Sunrise.

"Patients who disagree with their doctor can be 'fired' or flagged with scarlet letters in the corners of their electronic medical charts."

"'Exaggerating.' 'Resistant.' 'Noncompliant.' 'Hysterical.' To be sure, there are problematic patients, even dangerous ones. But for the rest of us, the imbalance between our defenselessness and the doctor’s discretion can create an unhelpful dynamic, one that pushes us to stop advocating and start accommodating. The result is waiting rooms full of people pleasers and providers who never get the full picture. The pressure to be pleasant and pliant is especially strong for women. Just as 'bossy' women often don’t get promotions and 'uppity' women are more likely to be sexually harassed, women who are branded as difficult patients are at risk of not being taken seriously or losing access to care. This is one of the reasons women overapologize, even for their own pain. A simple disclaimer — 'I don’t mean to be difficult, but …' — can backfire as well...."

Writes Allison Sweet Grant, author of "Lump: A Memoir in Ineloquent Reflections," "This Is Why Women Are Scared to Tell Their Doctors the Truth" (NYT gift link).

A mere 30 years ago, this was a highlighted modern problem on "Seinfeld" (Season 8, Episode 5, "The Package"):

 

(Yes, I know this is my second "Seinfeld" post this morning. It was in looking for this Elaine-at-the-doctor material that I stumbled into the unfilmed episode stuff I blogged an hour ago, here.)

"The Seinfeld cast refused to film this episode. So we animated it instead."

"Jerry and and Julia read this one scene where she has the gun and she's holding in her hand and she says to Jerry in the car, 'All right, Jerry, where do you want it? The Kennedy, the McKinley?' And she could barely get it out of her mouth. And I used to sit right next to Juliet... and I remember her saying it and just looking at me with the most pathetic eyes and then looking at Jerry... and she went, 'I'm not doing this. I'm not doing this.'"

"[T]his relationship is pathological, and a source of great irritation among other courtiers. It is Trump distilled to his essence..."

"... cult leader and his most rabid follower, narcissist and his most flattering mirror. The daughter of a devoutly Christian real estate broker who died by suicide during the pandemic, [Natalie] Harp idolizes Trump with a rare fervor.... ... Trump told his staff that Harp was the only one who loved him as much as his wife and kids did. 'She’ll never leave me,' he would tell other staffers.... It’s a perfect (taxpayer-funded) relationship. She thinks he’s amazing. And he agrees."

Writes Maureen Dowd, in "Natalie’s Magnificent Obsession" (NYT gift link).

"Obsession" is the title of a current movie that is, as Dowd tells us, "about a man who wishes for more adoration from a young woman, who falls under his spell and maniacally provides it." 

I haven't seen it. And I haven't seen "Magnificent Obsession," but I know it's a 1954 movie starring Ronald Reagan's first wife:

ADDED: After reading Dowd's column, I scribbled this at Grok, writing quickly, without the intention of sharing it, but I'm sharing it:

I'm interested in they way many women in the workplace are competitive with other women in a way that's actually sexist — judging that other women are getting more than they deserve because of their looks and/or imagining that sexual things are going on. They're actually impeding the progress of women... or are they trying to help some subset of women by pulling particular women down? (I'm thinking about the reaction to Natalie Harp.)

And then I connected the Natalie Harp foofaraw to this passage from "President Kennedy: Profile of Power" (commission earned) that my son Chris — reader of presidential biographies — had just texted to me last night. We join the Cuban Missile Crisis in progress.

Sunrise.

The astounding delusion of Neom.

ADDED: Back in 2021, I blogged a NYT article about the the part of the project called "the Line" —  "a postmodern ecotopia... a narrow urban strip 106 miles long with no roads, no cars and no pollution...." Here's how Saudi Arabia announced the project:

"The Supreme Court on Friday temporarily allowed President Trump to continue construction of a luxury White House ballroom to replace the East Wing he demolished last fall."

The NYT reports.

In a one-sentence order, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., acting on his own, issued a place holder that gives all nine justices additional time to more fully consider whether construction of the planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom can proceed. The chief justice’s order did not provide a timeline for when the court would act next, stating only that a lower-court ruling against the Trump administration was paused “pending further order of the undersigned or of the court.”

"I looked in his eyes. I can't picture his face... I didn't see the skin. When I think about him... all I see is these deep oceans of blue in these deep concerning eyes."

"And this like white light behind them. That's what I picture when I think about what did Bob Dylan look like to me. All I can see is these the deepest bluest eyes with the most concerning emotion in them and then this like aura of like white light. That's what Bob looks like to me in my memory. I can't remember his face...."

Said Billy Strings.

