeply influenced by his times" (NYT).

I agree! Let's read the diaries of Jo Nivison.  The wife of a famous artist put in writing the idea that he should be choked or smothered or roasted. Seems promising. You can read them on line here, and see her artwork — which Solomon bemoans as "tepid" — here. I click randomly and got this:

"The Puritans had scarlet letters, and now the content creators have scarlet posts: video apologies..."

"... usually negotiated by lawyers for brands and public figures that have come under criticism from influencers pushing commentary not always rooted in facts. For the women who whittle their free time on New York lifestyle Instagram accounts, Gellis’s austere video was startling as it appeared amid a scroll of the standard imagery that generates likes, comments and commerce.... Chatter about the video spread across Instagram and around New York last weekend, revisiting F-Factor, a pre-Ozempic-era high fiber diet, as well as Gellis’s relentless campaign, which created a pandemic-days internet spectacle-cum-unscripted reality show....."

From "An Influencer’s Punishment Is a Pinned Instagram Post/A dispute over online misinformation about the F-Factor diet led to an unusual agreement: an apology video that must be pinned to the top of social feeds for three and a half years" (NYT).

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Emily Gellis Lande (@emilygellis)

"By a certain light, this is the first time that the British director’s vision will be seen properly."

"The restoration contains censored moments once thought lost, like frenzied, naked nuns writhing sexually on a giant crucifix or a Mother Superior (Vanessa Redgrave) making love to a phallic bone fragment.... The uproar makes sense in context. 'When people saw the film, because Ken’s imagery is so visceral, they were shocked by it,'  said the critic Mark Kermode, who befriended Russell in the 1990s and was instrumental in finding the lost footage and reintegrating it into the director’s cut.... Yet Russell, who died in 2011 at 84, was adapting a respected 1952 nonfiction book, 'The Devils of Loudun' by Aldous Huxley, and a stage version by John Whiting that followed in 1961. The plot centers on a Roman Catholic priest, Urbain Grandier (Reed), who unabashedly pursues sexual relationships with women, but also presides over the walled city of Loudun as a sort of secular stronghold where Catholics and Protestants live together peaceably."

From "In 1971, This Film Was a Scandal. In 2026, It’s a Respected Period Piece. 'Ken Russell’s The Devils' was deemed shocking for scenes with orgiastic nuns and a debauched priest. But its serious aims are clear in a new restoration" (NYT).

I can't remember how I was ever able to see this film, but I did see it, I believe in the 70s, and for many years I'd always include it on my very short list of favorite films — along with "Aguirre the Wrath of God" and "My Dinner With Andre." Clearly, I had a taste for a certain sort of male character! I have no idea how this film would strike me today. But I think it would resonate with present-day themes: a strong political man ruined over his sexual acting out and women who lose their rationality when overexcited by sex and politics.

As Kermode puts it: "It is really a brilliantly serious, heartfelt story about brainwashing, about the politicization of religion, about the use of hysteria."

Speaking of naked writhing and early 70s films the critics panned, I got through "Zabriskie Point" the other day. Not good. Seems to say if only you can be young, beautiful, and naked — and kick up a big cloud of white dust while having intercourse in a barren landscape — you can save the world. I was worried about the dust — borax?!— and the damage to the landscape — Death Valley  and I couldn't even believe those 2 crazy lovers could enjoy their gritty play. We're supposed to think they do because the camera pulls back and shows the landscape full of naked couples simulating sex. Who are they? Where did they come from? Answer: This is art. They're an idea.

"So what was on the menu for the lost dog? It wasn’t especially appetizing."

"'She probably was eating the forest feces from all the other animals in the forest.... That’s how they survive. And they can survive for months and years like that.'"

From "Luna, a Dog Who Was Lost in Yellowstone for a Month, Is Found Safe/A 10-year-old Jack Russell Terrier/Chihuahua mix, Luna lost half her weight but was otherwise healthy after several weeks in Yellowstone National Park" (NYT).

