"This isn't a monument to my legacy. It's a gateway to yours."

May the Fourth be with YOU, from the Obama Presidential Center.

Opening June 19. @BarackObama @MarkHamill pic.twitter.com/OzhhUzD789

— The Obama Foundation (@ObamaFoundation) May 4, 2026

It's "May the Fourth," and they've wheeled out Mark Hamill, who's stuck with a scripted role. He reads it woodenly, perhaps because he feels a little bad that he's required to be an egotist, and humor is wrung out of having Barack Obama insult him for being a narcissist. Why am I being subjected to this?, I wondered, and what is the point of using "Star Wars" to promote the Obama Presidential Center?

I guess it must be because the Center has been likened to certain "Star Wars" images, but not in a good way.

"Ukraine is intensifying drone strikes on Russian oil facilities, hitting a key Black Sea refinery four times in two weeks and setting off a days-long carcinogenic blaze..."

"... that environmentalists say represents one of the country’s worst ecological disasters since the fall of the Soviet Union. A plume of black acrid smoke once again rose over Russia’s Black Sea city of Tuapse on Friday after Ukraine struck the refinery and oil terminal there overnight, the fourth in a spate of attacks that have also caused oily droplets of 'black rain' to fall on residents and contaminated more than 30 miles of coastline as an oil slick spread...."

From "Poisonous black rain falls in Russia as Ukraine strikes oil facilities/Residents of Tuapse, on the Black Sea, complained of an inadequate government response and coverup of what they say is a huge environmental and health disaster" (WaPo).

"A third of children say they have bypassed online age checks in the past two months - some by drawing fake moustaches on their faces to trick facial recognition software."

Euro News reports.

"So much of what we take for granted today — from our meritocratic rat race to our gentrified neighborhoods to our culture of overwork, fitness training and foodie obsession — was born in the yuppie-made 1980s...."

"After the Carter and Reagan administrations loosened the regulations governing Wall Street, finance began to generate a greater share of profits than manufacturing or services. Investment banks and law firms now shaped the fates of the corporations they had once served. As America hitched its fortunes to finance, those banks and firms began to chop up, spin off, merge, offshore or otherwise squeeze short-term value out of the nation’s legacy corporations. But to do it, they needed legions of employees to handle the grunt work: the proofreading, drafting and document review that kept the takeover machinery in motion.... Once they were hired, aspiring yuppies were expected to work more hours, often on smaller and less intellectually demanding piecework. They were also given less meaningful training, all for narrower chances of promotion to partner. As the professional world was beginning to diversify, it became an increasingly miserable place to work.... The exhausting meritocratic contest that furnished them with nice apartments and private-school tuitions had real psychic costs. Between the long hours and the constant pressure for upward mobility, few yuppies actually felt triumphant. They felt burned out. Yuppies were the first class of young people to be drawn into the sweatshop of the meritocracy. Now is the time to rethink the bargain they made...."

Writes history professor Dylan Gottlieb, in "How Yuppies Changed America" (NYT).

"The artist Michaela Stark, who is known for binding her own flesh so that it spills over, confronting those who see it with their own idea of what is considered beautiful..."

"... and who also posed for a Met mannequin — put it... bluntly: 'It institutionalizes the idea that bodies are different.'"

From "The Met Makes a Statement With 9 New Mannequin Bodies/The latest Costume Institute exhibition expands its ideas of who, exactly, belongs in fashion. Will the gala follow suit?" (NYT)(gift link, so you can see the artist's bound flesh spilling over and the quite interesting mannequins in their fashions).

"Stark [said] that the images that come out of the gala matter, especially now. 'Who’s on that red carpet and what their bodies are like is a political statement,' she said. To really inspire change, she said, the party needs at least some 'fabulous fat women wearing fabulous gowns.' 'If it is watered down to an Ozempic-fueled event of skinny girls wearing paintings on the red carpet,' she said, 'that’s an active denial of what this exhibition is really about.'"

