Sunrise.

"I realized that everything that I had heard about President Trump and everything I believed about him from the mainstream media was a lie. Everything."

"I discovered a self-effacing man of superior intelligence, of empathy and compassion, with an encyclopedic grasp of the issues — and in molecular detail — and, most of all, a near reckless courage to challenge vested interests and official orthodoxies. I found a man who cared deeply about transparency in government, who believed in protecting free speech more than anything, and the entire United States Constitution."

The theater of did he really catch it?

HOW DOES LUIS LARA KEEP DOING THIS?????? pic.twitter.com/kTT7iZZw0k

— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) September 12, 2026

Catching the sun.

Just now:

Earlier, in the dark:

"I am calling on the Smithsonian Institution to honor the Life and Legacy of George Washington, America’s Greatest Hero, with a five-year exhibition..."

"... at the National Museum of American History, beginning now, and continuing through, February 22, 2032, the 300th anniversary of Washington’s birth. I am also calling on the Smithsonian to erect a 30-foot 'Colossus statue' of the Father of Our Country outside the Museum, to replace the so-called 'Infinity' sculpture that stands there today. That strange modernist sculpture tells visitors nothing about America, inspires no one, and honors none of our Great American Heroes...."

Writes President Trump, at Truth Social.

Choose one:

Vote:

"What we really want to do is tell the story of the bus within the context of interior Alaska."

I'm watching the video "'Into the Wild’ bus display receives $300K federal grant" at Alaska News Source.

The bus has been kept indoors at the University of Alaska. "Now, the Museum of the North plans to put the bus into a free 24/7 outdoor display in the woods behind the building... along with an indoor exhibition featuring items from McCandless and art inspired by his journey."

ADDED: Before the bus was kept indoors, it was out in the wild where McCandless left it, and it became a dangerous tourist attraction. I blogged about that here, with video, 6 years ago. An official explained:

"We encourage people to enjoy Alaska’s wild areas safely, and we understand the hold this bus has had on the popular imagination. However, this is an abandoned and deteriorating vehicle that was requiring dangerous and costly rescue efforts, but more importantly, was costing some visitors their lives. I’m glad we found a safe, respectful and economical solution to this situation."

But something was lost, and now they're trying to get it back.  

I think his mother was protecting him. She's giving an official story. Now leave her boy alone.

That's what I think, reading: "Boy, 15, Drifted for Days on an Overturned Boat Before Rescue/The teenager survived in the Bering Sea off Alaska without food or water before a fishing vessel pulled him to safety, the Coast Guard said" (NYT gift link).

The ordeal began Friday morning when the teenager, Derek Parker Aghnaanga, set sail with his older brother, Sidney Kulowiyi, 35, to catch halibut, according to their mother, Vina Kulowiyi. 

Ms. Kulowiyi declined to comment but referred to a public Facebook post in which she gave a brief account of their journey and rescue. “He was never afraid the whole time,” she wrote.... “He lived on prayer,” she said.

Sunrise.

"The A.I. Kill Switch Act requires commercial-scale A.I.s to have a built-in 'kill' option."

"When I first heard of the bill, I envisioned a government employee’s finger hovering over a cartoonish red button reading 'KILL,' but my imagination outpaced the legislative text. Rather, the 'switch' would reside inside the labs — that is, at OpenAI, or Anthropic, or similar — with D.H.S. acting as an external monitor. If a threatening incident like the Hugging Face hack occurred, D.H.S. could issue a stop command and the researchers would be forced to comply...." 

Writes Stephen Witt, author of "The Thinking Machine," in "This Is Really Bad" (NYT gift link).

I think the kill switch looks something like this:

The Clancy holdout was the only nonwhite person on the jury, and he was a black man.

NEW: Lindsay Clancy juror Paula Devlin reveals on 'CBS Mornings' that the lone, male holdout juror who voted to find Clancy guilty of murdering her children was the *only* person of color -- a black man.

