"I like Graham Platner. You like Graham Platner"/"That's my kind of man."

SUPERCUT!

Dems explain why Nazi tattoos & sexually aggressive behavior are fine actually pic.twitter.com/xeLPHh9fwN

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 8, 2026

"No one could have seen this coming."

I can’t believe they made a Graham Platner biopic where he’s a sexting nazi rapist graham cracker… pic.twitter.com/gYDy7fAnAh

— TBC (@TBC_on_X) July 8, 2026

Summer sunrise, with rain that looks like snow.

Video by Meade.

"I’m worried about Weimar America. That’s the title of the next book I’m working on. The first thing people say when they hear that is..."

"... 'Oh, is this a "Trump is Hitler" book?' No, Trump barely figures in this book. When we hear Weimar, we think of the film 'Cabaret' and corruption, and we think it all ended up in Nazism. But that is a superficial understanding of it. We have created in America today, perhaps throughout the West, the psychosocial conditions of Weimar without having suffered the traumas that Germany did — losing the First World War, hyperinflation, and the Great Depression. This also goes back to Hannah Arendt and her famous 1951 book, 'The Origins of Totalitarianism.' She tried to explain how it was that right-wing totalitarianism in Germany and a left-wing version in Russia rose, and she said social atomization is by far the most important factor...."

Says Rod Dreher, quoted in "'I'm Worried About Weimar America'/'It may not be Hitler 2.0. It may not be Stalin 2.0. It might be something all American, but it’s not going to be what we’re used to,' the author Rod Dreher argues" (NYT). This is Ross Douthat's podcast "Interesting Times," and you can listen to the whole thing and read the transcript here (and elsewhere).

Bonus: "What is fascism?" 

Souvenirs.

"Officers said they observed Mr. Thiers and Mr. Carreno reach their hands into the water, peel pieces of blue sealant off and pull them out of the water, according to arrest records. Officers also found a piece of the reflecting pool liner in Ms. Dennison-Gibby’s purse, the records showed."

From "Three More People Charged With Damaging Reflecting Pool/The three individuals face misdemeanor charges of causing damage worth less than $1,000. Experts have said that the problems could have been caused by the pool’s makeover" (NYT).

"It’s tempting to treat this as a story of one flawed man and a vetting process that failed.... But the more uncomfortable lesson..."

"... is the one that the Platner boom offered before the bust. The hunger that lifted him — the overflow crowds, the volunteer armies, the sense that here, at last, was someone who meant it — was real.... Handed the chance to litigate what the party actually believes, Democrats have mostly declined.... Mr. Platner’s appeal was never really about oysters or facial hair. It was that he seemed to stand for something. He was angry on voters’ behalf about an economy that seems rigged for the powerful, and he was unafraid to say so. People responded to the promise of conviction. That signal is the one the party ought to be reading. The tragedy of a campaign like his is not only that it collapsed, as it deserved to, but that so much energy was poured into a messenger before anyone was sure of the message...."

So says the New York Times Editorial Board, in "The Democrats Can’t Go On Like This.

So "he seemed to stand for something," but we really don't know what, and instead of letting us argue publicly about what that message was and whether it is what we want, they took out the man. I think they had the ability all along to destroy him as a man, but they propped him up as a man. The Nazi tattoo was somehow okay! But when they decided they needed to replace him (presumably, because he wasn't going to win), they used the personal material to take him out.

Here's how Platner himself explained it as he bowed to the Party's demand that he drop the nomination the primary voters had given him: "I think it's really important to understand why this is happening in the timeline, why this is happening right now.... there is a reason that this is happening now...."

Total eclipse.

Bonnie Tyler has died: "Bonnie Tyler obituary: gravel-voiced singer of Total Eclipse of the Heart/The most successful Welsh female singer since Shirley Bassey did not have her first hit until 25, but went on to sell 100 million records" (London Times).

