The last sunrise of spring.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

The summer solstice arrives here at 3:24 a.m. There's nothing really to go out and look at. One can only find the solstice in your mind. Perhaps there is a ritual to externalize whatever spiritual feeling you have about the solstice. There is the idea of arriving at one's sunrise vantage point early — sunrise isn't until 5:18 — but the sign says the place is closed after 10 at night and before 4 in the morning.

Here's another photo of the milkweed in the golden hour light.

"Ludovico Mazzarolli, a constitutional expert, told the Italian daily Corriere della Sera that a €50 ticket would exclude visitors unable to pay and violate the Italian constitution’s insistence on free circulation within Italy."

From "Venice mayor faces backlash over ‘barbarous’ entry fee increase/Plans to curb overtourism in the lagoon city by increasing day tickets to €50 face opposition after lower prices failed to change visitor behaviour" (London Times).

The weeds — milk and butterfly.

At 5:22 a.m. on the last day of spring:

The Mystery of the Paint Peel.

Link.

Getting Into the Weeds/Or: Even a Turtle Can Be Slowed Down.

"He came in strategically prepared to disarm us with niceness.... It worked on you, didn't work on me."

Ana Navarro: “[Vice President JD Vance] also came in… strategically prepared to disarm us with niceness. He came in being affable and laughing easily and being very nice. I mean, it worked on you, [Joy]. Didn't work on me.” pic.twitter.com/CKDFqQesGp

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) June 19, 2026

"On the second floor of their home right by the National Mall, Melania has the master bedroom all to herself."

"Her husband Donald goes to bed in what used to be a living room. But with a little creative thinking, as Kevin McCloud would say on Grand Designs, he has transformed it into a curated sleep space all of his own.... Trump appeared... to be engaged in a decorating arms race with Melania in the room next door. Trump was 'determined to have the better room'.... To this end he was said to have removed gold pieces that his wife had selected for the hallway and brought them into his own bedroom to sleep among them.... Sleep scientists, and Cameron Diaz, will tell you that separate bedrooms does not imply an unhappy marriage...."

From "Trump 'steals Melania’s decor to make his bedroom better than hers'/The latest insight into life inside the White House pits the president against his wife in a decorating arms race" (London Times).

The details in that article are taken from the new book "Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump" by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan (commission earned).

"[Michelle] Obama called [George W.] Bush 'a wonderful man' and 'a funny man.' 'I love him to death,' she said...."

"'It turns out the country is starved to see a White center-right Republican and an African American center-left Democrat having fun and being able to converse, not as political figures, but as citizens,' Bush said."

From "George W. Bush gifts Michelle Obama a tin of Altoids at Obama Center opening in an ode to their friendship" (CBS News).

"You don't have to tip. You wanna tip."

An Aussie discovers Texas Road House for the first time. Epic!

The World Cup needs to be permanently held in the US. It offers the most for the teams and the fans. 🤣🇺🇸🇦🇺 pic.twitter.com/5AFbUVWrFZ

— Buzz Patterson (@BuzzPatterson) June 19, 2026

AND: Costco has your beans:

Culture shock… Europeans in America pic.twitter.com/fxxgdHqKng

— Meidas_Charise Lee (@charise_lee) June 19, 2026

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"Well, now we finally know what would happen if The Wall Street Journal and Us Weekly had a baby. In a piece titled 'Everyone in Trump’s Cabinet Is Eating Sauerkraut'..."

"... the Journal reports that various White House officials are shedding pounds thanks to a hot new diet that involves eating lots of fermented foods, like sauerkraut and kimchi.... There’s just one drawback: 'sulferous odors' have caused some 'friction at home.'... HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was, naturally, the first to jump on the trend. Now he’s converted Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, Transportation secretary Sean Duffy, and Vice-President J.D. Vance. We’re told that the men have been getting compliments on their 'glowing skin' and seeing various health benefits, including dramatic weight loss.... [S]everal Cabinet members have been looking svelter, and what other explanation could there be? It’s not like there’s some new magical weight-loss drug out there!"

Writes Margaret Hartmann, in "Sure, the Trump Cabinet’s Weight-Loss Secret Is Definitely 'Sauerkraut'" (New York Magazine).

"Would I rather watch the cast of 'Hamilton' at the White House than men pummeling each other into bloody pulps?"

