"I, like many a young woman, was once wildly judgmental about plastic surgery. I grew up in the 1990s..."

"... at the bizarre, lonely intersection of second-wave feminism and Manhattan privilege. Many of the girls in my private high school had their breasts enlarged and their noses shrunk. I congratulated myself for not following suit, even though I didn’t have a bump on my nose and I wasn’t flat chested. My mother, the writer Erica Jong, had a whole gestalt back then: pro-sex feminism, which of course meant keeping herself appealing enough for men to want to have sex with her. She worried about her own weight and beauty constantly. Julia Phillips, a successful film producer and writer, once compared her to 'Miss Piggy when her face is in repose'.... My mom was the concubine of more than a few powerful men. To preserve that status, she had a face-lift in her 50s. Many of the feminists who populated my mother’s narrow townhouse — Andrea Dworkin, Betty Friedan and Phyllis Chesler among them — did not believe in molding themselves into something different for men’s delectation. These women rejected the beauty-obsessed power structure that my mother embraced. Instead, they hoped to change that culture by refusing to comply with it...."

Writes Molly Jong-Fast, who got a deep plane face- and neck-lift, in "I’m Not Going to Lie About My Neck" (NYT gift link).

Moving the frozen eggs to the front burner.

I don't know how much more of this we'll be seeing, but I wanted to record what seems like an incipient trend, the women's issue we somehow suddenly need — egg freezing.

1. A couple days ago, in an episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "Why Adults Are Getting Cancer at a Younger Age," there was the story of a 36-year-old woman with breast cancer, facing surgery and chemotherapy, who was asked by her doctors if she wanted to freeze her eggs: "And so first things first, like my brain wasn't even on the cancer. My brain was like all the things that go into freezing your eggs and what that meant for like my future and what that meant. Like my boyfriend and I at that time, like we weren't talking about having kids...." And the journalist assures us that "egg freezing is a really intense process, it's intense emotionally and it also intense physically."

2. In yesterday's NYT, there was "Ocasio-Cortez Opened Up About Freezing Her Eggs. She Got Women Talking. Many women say being open about the fertility treatment is a form of empowerment. But critics say all the talk can be misleading" (gift link). "Until about 2012, freezing eggs to preserve fertility was considered an experimental intervention for urgent cases like cancer patients whose fertility would be compromised by treatment. Like breast cancer, menopause and menstruation, egg freezing has become yet another women’s health issue in which open discussion is seen as a form of empowerment. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez herself said that it was 'badass that I’m going to be giving myself shots in the green room' of a TV studio..."

NBC’s Steve Kornacki at a loss for words.

NBC’s Steve Kornacki reacts to the USB drives that were missing election data in Wisconsin.

“Are you serious? They have to do… God… Okay…” pic.twitter.com/Byj6KQJBX9

— Brandon Doggett (@brandondoggett) August 12, 2026

"I'm not going to travel the world with a cooler full of sauerkraut. It's ridiculous. I can't do it!"

🤣 LMAO! Marco Rubio just dropped this hilarious response to Sec. RFK Jr.'s diet

Q: Have you adopted RFK's diet of red meat and fermented vegetables?

RUBIO: "No! This is a CRAZY diet. This is a diet that consists of eating sauerkraut and meat. Now you understand like this is… pic.twitter.com/qgaMNjsIhu

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) August 11, 2026

"There was so much vulnerability and yearning there. It was heartfelt and pure girl power. Arlene on that song was inspiring. I wanted to record a record like that."

Said Ronnie Spector, about "hearing 'Maybe' for the first time on her grandmother’s Philco radio as a teenager."

Quoted in  "Arlene Smith, Whose Song ‘Maybe’ Helped Define Doo-Wop, Dies at 84/With the Chantels, a groundbreaking female vocal group, she tugged heartstrings with the indelible hit and paved the way for a wave of 'girl groups'" (NYT gift link).

At that point, doo-wop — born of city street corners — was dominated by male acts like the Penguins (“Earth Angel”), Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers (“Why Do Fools Fall in Love”) and the Del-Vikings (“Come Go With Me”).

