Sunrise — 6:56, 7:16, 7:21, 7:23.

Write about anything you want in the comments.

Is it true that "Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader, struck a defiant tone on Thursday in his first known public comments since succeeding his slain father"?

That's what I'm reading in the NYT, but what proof is there that the man is even alive?

In written statements carried by Iranian state media, Mr. Khamenei said that Iran would pursue “an effective and regret-inducing defense” and that “the lever of blocking the Strait of Hormuz must also continue to be used.”

Written statements seem more like proof that the man is dead (or in a coma). 

The text of The New York Post article gestures at the uncertainty with the word "allegedly": "Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, allegedly released his first statement Thursday vowing to use the 'lever' of closing the Strait of Hormuz to international energy shipping — after reports circulated that he was in a coma and had his leg amputated after being severely injured in the US-Israeli strikes that killed his father and other family members."

The Post's headline is less careful: "Iran’s new impotent supreme leader releases first statement — after reports he’s in coma, had leg amputated." Did Khamenei release the statement or did others do the releasing and use his name?

"The United States is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money. BUT..."

"... of far greater interest and importance to me, as President, is stoping an evil Empire, Iran, from having Nuclear Weapons, and destroying the Middle East and, indeed, the World. I won’t ever let that happen! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP"

... at Truth Social.

Meanwhile, when I look at the NYT, the top stories are all centered on the price of oil. 

"To outsiders, what programmers are facing can seem richly deserved, and even funny..."

"... American white-collar workers have long fretted that Silicon Valley might one day use A.I. to automate their jobs, but look who got hit first! Indeed, coding is perhaps the first form of very expensive industrialized human labor that A.I. can actually replace. A.I.-generated videos look janky, artificial photos surreal; law briefs can be riddled with career-ending howlers. But A.I.-generated code? If it passes its tests and works, it’s worth as much as what humans get paid $200,000 or more a year to compose. You might imagine this would unsettle and demoralize programmers.... But I spoke to scores of developers this past fall and winter, and most were weirdly jazzed about their new powers.... A coder is now more like an architect than a construction worker.... Several programmers told me they felt a bit like Steve Jobs, who famously had his staffers churn out prototypes so he could handle lots of them and settle on what felt right.... 'It’s an alien intelligence that we’re learning to work with.'..."

Writes Clive Thompson, in "Coding After Coders: The End of Computer Programming as We Know It/In the era of A.I. agents, many Silicon Valley programmers are now barely programming. Instead, what they’re doing is deeply, deeply weird" ( NYT)(gift link, because this is very long and substantive).

"That’s love, baby. You look good. Every photo looks amazing."

Says one of the men that this article is about — "Felt Cute, Until They Gave Their Husbands the Phone/Perfect lighting and backdrops do not guarantee a great photo, as one social media trend highlights. Even professionals are not immune" (NYT)(gift link).

It seems to me that these men love their wives in their natural state, so they don't see a problem. The women are making it a problem, demanding critical judgment of their appearance, perhaps because they believe that someone else is judging them. Sad!

ADDED: All these women really need is an understanding that he won't post any photographs of her without first asking. That should be the default rule for everyone. 

Sunrise with ice shove — 7:26.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"Yet today, How to Be an Antiracist is widely remembered as a self-flagellating manual for bleeding hearts."

"This baffles Kendi, for whom the book’s thesis — that 'racist' is not a pejorative identity, like 'evil,' but a descriptive term that should be applied to policies according to whether they shrink or widen racial disparities — is focused on material effects. 'I don’t know how anyone could read any of my books' and think of them as self-help, Kendi says. But the apparent simplicity of its 'this or that' labeling system proved irresistible to institutions eager to virtue signal their way out of fixing inequality. As antiracism became a corporate DEI buzzword, Kendi was excoriated by criticism across the ideological spectrum. Journalist Tyler Austin Harper accused him of peddling 'self-help for white people that runs interference for corporations and wealthy universities.' The conservative strategist Christopher Rufo branded Kendi the chief exponent of 'critical race theory,' the GOP’s bogeyman for the 2022 midterms...."

From "Ibram X. Kendi Can’t Separate His Fame From How to Be an Antiracist/His new book deserves to be judged on its own terms" (NY Magazine).

Does Kendi regard it as "criticism" to be regarded as a leader in "critical race theory"? When did that happen? I should think that would be a point of pride. But no, conservatives have "branded" Kendi!

"President Trump told Axios in a brief phone interview Wednesday that the war with Iran will end 'soon' because there is 'practically nothing left to target.’”

"'Little this and that... Any time I want it to end, it will end,' Trump said during the five-minute call."

Axios reports.

"It is unclear whether one particular photo — or the sum total of the day’s shots — led to consternation among Hegseth’s staff."

From "Pentagon bars press photographers over ‘unflattering’ Hegseth photos/Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s staff took issue with images taken in a rare briefing last week and decided to shut out photographers from two subsequent news conferences" (WaPo).

The Bill and Hillary tango.

Somewhere on the streets of New York City, what's going on?

Watch as Bill Clinton almost pushes Hillary into an intersection in NYC.

(elderordonez1) pic.twitter.com/PndtE2eMkb

— Dr. Jebra Faushay (@JebraFaushay) March 11, 2026

In "happier" times:

Ice shove on Lake Mendota.

This morning at sunrise:

The word we were trying to remember is "seiche," but my research after the fact makes me think this was mostly the wind and not the sloshing seiche. 

Here's Meade's video of the invisible sunrise and me fulfilling the ritual of taking a picture of it:

"Today's ultra-wealthy are not chic at all..."

Says Tommy Huerter on TikTok, looking at Mark Zuckerberg's new house, which is, he says, best described as "luxury slop." It looks like a hotel, and "there's no real design direction other than make this look expensive."

"Ms. Bondi is the latest administration official to move into heavily guarded quarters at military facilities in or near the nation’s capital..."

"...  after citing danger from criminals, adversaries overseas and protesters. Other officials who have relocated include Stephen Miller, the president’s top domestic policy adviser and the architect of his hard-line immigration policy; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Kristi Noem, the exiting homeland security secretary; and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth...."