There is also the literal version of that song, a wonderful examination of the absurdities of 1980s music video:

"I left Google to study neuroscience, and what I found in the research literature helps explain why the A.I. summary poses a danger to learning."

"Curiosity, it turns out, is not just an individual’s desire to find out discrete facts; it’s also a feature of our biology designed to help us learn more broadly. And it requires a specific condition: a gap between what you want to know and what you find out. Researchers have found that people in a state of curiosity, while waiting for an answer to an intriguing question, remember unrelated information they encounter during that time far better than they otherwise would. In that same study, the researchers also placed those people in brain scanners. They found that waiting for an answer activates reward circuits in the brain and readies the hippocampus to help form new memories.... Curiosity opens a window, and while the window is open, learning deepens across the board.... Our technology is increasingly treating the territory between the query and the answer as dead space to be eliminated, when that territory is where most of the learning actually happens. The danger is not that people will stop asking questions. It is that questions will become endpoints...."

Writes Anne-Laure Le Cunff, "a neuroscientist who studies curiosity," in "We Are Losing the Ability to Discover What We Didn’t Know to Ask" (NYT).

Intriguing questions that popped up for me: 1. What kind of name is "Le Cunff"? 2. "The danger is not.../It is..." seems to be one of those things — like em dashes and the word "delve" — that A.I. tends to write, so did Le Cunff use A.I. to write this essay?

Answers: 1. It means "the gentle," "the affable," or "the debonnaire." 2. It's a rhetorical device that A.I. has learned from real human writers, and real human writers don't need to avoid it, they just, as always, need to use it well, which, in this case, Le Cunff did. 

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments... except Platner. Go one post down for that. And Trump and Iran. Go 2 posts down for that.

"It is him who is wanting to hold on. He is having to come to terms that his dream is dead. The show is over, this is done."

Said an unnamed Democrat, said to be "close to Platner," quoted in "Graham Platner, isolated, defies Maine Democrats as they try to hatch a plan/People close to the Senate candidate’s campaign say that they know he has to drop out but that Platner has struggled with the decision" (WaPo)(gift link).

And there's this, from Devon Murphy-Anderson, executive director of the Maine Democratic Party: "Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate."

But he won the primary. Shouldn't that at least mean that someone with the same political orientation should replace him? Otherwise, it seems as though the part of the Democratic Party that lost in the primary process is stealing the nomination. That means the only way Platner’s team can have any role in determining the nominee is for Platner to hang onto the nomination he won. Unfortunately for the Party, it has no role in stopping him. 

He wants to hold on? He can hold on. The dream is dead? Hold onto that dream.

 

UPDATE: Platner abandons his dream. He’s out. Watch his video here.

"President Trump abruptly announced Wednesday that he would not fly out of Turkey aboard his luxurious new Air Force One..."

"...  stoking speculation that the Qatar-donated jet may be vulnerable to Iranian fire as the war resumes. Trump instead departed the annual NATO summit using the older model of Air Force One, which he had stopped using last week in favor of the $400 million 'palace on wings' that he has proudly boasted about acquiring.... 'I’m number one on the kill list for Iran. They’re lovely people,' Trump told a Post reporter who asked if security concerns motivated the switch. Earlier in the day, Trump had said, 'They want to take out the US leader, me … And so far, I guess I’ve been a little bit lucky. But that maybe doesn’t last very long.'"

From "Trump ditches new Air Force One in Turkey, stoking Iran threat intrigue: 'I’m number one on the kill list'" (NY Post).

"A pilot jumped out of the door of a moving plane to his death, leaving the student he was teaching to fly to land the aircraft by herself. "

"Flight instructor Leandro Andrés Bertazzo, 42, was found dead following the incident, which took place in Toledo, central Argentina, on Saturday.... The student said Bertazzo told her, 'You know what you have to do, carry on,' before taking off his headset and seatbelt, opening the door and jumping out of the plane...."

From "Flight school pilot jumps to his death midair, leaving student to land plane" (CNN).

Maxxing out.