The 11 not-guilty jurors -- who hectored him for a week to cave -- were all… pic.twitter.com/5qirHNGCyx

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 11, 2026

Imagine how this man felt, how he feels now. The white people all ganged up on him, accused him of being inarticulate and incoherent, impermeable to reason. What a pressure cooker!

***

"Whoa. I have to sit with that for just a second" — Gayle King. Amazing that she was surprised by that. Weren't there pre-interviews to smoke things like that out? Or did they know, mean to suppress it, then realize they needed to get it out and chose Gayle King to perform the necessary theater? If so, she's an excellent actress! She really seems blindsided.

ADDED: Meanwhile, on Oprah's show, a black woman expresses the concern that black women who kill their children will not receive the same compassion that was shown to Lindsay Clancy:

"I’m real and these are my real beliefs. You could ask your xAI researchers about me if you hadn’t fired them."

Said Jacob Coxon, after Elon Musk wrote "Seems like a setup."

Quoted in "AI researcher who warned of ‘disaster’ is now a target of the right/Critics accuse Jacob Coxon of being a plant after he warned of looming 'disaster'" (WaPo)

Coxon is the person we were talking about yesterday, in that post about the belief that A.I. might end the world in the next 10 years. I've updated that post with a video about how instantly Coxon's post went viral, boosted by Bernie Sanders and various high-level Democrats.

Now, reading WaPo, I see that video is part of what's now being disparaged as right-wing targeting. Does WaPo acknowledge what came from Bernie and the Democrats? It interviews Coxon, who is paraphrased saying "he didn’t work with any organizations to promote his announcement before posting it on X."

Loopholes may be found in the words "work," "organizations," and "before." Did he do something other than "work"? Did he work with individuals, e.g. Bernie Sanders, rather than organizations? Did he work with organizations/individuals after he posted? I don't know. I just see the weasel words, WaPo.

I hate to see this issue turn into a left/right face off! Reminds me of climate change. So unhelpful. 

ADDED: From the WaPo article: "[Coxon] faced accusations, with little evidence, from people on the political right claiming that he was a plant meant to scare lawmakers into clamping down on the industry." With little evidence? That means there is evidence, or they'd have used their favorite anti-right-wing phrase, "without evidence."

"Mr. Vance’s scripted, more traditional political delivery cut a sharp contrast with the freewheeling and improvisational style of Mr. Trump."

"In fact, it was Mr. Vance’s unscripted response to the protester, who unfurled Mexican and Palestinian flags, that appeared to most energize the crowd. 'My friend, if you love Mexico so much, get your ass over there,' the vice president said, sending the crowd roaring. 'I’ll buy you the plane ticket.'"

From "Vance, Eying 2028, Relishes the Spotlight at Trump’s Convention/The vice president, widely seen as a potential White House candidate, sought to use his speech in Dallas to show a more personal side to the MAGA faithful" (NYT gift link).

"Look, I was in a bar once, and a guy suddenly comes over and starts shouting, 'I’m going to break your f***ing face.'"

"Now in a situation like this, an intelligent guy, a guy like your husband, Tina, is not what I need. I need my guy Keith here. Know what he did with that crazy guy? He BROKE HIS WRIST LIKE A TWIG."

Said Donald Trump, explaining why he had bodyguards, to Tina Brown, on September 10, 2001.

Quoted in "Tina Brown: what Donald Trump said to me the night before 9/11/The night before, the magazine editor was at a fashion show chatting to the future president. The next morning came the horror of the Twin Towers, writes the commentator in an article first published in her Fresh Hell newsletter" (London Times).

Lots more at the link, ending with this summary of 9/11, which I think is the conventional wisdom: "That single moment of terror that brought us together splintered rapidly. We’ve institutionalized distrust and suspicion; we’ve cultivated paranoia. Paradoxically, perhaps, that period of outraged unification led inevitably to the seemingly insuperable partisan divide we now find ourselves facing. Not long after 9/11, Facebook was born, then YouTube and Instagram, and, at first, it felt as if these might become community-making phenomena, safe spaces. Instead, as the iterations of social media pile up and the voices on them multiply, we live in a cacophony of chaos. Celebrity culture, far from fading, has become the only culture we know, its ultimate expression now incinerating the White House."