Theo Von: "It's almost something that's like almost like maybe from another realm or something. I think God, like God's concern, like shows up in our eyes, I think. So maybe he just has a lot of like concern from the other side, you know?"

Billy Strings: “Yeah. And it's it's not a paranoid concern. It's more of like a compassion and and a like like a love like from an elder, you know?”

Theo: “Yeah. Maybe like a kind of semi-aggressive intrigue kind of.”

Billy: “Like a some kind of musical grandpa, you know?”

Theo: “Yeah, dude. Bob Dylan, bro. Wow.”

I see my name invoked over at Instapundit.

It's on the old "men in shorts" topic. Something about women being able to wear "sundresses" to work. I think the term "sundresses" is being used to mean sleeveless dresses. An actual sundress wouldn't look any more professional than a man in shorts, but sleeveless dresses exist and might look okay in the office. But isn't the office air conditioned? I think women are more likely to put on a sweater than to want their bare arms exposed. 

Anyway, my classic men-in-shorts topic was about men looking like children. It all started back in 2006. It all started with something Tom Wolfe wrote in "I Am Charlotte Simmons" [commission earned]. "I was amused," I blogged, "to run across this description of a man wearing shorts":

All that elegance was what made the personage of Dr. Lewin seem so curious. Last week, when the class first met, he had worn a plaid cotton shirt and pants -- nothing remarkable about that. The shirt had had long sleeves, and the pants had been long pants. But this morning he had on a short-sleeved shirt that showed too much of his skinny, hairy arms, and denim shorts that showed too much of his gnarly, hairy legs. He looked for all the world like a seven-year-old who at the touch of a wand had become old, tall, bald on top, and hairy everywhere else, an ossified seven-year-old, a pair of eyeglasses with lenses thick as ice pushed up to the summit of his forehead -- unaccountably addressing thirty college students, at Dupont, no less.

That's my motivation. Trying to encourage you to eschew the look of an ossified 7-year-old. 

"Rachel Cusk... wasn’t planning on having this conversation about the novel, 'Life of M,' but other people have had a lot to say — about whether 'M' is actually Natalie Portman..."

"... and whether, by writing about an actor who so closely resembles a real celebrity, Cusk has committed some kind of artistic betrayal.... Cusk seems bewildered, and a bit distressed, to find herself caught in the harsh spotlight of fame and the kind of tabloid feeding frenzy she evokes in the novel, which features an author who writes about a famous actress."

From "How a Highbrow Novel Became Celebrity Gossip 'Life of M,' Rachel Cusk’s new book, has a protagonist with an uncanny resemblance to Natalie Portman. But in an interview, Cusk says she never expected it would cause such a frenzy" (NYT gift link).

Cusk says: "It’s very stressful, the thought of these things happening.... It’s taking the novel that I’ve created into almost a sort of courtroom or a factual fight.... What I’ve done belongs much more in a world in which fame, and these people who are so known and yet so unknown, is a part of contemporary consciousness....

"Robert Plant bakes a pie."

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"I am using [the word 'scam'] more liberally than I think other people do. On purpose, because I think it’s funny."

Says Alex Falcone, who makes videos in a series called “Is It a Scam? Yep," quoted in "Alcohol. Manliness. Flushable Wipes. Since When Are These ‘Scams’?" (NYT gift link).

I like this expansion of the word. It is, as Falcone says, funny. 

Watch his videos on YouTube here.

Example:

ADDED: Once you start using the word "scam" this way, you quickly progress and will, I predict, get to "life itself" in less than 15 minutes. It's more light-hearted than calling everything "bullshit." It's reminiscent of Holden Caulfield calling everything "phony."

AND: There are quite a few things I've blogged about over the years that reflect an opinion that I could express with this broad use of the word scam — journalism, tourist travel, flying on a plane, manned space travel, the 2 major parties, calls for civility....

Steve Hilton, the GOP nominee for Governor of California, talks to Joe Rogan.

Joe and Hilton are old friends, and this discussion goes on for 3 hours, so this should be a major boost for Hilton. I'll just jump in at the point where they are talking about the waste of money on nonprofits that deal with homelessness:

Steve Hilton: This woman runs a homeless nonprofit, 1.6 million dollar salary. Homeless nonprofit.... There's another one...  2.6 million a year....

Joe Rogan: And here's the most important thing. The homelessness only got worse. Like if in the private sector, imagine if you were a CEO of a company that was just losing insane amounts of money and never completing its tasks, never doing the thing that it set out to do....

Steve Hilton: The more I look at it, the more insane it is. And everyone just looks at it and no one's ever pointed this stuff out.... The government just makes everything so expensive in California. Everyone says, oh, it's so expensive. What are we going to do? We'd better give them more welfare benefits... we better have a billionaire wealth tax.... They don't have that mentality of cutting costs like every normal business.... And this is what happens, I think, when you've got this one party rule thing that's been going on for 16 years now. They've run everything. They don't care because they think they'll be in power forever and it just doesn't matter....