"Texas looksmaxxing influencer Connor Michael Murphy has drowned in Thailand after he was seen acting erratically and jumping in a lake to avoid cops.... The 32-year-old self-proclaimed 'giga chad,' or alpha-male, had earlier sparked alarm with his erratic behavior as he argued with a security guard at the estate.... His 22-year-old girlfriend said she had no idea what caused the outburst — but claimed he had previously splattered paint in the property while she was sleeping...."

The New York Post reports.

Here's how he looked before he maxxed out:

"After an uncredited part as a masseuse in the Peter Sellers comedy 'What’s New Pussycat?' (1965), written by Mr. Allen, and a voice-over in 'What’s Up, Tiger Lily?' (1966), Mr. Allen’s directorial debut..."

"... Ms. Lasser had full-fledged roles — with character names and screen time — in Mr. Allen’s next three auteur efforts, which he wrote, directed and starred in. In 'Take the Money and Run' (1969), she was a bank robber’s neighbor, impressed by his fame. In 'Bananas' (1971), she was the hero’s activist girlfriend who drops him because he shows no political leadership skills. The next year, in 'Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask),' she played a woman who could achieve orgasm only in public. In the middle of all that filmmaking, in 1970, the Allens divorced...."

From "Louise Lasser, Star of TV’s ‘Mary Hartman,’ Is Dead at 87/She began her screen career in Woody Allen movies (he was also her husband), but she was best known for her portrayal of the Ohio housewife in the pigtails and puffed sleeves" (NYT).

McDreamy.

From "Here Are the Maine Democrats Who Might Replace Graham Platner/Mr. Platner has not yet withdrawn from the race after a rape allegation, but Democrats in the state and nationally are already exploring potential alternatives" (NYT):

Platner was presented by the Democrats as fulfilling the people's supposed longing for masculinity, so, yeah, replace him with Patrick Dempsey. That makes sense.

"Firefighters used ropes to rescue her and the couple’s two children, a 7-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy, from the mangled Tesla."

"The children were uninjured, the authorities said at the time. The California Highway Patrol quickly determined the crash had been 'an intentional act.'"

From "Charges Against Man Who Drove Family Off Cliff Are Dropped After Treatment/Three counts of attempted murder against Dharmesh A. Patel were dismissed after he completed a court-ordered mental health program, prosecutors said" (NYT).

It was a 250-foot drop.

"'He can drive home tonight,' said [Steve Wagstaffe, the San Mateo County district attorney], whose office opposed the diversion program and had asked the court to bring Mr. Patel to trial. 'It’s like the case never happened.'"

"Rape claim against Democrat has party asking: Why did we ignore 'red flags'?"

That's the headline at the London Times, a question that assumes a proposition I don't accept as true. Democrats didn't ignore red flags. They saw them and went forward anyway.

The question should be why did they do that, and we know why. It's not hard to figure out. I don't for one minute believe that Democrats are deeply contemplating why they backed Platner despite what they knew. They wanted to win the Senate seat, and they imagined he was their best hope. Now, they are trying to act as though they were blindsided by this rape accusation, and it suddenly disqualifies Platner in a new way.

By the way, what's Platner's motivation to withdraw? He won the primary. It's his nomination. What's good is there for him in withdrawing? If he hangs on for a few more days, past the July 13th deadline for replacing him as the candidate, won't the heat die down? He will have weathered the storm, and he can present himself as a rebellious survivor.

Yes, he may lose, and that loss may be the one Senate seat that denies Democrats the majority they covet, but so what? I mean: "So what?" from his point of view. Should he shrink back into oyster-ridden obscurity because of a rape he says he did not commit? Because of a tattoo everyone knew about when he won the primary? 

"I don't want to deal with them anymore, they are scum."

BREAKING: President Trump says the ceasefire with Iran is "over."