"You bet. But there’s a chasmic difference between brilliant Broadway performers and hyped-up men kicking and punching for spectacle. I can’t bear to think what the rest of the world sees when it watches the most powerful country on Earth, the heart of democracy, descend from the hilltop into the primal muck where man-as-beast triumphs over the sublime. (That’s me being polite.)"

Writes Kathleen Parker, in "Trump’s big, beautiful brawl was the worst birthday present ever/A $60 million South Lawn cage match cheapened the People’s House" (WaPo).

"[If] the jury were to find Mangione guilty while accepting the emotional disturbance defence, they would have to convict him of manslaughter."

"That would carry a sentence of up to 25 years in prison, rather than murder, which could mean a life sentence. An extreme emotional disturbance defence only applies to defendants in New York state who are accused of murder. It differs from a 'not guilty by reason of insanity' defence, which would allow a defendant to go to a psychiatric facility instead of prison...."

From "Luigi Mangione withdraws plans for psychiatric defence at murder trial/Lawyers earlier said they would argue the Ivy League graduate, 28, was suffering from ‘extreme emotional disturbance’ when he allegedly shot Brian Thompson" (London Times).

"Days after his arrest and before Mangione retained her as his lead attorney, [Karen Friedman] Agnifilo told CNN that a psychiatric defence could be the right move for him. 'There might be a not guilty by reason of insanity defence that they’re going to be thinking about, because the evidence is going to be so overwhelming that he did what he did,' Friedman Agnifilo, then a CNN legal analyst, told the network."

"The videos are all over social media... Go ahead and let A.I. do your homework — with the latest technology, you won’t get caught...."

"Humanizers rewrite A.I.-produced text to make it sound less robotic, formulaic and trite. Autotypers slowly drip words and sentences into documents, making it appear as if papers were typed at a human pace when in fact, they were produced by A.I. They even fabricate typos, deletions and revisions. Both tools can help students evade software designed to detect A.I.... In some cases, the very same companies selling detection tools are also making apps that allow students to cheat...."

From "Student Cheating Is Becoming Impossible to Detect in an A.I. Era/Big tech companies and small start-ups are using social media to hype new tools that allow students to trick teachers and A.I. detectors" (NYT).

"['The Ring,'] a remake of a Japanese film, 'Ringu,' received mixed reviews, but the image of Samara crawling through a blurry television screen became seared in the cultural memory..."

"... and Ms. Chase won the award for best villain at the 2003 MTV Movie Awards. That year she returned to Lilo in the sequel 'Stitch! The Movie' and in the 'Lilo & Stitch' TV series, which ran from 2003 to 2006. She then transitioned to her biggest TV role yet. In HBO’s 'Big Love' — which chronicled the trials and tribulations of Mormon polygamists — she starred as Rhonda Volmer, a cunning 14-year-old bride in waiting, in 32 episodes between 2006 to 2011...."

From "Daveigh Chase, ‘Lilo & Stitch’ Voice Actor and ‘The Ring’ Villain, Dies at 35" (NYT). Chase died of "complications of bacterial meningitis and a blood infection" while she was "homeless and living in Los Angeles with her boyfriend."

UPDATE, June 30, 2026: Now, the report is that Daveigh Chase died of AIDS.

Accepting accolades.

Patience rewarded.

"Wordle’s Hard Mode Is Actually Easier, 730 Million Games Show."

The NYT reports, and here's a gift link. I've always played in hard mode. I don't know if that's because my intuition told me it was easier or because I could see it would be more fun, but it certainly wasn't in order to make it harder on myself.

Players in hard mode solve in fewer turns on average.... Those in hard mode have a lower rate of failing to solve in six turns.... Hard mode seems to help players avoid poor choices.... Standard-mode players have more freedom but often don’t know how to use it. Not needing to use revealed letters, they have many more choices on their second and third turns.

David Epstein, author of “Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better,” said in an interview that in any area of life, “when options are really large” there’s a tendency to “back out of a decision or make a poor one.” Citing the cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham, he said the brain is mostly not for thinking, but for preventing you from thinking. “It’s wired for convenience, the easy thing, the first thing to pop to mind,” he said, while constraints can paradoxically lead to creativity and productivity....

I get it. We're supposed to think: The choice of hard mode or easy mode in Wordle is like a choice we make in how to live our life. And that's why you might want to stick to tradition (if you are conservative) or have government experts eliminate most of the choices (if you are progressive).

Sunrise.

Talk about whatever you want in the comments.

"You did it all with such grace and class and cool that you made the hardest job in the world look like a walk in this beautiful park."