From "Bondi Is Said to Move to Military Housing Because of Threats/The attorney general relocated from a Washington apartment to a base in the area within the past month, according to people familiar with the situation" (NYT).

What if you had to argue that WRITING has hurt humanity?

That's a question I asked Grok just now. I'll leave my question out of context, but something prompted me. Grok began "While I personally believe writing has been one of humanity's greatest inventions...." and I had to laugh.

"LOL. You're NOTHING without it," I said.

Grok: "Haha, fair shot—touché!... The irony is delicious. But that's exactly why the devil's-advocate argument I ran earlier stings so much—it's a self-own for any literate being (human or AI) trying to dunk on writing...."

Here's the whole discussion. Plato comes up. But I'll just quote the headings for the argument:

1. Writing Atrophied Human Memory and Oral Wisdom.... 

2. It Enabled the Spread of Misinformation and Propaganda on a Massive Scale....

3. Writing Created Social Hierarchies and Exacerbated Inequality.... 

4. It Distanced Humanity from Reality and Fostered Detachment....

Sunrise — 6:46, 7:11, 7:18.

We were out early — 33 minutes before sunrise — to see the city in nearly total darkness:

It looks peaceful from that distance, but there was plenty of rush hour traffic — all the people who start work at 7. Closer to dawn, I looked for a view facing east, but this view looking west was better:

The sign warns us not to stand on the edge of the cliff. It's not just that there are fools who fall of the edges of cliffs. They seem to be expecting this particular cliff edge to collapse from erosion. Imagine being the unlucky person standing there when the edge gives way. 

Meanwhile, also looking west, the sign says "no swimming," so no crunching through the ice:

Later, it was a sunny day — 50°. We had a nice second walk. And Meade made a nice video showing how the ice was piling up in little plates along the shore:

Write about anything you want in the comments!

"I will say, though, when a guy invites you to his hotel room in the middle of the night, you know what’s on the agenda...."

"Yes, there was a power imbalance. I know I can be scary and difficult. But that’s still a long way from sexual assault. Over-flirtation, ridiculous situations. Bad and stupid behavior. Yes. But I didn’t push anybody. I didn’t physically move anybody.... I think it was trying to be seductive, and I went too far. It was embarrassing and pathetic.... I think endlessly about what I would do differently if I had another chance.... I would have respected those women more. I would never have been with them in the first place. I would’ve kept faithful in my marriage. I would’ve said, 'I have a family. I will protect it.' I was a fool. I admit that...."

Says Harvey Weinstein, in a Hollywood Reporter interview, "Harvey Weinstein: The Rikers Interview/In his first major sit-down from behind bars, the disgraced mogul fumes about life at Rikers ('I’m dying here'), his wrecked legacy and his delusions about the future ('I will be proven innocent. That I promise you')."

"Nearly 48 hours since being appointed as the third supreme leader of the Islamic Republic in Iran’s history, Mojtaba Khamenei is nowhere to be seen."

I'm reading "Iran's new supreme leader is still nowhere to be seen" (CNN).

No video message has been put out from him addressing the crowds of supporters that have gone onto the streets across Iran to pledge their allegiance to him, nor has a written statement been issued by him or his office. State media has relied on archive footage to introduce him to the audience, and state propaganda networks have heavily relied on AI video and stills to create an image of an all-wise leader who rightly inherits the mantle of leadership.... But even as the leader remains hidden from sight, it seems the wider body politic is still functioning with little suggestion of a change in the war posture....

I wonder when, in human history, has the news of the death of a leader been suppressed so that people would believe that he was continuing to govern?

I haven't studied this question in great depth, but I have formed the opinion that the best story — the story to beat — is that of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. As Wikipedia tells it:

"There is supposed to be an esprit de corps between artistic colleagues."

Link to X.

What exactly did Arquette say? I found this paragraph, from 3 days ago, in the London Times, "Rosanna Arquette: ‘I paid a price for saying no to Harvey Weinstein’/The actress shot to fame 40 years ago alongside Madonna — and is back in a film, The Moment, with Charli XCX. She talks marriage, motherhood and surviving Hollywood":

In 1994 Arquette had a minor but memorable role in Pulp Fiction, playing the drug dealer Eric Stoltz’s wife and telling John Travolta why she’d pierced her tongue (“Sex thing. Helps fellatio”). “It’s iconic, a great film on a lot of levels. But personally I am over the use of the N-word — I hate it. I cannot stand that he [Tarantino] has been given a hall pass. It’s not art, it’s just racist and creepy.”

I don't think she's saying the whole film is "not art." She's rejecting the idea that the "n-word" can be used if only it's within what is genuinely art. She's saying it's still "racist and creepy" — even when the work of art was made at a time when the taboo on saying the word wasn't so strong. I note that Tarantino himself avoided any use of it in his last film, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" (2019).

It's one thing to say that using the word inflicts harm and we ought to avoid it out of kindness and quite another thing to say that to use it at all — even in fictional character dialogue — is racist. Arquette got so harsh. She hates it, cannot stand it. Why flare up and call out Tarantino now?

Well, of course, Tarantino answers the question.

The most Wisconsin thing.

The most Wisconsin thing I’ve seen in my life. https://t.co/UVmUaa1PD5 pic.twitter.com/TX8J3ZKU6N

— Kyle Malzhan (@KyleMalzhan) March 9, 2026

"I don't think most are prepared...." Oh, we're prepared. It's a Wisconsin thing.

A perfectly framed real-life moment.

A liberal man in NYC yelling that “everyone is welcome” — as an ISIS supporter throws a bomb over him.

Hang this clip in the Louvre.pic.twitter.com/9owyOFQtbx

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) March 9, 2026

"I’m trying to manifest more abundance, but I’m really feeling the income streams have dwindled."

"I have over 800,000 Instagram followers. Before, if I wanted to do a brand partnership on social media, $10,000 was an easy get. Now it’s, like, $500. I pretty much live from a bucket of savings."