Like a kid in a candy store: a dog in the forest.

It wasn't easy trapping the tiny dog: "She’s a very typical Jack Russell terrier. She’s got opinions, and she’s got energy, and she’s tenacious, and she is not going to give up easily. And that is why she’s alive."

"It’s surreal. I’ve been dreaming about this moment for all this time, but often thinking I might not make it, financially, emotionally or physically."

Said David Sabatini, after the verdict, quoted in "M.I.T. Scientist Wins $6 Million in Sexual Harassment Defamation Suit/David Sabatini, once a prominent scientist at M.I.T., sued a former colleague who accused him of inappropriate behavior. A jury found in his favor" (NYT).

[Santini] ran a research lab at the Whitehead Institute, in Cambridge, for 24 years. His lab studied cellular biology to better understand neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, diabetes, and aging. He was forced out of his lab in 2021 after an internal Whitehead investigation concluded he had a past sexual relationship with a younger and less experienced colleague, Kristin Knouse, over whom he had a career-influencing role. The investigation also found that his lab had maintained a sexualized atmosphere. Dr. Knouse said that the relationship was coerced. But Dr. Sabatini denied his lab had an improper atmosphere. He maintained that his relationship with Dr. Knouse had been consensual and that Dr. Knouse had schemed to get him fired and disgraced after he became interested in another woman....

"The woman later told her rescuers that she had jumped off the ship because she 'wanted to disembark'...."

I'm reading "20 Hours After Falling Overboard, Cruise Passenger Is Rescued Near Greece" (NYT).

A cargo vessel found the woman conscious and holding onto a life preserver just before 3 a.m. on Saturday.... Royal Caribbean did not respond to... why rescue officials were not alerted until three hours after the incident. According to the company’s website, the Odyssey of the Seas is over 1,100 feet long and can hold nearly 4,200 guests.

1,100 feet long... 4,200 guests... I, too, would feel the urge to disembark. But floating — albeit with life preserver — for 20 hours, that's a lot of time to contemplate the solitude you thought you wanted in place of that cruise-ship crowd. I saw a movie once where a man and a woman were floating in a life preserver. What do you do? Wonder if help will arrive before you die of thirst... or sharks attack? Or do you slip out of the life preserver and become a life non-preserver?

Sunrise on a very windy day.

"Thank God we had him. Otherwise, it would have been much worse. It's a terrible thing, but thank goodness for a man that had a gun and knew how to use it."

Said President Trump, quoted in "Hero bystander who took down Oregon school shooter comes forward" (CBS News).

"For a minute I thought this was going to be another Anne Carson post."

Wrote Smilin' Jack in the comments to the post that begins "His English mastiff was dying, so he hired her to read its mind. But when she met the man with the messy hair, he kept apologizing for his casual outfit."

And isn't this a lovely tribute to the literature Nobelist who's found her way into a few of my posts? 

There are some writers who rearrange your vision so that other things look as though they are influenced by her mind. That may be what Carson did to Jack and it may be what Carson did to me. Maybe I am picking out different things to blog or finding excerpts in some new way, framing the post differently, and maybe Jack is reading these things differently. 

Don't you want writers to shake up your world? Don't you want to live in the enchanted world where dogs send you messages that psychics step up to translate? 

Carson says some things about dogs. Like this, from page 142 of the Kindle edition of "Wrong Norma" (commission earned): 

The blue heron flies at dawn.

Video by Meade.

Post title inspired by vaguely familiar Hollywood spyspeak... or perhaps by that Jack Benny movie that only I remember.

"Like many of the earliest competitive eaters, Mr. Janus stumbled into the sport. He was working as a day trader in Manhattan..."

