Sunrise — 7:12.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"Is it inappropriate for a mother to suggest two naked women carrying a surfboard for my 15 yr old sons wallpaper?"

Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway asked Jeffrey Epstein in email quoted at "The Truth Is Out There/How the Epstein files turned everyone into conspiracists" (NY Magazine).

"The reaction from the student body points to a larger issue: many people my age don’t want to take the easiest path but..."

"... if it’s being offered to hundreds of your peers, giving them the chance to earn higher grades or better job opportunities, that’s what you do. Otherwise, you feel like a sucker.... "

Writes Elsa Johnson, in "I exposed Stanford’s disability racket. I was stunned by the reaction on campus After my revelation that elite students are claiming to be disabled to get cushy perks, I expected blowback — but what happened next surprised me" (London Times).

"Many of my peers and I wouldn’t mind — and might even prefer — our teachers and administrators being tougher on us. After all, the accommodations we’re gaming today won’t help us in the real world. In the workplace you won’t have sympathetic OAE advisers giving you extra time to perform a surgery if you’re a doctor. No one is going to excuse you from a tricky business presentation because you claim 'anxiety.'..."

Here's my post from a few days ago about Johnson's original essay.

Meade catches me out in the sunrise and the waning gibbous moon.

"Get outta here."

A Dane County (WI) judge granted a temporary restraining order for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brett Hulsey against State Sen. Cory Tomczyk (R-Mosinee) after the Republican started a physical altercation last month.

Here's Hulsey's video of Tomczyk shoving him. pic.twitter.com/pqiIAfMPCj

— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) February 5, 2026

ADDED: That video made me think of Meade's video of Hulsey during the Wisconsin protests. Hulsey, who was our assemblyman, had just appeared at a Planned Parenthood rally in front of the Wisconsin Capitol. It was March 25, 2011,  and Meade calls out to him and tried to talk with him. As you'll see, Hulsey refuses to speak to Meade on the ground that he's "a right winger":

"Well, look, Laura, you know, it was a meme that was posted by a staffer at the President's Truth Social account."

So, staffers are responsible for what's been going out under the President's name... or that's what Karoline Leavitt wants us to believe (as an explanation for the Obamas-as-apes image that went out yesterday and that served the President's opponents very well).

I think we knew all along that Trump doesn't put his own words into writing and post them on social media. Someone else is transcribing things he says. Are they also selecting the video to share? What part of the process is Trump? I'd like to know. But anyway, if someone on staff is the filter between him and us, that person ought to be highly competent and meticulous. Either they weren't or they were operating in the racist mode.

I'm going to assume incompetence and sloppiness because the video that was shared had the offensive image spliced in at the very end, and the image had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the video.

There has been some news reporting on Trump's social media method, and here's that video from 2024 showing his method in action:

I used to think there was no way Trump was coming up with all his posts by himself, but the "Art of the Surge" documentary proves IT'S ALL HIM. He literally controls everything to the last detail 😂

He really is just built different.

Also, those are some great typing skills… pic.twitter.com/KwG5PKOOE0

— George (@BehizyTweets) October 30, 2024

"How can official orthodoxies persist for so long even when few people believe them?"

Megan McArdle asks, in "The transgender orthodoxy is cracking/Malpractice suit and shifting clinical guidelines show cracks in transgender orthodoxy" (WaPo)(referencing the book "Private Truths, Public Lies" by political scientist Timur Kuran).

Public orthodoxies that diverge from private opinion may be surprisingly stable, but they can also prove remarkably unstable, because they depend on private thoughts to stay private, giving doubters the illusion that they are lone deviants rather than members of a silent majority....

Why is this surprising? It's the familiar story of "The Emperor's New Clothes," which everyone has always easily understood.  

Starting around 2015, an orthodoxy on transgender issues crystallized, seemingly out of nowhere....

Once you've said "2015," you've got your answer staring you in the face! Why don't you see it? That was the year gay people won their great victory, a right to marry, in Obergefell v. Hodges. McArdle has "an orthodoxy... crystalliz[ing]" — as if a mysterious disembodied force emerged out of nothing — ex nihilo!

But real human beings were involved and their incentive to acquire a new cause is obvious. The activists had won, but they still needed to work, they still needed contributions, they still needed to push conventional people to move forward into challenging new territory. They couldn't just allow people to become decently accepting and empathetic to the gay people who, after all, are human beings who sometimes love each other and want a home and a family. Remember that moment?

That made too much sense. Ordinary people relaxed. Got comfortable.

By the time I went to the Ivy League swimming championships in 2022 to cover the controversy over a trans swimmer, people I talked to evinced a wariness that seemed more appropriate to a Cold War spy novel than to citizens of a free republic....

