Sunrise.

“During the Obama administration they tapped the AP bureau’s phones and the phones of AP bureau reporters. They tapped their phones!

Said Atlantic writer James Kirchick on Bill Maher's show last night.

Maher chimed in: "Josh Earnest, he was in the Obama administration. He admitted it. He said: 'The White House has demonstrated our willingness to exclude Fox News from news making interviews.... He said: 'We're going to treat them like we treat an opponent.' This is exactly what I say about this country. Everybody’s like this is the worst thing in the world except when we do it. And then it’s always perfectly okay."

New York Times reporter Jonathan Swan just got a stunning reality check from both Bill Maher and author James Kirchick.

Swan was spiraling over President Trump barring CNN and MS NOW from the White House, until Kirchick reminded him of some of the Obama-era media scandals.… pic.twitter.com/GopA8f61qD

— Overton (@overton_news) September 26, 2026

"But critics argue the bare nails trend actually says something about class, the hamster wheel of beauty standards, and who gets to define what is considered tasteful."

"Nail art's historical and creative roots are linked back to black, Latino, and Asian communities and the suggestion that bare nails are now a sign of high status could stigmatise bold manicures, they say. 'That trend really promotes blankness and this kind of sameness and erasure of culture and identity that is so important to black and brown communities,' beauty journalist Kristina Rodulfo tells the BBC. 'They are often called elegant or tasteful, and these are often usually euphemisms that perpetuate white supremacist standards of beauty.'"

So it says at the BBC. 

Anyone who thinks the nails in that photo are unpolished must be the kind of person who thinks vanilla doesn't count as a flavor. But vanilla is a great flavor, and a thin coat of light pink nail polish is great way to paint your nails.

Anyway, if I prefer vanilla ice cream, it takes nothing away from your enjoyment of Rocky Road. If you want to be a maximalist, just be a maximalist. Don't try to bully minimalists into promoting the maximalist agenda. We're not "erasing" you! But maybe that's a hint about why people are drawn to maximalism: Is there a fear that unless you go big and bold and loud you might cease to exist? Quietness is not "blankness."

"'Next week, we’ll play a name game,' she said, explaining that it involves saying your name and then an animal starting with the same letter. 'For example, I’m Carol the Crocodile. It helps to remember.'"

So ends the NYT article "How to Be a 'Radical' Listener/The lessons in Carol Gilligan’s groundbreaking feminist book 'In a Different Voice' are more than 40 years old. She wishes they weren’t still so relevant."

"I no longer believe in extreme gender roles, especially when they’re wrapped in spiritual language."

"If any belief system creates a power imbalance that puts women or anyone in a position of fear, isolation or total dependence, I reject it. If my past content contributed to that, I am so genuinely sorry."

Said Bernadine Bluntly, quoted in "Her Brand Was Tradwife. Now She’s Divorced. What happens when a trad influencer leaves her husband, questions her beliefs, stops selling anti-feminism T-shirts — and still needs to make a living online?" (NYT).

"He chose the name Faust because it sounded cool, he said, and because, 'as a kid doing graffiti, you’re making this Faustian deal...'"

"'... this deal with the devil in exchange for fame. I was 15 years old, I was breaking the law, running from cops'... He now works out of a fifth-floor studio in a walk-up building on the edge of Chinatown. At the top of a rickety flight of wooden steps, the space is spare and well-organized.... 'Being born and raised in New York, really being inspired by this 50-year history of the culture and really trying to do whatever I can to continue to carry that narrative forward, I looked at all the pioneers before me and really tried to channel the ethos of New York City graffiti until I eventually was able to find my own voice within that,' he said."

From "The Graffiti Artist Top Brands Call On for That ‘New York’ Look/If the city had a font, would his lettering be it?" (NYT).

When the problem and the solution to the problem overlap this much, you have to be willfully blind not to see.

I'm reading "Travelers Are Reckoning With the Ultimate Disrupter: Climate Change/Once dismissed as occasional inconveniences, climate-related disruptions are now an inescapable fixture of summer travel. How will travelers respond?" (NYT):

The main "climate-related disruption" in question is that it's terribly HOT in the summer. The travel experience is BAD and, conveniently, the traveling is a cause of the heat. It's a big carbon footprint. So the thing that's not good anymore is exactly the thing you shouldn't do. 

"In an unsigned decision with no noted dissents, the justices warned of 'electoral chaos' if the state were to change course so close to the election and use the 2025 map."

"The election is not merely upcoming; it has already started. Ballots using the 2022 map have been printed and mailed. Absentee voting has already begun, as has military and overseas voting,” according to the five-page decision."

From "Supreme Court Once Again Blocks Republican-Backed Voting Map in Missouri/A federal appeals court had sided with Republicans seeking to use redrawn congressional district boundaries to give their party an advantage in the midterms elections" (NYT).

Note: All NYT links are gift links now. I'm not going to write "gift link" next to every NYT link anymore. Just know they are gift links. I'm not going to keep repeating myself, and there's also no need for you to repeat the complaint that the NYT requires you to register with them to get the access they're offering free. You can't have everything you want. What in this world is completely free?

"Cube enthusiasts... explain the plummeting age of champions by pointing to kids’ enthusiasm for the puzzle, their ability to learn quickly and that they simply have more time to practice."

"Many are from China, which has schools that teach speedy Rubik’s Cube solving.... Yunzhi practices two to three hours a day, her mother told Red Star News of Chengdu, China...."