"... hating the stress of his job. One day he went looking for a way to relieve the pressure and found it in a St. Patrick’s Day eating contest — corned beef and cabbage.... 'He brought this unique level of thoughtfulness and earnestness to competitive eating,' Jason Fagone, the author of 'Horsemen of the Esophagus: Competitive Eating and the Big Fat American Dream' (2006), said in an interview. 'He took this thing that a lot of people just throw off as a joke, and he took it seriously.'... After he took up competitive eating, he began working nights at a pizza parlor, and eventually quit day trading to make pies full time. He never earned enough money in the sport to live off it exclusively — at the time, no one did — but he also insisted that money didn’t interest him. 'It’s never been about the cash; it’s always about the adventure.... One of these contests recharges me more than a week at the beach ever would.'"

From "Tim Janus, One of the World’s Greatest Competitive Eaters, Has Died/He brought rigor and strategy to the sport, rising to No. 2 in the world and eating 141 pieces of nigiri in six minutes in the process" (NYT).

He died at age 49 — and not of overeating. Of lung cancer.

(If that makes you think about the Pope, here's a BBC article about the Pope's lung cancer. He seems to be doing well after the removal of the lower lobe of his right lung. There are photos of him celebrating mass at the hospital, after the surgery.)

I'm giving this post my "sports" tag, but is this a sport? I want to say that it is. Grok agreed with me, here.

"His English mastiff was dying, so he hired her to read its mind. But when she met the man with the messy hair..."

"... he kept apologizing for his casual outfit. 'He told me, "Sorry for being dressed like this; I’m always in a suit on television,"' recalled [Celia] Melamed. 'I don’t have a television, so I had no idea what he was talking about.' The man was Javier Milei, at the time a TV pundit in Argentina known for railing against the government. The mastiff was Conan, soon to be Argentina’s most famous dog.... Ms. Melamed then became [Milei's] dedicated pet psychic. He kept hiring her for the next two years, she said, including to talk to Conan in the afterlife and to the five clones made with Conan’s DNA...."

From "The President’s Dog Psychic/In Argentina, many people try to read the mind of the president. Celia Melamed read the mind of his dogs" (NYT).

At the link to there's a photo of a book Milei wrote and autographed for Melamed. It says: "For Celia, TOTAL GENIUS OF THE UNIVERSE, the being of light who helped me find the way."

"Clad in a little white suit and cowboy boots, his hair a nimbus of blond curls that his mother had bleached and permed, he gestured and lunged, delivering his lines in a piping voice from a pint-size pulpit..."

"... and rolling his R’s as his mother had taught him: 'Hell is a place of extrrreme suffering.' 'I’m herrre to give the devil two black eyes.' 'I thank God for my good Chrrristian mother.' Marge sewed special pockets into his suits so that when he went through the congregation collecting offerings — $20 would get you a kiss from 'Little Marjoe' — there was ample room for the money.... He was good at his job, and he enjoyed being onstage, but he never believed in God. And he certainly didn’t believe in hell.By the time he was 14, the novelty of preaching had worn off, for him and his congregants. His voice was changing, and his father had abandoned the family and absconded with Marjoe’s earnings — some $3 million, he later estimated...."

I'm reading the obituary for Marjoe Gortner, "As a Child Evangelist, He Roused the Faithful. Later He Exposed the Con. An ordained minister at 4, Marjoe Gortner went on to star in a documentary that revealed the flimflammery of his former profession: 'You go into it like a business'" (NYT).

You can watch the whole documentary on Tubi, here.

"This is late stage capitalism, and this is your money — your future — being wasted on billionaires...."

The Tesla roadster is not okay https://t.co/10Z2AjVvxe

— Damien Slash (@damienslash) October 16, 2026

You might want to say: If it's my money, why are they billionaires? The answer would be: But that money they have is really your money. They need to give it back. This crazy flying-cars bullshit is taunting you. It's saying: Look at the nonsense we're throwing your money into, and we never asked if you wanted these toys we built for ourselves.