What happened?

Sunrise — 7:13.

That's my point of view, and here's Meade's:

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"President Trump posted a blatantly racist video clip portraying former President Barack Obama and the former first lady Michelle Obama as apes...."

"The brief clip, set to 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight,' was spliced near the end of a 62-second video that promoted conspiracy theories about anomalies in the 2020 presidential election....In response to questions about the clip, which Mr. Trump posted Thursday during a late-night spree on social media, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said criticism of the video was 'fake outrage.' 'This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,' she said. 'Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.'"

I'm reading "Trump Posts Video Portraying Obamas as Apes/The White House press secretary dismissed criticism of the clip’s racist content, shared by the president’s Truth Social account, as 'fake outrage'" (NYT).

I don't know why Leavitt responded like that. If I hadn't read what she said, I would have assumed Trump shared the video because of the material that took up the first 97% of the video. Look at it here. It's somber technical material about tampering with voting machines in the 2020 election. I would have assumed that he never even saw the discordant image of the Obamas as apes that is spliced in at the very end, in the last 2 seconds.

I would have speculated that some sneaky person spliced that image in to trick Trump supporters into passing the video along unwittingly and becoming targets for accusations of racism.

Who sticks around for the full 62 seconds? Well, maybe some people do, and then when the Obama image pops up, they probably think What is this bullshit? It doesn't belong. Who put this here?

"this is a wicked man who knows he is being wicked and does it anyway/like, do you see that smirk? that brief 'ain’t i a stinker' grin? beneath contempt."

"i can’t imagine a parent who wouldn’t sell little JD for percocet if they knew he would turn out like this/to be a bit serious one irony of vance’s life is that he is also an addict: addicted to power and clearly willing to sell anything to get it"

Writes NYT columnist Jamelle Bouie, at Blue Sky, commenting on this video showing JD Vance declining to entertain hypotheticals about Alex Pretti.

this is a wicked man who knows he is being wicked and does it anyway

[image or embed]

— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) February 4, 2026 at 10:41 AM

You might assume the line "i can’t imagine a parent who wouldn’t sell little JD for percocet" has a factual basis. Where in "Hillbilly Elegy" is the story about Vance's drug-addicted mother resorting to trying to sell him? That's what I asked AI. But I don't think there is any such background to support Bouie's effort at satire.

"After the incident... she abandoned a career as a flight attendant... She moved home... She fears the dark, she said, because it takes her back to the seat of the car in the dark parking lot..."

"... where the rape occurred. She sleeps with the lights on, sometimes in her parents’ bed, she said. Uber’s lawyers said the driver had no criminal history, had received top ratings from passengers, had completed training and had acknowledged that he was aware of Uber’s rule that bans sex between drivers and passengers. They said the company was the industry leader in safety, developing a machine-learning tool to assess the risk of potential rides as well as other safety features and releasing public reports documenting assaults and other safety incidents on the platform. Sachin Kansal, Uber’s chief product officer, pushed back against claims that the company 'dragged its feet' on safety features like dashcams. However, 'I’ll be the first one to say we have not done enough,' he said. 'There’s a lot more that we have to do.'"

From "Uber Found Liable in Rape by Driver, Setting Stage for Thousands of Cases/In a federal bellwether case, the jury ordered the ride-hailing giant to pay $8.5 million to Jaylynn Dean, who said one of its drivers assaulted her in 2023" (NYT).

"You've gotta learn to get more pleasure!"

A Super Bowl ad for a product called...

Ella Emhoff, step-daughter of Kamala Harris, has been on SSRIs for 15 years, and she has some questions.

"I don't know if this is something that I feel like is being talked about enough."

She seems to have been on these drugs since she was about 12, and Kamala Harris has been her stepmother since 2014. I would assume she has had access all her life to the very best medical care, and yet look at her. She seems lost, trapped inside of a drug experience that she never competently chose for herself and unable to test what lies on the other side of a disturbing withdrawal experience. She responds to commenters who push her to give up the drugs with lines like "y'all… I will not be getting off my meds."

Here's the original video, without the doctor's contribution:

"We now know that the things that you eat are driving mental illness in this country.... There are studies right now that I saw two days ago where people lose their bipolar diagnosis by changing their diet."

Said RFK Jr., quoted in "Kennedy Makes Unfounded Claim That Keto Diet Can ‘Cure’ Schizophrenia/The claim vastly overstates preliminary research into whether the high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet might help people with the disorder, experts said" (NYT).

Mr. Kennedy was apparently referring to Dr. Christopher Palmer, who in 2019 wrote about “two patients with longstanding schizophrenia who experienced complete remission of symptoms” with the keto diet. He said both patients “were able to stop antipsychotic medications and have remained in remission for years now.”