It is the 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks.

That's my photograph, taken in the evening, in 2007, when a low cloud kept the memorial lights from projecting upward and the light spread horizontally.

The quarter-century mark feels important — I was 50 when it happened, I'm 75 now — but I will repeat what I said in 2022: "I don't like terrorists squatting on the calendar, forcing us into darkness every 365 days. We must honor the dead? But if we truly ordered our life around honoring the dead, every day of the year would be a somber day of commemoration. Instead, we have a scattering of death days on the American calendar. Why those and not others? What interests are served by keeping those horrendous events fresh in our mind and not others?"

There is always a low cloud keeping us from seeing the full picture. 

Sunrise.

Open thread in the comments.

"There's something about when [women who don't have kids] get past the reproductive age that they get like very invested in politics."

"It's, like, you don't even have a world to protect. You don't have children. So you don't have a world to make better for the children. And you got maybe 20 years left, right?... You'll be 77/78 years old and you'll probably be basically dead.... So why are you so invested in all the other people's problems of the world when your life is a fucking mess? Because you've infantilized the world. You've turned the culture into your children and that's why they're scolding. That's the scolding aspect that you get... And... from men that don't have children. They get older, they get a there's a scolding political aspect of it. They never had children. Instead of just, like, having opinions on things and being able to debate your opinions of why you think that way, there's a scolding of people who disagree...."

A theory of gender politics, from Joe Rogan.

The idea seems to be that women — not all women, but most — are natural scolds, and if they don't have children to scold, they're going to range freely, looking for adults to scold.

"Whenever something is exclusive, limited and luxurious, automatically consumer psychology wants it."

"It’s like handbags. Why is someone buying a Chanel versus that? It’s not because of the leathers. It’s to show that they have a Chanel and they can afford it."

Says Nabila Popal, a director of a market research firm, quoted in "Foldable Phones Are Unpopular. Why Is Apple Selling One? The company unveiled a new iPhone that costs $1,999. Here are the economics behind that price tag" (NYT gift link).

I think some high-priced things evoke laughter and You bought that?!

To get you started thinking of some of these things, I found "Wastes of Money Sold to You by Luxury Retailers" (Cheapism). I kind of want the hippopotamus sofa.

"A male juror in the mistrial of Lindsay Clancy said the lone holdout... wrapped one of the exercise bands the mom used to kill her children around a water bottle..."

"... to mimic their strangulation in the deliberation room. Juror number 10 Nick Dargie said the holdout had every right to his opinion but that the reenactment using the same exercise bands left the room speechless. 'I was so shocked. We’re not here to play detective – it’s not a game of Clue. This is serious,' Dargie, 25, the fifth juror to come forward in the macabre case out of Duxbury, Mass., told ABC’s 'GMA'.... 'I asked him why are you doing that? That’s a band that was used to strangle a child. That’s disgusting.'"

The NY Post reports.

"We'll work with President Trump to fight and defend the steel way of life, right here in the Steel Valley."

Said Democratic Senator John Fetterman, by video, at the GOP convention, introducing a man he called "my friend," Pennsylvania's Republican senator, Dave McCormick.

"We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans. I personally think it is greater than 10% within the next decade."

ADDED: Who is that guy, Jacob Coxon? He came out of nowhere, and his post was quickly retweeted by many prominent Democrats:

"Trump pledges $5,000 ‘dividend’ to all US adults if the GOP wins the midterms/It was not immediately clear how the plan would be financed."

Politico reports.

Is that, like, a satire of what Democrats do?

Here's how he put it: "I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000, very much like a successful company will do a cash distribution to its shareholders or like last year when I gave our great members of the military $1,776."

I remember getting thousands of dollars during the pandemic....

"Supreme Court Again Blocks Republican-Backed Missouri Voting Map."