Said Michelle Obama, as "Mr. Obama looked down and wiped away tears."

She's quoted in "Presidents Line Up for Obama’s Long-Awaited Center in Chicago/Thursday’s opening drew four former presidents, as well as Bruce Springsteen, Bono and Jennifer Hudson. Chicago has seen years of planning and legal fights" (NYT).

Biden was there too, bearing with unbearable sorrow:

At the Prairie Café...

... you can talk all afternoon.

(Video by Meade.)

"It was just like: I want to win the social competition. I want to be better than other people. And I wanted to go to the best school..."

"... so I got into Yale Law School. And I wanted the best jobs, and I wanted to make the most money. But the thing I realized is that this kind of striving had made me pretty hollow. It had made me less interesting than some of the Christians that I know who seemed to have things figured out much better than the 'elites' that I had surrounded myself with. And I just started searching for something that answered the more important questions, like: How do you be a good father? How do you be a good husband? So one way that I would put this is, and this goes back to the personal relationship thing, is, yes, I do think religion serves a socially useful role. I think the evidence is quite clear that people and families that are raised with some sort of institutionalized faith are happier and healthier and more well-adjusted. But I also think: Isn’t that evidence that there’s something about Christianity that’s particularly true? That if these people who believe these things and practice the faith in these ways — I come back to this phrase, I think it’s from the Book of Matthew: 'By your fruits you shall know them.'"

Says JD Vance, quoted in "JD Vance on the Morality of the Trump Administration/I asked the vice president what is Christian about this White House" (NYT).

Truth = what works.

"La la la la."

That's the call from the press as Trump arrives at Versailles Palace. 

Is that how reporters try to get a leader's attention in France? I don't think so. I think they would normally use "Mr. President." So is "La la la la" like shouting "Hey!"? No, I don't think that's the case either. I'm understanding "La la la la" as a more random filler sound. I consulted Grok: "'La la la la' functions more like rhythmic, attention-grabbing noise or an extension of the French interjection "Oh là là!" (often elongated for emphasis)."

"But they have a new group of leaders that I think is, uh, actually I think they're smarter. I think they're very smart. I think they're far less radicalized."

"And I think they're, uh, I think they're really good. They love their country. You know, you talk about regime change, nobody will say that. But I guess that's, look, their one set of leaders is all gone. Their second set of leaders is all gone. Their third set of leaders a little bit gone. But for the most part, and frankly, I think that's regime change. I think they're going to behave much differently. I think they see a different way of life that they were never exposed to. So the one thing I didn't want to see is I didn't want to see economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have happened. But all I know is every time we talked about the possibility of peace, the stock market shot up like a rocket ship. It never went down. They didn't like it. The people, you know, the stock market is more brilliant than anybody there is, including the people on the stage, other than me, of course.... What do you think, Scott? Is the stock market more brilliant than you?... And, uh, every time we said something amazing like we're going to settle, it would go up. And every time we said something negative like — guess what? — we're not going to be able to settle. It would go down.... And the one president I did not want to be was the late great Herbert Hoover. I didn't want that. And who knows what would have happened, but bad things happen. ..."

Sunrise on a rainy Wednesday...

"But, without Mamaw around to guide him, JD lost his faith in God. 'With her gone, no one really cared about my faith, and soon I stopped caring too.'"

"By 2006 'I was no longer, in any real sense, a Christian.' Instead, he took up the winner-takes-all, blessed-are-the-rich philosophy of Ayn Rand, which he summarises as 'stop whining, stop praying, and start working your ass off.' Hers was the materialistic faith he followed through Ohio State University and most of Yale Law School, where they regarded Christianity as 'a weird superstition.' He now thinks his loss of faith was not primarily intellectual, but the inevitable result of transferring his political allegiance to an ungodly liberal elite. 'It was the equivalent of divorce. I was severing myself from my roots.' But then, around 2014, after he’d fallen in love and got married, he began to see that by becoming 'so focused on winning the game of life… I had neglected the deeper truth.'"

From "God, guns and 'Mamaw' — JD Vance’s memoir is part rant, part sermon/In Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, the US vice-president explains why the liberal elite pushed him into the arms of the Church — and Donald Trump" (London Times).

"So I decided to ask them: Can you tell me what, exactly, you like about ultimate fighting?..."