"They were a success in Hollywood on one level. They brilliantly scammed some of the powers that be..."

"... and I never ceased to be amazed that very shrewd, extremely astute, hard-bitten, cynical executives are still blinded by celebrity. There was no proof from the beginning that these people knew how to produce material that people wanted to watch and yet they walked away with millions and millions of dollars. And on that level, they were a glowing success. On another level, which is return on investment, they failed abysmally."

Said Stephen Galloway, dean of the film school at Chapman University in California, quoted in "How Harry and Meghan ‘scammed’ Hollywood/The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are leaving California after deals with Netflix and Spotify failed, experts say. Is their brand dead?" (London Times).

Brilliantly scammed? What did they do that was brilliant? Maybe Galloway is a little scammed. He's proclaiming brilliance when all he is seeing are foolish executives falling for a man who inherited royalty. Or is Meghan brilliant — not brilliant at producing shows, but perhaps brilliant to see a way to bamboozle executives with royalty for a few years until the ludicrous inability to deliver the product became crushingly obvious?

Sunrise.

Talking crossword.

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"If 'lore' is in part a word about treating fiction as a set of discoverable facts, it is also a word that imagines the hard facts of real life as part of a grand story...."

Writes Mitch Therleau, in "A Simple, One-Word Trick to Turn Everyday Life Into Grand Fantasy" (NYT gift link).

“Share a piece of lore about yourself,” goes one perennial prompt post on X.... The responses these kinds of posts elicit are not unlike the fun facts you might be prompted to share in an icebreaker activity.... Calling these unfun facts “lore” perhaps blunts the pain of the original experiences, rhetorically placing them in misty antiquity and sarcastically puffing them up into arcane secrets.... “Does your brand have lore?” asks Advertising Week... “Lore” is a hinge word, a threshold word. Fiction passes through it and becomes tangible fact; facts pass through it and become part of a grand story. Its ultimate trick is to make knowledge not embarrassing or useless, but a form of dark magic.

ADDED: This makes me think of the old Mothers of Invention song about becoming a hippie:

First I'll buy some beads
And then perhaps a leather band to go around my head
Some feathers and bells
And a book of Indian lore....

At the Coyote Café...

... you can talk your way through lunchtime.

"She won’t be here long"/"Next: H&M- the divorce"/"This is going to end in tears"/"My thoughts exactly. She does not want to be here. Lawyers will be circling...."

Various comments to be found at the London Times article, "Prince Harry and Meghan moving back to UK this month/Duke and Duchess of Sussex have enrolled Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet in a British school and are preparing to leave California."

"Unfortunately for [Jeff] Bezos and [Lauren] Sánchez, the very fact of their obscene wealth and fame may be keeping the gates of membership closed to them thus far."

"As the [Wall Street] Journal reported, 'As with many private country clubs, admission often comes down to hitting it off with existing members.... In fact, too much wealth or notoriety has become a deterrent, as wealthy new applicants arriving in Florida are learning.' In fact, 'old guard' members are apparently so turned off by what they see as 'billionaire interlopers' that they are said to be 'mounting a last stand' and refusing to 'offer membership to just anyone who has struck it rich.'... Bezos and Sánchez are not the only deep-pocketed duo living on the Miami island — known as the 'Billionaire Bunker' — who have yet to score an invite for membership. There’s also Mark Zuckerberg, who dropped $170 million on a waterfront estate last year; the Qatari royal family; and one Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump...."

From "Jeff Bezos, Javanka Have Yet to Score Invites to ‘Billionaire Bunker’ Club" (NY Magazine).

Well, this is an old old story, the story of old money socially shunning the newly rich. Those upstarts.

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"A few years ago, Charlotte, which is not her real name, was referred to the Select Date Society, which then offered services starting at $35,000..."

"... (due to high demand, the fee rose to $75,000 shortly after, with a top tier that started at $150,000). Charlotte, 38 at the time, worked for a successful business that had just gone public, so the money wasn’t a huge issue for her. 'No one I know would ever do this, I know that,' she says of her thinking at the time. 'But you know what? I could use some help, so I’m raising my hand here — I could use some help. And I’ll be honest, I’m lonely.' An M.B.A. with a blistering career trajectory that had taken her to companies like Goldman Sachs and Google, she was mainly occupied renovating a townhouse she’d recently purchased. She was in a position where, she says, 'I can use a friend. I can use someone who’s like my best friend.'..."

I'm reading "The Good-Man Shortage Has Gotten Exponentially Worse/The crisis is both a boon and a challenge for high-end matchmakers helping women find love" (NY Magazine).