The idea of "wearing paintings" relates to the theme of the Met Gala this year, which is something about the way fashion has channeled fine art. We'll see how literally the gala-goers take it. I hope nobody uses the idea of walking about inside a picture frame. 

AND: The Gala is tonight, so watch for the picture frame idea. It's on my bingo card. So is a "Starry Night" star on each breast.

Sunrise.

Do you see the goose couple showing off their babies?

Half an hour later:

The clouds shaped up into what reminded me of something by Thomas Hart Benton:

"[T]he dominant mode in Democratic politics right now. It’s not the rebellion or radicalism manifest in, say..."

"Hasan Piker’s Twitch-streamer Marxism or Zohran Mamdani’s telegenic democratic socialism. Notable as those tendencies may be, the Democrats’ fundamental condition is a late-Trumpian stasis — in which the president’s stark unpopularity encourages his opponents to imagine that they can keep everything basically as it was in the Biden era, with the same broad priorities and deference to activists and interest groups, and float back to power automatically. The continuing appeal of Harris is a useful indicator of this stasis. Yes, she is unlikely to be the 2028 nominee, and part of her support is name recognition...."

Writes Ross Douthat, in "Slouching Toward Kamala Harris" (NYT).

Harris is ahead in the polls for the Democratic nomination in 2028. The Real Clear Politics average has her up by 9.3 percentage points. The most recent poll, from Harvard-Harris — has her up by 28 percentage points. Here's her closest competition:

This is about as bad as I’ve seen him. pic.twitter.com/xksNZfG0BE

— Kira (@Kiradavis) May 3, 2026

3 things Meade did.

1. He used Grok's "imagine" to make it look as though he were flying a drone toward the sunrise:

Generated with @grok imagine pic.twitter.com/1SgsOtklwi

— Laurence Meade (@laurmeade) May 3, 2026

2. He made me feel like a monument:

3. As part of his new activity of picking up litter around town, he's photographing distinctive litter. Today's winner:

I'm glad I have a tag "litter." I discussed it in some detail here. You may remember "hipster litter" ("It's a trend, I'm telling you. See it. Record it. Know it").

ADDED, re #2: I felt monumental on that boulder, but watching the video, I see that it made me look tiny. I will need to stand on a small rock to look monumental. 

"Porcupines used to be confined to the forests but with deforestation, they’ve moved out into saffron farms looking for food."

"Saffron corms are highly nutritious and porcupines love them. Since they destroy the crop at night, farmers can’t do a thing."

Said Mir Hasan Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, quoted in "How porcupine ‘terror’ is devastating Kashmir’s saffron harvest/Authorities have set up a ‘situation room’ in the quest to stop the rodents raiding crops of ‘red gold’ , devastating farmers’ livelihoods" (London Times).

"The Iranians are clearly stronger than expected and the Americans clearly have no truly convincing strategy."

"The Iranians are clearly negotiating skilfully or very skilfully not negotiating... a whole nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership."

Said Chancellor Friedrich Merz, quoted in "Is German troop withdrawal start of US uncoupling from Europe? After President Trump took offence at Friedrich Merz’s Iran war comments, Donald Tusk warned that infighting was a bigger threat to Nato than its external enemies" (London Times).

Not a typo for "Donald Trump." There really is a Donald Tusk in this story. He's the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk. His mild-mannered contribution to the debate is: "The greatest threat to the transatlantic community is not its external enemies, but the ongoing disintegration of our alliance."

Last paragraph of the article:

"The City Council in The Hague, the seat of the national government, passed the first law banning fossil fuel ads in 2024."

"The following year, a Dutch travel trade association and several travel agencies sued, arguing that the ban was an overreach that violated freedom of expression rules and European Union consumer law. But the judge sided with the city, ruling that the health of its citizens and the climate was more important than commercial interests. 'It is not up to the municipality to refrain from taking measures to promote the health of its residents in order to strengthen the future position of travel providers,' the judge wrote, according to Euronews.... Among the recent promotions that are no longer allowed in Amsterdam: Ads for Range Rovers. Marketing for flights to Zanzibar, Mauritius and Dubai, and getaways to Thailand, and even, gasp, New York City."

From "In Permissive Amsterdam, Ads for Fossil Fuels or Meat Are Now Verboden/The Dutch city has outlawed advertising that promotes lifestyles linked to high carbon emissions, which is a driver of climate change. It’s a first for a world capital" (NYT).

I blogged it 13 years ago: "If you really care about global warming, stop all unnecessary travel."

And, from 16 years ago: "If you really believed in global warming, you would turn off your air conditioning" — which had 6 more things you ought to do to avoid shame and hypocrisy (if you really believe). I ask you to review the list now and reflect upon how well you have done:

"Those words never left my lips."

NYT: “You’ve been talking on your show about whether Trump is the Antichrist”

Tucker Carlson: “I have not said that”

NYT: *plays clip of him saying that* pic.twitter.com/L0sUQnfhpb

— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) May 2, 2026

"Other incidents in the book are merely surreal: the appearance of Bob Dylan in a blue mohair suit..."

"... at [Brian] Jones’s hotel door in the middle of a Northeast blackout in 1965, bearing guitars and 'excellent weed'; a passing mention of future Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as one of the drug buddies who 'revived Keith’s appetite for coke and heroin' in the late 1970s; a young Harvey Weinstein, then a regional concert promoter, passing out Afro wigs to the band and crew during a raucous tour closer in Buffalo."

From "You Can’t Always Get What You Want, Unless It’s a New Rolling Stones Biography/The music journalist Bob Spitz, a keeper of numerous rock ’n’ roll flames, has turned out a colorful and authoritative new take on a much-documented band" (NYT).

Here's the book: "THE ROLLING STONES: The Biography," by Bob Spitz (commission earned). I might buy it. It wouldn't be the first book about The Rolling Stones for me. I read Keith Richards' autobiography. Somehow all I remember is him as a little kid keeping a mouse in his pocket. Blogged here.

But anyway, downloading the Kindle of the Spitz book just so I can do a word search on "mohair" is exactly the kind of thing I would do.

"Look, I'm 30 years old. Not one of my friends has children. Zero. No one. No one's having kids."

"Do you know how hard you need to abuse a mammal to make them not have children? Like, for real? Let's step back a moment, right?... Look, GDP goes up. People have enough food and whatever. No one's having kids. And this is across the world. This is across both the West, the East, everywhere it's happening. So why do I not have kids?... Do you know what dating app algorithms do?... They don't optimize for you to meet the love of your life. They optimize for you to keep coming back to the app.... We have treated technology as a wild west. Absolutely. Just everyone can do whatever they want. Oh, just sell all of our younger generations' dating lives to corporations for profit. And who pays the cost for this? Who has liability for every person who doesn't find the love of their life because the whole dating market is fucked up? Who pays for this? No one. There is no responsibility. It's completely worthless. And these dating companies, they're not even profitable...."

That's Connor Leahy, and I've got a problem with his abuse-a-mammal theory. Of course, he meant to say "Do you know how hard you need to abuse a non-human mammal to make them not have children?" But non-human mammals don't have access to birth control (and abortion).

Is the Biden administration responsible for the loss of Spirit?

Here’s Mayor Pete announcing the Biden administration’s decision to fight the Jet Blue and Spirit merger so they could protect consumers and ensure low fares. Now the airline doesn’t exist and passengers are stranded across the country. pic.twitter.com/u7TXdwG9vj

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) May 2, 2026

When late-night comedians found censorship deeply seductive.

The Late Night show hosts were so giddy and celebratory after Trump was banned from social media.

They absolutely LOVE censorship until someone accusing one of them of crossing the line. Then they become supporters of free speech.pic.twitter.com/7igDcNzvXn

— MAZE (@mazemoore) May 2, 2026