But don't be confused! The guy in the video, Damien Slash, is a comedian. He's doing satire. It's good enough satire and the world is weird enough that I think there are many people who believe everything he said.

And here's a little poll where I ask you to vote for the most intriguing machine of the week:

I don't know, and I don't like that language. I just want her to withdraw back into obscurity. Please.

I would like to just not have to talk about her. She's your spokesperson, and what she communicates is your incompetence in choosing her. Fix it.

I don't like the violent metaphor in this tweet, but I hope the observation here is correct.

I have a feeling Donald Trump called Sean Hannity and told him to assassinate her. And he did. This is the entire interview with the soon to be fired Katie Zacharia. It’s worth it. https://t.co/lBBkGcM7vO

— Evan (@daviddunn177) October 16, 2026

ADDED: The lawyer/attorney distinction is ludicrous. Painful. 

AND: Thanks!

“Honestly, if I were you, I’d reconsider,” he told reporters, recounting his conversation with his press secretary. He said he added: “Katie, do you need this? I don’t think you need this.” He said Ms. Zacharia might continue to work for him “in some form, but maybe a more pleasant form.”

"Unintimidated, undaunted, undeterred, they overwhelmed the Dodgers in every phase, outslugging their star-studded foes, countering every punch, perpetually pouring on pressure..."

"... and snatching the will of the defending champs, who couldn’t help but tip their caps afterward. 'No matter how much you win, these moments suck,' said Kiké Hernández. 'I've won a lot in my career, but I've also had a lot of these. They don't get easier. But they're playing unbelievable right now. Congrats to them. I hope that they end up winning it all. They're almost playing perfect baseball. That's a team that's incredibly hungry and incredibly talented. Their pitching was lights out. Their offense was almost suffocating.'"

Writes Rowan Kavner, in "The Dodgers' Three-Peat Dream Became An NLCS Nightmare. Now What?" (FOX Sports).

The view from the winning side: 

You are going to want to watch this Cooper Pratt interview. https://t.co/pgwSzLNupC

— Curt Hogg (@CyrtHogg) October 16, 2026

AND: A pithy graphic:

Sunrise on a rainy day.

"The French have a phrase for it: 'un engrenage,' a vicious spiral. That’s what France is in."

"Several crises have been long in the making; each now threatens to accelerate the others. The first is a crisis of liberal democracy. Polls suggest that the far right may take power in the presidential election next spring. The second is a crisis of fiscal mismanagement. France’s public debt has reached a record $4 trillion... The third is a crisis of youth disaffection. French students, protesting.... Mr. Macron deserves some of the blame for the mess. So does the opposition, from the far-left France Unbowed to Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally...."

Writes Mujtaba Rahman, "the managing director for Europe at Eurasia Group, a political risk research and consulting firm," in "France Is No Longer in Control of Its Destiny" (NYT).

"Trump cancels Hegseth’s plan to live-stream Fort Hood shooter’s execution/The decision is a rebuke of the defense secretary, who has remained in the president’s good graces through numerous controversies."

The headline at WaPo.

Good!

Here's Trump's Truth Social Post:

Why we're rooting for Cleveland to win the American League Championship Series.

We like the idea of the Edmund Fitzgerald World Series. It's like a "subway series," but the geographic link is the Great Lakes:

An important update on the Edmund Fitzgerald World Series because we're not serious journalists 😂 @mikegolicjr | @golic | @JonCarroll03 | @Johnubacon https://t.co/kfUpM1rEOy

— The Golics (@thegolics) October 13, 2026

"The university decided to halt parties at fraternity houses, he said, because Cornell doesn’t 'have the full ability to be confident that what goes on in those houses is safe...."

"The pause, he added, was also a chance to 'take a step and carefully study' the issue of banning fraternities altogether, a step some have called for. Addressing a speaker who supported such a ban, Dr. Kotlikoff said he had just spoken with alumni who said that 'their sorority and fraternity experience was a very important part of their life at Cornell.' 'If at the end of the day, the fraternities cannot exist in a safe environment, and we can’t be convinced that they can be safe, then we should make that decision,' he said."