Despite the fact that a few pioneering Black female groups like the Teen Queens (“Eddie My Love”) and the Bobbettes (“Mr. Lee”) had hits before the Chantels, the record industry “didn’t know what to do with us,” Ms. Smith later said in an interview with the site ClassicBands.com.

"Maybe" is the subject of Episode 65 of the great podcast "A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs." Excerpt:

"For now, we polka."

Tonight's all about @DavidCCrowley. He's earned this win and the accolades.

I am so proud of David—he's the future of our Party, and I can't wait for him to be our next governor.

For now, we polka. Tomorrow, we're back at work to win.@TomTiffanyWI, we'll see you in November.

— Tony Evers (@Tony4WI) August 12, 2026

I live in Wisconsin and I feel like I'm paying attention, but I had to ask Grok about the significance of the polka. Answer:

Trump said we could just "bop along" in Iran: "We could just keep it alone, and they’re going to fail. We could just keep, you know, doing sort of just like nice and easy, relaxed."

Quoted in "Trump floats ‘easy, relaxed’ Iran war phase focused on hurting regime’s economy: 'I’m their banker.'" 

“I’m sort of negotiating. You see, they’re very devious negotiators because they’ll agree to something, then they’ll go out and tell the press that they never agreed to it. They’re very dishonest people.” 

“We have three strategies,” he declared.

The race was close, but Francesca Hong has conceded and the risk of a democratic socialist Governor for Wisconsin is over.

At least this time around.

Here's the NYT report (gift link):

My questions: 

• What proportion of the votes for Hong were supporters of the Republican candidate Tom Tiffany — voters who thought Hong would be a weak opponent for him? It was an open primary, and I saw some open encouragement of this behavior. Tiffany obviously had his nomination sewn up.  You can see that David Crowley only won by about 3,000 votes. How much larger would his margin of victory have been without those insincere strategic votes for Hong?

• Why did Hong concede so quickly, with such a narrow margin? Why not wait at least until all the votes are in? Why not ask for a recount? She's entitled to a recount if the margin is 1% or less, but it's only paid for by the state if it's less than 0.25%. To drag out the process after the primary would help Tiffany. That's good reason not to indulge in a recount, but why not wait until all 100% of the votes are counted? She conceded when it was less than 95%.

• Why were the polls so bad?! The final Marquette poll, from July 22–27, released July 29, had Hong at 38% and Crowley at 7%. There was also another candidate at 16% (Barnes), but he dropped out. Still, giving all the Barnes votes to Crowley would only put Crowley at 23%. That 38% for Hong looked awfully strong. But I wouldn't assume the polls got it wrong. The polls inspired a lot of people to attack Hong, making her look unusually foolish and driving a lot of Democrats into voting for what is practical and strategic and not for the radical who excited them so much.

• Speaking of exciting radicals in Wisconsin, these votes were falling into place as a highly visible and emotional street protest was escalating in Madison after the death of Corey Ruiz. Though Ruiz had apparently attacked the police with a knife, Hong quickly denounced his killing as "a state-sanctioned… execution." Those protests went on for 2 weeks, mostly during the period when there were no new polls. How much did those impassioned protests turn Wisconsin voters against Hong?

***

As for me, I was going to sit this one out, but in the end I did go over to the Congregational Church and cast a vote.

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"What a blast from the past! The New York Times hasn’t pulled out the infamous 'beer test' for a political candidate since May 22, 2015..."

"... when it ran ['Finding a Candidate You’d Like to Have a Beer With.'] The 'beer test' was once a massively overused campaign reporting cliché. It grew out of a Sam Adams ad campaign in the 2000 race, and from Bush-Gore through the 2016 cycle it was nearly impossible to escape 'beer test' coverage. Then Donald Trump won the 2016 beer test by default — it was hard to imagine Hillary Clinton having a beer at all — leading even Slate to pronounce 'there has never been and perhaps never will be a candidate you’d be more eager to have a beer with than Donald Trump.'

That's Matt Taibbi, in "Cliché Alert: Return of the 'Beer Test'/The New York Times reverts to old form, thanks to a blue-party schism" (Racket).