"Look, I’d also be annoyed if touch of the ’tism TikTok were a regular feature of my offline conversations..."

"... but you’re right to laugh off your friends’ commentary if you can. It’s not worth wading into the quagmires awaiting you otherwise: conversations that assume and/or stigmatize a given condition’s symptoms and signs; declamations about the societal perils of self-diagnosing online, especially when it’s possible someone in your cohort has done exactly that; and any number of other headaches."

Writes the NY Magazine advice columnist, answering a letter in "My Friends Are Always Trying to Diagnose Me With Something!"

"[M]any on the left are blaming the media. 'The media lynched Jason Arday,' declared Ibram X. Kendi...."

"Important British progressives... signed an open letter demanding some sort of official oversight of journalistic decision-making. 'Self-regulation of the press has comprehensively failed,' it said. The writer Will Self called, in an open letter to Prime Minister Andy Burnham, for the police to begin 'impounding computers,' presumably belonging to people involved in covering the scandal... Some who once championed Arday seem to be trying to deflect from their own embarrassing credulity, and it is unlikely to work...."

Writes Michelle Goldberg, in "After a Scholar’s Awful Death, Mistaken Calls for Censorship" (NYT gift link).

"Many of the people who didn’t bother questioning Arday’s back story should have known better; today their oversight looks less like respect than condescension, as if no one took him seriously enough to think hard about what he was saying. 'Arday was treated not as a scholar but as a mascot,' Jason Okundaye wrote in the left-leaning Guardian.... For people on the left, it’s sure easier to talk about the feral excesses of the right-wing press than the willful gullibility of certain elite progressives."

What she's politely calling "condescension" and "the willful gullibility of certain elite progressives" is racism. The way they treated him reflected a belief in his inferiority.

It used to seem like a joke — a prank — to get A.I. talking to A.I.

But these days:

"Students are writing essays with ChatGPT, and teachers are using A.I. to grade them. Workers are sending lengthy A.I.-generated emails to colleagues, who are responding with walls of chatbot text of their own. A.I podcast hosts are holding forth with A.I. podcast guests on topics like gas prices, the Iran war — and artificial intelligence.... In March, Meta acquired a social network designed for bots to talk to one another.... There was a telecom executive who had noticed customers sending A.I. voice agents to argue with his company’s A.I. customer service system. There was a man who used a chatbot to draft messages on a dating app to a woman who seemed to be doing the exact same thing...."

From "Chatbots Are Pushing Us Toward a Post-Human Internet/In matters of work, school and even romance, we turn to A.I. chatbots. But what happens when the bots begin talking to one another?" (NYT gift link).

The data center next door.

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"Zale Parry... [an] underwater stuntwoman whose reverence for the oceanic world was deepened by tripping out on LSD in a research study that included Cary Grant, Jack Nicholson and Dennis Hopper..."

"... died on July 20 at her home in Tillamook, Ore. She was 93.... [She] doubl[ed] for Sophia Loren in the 1957 film 'Boy on a Dolphin' and co-starr[ed] with Lloyd Bridges on the television show 'Sea Hunt.'"

I'm reading "Zale Parry, Aquatic Hollywood Star and Early Acid Tripper, Dies at 93/A diving feat landed her on the cover of Sports Illustrated and led to a film and TV career. She also took part in one of the first LSD studies" (NYT gift link).

"Girl skin diver" — I like that old-time locution. 

Onto the LSD part of the magnificent lady's story. 

Sunrise.

"Restitution, if only in the form of honest contrition and perhaps even a public apology, is in order."

"Restitution, for instance, for Stan Wischnowski, the top editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, who in 2020 had to resign from his job and issue a groveling apology for the sin of running an article by the paper’s architecture critic with the headline 'Buildings Matter, Too.' Restitution for Mike Pesca, the host of a popular podcast, 'The Gist,' who was suspended indefinitely from his job at Slate for making a case, in an interoffice back and forth, that it may sometimes be permissible for a non-Black person to quote a racial slur in narrow contexts. Restitution, yes, for James Bennet, a former editor of The Times’s Opinion section, who was forced from his job after the publication of a controversial guest essay by Tom Cotton, a Republican senator...."

Writes Bret Stephens, in "Yes, Woke 1.0 Was Crazy. Now Where’s the Accountability?" (NYT gift link).

"The most gratifying loss last night was that of a real treasonous creep, Alexander Vindman, to a Radical Left Lunatic, who can’t speak or think properly..."

"... and who will go down to certain defeat at the hands of Ashley Moody, a truly Fantastic Senator, from the Great State Florida. Vindman, if you remember, was the one who lied about my 'Perfect Call' with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine, only to find out that the conversation was routinely recorded and proved that I was 100% in the right (Completely Innocent!). It was, indeed, a Perfect Call, and the Dumocrats Fake Impeachment effort massively failed. Vindman should be prosecuted for what he did! President Donald J. TRUMP."

That's Trump, obviously, at Truth Social just now. 

Here's the NYT article about Vindman's defeat: "The Left Notches Another Win With This Secret Weapon: Old-Fashioned Organizing/State Representative Angie Nixon scored a stunning upset on Tuesday in Florida’s Democratic Senate primary. Her victory will test the strength of a democratic socialist in a red state" (gift link)("The flip side to Ms. Nixon’s victory is that it may turn what was widely seen as a long-shot goal for Democrats — defeating a sitting Republican senator in comfortably red Florida — into an even longer shot. The Cook Political Report has consistently rated the race this year as 'solid R'").

"She is a platinum blonde geyser of positivity, there to buck him up when the going gets rough."

I'm reading "'With All My Heart, Natalie.' Trump’s Most Devoted Aide Emerges. President Trump’s White House aide Natalie Harp is always by his side. What, exactly, does she do?" by Shawn McCreesh and Maggie Haberman, in the NYT (gift link).

They're talking about Natalie Harp because"she was chosen to join the president on the secret food-delivery-truck rescue gambit" and because Senator Jon Ossoff, a potential Democratic Party nominee for President, observed, "[Trump] doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.'"

The Times article also refers to Harp as a "sylphlike woman."

The quote "With all my heart, Natalie" — seen in the article headline is the sign-off of a letter Harp wrote to Trump in which she apologized for attracting press coverage as she walked a golf course as Trump played golf and, naturally, used a golf cart. I guess that looked foolish to some observers looking for one more thing to revile. I haven't read about the incident, but I suspect she wanted the exercise. I've walked golf courses as a spectator. It's normal for spectators to walk.

"The letter goes on to say: 'I want things to always be right between us. I also know I’ve been distracted all week (forgetting to eat throughout the days, and even forgetting to sleep, and only catching a couple hours at a time).'"

"[T]he house has a 'liquid layout,' with arcing walls and long curtains that soften the effect of the glass and shiny new resin floors."

"You hear visitors in the entry vestibule before you see them and when friends come for dinner, they meet for cocktails in a lounge with low gray furniture — the ceilings are just under seven feet high — until they eventually wander past an enclosed, terrariumlike indoor garden to the magenta dining room beyond. Nearby, there’s a purple-carpeted, textured-concrete closet, intended only for playing chess, accessible via a secret door."

From "In Mexico City, a Futuristic House With a Secret Chess Room/The architect Fernando Romero has pushed what was once a generic midcentury home as far as it can go" (NYT gift link)(with lots of photos of very unusual rooms).

Seems like the set for a horror movie, but to each his own.

"As far back as 2018, Lodge had been stealing body parts — including 'heads, faces, brains, skin and hands' — which he’d then bring to his home..."

"... in New Hampshire and sell with his wife, prosecutors said, shipping them to buyers in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. In one horrifying example heard during his trial, Lodge provided skin to a buyer so it could be tanned into leather and bound into a book.... 'In another, Cedric and Denise Lodge sold a man’s face — perhaps to be kept on a shelf, perhaps to be used for something even more disturbing'...."

From "Harvard to pay $53M in suit over selling donated corpses on black market" (NY Post).

In baseball, there's no such thing as running up the score.

The offensive players come up to the plate and must pursue the end of scoring runs. It is for the defensive team to record outs, and it is only through the achievement of outs that the game can ever end. There is no mercy, nothing that can be done about the humiliation.

MLB HISTORY 🤯

The Brewers' 22-0 win tied the largest shutout victory since the start of 1888! pic.twitter.com/frLpYbI4h0

— MLB (@MLB) August 19, 2026

Sit back, relax and enjoy all 22 runs 🍿#ThisIsMyCrew x @MillerLite pic.twitter.com/fYjvllh1iZ

— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) August 19, 2026

But then there is the utter humiliation that a player brings upon himself:

The Mariners were losing 19-0. Somehow the worst play of the game came after that with Julio Rodriguez simply not paying attention.

Unreal. https://t.co/jVNfJOlGLJ #Mariners #TridentsUp pic.twitter.com/Vjg6QZuUrQ

— Dusty Baker (@DustyBakerTV) August 19, 2026

Sunrise.

The old "so bad it's good" phenomenon works in China.

The BBC reports, in "Movie that went viral for terrible animation becomes China box office hit."

