"By 1963 we had accumulated ten horses, eleven dogs, a donkey, two goats, pigs, my 4-H cow, chickens, pheasants, ducks, geese, forty closely related rabbits (I started with two)..."

"... and a coop of Hungarian homing pigeons, along with the hawks, owls, raccoons, snakes, lizards, salamanders, and fish in my personal menagerie. A pair of bush babies lived under the porte-cochère, a nocturnal honey bear slept away his days in the playroom crawlspace, while my coatimundi and my giant leopard tortoise roamed free in the house. A jill ferret fed her pups under the kitchen stove. The mailman, retreating to his car, might be chased by goats, geese, or an imposing pack of barking dogs, where he might find a sea lion lolling on the vehicle’s warm hood, playfully slathering the windshield with a fount of fishy saliva. Aunt Jackie captured this bedlam in one of her watercolors, depicting frolicking children pursuing a football among a herd of galloping horses, a worn-out cook leaving the driveway with her overnight bags as her replacement arrives similarly encumbered, while canines pursue an accountant, tearing at his clothes...."

Writes RFK Jr., in (commission earned).

That's the only mention of raccoons in that book, which I've read and enjoyed and which I was searching this morning a propos of the new story "Kennedy Jr/RFK Jr once cut penis off ‘road-killed raccoon’ in New York, new book reveals/Health secretary in a diary entry said his kids were in the car as he cut off animal’s genitals in 2001 to 'study them later'" (Guardian).

Here's Kennedy when he was asked about the raccoon penis yesterday. I love the reaction, a subtle chuckle as he walks away. I read his mind to say: If only you knew the life I've lived. Your windshield was never slathered with fishy saliva.

"The shift to drilling holes in fuel tanks comes as an old method of stealing gas has faded: siphoning...."

"Most newer vehicles have narrow, curved filler necks leading to the gas tank, making it difficult to force a tube inside. Some vehicles also have internal flappers or baffles to thwart siphoning. And anti-pollution regulations mean fuel systems are often better sealed. Gas thefts of all kinds tend to follow pump prices...."

From "As fuel prices rise, a new technique of gas theft is spreading/With simple tools, thieves are 'drilling and draining' fuel from vehicles, leaving drivers with costly repair bills" (WaPo).

I don't like that phrase "As fuel prices rise," which seems to assume the rising trend will continue. Right now, I'm seeing this:

"The Strait of Hormuz is 'completely open' for all commercial ships after the agreement of a cease-fire in Lebanon, Iran’s foreign minister said on Friday."

The NYT reports. 

And here's Trump at Truth Social, one minute ago: "THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ IS COMPLETELY OPEN AND READY FOR BUSINESS AND FULL PASSAGE, BUT THE NAVAL BLOCKADE WILL REMAIN IN FULL FORCE AND EFFECT AS IT PERTAINS TO IRAN, ONLY, UNTIL SUCH TIME AS OUR TRANSACTION WITH IRAN IS 100% COMPLETE. THIS PROCESS SHOULD GO VERY QUICKLY IN THAT MOST OF THE POINTS ARE ALREADY NEGOTIATED. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! PRESIDENT DONALD J.TRUMP"

Friday sunrise.

Video by Meade.

"I have an interview on NBC tonight, and I'm a little nervous."

"What's an opening line I could say that just makes them interested in me?"

Lots more from Husk here.

"I felt like the whole time [the jury] saw right through what the defense was trying to do, how they tried to defame my character..."

"... things they brought up that had nothing do with the case. They were just trying to criminalize, bully me and make me look like a bad human being."

Said Diana Sanders, quoted in "Woman Who Took 15 Tequila Shots on Carnival Cruise Gets $300,000 in Damages/The woman, who fell and injured herself, said in a lawsuit that bartenders had been negligent for serving her while she was visibly intoxicated" (NYT).

Before you judge, consider that Sanders had paid extra for what Carnival called the “Cheers!” drink package, which pays for as many as 15 alcoholic drinks per day. Sanders was drinking up the amount she'd paid for, and Carnival had structured its commerce in a way that created that incentive. The cruise ship business — what can you say? It's tawdry, isn't it?

"This was a fecund period of first-person writing by women that had a transgressive and self-revealing quality, which also had the consequence of creating a kind of adrenalized form of commentary."

"Blogging was personal, but also a job, often a grind. It created cycles of argument that were rapid, intense and often punishing for the people at the center — both the subjects and the writers. As post quotas were filled, a slippage occurred between the artist and her public, the blogger and her commenters, the internet-famous and the real stars. 'Girls' permeated this media ecosystem...."

Writes Amanda Hess, in "We Need Lena Dunham Now More Than Ever/The era of 'Girls' is long gone. So why are we still so fascinated by its creator?" (NYT).

"An inveterate poster, [Lena] Dunham lived online and seemed determined to step on the rake of commentary as her influence scaled.... [Dunham said she] wished she could have had the experience of aborting a pregnancy.... She explained that her comment was made under the guise of 'a "delusional girl" persona I sometimes inhabit'.... Her name, and her auto-fictional project, had wandered beyond their creative boundaries, and the internecine debates of blogs had ballooned into a national concern. When Clinton lost the election, some blamed Dunham."

Sunrise.

Those are my pictures, and here's Meade's video of me taking them.

"A federal judge set new limits on President Donald Trump’s planned White House ballroom, saying construction could proceed only on an underground portion of the project deemed necessary by the military..."

"... and not on the 90,000-square-foot aboveground addition that Trump has eyed to entertain VIP guests. 'National security is not a blank check to proceed with otherwise unlawful activity,' U.S. District Judge Richard Leon wrote Thursday. He said the Trump administration could also take steps to secure the construction site to make it safe for people on the White House grounds...."

WaPo reports.

"In contrast to the carved statues of monarchs and saints framing the entrance to the museum’s main building eight miles to the west, this towering sculpture depicts an anonymous young Black woman."

"She holds a phone in one hand as she turns, in a twist reminiscent of Bernini’s 'David,' to look over her right shoulder with an intent gaze. Her hair is in two neat braids and the folds of her T-shirt drape luxuriously where they tuck into her jeans. She wears colossal Nike Air Rift sneakers."

From "A Huge Statue of a Black Woman Opens a New Door to London’s V&A/Thomas J Price’s bronze figures present anonymous Black people at heroic scale. After an installation in Times Square sparked a furor, his latest work welcomes visitors to a new museum outpost" (NYT).

What was the Times Square sculpture that "sparked a furor"? It was a similar anonymous generic black woman. According to the artist, "the messages I would get from women who look like her [were] saying she was disgusting." He said: "A lot of people, they’re not used to seeing people who look like them. And I mean that not just in terms of race or gender, but people just being people."

I wonder if most people, confronted with a colossal sculpture of a person who looked exactly like them — other than the size and the monotone color of bronze — would find it disgusting. But those 2 changes — size and bronzeness — are what we usually think makes a statue "heroic."

Or perhaps the "heroic" quality requires something more: a proud pose, idealized beauty, nudity (or a military uniform, a toga, or at least a business suit), some connection to glorious achievement (certainly not just standing around casually). But when's the last time elite art came out in favor of the heroic? That's so right wing. Like something Trump would do. Or try to do.

"Why art thou proud, O man? God for thee became low. Thou wouldst perhaps be ashamed to imitate a lowly man; then at least imitate the lowly God."

Wrote Saint Augustine, quoted in "Imitation of Christ," a Wikipedia article I'm reading on the occasion of so much talk about that illustration of Trump in which he is depicted as Christlike.

The Apostle Paul wrote, in Ephesians: "Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, even as Christ also loved you."

Thomas Aquinas wrote: "Religious perfection consists chiefly in the imitation of Christ."

Then there's the 15th century best-seller "The Imitation of Christ," by Thomas à Kempis.