"I don't want to deal with them anymore, they are scum," Trump says. pic.twitter.com/laHQdRKZUV

— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) July 8, 2026

Is that real? Grok: "Trump made the statements live at the NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, on July 8, 2026, during interactions with reporters. Multiple major outlets (Hindustan Times, GB News, ITV News, Reuters via partners) reported the exact quotes with video footage from the event. The clip in the KobeissiLetter post matches the authentic press conference recording, showing Trump seated with US flags and summit backdrops. No credible sources flag it as fabricated."

A Little League home run... for the Mets.

I promise no amount of explaining will prepare you for how bad this play is pic.twitter.com/45XcHCMvyL

— Ben Verlander (@BenVerlander) July 8, 2026

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments... except for the "frozen zone" in NYC and the Vance's henhouse. There are new posts for that, just below this one.

"Midtown residents, workers and tourists ran for their lives from homes and offices near a buckling building Tuesday..."

"... and now have no idea when they can return to the evacuated 'frozen zone' around the site. Nine buildings had to be suddenly cleared after 8 a.m. when crucial support columns began caving in the under-construction 37-story former Pfizer headquarters on East 42nd Street near Second Avenue — and City Hall would not say when anyone might be able to return to the area...."

From "Massive ‘frozen zone’ around buckling Midtown NYC building leaves hundreds out on street — with no idea when they can return" (NY Post).

"The Vances’ henhouse is elevated — about two feet off the ground — and situated inside a shed that is protected from the elements...."

"The design is such that the owner does not have to walk through 'chicken droppings and chicken bedding' to tend to the birds. The keeper can access the hens via interior shed doors. The attached run is predator-proof... and includes a solid roof, which helps prevent avian flu from spreading to the flock, as it can be 'transmitted with migratory birds flying overhead'.... The [henhouse] has led to speculation that there may be political motivations behind the flock’s appearance. It’s a theory that resonates with Danny Bowers, who keeps 19 chickens on a suburban property in Utah County, Utah. Bowers, who uses they/them pronouns, points out that some conservatives have embraced the values espoused by 'trad wife' influencers, many of whom raise chickens."

I'm reading "The Vances added a chicken coop to the vice president’s residence. We had questions. Who will be raising the hens at the Naval Observatory? And why are the Vances taking on this project?" Thats a gift link, in case you want to get serious or laugh about henhousegate.

I love the sheer randomness of the pronoun preference of some guy in Utah who's got nothing to do with any of this other than that he too keeps chickens.

I'm going to assume that the reason for the chickens is to enrich the day-to-day life of the Vance's 3 — soon to be 4 — children.

It is an awfully posh henhouse. I can see why some people are envious... or trying to figure out if they should be envious:

In the garden.

Video by Meade.

 

"While I’m assigning blame, I shouldn’t leave out myself. Last October, when stories about Platner’s tattoo and Reddit posts first broke..."

"... I went to Maine to write about him. I tried to convey what I saw: a campaign that was electrifying angry Maine voters. But I deeply regret that, impressed by Platner’s political charisma, I wrote that he was 'nothing like the edgelord caricature I encountered online.' If anything, he seems to be significantly worse...."

Writes Michelle Goldberg, in "Lessons From the Graham Platner Disaster" (NYT).

That article she wrote and links to came out last October. It sets out to prop him up as he was falling long before the primary: "Platner is the oyster farmer and former Marine with a baritone voice and a Bernie Sanders endorsement who this fall came seemingly out of nowhere to capture progressive hearts nationwide. Recently, a barrage of ugly revelations made it look like perhaps all the hope invested in him had been misplaced...."

Hearts. Hope.

Here's Goldberg, back in October, explaining that Nazi tattoo:

As political as you want it to be.

I'm just answering the question posed in this New Yorker title: "How Political Is This Supreme Court?"

Read the article if you like. It contains material like "My argument is that the Court is neither entirely political nor that it is entirely apolitical. I think we have to be a little more nuanced in the way we go about this. First, how do we define political?..."

What is closest to your reaction?

I'm not the sort of person who needs to read that sort of thing.

Good. That sounds substantive and nuanced.

I'm distracted by the Althouse "nuance" tag.

 

pollcode.com free polls

"You said: He's your kind of man."

CNBC host calls out Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Host: "You campaigned with Graham Platner… you said, 'He's your kind of man.' … This is a guy who had a chest tattoo with a N*zi symbol… It's a guy that reportedly wrote 'people concerned about r*pe should take some responsibility… pic.twitter.com/zcy7r7BqnW

— Resist the Mainstream (@ResisttheMS) April 22, 2026

You can see that's from back in April, but it appeared at the top of the feed when I clicked on the "Platner" trend in the sidebar at X.

The timing of all of this matters. What did they know and when did they know it? Did they hold the accuser back and then let her loose? Look at Jake Tapper seeming to want something of an answer:

NEW: Woman who accused Graham Platner of r*ping her says America needs someone with his political stances in office, says his videos fired her up.

Jake Tapper: There are gonna be people who say this is politically motivated. What would you say to that?

Accuser Jenny Racicot:… pic.twitter.com/7jYk2i7oBg

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 6, 2026

I'm less interested in the random oysterman than I am in the Democratic Party leadership, what they were up to, and what they are doing now. It's so much like the story of Joe Biden's candidacy in 2024. They let the primary process occur, propped the guy up while democracy was in play, let the people expend their power to choose, and then and only then a fatal defect got exposed, and the people's choice had to withdraw himself. The Party got to insert their candidate, someone who never had to face the test of the primary. I want to hold the Party responsible for what it did. Was it just idiotically searching around for a "masculine" man and infatuated with his oysters? Did it cynically select him and think the people don't care about sexual misdeeds anymore — the #MeToo era is over and it's time to go for those "manosphere" votes?

ADDED: When I first clicked on this, I thought it was a humor sketch. The creaky voice on this Moraff character is something else: 

Graham Platner was recruited to run for Senate by a pair of socialist political operatives, Daniel Moraff and Leanne Fan, who determined that another prospective candidate had “a skeleton in the closet.”

The Wall Street Journal published a rare interview with the duo on Sunday… pic.twitter.com/tbmOE5nxJX

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) June 8, 2026

AND: Scott Jennings puts it well:

Democrats fully vetted Graham Platner, happily signed off on his incredibly disturbing history to win a Senate seat, and are only pretending to be shocked now because they can no longer rationalize the hypocrisy. pic.twitter.com/jkp12Gwv16

— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) July 7, 2026

"I actually don't think that was a loss. 4 goals? I didn't see 4 goals. It looked more like a tie to me, Gianni...."

STOP IT!!!🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/wMgMLFoFyO

— il Donaldo Trumpo (@PapiTrumpo) July 7, 2026

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like... except the soccer game and Graham Platner. Scroll down to the previous posts to talk about the soccer game, including Trump's phone call, and scroll down one more to say whatever needs to be said about the oysterman.

"I can call anyone about anything."

He CALLED FIFA 🤣 pic.twitter.com/hp1DObdnFv

— Baby News Network (@BabyNetworkNews) July 6, 2026

"A wave of prominent Democrats, from Platner’s most progressive allies to top Democratic leadership, are bailing on his Senate campaign..."

"... after POLITICO reported that a woman who dated him said he forced her to have sex with him.... On Monday night — just hours after the story published — Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called on Platner to 'immediately withdraw'.... Some of his biggest backers — Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) — called on him to exit the race, as did Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). Another staunch supporter and potential 2028 presidential hopeful, Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego, withdrew his endorsement.... Meanwhile, one of Platner’s most prominent Senate backers, Bernie Sanders, has yet to comment on the news...."

Politico reports.

Platner "represented masculinity" for the Democrats:

 

Graham Platner (D) on NPR one month ago: "I represent healthy masculinity"

This did not age well 😬 pic.twitter.com/T3bEvgvdm5

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) July 6, 2026

The #1 Person in Tic Tac.