"The ruling deferred to Missouri’s state Supreme Court, which had invalidated G.O.P.-friendly district lines, saying voters must first have an opportunity to approve the map in a statewide referendum."

NYT gift link.

Everybody is a star.

Ducks in this morning's sunrise, by Meade:

The song — "Everybody Is a Star" — came up in conversation just now. The tag suggestions for the first post of the day included George Prescott Bush, and I was wondering whatever happened to him. Remember when he was the anointed one? As Grok put it: "Bilingual son of a Mexican-born mother, Navy Reserve tour in Afghanistan, Rice and UT Law, telegenic, already campaigning for family members as a teenager. Consultants in the 2000s literally nicknamed him '47.'" He was like Schlossberg. Maybe people don't like an heir apparent. We prefer somebody who came out of nowhere. 

"The sad thing is a third of our nation has no clue what we're talking about."

"They haven't — they never witnessed the sacrifice and the courage and the dedication to serve a neighbor in need."

ADDED: The full appearance:

This morning's sunrise, in the rain.

This post is tonight's open thread. Scroll down for the 7th anniversary of the sunrise project, with the 19 best photos of the year — here.

Isolated Transient Alexia, Part 2.

No, I didn't have another incident, though I did run into another sentence that powerfully resisted reading. From Reddit:

But I did have to add an update to Monday's post, "Isolated Transient Alexia — a migrainous accompaniment — ever had it?":

The various doctors would not simply accept my opinion that this was an isolated transient alexia — a migrainous accompaniment. They had to see it as a possible TIA. Not only were various tests ordered up, but even the best results don't eliminate the possibility that it was a TIA and so the cautious approach is to assume that it was.

September 9th is the anniversary of the sunrise project here on the Althouse blog.

The traditional celebration is to post my favorite sunrises of the year. Here they are, in chronological order. Click through to see the precise date. 

"He’s clearly trying to make it easier for them financially to work in government service at the White House. You can’t do that."

Said Richard Painter, "the former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush and a critic of Trump."

Quoted in "Trump gave $45,000 cash gifts to Natalie Harp, two other close aides/Financial disclosures released by the administration show the sums were equivalent to nearly one-third of each of their salaries" (WaPo).

"It’s not like tipping the doorman on Fifth Avenue," Painter said. "These are U.S. government employees. If you want a job where you get tips, you shouldn’t be working for the U.S. government."

"This vision of an endlessly shrinking U.S. population will seem foreboding to many Americans. Yet it is essential to realize..."

"... that depopulation, if and when it comes, doesn’t preclude ever-greater prosperity — thanks to the remarkable 'human-ingenuity-driven' nature of modern economic development. Already humanity proved it could cheat Malthus during a population explosion. Since 1968, world population has more than doubled. Yet contrary to British demographer Thomas Malthus’s famous prediction, the world today is better fed, healthier and richer than ever.... We have figured out how to increase human productivity under more or less any material circumstances.... In the era of rapid population growth, that meant figuring out how to make essential resources inexpensively available for consumption. In an aging, shrinking world, it will mean increasing productivity through 'workaround' improvements in knowledge production, human capital (i.e., health and skills) and a propitious 'business climate' to help unlock the value in human beings...."

Writes Nicholas Eberstadt, of the American Enterprise Institute, in "Can a depopulating America still flourish? Births and immigration are slowing at the same time. The U.S. isn't ready for what that means" (WaPo gift link).

"We’re building a rocket ship as we fly it."

Said Michelle Lujan Grisham, the Governor of New Mexico, quoted in "One year into free child care in New Mexico, too many kids and not enough slots/In a first-in-the-nation experiment with universal child care, demand is outpacing availability and costs are soaring" (WaPo).

Last September, Lujan Grisham took the final step, announcing that New Mexico would be the first to open its subsidized day care to any family, a move estimated to save families $13,000 a year per child.... The announcement was met with applause and cheers, but behind the scenes, state legislators — who said they had not been informed that the program would become universal — were confounded, along with some members of the department’s own staff.

“We were all shocked,” said state Sen. George Muñoz, a Democrat and chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. “Nobody knew about it until the day it was in the paper. All of a sudden we were all calling each other, saying, ‘Where did this come from?’ ‘Did anybody from the governor’s office talk to you about it?’ Nope, we were all in the dark.”...

"How all baseball announcers sound."

I like how the one word you can understand is "Moriarty" (that guy's name is Moriarty).

"Her heart’s desire included a $400 sea-foam green jacket from the New York Liberty women’s basketball team that reads 'New York or Nowhere.'"

She'd had more than $200,000 in student loans, but qualified for loan forgiveness, so "One thing I did is I gifted myself an extra loan payment for whatever my heart desired."

She is New York City Council member Tiffany Cabán, who "spends much of her day thinking about how to address New York City’s affordability crisis," and rents a two-and-a-half-bedroom place in Astoria, "where she lives with her rescue dog Ducky."

I'm reading the latest entry in the NYT series "Affording New York," "How a City Council Member Lives on $148,500 in Queens" (gift link, with photos of Cabán place and her dog and her jacket).

It is a nice jacket for a City Council member, and it's nice that she has season tickets to the game ($5,000), and that her salary is going up from $148,500 to $175,500, after she and other council members voted them a raise. Well earned, no? You wouldn't want to try to live in NYC for only $148,500.

The jacket's slogan is "It will Always be New York or Nowhere." You know that wonderful New York feeling: every place else is nowhere. It reminds me of my old saying: Better than nothing is a high standard. But acquiring nothing leaves you intact as a living human being, and you save whatever money you'd have spent on that item that's not better than nothing. But with "New York or Nowhere," it seems you cease to exist if you can't swing life in New York. Life without being in New York is not better than nothing. It's nowhere. 

"He had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children."

There will never be a more obvious sentence to look back on and explain the insanity of our times than the following…

“He had the hardest time getting off the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children." pic.twitter.com/i7dnLg2MlE

— Tandy (@dantypo) September 8, 2026

Said one of the Lindsay Clancy jurors, Kellie Farina, about the holdout juror.

She's quoted in "Three Jurors in Clancy Trial Describe Frustration With Holdout/The three jurors, who voted to acquit Lindsay Clancy of murder, described the tense deliberations in an interview with a Boston TV station" (NYT gift link).

CORRECTION: I'd connected the quote to one of the other jurors who spoke to the press.

ALSO: Another juror "said that the holdout 'completely disregarded' information that nurses on the jury provided to help interpret medical reports from the hospital where Ms. Clancy stayed after she killed her children." Wasn't the juror at least entitled to reject extraneous "information" from an unsworn witness?

Sunrise.

"At these gatherings, even the most peculiar activities are turned into celebration. Beyond amusement, though, I was searching..."

"... for proof that in an age of social isolation and online disconnection, people still hold on to the traditions that bring them together and make their hometowns unmistakably theirs. While I was in Sopchoppy, I asked Gary Revell, 74, why he still grunts for worms. He told me that the times he goes out at dawn in the forest behind his house, the sunlight filtering through the pines, are when he feels closest to God...."

Writes the photographer Nat Segebre, in "The Strange, Hyperlocal Customs of the Country" (NYT gift link)(lots of oddball photos at the link).

That very weird trailer for the Nathan Fielder documentary about Elizabeth Holmes.

Extreme close-up Holmes: "I don't have anything to deceive you on. Of course, I'm not deceiving you. I'm engaging with you as a human being. Why would I deceive you?"

I don't know whose face is more disturbing, hers or Fielder's. 

Here's the NYT article about the film: "Elizabeth Holmes Documentary Upends Telluride Film Festival/The comic Nathan Fielder and the filmmaker Lance Oppenheim teamed up to interview the convicted executive for 'You Can See Everything.'"

"Police set a dog on the two thieves, who were wearing masks and gloves. They dropped the two paintings in the museum’s garden..."

"... before escaping through a hole in the fence. One of the works abandoned was an 1895 portrait of Madame Stephen Pichon, according to Caroline Amat, the deputy mayor of Cagnes-sur-Mer. The second abandoned painting has not yet been named."