"I couldn’t get my 18-year-old to talk about it, but my 15-year-old — a thoughtful kid who last week told me, 'U.F.C. literally takes up 99 percent of my brain space' — was happy to oblige. He explained in excruciating detail the various weight classes and fighting techniques.... 'I know it’s marketing, I really do, but their characters are so entertaining and their work ethic really impresses me.' Another thing he finds compelling about U.F.C., he said, is how 'real' it is. Most professional sports are 'fictional' made-up games in which people throw or kick or hit round rubber things in order to amuse themselves and a bunch of strangers. Fighting, he pointed out, is primal, 'in our blood'...."

Writes Hope Reeves, in "My Teenage Sons Love U.F.C. Here’s What We Saw at the White House Cage Match" (NYT).

"The performance turned out to be a string of gags about Bankman-Fried’s and Diddy’s sins that largely spared Mangione of the worst ridicule."

"It instead featured running jokes about how parts of the internet find him attractive, while the titular character is gifted love ballads, literally and metaphorically. His cast members call him a 'prodigy' and a 'legend.' His response: 'I’m not a celebrity. I’m just a normal, exceedingly handsome guy. To make matters worse, they all sing...."

From "'Luigi: The Musical' is a fever dream from hell/The show isn’t meant to 'glorify violence,' but it does. The protesters outside, meanwhile, think it doesn’t go far enough" (WaPo)(gift link).

"The musical has a bare-bones plot, practically no choreography and nothing in the way of a set apart from a couple of chairs and one prop, a gun. All that could be forgiven in a staged reading, but what is glaringly absent is any serious mention of [Brian] Thompson’s name or the wife and two sons he left behind. It’s clear the show’s creators think they have tapped into some profound observation of the nihilistic trends running through today’s culture: our numb responses to mass violence, the disintegration of societal trust. 'What kind of sick f---- would buy tickets to something like that?,' the characters lament onstage about the musical, in what’s meant to be a self-critical, meta moment...."

"I think they think I was right. I’m sort of always right, you know, when you get down to it."

"They think I was right. They feel good. Now all of a sudden they all want to be involved."

Said — it's so obvious (who talks like that?) — Trump.

Quoted in "G-7 ends without rupture as allies praise Trump for ending Iran war/For the other leaders of the Group of Seven nations, success was defined as avoiding a public fight with the U.S. president" (WaPo).

The same allies that have worked to build economic, diplomatic and military hedges against Trump’s unpredictability found themselves applauding his role in restoring a measure of stability.... 

"This way, if it works, I take the credit. If not, I blame JD! You better be careful, JD!"

🚨 LMFAO!! Funniest president ever 🤣🤣

DOOCY: Why not stick around in Europe for the Iran deal signing this weekend?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I might, but this is a Memorandum of Understanding...if it works, I take the credit. If not, I blame JD! You better be careful, JD! He's gonna… pic.twitter.com/O1h8TVsLbX

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) June 17, 2026

"The storm comes and splits at the White House and goes around the White House and the Ellipse. The President believes that… it was divine intervention."

Dana White on the storm going around UFC Freedom 250: “The storm comes and splits at the White House and goes around the White House and the Ellipse. The President believes that… it was divine intervention.” pic.twitter.com/uWFETwVL9H

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) June 17, 2026

This skirt is messing Obama up.

Barack Obama "is really messed up. I'm giving him some time because this beautiful skirt that my stylist Meredith Koop picked out that is my favorite portrait of my mom. He didn't know it existed until just a few minutes ago. I've had a few weeks to settle down"
- Michelle Obama pic.twitter.com/YbjPXRy0OS

— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) June 16, 2026

ADDED: I've seen faces on shirts but I can't remember ever seeing a face on clothing below the waist. I went looking and found this from Jean Paul Gaultier in the 1990s. I think it works because the faces are small and numerous, making it not that different from, say, a floral print.

One giant face, larger than the face of the wearer, feels quite obtrusive. But it's long been accepted above the waist. How long have those things been around? I remember the Che Guevara shirts, circa 1970, but what was the original T-shirt with a big face? My quick research says it was probably the Thomas E. Dewey 1948 U.S. presidential campaign T-shirt — Dewey's face and the slogan "Dew-it with Dewey."

"Lately, it seems that many women — perhaps especially white millennial ones — are indulging in the same fantasy."