From "Cornell’s President Grilled by Faculty Senate Over Handling of Crisis/Ahead of a vote on a resolution of no confidence in Michael I. Kotlikoff, some faculty members said they were not swayed by steps he announced on Tuesday, including banning fraternity parties" (NYT).

"Mr. Vance, who just published a book about his conversion to Catholicism, has for weeks been road-testing unfounded, innuendo-based salvos against Mr. Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian."

"At the Republicans’ midterm convention in Dallas last month, the vice president suggested that Mr. Talarico’s past statements supporting transgender children were evidence of inappropriate behavior. 'A guy that age who is so obsessed and focused on transgender children, I don’t know about you, but I never want to see that guy’s web browser history,' Mr. Vance said. People in the crowd gasped and murmured. Some clapped. Mr. Vance has defended those comments. 'I think typically people who say stuff like that tend to have some pretty unusual search histories,' he said a day later. Mr. Talarico, who has said he has a longtime girlfriend, has largely ignored the vice president’s insinuations...."

From "Vance’s Talarico Attacks Show His Penchant for Personal Broadsides/At a rally in Texas, the vice president suggested the Democratic Senate nominee is gay, a comment criticized as homophobic" (NYT).

"You're telling me somebody wrote this — in 2026 — for SNL?"

“You can’t write those jokes — I have a master’s degree in creative writing” pic.twitter.com/vuU3B98sCn

— Douglass Mackey (@douglassmackey) October 15, 2026

Things to do on a rainy night in Wisconsin.

With rain in the forecast & the chance to clinch, the Brewers are hosting tonight’s watch party inside American Family Field. Tickets aren’t free anymore. They’re $15 and include a $10 food/bev credit, plus a $1 MLB service fee. Parking lots open at 4:30. Gates open at 5:30

— Sam Kraemer (@SamKraemerTV) October 15, 2026

Compare the fans in L.A.

"You want your Republican opponent locked up?"

Angie Nixon: "They're spreading lies about me saying I want to abolish prisons... Why would I want to do that when I want [Ashley Moody] locked up and jailed." CNN: "You want your Republican opponent locked up?" Angie Nixon: "Yeah basically. I absolutely want that to happen." https://t.co/KkfiWKhIi6

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 14, 2026

"Do you think do you think are you are you insinuating that somehow I was lying?!"

HOLD THE PRESS: NBC holds Abdul El-Sayed’s feet to the fire on his family’s ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. He CLEARLY panicked and lashed out at the reporter. NBC: “When people ask you a question, they do expect the truth.” EL-SAYED (flustered): “Are you insinuating that somehow I was lying?!” This is so good. He’s panicking and his lies are catching up to him. A rare act of journalism from NBC News.

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 14, 2026

"We always said we would only return to Girls if there was a specific story we were burning to tell."

"I’ve missed these characters, but for a long time I couldn’t quite picture them in the present day. Then, right around my 40th birthday, they started talking to me in the shower.”

Said Lena Dunham, quoted in "Girls is coming back — bring on Hannah, the uber-competitive Brooklyn mum/Lena Dunham has announced a five-episode coda for her hit show, a decade after it ended. The absence of Adam Driver’s character aside, it may just work" (London Times).

 

ADDED: At the London Times, I clicked on a link to "We love Lena Dunham and Tracey Emin — but, once, we loved to hate them/The violent derision that first greeted the American writer and the YBA from Margate shows us that they got it right." That referred to "Tracey Emin’s big, flashy retrospective at Tate Modern," and I'm telling you this because it took me to one of the most absurd headlines I've ever seen:

"Everything we saved and left rough is controlled — it’s what we really want. Our research... is based on real and true architecture."