More recently, Dr. Palmer and his colleagues described the diet as a “promising therapeutic approach for schizophrenia.” Dr. Palmer did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

"Private equity firms are making vast profits from investing in ADHD clinics which provide assessment and treatment for tens of thousands of NHS patients."

"The NHS has become dependent on privately-run services to diagnose ADHD and autism, leading to an 'exponential' growth in ADHD spending which is 'blowing NHS budgets.' More than half a million people in England are on NHS waiting lists for ADHD assessments. Under an initiative called Right to Choose, they have a legal right to get assessed privately and the NHS will pick up the bill. This has led to a proliferation of private providers, several of which have attracted private equity investors looking to generate quick profit."

From "How ADHD became a multimillion-pound industry for private equity/NHS has become dependent on privately run services to diagnose ADHD and autism as patients given legal right to assessments under Right to Choose initiative" (London Times).

Sunrise.

No, that's yesterday's sunset. Photographed by Meade out in the middle of the frozen lake. Here's this morning's sunrise:

Not so glorious. But we were there, and the photograph commemorates that tiny event.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"There is an easy familiarity between the two men that allows Bannon to call Epstein a 'schmuck' and 'criminal' and even ask if he is 'the devil' fallen from paradise."

"At one point, Bannon comments: 'There’s something deeply fucked up with you.' The interview also becomes an exercise in intellectual peacocking as they invoke Socrates, Isaac Newton and quantum physics but pay little attention to Epstein’s crimes. Epstein reveals himself to be a living museum of racial prejudice...."

From "'Do you think you’re the devil himself?': highlights from the bizarre, newly released Bannon-Epstein interview/The interview,⁠ revealed in the latest tranche of Epstein files, was reportedly intended for a sympathetic documentary" (The Guardian).

Sample clip, with Epstein posing as thoughtful on the topic of gender difference:

Transcript:

Science doesn't describe romance. I don't know why I'm attracted to somebody. I don't know. People are attracted to each other, and everyone has felt the same thing at some point. They've seen someone walk into a room and thought, "Oh, that person gives me a creepy feeling."

He knows, I infer, that the females he is finding attractive are experiencing him as creepy.

"Jim and Rachel Van Eerden had a 'barn raising' for their cabin in Stokesdale, N.C., with friends building historically accurate furniture, a contractor working on the frame..."

"... and even a blacksmith forging nails in the style of the 1850s. Their 'Walden' cabin is the first in a growing series of literature-inspired structures on their homestead property, rented out via Airbnb and VRBO. The listing explicitly warns would-be visitors about the lack of plumbing, electricity and Wi-Fi; showers and toilets are available at nearby 'Narnia cottage,' instead. Their cabin’s interior is nearly true to Thoreau’s model, with even the dents and nicks in the wood desk matching the writer’s own. They made a few additions to the structure though. 'We gave ourselves what we called the "third year liberty" where we said, "OK, if Thoreau would have stayed a third year, he would have wanted a little front porch. He would’ve wanted a garret,"' said Mr. Van Eerden...."

From "They Went to the Woods Because They Wished to Live Deliberately/Paying homage to the long-dead Transcendentalist, some people are building full-scale replicas of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden cabin" (NYT)(gift link, so you can read more and see the pictures, and read the comments, predictably from folks who just have to recite the received idea, his mother did his laundry).

"Even before 'Walden,' critics questioned Thoreau’s motivations for building and moving into his isolated cabin. 'I think he touches a lot of nerves,' said Laura Walls, a scholar of American Transcendentalism. 'What a lazy bum this guy has to be, not pulling his weight in society and isolating himself like that,' she said, paraphrasing his detractors.

"The town's authorities report that tourists were 'opening private home doors without permission to use the restroom,' trespassing, littering and 'defecating in private yards and raising a fuss when residents pointed this out.'"

From "Japan cherry blossom festival cancelled over badly behaved tourists" (BBC).

"It is not the first time Japanese authorities have had to take measures to address photo-keen tourists. In 2024, officials blocked one of Japan's most iconic photo spots in Fujikawaguchiko with a big black barrier in a bid to deter badly behaved tourists."

MEANWHILE: In Venice:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Travel | Venezia | Venice (@venicetravelers)

Meade walked across Lake Mendota today and sent me sunset photos from somewhere near the middle.

It was about 5:05 in the afternoon:

Open thread in the comments. Write about whatever you want.

"Great story. I especially enjoy the moving of the three palm trees."

Texted Meade after I sent him "'It’s not leaving until they pay me': sculptor holds Trump statue hostage/Alan Cottrill created an 18ft bronze capturing the moment the president survived an assassination attempt. He says his patrons aren’t paying up" (London Times).

There's a lot going on in this story, but keep reading, you'll get to the palm trees:

"Walz only seemed like a football coach to voters with no preexisting relationship to football. His image embodied the liberal conception of nontoxic masculinity, a reverse Margaret Thatcher."

Writes Chuck Klosterman in his new book "Football," reviewed in "Is Football Doomed? Chuck Klosterman Thinks So. In his new book, the writer goes deep on a sport that dominates American cultural life — but possibly not for long." The review is by Dwight Garner in the NYT.

Garner says: "I like reading Klosterman. He’s a dorm-room philosopher and, on pop topics, the overthinker’s overthinker." Despite the headline for the review, Garner is less interested in the prediction of doom — which "takes up a relatively small portion of his book, mostly at the beginning and at the end" — and more interested in what else is in there: "The 'football is doomed' material is like a pancake that arrives alongside an order of Peking duck. The tastiest stuff is mostly tucked inside." Like that Walz material.

I've read a few Chuck Klosterman books. Click my Chuck Klosterman tag. I like the writing style. Here's an example from the NYT review: "[Football] will never completely disappear, in the same way you can still hear jazz on NPR and you can still smoke Lucky Strikes inside a casino."

"During lobster season — from June to December — Mrs. Oliver would wake up at 2:45 a.m., put on overalls and drive her four-wheel-drive pickup truck..."

"... to the dock. After loading her boat, the Virginia, with bait and gas, she would head to sea before sunrise, hauling lobster pots until lunchtime.'It’s not hard work for me,' she told The Boston Globe in 2021, when she was 101. 'It might be for somebody else, but not me.'"

From "Virginia Oliver, Maine’s ‘Lobster Lady’ and Folk Hero, Dies at 105/She fished off the New England coast for more than 80 years, and intended to continue until she died. '“It’s not hard work for me,' she said at 101" (NYT).

I wonder what she did January through May. That's a long off season. What's the secret to longevity, based on this one data point? It's not just hard work. It might be seasonal work with a long, predictable rest every year. I think there are other articles about her that she kept busy in the off-season with housework.

"Mr. Routh, a former roofer from Greensboro, N.C., never fired a shot during the thwarted assassination attempt on Sept. 15, 2024..."

"... a fact that his lawyer, Martin L. Roth, emphasized on Wednesday. A Secret Service agent spotted him outside a fence near the sixth hole while Mr. Trump was golfing nearby. The agent fired; Mr. Routh fled in his car and was caught shortly after.... Mr. Roth asked the court to consider setting aside the sentencing guidelines and instead sentence his client to 27 years in prison.... 'Defendant would be in custody into his 80s and would not pose any threat to cause harm to the public,' Mr. Roth wrote. On Wednesday, he described Mr. Routh as 'troubled,' but said he had 'a very good core.'... Mr. Routh told the judge before his sentencing on Wednesday that he was a do-gooder, saying, 'I’ve given every drop of who I am, every day, for the benefit of our nation.'"

From "Man Convicted of Trying to Assassinate Trump Gets Life Sentence/Federal prosecutors told the judge that Ryan Routh had 'plotted painstakingly' to ambush Donald J. Trump in 2024 at his golf course near West Palm Beach" (NYT).

Don't all assassins portray themselves as do-gooders?

I asked Grok. Full answer here. I'll just quote what Charles J. Guiteau, President Garfield's assassin, said after he was condemned to death: "I know where I stand on this business. I am here as God's man and don't you forget it."

"The Supreme Court... cleared the way for California to use a new congressional map intended to give Democrats five additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives."

"In a one-sentence order, the justices turned down a request from a group of California Republicans that would have required the state to continue to use the map in place for the last several federal elections in the state while their challenge to the map moves forward. There were no public dissents from the court’s ruling."

SCOTUSblog reports.

"The court’s order came exactly two months after the justices, over a dissent by the court’s three Democratic appointees, granted a request from Texas to allow it to use a new map intended to allow Republicans to pick up five additional House seats in that state.... The challengers [in the California case] argued that the state’s goal all along had been 'offsetting a perceived racial gerrymander in Texas.'... The state countered... that the new map was not racially motivated. More broadly, it contended, the challengers were 'asking the Court to treat California’s map differently from how it treated Texas’s map, thereby allowing a Republican-led State to engage in partisan gerrymandering while forbidding a Democratic-led State from responding in kind.'"

So both states — and all states — can politically gerrymander to their heart's content. The Court isn't going to look too closely at whether something racial is really going on.

"The cuts are a sign that Jeff Bezos, who became one of the world’s richest people by selling things on the internet, has not yet figured out how to build and maintain a profitable publication on the internet."

"The paper expanded during the first several years of his ownership, but the company has sputtered more recently. Matt Murray, The Post’s executive editor, said on a call Wednesday morning with newsroom employees that the company had lost too much money for too long and had not been meeting readers’ needs. He said that all sections would be affected in some way, and that the result would be a publication focused even more on national news and politics, as well as business and health, and far less on other areas."

From "Washington Post Begins Laying Off More Than 300 Journalists/The layoffs will cut into The Post’s local, international and sports coverage, and reduce the number of all its employees by about 30 percent" (NYT).

What's it to Bezos? Why doesn't he just bankroll the operation? Make it so good it's worthy of spending money on?

A famous question: "Now, tell me honestly, my boy, don't you think it's rather unwise to continue  this philanthropic enterprise, this Inquirer that's costing you a million dollar a year?" Famously answered:

"More than 80 percent of nurses experience workplace violence each year.... Almost all of these assaults are perpetrated by patients..."

"... though patients’ family members can also threaten our safety. People don’t realize that hospitals are increasingly dangerous places to work in. Because nurses spend more time than anyone else with patients, we often get the brunt of their anger with the health care industry, lack of adequate services and long wait times. Throughout my career, I have sustained many injuries and threats. In a recent eight-month period, I was scratched in the face (which left a scar that I cover with makeup daily), kicked in the chest so hard it left bruises, bitten multiple times and spat on. I’ve been pushed, sexually assaulted and punched. I’ve been thrown across the ambulance bay. I’ve had to hide marks of violence from my four young children so they don’t worry about me...."

Writes Sheryl Ostroff, in "Nurses Get Bitten, Spat on, Thrown. That’s Why We’re on Strike" (NYT).

"You know, if you're if you're a 70-year-old billionaire, you can't walk into a bar... and meet an 18-year-old.... I'm presuming these things are facilitated at private parties..."

"... and it needs to, you know, for a lot of these guys, it has to be discreet. You know, they've got wives, they've got reputations, and you know, there's an aspect of this that plays out at every institution. I worked at a New York law firm and... there's ways that you can make partner — at least this was kind of the vibe that I felt. Some people make partner because they're really good technically.... There are some people who move up because of nepotism.... There are some people... who brought in one client... a really big rainmaker. And there are some people who move up because they open doors to partners while they're associates. They introduce them to someone. They host events. They've got tickets to exclusive things. And the partners just like being around that person because they get access to that person in a currency that they can't get on their own. And that includes hosting cool exotic parties, having attractive women."

Nicki Minaj and Scott Bessent.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Nicki Minaj Fanpage (@thenickiminajlegacy)

Sunrise — 7:16.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

Politico chooses the photograph with the blue dress.

Link.

"Jill Biden’s ex-husband was arrested Monday on charges he murdered his wife in their Delaware home in December...."

The NY Post reports.

"Jill Biden, 74, divorced Stevenson in 1975 after a five-year marriage. Two years later she wed then-Senator Joe Biden (D-Del.). Stevenson has accused Jill of having an affair with the one-term Democratic president prior to their divorce...."

"The 13-year-old Australian boy who swam for hours to get help for his family after they were swept out to sea has told the BBC 'I didn't think I was a hero - I just did what I did.'"

"Austin Appelbee didn't know if his mother Joanne, brother Beau and sister Grace were still alive when he finally reached the shore, four hours after he left them clinging to two paddleboards. Miles out to sea off Australia's west coast - the waves getting bigger, the light beginning to fade - his mother feared he too may not have made it.... 'We couldn't see anything coming to save us.... It was very much getting to that point where we are on our own.' Joanne couldn't even relax when she saw the boat approaching: the children had fallen into the water and she was desperately trying to reach them."

From "'I don't think I am a hero': Boy, 13, describes 'superhuman' swim to save family" (BBC).

"There are no bedrooms. The sleeping area for Yoichiro, a painter and metal guitarist, is little more than a bed in a corner..."

"... with one real wall and three makeshift ones fashioned out of a painting rack, a stereo cabinet atop a dolly, a bookcase and a bureau. The area is decorated with stuffed animals sitting atop a canvas; Yoichiro’s drawing of a departed family cat; and photographs of his muse, Laura Ingalls from the 1970s television show 'Little House on the Prairie.' His parents’ sleeping area is tucked in a more secluded corner of the labyrinth, reached by navigating among yet more canvases, under a clothesline strung with coats and through a passage no wider than a goat path. On the walls hang fuse boxes and Yoichiro’s paintings. A typical morning begins with Toshihisa rising around 6:30 to make tea, which the Yodas use in a prayer ritual at a Shinto shrine that sits atop an old dresser. Then they work...."

From "A Family of Three in a SoHo Loft Without Walls/Toshihisa and Junko Yoda and their son, Yoichiro, have been making art in a 4,000-square-foot space on Mercer Street for 35 years, each following their own muse" (NYT)(gift link, because there are cool photos of artwork and arty interiors).

It's a big living space, and right in a beautiful part of NYC. A 53-year-old man lives with his 85- and 82-year-old parents. And no walls! "In lieu of walls, the Yodas have divided the vast space into an eccentric warren of 'rooms' with hundreds of stacked canvases and boxes, some adorned with a Japanese moving company’s logo of a mother cat carrying a kitten in her mouth."

You can see that logo — and the children's drawings it's based on — at "The Cat that Carried a Nation/What Kuroneko Teaches Us About Brand Trust" (Medley): "A black cat carrying her kitten. No text. No slogan. Just a gentle silhouette, frozen mid-step. In Japan, you don’t even need to see the full image. A flash of yellow and black, the curl of a tail, and you already know — it’s Kuroneko. And your package is in safe hands. What makes it brilliant isn’t just recognizability. It’s emotion...." 

Moon and sun.

That's by Meade, this morning. And a bit earlier, there was this:

Fresh muffins and steaks.

somehow, this so-casual, cutesy references to "fresh muffins" & "steaks" is among the most obscene emails in what we have seen of the Epstein files.
to learn that the emailer is a woman named Susan Hamblin who'd founded an adoption charity is overwhelmingly disgusting. https://t.co/qDp2UBU0fl

— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) February 3, 2026

If I'm reading this right, both victims and predators were conceptualized as food to Epstein and whoever Susan Hamblin is.

Many of the commenters over there at X seem to think they are talking about actual food.

Can you think of any examples — beyond this possible one — where a non-metaphor was read as a metaphor? Sex is often talked about using food metaphors, so there could easily be a mixup where talk about food is misread as sex talk. Famous example from 10 years ago: Pizzagate. The words "cheese pizza" were said to mean "child pornography."

Looking up "Pizzagate" this morning, I see what was 10 years old is new again:

"His doctors hit the cancer with chemotherapy and radiation, then focused on medications to deprive it of male hormones, or androgens, which fuel its growth...."

"Brian’s treatment took away his libido and left him sometimes with brain fog. Without testosterone in his system, Brian lost sexual function and libido, which had been a core of his identity. 'That has been the hardest part of this,' he said, with typical directness. 'Because I love being a man. I love being in a man’s body.'... Brian asked his doctors about taking a three month 'holiday' from the drugs — allowing his testosterone levels to rise for a short spell so he could feel like himself again, without the fatigue and brain fog and sexual dysfunction....  After deliberation, they slated it for the summer of 2025, when he planned to spend several weeks on Fire Island, long a mecca for gay men and women.... Here was a chance to briefly reinhabit his old energetic, sexual self.... One day he set out for the beach, eager for an outing not shaped by his cancer. But when he came to a slight incline in the footpath, he realized he could not make it.... By midsummer, it was becoming clear that his drug holiday was not going to deliver as he’d hoped. He still had no libido, let alone sexual function.... "

From "A Role Model for How to Die/What if you really did live every day as if it were your last? That was Brian’s plan" (NYT).

Sunrise, 7:13... afternoon, 3:58.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"I can't believe the bespoke NY magazine biz hasn't yet realized that an Annie Leibovitz puff piece photoshoot is a political death sentence."

I can't believe the bespoke NY magazine biz hasn't yet realized that an Annie Leibovitz puff piece photoshoot is a political death sentence pic.twitter.com/INL4dWe7Hb

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) February 2, 2026

"And some 'disabilities' are just downright silly. Students claim 'night terrors'; others say they 'get easily distracted' or they 'can’t live with others.'"

"I know a guy who was granted a single room because he needs to wear contacts at night. I’ve heard of a girl who got a single because she was gluten intolerant. That’s why I felt justified in claiming endometriosis as a disability.... The application process was very easy.... The system is staffed largely by empathetic women who want to help students.... In addition to a single housing assignment, I was granted extra absences from class, some late days on assignments and a 15-minute tardiness allowance for all of my classes.... Had I been pushier, I am sure I could have received almost any accommodation I asked for. While I feel entitled to my single room, I would feel guilty about some of the perks I have — except that so many of my fellow students have gamed the system...."

Writes Elsa Johnson, a Stanford student, quoted in "Nearly 40% of Stanford undergraduates claim they’re disabled. I’m one of them/One of the most prestigious universities in the US offers perks to those who say they have ADHD, night terrors, even gluten intolerance. You’d be stupid not to game the system" (London Times).

"The constant activity is better than therapy. It’s a lot of work, but running this restaurant is my passion, my dream. I don’t feel like I have Tourette’s anymore."

Said Dylan Larson, quoted in "Teen with Tourette’s Syndrome operates restaurant by himself — and the 'constant activity is better than therapy" (NY Post).

Larson, now 21, is the sole employee at Rare Earth Goods Café in Ishpeming, taking every order, cooking every meal, washing every dish, and balancing the books.... He works without a stovetop or full-sized oven, relying instead on a small electric griddle, a four-slice toaster and a countertop convection oven. On busy days, customers wait up to 45 minutes for their breakfast and lunch meals.... 

Doctors later diagnosed him with Tourette’s at age 8.... “I was noisier or a bit more, I don’t know, just louder than other people.” Larson said. “I was like, shouting in class. And when I got excited about something, my first word would be like, yelling at you. Sometimes, it would scare people.”

You may remember the chef with Tourette's from "Curb Your Enthusiasm":

"The Government Published Dozens of Nude Photos in the Epstein Files. The photos, which showed young women or possibly teenagers with their faces visible..."

"... were largely removed after The New York Times began notifying the Justice Department.... As part of its required disclosure of the Epstein files, the federal government was tasked with redacting both sexually explicit imagery and information that could be used to identify victims. But in the process of reviewing more than three million pages uploaded to the Justice Department’s website on Friday, The New York Times came across nearly 40 unredacted images that appeared to be part of a personal photo collection, showing both nude bodies and the faces of the people portrayed...."

The New York Times reports.

Government-issued pornography. Presumably accidental, but what can you expect with this longstanding prurient interest in Jeffrey Epstein?

That can't feel good.

"Her custom negligee dress and matching cape were crafted in silk georgette in a deep red garnet. But once Roan removed the cape, the result was a naked dress that seemingly exposed her breasts, with the silk georgette suspended by nipple rings."

I'm reading "Chappell Roan’s Naked Dress at Grammys Shocks Social Media/The double Grammy nominee created what was arguably the night's first viral moment when she turned up in a sheer look by Mugler" (Hollywood Reporter).

Congratulations on getting attention. It's quite a look, and it kind of looks good. But I'm just worried about that kind of weight suspended from pierced nipples. You're treating your breasts like hooks on the back of a bathroom door, things to hang clothing on.

Here's a closeup (on X) that highlights the pulling. It's not just an illusion that the whole bottom of the dress is hanging from those nipple rings. You can see the distortion from the weight. You can see the risk of injury. The viewer is drawn into the experience of pain and danger. Who is that for? 

"Well, of course, we contact our Trinidadian friends and all the people that like to eat iguanas... and they eat the eggs and they eat the legs and they eat the tail."

"So this is easy snacks, fallin' out the trees this mornin'."

Meet Jessica Kilgore the South Florida iguana slaying queen!!!! pic.twitter.com/CDNQvsok8O

— Branch Floridian (@JackLinFLL) February 1, 2026

"I've got nothing but respect for Don Lemon's husband."

"Do you see that man's face?"

"A mind-set shift involves changing what you notice, what you remark upon, where you place your focus."

"[C]oncentrat[e] on what you like about winter (cooking, cozy indoor reading, the quiet after snowfall) over what you don’t.... 'Appoint yourself a wintertime ambassador this year... and encourage everyone around you to notice what they like about the winter as well.'... [G]et outside, to figure out the layering situation such that experiencing the Norwegian concept of 'friluftsliv,' or “'open air life,' isn’t excruciating. The Swedish author of 'There’s No Such Thing as Bad Weather' (I think that sentence usually completes with 'only bad clothes') [said] 'There are some days when it’s harder to get outside than others, but I know that if I do, I’m never going to regret going outside.'... This is the sort of mantra that works on me. Every fiber of my being may disagree with it, but if I allow my brain to override the resistance, if I believe intellectually that it’s true, I’ll go out in the cold and quite possibly discover the physical and mental benefits of 'outdoorphins.' If I can take a break from my usual winter pastimes of turning up the thermostat when no one is looking and making others touch and offer sympathy for my corpse-cold extremities, there’s a different relationship with winter awaiting."

Writes Melissa Kirsch, in "Cold Comfort/How can the perpetually shivering warm up to winter?" (NYT).

I don't need that advice. (I'm acclimated.) But maybe you do. It's all in the mind. I mean, you have to dress for the occasion, but go outside in the cold. It's exciting. It's beautiful. I love winter!

Sunrise — 6:59, 7:14.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"Newsom was profoundly dyslexic.... By the third grade, he had worked himself into a panic over his trouble with reading and math."

"'I’m faking being sick, because I hate school and I’m stressed, and they’re always having to pick me up early,' he recalled.... He was a scrawny, shy boy with a bowl cut. 'He always called himself stupid,' his sister said, and other kids apparently agreed. 'The guys kept saying, "If you’re looking for your brother, he’s hanging from his underwear on a lamppost."'  In middle school, Newsom took steps to reinvent himself as an athlete. 'Rocky' had recently come out, and he emulated the main character—running up and down hills, drinking raw eggs, learning to box. His sister remembers falling asleep night after night listening to the sound of him relentlessly practicing basketball: shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting. Learning to read was a similar feat."

Writes Nathan Heller, in "Gavin Newsom Is Playing the Long Game/California’s governor has been touted as the Democrats’ best shot in 2028. But first he’ll need to convince voters that he’s not just a slick establishment politician" (The New Yorker).

"When I asked Newsom about his dyslexia in his office one afternoon, he showed me an overstuffed folder of printed material, his reading from the previous evening. Almost every word of text was underlined. He flipped through a galley proof of his memoir, in which the underlining covered whole pages—the only way, he said, that he could read any book, even his own. He produced another folder filled with lined paper and covered with his handwriting: he copies all the text he underlines onto writing pads...."

"Muzzle velocity, in its literal sense, describes the ferocious speed of a bullet at the moment it exits the front end of a gun."

"The term came from an interview that Steve Bannon, President Trump’s former chief strategist, gave in 2019. 'All we have to do is flood the zone,' Bannon said. 'Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity.'"

Writes Ezra Klein, in "Trump Has Overwhelmed Himself" (NYT).

But has Trump "overwhelmed himself"? Listen to last night's press gaggle — all the topics he crunched through in 15 minutes. Iran. Venezuela. Cuba. China and India. Crime in Minneapolis and Chicago. ICE protests. The 250-foot arch and the ballroom, the Epstein files, suing Michael Wolff, suing the FBI. Greenland. And that "sleazebag" Don Lemon. 

He didn't seem overwhelmed at all, and that was at night, on a gruelingly noisy plane, grilled by reporters after an evening event where, as WaPo puts it, "Trump tries humor, gets some silence, at black-tie dinner with 'people I hate.'"

He seemed to be up for all of it.

Has there ever been a worse impersonation on "SNL" than Pete Davidson's complete failure even to attempt to seem the slightest bit like Tom Homan?

Look:

I guess they just hoped the audience didn't know Homan, but if you've ever seen him talk, you know he has an especially funny way of talking. What a treat for a comedian to be invited on the show to do a long Homan impression in the cold open. Maybe they thought we'd just be so thrilled to see Pete Davidson again that it would be okay for him to do Homan as just some guy in a bald wig.

Davidson, you lazy bum, compare your Homan to Jim Carrey's brilliant Broderick Crawford:

Ever since I first heard Tom Homan, he's reminded me Carrey's Broderick Crawford. I watched that in real time, some 30 years ago and I've always remembered it as one of the funniest things I've ever seen on television.

"President Trump Gaggles with Press on Air Force One En Route Palm Beach, FL, Jan. 31, 2026."

I'm going to pick through the transcript and will update in about an hour. Meantime, you can pick over the text and pull out your favorite highlights

ADDED: From the YouTube transcript:

"The weekly gatherings of knitters at Needle & Skein, a yarn store in Minneapolis, are typically filled with giggles and storytelling."

"But, earlier this month, a heaviness hung in the air. 'It was just collective exhaustion,' said Paul Neary, a shop employee. 'Minnesotans — we're not going to say the big thing, but we often know what the big thing is just by looking at each other.'... They pulled out their knitting needles and got to work. Neary created the pattern that has now become the well-known 'Melt the ICE' hat, a red beanie-shaped cap topped with a braided tassel.... As a history buff, Neary chose the pattern based on a Norwegian hat used to protest the Nazi occupation of Norway in the 1940s. The hats were called 'nisselue,' which roughly translates to Santa hat...."

From "A red hat, inspired by a symbol of resistance to Nazi occupation, gains traction in Minnesota" (NPR).

"Peter Fritzsche, a history professor at the University of Illinois, said the Nazis were operating on 'obviously a very, very different scale,' but with ICE's presence in Minnesota, people can still feel 'occupied.'... Wendy Woloson, a history professor at Rutgers University at Camden and fellow knitter, said the red hats are a classic response of the crafting world. When knitters want to help in their community, they put their hands to work, she said.... She recalled the pink 'pussy hats' from the 2017 Women's March...."

It's poignant, this urge to do something that finds its release in knitting. It's something very calm indoor people can do when they want to feel they too are engaging in activism. 

ADDED: Speaking of hats in Minnesota, I just ran across this fascinating passage in a NYT article from April 2025: