"Maybe such freaks should come to power — those who aren’t afraid of anything, who just do things — at least there are visible changes."

Said Svetlana Popova-Znamenskaya, who "stayed in Vologda to establish an architecture practice where she restores wooden houses and builds furniture" and has "a showroom with a specialty coffee shop opposite the local Kremlin and the new monument to Ivan the Terrible."

Quoted in "He Shut Liquor Stores and Banned Abortion, All for the Glory of Russia/A firebrand governor aims to transform his region into a laboratory for the Kremlin’s reactionary ideals" (NYT)(gift like).

"He" = Georgy Y. Filimonov, "the governor of the northern region of Vologda," who has "vigorously embraced the sort of 'traditional Russian values' espoused by the Kremlin, asserting Vologda as an undistilled bastion of 'Russianness.'"

And here's a quote from Misha Priyemyshev, "a designer who worked on branding for the city before Mr. Filimonov’s arrival": "Everything is very slow here, like in a true swamp. That swamp has a lot of power — the more you move in it, the more it sucks you in."

"Our investigators lost critical hours tracking down today’s shooting suspects because Austin’s City Council chose politics over public safety...."

Our investigators lost critical hours tracking down today’s shooting suspects because Austin’s City Council chose politics over public safety and prevented APD from using license plate readers and other crime-fighting technology.

Those cameras could have helped identify suspect… https://t.co/yp4ZKdLc1a

— Michael Bullock (@MBullockATX) May 18, 2026

Here's an AP report from half an hour ago: "3 young people arrested in series of random shootings across Austin that left 4 injured." I wonder how do they know its random? They're calling it a "series." It might have been coordinated.

Equality? Ridiculous!

There's no way in the world that 7 of the top 14 novels here were written by women.

In fact, there's only one really great novel written by a woman in the past 200 years and that's Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchel.

I'd rate it as the greatest American novel of all time. https://t.co/6OJWFjTDk9

— Ted Joy (@TedJoy71) May 16, 2026

Here's the Guardian's explanation, "Who’s in, who’s out, and how many have you read? The story behind our 100 best novels list":

The women-empowering-women genre of political ad.

This new Spencer Pratt ad may be somewhat innovative in its forthright use of AI:

“You are not alone.” Yoga moms, silent majority, and a preference cascade all in one. Whether or not Angelenos elect @spencerpratt as LA mayor, he and his team are revolutionizing politics. pic.twitter.com/l4pwOSmNUH

— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) May 17, 2026

But it reminded me of something else that got plenty of attention not too long ago. I'll bet you remember this Kamala Harris ad:

Both ads depict women as inhibited in expressing their personal political preference but speaking woman-to-woman and conquering that inhibition. 

Sunrise in the rain.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

The flowers are Golden Alexander. 

"[T]he foundation of Mr. Colbert’s success was something new to late night: hard-core, point-of-view political comedy."

"He had developed it while contributing to 'The Daily Show' on Comedy Central. A broadcast network, steeped in the traditional 'both sides' style of Johnny Carson, was going to expect him to drop that as well as the character. CBS did; Mr. Colbert tried. It didn’t work.... The network says it decided to end 'The Late Show' because it was losing at least $40 million a year. Sounds credible, doesn’t it? Maybe not.... In forcing Mr. Colbert out and shutting down a 33-year late-night franchise — while selling that post-local-news hour of airtime to a syndicated show instead of replacing him with an original program of its own creation — CBS is assenting to its own diminishment. The biggest loss is to core America values, such as the right to speak freely, even in brutally mocking terms, about those in power. Then there is the opportunity, shared by everyone, to find and be entertained by voices like that on a free national platform, or to turn them off and watch something else."

Writes Bill Carter, author of “The Late Shift” and “The War for Late Night,” in "CBS Cancels Itself, Not Just Colbert" (NYT).

The biggest criticism I'm seeing there is the failure to put something new — "an original program of its own creation" — in that slot. But maybe they know that slot is doomed. People don't watch TV the way we used to. Staying up/getting into bed early to spend that last waking hour with Johnny lest you miss the whole thing forever — there's no going back to that. 

Who jumps out of bed to answer the doorbell?

I'm reading this interview, in The London Times, with Tori Amos:

What do you wear to bed?

A slip. If I’m alone, I’ll also have, on the floor, a pair of cut-off blue jeans shorts, a Rick Owens bomber (above) and a pair of white Roxy sneakers just in case somebody rings the doorbell.

Fear of blue and desperate clinging to "character-defining grey."

"The resurfacing will dramatically and permanently transform the character-defining grey, achromatic appearance of the reflecting pool basin. The new colouration will cause the pool to resemble a large swimming pool rather than the reflective civic landscape it was designed to be, distorting the experience of the site for the millions of visitors who come to it each year."

So said the Cultural Landscape Foundation, a Washington society, quoted in The London Times, which looks like this, going all in on AI imagery:

I was going to ding the the Cultural Landscape Foundation for writing "grey" instead of "gray," but when I saw "colouration," I had to assume that The London Times imposes its British spellings on quoted material.

It's funny how people are getting cranked up over the color blue. The Foundation associates blue with backyard summer fun incompatible with what the reflective pool is supposed to be.

"His disloyalty to the man who got him elected is now a part of legend, and it’s nice to see that his political career is OVER."

Said Trump, in social media, quoted in "Trump Gets Revenge Against Republican Who Voted to Convict Him" (Bloomburg).

In a 3-candidate primary, Cassidy came in third, the other 2 advance to a runoff. Trump's candidate, Julia Letlow, came in first.

Conceding, Cassidy said "I find that people of character and integrity don’t spend their time attacking people on the internet."

"They know that American society is going to turn against them in big ways because they are the greatest and most illegitimate pirates who ever lived."

"Tech is the single most powerful force that was ever arrayed against the humanities. There is a huge difference between knowledge and information, and these asinine people have taught our population that all of knowledge can be reduced to the status of information. Press a button, you got your answer. So the whole humanistic mentality of mystery, obscurity, patience, beauty — it’s the opposite of what this technology has inculcated."

Said Leon Wieseltier, Maureen Dowd, in "What A.I. Kant Do" (NYT). Wieseltier is identified only as "editor of the journal Liberties," but I needed more context, so:

Yes, tell me about the the whole humanistic mentality of mystery, obscurity, patience, beauty under siege by the greatest and most illegitimate pirates who ever lived.

I wondered why Dowd — or whoever wrote the headline — went with the stale pun "Kant" when they could have used "Oh, the humanities!" But though I came up with that on my own and was going to use it as a kicker at the end of this post, a quick google showed it's been used and used and used.

It was even famously used, 15 years ago, as a punchline on "The Big Bang Theory":

"Well, then, prepare to be terrified. If your friends are unconvincing, this year's donations might go to say the geology department... or worse it could go to the liberal arts. Millions of dollars being showered on poets literary theorists and students of gender studies"/"Oh, the humanities!"