"To us, there is no skin in architecture. We have just the bones, and we show everything that is important to be shown for the understanding of the building."

Said the architect/owner, quoted in "In Italy, a Townhouse Where Polished Gives Way to Ragged and Raw/An architect laid bare the imperfections of his home renovation to fully reveal the building, and leave room for later inspiration" (NYT).

That's a gift link, so go over and see the pictures of what he did to the place. It had been "completely renovated in the 1970s." According to the architect, "It was beautiful and really bourgeois." I can see objecting to the "bourgeois," but where does that take you?

Sunrise.

"Do hawks and falcons look so fantastic rising and falling because they have the sky as background or would they look equally good flying through mud or a piece of corduroy."

Writes Anne Carson — who just won the Nobel Prize for Literature — in "Lecture on the History of Skywriting" (a chapter of the collection called "Wrong Norma" (commission earned)).

A Paris Review interviewer asked her, "Tell me about the 'wrongness' in the title of Wrong Norma." She answered: 

"It’s directional more than wearable."

Says NYT fashion reporter, Jacob Gallagher, quoting himself, in this article he writes: "Is Anyone Really Wearing a Bra as a Shirt? A trend that points nowhere" (NYT).

If it "points nowhere," how is it directional?

I think it's funny to talk of bras as pointing somewhere, given that some, but not all, bras are pointy.

Gallagher explains his position: "It expresses something, primarily, about how thin the models are. You look at these outfits and your only real takeaway is 'Well, gee, she’s skinny.' It’s doing that thing fashion often does — making us think about our own bodies and how they differ by comparison...."

So fashion is speaking to you, and what it's saying is you can't wear this. It's like a shopkeeper telling you you can't buy this mechanical bird. It's aggravating. 

"The subject of her citizenship became part of a larger cultural conversation in April this year..."

"...when The New York Times created a list of 'the 30 greatest living American songwriters.' Ms. Mitchell was not included. 'We elected not to steal that honor from Canada,' The Times wrote in an article about its selection process. (Just a month before, the Juno Awards, Canada’s equivalent to the Grammys, had honored Ms. Mitchell in Ontario with a lifetime achievement award.) The Times’s reasoning did not sit well with fans and cultural commentators who felt that she... should nevertheless have been included."

Says the New York Times, in "Joni Mitchell Is Now an American, After 60 Years of Living in the U.S./On Tuesday, she announced the news of her U.S. citizenship on social media with a video and a photo of herself at the ceremony."

The coots are back and the ducks will have to deal with it.

Video by me.

Which side were you on?

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ellis Rosen (@ellisjrosen)

ADDED:

“Kelly Clarkson has put us all in danger” might be the most unintentionally funny sentence in the history of mankind.

— smootoshi (@adamsmoot) October 13, 2026

AND: Here's the bird that started it all:

 

I’ve been to Art of Play many times for magic shows, and Molly the purely mechanical bird is really cool. Here’s a video I shot last year. I can see why Kelly Clarkson would want to buy it. But also, Kelly Clarkson + Art of Play’s Molly is so random a collision that I’m upgrading my belief in the simulation hypothesis

— Eugene Wei (@eugenewei) October 12, 2026

"She spent... eight minutes reading nervously from a script, looking up at the cameras every couple of lines."

"Then she said she was ready to take some questions. She called on only three reporters, dropped one wild piece of news, made a slip mixing up her husband and her president, then darted out of there after just five and a half minutes, leaving the White House press corps to scratch its collective head."

Writes Shawn McCreesh, in "Katie Zacharia Stepped to the Lectern for the First Time. It Was a Bumpy Ride/Ms. Zacharia spent eight minutes reading from a script, called on only three reporters and made an awkward slip-up" (NYT).

This doesn't seem likely to go well. Hard to brush it aside as beginner's nerves. There was also this:

President Trump on White House Press Secretary Katie Zacharia: "I thought she was very good."