I'm reading "6-Year-Old Girl in China Sets a Rubik’s Cube Record Lian Yunzhi of China solved a Rubik’s Cube five times in an average of 4.27 seconds, setting a women’s world record" (NYT).

And I'm not thinking oh, isn't she cute? like most of the commenters over there. I'm thinking: 1. Child abuse, and 2. A separate "women's" division is bullshit. 

The "men's" record — i.e., the record — is 3.51 seconds, almost 20% less.

These kids who train for hours a day in Rubik’s Cube solving — what are they really being trained for? It made me think of this viral video:

Sunrise, sunset.

"[I]n the face of the evidence we have so far, and given the incendiary nature of the claim, why would anyone say that the United States is experiencing a 'national crisis' of lynchings?"

"One reason is a stylized wariness that Black Americans are often taught as a kind of wisdom — to be ever on guard that the bad old days could return at any moment. Another reason is a belief that Black people don’t hang themselves because of the fraught historical associations with the act. 'It is very uncommon for young Black men to commit suicide, let alone by hanging,' Raymond Winbush, a psychologist who has treated hundreds of Black men and boys, told The Washington Post. 'That’s not the way we do' is how Black Americans often put it in conversation. But we must ask, with all due compassion: Suppose it is?"

Writes John McWhorter, in "Are Lynchings Really Happening?" (NYT).

"Whimsymaxxers talk about bringing out the magic in the everyday, but increasingly that magic is seen as something to be measured and harnessed."

"It is no surprise, then, that whimsy slots so comfortably into the jargon of our wellness-saturated culture. One social media guru breaks whimsy down into a series of salutary 'microhabits'; another speaks of whimsy as a means of maximizing the return on investment of one’s 'inner child.' Whimsymaxxing is presented as part of a 'low-cortisol morning' routine.... Buy yourself a little treat. Invest in your inner child. Let your impulses drive. 'Fun is a medicinal bath,' as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno put it more than 80 years ago. 'The pleasure industry never fails to prescribe it.'"

From an "On Language" column by Mitch Therieau, "Has a Dash of ‘Whimsy' Become Less Whimsical?" (NYT).

Therieau informs us that in the 18th century "'whim' and 'whimsy' came also to mean... a rotating drum or capstan, attached to a rope, that could lower and raise materials into and out of a mine." He uses that old meaning to question what we're talking about today when we talk about "whimsy": "Isn’t life today a bit too mechanical? Aren’t we treating ourselves too much like machines?"

"Rocket From the Tombs never recorded any songs, never toured widely and broke up after less than a year."

"But in that brief time, it laid down a whole new approach to rock.... Propelled by Cheetah’s hard-charging guitar work and drawing influence from proto-punk bands like the MC5 and the Stooges, Rocket From the Tombs burst onto the Cleveland music scene in late 1974.... The band drew the attention of avant-garde groups charting a similar course in New York City, and in July 1975, it opened at a Cleveland show headlined by one of them, Television. As the urbane New Yorkers saw to their horror, the band members were as chaotic as their music. True to the punk ethos they were pioneering, their copious drinking and drug use fueled fights onstage and off. Cheetah fell on his back during the opening song and played the rest of the set supine. 'A lot of very nasty things got said — everything came to a head that night,' he wrote in the liner notes for a 2002 collection of Rocket From the Tombs songs, 'The Day the Earth Met the Rocket From the Tombs.'"

From "Cheetah Chrome, Guitarist for Pioneering Punk Bands, Dies at 71/He played with Rocket From the Tombs and the Dead Boys, whose snarling nihilism opened the door to an entire music genre in the 1970s" (NYT).

"Fat sea lions ruined her town. Now this woman wants to kill them."

Headline at the London Times makes it seem as though the lady is fatphobic.

“They need to be killed,” says Reyhan Higgins, 52, a fishing guide on the Columbia River, brandishing a rubber-bullet gun he uses to deter sea lions from stealing salmon. “I’d shoot them myself if they would ever let us.”

On the river, the sea lions are barking with satisfaction after a summer of excess. They heave themselves on to the docks, waddling in search of a comfortable position to rest their swollen bellies. For months they have been feasting on salmon — the fish that is the lifeblood of Chinook, a small town in Washington state.…

ADDED: I see the pronouns are confusing. I should have excerpted the first sentence: “In most Democratic districts, campaigning to slaughter a cute mammal would probably not win many votes. But Marie Gluesenkamp Perez appears to know her electorate.”

"Copenhaver was hit in the arm and abdomen. The wounds left him with lingering injuries, which required him to undergo surgeries..."

"... including a transection of his colon. He also suffered kidney damage as well as loss of feeling in his leg, and was required to walk with a cane. The top of Trump’s right ear was injured before the Secret Service ushered him off stage..."

From "James Copenhaver, shot at Trump rally, dies two years later/The 76-year-old was called a ‘true American patriot’ by the US president. It is unclear if he died from injuries sustained in the crossfire in Pennsylvania" (London Times).

The Brewers hit 100 wins last night, but it would all have been shrouded in darkness...

... if this ball had hit the baby:

This dad made a wild barehanded snag with his baby in his arms 😮 pic.twitter.com/Txy0rnUSv7

— MLB (@MLB) September 25, 2026

That was, per Grok, the top of the 3rd inning during the Brewers-Phillies game at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia last night — a foul ball hit by Brewers first baseman Jake Bauers.