"According to endless social-media posts and group-chat messages, Adult life sucks lately. I’m opting out. It’s as if a generation raised on the dream of the girl boss has become disillusioned by the promise that hard work will get us anywhere (and to be fair, there’s no guarantee that it will). Struggle is for chumps! 'I’m just a girl,' and I don’t want to learn about balancing my checkbook or filing expense reports or how to parallel park. The 2020s have been a weird time for womanhood. (Then again, when hasn’t it?) Greta Gerwig’s record-smashing Barbie, more phenomenon than movie, and Taylor Swift’s mind-bogglingly profitable Eras Tour had women spending collective billions to proudly and unapologetically relive their sparkly, pink-tulled girlhoods. Fashion has trended toward the young and feminine, too: : ribbons and bows, beads and sparkles, mary janes and ballet flats. By the end of 2023, Isabel Cristo wrote in this magazine, 'The market [had] conspired to sell us one thing, rendered every which way, and that thing was: girl.' Ours is a time in which 'the only way to have fun [it seems, is] by turning away from adult womanhood wholesale and toward a breezy, bright alternative. Instead of politics, can I interest you in some blissful, childlike ignorance?'"

Writes Shannon Keating, in "Confessions of a Recovering Baby Woman On the enduring fantasy of being 'just a girl” — and how I finally decided to get a grip and grow up" (The Cut).

Panorama at 5:09 a.m.

"Last Friday Kuzovkov protested outside the Russian embassy in Berlin with a satirical painting of Putin and Joseph Stalin."

"It depicted a tiny Putin sitting on Stalin’s lap. He also stuffed a Russian flag into a bin during the protest, which was staged on the Russia Day national holiday.... On Saturday Kuzovkov posted a painting on Telegram showing [Chechen leader Ramzan] Kadyrov and his teenage son, Adam, as pigs. His work included sexually explicit images of Kadyrov that suggested the Chechen leader was gay. He also mocked Apti Alaudinov, the commander of Chechnya’s Akhmat special forces unit...."

From "He made Putin look grotesque. A gunman shot him dead in a car park/Two Belarusians have been arrested over the killing of Robert Kuzovkov in Poland. The case may be murkier than it first appears" (London Times).

  

They had to know this would happen: "Trump’s $14m 'American flag blue' reflecting pool turns green with algae."

I'm reading the news in The London Times.

[E]xperts who warned that the dark blue colour would absorb more sunlight than the original light grey concrete and become a perfect environment for algae to bloom were quickly proven correct... This week workers appeared with bottles of hydrogen peroxide that they poured into the 6.75 million gallon pool. Officials said that this would work with the new ozone-injected nanobubble filtration system that was supposed to combat the growth of algae... “This is some six-and-a-half million gallons of water we’re talking about here, so that’s a lot of bottles of anything that you’d have to add,” Steve Goodale, a pool maintenance expert.... “But the hydrogen peroxide is an oxidizer itself, in the same way that the nanobubbler system is, so the two systems are essentially the same thing, just a different approach to it.”

I hope they fix it, but for now, it's at least embarrassing.

Sunrise.

Talk about whatever you want in the comments.

JD Vance gets a word in edgewise on "The View."

It's not easy, but he keeps his cool and maintains a friendly manner even as the women try very hard to put on the pressure: 

Whoopi Goldberg asks JD Vance why the Trump Administration is "stigmatizing" black people.

*JD Vance asks for specific examples*

Whoopi: "Ummmm Uhhhhh Ummmm" pic.twitter.com/mPPon5eprX

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) June 16, 2026

"Politicians’ constant compulsion to blame the gap between policy victories and political support simply on poor communications, or worse, poor 'messaging,' is a bit too pat..."

"... both self-serving and self-exonerating. If only they knew about all the great things I’ve done! But Biden — who, by late in his term, 'had become among the most inaccessible presidents in modern history,' Timothy Naftali of Columbia University writes — did himself few favors on that front. 'He did not just fail to tout his achievements; he seldom even tried,' Michael Kazin, a historian at Georgetown, complains.... In her memoir, Jill Biden reimagines her husband’s communications struggles as something between a mistake and a virtue. 'While Joe was in office, I think he and I both erred on the side of silence, dignity and letting news cycles run their course,' she explains.... 'We were trying so hard to reassure everyone that we didn’t take the time to acknowledge that he looked very unwell in that debate, to say to the public: 'Yes. That was bad, no doubt.'"

Writes Carlos Lozada, in "The Verdict on Biden Is In" (NYT).

Raindrops on purple water.

"The comments express widespread skepticism and disbelief regarding the claim that the FBI thwarted an attack targeting a UFC event at the White House."