Q: "You said she's an attorney. Where did she pass the bar exam? Which state?"

Zacharia: "When I moved to China."

Q: "Where did you pass the bar exam?" pic.twitter.com/5xiwyEsVSs

— CSPAN (@cspan) October 13, 2026

"She wasn’t a member of my family. She, I guess, dated my son a long time ago."

Said Trump, about Kimberly Guilfoyle, who was engaged to Don Jr. from 2020 to 2024. 

Trump's cold distancing is quoted in "'Honey Please’: The Steep Rise and Sudden Fall of Kimberly Guilfoyle. President Trump cut her loose after damaging news reports about her tenure as ambassador to Greece. Once a prominent Trump insider, she suggested she will now fight to defend her reputation" (NYT).

Ms. Guilfoyle was a Trump insider with a prominent role in the family and its political operation. The president’s swiftness in firing her showed his willingness to cut off anyone who becomes a liability and an embarrassment. But it also left her with little reason to remain loyal to the president and his family at a time when Mr. Trump’s political authority is ebbing....

Her stint in Greece is over. It served its purpose: 

"'That's really chill,' is saved for something really good, like new suede sneakers with a double set of laces..."

"... or some sharp clothing, known as 'gear.' But that's only if the shoes or 'kicks' are Pumas or Adidas. For teen-age boys, this summer's sharpest 'gear' is matching nylon BVD T-shirts and shorts, with the elastic waistband showing out of the top of Lee jeans. A 'chill' outfit for a girl is tight Sergio Valente or Tale Lord jeans, black loafers and anklets."

That's from an August 1983 NYT article, "City Teenagers Talking Up a 'Say When' Storm."

I'm reading that article this morning because I got a bit annoyed by the use of "chill" in this NYT headline: "Austin Abrams Is Pretty Chill, Actually." Ugh. When did we start talking like that and why haven't we stopped?

I'm talking about "chill" as an adjective meaning "Free from anxiety or stress; relaxed, calm; easy-going, laid-back" — to quote the definition in the OED.

The OED calls it "North American slang," and, tracing its appearance in print back to 1983, quotes that NYT article and a slightly earlier writing, the March 1983 UNC-CH typescript "Campus Slang": "Try to be chill when the cops ask you why you ran the red light doing 75 mph."

The slang use of "chill" as a verb meaning to "calm down, relax, take it easy" — which I find less annoying — is a few years older. The OED finds it first in a 1979 song lyric (quoted in a 1992 book):

Sunrise.

"People are hungry for real conversation about what’s happening in our democracy and what it will mean for their families.... There will be some discussion, some debate, and hopefully a lot of laughter."

Said Hillary Clinton, quoted in "Hillary Clinton and Kara Swisher to release weekly midterms podcast/The weekly podcast, 'High Stakes,' will aim to dissect the election and its aftermath, Vox Media said" (WaPo).

Weekly... on the topic of the midterms. Starting Wednesday. There are 2 Wednesdays left before election day. But they're covering the "aftermath" too. 

I can't imagine looking to Hillary Clinton to satisfy a hunger for real conversation. I will give this post my "Hillary goes away" tag. Somewhat perversely, but you know what I mean. I am so tired of these midterms! I've never seen midterms get so much attention. But I know they are all that saves me from being plunged into the 2028 presidential race, and I don't know how I will take what will be the 7th presidential race in the history of this blog. 

"A donor, Eric Deters, first told The Wall Street Journal that Ms. Guilfoyle asked him to wire her $100,000 to pay off her American Express card..."

"... just before her Senate confirmation hearing in July 2025. According to messages Mr. Deters provided to The New York Times, Ms. Guilfoyle promised to serve as his 'ride or die in Trump world' if he sent her the money...."

From "Kimberly Guilfoyle Resigns as Ambassador to Greece/Ms. Guilfoyle was asked to quit by the White House after a string of damaging reports, including that she had asked a Republican donor to pay off a credit card" (NYT).