And don't talk about the Packers:

This Packers fan is going through it 😭

(📺 Prime) pic.twitter.com/TSRPaCkTT6

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) September 25, 2026

What would "One Day More" from "Les Misérables" mean to President Xi?

Behind the scenes at the @WhiteHouse #StateDinner with President @realDonaldTrump, First Lady @MelaniaTrump, President Xi, and Madame Peng—With guests in the beautiful East Room… pic.twitter.com/kDhBrIWajI

— Dan Scavino Jr.🇺🇸🦅 (@DanScavino) September 25, 2026

I'm reading "Reading with Xi Jinping | Les Miserables" in the People's Daily Online,  April 23, 2022. This is about the book, of course, not the musical:

“I developed a keen interest in French culture and particularly French history, philosophy, literature and art when I was a young man,” Xi said in a speech... When reading Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, Xi found the moment when Bishop Myriel enlightens Jean Valjean to be quite moving. Great literary works like this possess a remarkable ability to stir the heart and literature is the vehicle of ideas, Xi said.... When Jean Valjean stole the Bishop's silverware, the bishop was not angry, but gave him also the two silver candlesticks which he had not stolen. And he said: "Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I buy from you; I withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God."

 An image from the 1935 movie: 

ADDED: Speaking of the People's Daily Online, here's the front page. I think this is the kind of press coverage Trump would like:

 

Bring on the pandas!

Giant panda ties between China and the United States go back a long way. In April 1972, two giant pandas -- Ling Ling and Xing Xing, arrived in the United States following the visit of then U.S. President Richard Nixon to China in February the same year. More than 8,000 Americans welcomed Ling Ling and Xing Xing in the rain. In their first month on public display, they attracted more than one million visitors. Giant pandas have since helped foster friendship between the Chinese and American peoples.

"As a special treat in honor of President Xi and Madame Peng, I’d like to invite everyone in the room to visit through that beautiful curtain in the back door."

"It’s all lit up and looks beautiful. It's one year away from completion, the new ballroom that you've heard about, and you will see something that you will really love. Presidents have been trying to get this built for 150 years that I can tell you that, tonight, if we had it, we would have had way more than a thousand people, standing room only, and this room has about 145. That's about it. So they've been looking for this for over 150 years. All Presidents. And they will shortly have it. So, in honor of you, you’ll be the first people to step foot on that, and we’ll do that maybe after we’re finished with the entertainment tonight. Anybody who wants to walk into a construction site that’s nice and clean and sparkling, it’s our honor to have you do so, but this is in honor of President Xi, Madame Peng."

Sunrise.

"This month, 27 Fields medalists — winners of mathematics’ highest honor — have signed a joint declaration stating that solving famous open problems is not, in itself, the goal."

"Such problems are 'landmarks and lighthouses,' they write, whose deeper purpose is to guide mathematicians toward conceptual understanding and insight. Terence Tao, one of the signers... has described what’s happening as 'strip-mining' mathematics. Good problems, he argues, are like nonrenewable resources. Some of them — the smaller, easier ones — can help train the next generation of mathematicians. Young researchers try their hand on them, learning what they will need to push the field forward. If A.I. strips away the big problems and their satellites, it could destroy the entire mathematical ecosystem. Tao has suggested that some questions may even need to be fenced off from automated solvers, as if they were national parks for math problems.... From the outside, mathematicians’ insistence on human understanding looked like guild protection — an attempt to save something for themselves now that machines are starting to beat them at their own game...."

From "Mathematics Isn’t Just a Game to Let A.I. Solve. History Shows Why. In our field of applied mathematics, the long, human process of trial and error — not just the solutions themselves — is often what has led to progress" (NYT).

Here's the joint declaration: "A Severe Misalignment of AI in Mathematics."

Let the children come to Mamdani.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@nycmayor)

This gets my old tag, "using children in politics."

"I still have this weird feeling that there's some things that I'm not seeing."

A Texas conversation.

Paxton:

James Talarico is a conman who believes in sex change surgeries for kids.

His favorite drag queen even grooms children. pic.twitter.com/D7fNvdvDD1

— Attorney General Ken Paxton (@KenPaxtonTX) September 17, 2026

A response from the Texas drag queen Tarico named as his favorite:

"Joey’s family’s business is an undistinguished upstate New York watering hole.... It does hold one mystery for him, though."

"What, precisely, goes on in its back room?... Whatever nigh on miraculous peace that men are finding in there — one at a time, very hush-hush — Joey does not know the feeling. The blissful intensity of that sensation is the gospel news that gains acolytes in Max Wolf Friedlich’s gleefully weird comedy 'The Holes,' a tall tale of a play about, pardon the bluntness, manual stimulation as religious experience.... The play’s premise makes ample room for contemplation and satirization: of misogyny; economic exploitation; homophobic self-loathing; the barely-to-not-at-all veiled homoeroticism of all-male spaces; and the deliberate, cultish opacity of the men’s wellness niche. Also a target: the kind of counterfeit authenticity that Wesley envisions in his remade version of the bar. 'Honestly maybe we funk it up a bit,' he says, after Joey has done some sprucing. 'Spill some cans on the floor? I’m missing that old beer seeped into wood smell.'"

From the NYT review of the play "The Holes": "Benediction in the Back Room/The men’s wellness niche, and men-only spaces, come in for a skewering in Max Wolf Friedlich’s gleefully weird follow-up to 'Job.'"

"It's an example of someone who isn't governed by tidying up."