"Many commenters question the credibility of Kash Patel and the administration, suggesting the story is fabricated or exaggerated. There is also criticism of the administration's motives, with some suggesting it is a distraction or a ploy to justify security measures like a ballroom. Overall, the sentiment is one of distrust and ridicule."

That's the automated summary of the comments section at The Washington Post article, "FBI thwarted attack targeting UFC event at White House, director says/People have been taken into custody in connection with the alleged planned attack on the UFC event Sunday that President Donald Trump attended, FBI Director Kash Patel said."

ADDED: I think there are always threats against the President, so the question is why are we hearing about this one? It seems rational to assume it's because it serves the administration's political interests. Nothing happened that we saw, so it wasn't like the Correspondents' Dinner incident. So... I'm skeptical too.

"Her famous dad was mostly absent for the first six years of her life, but she still manages to write about him with the sort of girlish affection..."

"... that many daughters reserve for their fathers. Things weren’t always so pretty. Her father was raised in a brothel in Peoria, Ill., where he witnessed the constant terror of violence and rape. His father was a pimp. His grandmother, who raised him, ran the family sex business. But Pryor escaped, using comedy as an outlet for his trauma...."

Writes Lauretta Charlton, in "Richard Pryor’s Daughter Grapples With a Flawed Father and a Hateful Word/Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor’s new book, 'Something We Said,' is at once a memoir and a history of a racial slur" (NYT).

It sounds as though the book expands on Pryor's TED Talk from 2019. Pryor, the daughter, became a history teacher, and she had an experience with a student quoting a line from "Blazing Saddles" — which her father co-wrote — and saying the "n-word" as part of the quote. She asked "Why not connect [Richard Pryor's] legacy with her own by becoming a foremost scholar of the n-word?"

Here's the TED Talk:

Side note: I'm reading about Richard Pryor's contributions to the "Blazing Saddles" script and see that he was especially pleased with this line:

"In the country’s wealthiest enclaves, like New York City and Miami, concealment has become the defining aspect of the contemporary kitchen."

"What began with 'appliance garages' and refrigerators and dishwashers that look like cabinets has evolved into a far more ambitious practice of disguise, with custom millwork and technology obscuring everything from sinks and cooktops to electrical outlets and small appliances."

I'm reading "In New Luxury Kitchens, Everything Is Hidden — Even the Sink Camouflaging the fridge is just the beginning for high-end kitchens" in The New York Times, which often lets its adoration of wealth show.

I'm blogging this because I love to use my tag "seen and unseen" and because I find this photograph — "a marble island with a retractable countertop that conceals an induction stovetop and sink" — hilarious:

It looks like a sarcophagus.

Now, how rich are the people who get things like that installed in their homes?

Sunrise.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments.

"I even talked to her. I have a habit of joking and saying, ‘Nobody dies on my shift.’ And I told her, 'Duda [Eduarda], nobody dies on my shift.' Even though I wasn’t on my shift there."

Said a nurse named Rayza Dias, quoted in "Bungee jumper who plunged from 130-foot bridge without a cord was still alive when she was found, nurse reveals" (NY Post).

From the comments over there: "I just don't get how not one but two [actually, three] bungee 'professionals' can literally be carrying a jumper across the platform and fail to notice there is no bungee cord attached to the jumper! Then again, how can a jumper fail to notice there is no bungee cord attached to themself? BTW, does anyone know how common it is for jumpers to be carried and tossed off the platform vs. jumpers walking the platform and diving off it on their own steam?"

"Keep a constant watch on the doubtful voters, and from time to time have them talked to by those in whom they have the most confidence."

Wrote Abraham Lincoln, in an 1840 letter, quoted by Ben Wikler, in "My State Was a 'Democracy Desert.' This Is How We Turned It Around" (NYT)(gift link)

"My State" = Wisconsin. Ben was chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party from 2019 to 2025. 

He continues: "There’s a name for that approach today: 'relational organizing.' It starts with the recognition that people will be more open to a new message if they trust the messenger. So if you want to build a movement, build trust. Seek to do this outside of your own political bubble, because the people who are most apt to change their minds about politics are generally the people who are the least interested in it. Your goal should be to join or build a group that engages voters who don’t live, sleep, eat and breathe politics — in a barbershop, at a fish fry or at a farmers’ market."

I wrote about the term "relational organizing" back in 2023 — here — based on a WaPo piece the quoted Wikler. I said:

A woman dies and this is how she is remembered? For her "burning hatred for Trump"?