"Julia Warhola was born Julia Zavacky on November 17, 1892, in Mikova, in the former Czechoslovakia."

"Initially, she didn't want to marry Andy's father, the first Andy -- Andrej, born November 28, 1889, also in Mikova. Her father beat her into accepting the proposal; she was further persuaded by candy that Andrej offered. When interviewed by Esquire in the late 1960s, she said, 'My Daddy beat me, beat me to marry him.... I cry. I no know. Andy visit again. He brings me candy. I no have candy. He brings me candy, wonderful candy. And for this candy, I marry him.' Candy, trauma: these were the alpha of Julia's marriage and the omega of her son's art. Julia loved candy, and so did little Andy.... In his fanciful The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again)... he recounts that his mother gave him candy bars as reward for every page completed in a coloring book.... Tom Wolfe reports Andy refusing food at society dinner parties and declaring, 'Oh, I only eat candy'...."

From "Andy Warhol" by Wayne Koestenbaum, a book excerpt published in the NYT on September 16, 2001. 

I ran across that this morning because, eating candy, I was researching the accuracy of a quote I'd long remembered, "I only eat candy."

The 911 calls in the aftermath of the failed execution of Christa Pike.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The New York Times (@nytimes)

 

See "Calls Show How Confusion Delayed Emergency Response for Christa Pike/The first 911 call from inside the prison was made at 8:40 p.m. It took about 30 minutes to verify its authenticity" (NYT).

"Confusion" is putting it euphemistically. How do I know the prison employees were not deliberately delaying in the hope that Pike would eventually expire?

"The initial 911 call did not come, as it might normally, from the central control at the Tennessee Department of Correction, and the caller did not have the right security verification." So who called? And why didn't someone with clear authority call? The NYT can't answer those questions because the state has secrecy laws that protect its employees who do the work of carrying out the death penalty. 

There was an execution protocol, it didn't kill Pike, and there was no protocol relating to what to do next. But that did not create the authority to kill her in some other — slower — way. 

No one should drink what they don't want to drink. It's not funny to watch someone — even a billionaire — enduring pressure to consume alcohol.

I’m not a huge fan of Guinness (basically liquified pumpernickel), so i get it. But I’d like to think one of the best parts of being worth a quarter trillion dollars is not having to drink stuff you don’t like to be accepted by the bros.

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) October 13, 2026

What was this coercive setup? It's this, the "Cheeky Pint" podcast:

The host of the podcast, John Collison, is Irish, and he seems to have arranged for his guests to join him in what the audience may enjoy believing is the Irishman's natural environment. 

In real life, does Zuckerberg drink at all? He seems like more of a health-focused guy. Look at this, fast year, on Theo Von's podcast:

"Down 0-2 in the National League Championship Series, the Los Angeles Dodgers are going to consider the unfathomable... benching superstar Shohei Ohtani."

"'Yeah, I mean, obviously it hasn’t been good,' manager Dave Roberts told The Athletic on Monday, after the Dodgers’ 7-4 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers in Game 2. 'He doesn’t feel great. I think for me, it’s having a conversation with him tomorrow, kind of try to figure out what’s best for him, what’s best for us'..... Ohtani’s at-bats have been unrecognizable. Throughout October, a clearly compromised Ohtani has been getting beat on fastballs, and he’s rarely pulling the ball or hitting it hard.... He has attempted to shorten his swing and slap balls the other way.... In Game 2, Ohtani went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts.... A clear sign of how uncomfortable Ohtani is at the plate? Leading off the sixth against Brewers left-handed reliever JoJo Romero, Ohtani showed bunt...."

From "As Shohei Ohtani struggles, Dodgers will discuss benching superstar in Game 3" (NYT).

Top comment at the NYT: "Whole country rooting for the Brewers right now."

Sunrise.