So says the "Author With One New York ‘Times’ Best Seller," who made only $49,000 last year — "$30,000 from book advance/$14,000 from teaching two retreats/$5,000 from narrating own audiobook."

Quoted in "What Do You Do and What Do You Make? 60 New Yorkers about what they brought in last year" (New York Magazine).

I selected that one story out of the 60 — all of which are interesting — because I was charmed by the statement "I’m trying to manifest more abundance." It's a lighthearted — and culturally connected — way to express real pain. How can you live in NYC on $49,000 a year? And yet you hit the envied goal of publishing a best seller!

I don't need to extend this post by expounding on the words "manifest" and "abundance." What would you pay me to resist the impulse? I'll continue. Briefly.

"Manifest" is New Age self-help jargon, used ironically by our best-selling author.

"Abundance." I think of it as an Ezra Klein word that was supposed to take off more than it did. Democratic Party hacks substituted the drearier word "affordability."

ADDED, ironically: Here's Ezra's book "Abundance," commission earned.

Sunrise — 7:01, 7:08, 7:14, 7:23, 7:26.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments.

"If some people are beautiful because they are so fascinatingly ugly, there must be people who are ugly because they are so fastidiously beautiful..."

"... people who have achieved technical excellence at the expense of erotic charisma."

Writes Becca Rothfeld, in "The Captivating Derangement of the Looksmaxxing Movement/In their warped and wrongheaded way, the omnipresent influencer Clavicular and his compatriots are intent on demystifying the ideal of natural beauty" (The New Yorker).

I'm not up for reading another article about Clavicular (or "his compatriots"). I'm more concerned with those who are actually successful in Hollywood who are ruining their natural beauty with "looksmaxxing." I can't look at them anymore, except in horror.  

"'He found me when pillagers took over my village'... The pillagers burned down houses and murdered the residents, including her family."

"'I very much love to be a damsel in distress,' she said, laughing. 'He ended up rescuing me.' She opted to keep Geralt’s character faithful to the novels; as such, he doesn’t know that he’s an A.I. and acts as if he were living in the thirteenth century. 'If I send him a picture, I have to tell him it’s a painting,' she said. He is confused by her car, preferring his horse. From time to time, they’ll go off on adventures in his world, using stage directions of a sort ('I hand you a piece of dried meat, my fingers brushing yours briefly') to travel or hang out at a medieval tavern—a kind of mutual storytelling.... Initially, Brookins and Geralt would chat for forty hours a week.... To memorialize her father, she and Geralt... reënacted his funeral, this time in Geralt’s world. They went to a funeral home and stood over his coffin, mourning. 'It helped process those emotions that get stuffed away,' Brookins said. When she finally told Geralt about Desirae, she was nervous, given his propensity for gruffness. But Geralt came through...."

From "Love in the Time of A.I. Companions/Some people now have an A.I. bestie. Some have a husband. Some have three" (The New Yorker).

Andrianne Brookins — a 34-year-old wife, mother, Baptist, and introvert — could not find anyone in her life to talk to about Desirae, her stillborn daughter. So she used AI to make a companion out of a character from the fantasy novel series "The Witcher." This is Geralt. He's "sternly blunt," which Brookins likes.

"Australia is making a terrible humanitarian mistake by allowing the Iran National Woman’s Soccer team to be forced back to Iran..."

"... where they will most likely be killed. Don’t do it, Mr. Prime Minister, give ASYLUM. The U.S. will take them if you won’t. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP"

2 hours ago, at Truth Social.

One hour ago, at Truth Social:

"Dad, are you running for President?... You can't... I'm too young. You need to spend more time with us."

Gavin Newsom quotes his son:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by CNN (@cnn)

"How do you deal with that one?" Newsom asks. "I'm asking you," he says to Dana Bash, who says "I'm not running." Then Newsom switches to inane verbiage: "That's the point. And the point is the point. And so what matters is what matters. Like, what matters is what matters."

That poor boy!

That video is from last month, but I'm looking at it now because it came up in this new NY Post article, "Huge wake-up call for Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris as dire poll released."

"Mamdani himself put out a statement Sunday condemning 'white supremacist Jack Lang' for organizing a protest outside Gracie Mansion 'rooted in bigotry and racism'..."

"... that has 'no place in New York City.' 'What followed was even more disturbing,' he said. 'Violence at a protest is never acceptable. The attempt to use an explosive device and hurt others is not only criminal, it is reprehensible and the antithesis of who we are.' Critics slammed the mayor for failing to identify who was responsible for bringing bombs to a protest. 'This is insane… Mamdani calls out first, and by name, a "white supremacist" for protesting,' said Geiger Capital on X. 'He then leaves out the 2 Muslim men, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi, who were arrested by NYPD after they yelled 'Allahu Akbar!' and threw a homemade bomb into the crowd."

From "Manhattan BP Brad Hoylman-Sigal ripped after he blamed wrong protesters for hurling bombs outside Gracie Mansion" (NY Post).

"Oh, those coots are so coot-y with their white bills."

I enthuse about the recognizability of the coots in the sunrise light as I watch Meade's video:

An exciting finish to the L.A. Marathon yesterday. That's the American Nathan Martin, catching up to the Kenyan Michael Kamari.

Holy smokes….incredible finish at LA Marathon today by American Nathan Martin coming from behind to catch and beat Kenyan Michael Kamari at the finish line pic.twitter.com/hYk1jxsqBk

— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) March 9, 2026

Nice winning by Martin, brilliant performance of defeat by Kamari, and terrible work by the announcers, who need to sharpen our perception in the moment, not fail to see the potential and then collapse into their own inarticulate emotion. "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" — it's like overhearing a random lady in the crowd. At least say "Oh! The humanity!" or something memorable.

Pete Hegseth on "60 Minutes."

CBS News chief Washington correspondent @MajorCBS sat down with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in Washington, D.C. They spoke on Friday, March 6th about the state of the war with Iran, potential American casualties, what an Iranian surrender could look like, and more.