Niu Lai, a low-budget animation film about a cow in a dream sequence has seen a huge jump in ticket sales after going viral for its confusing plot and terrible graphics. It grossed just 7,705 yuan ($1,140; £843) in the first 10 days after its release, but has now made more than 11.4 million yuan, according to movie tracking site Mao Yan. That means it is holding ground against Hollywood blockbusters like The Odyssey and Spider Man: Brand New Day. 

"You may regret for 80 minutes if you watch it, but if you don't, you'll regret it for life," one popular social media post about the film said.

Give Rosie O'Donnell credit for a nice comeback, telling 2 charming stories of her life in Ireland.

She barely gestures at Trump. I think she wants to be "Queen of Nice" again. Give her a chance and watch with charity:

The news from Sicily.

1. "American Hiker Dies After Lightning Strike on Mount Etna in Italy/Rescuers found a 29-year-old man in serious condition on the volcano’s eastern slope on Sunday. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital in Catania" (NYT gift link)("On Monday, Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology reported that another volcanic vent had opened in the valley, with fresh lava flowing overnight.... During a volcanic eruption, tiny collisions among the rising particles of ash can create static electricity, which may in turn produce volcanic lightning").

2. "Thieves Steal 4 Renaissance Paintings From Italian Museum in Brazen Heist/The works, by Antonello da Messina, were taken as the Sicilian city of Messina held a religious celebration" (NYT gift link)("The celebration, the Procession of the Vara, is a religious ritual that takes places every Aug. 15. Some 100,000 people attended the celebration and the city’s law enforcement officials were focused on maintaining order there, city officials said....The theft is a blow to the city.... [F]or the past few years the city has focused on the 'Messina, City of Antonello' brand...).

3. The Procession of the Vara:

Comedian strategies.

Link.

I want to know more. Was this a prank of a sort that some people will admire and think of as what the supposedly legitimate polling business deserves?

ADDED: What else did Median Strategies do? My first thought was Spencer Pratt.

It doesn't take much these days to be considered "formal."

I'm reading "Think It’s Cool to Wear Fancy Sneakers to Work? You Might Be Old. After years of office casual, young people are embracing loafers, derbies and oxfords" (NYT gift link).

Earlier this year, Esquire described the trend as the loafer’s “big generational shift,” describing how younger consumers “were bypassing sneakers in growing numbers.” And in January, The Times UK deemed 2026 “the year of the loafer.”...

The surging interest in formal footwear fashions has simultaneously been a boon for both high-end luxury retailers and heritage brands with classic shoe offerings, like Allen Edmonds, the Wisconsin-based retailer. Nick Wooster, the brand’s consulting creative director, said that they have “absolutely” seen a recent increase in interest in their handmade leather loafers and derbies among younger customers. 

Even sneaker brands are trying to be more dressy.

"Being a good teacher requires being sort of odd, even a bit immature."

"Some of my favorite professors married scholarly expertise with considerable eccentricity. My dissertation adviser insisted her students take up social dance like polka, line dancing and zydeco; another of my former professors would alight at 4 a.m. to teach himself Japanese before undertaking woodworking projects like making a life-size chess set. The passions are nonconformist. To be moved is to be a little bit weird."

Writes Matt Dinan, the director of the great books program at St. Thomas University in New Brunswick, in "I Let My Students Watch Me Struggle With a Masterpiece. It Changed Everything" (NYT gift link).

"What I discovered anew in my encounter with 'The Brothers Karamazov' last term was that if you want students to be passionately engaged, not worried about the future, grasping, careerist or disengaged, you must transmit the spark of passion in your deeds, your mien — let’s face it, in your own soul. If you expect your students to choose books, ideas and genuine learning over shortcuts and distraction, you must be a bit courageous, too.... As [the Karamazov brother] Alyosha memorably notes, all capable people 'are awfully afraid of looking ridiculous, and it makes them unhappy.'"

"They were going to build an F.B.I. headquarters three hours away in Maryland, a liberal state. We’re going to stop it."

Said Trump, last year, quoted in "Judge Rules Trump Administration Can’t Scrap F.B.I. Move to Maryland/The ruling is almost certainly not the end of the lengthy fight over the F.B.I.’s future headquarters, which has lasted for years" (NYT gift link).

In a 47-page ruling, Judge Theodore Chuang of the Federal District Court in Maryland wrote that “the F.B.I. erroneously concluded” that it could select a new headquarters for itself without consulting Congress. In reality, Judge Chuang wrote, Congress had already approved the Biden administration plan for the F.B.I. to move to Maryland.... Maryland state officials cheered the ruling, which blocked the Trump administration from diverting about $1 billion to be spent on a sprawling campus near the Greenbelt Metro station in Prince George’s County....

Sunrise reprise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

Sunrise.

"When I’ve alluded to my penchant for audiobooks... I’ve occasionally been chided and told that they’re bastardizations of the real thing..."

"... and that printed volumes are truer to an author’s intent, better suited to lingering over language, superior through and through. Maybe so. But do the evangelists of that religion pause to wonder why we heretics exist? Some of us worship differently not because we haven’t seen the light, but because we don’t see well."

Writes Frank Bruni, in his newsletter (NYT gift link).

He describes his vision problem: "Almost nine years ago, I had a stroke that ravaged the optic nerve behind my right eye and rendered that eye pretty much useless. I wrote about that in this 2018 essay.... Since the incident, my slightly off-kilter monocular vision hasn’t deteriorated further.... [There is a] gap between what each of us struggles with and what the people in our orbits know or see of it.... It’s the source of so much ignorance, insensitivity and even cruelty."

(If you click through to the newsletter, you'll see the headline is "Buttigieg and El-Sayed Are Teaching Democrats to Speak Republican." You might want to read that. I did, but then I didn't want to blog about it... and did want to blog about the old audiobooks issue, even though I've blogged it many times before, as a click on my "audiobooks" tag will prove.)

"I just do not understand the mentality. If this is a representation of who our military is now… we’re just Rome sitting here waiting to burn. We’ve got nothing left."

From "Fox Host Trashes U.S. Sailors as ‘Weak’ for Speaking Out About Dire Conditions/Fox News host Joey Jones mocked service members speaking out about conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln" (MTN).

Joey Jones on concerns of service members on the USS Lincoln: pic.twitter.com/Va2npYmA9x

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 15, 2026

"After the 1997 Asian financial crisis South Korea realised that it was overly dependent on heavy industry, notably shipbuilding and carmaking."

"Ministers decided that the creative industries might successfully diversify the economy, after a team of economists pointed out that the film Jurassic Park alone had generated the same profit as selling 1.5 million Hyundai cars. They got behind everything from media and the arts to food and drink. A campaign for traditional Korean food supported restaurants, chef training and marketing. It has helped Korean food to travel alongside the 'K-wave' of pop culture. Kimchi is spreading like sushi and ramen did a generation ago...."

From "All points east — how the West got hooked on Korean and Japanese culture/K-pop titans BTS are taking on the Grammys, manga is on the London stage and Japanese literature is breaking records. What’s driving the boom?" (London Times).

We're told that BTS is very popular because of their "mix of pop, hip-hop, R&B and electronic music, with lyrics about mental health and social pressure," and it made me wonder what the group is saying about mental health and social pressure. So, the world being what it is, I said to Grok, "All I want from you is about 10 quotes from BTS songs that are 'lyrics about mental health and social pressure.'"

Click through if you want to know.

"Former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona is being sued in North Carolina under the state's 'homewrecker' law."

"Sinema admitted in a deposition to having a sexual relationship with her then-married former bodyguard. Sinema argues the affair did not happen in North Carolina, so she shouldn't be sued in that state. The lawsuit was filed by Heather Ammel, the ex-wife of Sinema's former bodyguard Matthew Ammel...."

I'm reading "'We went inside and had sex.' Sinema details affair with bodyguard" (The Arizona Republic).

Presumably, Ms. Ammel's argument is that the thing Sinema wrecked, the marriage, was located in North Carolina. 

"My hair stood on end and I became ferocious and, like, this is not happening, but I had nowhere to hide."

WATCH: Hayden Panettiere says she was 18 when a woman she trusted as a protector took her below deck on a yacht and physically put her in bed beside an undressed “very famous” man.

“By the time I’d realized I was in danger, I was quite literally out to sea.”

“She physically put… pic.twitter.com/rz5JAyxQo0

— Scott M (@EODWX5) August 17, 2026

Background: "Hayden Panettiere, Star of ‘Nashville’ and ‘Heroes,’ Dies at 36/In May, she published a memoir after a tumultuous decade that involved depression, substance abuse, losing custody of her daughter and stints in rehab" (NYT gift link).

UPDATE: From  "Emergency Responders Found Hayden Panettiere in Cardiac Arrest/After the authorities responded to a 911 call in Greenville, S.C., an initial police investigation found no evidence of 'foul play or suspicious circumstances'" (NYT gift link):

The cardiac arrest was caused by an apparent drug overdose, according to a person with knowledge of the situation... The person with knowledge of the situation said that Ms. Panettiere was with Brian Hickerson, a former boyfriend, at the time of her death.... 

According to Ms. Panettiere’s memoir, 'This Is Me: A Reckoning,' which she published this year, she met Mr. Hickerson in 2018 in Los Angeles. The two dated on and off for several years. Court records show that in 2021, Mr. Hickerson pleaded no contest to two felony counts of injuring Ms. Panettiere." 

Sunrise.

"In the exhilarating case of Madison, it’s important to pursue the frenzy, merge with the frenzy, ingest the frenzy."

"The frenzy beckons along State Street, the central nervous system of the city and the 50,000-strong university, with main quadrangle Bascom Hill at the end opposite the state Capitol. The frenzy churns up and down the streets and boulevards leading up to kickoffs, the multistory bars packed with people and red. It’s present in bits in the breakfast line at the famed Mickie’s Dairy Bar, or the doughnut line at Greenbush, or at State Street Brats, or the Memorial Union Terrace of the main student union. It’s bubbling at the Dane County Farmers’ Market, and it’s roaring at the frat houses near Camp Randall Stadium, where the inspiring sights might include a beer bong on the second floor delivering the nectar to a drinker on the ground. It reaches its peak, though, at the end of the third quarter.... If one seeks bouts of quiet, as unfitting as they can seem, there’s a daydream of a lake (Mendota), the Lakeshore Path, the city’s welcoming capacity for cyclists or the privilege of a lakefront room at the Edgewater Hotel...."

The Washington Post puts Madison first, in "The 10 best college football towns in America" (gift link).

Here's the daydream this morning, video'd by Meade:

 

Socialists in shorts.

I'm reading the NYT article "Is the Democratic Party Facing Its Own Tea Party Moment? A string of primary wins by progressive candidates has revealed the strength of a high-energy insurgent movement but also its potential limitations," which you can read for yourself at that gift link.

It's a topic I'm following, and I've recently blogged about. I said it a week ago: "The socialists are to the Democratic Party what the Tea Party was to the GOP."

So right now, all I want to do is put up something I cropped from one of the photographs:

"Dr. Abdul El-Sayed tried to attract young voters," and he did. They came toddling in wearing shorts, shuffling in slides and sneakers.

If I were a NYT essayist, I'd muse that they are showing us what real, human, embodied and, yes male power can look like.

ADDED: After publishing this post, I dashed off a question to Grok, "Can the males wear shorts and slides to the revolution?" Answer:

"Women remain, as linguists say, the 'marked' sex, the nonstandard, defined as the opposite of the male norm."

"There is no one effortless way to look as a congresswoman, no uniform of business suit and tie that allows her to blend in. Most female politicians handle this by approximating male attire with some tweaks. Usually that involves a blazer, pearls, and very discreet hair and makeup — ideally, none of which gets talked about. But there is power in rejecting this model. Power in embracing the variety of embellishments available to women — earrings, lipstick, dresses, different hair styles. And an extension of this power can be a woman experimenting with baring her belly, along with her reproductive journey. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is consciously working to fuse her body and mind on the public stage, to show us what real, human, embodied and, yes, female power can look like. She will not be a mere 'thing in a suit,' as she said."

Writes Rhonda Garelick, in "Ocasio-Cortez Rewrites the Rules" (NYT gift link).

It's an old idea — that feminine beauty is powerful and that power-seeking women can implement beauty to rise in the political world. Cleopatra, etc. But Garelick adds the notion that a woman baring her belly to the public and making a show out of shifting her fertility into the realm of science and technology will augment the power achieved through beauty and fashion. The old idea is a cliché. It works as far as it works. The new idea is barely coherent.

"I’m sorry to be crass about it, but I don’t think the point of the magazine is for self-pleasure. You no longer need a print magazine for that."

"It weirdly offers an artistic and highbrow view of the female nude, at a time when that is hard to come by."

Says Phillip Picardi, quoted in "I’ll make Playboy playful again, says its new gay editor/Phillip Picardi, a Catholic former Condé Nast wunderkind, also wants to attract women to the £30 magazine with more ‘artistic’ nudes and robust writing" (London Times).

He wants to “destigmatise male sexuality”, he says, and “help men to build a healthier relationship” with the women in their lives. “I’m hoping we can be a space for men who feel caught between needing to be manosphere-adjacent and needing to be the performative liberal male,” he says.... “We should promote the idea that we can be excited about sex and we can be excited about each other and excited about touching each other,” he says with a cheeky grin.

How Catholic is he? We're told he's "a lapsed Catholic who recently completed a master’s at Harvard Divinity School in order to rediscover his faith (his thesis was titled: Is Jesus Kinda Hot?)." Is religion part of making "playful again"? You can find "an artistic and highbrow view of the female nude" in church:

This reminds me of a sequence in the movie "Blue Moon," about the songwriter Lorenz Hart, who was gay, though not openly. The character has this conversation with the bartender. From the brilliant screenplay by Robert Kaplow (commission earned):

HART: You know what the sexiest thing on the planet earth is? A half-erect penis. 

EDDIE: Jesus Christ, Larry, nobody wants to hear this.