Of course, I'm not saying Trump has been living up to this standard. I am only questioning those who seem to be saying that there is something blasphemous about equating a human being to Jesus Christ. The standard seems too high, and yet it has been tradition in Christianity to speak in terms of that standard. The name "Christian" contains the thought that we are called to be Christlike.

Here's a good C.S. Lewis passage, speaking of Christians as "little Christs":

"... I made remarks that were inappropriate. I regret my hurtful comments. I have apologized to my colleague."

Said Justice Sotomayor, quoted in "Justice Sonia Sotomayor issues unusual apology over 'hurtful' remarks about colleague Brett Kavanaugh/The liberal Supreme Court justice had criticized her conservative colleague while she was talking about an opinion he wrote last year in an immigration case" (NBC News).

Here's the statement for which she apologized: "This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour." 

You can see the context at the link. She didn't call the "man" by name — it was Kavanaugh — and she didn't even say he lacked empathy. She didn't even assert that he lacked experience with the working class. She didn't even say he probably doesn’t know anyone who works by the hour. She only said he probably doesn’t really know anyone like that. 

To really know someone... that takes a lot. That's a high standard! She apologized for only saying that he probably didn't meet a high standard. Why apologize then?

Perhaps it's an effort to appear especially virtuous herself, but perhaps the motivation is to stop Kavanaugh supporters from getting lots of attention coming forward with accounts of his interactions with working class people. Kavanaugh has volunteered to serve the poor through Catholic Charities, he's done tutoring, and he's coached youth basketball in the Catholic Youth Organization league. This was widely reported during the confirmation hearings but that was years ago. It could all be laid out again, in detail, and with hooting at Justice Sotomayor. Some might ask whether Justice Sotomayor has done equivalent charity and service to the poor and working class. Better to apologize.

Can we talk a little bit about beauty filters?

I'm told this is Rosie O'Donnell, inviting us to "talk a little bit about Eric Swalwell. If she's actually ready to get serious about the interests of women, why is she presenting herself like this?

Rosie O’Donnell speaks out about her past support for Eric Swalwell.

“It’s heartbreaking to me. And I wrote him a little message. And I said ‘Bill Clinton broke my heart and you did too.’ The conclusion I’ve come to- men suck.” pic.twitter.com/QP1nBuQDUc

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) April 16, 2026

She's used some kind of filter that makes her look like a little girl. That actually fits the substance. She's posing as an innocent girl whose "heart" was broken when men she supported revealed themselves to be abusers of women. She wants us to be angry at them because they hurt her — they broke her heart. First Clinton and now Swalwell. Her conclusion is babyish: "Men suck." 

Then she takes on a believe-the-science attitude: "The way that [men] are physiologically, they can't, sort of, control their sexual urges." After saying that, she touches her nose and cheek in a way that makes me think she knows she's bullshitting.

Notice that it's basically the same bullshit theory we were talking about 2 days ago in "The problem is less a 'boys will be boys' tolerance than a sense of resignation among politicians, staff and other members of official Washington that powerful, ambitious men are built differently."  That post title is a quote from a NYT column. The columnist, Michelle Cottle did not detail this "built differently" hypothesis, so I paraphrased it: "the idea is if we want truly great men in our positions of power, we need to accept the component of their psyche that is a drive for sex — a lot of sex, with young, beautiful women."

"Former Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax shot and killed his wife inside of their home and then shot and killed himself."

So say local police, quoted in "Former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax kills wife, self amid divorce proceedings, police say/Fairfax served as lieutenant governor from 2018 to 2022 and previously ran for governor of Virginia" (NBC News).

The former lieutenant governor, who was 47, served in the role from 2018 to 2022 under Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam. In 2019, two women accused Fairfax of sexual assault years earlier, prompting Virginia Democrats to call for his resignation.... 

When he ran in the Democratic primary for governor in 2021, Fairfax, who was Black, said during the gubernatorial debate he was treated like George Floyd and Emmett Till when Democrats immediately called for his resignation after the women made the allegations.

The city looked like it was sinking into the lake this morning.

7 minutes later:

 

Those are my pictures. Here's Meade's point of view at the same time:

The Trump-as-Jesus meme rages on.

These 2 gems came up on my for-you feed on TikTok today. Don't watch if you're actually appalled by this sort of thing. Watch if you think it can be funny/intriguing/worth keeping track of:

"Investors appear to be treating an end to the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran as a foregone conclusion, as the S&P 500 closes above 7,000."

The NYT reports.

Morning fog.

Video by Meade.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"Bob was inspirational. I always just think: ‘The vandals took the handles.' Just that little phrase out of everything. It’s so sort of corny but brilliant."

Said Paul McCartney, quoted in "Bob Dylan and the Beatles: When the Fab Four Became the Fab Five/Jim Windolf’s new book, 'Where the Music Had to Go,' traces the influence of Dylan on the Beatles and the Beatles on Dylan" (NYT).

You might think I'd read that book, but I actively don't want to read it.

"Please don’t write about this immediately. I know how you work, and that you will. But please, just not right away."

Said the "Girls" showrunner, Jenni Konner, to Lena Dunham, quoted in "In 'Famesick,' Lena Dunham Diagnoses Celebrity, Illness and Herself/This unusually unfiltered memoir takes us to the hospital, to therapy and to the sometimes hostile set of 'Girls'" (NYT).

The book reviewer, Alexandra Jacobs, adds: "Maybe, contra Dunham’s mentor Nora Ephron, not everything is copy? Or at least … everything needs a copy editor? The Keebler elf makes a second, sexualized appearance; 'Harold and the Purple Crayon' is invoked twice; and Jack and Lena share soup from a 'terrine.'"

Points if you know the difference between a terrine and a tureen. 

I know "tureen" because I know "Alice in Wonderland" — "The Mock Turtle's Song":

"'It shows you that there are people interested in stuff beyond just living and existing,' Bridges said, chatting with fellow residents over Golden Oreos and cranberry juice after her virtual trip to Santorini. 'It’s an escape from reality.'"

From "How Older Adults Are Using V.R. to Counter Social Isolation/New tools tailored for use in senior living communities allow for shared experiences and social bonding" (NYT).

I'm not using a gift link for this one, so you'll just have to picture old people with a big VR device strapped to their face. And imagine many paragraphs puffing the joys of VR — and the joys of travel.

But VR and travel are touted as a means to an end, and the end is the all-important social connection: “When V.R. is done well, you get mentally transported to a place,” said Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University.... A few minutes together on a virtual hike or sunset cruise can change a silent dinner to a lively conversation about past travel experiences...."

"My voice is hoarse because I've been screaming at Iranians all day."

Said Trump, just now, in an interview on Fox Business.

"Androgenic Reacts After Reports Of Clavicular Suspected Overdose."

A Newsweek headline. Can you even read it?

I know Clavicular is a person, and I've got to presume Androgenic is also a person. By their names alone, I would have guessed they were corporations or health-care products of some kind. But in the context — reacting, overdosing — I can see that they are human beings. Sad.

Clavicular is only 20, and he's gotten far too much attention for a young person. Yes, he's been asking for it, but don't give young people everything they ask for.

Sample paragraph from his Wikipedia page: "On December 27, 2025... [Clavicular] described Vice President JD Vance as 'subhuman' for his "recessed side profile' and for being 'obese,' asking, 'How are you fat and expected to lead a country?' He agreed with [a] criticism of California governor Gavin Newsom as both a 'degenerate' and a 'liar' but said that, in a potential 2028 United States presidential election in which Newsom ran against Vance, he would vote for 'Chad' Newsom for 'mogging,' or being more attractive than, Vance."

"He likes to do whatever I want him to do.... He is always looking at me and smiling.... I wanted him to dig, and he just did exactly what I told him to do."