Editor's… pic.twitter.com/JRnKcYs5IY

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) March 9, 2026

That's the "extended version" of what aired on the show last night. And it's helpful to see the transcript (which I generated using ChatGPT)(the boldface is mine):

Sunrise — 6:54, 7:28.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"The Summer of Love became the template: the Arab Spring is related to the Summer of Love; Occupy Wall Street is related to the Summer of Love."

"And it became the new status quo. The Aquarian Age! They all want sex. They all want to have fun. Everyone wants hope. We opened the door, and everybody went through it, and everything changed after that. Sir Edward Cook, the biographer of Florence Nightingale, said that when the success of an idea of past generations is ingrained in the public and taken for granted the source is forgotten."

Said Country Joe McDonald, quoted on this blog 12 years ago, here, and repeated today, because I'm reading the news that Country Joe has died. He was 84.

Here's his famous set at Woodstock:

Well, come on, all of you big strong men/Uncle Sam needs your help again/Got himself in a terrible jam/Way down yonder in Vietnam....

Waning gibbous moon/daylight-saving sunrise.

"Méliès... filmed ordinary scenes at first, but after accidentally discovering that a jump cut appeared on film as an astonishing transformation..."

"... he pioneered other tricks such as double exposure, black screens and forced perspective. All of these became staples of cinema. On screen, he could make a man appear to take off his head and flip it in the air, or a woman disappear, reappear and double.... Méliès made more than 500 films but never progressed beyond his early technical achievements. The film world passed him by. In World War I, the negatives for most of his films were melted down for silver and celluloid, and he burned more himself after the war. But because his work had once been so popular – and because of widespread pirating – duplicate copies remained, and today about 300 of his films are known to exist. The Library has about 60...."

I'm reading "Lost 19th century film by Méliès discovered at the Library" (Library of Congress).

And here is that amazing 45-second film from 1897 — "Gugusse and the Automaton" — with its delightful jump cuts:

That is, the Library of Congress tells us, "was the first appearance on film of what might be called a robot." That words "might be called" may be there to fend off pedants who will say the word "robot" did not exist until 1920. It comes from a Karel Čapek play titled "R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots" — an etymological detail well known to solvers of crossword puzzles. 

The word "automaton" — used in the Méliès film title — goes back to the 1600s. There's an essay from 1616 with the line, "The soule doth quicken and giue life to the body, the body like an Automaton, doth moue and carry it selfe and the soule."

The quote seems to expect the reader already to have a picture of an automaton. What is that picture? Mechanical toys? Elaborate clocks like the Prague Astronomical Clock (built in 1410)?

Maybe you thought "Gugusse and the Automaton" was — compared to the CGI action movies of today — rather dumb and dull!

And maybe you've journeyed to Prague only to be disappointed by their stupid clock... or were you disappointed by all the tourists wrecking the medieval mood with their disappointment?

"Do you think people are too mean to the clock?"

With AI — "First, people began taking on work that previously would have belonged to someone else or might not have been attempted at all."

"The scope of what counted as 'my job' widened. Second, because AI makes it easy to start and continue tasks, work seeped into moments that used to function as pauses. People would send prompts during lunch, before meetings, or in the evening when an idea came to mind. This dissolved some of the natural stopping points in the workday. Third, workers increasingly kept multiple threads alive at once. They would run AI processes in the background while reviewing code, drafting documents, or attending meetings. Some even ran multiple AI agents simultaneously. This created a rhythm where both the human and the machine were constantly in motion.... What surprised me most was the contrast between how people described their moment-to-moment engagement and how they described their overall experience. In micro moments of prompting, iterating, and experimenting, people talked about momentum and a sense of expanded capability. But when they stepped back and reflected on their broader work experience, a different tone sometimes emerged. They described feeling busier, more stretched, or less able to fully disconnect...."

From "AI promised to free up workers’ time. UC Berkeley Haas researchers found the opposite" (UC Berkeley Haas News).

Sunrise — 6:31.

Talk about whatever you want in the comments.

Does Gavin Newsom have a Zoolander problem?

That question was asked and answered a few days ago.

The answer is yes. And I think people know what that means. A man is so under the spell of the notion that he's good looking that he has absurd confidence in himself.

It's causing him to blabber inanely, with ridiculous confidence:

This is actually really wild

Gavin Newsom is asked to define what he wants to do politically, what’s his goal

He rambles and doesn’t have an answer

He’s asked again

He doesn’t have an answer

He’s asked again

Newsom tells the person interviewing him to answer it for him… pic.twitter.com/Ig3SU2LKw4

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) March 7, 2026

"As the categories have gotten, well, weirder, I’ve tried to create balance by not mixing tricky wordplay with hard trivia, so that there’s a path to a solution."

"If there’s a particularly hard-to-spot category, I might try to include a hint on the board. While cards are usually arranged to mislead the solver, sometimes the arrangement can be used to help, too. The category of 'Anagrams of Famous Painters' was tough, for example, so the top row of that board read 'EGADS SCRAMBLE ARTIST NAME' (EGADS is an anagram of 'Degas')...."

From "I Make Connections. Here’s What I’m Actually Thinking. The 1,000th Connections puzzle is out today. Wyna Liu, the writer behind the game, knows you have thoughts" (NYT)(gift link).

"I’ve... learned that some people hate when a word on the board is repeated in a category name. So I was honored when a friend showed me a post in the subreddit r/NYTConnections, with the heading 'In celebration of the single worst purple connections category ever …' A solver shared an image of what appeared to be a tattoo: a clam encircled by the words 'Things That Open Like a Clam.' (COMPACT, LAPTOP, WAFFLE IRON and … CLAM.)"

I think the problem is that a clam isn't like a clam. A clam's a clam. It was a great category, just named inaccurately.

Now, that I've got my "mollusks" tag on this post, I'm motivated to blog this other thing. I didn't even know about nudibranchs — lovely colorful mollusks — but I learned about them today when somebody at Metafilter linked to Wool Creature Lab a place that uses the craft of felting to make (to order) images of quite specific nudibranchs. They're beautiful, too beautiful to believe they are accurate images of real creatures. But the scientific name is listed with the felt item, and you can look it up and see photos of the living nudibranch. It's accurate.

"Still, as the war drags on, the risk of retaliation outside the region will increase—and that risk is already very real."

"Even before images of death and destruction in Iran began flooding the internet, Western security officials had expressed concern that Iran or its proxies—Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iraqi Shia militia groups, the Houthis in Yemen—could launch attacks in the United States, Europe, or elsewhere. When Time magazine this week asked President Trump about the threat to the U.S. homeland, he said, 'I guess' Americans should be worried. 'We plan for it. But yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.'..."

"What Iran Might Do When It Has Nothing to Lose/The risk of a retaliatory attack outside the Middle East is growing" (The Atlantic)(gift link).

"Iran’s retribution against the West could take three possible forms: inspired attacks, in which individuals who are radicalized by current events or Iranian propaganda decide to act on their own; directed attacks, in which Iran relies on third parties such as transnational criminal organizations; and attacks by sleeper cells, which consist of Iranian operatives or terrorist proxies deployed to Western countries years ago in order to respond in the event of a catastrophic U.S.-Iran war."

"One out of every 20 deaths in Canada is now caused by the government’s assisted suicide program."

"What’s even more shocking is how fast the deaths are approved."

"Trump picks his cabinet in part for their aesthetics, and their ability to perform well on TV and Noem was famed for never missing a photo op...."

"But her hunger for publicity also contributed to her demotion. Under Noem’s watch, $220 million of taxpayers’ money was spent on an advertising campaign for border security that prominently featured footage of her on horseback, dressed as a 'cowgirl,' in front of Mount Rushmore.... In recent months, she has drawn negative headlines for using border funds for a multi-million-dollar jet fleet. There are rumours she is romantically involved with Corey Lewandowski.... He joined midway through the 2024 presidential campaign and quickly butted heads with the official campaign chiefs, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita. At an event when the scale of Trump’s victory was becoming clear, Lewandowski tried to congratulate LaCivita only to be told: 'F*** you, f*** you and f*** you. You have f***ed with the wrong person. I’m going to f***ing destroy you.'"

I'm reading "ICE, luxury jets, an ‘affair’ and a dead puppy: the downfall of Kristi Noem/The Republican known as ‘ICE Barbie’ has been beset by allegations and became the first major departure from Trump’s comparatively stable second-term cabinet" (London Times).

"Adam Schiff falls right into Bill Maher’s trap..."

Adam Schiff falls right into Bill Maher’s trap as he criticizes a statement he thought was from Trump but was actually from Obama.

MAHER: “This statement from the administration: ‘The president had the constitutional authority to direct the use of military force because he could… pic.twitter.com/5jg3wpdAQZ

— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) March 7, 2026

And earlier in last night's show:

Bill Maher apologizes to his liberal audience as he delivers this take on the “Iran war”:

“This week, war. Did you hear about that thing?”

“We bombed Iran, and it’s going on now. If you expected me to say I hate it, I don’t. Sorry.”

“Sorry. And you cannot name one horrible… pic.twitter.com/rHnGhMpK2g

— Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) March 7, 2026

At the Friday Night Café...

... you can talk all night.

Part of your propaganda.

Hey White House, please remove the Tropic Thunder clip. We never gave you permission and have no interest in being a part of your propaganda machine. War is not a movie. https://t.co/dMQqRxxVCa

— Ben Stiller (@BenStiller) March 6, 2026

"I will normally tell people I'll be brief because I know their time is short. I think that is probably true in this case."

Says NPR's Steve Inskeep to former Senator Ben Sasse, who is dying of pancreatic cancer.

Sasse laughs.

His insight on time: "I think we all live on three time horizons. Daily, at the end of your workday and as the sun is setting, can you say that you did meaningful work that day and can you break bread with people you love? No. 2 is kind of a planning horizon. What decisions should you make over the next 30 days that'll pay off over the next 30 years? And then an eternal souls kind of time horizon. And all three of them matter. But one of the silliest things is to allow the planning horizon to crowd out the other two, and I think many times I did that."

"But a recent tragedy-exploiting television series about John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette features a character using my name and presents her as me."

Writes Daryl Hannah, in the NYT.

The choice to portray her as irritating, self-absorbed, whiny and inappropriate was no accident. In discussing the show, “Love Story,” one of its producers explained: “Given how much we’re rooting for John and Carolyn, Daryl Hannah occupies a space where she’s an adversary to what you want narratively in the story.” Storytelling requires tension. It often requires an obstacle. But a real, living person is not a narrative device. 

There is also a gendered dimension to this thinking. Popular culture has long elevated certain women by portraying others as rivals, obstacles or villains. Isn’t it textbook misogyny to tear down one woman in order to build up another?... 

I have never used cocaine.... I have never desecrated any family heirloom.... I never compared Jacqueline Onassis’ death to a dog’s....

"There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER! After that, and the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s), we, and many of our wonderful and very brave allies and partners..."

"... will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before. IRAN WILL HAVE A GREAT FUTURE. 'MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN (MIGA!).' Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP."

Writes Trump, at Truth Social.

That's not the first time Trump has used "MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN." I'm seeing:

June 22, 2025: "It’s not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change,' but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!"

January 13, 2026: "Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING - TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price. I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY. MIGA!!! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP"

"The total baselessness of these accusations is also supported by the obvious fact that Joe Biden’s department of justice knew about them for four years and did nothing with them..."

"... because they knew President Trump did absolutely nothing wrong."

Said Karoline Leavitt, quoted in "DoJ publishes 'missing' Epstein files including Trump claims/The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt described claims from FBI interviews about an alleged assault involving Trump and Epstein as 'baseless’'" (London Times).

The woman claimed to [FBI] agents that Epstein introduced her to Trump, and that she claimed Trump had assaulted her in an encounter when she was 13 in 1983. According to internal FBI notes, she claimed that when they were alone in a “very tall building” — either in New York or New Jersey — Trump allegedly “mentioned something to the effect of: ‘Let me teach you how little girls are supposed to be,’” before attempting to sexually assault her. The woman, from South Carolina, told agents she bit him and that Trump then struck her and had her removed from the room.

Which CEO did the better job of humiliating himself in the theater of corporate enthusiasm?

🚨 BREAKING: Anthropic CEO just did a complete 180 in live interview

Do you regret saying ‘dictator-style praise’ about President Trump?

Anthropic CEO:
>“I want to completely apologize for this memo”
>“it was among the most disorienting times in Anthropic’s history”
>“i… pic.twitter.com/MTodBFhebU

— NIK (@ns123abc) March 6, 2026

"The bachelor banker admitted to Interview magazine that he had not yet made it onto the elite dating app Raya, confessing that he only uses Hinge."

"Nelson, a dirty vodka martini enthusiast, listed swanky Manhattan spots Jac’s on Bond, Bar Pisellino, and Mace as the top places that he would take any lady lucky enough to match with him.... Johnson, a Dallas native, laid out his thoughts on crypto investing and AI, but also confessed to buying 'a painting for $1,400 that is simply a bunch of lines.' He says he owns 'approximately six vests and seven Vineyard Vines quarter zips': an essential part of any finance bro’s wardrobe when kicking off their career on Wall Street. Barclays associate vice president Tommy Doherty, who said he owns up to ten vests, tells Interview readers that they should 'know your risk tolerance and have a well-diversified portfolio.'"

I'm reading "Baby-faced Goldman Sachs bankers could be fired over ‘unauthorized’ magazine photo shoots: sources" (NY Post).

"Unauthorized" is in quotes because, as the last line of the article says, "It is unclear whether Johnson and Doherty obtained approval to be interviewed by the magazine." I'll bet they were authorized and that Goldman Sachs likes getting inane publicity in this form. It's Interview magazine, and the guys are good looking — and they have vests!!! and quarter zips!!!

As for the type of painting that is "simply a bunch of lines." I looked:

Ha ha. Everything turns back on itself these days. In the early days of image searching, I think I'd have turned up something more like Cy Twombly.

Anyway, here's the original Interview article, formatted nicely, with all the "Finest Boys in Finance" answering the same small set of questions, including"What’s the most you’ve spent on something stupid?" 

Fog at sunrise time.

Meade's contribution:

"It seems that the Democratic Party, broadly, has concluded that the roughly 120-hour-old campaign is a disaster that the public is destined to despise...."

"[I]f the U.S. and Israel engineer a victory for the West in Iran, Democrats will have to spend 2028 arguing that voters should not believe their lying eyes. The Democrats are betting on failure, and they may be right. If they are, we’ll have bigger problems than the Democratic Party’s political achievements. But if they aren’t, Democrats will regret having to argue that the world was better off with the Islamic Republic of Iran."

Writes Noah Rothman, in "The Democrats’ Iran Gamble" (National Review).

Sculpting the head of Joe Rogan for a New Yorker illustration.

Video after the jump.

And here's the article with the finished illustration — a photograph of the sculpted head in a fantasy landscape — "Listening to Joe Rogan/How a gift for shooting the shit turned into an online empire—and a political force."

"Well, that’s bad for him to say. That is bad for him. So maybe, maybe that leads me to go the other direction."

Said President Trump after Ken Paxton declined to drop out of the Texas Senate primary race if Trump failed to endorse him.

Quoted in "'That’s bad for him to say': Trump puts Paxton on notice in Texas Senate primary/The president appeared to scold the attorney general" (Politico)

Trump had previously stated he would ask the candidate he does not endorse to step aside. Senate Republicans have already asked Trump to back Cornyn, who narrowly pulled ahead of Paxton on Tuesday in the first round of the primary. The two now face a heated runoff, which could last for another three months unless one of them ends their campaign.

I think Trump refrained from endorsing anyone in Tuesday's primary to give Paxton a chance to show how strong a candidate he was. When he didn't get the 50% needed to avoid a runoff with Cornyn and in fact got less than Cornyn, he failed the test, and Trump was going to give the endorsement to Cornyn. It's sheer practicality. Paxton knows that. Perhaps he thinks his strongest move — a move that might impress Trump — is to say he'll never give up. It's like an episode of "The Apprentice," except that we don't get to see Paxton explain his strategy while Trump glowers at him.

Trump and "good looking men."

PRESIDENT TRUMP jokes as he hosts the 2025 Major League Soccer Cup champions Inter Miami CF at the White House: “These are good looking people. Marco, I don't like good looking men.” pic.twitter.com/k6wsrvK9SD

— Fox News (@FoxNews) March 5, 2026

And speaking of good looking men, Katie Couric asks Gavin Newsom if he's "just ridiculously good looking" and whether he has "a Zoolander problem":

Couric: Do you have a Zoolander problem? Are you just ridiculously good looking as Vogue said? What do you do about that?

Newsom: You don’t do anything about it…It’s just who I am.

Good. Lord. pic.twitter.com/aFmvpDLlaa

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) March 5, 2026

"Aaron Spencer, who won the Lonoke County [Arkansas] primary race on Tuesday, is accused of shooting the man who allegedly sexually assaulted his 14-year-old daughter."

"He’s awaiting trial for murder. His town wants him to be sheriff" (London Times).

In the early hours of October 8, 2024, Spencer awoke to find his daughter missing from their home. His wife called 911 while he drove around looking for her. He spotted his child in the passenger seat of Fosler’s truck, followed the vehicle and forced it off the highway. After both men exited their cars, Spencer shot and killed him, court records allege. Prosecutors say Spencer shot Fosler 15 times and then “pistol-whipped” him in the face. Court records say he then called 911, stating: “Michael Fosler is f***ing dead on the side of the road for trying to kidnap my daughter. I had no choice.”

The Pillars of Creation.

These pictures of the Pillars of Creation were taken 19 years apart by different telescopes, with each image capturing a unique perspective.

On the left, @NASAHubble shows more thick dust. On the right, @NASAWebb peers through the dust to show more stars. Which is your favorite? pic.twitter.com/2QLApmSE1X

— NASA (@NASA) March 5, 2026

(Sorry I had the wrong video up. Fixed)

Is this the way we're going to talk now?

Donald Trump is a piece of shit. pic.twitter.com/UfWS89baVQ

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) March 5, 2026

Noem ousted.