Trump: "You know who the number one person on Tic Tac is by far? Trump. Me. Taylor Swift was number 11." pic.twitter.com/BriJNk4QeL

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 6, 2026

"Every summer, my husband, my daughter, and I stay with my mother out East so my child can spend time outside the city in an area I remain attached to from my childhood."

"Without my mom’s generosity, we could not afford to be there. I realize that having access to all this when I haven’t made the right career choices, shorted the market at a moment of crisis, or robbed a bank to be able to afford my own Hamptons house is deeply fortunate. And yet, as I’m often reminded during a flare-up with my mother over how to properly cut a $13 Il Buco filone (apparently, I saw bread too 'wavily' and ruin the rest of the loaf for straight-slicers), Chekhov’s greatest dramas were multigenerational tragicomedies set in country homes."

Writes Lucy Boyle, in "'I’m Sorry You’re in This Beautiful House We Pay For!'/There’s a glut of middle-aged children living with their parents in the Hamptons for the summer" (New York Magazine).

I'm interested in this tale of petty woe not because I've ever stayed at any beach house owned by my parents — I have not — but because we — in the midst of our summer here in our year-round home — took the half-hour drive out to the American Players Theater last week and saw "Uncle Vanya."

The troubles in "Uncle Vanya" were nothing like what we're seeing with these "middle-aged children" in the Hamptons. They're irked by rules about using coasters, taking out the trash, and not stealing things. Boyle gets a psychotherapist to analyze the parents: "When the house is full of the grandkids and the grandkids’ and kids’ friends, they’re kind of in the background. One way they can become the foreground and say ‘I am here’ is to foreground their ownership and possession.'"

"The summer I turned 39, my husband and I moved from Brooklyn to a darling little village in upstate New York. Our parents were thrilled..."

"... their unspoken hope that leaving the big city might be a sign that we were settling down—that as my fertility began to sunset, we’d turn one of our house’s three bedrooms into a nursery. And we were having that conversation, too. We owned a home with ample space and an affordable mortgage. I worked for myself and had maximal flexibility. He had good health insurance and a great if demanding job. Did we want to have a baby? As late summer melted into a vibrant fall and then into the cold of upstate winter, I knew my answer: No...."

Writes Jill Filipovic in "We Need More Good Men/Conservatives often lay the blame for declining fertility at women’s feet. They’re wrong" (Slate).

"New York City bodega owners came to City Hall last week for a 'roundtable discussion' at the invitation of Julie Su, deputy mayor for economic justice..."

"... only to get barraged with 'intrusive' questions about their businesses, a source close to the situation said.... 'What items are sold the most at your stores?'... 'Where is your profit margin the greatest?' sources said. The bodega reps declined to answer.... 'They wanted us to share proprietary information with them but they don’t answer our questions and that’s why there is distrust,' said a bodega rep who did not want to be identified.... Mamdani’s plan to subsidize the grocery stores with taxpayer funds so they can offer rock-bottom prices on essential items threatens grocers who operate on 2% to 3% profit margins.... 'What is the main thing people come into your store for? What else do they buy while there?' 'It seems like a clumsy, one-sided fishing expedition,' a food policy expert who did not want to be identified told The Post.

From "Mamdani officials scramble to ease concerns about public supermarkets — but local business leaders aren’t buying it" (NY Post).

Su insisted that the city "wanted to understand is whether there are key products bodegas sell and rely on that we should not sell." And "That’s how serious we are about not undercutting them." The whole idea is about undercutting them. Now, the city seems to be trying to assure them that they won't undercut them too much. But the bodega owners don't trust the city. If there's a "2% to 3% profit margin" generally, but the city wants to know "Where is your profit margin the greatest?," it looks like the city wants its own operation to take advantage of the most profitable items. 

Sunrise.

At the Skylight Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

An overabundance of furniture.

On Wednesday, I saw the APT production of "The Chairs," which involved dragging an ever-increasing number of chairs into a surrealistic environment...

Then, on Friday, I went to the movies for the first time in over a year, to see "The Backrooms," and it too involved a piling up of furniture in a surrealistic environment....

It's a bit much. A bit meta. Seemingly separate surrealisms are converging. In one week, I'm seeing 2 things playing out so similarly, and I can't think of any other play/movie where the furniture was so important. I didn't set out to experience plentitudinous furniture.

Watching both the the play and the movie and thinking about them afterwards, I thought a lot about whether we were supposed to think of the place as a fantastical external environment that contained the characters or whether it was a depiction of the deteriorating state of a character's mind. 

"Fireworks release tiny particles that can irritate lungs and trigger asthma attacks, along with gases like carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide..."

"... and sulfur dioxide and metals including aluminum, manganese and cadmium, according to the American Lung Association. Even Freedom 250, the Trump-backed group that helped organize the event, acknowledged on its website that 'air quality will decline' and visibility 'may become compromised.' It advised children and older people to avoid extended time outdoors and advised residents to keep windows closed and to use air filters. 'It’s probably going to be incredibly hot and adding a firework show is just going to compound the air quality that’s already destined to be poor,' said Panagis Galiatsatos, a pulmonary physician.... He encouraged people with respiratory conditions like asthma to stay indoors and watch the spectacle on TV. 'Sometimes we need to just be mindful of safety versus grandiosity'.... Dogs tremble. They drool. They try to hide by cramming themselves into spaces that are too small. They have accidents indoors and tear up clothes or furniture...."

From "Bombs Bursting in Air Means Hours of Smoke and Confused Dogs in D.C./Organizers want the July 4 fireworks in the nation’s capital to break the world record. But the fun will also come with air pollution and possibly headaches for pet owners and zoo keepers" (NYT).

"Visitors in red, white and blue darkened with sweat stood in lines for hours, sometimes screaming in frustration and other times collapsing from exhaustion."

"The Independence Day parade was canceled and the Great American State Fair delayed. Steel fences and closed roads made photos of iconic monuments hard to capture. Both white supremacists and liberal activists marched through the city, each demanding their country back...."

I'm reading "America’s 250th celebrations marked by severe weather, political division/Officials ordered thousands of people to evacuate the National Mall after a severe weather warning that delayed President Donald Trump’s speech." That's in The Washington Post (not the NYT, as I'd accidentally had written).

"Small protests popped up throughout the day. One group lugged a 700-foot banner that read 'We the People' down Pennsylvania Avenue, condemning the president. About 50 people with another group, 'Refuse Fascism,' marched toward the White House, demanding that Trump leave office.... [H]undreds of uniformed members of Patriot Front, a white-supremacist group, marched toward the U.S. Capitol. Their faces covered in white masks, the men beat drums and carried flags — some upside down, others Confederate — as they chanted, 'Reclaim America!' Many gripped combat shields as they passed the Capitol building...."

How did the extra-important 4th look from your vantage point? 

"There’s always trouble in the Church of England.... They’re always tying themselves in knots about something or other."

"But this is a big one, because they’ve decided that their whole operation is a festival of ableism and that their meek priests are not feeling very blessed at all. One, quoted in a new report called 'All Kinds of Minds,' says that the pressure of trying to appear 'typical' means that when he gets home after a hard day at work (me neither) he has to lie on the floor to literally ground himself.... [T]he report reckons that the pressure on vicars to be loud and interesting puts intolerable pressure on those who are 'neurodivergent.'..."

Writes Jeremy Clarkson, in "I know how to fill churches. Deconsecrate them/My idea to fill the pews would mean hiring out churches for parties — but a new report focuses instead on calming down neurodivergent vicars" (London Times).

Clarkson goes on to crack some jokes at the expense of the neurodivergent, but I didn't think the jokes were much good, so let's just read that article he linked to: "Church urged to embrace neurodivergent parishioners (and priests)/A report says the assumptions that preachers should be extroverts and worshippers must sit still were contributing to 'cultures of ableism.'"