Here's the NYT article that set Taibbi off: "He’s Not a Democrat. Democrats Love Him Anyway."

I invite you to persuade me to go over and vote in the Wisconsin primary today.

Observing myself, I believe I am abstaining. 

Of course, as I've said many times, I'm a big believer in the right to not to vote. It's like the right not to speak. Or the right not to profess any religion.

UPDATE:

"Debbie Rodman, the keeper of a 3,694-day streak, once stood on top of a toilet at Yellowstone National Park in an attempt to receive enough Wi-Fi..."

"... to solve the Crossword. Ten years in, 'it’s been part of my daily routine for so long, I will never voluntarily give it up,' Ms. Rodman, 67, said. 'Someday when the lights go out, that’ll be how my streak ends.'"

From "What It Takes to Keep a Puzzle Streak for Years/Meet the players who persist through childbirth or intense athletic feats to ensure they solve Wordle and other puzzles every day" (NYT gift link).

"Now, I’m 13 days post-op. Only one of my friends has been negative about it."

"Before the surgery, he said, 'It’s weird to me that you’d do this, because you’re someone who preaches embracing who you are.' The confusing thing is that he’s very 'black pill,' which is a trend that says you need to be beautiful in order to get a job or find a soul mate. I hate black pill, because it’s pushing the narrative that hurt me as a little girl: that looks are the only things that matter.... Maybe I’m contributing to that narrative by getting this procedure. But I looked in the mirror after my surgery, and I thought, Wow, this feels like the real me. It sucks that I have to change a part of me to truly like myself."

Said "R., 18, is an incoming college freshman from Colorado who got a deep neck-lift and rhinoplasty," quoted in "Three People on Why They Wanted New Faces" (NYT gift link).

That realization "Wow, this feels like the real me" is so "Twilight Zone."

"Zuckerberg acknowledged 'a risk that an imbalance of power between individuals and government leads to a loss of freedom or totalitarian state.'"

"His solution was to create superintelligence which ensured that users were responsible for deciding the model’s values, not the developer. He said there should be 'a fully private mode for personal agents where even Meta or any other service provider cannot see or grant access to your information.'"

From "Five key takeaways from Mark Zuckerberg’s AI manifesto/The Meta founder outlines a vision of free superintelligent personal AI agents, smaller workforce teams and expanded open-source tech across the nation" (London Times).

"That's as strange as it gets."

I’ll take “things I’ve never seen before” for 500 please. pic.twitter.com/gWVQkBDV2b

— Michaela Bennett (@MichaelaB_22) August 11, 2026

Fish swallows golf ball.

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The London Times reports: "Charl Schwartzel of South Africa had to take a one-stroke penalty after his attempt on the 134-yard par-three 7th at Trump Bedminster ended up in the water, and was swiftly swooped upon by a resident fish."

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"These days I am a middle-aged man who works the door at a bar in Chicago that is reasonably popular with the youths, and I am routinely flummoxed..."

"... by the sartorial flotsam that comes packing itself in. The other night a guy came in with a shoulder-length butt cut and his T-shirt tucked into his jeans. 'Now there’s a dork,' I thought. I could’ve clocked him from down the block. But no. An hour later I went outside, and he was making out in the alley with a six-foot freaking supermodel — and she was goth. Or at least she was dressed like what I consider to be a goth; nowadays I don’t even know..... Why is everybody under the age of 30 these days dressed like an actual lunatic?... The subcultures of my youth were a sort of surrogate extended family. In a society jettisoning the type of organizations and communities that stitched it together over the 20th century, finding someone or a group of someones who were the same thing as you served as a bulwark against the fracturing sense of atomization. Making up a subculture every couple of months basically does the opposite, keeping you permanently aloof from the kids around you. I mean, half these things barely sound like groups of anything. What the hell is a performative matcha boy — some guy who drinks a thing? How’s that going to be your tribe?"

Writes Thomas Morton, in "Gen Z-ers Dress Like They’ve Never Worn Clothes Before" (NYT gift link)(lots of photos at the link).

#1 reason for blogging this story: It used my favorite word, "flummox."

3 outlooks on beauty.