Now, this is just very sad. Imagine dying and that's the headline — how you burned with hate. Thanks, family. Thanks for remembering the hate.

Can you think of any other example of a person of note whose admirers remember them after their death for their burning hatred? I resorted to AI to search for examples of this kind of post-death praise for hating and I couldn't find one example. The closest I came was Muhammad Ali. He "hated" Frazier. Said things like "It's gonna be a killa and a chilla and a thrilla when I get that gorilla in Manila." 

"Greenland is the largest island in the world, but it has fewer than fifty-seven thousand residents, who are mostly scattered..."

"... among settlements and towns along its western coast. Although it belongs to the Kingdom of Denmark, it lies to the west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and is part of North America. The latest articulation of the U.S.’s National Security Strategy, published in November, frames Trump’s imperial ambitions as an extension of the Monroe Doctrine, the assertion by President James Monroe, in 1823, that any attempt by European powers to further colonize the Americas would be treated as 'dangerous to our peace and safety.' Under Trump’s leadership, the N.S.S. says, “we will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.'"

Writes Ben Taub, in "Inside the Ludicrous, Deadly Serious Plan to Take Over Greenland/'We want Greenland,' Trump said. Four men sprang into action to make fantasy a reality" (The New Yorker).

Adding tags to this post, I hesitated over whether to use "geography" or "geology" or both. The part about Denmark "owning" or "colonizing" Greenland is obviously geography and not geology, so "geography" is a good tag for this post. But I want to underscore that Greenland is part of the North American continent. To get rid of the politics and human culture and speak of it geologically, Grok pointed me to the Wikipedia article "Laurentia":

Among the celebrities at the UFC Freedom 250 festivities: The Holy Uncle.

Vice President JD Vance hanging out with Pope Leo’s brother, the Holy Uncle, at the UFC Freedom 250 Fight Night at the White House.

This is the greatest timeline in human history. pic.twitter.com/W3xZPkNhtU

— Thomas Hern (@ThomasMHern) June 15, 2026

Those who like to call out Trump for his narcissism got a big disappointment last night as the supposed birthday party was not a birthday party at all.

The event was called UFC Freedom 250, and, true to that name, it turned out to be about the UFC and the United States of America.

3 days before his birthday, Trump had said — quoted at USA Today — "You don't have to wish me happy birthday because I'm not happy about that birthday that I'm having. That's a number that I never thought really too much about. It's not a number I like, but I'm here, nevertheless."

And at that huge event on the White House lawn on the evening of his birthday, last night, I don't think there was even a passing mention of his birthday.

All I am seeing is a spontaneous welling-up of the song "Happy Birthday" in the crowd:

If that was planned, it was planned to seem unplanned. It's entirely unconnected to anything happening in the Octagon.

Trump walked out of the White House with some fanfare, but he was side-by-side with Dana White, and that thwarted the hater's interpretation that Trump expected it to be all about him.

He took his seat ringside and mostly just sat there smiling. At the end, he entered the Octagon, but not to be celebrated. He was congratulating the fighters and giving them a photo-op to celebrate themselves.

Sunrise.

Talk about whatever you want in the comments.

"The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete. Congratulations to all!"

"I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade. Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow! President DONALD J. TRUMP"

Writes Trump, at Truth Social.

Out for the sunrise (and looking at a bird).

Deploying the TR precedent to promote fighting at the White House.

UFC just dropped a killer AI promo for tomorrow’s White House event featuring Theodore Roosevelt boxing 🥊🔥pic.twitter.com/W8wu2yFP6b

— TaraBull (@TaraBull) June 14, 2026

The video, from UFC, quotes from Theodore Roosevelt's idea of "the man in the arena." I've put up the full text of it in the past — here — but it's worth having at your fingertips today, as Trump celebrates his 80th birthday. Does this describe Trump?

Lake Mendota sandcastle.

That was yesterday. Here's what Meade was capturing:

"Everything about 'the Claw' feels tawdry, especially when they turn on the lights, which send bolts of blue and white illumination down the 154-foot interlocking steel arches...."

I'm reading "Joe Rogan called the White House UFC event ‘so America.’ He’s right. The 'Claw' bursting out of the White House grounds is the perfect metaphor for the moment, injecting bloody spectacle into the country’s birthday celebration" in the Washington Post

I'm reading that because it's by the Post's architecture critic, Philip Kennicott. He writes:

[T]he UFC match isn’t about celebrating the foundational myths of American democracy. It inhabits a landscape of darker myths, like the perpetual struggle of the frontier, the faux chivalry and resentments of the Lost Cause, the Darwinian drama of survival in a world of hostile forces, enemies, chaos....