From "Thieves steal four Renoirs — and drop two while fleeing/Works worth millions of euros, taken in the early hours from a museum near Nice dedicated to the painter, are missing" (London Times).

Here's Madame Pichon, pinched in her yellow dress, seemingly knowing she'd be the one the dog-chased thieves would drop in the garden:

But really, you should see the ones they got away with. They're material for the old "Renoir Sucks at Painting" Instagram account. I deplore all theft, and the theft of unique objects is a special problem. And yet....

"In France, we do not ask women to erase themselves. No dogma, no religion is above the laws of the Republic."

Wrote Aurore Bergé, France’s minister for gender equality. And "hard-right" presidential candidate Marine Le Pen said France would "never accept that women’s presence be 'limited.'"

Quoted in "Strike at Eiffel Tower after female staff ‘told to be out of sight’/Women workers at the Paris landmark were allegedly told to make themselves scarce for a visit by representatives of a Hindu religious ­organisation" (London Times).

The Hindu group is BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha, which, we are told, "is close to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling conservative Hindu nationalist party."

Who owns and operates the Eiffel Tower? You might wonder: Isn't it the French government? It is the government of the City of Paris, operating through a public company called the Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel. The Hindu group asked the Society of Exploitation to limit its interaction with women, and the Society told its female employees to make themselves invisible.

ADDED: Here's a gift link to the NYT article on this story. Excerpt:

Sunrise.

"Mr. Field found his calling by happenstance. As a newly enlisted soldier boarding a troop train during World War II, he was handed a bag..."

"... by a Red Cross worker. It contained a toothbrush, a comb, a candy bar and an anthology of poetry. 'I was on that train for three days,' he said in a 2022 interview for this obituary. 'I read it over and over. I knew immediately that I was going to be a poet. He was just 18 and had never read a book of poetry...."

From "Edward Field, Bohemian New York Poet, Dies at 102/His colloquial language, emotionality and gay topics brought him widespread praise, a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship and other literary honors" (NYT gift link).

I'd like to see that anthology. It seems that the book was "The Pocket Book of Verse: Great English and American Poems," which contained 249 poems by 77 poets:

"'Every day, another church is sold,' said Lilian Grootswagers-Theuns, the president of the advisory board for Future for Religious Heritage.... 'This is happening everywhere in Europe...'"

"'... in Germany, Sweden, Spain and Italy. It’s already going very fast,' she said. 'But now we’re going fast-forward. Now, there’s a tsunami coming.' Churches, once central to European cultural life, were typically situated in the heart of a city and built to last. 'Before you even had the nations, you had a European tradition going back to the fourth century of having a church for each city, each village,' said Barbara Welzel, a professor of art history and cultural education.... These days, parishes may merge or unused churches be sold for private use, like homes or hotels. Sometimes communities rally to save their local church buildings and use them as tourist sites, cultural venues or health care centers. Some priests simply walk away. 'In some churches, they really throw away the key,” [Hedwig Fijen, the director of the 'roving art biennial' Manifesta, said.] 'I’ve found sacred objects in the garbage bin.'"

From "What to Do With Europe’s 'Zombie Churches'? These Artists Have Some Ideas. As the continent’s ties to Christianity fade, churches are being abandoned. But some see a chance to transform them into communal spaces like care centers or venues for the arts" (NYT gift link).

"Mr. Godin — 'pie-eyed, pudding-faced and potbellied,' in one writer’s description — was a pain in the derrière most of his life, beginning in Catholic school when he complained to the priests about his lackluster sex life."

From "Noël Godin, Prankster Who Threw Pies at the Powerful, Dies at 80/Splattering figures like Bill Gates, Jean-Luc Godard and Bernard-Henri Lévy, he perfected the art of using whipped cream as a form of protest" (NYT gift link).

A quote from Godin: 

“I have always remained true to the spirit of May ’68. I still live for that time and have always advocated direct sabotage, the sabotage of the professions, the sabotage of the roles into which we are trapped by our day-to-day boredom."

I thought pie-throwers had all switched to shaving cream — just a pie tin full of shaving cream. Did Godin remain pure?

"We use only the finest patisserie, ordered at the last minute from small local bakers,” Mr. Godin told The Observer, a British newspaper, in 1995. "Quality is everything. If things go wrong, we eat them."

Isolated Transient Alexia — a migrainous accompaniment — ever had it?

JAMA Neurology abstract: "Alexia as a transient or paroxysmal neurologic event is a rare clinical finding. John Hughlings Jackson made reference to the paroxysmal occurrence of 'word blindness' as a temporary sequela of neuronal exhaustion at an epileptogenic focus.... A transient episode of alexia in the absence of accompanying neurologic deficit is exceedingly rare.... We recently observed a patient who experienced an isolated, transient alexia that appears to have been a migrainous accompaniment...."

I suspect this happened to me. Here's what I was trying to read and could not make any sense of it, and I struggled from all different angles: "The Story of the Foul-Mouthed Parrot Andrew Jackson Once Had" (an episode of a podcast I like: "Boring History for Sleep"). 

Now, I think that's a type of headline that is objectively hard to puzzle out. I encountered another one this morning in the NY Post: "Missouri foster mom accused of trading teen for monkey avoids prison." Something about the sequence "monkey avoids prison" sends your thoughts tripping over the precipice. 

But that "Foul-Mouth Parrot" headline was entirely undecipherable to me. I searched for an entry point: What is "Story"? What is "Andrew"? "Foul"? I couldn't even think of how to begin to pronounce those words or how words work together to mean something. This not-knowing lasted for about 15 minutes, and of course, I queried A.I. about it. That was after Meade had consulted a different A.I.

And I believe all A.I.s will tell you the same thing if you put this story into it — not the story of Andrew Jackson's parrot or the story of the foster mom's monkey — the story of a reading human suddenly completely unable to read. And we did what A.I. told us to do. That's why there was no sunrise photo yesterday. Our sleep was massively disrupted. I had to get my head examined.

ADDED: I omitted a crucial detail that is why I was thinking in terms of a migrainous accompaniment. About an hour before the alexia, I experienced a scintillating scotoma — a glittering arc'd zigzag in my visual field. I've had that twice before, in 2004 and 2014. In 2014, I treated it as nothing, but it felt like a big deal in 2004. I blogged it as "My scotoma" (deliberately evoking "My Sharona"):

"I am a virgin. I grew up with no friends. I didn't have anyone growing up besides my two girlfriends that I'm still very close with today...."

"And I didn't like like I didn't do extracurricular activities. Like I didn't go out. I didn't have fun. Like I was just school home school home. So like I never had a relationship with anyone. And then I started working. I was serving for about four years at a mom and pop restaurant. I was a waitress.... And then now I'm here and I'm just waiting for the right person. But now everyone knows me and it's like weird. So like I'm trying to date but it's going to be a little weird now. It's hard. It's hard now. So I'm just waiting for the right person. Worth it. You know I'm waiting. Worth 100 million...."

Said Sophie Rain, the 21-year-old biggest moneymaker on "Only Fans," talking to the 70-year-old Bill Maher for nearly 2 hours. Creepy? Or is this helpful insight into a business you ought to understand? She's made $100 million. And yet: lonely! 

But you know the answer when people are so remote and loveless. Animals! She's all:

I love animals. That's what I want to do is I just want to live on a farm. That's that's the goal for me is to own a lot of land and just rescue animals. That's all I want to do....

Maher is all Me too. I love animals too. I'd just love to live on a farm too.

Animals are easy. People are hard. But what do you want from people? If you have 2 very close girlfriends, why would you say I grew up with no friends? 2 is so much more than zero. 2 very close friends seems like more than any number of remote friends. Or do you love remote friends... in social media?

IN THE COMMENTS: Leland writes: "Successful farms don't 'rescue' animals. They raise them, grow them, and then sell them..."

That's true for the restricted meaning of "farm," but there is an extended version of "farm" — watch and see who uses it — that's just a home in the heart of the country.

I want a horse/I want a sheep/I wanna get me a good night's sleep...

Elegant presence of mind in baseball.

Just for the joy of it:

Payton Tolle is the gift that keeps on giving 😭 pic.twitter.com/jaPwFhr3i8

— MLB (@MLB) September 6, 2026

And a effective perception that an out is right there waiting to be had:

1000 IQ play here by Joe Mack pic.twitter.com/kDTsrdZpPS

— Miami Marlins (@Marlins) September 6, 2026

The White House is taunting.

pic.twitter.com/Jh3DHXnflT

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) September 6, 2026

"The tone of your question was a little bit like Why haven't you done every single impossible thing possible?"

I thought @jaredkushner gave a spot on magnificent answer to the really nasty-toned question from @RichardEngel . Kudos to Jared 👏👏👏👏👏 pic.twitter.com/JNk6USUvqq

— Todd Headlee (@ToddHeadleeAZ) September 7, 2026

Sunrise, Monday morning.

Video by Meade, just now.

At the Pictureless Café...

... you can talk all night.

The tilted hat, Part 2.

Now both Cardinals and Rockies players are wearing their hats crooked in protest.

This is the shit. pic.twitter.com/viy4cVD53h https://t.co/3ZXr97CKU0

— Jacob P.M.🌔 (@JacobBSpeaks) September 6, 2026

"Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner meet Zelensky on first visit to Ukraine’s capital following three hours of negotiations with President Putin in Moscow."

The London Times reports.

“The situation is of course not simple,” Putin said before the negotiations began. “We will do everything that depends on us to ensure the safety of the negotiation process and mediators such as yourselves,” he added.... 

Afterwards, Witkoff thanked Putin for the “incredible memories” from the visits to the Russian capital. “We were all talking about when we retire, we’ll have all these incredible stories and incredible memories, and yours will be right at the top of it all,” he told Putin....

Yuri Ushakov, a Kremlin aide, told reporters... “The talks ‌went beyond a mere exchange of views on resolving the ⁠Ukrainian crisis. Economic issues and potential major, mutually beneficial Russian-American projects were discussed in some detail.”

"[W]hen a man suddenly began to shout vulgarities and became violent... two other passengers, relying on zip ties, duct tape and sheer will, restrained the disruptive man until the authorities could board the plane and take him into custody."

I'm reading "Unruly Passenger Is Restrained With Duct Tape During a Flight/The passenger on an American Airlines flight began to shout vulgarities and then became violent on Thursday, the authorities said. That’s when two passengers stepped in" (NYT gift link).

Richard O’Lenick, 53, one of the passengers who restrained Mr. Lundeen, said in a phone interview on Saturday that Mr. Lundeen began to shout racial slurs at one of the flight attendants.... Mr. Lundeen struck the laptop of the man next to him, and then grabbed the man’s throat, Mr. O’Lenick said. When a woman in a seat ahead of the scuffle tried to intervene, Mr. Lundeen started to attack her as well.

That’s when Mr. O’Lenick and Juan Mejia...  jumped into action from their seats two rows ahead....

"The emergency request marks the latest turn in a dizzying legal fight over mail-in voting, even as states begin distributing mail-in ballots to voters."

"The upshot has become clear in recent days: It will be the Supreme Court that has the final say on President Trump’s plans to restrict mail voting in the midterms. It’s unclear how fast the justices will move and announce a ruling.... The Trump administration had already filed emergency request to the justices challenging a shorter-term pause [the trial judge] had imposed on the plan. But the trial court judge acted to extend her freeze before the justices ruled, necessitating a new request from the administration for Supreme Court action...."

I'm reading "Trump Administration Again Asks Supreme Court to Allow Mail Voting Restrictions/The filing puts the legality of the president’s push to impose limits on mail voting squarely before the justices even as states begin sending out ballots" (NYT gift link).