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"I'm not sure why WaPo covered this, but ignored trump wearing a wig that is styled like his mother's hair during her last year of life."

That's the top-rated comment (by far) on the WaPo article, "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she’s freezing her eggs/The Democratic congresswoman, 36, said she made the decision to undergo the fertility procedure to 'feel more in control of my life'" (gift link).

I was trying to figure out whether and how to blog the AOC story. I saw her video yesterday:

AOC is starting her journey for freezing her eggs!

Sharing her doing the shot.

"Don't be weird about this even though I know you all will be".

She knows the internet so well. pic.twitter.com/2ywzN8R5d9

— Winter (@LeftyWinter) August 9, 2026

I haven't seen such a display of political abdominal flesh since the days of LBJ and his gall bladder surgery:

Still wondering how to blog that. But what's all this about Trump and his wig?

"It recounts an immigrant’s life story, told by a Mexican construction worker who toiled, prospered, became an American citizen..."

"... and brought up American children, including a son lost in Afghanistan. 'They were raised to believe in this country,' he sings, heaving a sigh that speaks volumes before continuing, 'that I barely recognize now.' Widowed and alone, all too aware of brutal immigration arrests, he’s going back to his long-ago Mexican hometown."

That's a description of the song "Volver a Celaya," by Steve Earle and Los Lobo, in "9 Songs We’re Talking About This Week/Karol G returns, Steve Earle and Los Lobos link up and Temper City climbs the charts" (NYT gift link).

Listen to the recording here. Live performance here. Lyrics here, which, despite the title, are in English. 

"Hobbies have helped Kimura feel more secure and find her voice, partly because many of her hobbies end with a finished product..."

"... giving her a feeling of accomplishment. Unlike the women in previous generations in her family, whose lives were centered on marriage and raising children, she feels empowered to pursue the activities that bring her happiness. 'I feel like I can design my future,' she said. As for romantic relationships, Kimura said she’s not closed off to dating indefinitely. 'I just don’t feel like I’m in such a rush anymore.'"

From "For Some Singles, ‘Hobbyamory’ Has Replaced Hookups/Is a packed social calendar the new relationship goals?" (NYT gift link).

"The Korean supergroup BTS has pulled its blockbuster album 'Arirang' from Grammy Awards consideration, in protest..."

"... of the new Asian Pop Music Performance category....The Recording Academy has been cooking up new categories for years. It started out with 28 in 1959. We’re up to 100 now.... Some reflect true genres and discrete markets. But most are the malignant offspring of the record business’s historical segregation, which divided Black and white artists into separate genres and markets, even if they were playing sonically similar music.... After a song from 'K-Pop Demon Hunters' won big this year, Asian Pop was created...."

Writes Dan Charnas, a professor at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYT, in "Pop Music Is the Problem" (NYT gift link).

Here's how I'd frame the question: Why don't the Grammys have a category called White Pop Music?

There are 2 directions to go with that question. You could say it's white supremacy or you could say it's anti-racism.

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

RIP Beth.

It’s a sad day at Grassley household…. For my 34 years and 15 yrs before that at my mother in law’s home Beth has worked dependably….

— Chuck Grassley (@ChuckGrassley) August 8, 2026

The London Times tells us: "Grassley is not the first member of Congress to develop a strong attachment to a piece of machinery. John Boehner, a former Speaker of the House, appears frequently with his lawn mower. The senator John Kennedy has a cross trainer in his garage that he has named Margaret, 'after Margaret Thatcher because both kick butt.' His wife, Becky, 'won’t let me bring Margaret in the house,' he said, in a video posted this year. So he uses Margaret in his garage and then lifts weights, watched over, metaphorically speaking, by his Iron Lady companion."

It's just by chance — and consistent blogging methodology — that Margaret Thatcher came up twice today. The earlier post is about her plan to send coca-eating moths to Peru. 

Kayak sunrise.

Video by Meade.

"Is that Peter Thiel’s boy with that Ohio charisma he’s got? That guy. I think we’ve had enough of him."

"The last thing that he said that made any sense was 'Hillbilly Elegy,' after he said that Donald Trump had no business being president of anything. That was the last time he made sense, and then he decided to suck up to power."