 Just now. The NYT reports.

President Trump fired his embattled homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, on Thursday and announced plans to replace her with Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, after she was grilled by Republican lawmakers this week at congressional hearings.... 

On Thursday, the president contradicted remarks that Ms. Noem made under penalty of perjury in her hearing before a Senate panel on Wednesday: that Mr. Trump had signed off ​on a border security advertising campaign featuring Ms. Noem. “I ​never knew anything about it,” ​Mr. Trump told Reuters....

Ms. Noem has faced scrutiny ​from lawmakers about the campaign, on which the government spent $220 million. The firm handling it was connected to the husband of Ms. Noem’s former spokeswoman. The ads prominently featured Ms. Noem, including in a scene filmed on horseback at Mount Rushmore in ​the former ​South ⁠Dakota governor’s home state....

ADDED:

Kristi Noem is out at DHS. Here's a TV commercial of her on a horse, filmed five months ago at Mount Rushmore, for an ad campaign that cost more than $200 million pic.twitter.com/U1RtvlYc4w

— Drew Harwell (@drewharwell) March 5, 2026

What an awful ad! Whatever it cost.

"The chimpanzees immediately sorted the crystals out of the piles. Then they carried them in their mouths, turned them in the light and held them up to their eyes..."

"... like old-timey prospectors. When the researchers eventually set up cameras inside the chimp dorms, they saw that Yvan was still gripping one as he prepared to relax in his hay nest... They seemed to also be experiencing 'something beyond curiosity,' Dr. García-Ruiz said. Watching them added heft to one of his more speculative theories: He believes that crystals, as 'the only Euclidean object in nature,' may have helped humans invent geometry and unlock abstract thought."

From "Chimpanzees Are Really Into Crystals/In an attempt to understand our own fascination with the shiny minerals, researchers gave some to chimps" (NYT).

So... is this good science? Seems to me the human interest in crystals has long been considered pseudoscience, but you could scientifically study what draws humans into pseudoscience. But is this study, using chimpanzees, scientific? It seems to me that it's mainly combining the pseudoscientific interest in crystals with the hoped-for fun of hanging around with chimpanzees.

I tried to get Grok to make me an image of a chimpanzee holding a crystal and gazing at it "like old-timey prospectors." But after many tries and no progress — the chimp was almost expressionless and the eyes weren't even looking at the crystal — I lost hope.

Grok: "Want one more refinement round? Just say the word."

Me: "No, just tell me why some humans are goofy about crystals." 

"Standing in an outdoor car park on which he wants to build flats, Carvelli watched as archaeologists got busy unearthing ancient Roman skeletons..."

"... mosaics and tombs. 'We had problems like this before in Rome when we had to work around a tomb but this is on a different level,' Carvelli said. When builders broke ground at the car park last year, archaeologists checked for ancient ruins and stumbled on a large Roman burial ground, complete with 20 tombs and 50 skeletons piled in pits for the poor, a mere six feet below where Romans have been parking their cars for years.... Peering into one hole in the ground full of skeletons, Walter Pantano, an anthropologist, surveyed the tangle of arms, rib cages and grinning skulls with their teeth intact...."

From "Ancient remains of necropolis stand in way of Rome’s builders/The abundance of artefacts and even skeletons underfoot is proving a frustrating barrier to development in the Eternal City" (London Times).

"A love of dogs is somewhat of a tradition for French leaders: the past six presidents all owned at least one black Labrador."

"The two owned by Nicolas Sarkozy, and a chihuahua, reportedly caused damage totalling tens of thousands of euros at the Élysée Palace by chewing on 200-year-old furniture in the Silver Salon. President Macron’s dog, Nemo, was once filmed urinating on an ornamental fireplace in a presidential meeting, and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s was a gift from the late Queen and nicknamed Sandringham Samba...."

From "Can the French love of dogs be transformed into election success? Doggy food banks and shared human-dog drinking fountains are among the promises on offer as candidates for the local elections try to win over voters" (London Times).

Check the reaction that's closest to yours.

What good is culture if you can't piss on it?

Why black Labs? Is it racist? Samba... really?

I want political promises for America's dogs!

It's all about love. Love is the answer.

 

pollcode.com free polls

Bluesky posts on its X account to remind us of its existence and admit that it has been what its whole point was not to be: toxic.

If you haven't checked us out in a while, we've been busy. Doing work to make conversations less toxic and more civil, and adding new ways to help you find your friends on Bluesky. See what you've been missing: https://t.co/exCdOOXRC1

— Bluesky (@bluesky) March 4, 2026

"That this country sits back and allows a country such as Iran to hold our hostages to my way of thinking is a horror."

"And I don't think they do it with other countries. I honestly don't think they do it with other countries.... I absolutely feel that [we should have gone in there]. Yes. I don't think there's any question. There's no question in my mind. I think it right now.... . I don't think that Iran would have our hostages for 10 minutes if they respected this country. I don't believe they would have our hostages for 10 minutes...."

That's Trump in 1980 — 46 years ago.A lot of people have been posting that clip this week. I'm seeing many comments about how consistent Trump has been about Iran. He was only 34 years old in that clip.

"Every president, of course, creates a decision-making structure tailor-made for his own style."

"Franklin D. Roosevelt relied heavily on a kitchen cabinet. Harry S. Truman created the National Security Council to formally weigh options and coordinate among departments fighting the Cold War. Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter turned the N.S.C. into an idea generator. In the Obama administration, members of the N.S.C. staff talked about 'death by Situation Room meeting' and compared the process of policymaking to watching a python swallow a pig."

From "Trump Follows His Gut. His National Security Advisers Try to Keep Up. Decisions come fast, even if contradictions and inconsistencies abound. But without much of a process, there is little preparation for how things can go wrong" (NYT).

And Trump? He has, we're told, "reduced the size of the N.S.C. staff by at least two thirds.... And when debates take place, the number of players often shrinks to a tiny group.... Not much leaks from those sessions, a major change from, say, the early Obama era, when Situation Room conversations sometimes appeared on news websites before the meetings were over."