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Matt Gibberd (@homingwithmatt)

The full version:

"The ruling from Judge Kelly, a Trump appointee, is a temporary reprieve..."

"It pauses a chaotic series of events that began last Friday, when Mr. Trump declared in a Truth Social post that the outlets were banned from the White House because of their reporting.... Judge Kelly’s rationale for ruling against the White House echoed his own reasoning in a similar case from November 2018, when Mr. Trump, in his first term, revoked the White House press credentials of the CNN journalist Jim Acosta. Mr. Acosta had not been given an opportunity to contest the decision, Judge Kelly said at the time. Fights over journalistic access have become a staple of Mr. Trump’s presidency...."

From "Judge Blocks Trump’s White House Ban on CNN, MS NOW and Politico/Judge Timothy J. Kelly issued a temporary restraining order and told the White House to immediately restore the press credentials for the employees of the three news outlets" (NYT).

Trump is better off this way.

He's had his say against the press, but the press won — at least for now — and the fighting quiets down. The criticism of him is muffled. The leverage is gone. Trump can move on to things like this:

Trump just gave Xi the full American welcome package — Star-Spangled Banner, a rigid salute… then the sky starts roaring.

You don’t even see the jets. You HEAR them. That deafening B-2 / F-22 flyover rolls over Joint Base Andrews while Trump and Xi are standing there side by… pic.twitter.com/6zMNvVeqXQ

— Pete Santilli 🇺🇸 🇮🇹 🎙️ (@petersantilli) September 24, 2026

ADDED: I love how Trump reacts like a human being — man, that's noisy! — and Xi holds his pose like a machine. That bland smile! Trump looks over at him as if the 2 of them could agree that the planes are indeed noisy, but Xi gave him nothing. They could have laughed together, Trump may have thought. But, no, Xi has one smile, for noise and for silence. Nothing is revealed.

Sunrise.

Statues of Chicago.

Photographed by my son Chris:

Those are "Bibi on the Ball" and "Brooke with Beach Ball" by Carole Feuerman. I like these a lot! A closer view: here. 

That's "Reclining Liberty" by Zaq Landsberg. Seems to allude to a reclining Buddha. 

Bonus: a view of Chicago, with the President's imprint.

When Sunny Hostin was the holdout juror: A lesson in insanity.

Sunny Hostin brags about being a holdout juror that prevented The Butcher of Thompson Square Park from going to prison.
She admits "once he killed her, he chopped up her body parts, yes, boiled her body parts ... and fed her body parts to the unhoused." pic.twitter.com/sLbElgLuGt

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) September 22, 2026

Here's the NYT article from 1991, "Man Acquitted of Killing and Boiling Roommate."

Several jurors questioned afterward said one holdout juror was principally responsible for preventing them from returning a guilty verdict. "We don't think he intended to kill her," said a juror, Asuncion Cummings. "But once he did, he dismembered her body in an effort to commit the perfect crime."

Asuncion Cummings is the first name and maiden name of Sunny Hostin.

The racial inequity of beer gardens.

David Crowley says beer gardens contribute to “racial inequity” because they are “predominately supported by white users.”

Since when did enjoying a cold one become about race? pic.twitter.com/Qa4QVsoCxn

— Tom Tiffany (@TomTiffanyWI) September 23, 2026

I asked Grok to fact check:

"'I am the code,' Trump said."

I'm reading "'I am the code': Trump clashed with ballroom architect over safety issues/James McCrery II resigned in October after warning that the president was insisting on designs that violated fire and safety codes" (WaPo)(gift link).

White House renovations and construction are typically handled by federal agencies required by law to comply with nationally recognized building safety standards to the “maximum extent feasible,” unless doing so would present a national security risk. But Trump’s White House construction projects are being routed through the Executive Residence, a tiny office that is not a federal agency and is therefore exempt from rules governing agencies.

"[T]he area around Mont Blanc in the Alps is tainted by 'toilet paper under every stone' and SUVs transporting luggage from one stop to another, according to officials."

"This week, new rules were announced designed to limit the number of people walking around western Europe’s highest mountain. Officials also want to ensure that those who do come are genuine backpackers rather than tourists sending 'pink wheelie suitcases and make up-bags' on ahead of them in vehicles, according to Jean-Marc Peillex, chairman of the Federation of Districts of Mont Blanc Country.... 'The word Mont Blanc makes people’s eyes sparkle all over the world,' he said. 'If you sold air from Mont Blanc, you’d make a fortune. I think you could even sell dog poop from Mont Blanc and people would buy it.'... Peillex said hikers were being forced to walk less than a metre apart on some days. 'All they see is the bottom of the person in front of them,' he told Swiss television...."

From "France declares ‘serious hikers only’ on Mont Blanc trail/Walkers must book accommodation in advance and carry their own backpacks under new rules designed to protect the increasingly crowded Alpine circuit" (London Times).

"Overtly doctored imagery... is thought to be only a sporadic occurrence in higher education marketing materials."

"More commonly, universities select or stage photos that suggest that their campuses are more diverse than they actually are."

From "Stanford Used A.I. to Swap Black Student for Hispanic Student in a Photo/Universities have been accused of doctoring photos to showcase diversity in the past. In this case, a Black woman replaced a Hispanic young man, who said it was upsetting to be 'erased'" (NYT gift link).

Who cares if the fake impression is created by A.I. as opposed to moving real people into positions they didn't get into on their own? What's the difference? It's fake, it's deceptive, it's shallow, it's pathetic. Either way.