Said Abdul El-Sayed, quoted in "Vance rips Michigan’s ‘crazy’ El-Sayed: would be a ‘terrible senator'" (NY Post).

"Margaret Thatcher’s government spent £100,000 on a top-secret plan to 'bomb' Peru with voraciously hungry moths in a radical attempt to destroy cocaine crops."

The London Times reports.

The method is relatively cheap and simple. From what is known of Eloria [noyesi] it might be thought of as a ‘smart bomb’ with a very short range."...

 
"The moth is indigenous to Peru and is highly host-specific to the coca bush. There is no evidence of it feeding on other plants … Its use as a control agent could, therefore, be concealed."

I wonder what else has been going on in the use of tiny animals in warfare. I found this, at the History website: "Bugs of War: How Insects Have Been Weaponized Throughout History/For millennia, six-legged soldiers have been conscripted to torment enemies."

At the end of the 2nd century, the Roman emperor Septimius Severus was on his way to wresting control of Mesopotamia from the local monarchs.... As the Roman legions advanced on the desert stronghold of Hatra.... The defenders crafted earthenware bombshells loaded with scorpions.... As Severus’s men reached the walls of Hatra, scorpion bombs rained down....

More recently: 

During the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong dug a network of underground tunnels allowing them to decide when and where to fight.... Feeling his way through a dank passage, [an American] “tunnel rat” might overlook a trip wire and have a load of scorpions rain down from a hidden cavity in the roof. The Viet Cong also conscripted the Asian giant honeybee.... Soldiers gingerly relocated colonies to trails used by the Americans and then attached a small, explosive charge.... For their part, the U.S. military funded a research program to devise an apparatus to spray the Vietnamese enemy with the alarm pheromone of bees, thereby converting the local insects into fierce allies.... But the “weapon” was never deployed....

AND: Wikipedia has an article, "Entomological warfare."

Entomological warfare (EW) is a type of biological warfare that uses insects to interrupt supply lines by damaging crops, or to directly harm enemy combatants and civilian populations. There have been several programs which have attempted to institute this methodology; however, there has been limited application of entomological warfare against military or civilian targets, Japan being the only state known to have verifiably implemented the method against another state, namely the Chinese during World War II. However, EW was used more widely in antiquity, in order to repel sieges or cause economic harm to states. Research into EW was conducted during both World War II and the Cold War by numerous states such as the Soviet Union, United States, Germany and Canada. There have also been suggestions that it could be implemented by non-state actors in a form of bioterrorism. Under the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention of 1972, use of insects to administer agents or toxins for hostile purposes is deemed to be against international law.

A poster from 1942:

"Starting in the mid-2000s, the Democratic Party adopted a position that retail politics was due for an internet upgrade."

"Turning up for church hall meetings was well and fine. But haven’t you heard that Americans are bowling alone? Better to email. Phone banking turned into text-a-thons, where volunteers sent millions of text messages to cellphones we had not yet learned to ignore.... That... felt like the future in 2008.... By 2020, the Democratic advantage in digital campaigning was long gone.... As algorithms turned neighbors into unrecognizable partisans with crazy conspiracy theories, Silicon Valley abandoned the Democrats for Trump. Through it all, the frantic fund-raising text messages just kept coming.... [In the Michigan primary,] Abdul El-Sayed upset the deep-pocketed, establishment choice, Haley Stevens, by building a relational campaign on an economic populist message. El-Sayed won, in part, by characterizing the $62 million in outside money that backed Stevens’s campaign as a sign of... political corruption...."

Writes Tressie McMillan Cottom, in "Socialists Are Winning Because They Listen to People" (NYT gift link).

So... money isn't the answer. You need something other than money, and the socialists do have something. How, then, can they be stopped? The linked column puts it like this: "I’d be looking for the candidates who are thinking and running as if they know that bases are made of people, not dollars."

If you really wanted to show that you are about people, you wouldn't say "bases are made of people." You'd say people matter and hide that the reason they matter to you is they're what is required to make a "base."

The socialists are to the Democratic Party what the Tea Party was to the GOP. All they need now is their Trump.