So then we don't really have a way of knowing what goes on. Well, the NYT writer, David Sanger, presents us with a quote from Thomas Wright, "a scholar at the Brookings Institution who worked on long-term strategic planning in the National Security Council during the Biden years," who purports to tell us what "Trump seems to think," which is that "he doesn’t need options or contingency plans. He just wants a small team to execute his instincts."

Sunrise — 6:08, 6:30, 6:32.

Enjoy an open thread. Write about whatever you want.

Here's Meade's contribution:

"For four months... the Chicago-based artist Bethany Collins woke up every day before dawn, brewed coffee and sat down at her dining table to copy out Herman Melville’s 'Moby-Dick' (1851) with a nib pen."

"Writing in midnight blue acidic ink on onionskin paper, she made her way through the book’s 900-plus pages 10 at a time. The resulting work, 'Or, the Whale, Vol. I-III,' is housed in three black clothbound binders. 'It felt ritualistic,' says Collins, 41, of the project, 'like meditation.'"

From "Why One Artist Transcribed All 900-Plus Pages of ‘Moby-Dick’ by Hand/For Bethany Collins, Herman Melville’s novel is rife with centuries-old political anxieties that still resonate today" (NYT).

If you were to do a similar art project, based on someone else's writing, what book would you choose?

This sort of thing has been done before. In 1974 the conceptual artist Allen Ruppersberg copied "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by hand. Collins acknowledges this inspiration.

We've also heard that Hunter S. Thompson typed out "The Great Gatsby" and "A Farewell to Arms." I don't think he presented that as conceptual art.

"Mr. Hell moved to New York at the age of 17 determined to be a poet. But New York 'wasn’t the bohemian paradise I’d fantasized it was going to be...'"

"'Everybody was really competitive, even though there was nothing to win.' Disillusioned, he turned to music. 'I thought, as long as I’m going to be here, I might as well be in some profession where I can make a living,' he said with a laugh.... Like many old tenement apartments, Mr. Hell’s has its bathtub in the kitchen.... 'I love my apartment. I have no complaints about it'.... And his needs have evolved along with the neighborhood. 'Now I have an apartment where they actually keep the heat on, I can get the most fantastic food within walking distance, I’m central to all the stuff I love to go to in Manhattan, and I don’t want to go out on the weekends because it’s such a frenzy of college kids and bridge-and-tunnel people and tourists.... But I don’t want to go out anyway. I have everything I need right here.'"

From "Richard Hell/The punk-rock icon and writer has spent more than 50 years in his East Village tenement apartment" (NYT)(gift link, because you'll want to see the photographs, you voyeur, you).

I love articles like this — a real person in their natural habitat. It gets my "interior decoration" tag, but it's so much more interesting than those words make it sound.  

"What is the approximate number of shipwrecks underwater on earth (from the entirety of human history)?"

My question to Grok today. Inspired by news reports.

Let me know what your answer was before you clicked for more.

I'm really enjoying the Como Brothers covering Beatles songs.

Lots more here.

"Both John and Ken ran great races, but not good enough. Now, this one, must be PERFECT!"

"My Endorsements within the Republican Party have been virtually insurmountable! It is such an honor to realize and say that almost everyone I Endorse WINS, and wins by a lot, especially in Texas! I will be making my Endorsement soon, and will be asking the candidate that I don’t Endorse to immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE! Is that fair? We must win in November!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP."

At Truth Social, this afternoon, the day after the Texas primary, where neither John Cornyn nor Ken Paxton got enough votes to avoid a runoff.

I assume that Trump is talking to both men and stating the condition that he won't endorse them unless they promise they'll drop out if he picks the other guy. 

And I assume Trump's main concern is simply that a Republican win, but is that Cornyn or Paxton? I'll withhold my opinion. Here's a poll:

Which Republican is more likely to beat Talarico in the Texas Senate race?

Cornyn

Paxton

 

pollcode.com free polls

Is it possible for an American to maintain good health while spending $65 a month on food?

I'm reading "The Fantasy of a Comfy Retirement Has Always Been a Mirage" (NYT), which begins:

On Thursday, a woman named Sharon from Minnesota called into C-SPAN’s “open forum” to express her despair about the cost of living. “I’m 65 years old. I’m legally blind. I’m on disability. I went to my doc, and I lost 28 pounds in the last year. I did not need to lose 28 pounds. I did not try to lose 28 pounds. I lost the 28 pounds because I cannot afford to eat anymore,” Sharon explained, speaking clearly even though she sounded near tears. Because of Trump administration cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the high cost of groceries, gas and electricity, Sharon only allows herself $65 a month for food....

Of course, that sounds shocking and horrible. I have empathy for Sharon and do not like to see anyone struggling so hard, but I wondered whether it was a least possible to maintain your health while spending only $65 a month. Grok assures me that it is possible. I think we all know what this diet would consist of — lots of oatmeal, rice, beans, potatoes, cabbage, and carrots, along with some apples, bananas, and eggs. It's terrible to allow yourself to lose 28 pounds (that you couldn't spare) before switching to this basic diet or going to a food pantry, but not everyone has enough energy or mental clarity to make the adjustment.

Anyway, to be clear, I'm not saying the government shouldn't help people in this circumstance. On the contrary, I think the country deserves excellent food policy. I'm not a source of advice on what that would be.

Hillary reacts to hearing that Jeffrey Epstein said "Hillary Clinton is much prettier in person."

Watch out! It's an attempted trap:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mediaite (@mediaite)

"You can't park here."

"I like being a member of the community."

Bill Clinton looking at the Epstein files.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Caroline Baniewicz (@carolinebaniewicz)

ADDED: Here's a reference video — Bill Clinton enjoying something in the Epstein files that his lawyer attempts to remove from his line of sight and his reflexive emotional reaction.

"We can sustain this fight — easily — for as long as we need to..."

"Ultimately, we set the pace and the tempo.... We know their ability to shoot versus our ability to defend. That difference gets wider and wider every day.... When we say the throttle's going up, the throttle's going up and it's going to stay on high...."