"Lounging idly in the deserted little waiting-room was the usual shabby, bored, lonely ticket-seller, prodigiously indifferent to the grave beauty of the scene before him and to the throng of ancient memories jostling him where he stood."

Having recently suffered a bout of isolated transient alexia, I worry about a relapse when I encounter a sentence like that. It makes me wonder: Do I still have the ability to read?

That's the first sentence of a novel — writers put a lot of effort into crafting sentence #1, you know! — and that one is calling out to readers who are not me. Somehow every noun needs at least one adjective — or 3 or 6.

The book is "The Brimming Cup" by Dorothy Canfield Fisher. It was the #2 bestseller of 1921. (#1 was "Main Street" by Sinclair Lewis.) Here's a great picture of Canfield Fisher:

"Two days after Rihanna disappeared, Ms. Kemper drove to the Brooklyn address attached to the penis, entered the building by buzzing random apartments..."

"... and followed the geolocation arrow on her phone down a series of hallways to a door. When she activated the AirTag, she heard Rihanna chirping on the other side. The woman who answered didn’t match anyone in the security footage. She had found Rihanna on the hood of a car in Chinatown, she said, and gladly returned it...."

From "The Case of the Stolen Phallus, and Other Tales of Restaurant Theft/Proprietors know you want to steal from them. As diners get bolder, owners have plans to deter you — or catch you" (NYT gift link).

"Rihanna" = "a foot-long mirrored mosaic statue of a penis that Whiskey Tavern... uses to celebrate guests’ birthdays, breakups and other milestones."

Well, of course if you have tchotchkes lying about in your bar, people will steal them. I can't imagine tracking the thieves down with AirTags. Either plan to lose them and accept your fate or don't put things like that out to tempt people, not if you are expecting humans among your clientele. I really wish people were honest. Maybe the robots will be honest. Maybe we will miss theft when it is gone.

"My wife and I have been married over sixty years.... Like most we struggled with intimacy from time to time but being best friends forever we journeyed on...."

"Then it happened. My wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and we were devastated by thoughts and fears of what might be ahead.... I finally began to appreciate this unconditionally loving person I'd lived with for all these years in ways undreamed of. We found more intimacy than we'd known by sitting close and talking about our day, by holding hands as we took our walks, walks that became increasingly slow. Caretaking for my wife has allowed me to see and experience the depth of her caring and kindness and humility in allowing me to care for her. I have discovered, too late in some ways, the marvelous intimacy of simply giving to the other without measuring or thinking of what may be in it for self...."

From the top-rated comment — by far — on "The Best Sex Advice Might Also Be the Hardest to Follow/Some couples would rather get divorced than talk openly about their intimate lives" (NYT gift link).

The advice that's hard to follow is — big surprise — you're supposed to talk to each other.

"The sun was going, and the world was wrong. The grasses were wrong; they were platinum...."

"This color has never been seen on earth. The hues were metallic; their finish was matte. The hillside was a nineteenth-century tinted photograph from which the tints had faded. All the people you see in the photograph, distinct and detailed as their faces look, are now dead. The sky was navy blue. My hands were silver. All the distant hills’ grasses were finespun metal which the wind laid down. I was watching a faded color print of a movie filmed in the Middle Ages; I was standing in it, by some mistake. I was standing in a movie of hillside grasses filmed in the Middle Ages. I missed my own century, the people I knew, and the real light of day."

Wrote Annie Dillard, quoted by Sam Anderson, in "One of Our Greatest Writers Has Died. But Not for Me. Annie Dillard died this week. But her voice — wild and holy and hilarious — continues to live in my head, my soul and, somehow, my dog" (NYT gift link).

For some reason, this old post is the post of mine that got the most traffic in the last 12 months.

March 9, 2016

Elite media slowly absorbs the meaning of Donald Trump.

In the NYT this morning.

1. A photograph that exemplifies Donald Trump voters as they ominously approach a polling place. The sky is dark, the couple is old and funereal, the man is grim, the woman a clown.

2. A photograph that's mostly black space, with Donald Trump's face all the way over to the right, emerging from the gloom, and the shadows giving his neck the appearance of a scrotum.

3. The Editorial Board is "Trying to Read Donald Trump, in Translation." This is not — as I'd originally imagined — the NYT people translating Trump's simple statements into the language of the elite so they can understand it. It's attempting to imagine how Trump's statements are heard by people in other countries.

4. "Does Donald Trump represent a legitimate expression of the people’s will? Is his rise a manifestation of justifiable resentment among less privileged whites at their neglect by higher caste Republican leaders?" A columnist (Thomas B. Edsall) wonders.

"The case drew national attention when a surrogate from Alaska refused to have an abortion after the fetus she was carrying was diagnosed with a serious heart problem."

"She eventually traveled to Texas and gave birth to the child over the initial objections of the parents, a couple from California.... On Tuesday, Justice Kagan, who oversees emergency filings from California, denied the surrogate’s request to block the lower-court ruling in the couple’s favor. She acted on her own without referring the matter to her Supreme Court colleagues. The justice’s order did not include an explanation, as is often the case when the court responds to such filings...."

From "Supreme Court Order Gives Parents Custody of Baby in Surrogacy Fight/A surrogate refused to have an abortion after the fetus was diagnosed with a serious heart problem. She asked the justices to block a court order giving custody to the biological parents" (NYT gift link).

Here's the emergency filing. The proceedings below are all in state courts, and much of the argument is about jurisdiction, but that's interwoven with the merits of the case — who gets the baby:

Sunrise.

"Beyond their fixation on incredibly thin scarves, ukuleles and ungainly Sharpie art, these ['millennial optimism'] posts seem to obsess over the era’s supposed ease and quirkiness..."

"... to have Natalie Portman put on a Shins song and change your life. To wear ill-fitting running shorts like Michael Cera and seem approachably awkward. At the time, simply listening to superficially 'indie' music could signal some kind of eccentric individualism — yet it was individualism that was increasingly available on a mass scale. If you could identify with Seth Cohen on 'The O.C.,' squeeze into a sweater vest and listen to Death Cab for Cutie: Congratulations, you’re indie.... But for the Zoomers posting these clips, there is a pleasure in the opposite of independence: a homogeneity and cohesiveness that seems welcoming and communal..... That dreamy, half-real, lost world of social media, to Zoomers, is one that seems untethered from hierarchy — not yet tainted by algorithms and calculated recommendations. A cookie-cutter simplicity (or 'basicness,' when critiqued) could emerge: cheugy sunsets and sentimental drives into the country. The sad truth, but also the poignancy, of these videos, is that they fetishize an era that led directly to the one we’re in today...."

Writes Casey Michael Henry, in "Things Are So Bad, People Are Longing for Cringey Millennial Culture/Sepia tones, film cameras and ukuleles are a fast route to an imagined past of ease and quirkiness" (NYT gift link).

TrumpTV.

Background: "After Years as the Star of Must-See TV, Trump Faces the Sting of Cancellation/A boycott of the White House press pool by the major networks deprives the president of the oxygen of screen time. But he is still finding ways to get on the air" (NYT gift link).

So you get it: He doesn't need the fake-news networks. He's got a YouTube channel. Yeah, so do I....

"The US plans to open two military bases in Greenland after President Trump struck a deal with Denmark over security on the vast Arctic territory...."

"Trump announced the agreement last week after months of threatening to use force to gain control of the Arctic island, which is a semi-autonomous part of Denmark. Details on the deal have now begun to emerge. Reuters reported that the US plans to re-establish a Cold War-era military base at Narsarsuaq, in southern Greenland.... The other site is on the east coast of Greenland....The US, Denmark and Greenland are expected to sign the agreement at the United Nations general assembly in New York on Tuesday...."

The London Times reports.

Here's the NYT article on the subject: "Negotiators have been working for months on issues including the deployment of more American troops in Greenland, the territory’s mineral resources and ways of blocking Russia and China from gaining a foothold there. Russia and China have been stepping up their presence in the Arctic, sometimes working together, which Mr. Trump has used to justify his desire to annex Greenland...."

AND: This makes more sense now:

By the power of the NYT, Nikole Hannah-Jones was able to change the course of history.

Why wouldn't she think she had the power to transform her daughter's school?

Arrogance and obliviousness verging on hubris. What a tragic overestimation of her own expertise, importance and moral goodness compounded by a totally unjustified confidence in her chosen profession's power to influence events and circumstances in the real world. https://t.co/QRi5OntnQ6

— Thomas Chatterton Williams (@thomaschattwill) September 22, 2026

More from Chatterton Williams:

Meade texts me from upstairs, at 5:47 a.m., about how badly Democrats want to be rid of Donald Trump.

                             Today 5:47

Here's the link to the tweet Meade sent.

Assassination may be "underwater" at 29%, but there are 25% more who are neutral on the subject. A failure to view assassination as negative?! I'd say there's a majority — 54% — who fail to disapprove of assassination. 

AND: Only 28% disapprove of a military coup to oust Trump. 

"Franzen believes the most difficult part of writing a new novel is that it requires him to change..."

"... he needs to become 'the kind of person who can write the novel. I’ve had to become a different person in some significant way to get each book written.'"

I'm reading an interview with Jonathan Franzen in The Guardian.

"To move from The Corrections to Freedom he had to let go of his anger. To write Crossroads, he had to become more forgiving. Right now, he says, 'I’m waiting to wake up as the person who is alive again and not the same person he was five years ago.' Does this mean he sees writing as a means of self-improvement? God, no!... 'If you’re really engaged with [writing], it’s not a matter of morality, but a matter of getting at something true. So I prefer truth as a goal to morality, to self-improvement, to the betterment of one’s soul... I don’t really care about bettering my soul...."

Sunrise time on the last day of summer, but the orange disc chose not to pop.

"When Najya was entering pre-K, my husband, Faraji, and I decided to send her to the type of school that wealthier families with choices uniformly avoid..."

"... one that is low-income and mostly Black. Our decision had been informed by values shaped by my years of reporting on the enduring and too often seemingly hopeless battle for school integration.... We are both beneficiaries of educational opportunities that were forced into existence by generations of Black parents willing to put their most personal stake — their own children — in the fight for school equality for all Black children....So, like the generations of Black parents who came before us, Faraji and I felt an obligation to make educational decisions based on the collective good and not just our individual advantage.... Faraji and I decided that our role in this struggle meant upending the status quo and sending our child not to a wealthy white school but to a poor Black one.... We thought by sending Najya to a mostly low-income and Black school, we could help improve it for all the children there.... Najya deserved better. They all did. But she was mine. This girl, my only child, looked to me to protect her, to give her what she needed to thrive. And I had not chosen her. I almost cannot type the words...."

I'm finally reading the Nikole Hannah-Jones essay "In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own? A decade ago, I made a decision about my daughter’s education that I hoped would challenge New York City’s separate and unequal school system. Now 16, she thinks I made the wrong choice" (NYT gift link).

"'What are you reading?' I asked. Here’s what 5 strangers told me."

Nora Krug — in WaPo — experiments with what seems to be an excellent topic as she provides more evidence that there really is — as I've said I'd observed — a talking-to-strangers trend.

Have you noticed the talking-to-strangers trend?

People are adopting a deliberate practice of making themselves talk to strangers.

I suspected as much — I noticed a pattern of 2 or 3 incidences — and asked AI to find me some writings on the subject. There are these, all from this year:

Celebrities in distress.

Ed Sheeran, "shattered" and "in tears" as he sat cross-legged onstage at Lincoln Financial Field.

Carrot Top, perhaps extorted over a sex tape and perhaps having attempted suicide.

Presley Gerber, son of Cindy Crawford, dead at 27. The ideally handsome model died at a rehab facility. 

"We hold [these events] aloft as crystalline emblems of how this carnival government of men advances the professional interests of men, at the expense of all who are not men."

Crystalline emblems, eh?

I'm trying to read "The Thomas and Kavanaugh Hearings Restaged as a Theatre of Fact
'The Ford/Hill Project,' a documentary play, may capture recent events, but it’s a product of the present: activist theatre in a moment when the idea of civic urgency is losing purchase," by Doreen St. Félix, in The New Yorker. (Felix covered the Kavanaugh hearings for The New Yorker.)

"Hamilton’s Kavanaugh delivers his denial in bleats of indignation, and Bougere’s Thomas is rigid, stentorian, as he categorically rejects Hill’s claims. Because the stage is so empty, rid of the bureaucratic veneer of the so-called system, we start thinking about the state as an invisible force, everywhere and nowhere...."

I wondered if anyone had ever, before this, called anything a "crystalline emblem," and discovered the sad little world of car logos bedazzled with crystals. Like this.

"Crystalline emblem" could also be some magical object floating somewhere in a video game. As in "the naaru-like crystalline emblems on the spaulders are pretty cool."

But I get how it comes up in writing about art. "Crystalline" is one of those words like "luminous" that belong on a list of words never to use again to describe writing.  

"This morning, we notified the government that we are filing a lawsuit today to protect our First Amendment rights and defend the principle that the government does not decide what the press reports or publishes."

Say CNN, MS NOW, Politico, quoted in "CNN, MS NOW, Politico to sue White House over blocked access" (Axios).

Trump response, at Truth Social: "The White House is not instituting an assault on the Free Press, something which I cherish. It is instituting an assault on the FAKE NEWS, something that has grown like Cancer in our beloved United States of America. It is corrupt, purposeful, pervasive, fully coordinated, and totally out of control. It is a threat to our National Security, and must be stopped, NOW!"

Did you watch Ross Douthat interview Patrick Clancy on "60 Minutes"?

I did. It was terrible. What is the point of bringing on Ross Douthat to invite the father to speak of cuddling a baby as it died and seeing a dead toddler in his dreams and receiving assistance from his new wife in bearing the burden of grief? I thought Douthat was an intellectual, devoted to analyzing morality.

Patrick Clancy talks about the final days with his 8-month-old son, Callan.

“I really thought there was a chance that Callan would live,” he tells 60 Minutes. “And remember just thinking, ‘Just gimme one. Just gimme one kid,’ and I would raise him as best I could, and I would… pic.twitter.com/5HMfnujj1d

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) September 20, 2026

ALSO: Even though I pay for YouTubeTV, I had to watch many commercials, including the thumping, ominous trailer for the movie "Primetime," which is about rescuing children from sexual predators. I had to watch that awful mess before the interview, in the middle of the interview, and at the end of the interview. Who wanted that ad placement and why did CBS allow it? And what does Ross Douthat, traditional moralist, think of it?

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can talk all night.

"Children in foster care sometimes live in group homes if they haven’t found placement with a family."

"When they are placed with a family, they usually move to where that family already lives. Together California upends that model by having both the parents and their foster children (and up to two children those parents already have) move together into the village, where they will be joined by 11 other foster families. One of the parents in each family will devote themselves fully to managing the household and will be compensated for that work by the nonprofit.... [T]he townhouses... are spacious enough to accommodate large sibling groups, who are often separated by the foster care system...."

From "Christian Bale Built a Foster Care Village in the California Desert/The actor has been working for almost two decades to build a foster care nonprofit outside Los Angeles" (NYT gift link).

"Mr. Bale revealed that his sister was briefly in foster care when they were children but discounted that as his motivation. 'I usually don’t say that because I think that it shouldn’t require any experience of that to care about little human beings,' he said."

"I think a lot of men view reading fiction as a frivolous waste of time. We’ve been conditioned to ignore the benefits of empathy."

"I think it’s a marketing problem. Reading should be sold to men like lifting weights for your brain. But it’s not just men. People who are happily staring at their phone all day don’t want to pick up a book. Their attention spans are fried."

From "Anthony Jeselnik: Men Should Think of Reading as 'Lifting Weights for Your Brain'/But the comedian isn’t naïve when he makes selections for his popular book club: 'Most importantly, they’re short'" (NYT gift link).

Asked "What’s a supposedly funny book that you just don’t find funny?," Jeselnik answers, "I have zero tolerance for David Sedaris." 

I wonder what David Sedaris would say about the notion that "Reading should be sold to men like lifting weights for your brain."

"A 19-year-old man died on Friday in a lightning storm while huddled with nine other people inside a metal structure atop a mountain in Utah...."

"The shack, a well-known spot atop the peak, was built out of steel in 1927 as a lookout house.... Mount Timpanogos... is more than 11,740 feet tall.... Hikers climb on an exposed ridge line to reach the peak... leaving them few places to take shelter until a storm passes.... People should...  refrain from touching materials that can conduct electricity, such as metal, utility lines, water and plumbing... Small, exposed structures cannot protect a person from lightning...."

The NYT reports.

The rescue opossum just can't stop playing possum.

"I want to be a real monk"/"But you are a real monk."

"A real monk doesn't have ADHD."

"On Saturday, Mr. Trump proposed a follow-on to Space Force: a new 'A.I. Force.'"

"But he left to earthbound speculation what, exactly, it was supposed to do. Mr. Trump cast his announcement — along with his promise to appoint a new A.I. 'Czar' for the White House — as an effort to boost the A.I. industry, saying 'we will cherish it, help it, and watch over it.' In the roiling debate in Washington over regulating frontier A.I. models and the companies that produce them, or slowing down development until the mystery is solved about the summer in which A.I. agents went rogue, Mr. Trump continues to side with the 'accelerationists,' who call for the government to stay out of the way.... Mr. Trump did not make clear whether he envisioned the new A.I. Force as a military command or a civilian agency or department."

From "A.I. Gone Rogue? Trump Proposes Not New Rules but an ‘A.I. Force.’/The president proposed a follow-up to his Space Force but continued to dismiss worries about A.I.’s pace or potential for harm" (NYT gift link).

Appointing a so-called "czar" is an old presidential trick, but which President started it?

It's never been an official title (of course!) but it was Woodrow Wilson, during WWI, who had the first "czars" — an "industry czar" and a "railroad czar."

"I am an original Yippie. A Yippie is a politicized hippie, a protester who has been hit over the head by a cop — and woke up."

Wrote Judy Gumbo, autobiographically, in "Yippie Girl: Exploits in Protest and Defeating the FBI."

Quoted in "Judy Gumbo, Who Found Freedom as a Yippie, Dies at 83/She was part of the leftist radical group, which mocked institutional authority with political satire and street theater" (NYT gift link).

I don't remember ever hearing of her, but it says: "Ms. Gumbo was not as well known as Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, two of the party’s founders, but she was 'an integral Yippie,' Nancy Kurshan, a Yippie who was Mr. Rubin’s partner for a while, said in an interview."

She's named in this little NYT squib from 1970:

"We’ve shown for the first time that the front of the brain arises from a totally different progenitor cell than the back of the brain."

"Our discovery means that we can now grow neurons from the back of the brain, the hindbrain, in a petri dish and study their functions."

Said professor of developmental biology Kyle Loh, quoted in "Brain made up of two distinct organs evolving independently/Scientists have discovered the brain is made of separate systems, solving a longstanding riddle and aiding research into conditions like motor neurone disease" (London Times).

It's so convenient I feel skeptical. What wouldn't be ethical becomes ethical. 

"Unlike my other callers, who were stunned, barely able to articulate their condolences and offers of help, he sounded giddily elated — like a lottery winner, I remember thinking at the time."

Writes Earl Spencer, now, about what he says he thought 30 years ago, quoted in "10 key claims in Earl Spencer’s Princess Diana book/Allegations by the princess’s brother provoked an unprecedented response from Buckingham Palace. These further revelations are likely to add fuel to the fire" (London Times).

The Palace rouses itself to call Spencer a liar. I'm paraphrasing. I admire the elaborate prose: "While we do not comment on books as a matter of principle, His Majesty is mindful that the pain of fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgment and colour memory in ways others do not recognise, even many years after such a loss."

"Ending her career in the movies at the age of 39, she fled the paparazzi who had hounded her and the male admirers who had so often let her down..."

"The day-to-day items which surrounded her during these decades, and which form the core of the sale on September 21, are a testimony to her rejection of the star system she had come to abhor. Many are remarkable in their ordinariness — a wooden desk worth no more than €50, a straw hat valued at between €20 and €40, a lot of five night gowns priced between €100 and €150.... The items on display in the auction room attracted a constant flow of visitors last week. Among them was Yoann Guer, 25, who works in the theatre world. He conceded that many of the objects were 'common' but added that he might bid for something anyway because they 'have a little bit of Brigitte Bardot’s soul in them.' Guer described her as a symbol of 'freedom, including the freedom not to do what you do not want to do.'"

I'm reading "Bric-a-brac tells story of Brigitte Bardot’s humble life/The late star’s belongings will go on sale next week in Paris and the ordinary possessions are testimony to her rejection of the system she had come to abhor" (London Times).

"Conceded" is the wrong word.

I see: "Brigitte Bardot widower slams sale of star's belongings": "The sale, featuring more than 300 items ranging from portraits and toiletries to a flamenco guitar and a black tutu, is due to take place Monday at Paris auction house Drouot. 'These are personal items. Why hold this sale? For the animals? It's a joke,' Bernard d'Ormale told AFP, adding it amounted to a 'disrespect to Brigitte's memory.'... The Brigitte Bardot Foundation rejected the criticism, saying the auction was approved by the board in June, including Bardot's widower, who was then its president."

"What would Brigitte Bardot have done?"