Trump takes pleasure in presiding over conflict. The world comes to him, where he, the perpetual winner, lords over contests, over victories and defeats. You’re fired. You don’t hold any winning cards. You’ve lost the match. For many Americans, there is nothing surreal about this delight in domination. It simply reflects the world they live in, where people are losing all the time, at the gas pump, at dead-end jobs, in marriages that founder on the shoals of stress and poverty....

"The really worst part about being 80 is that you find, at last, you’ve got an understanding of something that might have altered everything in the past, had it come at a time when something could still be altered."

"When you’re young you think that time moves forward. At 80 you know that it doesn’t, it stands still. We’re the ones that move."

Writes Bob Dylan, answering the NYT's question what are the best things and the worst things about being 80, in "Bob Dylan and Liza Minnelli Already Turned 80. They Have Thoughts for Trump." Yes, Bob Dylan responded to a journalistic query on the occasion of Donald Trump's birthday.

Time doesn't move, but the world moves. Bob also says: "The worst thing about being 80 is that you still want to say yes to everything, but the world moves without asking. The old fire in your heart still tells you to do this and that, but your body says we already did it...."

And was time moving in the past? Bob also says: "The best thing about being 80 is that you outlive the clocks that have been chasing you. It’s freedom from that lie that anything was ever under control. You don’t chase the parade anymore. You’re an old king from some vanished country.... You’re not rushing to become anything and you’re not haunted by things that you did. You’re haunted by how little of it really mattered in the way you thought it would."

ADDED: Based on what I quoted, you might find the headline confusing. Bob didn’t say anything about Trump and what’s Liza Minnelli doing there? But the article actually has a bunch of other celebrities — Robert De Niro, Art Garfunkel, Gloria Steinem, and Dionne Warwick. And all of them, including Liza, are shown answering the question “Any advice for the president as he turns 80?” I presume Bob was asked that question too, and he refused to answer. Nevertheless, Bob’s answering of the two questions he did answer – what’s the best thing and what’s the worst thing about turning 80 – is put at the top of the article. So The New York Times wanted to make it about Trump and all the other celebrities went along with that but whatever it is Bob happened to say about aging and time mattered more, and I’m glad The New York Times was able to see that. And thanks to Bob for seeing, once again, that you don’t have to answer the question asked by the one who walks into the room with a pencil in his hand, sees the President of the United States standing naked and asks, How would you advise that man?

"The marble front remained shrouded in white- and blue-striped tarps, with no clear answer on when they would be removed."

I'm reading "At the Kennedy Center, a Name Change Shrouded in Uncertainty/President Trump’s name was removed from the arts institution’s facade overnight on Saturday. Many questions remain, including whether or not it stays off" (NYT).

“I was hoping for a reveal, honestly,” said Katy Bigge, a student at Rutgers University who was visiting Washington with her parents. Her father, Philip Bigge, was squatting on the ground, peering through a crack between the tarp and the building’s front to try to make certain that Mr. Trump’s name was gone. He could not be sure, but he thought he had detected that the letters were missing.

It seems that Trump's name is gone, but now you can't see that it's gone. It's "shrouded." Maybe some day, long in the future, when Trump is worshipped for his grand triumphs, the shroud will be on display, like the Shroud of Turin.  

"[Melinda] French Gates has said she met Epstein once and found him so repugnant that she had nightmares afterwards."

"I ask what had so chilled her. Her demeanour changes rapidly. She looks as if she is about to cry. It is upsetting to witness a woman of such unusual self-possession suddenly lose her poise. She turns away, to look at the lake outside her window, and I can see her attempt to compose herself."

I'm reading "'Have you ever been around someone you just know is evil?' Melinda French Gates on meeting Jeffrey Epstein, giving away billions, and her post-divorce peace," by Sophie McBain in The Guardian and my incredulity is sky high.

You can see her attempt to compose herself? I'm not looking at her. I'm just reading your words. But what I see is some phony-baloney acting. And silly writing. Which continues:

“My heart is racing,” she says after a moment, fluttering her hand over her chest.

Fluttering her hand over her chest? Really? This sounds like a comical drag performance of femininity. I'd like to turn away and look at a lake, but I keep reading: