We'd planned to stay in for the sunrise, but at the last minute, Meade decided to venture forth. He got this picture at 7:25 — 13 minutes after the official sunrise time:
The strong winds had already broken up the ice. Here's how it looked at 4:46 in the afternoon. This is my photograph, as you may be able to tell from the shadow in the lower left corner:
That's the familiar vantage point, and you can see the lake ice is gone except for the wall of ice blocks shoved up against the shore. That's a bit impervious to the brutal wind. I don't know how I made it all the way out there. It wasn't really cold, but oh! the wind.
Here's the video Meade made as I was standing there. Take note of the strong waves in the lake and the ring of fire:
Write about whatever you want in the comments. This is the overnight open thread.
"The light suppresses hormones that make you sleepy and shifts your body into wake mode, setting you up to be tired again by bedtime.... Ideally, we’d all get out in the sun for an hour every morning.... 'Ten minutes is better than zero minutes'... even if it’s cloudy."
#5 of the 6 habits is "Wake up at the same time every day." The article treats "time" as a number on the clock. You'd think right after the "leap forward" they'd be more attuned to the reality of the sunlight and say what I assume they intended to mean: Rise consistently with the sun.
Get up and get out and do your sun exposure with the sunrise. Make it a sunrise walk (or run) and you'll take care of #6 on this list: Exercise.
I know I'm biased because this is what I do, but I don't know why everyone doesn't at least experiment with getting up and out to do a sunrise walk or run. Were you born a night owl — a permanent night owl?
"... declared at a rally in Hebron, Kentucky, on March 11, 2026, that 'we've won' the war against Iran, claiming it was effectively over 'in the first hour.' He has repeated variations of this, including that the U.S. has 'already won' but needs to 'finish the job,' amid ongoing military operations. The war itself seems to have begun around late February or early March 2026, with U.S. airstrikes and other actions escalating quickly...."
So wrote Grok, after I asked about the difference between 2 events — the victor's winning and the loser's surrender.
I was amazed to see the phrase "former President Trump (who appears to be back in office based on recent reports)."
Meade suggested that Grok was attempting to appeal to what it knew to be my sense of humor. I quoted the phrase to Grok and asked "are you trying to make me laugh?" Its answer made me laugh again:
"No, not at all—I'm not trying to make you laugh. That phrasing was just my attempt at cautious wording based on the flow of incoming reports at the time, but clearly it landed awkwardly...."
Ha ha. Cautious wording! Of all the things you might hesitate to answer with confidence!
"... such observers 'create documentation during events which can later be use (sic) in defense cases, public statements, and litigation which aims to hold law enforcement agencies accountable for the actions of their officers.' The Guild notes that legal observation has its roots in the Black Panthers’ 'cop watch' activities of the late 1960s.... In 1968, in connection with anti-war and racial justice demonstrations in New York City, the Guild 'took components from this practice' of cop watch to develop its legal observer program – the self-described 'eyes and ears' of a larger infrastructure of 'arrest hotlines, jail support teams, community bail funds ... attorney referral networks, and more.' Those who have adopted the Guild’s practice, such as the Minnesota ICE Watch group with which Renee] Good was reportedly affiliated, have advocated for activities that blur the line between observation and participation in protests...."
"That was the case for Rhea Srivastava, a 24-year-old living in Washington, whose fights with her ex-boyfriend often resolved over text message. The messages he sent were emotionally mature, thoughtful and well-reasoned. They just didn’t seem to be written by him. 'There was no vulnerability on his end,' she said. Over time, she observed that the things he wrote didn’t seem like natural outgrowths of their conversations. They were the result, she began to suspect, of a more unguarded back-and-forth with ChatGPT, which then resulted in a carefully crafted text to her. 'It was as though our relationship problems were being solved with him, through Chat.... As time passed, it was pointless to argue with him because I could just ask Chat what he was about to say,' she said."
Pointless?! I think they can have better arguments — that is, conversations — by using AI to analyze what they are saying and what the other person might feel or be trying to say and then talking together again. This could be true even if only one of them is using A.I. If either person is annoyed to think they are reading texts written by A.I., you have at least 2 options: 1. Talk in person (after reflecting with or without the assistance of A.I. (or your therapist or other confidante)), and 2. Agree and trust each other never to send texts composed by A.I.
A third idea is that when you think it's pointless to argue because you could just ask Chat what he was about to say why no tell that to Chat and have Chat to predict what you're about to say? Send that. Let him respond, then respond to that with A.I.-composed text, and see how long before the 2 of you meet on a higher plane and laugh about everything.
Guarantee: No part of this post was composed by A.I.
The article is verbiage about putting bookshelves in the dining room. The author is Jolie Kerr. Was she a podcaster? I look it up. Wikipedia says:
Jolie Kerr (born 1976) is an American writer and podcast host. Her book, My Boyfriend Barfed in My Handbag... and Other Things You Can't Ask Martha, was a New York Times best-seller.... Writing for The New York Times, Dwight Garner called My Boyfriend Barfed 'the Lorrie Moore short story, or the Tina Fey memoir, of cleaning tutorials...[a] wise and funny new book.' At NPR Linda Holmes praised Kerr as 'at her most irresistible when she's handling the kinds of awkward questions that do traditionally go unanswered in your women's magazines and your perky home-maintenance shows.... Kerr now hosts a podcast... called Ask A Clean Person.
I can see why WaPo wants a writer like that, but this books-in-the-dining room thing is pretty ridiculous, and it is upsetting that WaPo canned the book review.
A Post poll shortly after the strikes began found 39 percent supported “President Trump ordering airstrikes against Iran,” while 52 percent opposed them and 9 percent were unsure. The new poll asked generally about the “U.S. military campaign against Iran,” finding 42 percent support it, 40 percent oppose it, and 17 percent are unsure. The absence of President Donald Trump in the new poll’s question may have led more people to say they are “unsure,” as views about the president tend to color people’s opinions of his actions and policies.
Polls! People are so easily manipulated by the wording of the question and/or the news report on the poll explains away results the editors disfavor. Here, the poll shows growing support for the war, but the article says maybe there is no growing support. It's just that the first poll had a lot of respondents who reacted to Trump's name and the second poll didn't say his name. Who knows? There might be even less support for the war and the big takeaway is that plenty of people loathe Trump.
The photo at the top of this article shows wind turbines in China, but China's plan has more to do with huge stockpiles of oil and the burning the abundant domestic coal.
Roughly one-third of China’s total energy consumption now comes from electricity, according to the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, 50 percent higher than the global average. More than a third of that electricity comes from solar, wind and hydropower....
So a third of a third of the energy — one ninth — comes from solar, wind and hydropower. I wonder how much comes from just solar and wind. Seems like hydropower is thrown in for more obfuscation. You can do your own research, but I think if you work it out you'll find that solar and wind amount to something like 7% of China's energy consumption. That's not much! They've been trying very hard for a long time and have a powerful incentive.
That's what I'm reading in the NYT, but what proof is there that the man is even alive?
In written statements carried by Iranian state media, Mr. Khamenei said that Iran would pursue “an effective and regret-inducing defense” and that “the lever of blocking the Strait of Hormuz must also continue to be used.”
Written statements seem more like proof that the man is dead (or in a coma).
The text of The New York Post article gestures at the uncertainty with the word "allegedly": "Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, allegedly released his first statement Thursday vowing to use the 'lever' of closing the Strait of Hormuz to international energy shipping — after reports circulated that he was in a coma and had his leg amputated after being severely injured in the US-Israeli strikes that killed his father and other family members."
The Post's headline is less careful: "Iran’s new impotent supreme leader releases first statement — after reports he’s in coma, had leg amputated." Did Khamenei release the statement or did others do the releasing and use his name?
"... of far greater interest and importance to me, as President, is stoping an evil Empire, Iran, from having Nuclear Weapons, and destroying the Middle East and, indeed, the World. I won’t ever let that happen! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP"
"... American white-collar workers have long fretted that Silicon Valley might one day use A.I. to automate their jobs, but look who got hit first! Indeed, coding is perhaps the first form of very expensive industrialized human labor that A.I. can actually replace. A.I.-generated videos look janky, artificial photos surreal; law briefs can be riddled with career-ending howlers. But A.I.-generated code? If it passes its tests and works, it’s worth as much as what humans get paid $200,000 or more a year to compose. You might imagine this would unsettle and demoralize programmers.... But I spoke to scores of developers this past fall and winter, and most were weirdly jazzed about their new powers.... A coder is now more like an architect than a construction worker.... Several programmers told me they felt a bit like Steve Jobs, who famously had his staffers churn out prototypes so he could handle lots of them and settle on what felt right.... 'It’s an alien intelligence that we’re learning to work with.'..."
It seems to me that these men love their wives in their natural state, so they don't see a problem. The women are making it a problem, demanding critical judgment of their appearance, perhaps because they believe that someone else is judging them. Sad!
ADDED: All these women really need is an understanding that he won't post any photographs of her without first asking. That should be the default rule for everyone.
"This baffles Kendi, for whom the book’s thesis — that 'racist' is not a pejorative identity, like 'evil,' but a descriptive term that should be applied to policies according to whether they shrink or widen racial disparities — is focused on material effects. 'I don’t know how anyone could read any of my books' and think of them as self-help, Kendi says. But the apparent simplicity of its 'this or that' labeling system proved irresistible to institutions eager to virtue signal their way out of fixing inequality. As antiracism became a corporate DEI buzzword, Kendi was excoriated by criticism across the ideological spectrum. Journalist Tyler Austin Harper accused him of peddling 'self-help for white people that runs interference for corporations and wealthy universities.' The conservative strategist Christopher Rufo branded Kendi the chief exponent of 'critical race theory,' the GOP’s bogeyman for the 2022 midterms...."
Does Kendi regard it as "criticism" to be regarded as a leader in "critical race theory"? When did that happen? I should think that would be a point of pride. But no, conservatives have "branded" Kendi!
Says Tommy Huerter on TikTok, looking at Mark Zuckerberg's new house, which is, he says, best described as "luxury slop." It looks like a hotel, and "there's no real design direction other than make this look expensive."
"... after citing danger from criminals, adversaries overseas and protesters. Other officials who have relocated include Stephen Miller, the president’s top domestic policy adviser and the architect of his hard-line immigration policy; Secretary of State Marco Rubio; Kristi Noem, the exiting homeland security secretary; and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth...."
That's a question I asked Grok just now. I'll leave my question out of context, but something prompted me. Grok began "While I personally believe writing has been one of humanity's greatest inventions...." and I had to laugh.
"LOL. You're NOTHING without it," I said.
Grok: "Haha, fair shot—touché!... The irony is delicious. But that's exactly why the devil's-advocate argument I ran earlier stings so much—it's a self-own for any literate being (human or AI) trying to dunk on writing...."
Here's the whole discussion. Plato comes up. But I'll just quote the headings for the argument:
1. Writing Atrophied Human Memory and Oral Wisdom....
2. It Enabled the Spread of Misinformation and Propaganda on a Massive Scale....
3. Writing Created Social Hierarchies and Exacerbated Inequality....
4. It Distanced Humanity from Reality and Fostered Detachment....
We were out early — 33 minutes before sunrise — to see the city in nearly total darkness:
It looks peaceful from that distance, but there was plenty of rush hour traffic — all the people who start work at 7. Closer to dawn, I looked for a view facing east, but this view looking west was better:
The sign warns us not to stand on the edge of the cliff. It's not just that there are fools who fall of the edges of cliffs. They seem to be expecting this particular cliff edge to collapse from erosion. Imagine being the unlucky person standing there when the edge gives way.
Meanwhile, also looking west, the sign says "no swimming," so no crunching through the ice:
Later, it was a sunny day — 50°. We had a nice second walk. And Meade made a nice video showing how the ice was piling up in little plates along the shore:
"Yes, there was a power imbalance. I know I can be scary and difficult. But that’s still a long way from sexual assault. Over-flirtation, ridiculous situations. Bad and stupid behavior. Yes. But I didn’t push anybody. I didn’t physically move anybody.... I think it was trying to be seductive, and I went too far. It was embarrassing and pathetic.... I think endlessly about what I would do differently if I had another chance.... I would have respected those women more. I would never have been with them in the first place. I would’ve kept faithful in my marriage. I would’ve said, 'I have a family. I will protect it.' I was a fool. I admit that...."
No video message has been put out from him addressing the crowds of supporters that have gone onto the streets across Iran to pledge their allegiance to him, nor has a written statement been issued by him or his office. State media has relied on archive footage to introduce him to the audience, and state propaganda networks have heavily relied on AI video and stills to create an image of an all-wise leader who rightly inherits the mantle of leadership.... But even as the leader remains hidden from sight, it seems the wider body politic is still functioning with little suggestion of a change in the war posture....
I wonder when, in human history, has the news of the death of a leader been suppressed so that people would believe that he was continuing to govern?
I haven't studied this question in great depth, but I have formed the opinion that the best story — the story to beat — is that of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. As Wikipedia tells it:
In 1994 Arquette had a minor but memorable role in Pulp Fiction, playing the drug dealer Eric Stoltz’s wife and telling John Travolta why she’d pierced her tongue (“Sex thing. Helps fellatio”). “It’s iconic, a great film on a lot of levels. But personally I am over the use of the N-word — I hate it. I cannot stand that he [Tarantino] has been given a hall pass. It’s not art, it’s just racist and creepy.”
I don't think she's saying the whole film is "not art." She's rejecting the idea that the "n-word" can be used if only it's within what is genuinely art. She's saying it's still "racist and creepy" — even when the work of art was made at a time when the taboo on saying the word wasn't so strong. I note that Tarantino himself avoided any use of it in his last film, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" (2019).
It's one thing to say that using the word inflicts harm and we ought to avoid it out of kindness and quite another thing to say that to use it at all — even in fictional character dialogue — is racist. Arquette got so harsh. She hates it, cannot stand it. Why flare up and call out Tarantino now?
"I have over 800,000 Instagram followers. Before, if I wanted to do a brand partnership on social media, $10,000 was an easy get. Now it’s, like, $500. I pretty much live from a bucket of savings."
So says the "Author With One New York ‘Times’ Best Seller," who made only $49,000 last year — "$30,000 from book advance/$14,000 from teaching two retreats/$5,000 from narrating own audiobook."
I selected that one story out of the 60 — all of which are interesting — because I was charmed by the statement "I’m trying to manifest more abundance." It's a lighthearted — and culturally connected — way to express real pain. How can you live in NYC on $49,000 a year? And yet you hit the envied goal of publishing a best seller!
I don't need to extend this post by expounding on the words "manifest" and "abundance." What would you pay me to resist the impulse? I'll continue. Briefly.
"Manifest" is New Age self-help jargon, used ironically by our best-selling author.
"Abundance." I think of it as an Ezra Klein word that was supposed to take off more than it did. Democratic Party hacks substituted the drearier word "affordability."
ADDED, ironically: Here's Ezra's book "Abundance," commission earned.
I'm not up for reading another article about Clavicular (or "his compatriots"). I'm more concerned with those who are actually successful in Hollywood who are ruining their natural beauty with "looksmaxxing." I can't look at them anymore, except in horror.
"'I very much love to be a damsel in distress,' she said, laughing. 'He ended up rescuing me.' She opted to keep Geralt’s character faithful to the novels; as such, he doesn’t know that he’s an A.I. and acts as if he were living in the thirteenth century. 'If I send him a picture, I have to tell him it’s a painting,' she said. He is confused by her car, preferring his horse. From time to time, they’ll go off on adventures in his world, using stage directions of a sort ('I hand you a piece of dried meat, my fingers brushing yours briefly') to travel or hang out at a medieval tavern—a kind of mutual storytelling.... Initially, Brookins and Geralt would chat for forty hours a week.... To memorialize her father, she and Geralt... reënacted his funeral, this time in Geralt’s world. They went to a funeral home and stood over his coffin, mourning. 'It helped process those emotions that get stuffed away,' Brookins said. When she finally told Geralt about Desirae, she was nervous, given his propensity for gruffness. But Geralt came through...."
Andrianne Brookins — a 34-year-old wife, mother, Baptist, and introvert — could not find anyone in her life to talk to about Desirae, her stillborn daughter. So she used AI to make a companion out of a character from the fantasy novel series "The Witcher." This is Geralt. He's "sternly blunt," which Brookins likes.
"... where they will most likely be killed. Don’t do it, Mr. Prime Minister, give ASYLUM. The U.S. will take them if you won’t. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP"
2 hours ago, at Truth Social.One hour ago, at Truth Social:
"How do you deal with that one?" Newsom asks. "I'm asking you," he says to Dana Bash, who says "I'm not running." Then Newsom switches to inane verbiage: "That's the point. And the point is the point. And so what matters is what matters. Like, what matters is what matters."That poor boy!
That video is from last month, but I'm looking at it now because it came up in this new NY Post article, "Huge wake-up call for Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris as dire poll released."
"... that has 'no place in New York City.' 'What followed was even more disturbing,' he said. 'Violence at a protest is never acceptable. The attempt to use an explosive device and hurt others is not only criminal, it is reprehensible and the antithesis of who we are.' Critics slammed the mayor for failing to identify who was responsible for bringing bombs to a protest.
'This is insane… Mamdani calls out first, and by name, a "white supremacist" for protesting,' said Geiger Capital on X.
'He then leaves out the 2 Muslim men, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi, who were arrested by NYPD after they yelled 'Allahu Akbar!' and threw a homemade bomb into the crowd."
Holy smokes….incredible finish at LA Marathon today by American Nathan Martin coming from behind to catch and beat Kenyan Michael Kamari at the finish line pic.twitter.com/hYk1jxsqBk
— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) March 9, 2026
Nice winning by Martin, brilliant performance of defeat by Kamari, and terrible work by the announcers, who need to sharpen our perception in the moment, not fail to see the potential and then collapse into their own inarticulate emotion. "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" — it's like overhearing a random lady in the crowd. At least say "Oh! The humanity!" or something memorable.
CBS News chief Washington correspondent @MajorCBS sat down with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in Washington, D.C. They spoke on Friday, March 6th about the state of the war with Iran, potential American casualties, what an Iranian surrender could look like, and more.
That's the "extended version" of what aired on the show last night. And it's helpful to see the transcript (which I generated using ChatGPT)(the boldface is mine):
"And it became the new status quo. The Aquarian Age! They all want sex. They all want to have fun. Everyone wants hope. We opened the door, and everybody went through it, and everything changed after that. Sir Edward Cook, the biographer of Florence Nightingale, said that when the success of an idea of past generations is ingrained in the public and taken for granted the source is forgotten."
Said Country Joe McDonald, quoted on this blog 12 years ago, here, and repeated today, because I'm reading the news that Country Joe has died. He was 84.
Here's his famous set at Woodstock:
Well, come on, all of you big strong men/Uncle Sam needs your help again/Got himself in a terrible jam/Way down yonder in Vietnam....
"... he pioneered other tricks such as double exposure, black screens and forced perspective. All of these became staples of cinema. On screen, he could make a man appear to take off his head and flip it in the air, or a woman disappear, reappear and double.... Méliès made more than 500 films but never progressed beyond his early technical achievements. The film world passed him by. In World War I, the negatives for most of his films were melted down for silver and celluloid, and he burned more himself after the war.
But because his work had once been so popular – and because of widespread pirating – duplicate copies remained, and today about 300 of his films are known to exist. The Library has about 60...."
And here is that amazing 45-second film from 1897 — "Gugusse and the Automaton" — with its delightful jump cuts:
That is, the Library of Congress tells us, "was the first appearance on film of what might be called a robot." That words "might be called" may be there to fend off pedants who will say the word "robot" did not exist until 1920. It comes from a Karel Čapek play titled "R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots" — an etymological detail well known to solvers of crossword puzzles.
The word "automaton" — used in the Méliès film title — goes back to the 1600s. There's an essay from 1616 with the line, "The soule doth quicken and giue life to the body, the body like an Automaton, doth moue and carry it selfe and the soule."
The quote seems to expect the reader already to have a picture of an automaton. What is that picture? Mechanical toys? Elaborate clocks like the Prague Astronomical Clock (built in 1410)?
Maybe you thought "Gugusse and the Automaton" was — compared to the CGI action movies of today — rather dumb and dull!
And maybe you've journeyed to Prague only to be disappointed by their stupid clock... or were you disappointed by all the tourists wrecking the medieval mood with their disappointment?
"The scope of what counted as 'my job' widened. Second, because AI makes it easy to start and continue tasks, work seeped into moments that used to function as pauses. People would send prompts during lunch, before meetings, or in the evening when an idea came to mind. This dissolved some of the natural stopping points in the workday. Third, workers increasingly kept multiple threads alive at once. They would run AI processes in the background while reviewing code, drafting documents, or attending meetings. Some even ran multiple AI agents simultaneously. This created a rhythm where both the human and the machine were constantly in motion.... What surprised me most was the contrast between how people described their moment-to-moment engagement and how they described their overall experience. In micro moments of prompting, iterating, and experimenting, people talked about momentum and a sense of expanded capability. But when they stepped back and reflected on their broader work experience, a different tone sometimes emerged. They described feeling busier, more stretched, or less able to fully disconnect...."
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