Said Barbara Collins, quoted in "Woman, 96, enlists 150-pound dog to plant spring flowers: She points, he digs/A video of Barbara Collins and Chewy gardening together has amassed millions of views on social media" (WaPo)(gift link, so you can see the pictures of the tiny old woman with the gigantic dogs).

This is another one of those mainstream media reports on what's in social media. Here's Chewy's TikTok,  account, with much better coverage of the old lady and what is her granddaughter's dog.

Sample video:

"Colleagues in the operating room 'had concerns that Dr. Shaknovsky did not have the skill level to safely perform this procedure'...."

"After Dr. Shaknovsky removed the organ, 'The staff looked at the readily identifiable liver on the table and were shocked when Dr. Shaknovsky told them that it was a spleen,' the state documents said. 'One staff member felt sick to their stomach.'"

From "Surgeon Who Removed Wrong Organ From Patient Is Charged in His Death/Dr. Thomas Shaknovsky tried to persuade his colleagues in the operating room that the liver he removed from a 70-year-old patient was a spleen, according to Florida’s Health Department" (NYT).

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

The morning puddle.

That crane video is by me, emphasizing the puddle. Here's Meade's crane video, stressing the freneticism of the feeding:

"These proceedings improperly threaten an open-ended, freewheeling inquiry into executive branch decision-making on matters of national security..."

"... that implicate ongoing military and diplomatic initiatives. This judicial intrusion into the autonomy of a coequal department cannot be remedied by a later appeal from a contempt conviction."

Wrote Judge Neomi Rao, for the majority, quoted in "Appeals Court Ends Contempt Inquiry Into Deportation Flights/A federal judge’s nearly yearlong effort to investigate whether the Trump administration had violated his order had become a point of contention in the president’s battles with the courts" (NYT): 

Here's the opinion, from the District of Columbia court. The judge below was James E. Boasberg. 

Why do people read this illustration to represent Trump depicted as Jesus rather than Trump with the miraculous power of the laying on of hands?

 

Trump shared this image, then took it down when he was attacked. The image was said to represent him as Jesus. He denied that he had seen it that way. He said the image showed him as "a doctor making people better and I do make people a lot better." Many observers hooted "Doctor!" What kind of doctor wears a robe and applies small orbs of light to the patient's forehead!?

But what is Jesus-y about handheld balls of light? What is Jesus-y about an American flag, the Statue of Liberty, the Lincoln Memorial, a bald eagle, fighter jets, soldiers ascending upward, and a medical worker with a stethoscope?

You can see what you want here, and maybe if you're genuinely concerned about blasphemy you'll want to err on the side of not jumbling up worldly images with things that might be sacred. But is there any serious Christian iconography there? I see nothing other than the white tunic and red mantle. What about the healing itself? But healing with the laying on of hands is not something limited to Jesus. Whether it is effective or not, it has been a widespread practice through human history, and it is a way to express the idea of profound healing.

There is healing through the laying on of hands in the Old Testament and, in the New Testament, it is not limited to Jesus. And in Western history, there was also the "royal touch" — "a form of laying on of hands, whereby French and English monarchs touched their subjects... with the intent to cure them of various diseases and conditions."

American Presidents are frequently portrayed as healers — spiritual healers — and the use of exalted imagery is common, not some freakish new thing special to Trump. It might be a bad idea — because it's trashy art, because politics and religion should be kept strictly separated, or because propaganda is deceptive and distracting — whatever. That image may be bullshit, but the outrage over it is also bullshit. When I think of all the times Barack Obama was portrayed as a Christ figure! Ridiculous. Grow up. 

And here are The Thompson Twins:

Oh, lay your hands on me/(Lay your hands) woo-hoo/(Ooh, lay your hands) oh, lay your hands on me/(Lay your hands) oh, oh-oh-oh....

Sunrise.

Meade's videos of the morning.

Which U.S. Presidents have been called "The Antichrist"?

I wondered, on seeing the Wired article "Staunch Trump Supporters Are Now Asking if He’s the Antichrist/The Iran war and a series of social media posts, including one depicting Trump as Jesus Christ, have some conservative commentators and fans suspecting the president may be the antichrist."

Of course, it's a long tradition in American discourse. If I can trust Grok, it goes back at least to FDR. 

Grok cites a 2011 Slate article: "How Many Presidents Have Been Accused of Being the Antichrist?/Hint: It’s not just Obama."

I remember why the topic came up in 2011. I blogged about it in "Obama does a great job reacting to a heckler who calls him the Antichrist" ("Obama has the presence of mind to say — responding to the heckled 'Jesus Christ is God, Barack Obama is the Antichrist!' — 'I agree. Jesus Christ is the Lord. I believe in that'").

There's also Ronald Reagan.

Trump is wowed by himself.

"Wow!"

ADDED: At the link, which goes to a Trump post at Truth Social, there's video animating a series of photos of Trump, in chronological order, beginning with him as an angelic toddler. We get the sense of Trump through the years, but there is one glaring problem, and it's funny that he chose to share this video anyway. There is only one photo where he is shown with one of his wives, and that wife is Marla Maples.

"Meta’s new gizmos are ordinary-looking Ray-Bans and Oakleys that have been juiced to the gills with hidden technology..."

"... Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, two tiny speakers, five microphones, a wide-angle camera.... [T]he real selling point is A.I. — an opportunity to chitchat with a disembodied superintelligence that can see and hear everything you do... So what do my miraculous sunglasses tell me? Many things. They inform me, in the voice of Princess Anna from 'Frozen,' that my dog is a golden retriever mix (he is not) and that a tree I am looking at is probably an oak (it is not). They tell me to walk north when I know I should be walking south. One afternoon, on a sunny stroll, I stop to admire a bright red cardinal singing its heart out in a tree. 'Hey, Meta,' I say. 'What kind of bird is that chirping in the tree?' My sunglasses make their little ding-dong noise, analyzing the world. Finally, they speak. 'I don’t see a bird in the tree or hear any chirping,' they say. I point directly at the bird, which is still chirping. 'I don’t see a bird in the tree where you’re pointing,' my sunglasses say, cheerfully. 'Just bare branches and sky.'..."

Writes Sam Anderson, in "I Feel So Sorry for My A.I. Sunglasses/Plenty of people hate Mark Zuckerberg’s superintelligent, supercharged spectacles. I was ready to hate them, too" (NYT).

There's your future — just bare branches and sky

"The problem is less a 'boys will be boys' tolerance than a sense of resignation among politicians, staff and other members of official Washington that powerful, ambitious men are built differently."

Writes Michelle Cottle, in "How Many People Heard About Swalwell and Did Nothing?" (NYT).

Cottle does not delve into this "built differently" hypothesis or the reasons why people believe it and choose to condone bad behavior. She seems to hope to light a fire under these weaker people and motivate them to oppose the "powerful, ambitious men" who — supposedly — are fueled by sexual desire. 

Maybe she doesn't delve into the hypothesis because she thinks it's true and self-evident. Maybe she's too puritanical to open up the subject. "Built differently." Say it clearly and explicitly. When I was a child, circa 1960, I asked my mother how babies were born. That was long ago, but I remember her answer verbatim: "Well, you know how men and women are built differently."

Can we please grow up and say it bluntly? There's no reason to be polite here. Powerful, ambitious men are built differently... the idea is if we want truly great men in our positions of power, we need to accept the component of their psyche that is a drive for sex — a lot of sex, with young, beautiful women. We're diminishing ourselves if we filter out the men who have it. Look at JFK. Look at Trump. And by the way, it's also the reason why none of the women are truly great political leaders.

That's not my personal belief. That's the hypothesis Cottle gestures at, and I'm just putting it bluntly. Maybe you can put it more bluntly, so I'll turn the conversation over to you.

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can write about whatever you like.

"I made a necessary break with everything.... I broke up with my business partner. I broke up with my partner. I had a hysterectomy. I stepped back from work."

"It was it was, like, I went from full on to, like, sitting in a back room in my parents apartment in silence collaging letters together and... my mom coming in and being, like, 'That's really nice.'... It was not a time where I was capable of really keeping anything going and I'm not a big — so much has happened in my life that's wonderful and so much has something that's challenging — I'm not a big redux person. Like, I look back and I go — I remember once I said to my mom like, 'I'm so glad you're my mom.' And she was like, 'It could have been no other way.' And there's so much it could have been no other way in this story. And I like... I had to detach from this entity that I had created and everyone who was responsible for helping me keep that entity alive."

The entity is Lena Dunham:

"You don’t need people to believe you, you just need to get it out of your poor body before it gives you cancer."

Said the actress Ruby Rose, quoted in "Katy Perry accused of sexual assault by Ruby Rose/Rose claimed Perry assaulted her at a nightclub almost 20 years ago. Perry denied the accusations, calling them ‘dangerous, reckless lies’" (London Times).

Rose isn't suing, but she says, "[Perry] is more than welcome to sue me (she won’t, because it happened, I have photos and it was literally in public and witnessed by multiple people)."

Andy Dick and Bill Maher explain Biden to each other.

I like Dick's set up — "I don't know politics" — and then he does some nice physical comedy.

ADDED: This video has strong Man-in-Shorts content. I think the shorts work well for Dick. He's an odd little man, so shorts are fitting for him. He's not trying to convey the impression that he's A Man.

Swalwell says he's "deeply sorry to my family, staff, and constituents for mistakes in judgment I’ve made in my past" and he "must take responsibility and ownership for the mistakes I did make"...

... but he's also determined to "fight the serious, false allegation made against me." He's fighting and it's false but he's sorry and he did make mistakes and he's got to take responsibility and he is resigning from Congress.

That's what it says here in "Eric Swalwell resigns from Congress after heinous sex assault accusations" (NY Post).

Does it seem incoherent? Not if you see it all in terms of "distraction": It's "wrong," he says, for him to be "distracted from my duties." The fighting will need to take place where we won't care about it anymore — on the outside of any campaign or political office. And now, presumably, we don't need to think about Swalwell for one more second. He has become nobody. Move on. That went by fast.

ADDED: Tony Gonzales, the Republican Congressman, is also resigning, also based on a sexual accusation (NYT link).

In the UW Arboretum...

... there were some blossoming magnolias...

... but mostly the trees were bare.

We kept stopping at benches and catching up on our reading. Have you forgotten the pleasure of reading outdoors?

And don't be telling me those aren't magnolias. This comes up every year. I looked back to last year. It was precisely the same day that we went to the arb — April 13th: "These are our magnolias. You don't need to tell me that your magnolias look different or that only your magnolias deserve the name magnolias. These are magnolias."

"Rory wins again…I think. CBS missed the last 4 shots. I guess that’s what happens when you have one camera covering the course and the rest pointing at teenagers watching the broadcast in Ireland."

One fan posted, quoted in "CBS bashed for botching Rory McIlroy’s Masters-winning shots" (NY Post).

Sunrise hubbub.

Video by Meade, this morning, on Lake Mendota.

It's a hubbub, to my ear, but I noticed that if I left the subtitles on, the computer was able to discern words that were chaotic noise to me, no more articulate than the nonsense of the geese. 

"I hadn’t intended to offend anyone, but the B-roll I posted to an account with a scant 100 followers was evidently being promoted as rage bait for the masses — and still is."

Writes Tammy Teclemariam, in "'U Went Viral for the Wrong Reasons Honey'/After I posted a video of some garlic bread, TikTok took over" (NY Magazine). She's getting excoriated by commenters who are mad at her for saying, bossily, "You didn’t ask if you could do that," when her tablemate, who'd ordered the bread, started cutting into it with a spoon.

"Within 23 days of posting, the video surpassed a million views.... Whatever machine learning was needed to push this onto the FYP of so many people, it seems to have worked as designed. Everyone I showed the video to in my real life couldn’t understand the controversy. But everyone leaving comments seemed willing to ignore any reasonable context to insist I must be a horrible person. 'You must be fun at parties,' commented LucyInTheSky. Lucy, I am fun at parties.... Some friends, understandably, suggested I just delete it. While that might seem like a quick escape from nuisance behavior, it doesn’t change the threat of this happening again. In order to speak freely on the internet, you have to take the haters for granted...."

"My reaction was pure confusion, sarcasm and not ill intended. Could have handled it better! Now I know what a Zaghrouta is! I welcome all cheers and yodels from here on out."

Said Sabrina Carpenter, quoted in "Sabrina Carpenter Apologizes for Mistaking Arabic Celebration Call With Yodeling During Coachella Performance: 'Could Have Handled it Better'" (Variety).

Here's how it looked and what she said at the time: 

Sabrina Carpenter is currently at the mercy of cancel culture after this exchange at Coachella last night.

Fu#%ing based Sabrina. 😎 pic.twitter.com/QzmggohvPQ

— Amiri King (@AmiriKing) April 12, 2026

ADDED: Notice that she says "I don't like it" when she misreads it as yodeling. Why the hostility to yodeling? But showing disrespect to Arabic culture is another matter. From the NYT article:

Fans appeared divided over Carpenter’s response on social media. One user called it “insensitive and Islamaphobic.” Another wrote: “She’s not obligated to like anything, but after receiving the information that it was part of the person’s culture, the least that is expected is respect.”

AND: Does yodeling seem... too country and somehow right wing?

"I have no fear of the Trump administration, or speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do."

Said Pope Leo, quoted in the NYT.

"Leo’s comments came after Mr. Trump’s lengthy attack on the pope on Sunday night, in which the president accused the pontiff of being 'weak on crime' and 'catering to the Radical Left.' Mr. Trump also said Leo, the first American pope, should 'focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician.'"

Trump wants the Pope to stay in his lane, but does Trump stay in his lane? I see I already have the tag "Trump and religion," so I'm going to say no.

MORE: From Leo: "The things I say are not meant as attacks on anyone. I do not look at my role as being political, a politician. I don’t want to get into a debate with him. I don’t think that the message of the Gospel is meant to be abused in the way that some people are doing."

I'm not getting in your lane. You're getting in my lane.

Speaking of tags, I have a longstanding "religion and politics" tag. The line between the two has never been clear, and people are not clear about how clear they want the line to be. It's a very old problem, and it won't be solved with facile stay-in-your-lane taunts.

AND: Here's what Trump put up at Truth Social:

"It seems like a kind of arms race. You have people becoming more and more assertive about including dogs everywhere and then..."

"... on the other side, people becoming more and more assertive about their resistance to having dogs everywhere."

Says Jessica Pierce, "a bioethicist studying human-dog relations," quoted in "Where Does a Dog Belong? In restaurants or grocery stores? Tensions between canine lovers and other New Yorkers are boiling over" (New York Magazine).

“If there wasn’t dog shit all over the sidewalks, then I don’t think dogs would necessarily be coming to a boiling point,” one Greenpoint dog owner in his early 40s reflected. It wasn’t as though he had never pushed the boundaries with his 50-pound supermutt. Yet if he didn’t always follow the letter of the law, he believed he observed the spirit, though he understood that not everyone agreed. Recently, he’d been in Transmitter Park with his dog — who, yes, was off-leash, but people do that there — when a guy in the playground area with his kid leaned over the fence. “He was not even in the vicinity of where my dog was,” he says. “He said, ‘Excuse me, you see the sign? It says NO DOGS.’ And I kind of looked at him like, Hey, you must be new here.” Why did he feel so entitled, the guy wanted to know. “And so I told him, ‘Hey, man, you’re here with your family, and I’m here with my family.” In seemingly every argument, someone brings up children. “Well, my dog,” someone inevitably says, “is better behaved and less disruptive and more pleasant than your disgusting child.”...

AND: From the comments over there:

The sunrise in the rain.

Write about anything you want in the comments.

"I just don't get it. I mean, everybody says, if we're on the moon, we can get to Mars. I don't want to go there either."

"There's nothing out there — except other rocks. Let's fix the shitshow here on Earth."

Said Bill Maher in the monologue of last Friday's episode of "Real Time."

Later in the show, breaking up 2 panelists who were brawling with each other about the democracy in Hungary, Maher butted in to say, "How about that moon?"

A panelist smiled and said, "We can agree on the moon."

Maher: "Well, I don't know if we can agree on the moon. I like — who doesn't like? — the moon. To look at it. From here.

"We want a full house cleaning. Get the garbage out of here. These jerks are destroying Congress, for the American people and for all of us who came here to do good work."

Said an unnamed House Democrat, quoted in "Swalwell scandal threatens cascade of House expulsion votes" (Axios).

But: "Many rank-and-file House members are territorial about their prerogatives and terrified of the precedent it would set to expel someone on the basis of allegations that haven't been fully adjudicated — even when they are highly unsavory."

"Lauren Sánchez Bezos... and [Jeff] Bezos do everything together. On a typical day, the newlyweds wake up around 6 in their new, roughly $230 million compound on Indian Creek..."

"... an exclusive private island in Miami.... They don’t touch their phones. Instead, they begin each day by listing 10 things they’re grateful for — and they can’t repeat what they named the day before. From there, the couple drink their morning coffee in a sunroom and watch the sun rise: hers from a mug that reads 'Woke Up Sexy as Hell Again,' his from one she got him that spells HUNK in symbols from the periodic table. They play pickleball. Six days a week, they work out for an hour with a private trainer. 'He looks good, doesn’t he?' Mrs. Sánchez Bezos said of her new husband, in an interview in Miami in January. She slow-nodded, repeating, 'He looks good.'"

For some reason the NYT has a long article about Lauren Sánchez Bezos. It's called, inanely, "Someone Has to Be Happy. Why Not Lauren Sánchez Bezos? As half of an unfathomably powerful couple, Mrs. Sánchez Bezos seems to have influenced the uber-rich to stop apologizing, and start enjoying themselves."

I skimmed most of the article, but I'm blogging it because I can't imagine someone with all the money drinking coffee from a mug that says "Woke Up Sexy as Hell Again" and making her husband drink from a cup marked "HUNK." And, sorry, I just don't believe "they begin each day by listing 10 things they’re grateful for" — whether they allow themselves to repeat items or not. Supposedly, you wake up sexy, and then you do the 10-things list, which is more like a New Age religion substitute, and just not sexy at all, even if you're listing things like I'm thankful I'm so sexy, I'm thankful my husband is sexy, I'm thankful I wake up sexy, I'm thankful I know how to derive multiple thankfulness items from the concept that I am sexy, I'm thankful for the sexiness with which I woke up yesterday, I'm thankful for pickleball, I'm thankful my husband is the third richest man in the world, I'm thankful for the New York Times, I'm thankful for our unfathomable power, and I'm thankful to have reached #10 on our daily thankfulness list.

"So, there you have it, the meeting went well, most points were agreed to, but the only point that really mattered, NUCLEAR, was not."

"Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz."

Writes Trump at Truth Social.

"At some point, we will reach an 'ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO IN, ALL BEING ALLOWED TO GO OUT' basis, but Iran has not allowed that to happen by merely saying, 'There may be a mine out there somewhere,' that nobody knows about but them. THIS IS WORLD EXTORTION....

Tim Dillon explains Melania's Epstein speech.

I like the detail in the interpretation of the line, "Donald and I were invited to the same parties as Epstein from time to time since overlapping in social circles is common in New York City and Palm Beach."

Dillon translates: "Here's what she's telling you: We are rich.... I'm wealthy and I'm attractive. Many of you aren't either one of those things.

"[A]s Vice President JD Vance took a podium in Pakistan and said no deal had been reached had been reached to end the war in Iran... President Trump... was surrounded by people, but Mr. Trump was somehow an isolated figure...."

"People mostly circulated around him, checking in with updates and then leaving again. For the most part, Mr. Trump sat and impassively watched blood and saliva sprayed out from the fighters beating each other silly in front of him...."

Writes Katie Rogers, "Trump Was Watching a U.F.C. Fight in Miami While Iran Talks Collapsed On his way to Florida, President Trump said it did not matter to him if a deal with Iran was reached or not: 'We win, regardless,' he said" (NYT).

Blood and saliva — I've got tags for both of those.

Trump was "surrounded." People "circulated around him." When you're a star, you can't grab what orbits around you:

"O."

Love how he stopped for the "OH"...if you're from Baltimore, you understand.

— Sҽαɳ 🇺🇸⚓️ (@doc_1029) April 12, 2026

"I worked in a warehouse. It's where I felt so free. Then HR saw that video and terminated me."

I was good. I was great. I was busy moving freight. But I wanted to be funny, now the trucks will have to wait. I miss that icy freezer. I know that must sound odd, but now the smoke has cleared and my testicles  have thawed. I used to pick up pallets and I used to lift them high. It used to lift my spirits up. I felt like I could fly....

That's Blake Porter, via this Metafilter post by CrunchyFrog.

I enjoyed that. It was sweet and quirky, and I felt for the guy (even though I also think employers do need some rules about making your own videos at work, especially if you're working with heavy equipment like forklifts).

But it also got me wondering about Metafilter. I remember years ago, it had hot debate about political and social issues, but now it seems that everyone has agreed amongst themselves only to talk about sweet little quirky things and to be really nice to each other. It's a gentle pleasant atmosphere, but what the hell happened? What sapped all the vigor out of the place? If you go over there now, you'll see a post about what Isaac Asimov wrote about "1984" in 1980, how Jhumpa Lahiri is finding "quivering energy" in the works of Thomas Hardy, the rescue of a sea turtle, a walk to see (hear?) a sound sculpture, a bird that has relearned an old birdsong, a cat in a library, what rock art might be saying about Tasmanian tigers, etc. etc. 

Attempting to use Grok to explore my wonderment, I encountered the word "cozification." My search based on that word might have led me down various sweet quirky paths, but in the interest of keeping myself sharp and fast-moving, I decided to end this post with this screen shot (from Urban Dictionary) which I deem found art:

A gently fogged up sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"In a stunning political reversal, prominent supporters of Rep. Eric Swalwell’s campaign for California governor withdrew their support Friday..."

"... after the congressmember denied allegations that he sexually assaulted a woman twice, including when she worked for him. Swalwell was among the leading Democrats in the race to replace outgoing Gov. Gavin Newsom. But in just hours, he saw his most prominent supporters - including U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff and powerful labor unions - drop their endorsements and call for his exit from the race.... This turmoil in the race came after the San Francisco Chronicle reported Friday that a woman said Swalwell sexually assaulted her in 2019 and 2024.... Uncorroborated and nonspecific rumors that Swalwell behaved inappropriately with female staffers have circulated on social media for weeks, but the Chronicle’s story is the first reported account of someone making a direct accusation...."

I'm reading "Allies yank support for Swalwell’s California governor run after sexual assault allegations" (AP).

"But as the show gassed on, it also started to feel like zealotry porn: There were only so many fingers you could watch chopped off, only so many gouged-out eyes."

"After a while, the red robes started to look more like cringe cosplay than a pointed protest symbol. When the series finale aired last year, I didn’t bother watching, especially after reading that the titular handmaid, June, never reunites with the daughter she’s spent the entire series trying to rescue.And now we learn why: Because without that loose end, there could be no 'Testaments.' Our new protagonist is June’s teenage daughter, Agnes, who is being raised by a wealthy Gilead family and trained to become a perfect upper-class Gilead wife. Daily, she and the other 'plums' get on a big purple bus and go to the weirdest finishing school in suburban Maryland. Mostly they spend their days learning needlepoint and flower arranging, but sometimes they break up the monotony by ecstatically cheering while watching a petty criminal lose his hand to a buzz saw...."

From "A 'Handmaid’s Tale' sequel answers questions the original forgot to ask/'The Testaments' extends the authoritarian thought experiment that began with Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel by turning focus to the enforcers" (WaPo).

Yikes. Zealotry porn. Are there really so many people who feel drawn to observe bloody amputations? And then they think the show is criticizing other people, not them. Are they titillated... by the amputations and by seeing how terrible those other people are?

Anyway... Daily, she and the other 'plums' get on a big purple bus... sounds like something in a song by Prince. I racked my brain, but all I could think of was "The bus came by and I got on, that's when it all began..."

And, yeah, it's "racked my brain," not "wracked my brain." The rack is a torture device.

"Iran has been unable to open the Strait of Hormuz to more shipping traffic because it cannot locate all of the mines it laid in the waterway and lacks the capability to remove them..."

"... according to U.S. officials. The development is one reason Iran has not been able to quickly comply with the Trump administration’s admonitions to let more traffic pass through the strait. It is also potentially a complicating factor as Iranian negotiators and a U.S. delegation led by Vice President JD Vance meet in Pakistan this weekend for peace talks...."

The NYT reports.

"Bartz recently put some of her own writing into Ace, an A.I. checker, and was startled when the program labeled her work as 82 percent A.I.-generated."

"The program then offered her a solution: 'Would you like to humanize your text?' When Bartz wrote about her experience on Substack, dozens of writers chimed in. 'I guess that’s what happens when your books were stolen to program A.I.,' the novelist Rene Denfeld commented, noting that an A.I. detection program had also falsely determined some of her writing to be A.I.-generated.... [W]ith the many ways A.I. is seeping into book creation, from research to editing to composing sentences, there is confusion over which forms of A.I. use cross a line — and a heightened fear that A.I. writing can, and will, steal past professional editors...."

Writes Alexandra Alter, in "Where Does Publishing’s A.I. Problem Leave Authors and Readers? Major publishing houses risk unwittingly putting out books generated with A.I. tools. Authors and readers are frustrated, nervous and grasping for solutions" (NYT).

Which U.S. First Ladies have received the cruelest treatment in the press (and in public conversation)? Especially which ones were disrespected as, essentially, whores?

I asked Grok. Answer after the jump. The easiest guess as to who came in first is the correct answer, so see if you know who came in second:

Bedeviled.

 

This is found art — wordplay that appears by chance.

I was doing a word search in the OED, looking up "bedevil," because it had come up in an article I just blogged. The NYT writer crafted this sentence: "Was [Trump] upset that [Melania] had single-handedly thrust this story that had so bedeviled him back onto front pages around the globe?" (Don't get me started on "thrust" and "globe.")

That blog post ends with a quote from Lord Byron, and I see the OED entry for "bedevil" also has a quote from Lord Byron — worrying about critics of "my poor, gentle, unresisting Muse, whom they have already so be-deviled with their ungodly ribaldry."

I like the word bedevil. It's vivid, perhaps too vivid. Are we to picture devils? Does anyone think of Jeffrey Epstein as literally The Devil? I know JD Vance seems to think the UFOs are devils — "I don’t think they’re aliens, I think they’re demons anyway, but that’s a longer discussion."

Have I been casually summoning up The Devil over the years by using this word that I like? Checking the 22-year blog archive, I see I've quoted it a few times and I've used it twice. Both times came in 2014. Once, in July, on the topic of ObamaCare:

"[Eric] Stewart came up with the idea for the song after his wife, to whom he had been married for eight years at that point, asked him why he did not say 'I love you' more often to her."

"Stewart said, 'I had this crazy idea in my mind that repeating those words would somehow degrade the meaning, so I told her, "Well, if I say every day 'I love you, darling, I love you, blah, blah, blah,' it's not gonna mean anything eventually." That statement led me to try to figure out another way of saying it, and the result was that I chose to say "I'm not in love with you," while subtly giving all the reasons throughout the song why I could never let go of this relationship.'"

From the Wikipedia article, "I'm Not in Love."

Researched this morning because the song Meade chose for his sunrise video got me thinking about lyrics that say the opposite of the meaning the singer conveys:

"Mr. Trump projected sang-froid about it all on Friday. 'I don’t mind anything having to do with Epstein,'"

"But he was talking about it again because of something his wife chose to do. Was he upset that she had single-handedly thrust this story that had so bedeviled him back onto front pages around the globe? 'No,' he said. 'I never get upset.' He said that after he watched Mrs. Trump’s statement, he thought to himself: 'She had a right to talk about it, because the fake news covers her so inaccurately. Would I have done it that way?' the president mused. 'Perhaps not, perhaps, I don’t know.'"

Writes Shawn McCreesh, in "Trump Says First Lady ‘Had a Right’ to Talk About Epstein/President Trump said in an interview that he had known his wife wanted to address rumors about the late sex offender at some point, but that he had not known exactly what she would say" (NYT).

My search of the NYT archive included a term that wasn't in the article: Ungaro. I was looking, as I usually do, for elite media coverage of a story I am seeing in lowlier media, which I generally eschew. In this case, that would be things like "Amanda Ungaro Arrived in the U.S. on Jeffrey Epstein's Plane at 17 — Now She's Going After Melania Trump From Brazil" (Yahoo!news). I guess you can say I'm just seeing one of those things the NYT deems not "fit to print."

Anyway... I enjoy Shawn McCreesh's writing at the NYT. I love the coverage of Trump's enigmatic responses. "I never get upset" — what a perfect answer to the question whether you are upset. It can't be true, but one appreciates the sang-froid.

Great word, sang-froid. Lord Byron used it in Don Juan:

In the mean time, cross-legg'd, with great sang-froid,

     Among the scorching ruins he sat smoking
Tobacco on a little carpet....

It was a chilly, cloud-covered sunrise this morning.

That's my photograph. Later, it got warm and sunny and you can see the blue sky as the background for an eagle in flight, video'd by Meade:

Write about whatever you want in the comments... except the return to Earth of the Artemis astronauts. Go one post down for that.

Artemis splashdown, live.

"Kristi Noem's husband, Bryon, had an on-off secret online relationship with a left-wing dominatrix for more than nine years..."

"Bryon fantasized about 'leaving' Kristi for the woman he worshipped as his 'goddess' and discussed his desire to transition his gender through surgery and hormone therapy. Sotomayor – a 5ft sex worker known as Raelynn Riley with extra-large 2500cc breast implants – has shared dozens of phone recordings and online messages with the Daily Mail.... 'He needed to just talk and talk, and it felt more personal than I was comfortable with,' said the 30-year-old from Colorado Springs who says she made tens of thousands of dollars off the relationship.... 'F*** your family,' Sotomayor texted Bryon in November, later calling the whole Noem clan 'gross.' 'Love that,' he responded. 'Besides the fact of who your wife is, no one is prettier than me. No one is as powerful,' she continued. 'F***ing true. Do you want me to be a woman?' he wrote.... 'I need to be your trans bimbo slut,' he wrote Sotomayor...."

That's what it says in The Daily Mail.

Kamala knows how to be President, because she "spent countless hours in my West Wing office, footsteps away from the Oval Office."

Here's Kamala Harris at the National Action Network conference, when Al Sharpton asked her if she's going to run for President again.

"Listen, I might [run again]. I'm thinking about it. Let me also say this. I served for four years being a heartbeat away from the presidency of the United States. I spent countless hours in my West Wing office, footsteps away from the Oval Office. I spent countless hours in the Oval Office, in the Situation Room. I know what the job is. And I know what it requires...."

So she spent untold hours in a room near his room. But what was he even doing in his room? Weren't there other people in other rooms doing everything for him? So yeah, she knows what it takes, and she feels up to it, and, if that's the job, we're all up to it.

"I want you to imagine a guy today, if R. Crumb never existed, but he emerged as R. Crumb today and put that work out. He would 100% be labeled in the Andrew Tate camp, right?"

 

Duncan Trussell had sent Joe Rogan an R. Crumb drawing, and it sets Joe off:

A look at Trump's Triumphal Arch... with the Lincoln Memorial in the background, at a distance.

From "Trump officials unveil designs for president’s controversial 250-foot arch/The arch is intended to commemorate the United States’ 250th anniversary. Military veterans have sued to halt the project, saying it would alter key views of Arlington National Cemetery" (WaPo)(gift link). Excerpt:

"It is his nature to be very deliberate. We don’t have time to be very deliberate in the year 2026."

Said one UW regent, Timothy F. Nixon, quoted in "Top Regent Defends Firing of Wisconsin University Leader/In testimony before state lawmakers, regents suggested that Jay O. Rothman had been well aware of the board’s concerns about his leadership" (NYT).

There's also: "Mr. Nixon, paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln, also cast doubt on Mr. Rothman’s contention that he had not known about the board’s misgivings, saying his claim had 'all of the substance of the shadow of a starving pigeon.'"

The oft-repurposed Lincoln hyperbole is: "as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death."

"Everyone seemed to agree that the patients were self-aware — that they could feel, that they had a grounding sense of being a someone who feels."

"But nobody knew exactly how much they retained of themselves: whether they knew themselves as a particular someone, or the someone they once were. It was impossible to know. In the view of these researchers, covertly conscious patients occupied a phenomenological gray space that was inaccessible to scientific probing and even to the human imagination. But some researchers believed that at least some of the patients were largely intellectually intact.... Tabitha learned that once a patient was diagnosed as 'vegetative' and then admitted into a nursing home, it was almost impossible for family members to get a second opinion and a new diagnosis and then, maybe, though only maybe, a new insurance-company authorization and entry into a rehabilitation program. Instead, when a family member, sitting at the bedside, reported the early flickerings of consciousness in a loved one, she was usually dismissed as seeing what she wished to see...."

From "Vegetative Patients May Be More Aware Than We Knew/New research is upending what we thought about the consciousness of patients, leaving families with agonizing choices" (NYT)(gift link, because there's a lot more material at the link, very well presented, including much about the Terri Schiavo case, the recent research about covertly conscious patients, and the vigilance of one wife at her husband's bedside). 

"But much of the ube flavor in foods and beverages doesn’t come from the yam itself."

"In T. Hasegawa’s low-slung building in an industrial district about 10 miles northwest of Anaheim, Calif., teams of food chemists spend their days trying to create concentrates of flavors — some that exist in nature and others that don’t, like 'unicorn' or 'glazed donut' — for food and beverage companies. First, the chemists analyze the composition of real food... to identify the molecules responsible for aroma and taste. Then, natural extracts, oils and aroma compounds are combined to create concentrated versions of the flavor.... 'You can’t just put blood orange juice into an energy drink.... It would require so much juice that there wouldn’t be enough room for other ingredients.' Compared with Dubai chocolate, which exploded in popularity a few years ago thanks to TikTok and its photogenic bright-green filling, ube has been more of a 'slow burn' flavor.... 'It had been on our radar for three years before we named it the flavor of the year'...."

From "A Must for the Next Food Craze? Be ‘Social Media Gorgeous.’ The ascent of ube has little to do with the purple yam’s taste or Filipino origins. It’s the color, flavor experts say" (NYT).

"The lack of outside help for [Janet] Mills has left some Democrats in Maine with the impression that Schumer and other powerful Democrats are leaving her to twist in the wind..."

"... as she fails to make up ground in the polls. With Platner ads airing regularly on television, Mills supporters have begun complaining to Democrats close to the governor about the lack of a response, with some wondering why Schumer recruited the governor to run if no help would be provided when she did.... Republicans have needled Democrats on the apparent lack of support for Mills in the ad wars, using it to paint Schumer as out of touch with the Democratic base. 'Chuck Schumer is bailing out his preferred candidates across the map, but Janet Mills’ air support is nowhere to be found,' the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s regional press secretary, Samantha Cantrell, said in a statement. '“As Maine’s Democrat base turns to the radical liar Graham Platner, Schumer’s dream of beating Susan Collins is slipping further out of sight.'" 

From "Is Chuck Schumer leaving his top candidate recruit twisting in the wind? Maine’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, has gone negative against Graham Platner. The attacks have not worked, and Minority Leader Charles Schumer so far has declined to bail her out" (WaPo).

" I Made a Network of Every Home Run in MLB History."

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can talk all night.

"For almost everyone, writing books is a low-paying job! For most it pays literally nothing!"

Lindy West gives us a striking example of working very hard to get publicity for a new book and barely selling anything. Is this a specific example of female readers repelled by the author's finding a way to stand by her polyamorous husband or something much more general in book publishing these days:

"What if your world should fall apart?"

Why not eat 11 doughnuts?

This is so insane

“Crumbl Cookies is now selling a cookie with the amount of sugar you would get, not in 1, not in 5, BUT 11 of these Krispy Kreme donuts”

This one cookie has 69 ingredients including one that crosses the blood brain barrier

How is this legal?? pic.twitter.com/ygUcmxo6n2

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) April 8, 2026

This made me think about the old expression "That's the way the cookie crumbles." The OED traces that expression to 1955, when a Cincinnati Enquirer columnist, Ollie M. James, wrote: "Well, as we say in the publishing business, sometimes that is the way the cookie crumbles." It was perceived at the time as a cute variation on "That's the way the ball bounces." I remember the late '50s excitement over "cookie crumbles" and other variations on the old "ball bounces." But the only other variation I can remember is "That's the way the grapefruit squirts."

Here's Tom Waits, "That's the Way." He remembers:

"They provided $0 to deal with the ongoing genocide of MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+."

Canada's New Democratic Party Member of Parliament Leah Gazan:

NDP MP Leah Gazan: "They provided $0 to deal with the ongoing genocide of MMIWG2SLGBTQQIA+,"pic.twitter.com/9KXxlKUuf0

— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) April 8, 2026

"My girlfriend turned into a worm."

"So every afternoon..."

After a year of using A.I., TurboTax looks and feels maddeningly clunky.

I paid for TurboTax and TurboTax kept goading me to pay even more to get more help from some additional service, but, of course, I took all my questions to Grok. Somehow it took me hours. What used to feel fast and helpful now feels archaic, abstruse, and ugly. I'm having deja vu. Did I say this last year? No, but looking for that, I found this:

At the Sunrise Café...

... you just might get some sleep tonight.

Ever notice that in "Friend of the Devil," there's a line "Ran into the devil, babe, he loaned me twenty bills" and then later "I ran down to the levee but the devil caught me there/He took my twenty dollar bill..."? Seems like the imagery is muddled. First, there are 20 bills and later, there's a 20-dollar bill, which is a single bill. 

"I was walking with my girlfriend when we saw him. Shirtless, in late-afternoon sunlight, J.F.K., Jr., was playing Frisbee, wearing nothing but black athletic shorts..."

"... tennis shoes, and droopy white socks. This was the Ivy League. Nobody worked out. (Nobody I knew, anyway.) And so I wasn’t prepared for the muscularity, the anachronistic virility, on display. John’s physique was so classically ideal he might’ve been throwing a discus instead of a Frisbee and been carved out of stone. You looked for the defect in him and you couldn’t find it. There had to be something wrong somewhere, but it would take a magnifying glass to detect. Most of his clan had inherited the freckled, rabbity Kennedy looks. John, lucky in everything, had received the enhancing admixture of dark, French Mediterranean, Bouvier blood. I mentioned it was 1979. Bisexuality was undergoing one of its periodic upticks. I’d fallen into some confusion on that score myself. But I had a girlfriend now. That wasn’t what was going on. The urge I felt wasn’t to possess. It wasn’t even to resemble. It was to draw near. To be allowed to draw near...."

Writes Jeffrey Eugenides, in "My Unrequited Love Story with J.F.K., Jr./I knew John F. Kennedy, Jr., not that well and not that long, but enough to have experienced the gravitational pull he exerted, like some great big moon"
 (The New Yorker).

"The euphoria of the first moon landing was directly connected to our ambivalence about the science that made it possible."

"Rocket technology, which lifted man to the moon, could also hurl hydrogen bombs across the planet. Like the promise of artificial intelligence and bioengineering, the promise of space was shadowed by the possibility of planetary annihilation.... The original space program had fierce and cogent critics in the United States, but the allure of the technology, the bravery and telegenic decency of the astronauts, and the symbolic power of winning the race to the moon eventually won out.... [O]n a nervous night, the world watched us again... wondering whether there might be nuclear bombs.... Trump backed down, but...[t]he distant, wide-eyed wonder of unprecedented achievement of the Space Age had been eclipsed by a deferred promise to return an entire people to the Stone Age...."

Writes Philip Kennicott, in "Trump’s dark rhetoric eclipses the new wonders of the Space Age" (WaPo).

I'm a little older than Kennicott, who was probably a young child at the time of the first moon landing. I was 18 and completely disaffected because of the Vietnam War. I didn't experience anything like "wide-eyed wonder." The boys my age were all in danger of being drafted and sent to fight in a war people were justifiably pessimistic about. Nixon was just as horrible to us as Trump is to the Trump-haters of today. I declined to respond with the awe the news shows told us to feel because I didn't want to see anything going well for Nixon. Less than a month after the moon landing, there was Woodstock. Who was a sucker for "telegenic decency" in the summer of 1969? Were we conned by "the symbolic power of winning the race to the moon"? Five years before the landing, we were laughing at Bob Dylan's sarcastic lines, "I ask you how things could get much worse/If the Russians happen to get up there first/Wowee! pretty scary!"

"The British government has blocked Ye from entry on the grounds that his presence would not be conducive to the public good...."

"Prime Minister Keir Starmer called it 'deeply concerning' that Ye was scheduled to perform 'despite his previous antisemitic remarks and celebration of Nazism.' 'Antisemitism in any form is abhorrent and must be confronted clearly and firmly wherever it appears... Everyone has a responsibility to ensure Britain is a place where Jewish people feel safe and secure.'"

I'm reading "London music festival canceled after Britain bans headliner Kanye West/The move comes after days of mounting controversy over past antisemitic statements made by the rapper, now known as Ye" (WaPo).

West has apologized and stated "I love Jewish people," but he did sell swastika T-shirts and release a song called "Heil Hitler." 

Meanwhile, in Toronto...

🚨 Iranians are OUT IN THE STREETS CELEBRATING, cheering President Trump and the collapse of the brutal regime!

After decades of oppression, the people are dancing, waving flags, and thanking Trump for finally taking action.

Freedom is coming to Iran!pic.twitter.com/Cjn7GEwsr2

— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) April 7, 2026

This reminds me of the way her husband, Gavin Newsom, told black people "I’m like you. I’m no better than you. You know, I’m a 960 SAT guy."

Holy shit. Gavin Newsom’s Wife Jennifer ran over and killed her own sister with a golf cart…then tells San Quentin Prisoners for Life, “Yours were probably accidents too…”

What TF is wrong with her? pic.twitter.com/rbOk6gcYMu

— Liz Churchill (@liz_churchill10) April 7, 2026

Trump has determined that Iran "has gone through what will be a very productive Regime Change."

Trump, at Truth Social, about an hour ago:

The United States will work closely with Iran, which we have determined has gone through what will be a very productive Regime Change! There will be no enrichment of Uranium, and the United States will, working with Iran, dig up and remove all of the deeply buried (B-2 Bombers) Nuclear “Dust.” It is now, and has been, under very exacting Satellite Surveillance (Space Force!). Nothing has been touched from the date of attack. We are, and will be, talking Tariff and Sanctions relief with Iran. Many of the 15 points have already been been agreed to. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP

So the regime change has already happened —  or the declaration that it has happened has been made — past tense. But there's a switch to the future tense, declaring something to be true in the future: great productiveness. I presume Trump's adversaries will call this wishful thinking... at best. But who knows? They'll embrace good results if they become obvious or if they perceive that the people are repelled by their pessimism.

Trump also posted this a few minutes ago:

A Country supplying Military Weapons to Iran will be immediately tariffed, on any and all goods sold to the United States of America, 50%, effective immediately. There will be no exclusions or exemptions! President DJT

Trump would like to get back to managing everyone with the device of tariffs. 

"Berliner here. Don't fool yourselves. The Nightclub scene in Berlin is dead. And it was destroyed by people like you who turned it into a tourist attraction."

Says somebody in the comments section of the Washington Post article, "Pants are optional: What I learned navigating Berlin’s famous club scene/Here’s what happened when our travel reporter attempted to infiltrate some of the city’s iconic clubs as a tourist."

The WaPo travel reporter is an attractive mid-30s white woman. She writes: "When I got to the door, the bouncer said I could come in if I took my pants off." She'd prepared by wearing a black one-piece swimsuit as a base layer. She "soon realized I would have been in good company in my underwear alone — or even fully bottomless."

This gets my rarely used "underpants" tag.

I agree with the Berliner in the comments. It's sad when something local gets co-opted by tourists... even if the damned tourists will take off their pants as the price of entry and even if the pants-off price of entry only works if you are decently attractive and somewhat young.

"At its core, fentanyl is a supply-driven problem. Problem is, local efforts have relied on demand-reduction strategies..."

"... believing they alone will address the problem. For example, we offer treatment to people addicted to towering levels of fentanyl, only to be surprised when they refuse. Declining fentanyl supplies offers a chance for demand-reduction strategies to work, as they apparently did for that woman in Salt Lake City.... Public health officials who want to give their demand-reduction strategies a chance to work need to think of this as a supply-driven crisis...."

From "Overdose deaths are plummeting. Here’s what worked. Efforts to disrupt the supply of fentanyl are paying off. We cannot back down" (WaPo).

"There will be lots of positive action! Big money will be made."

Trump at Truth Social:

A big day for World Peace! Iran wants it to happen, they’ve had enough! Likewise, so has everyone else! The United States of America will be helping with the traffic buildup in the Strait of Hormuz. There will be lots of positive action! Big money will be made. Iran can start the reconstruction process. We’ll be loading up with supplies of all kinds, and just “hangin’ around” in order to make sure that everything goes well. I feel confident that it will. Just like we are experiencing in the U.S., this could be the Golden Age of the Middle East!!! President DONALD J. TRUMP

We’ll be just “hangin’ around”... ready to bomb you back to the Stone Age if you don't pick up on this lots-of-positive-action vibe. Don't you want big money?

The builder wants to build. On top of all of that demolition.

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can talk all night.

"... a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East...."

Trump at Truth Social, an hour ago:

Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran, and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two weeks. This will be a double sided CEASEFIRE! The reason for doing so is that we have already met and exceeded all Military objectives, and are very far along with a definitive Agreement concerning Longterm PEACE with Iran, and PEACE in the Middle East. We received a 10 point proposal from Iran, and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate. Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but a two week period will allow the Agreement to be finalized and consummated. On behalf of the United States of America, as President, and also representing the Countries of the Middle East, it is an Honor to have this Longterm problem close to resolution. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP