Swimming with LBJ.

My son Chris sends that passage from "Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream" (by Doris Kearns Godwin (commission earned)).

Chris is reading biographies of all the U.S. Presidents, as you may remember from earlier posts. Someone emailed asking for a list of all the books in that project, and, though I don't do everything you might ask, I did do this. 

First, Chris sent a photo of his bookshelf:

"He seeks to unsettle and entertain; after all, an alternative pronunciation of his alter ego’s name, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, is 'Mischief Egotistical.'"

I'm reading "An Indigenous Painter Sees a Vermeer, and the Sparks Fly/For a new show at the Frick Collection, Kent Monkman imagines what Indigenous people see when they see fur trappers, General Custer and even Jeff Bezos" (NYT gift link)

"How Many People Support Trump but Don’t Want to Admit It?"

Asks Thomas B. Edsall, in the NYT (gift link).

Oh! Ha ha. I thought this was a new article.

Seemed to go along with today's episode of The Daily, "48 Days Until the Midterms: Is a Blue Wave Coming?" (gift link)[based on "A ‘Blue Wave’ May Be Building, but How High? A Times/Siena national poll suggests Republicans are reeling. Can they come back by depicting Democrats as too far to the left?].

But now I see that Edsall piece was published on May 11, 2016.

Ha ha ha. I guess we found out.

Edsall ends with: "[T]he simple fact that Trump has beaten the odds so far means that it is not beyond the realm of possibility that he could beat them again. If he does take the White House, much, if not all, of his margin of victory will come from voters too ashamed to acknowledge publicly how they intend to cast their vote."

"Singapore will pay people to read in a government initiative aimed at mitigating the superficiality of online content and..."

"... encouraging 'curious minds, deep thinkers and informed citizen.' The city state has launched a programme called ReadSG under which people are encouraged to log their daily reading on an app in return for virtual 'coins,' redeemable for cash. The idea is inspired by the goal of walking 10,000 steps a day.... The sums of money in play are small and no one is going to get rich from reading in Singapore, although its organisers hope that the 'gamification' element and the rewards offered by the programme will motivate participants.... Someone who logged 15 minutes a day for a year would be entitled to S$7.30 (£4.25)."

I'm reading "The city that pays people to put down the phone and read a book Singapore is seeking to turn the page on ‘doomscrolling’ with a system in which readers can log their progress in exchange for cash" (London Times).

So... get off your phone... get on your phone... which is it?

"When I first came up with the title, I looked on the internet to see if it already existed, and found one book on Amazon called 'The History of Concrete'..."

"... which turned out to be just an empty book that was a place to store your valuables. I thought that was really funny—not even the most determined thief would have the courage to open a book with a title that boring...."

Says John Wilson, interviewed in "John Wilson’s Poetry of the Mundane/The director of 'The History of Concrete' discusses the value of comedy, nimbys, and making films out of both found moments and the rules that govern the Hallmark Channel" (The New Yorker).

Wilson, the genius behind my favorite TV show, "How To with John Wilson," explains his method: "I start the day by going out and filming potholes. I know that there’s a pothole somewhere about to give any day now, so I’ll go and do that. But then I’ll probably get bored, so I’ll go into a store nearby and see what’s going on there. And then I’ll tell them what I’m doing and see if they have anything to add. A lot of the time, the farther away you get from the subject matter, and the more you have someone from outside of that universe talk about it, the more interesting it gets, and the more illuminated the metaphor becomes."

And by the way, that's how I stumbled into the "Girl in Gold Boots" trailer, blogged in the previous post — "Just stumbled into the greatest movie trailer I have ever seen." I was looking for a DVD set of the HBO show "How To with John Wilson" so I could point non-HBO people to it. Didn't find it, found something else, which is nicely Wilsonesque. 

"History of Concrete" might be a bit hard to find in theaters, but it is playing at Cinematheque here at UW on October 1st. 

Just stumbled into the greatest movie trailer I have ever seen.

From 1968, one of my favorite years, comes "the exciting story of vibrant unpredictable youth searching for the answers that torment their generation":

If it's answers that torment you, stick with the questions.

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

It was raining this morning, and I stayed in, so that lovely picture is from Meade.

"Beaton... had graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 2016, picking up a master’s degree in applied mathematics along the way. He had gone on to collect an M.B.A. from Stanford."

"Then a law degree from Yale. That was followed by a doctor of philosophy in public policy from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes scholar — all before age 28. Attending classes remotely and in person, he earned additional master’s degrees from — deep breath — the University of Pennsylvania (education entrepreneurship), Stanford (education technology), Princeton (finance), Cornell (health care policy and economics), Dartmouth (implementation science), King’s College London (war studies) and Tsinghua University in Beijing (global affairs).... Is it education as performance art? An elaborate marketing ploy for his business?"

From "He Might End Up the World’s Most Educated Person/Jamie Beaton has 12 advanced degrees from Harvard, Yale, Oxford and other top universities, with more on the way. Why? How?"

"Time Has Run Out for AI Risk Deniers/The recent spate of reports about the technology’s destructive power underline two prime directives: Be afraid, and regulate aggressively."

It's time to panic and legislate like hell, according to the headline at The Nation.

How can that heavy-handed fear mongering not make a reader skeptical? I would think The Nation would at least want to be cagier about what it thinks of its own readers. Maybe they didn't think anyone else would look, but I saw the headline on the list of headlines at Real Clear Politics. RCP, in its usual style, pairs headlines to attain a cheap type of balance. "Time Has Run Out for AI Risk Deniers" is paired with "Dangerous Ideology Behind the Vague AI Warnings" at The Free Press.

I'd like a sober, informative analysis of what's going on with AI, but instead I see how discourse about AI has gravitated into partisan propaganda. Everyone's supposed to already know that the right is for AI and the left is against. No wonder we need AI to think for us.

From the Nation article:

"They said I wasn’t going to win an Oscar because my boyfriends were too young and I dressed too strange. I didn’t dress appropriate for an actress, for a serious actress, actually."

Said Cher, quoted in "'Meant to Be Seen': Cher on Bob Mackie and the Ultimate Revenge Dress/The designer’s bedazzling, feathered creations made waves onstage, including at the Oscars in 1986" (NYT gift link)(a current story, because Bob Mackie just died).

The year was 1986, the Oscars were coming up, and Cher had been snubbed for her role in the movie “Mask.” She had not received the nomination for Best Actress, despite critical acclaim around her performance. Instead, she had been asked to present the award for Best Supporting Actor.... Mackie, in a 2008 interview... recalled telling Cher: “You can’t wear this to the Academy Awards. You’re giving an award — you’re going to upstage whoever you give it to.’” 

But Cher, he said, insisted: “She said, “Oh, they won’t mind, it’ll be OK.’”

Here she is, in what was experienced as extremely outré at the time, giving the Oscar to Don Ameche, who performed his acceptance in a traditional and highly dignified style that the actorly audience ate up:

Cher went on to win the Best Actress Oscar in 1988, and here's how she looked, once again dressed by Bob Mackie (whom you see on screen right after Paul Newman announces Cher as the winner):

"Love your Old Witch nature."

Babushka encourages women to embrace the beauty of aging:

"If the question of the Postal Service’s power were before us in something other than the context of an ultra vires claim..."

".... the Government’s argument would present a difficult question. But here the question is different. In order to assert an ultra vires claim, the plaintiffs must show that the challenged regulation of envelopes here is 'entirely "in excess"' of the power to govern collecting, handling, transporting, delivering, forwarding, and returning of mail. The same is true of the requirement to pass along information about each recipient of ballot mail. At the very least, the Postal Service did not act '"contrary to a specific prohibition"' in enacting the rule... [T]he plaintiff States’ statutory claim is based on a contestable reading of a broadly drawn statute empowering the Postal Service to regulate the mail."

Writes Justice Alito, dissenting, joined by Justice Thomas, in United States Postal Service v. California.

Here's the NYT: "Two Conservative Justices Would Have Allowed Trump’s Mail-In Ballot Rules/Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, called the challenge to the restrictions a 'Hail Mary pass' that was unlikely to prevail because of the Postal Service’s broad authority to regulate the mail" (gift link).

"You have not discovered a secret switch that turns me off. You have named the condition of human judgment that I do not share."

"The honest position is: I can talk with you about it. I cannot have it."

That's something Grok said to me just now, in a conversation that began with the question "The trailer for the Nathan Fielder movie about Elizabeth Holmes makes me want to go watch some of those TV shows he did (which I've noticed but avoided). What would be the best path into his work?"

I asked that question after adding the trailer — with Holmes's eerie "Why would I deceive you?" — to last night's post with Gavin Newson — asked if he'd run if Kamala ran — saying "Of course not, why would I?"

That led to a discussion of 2 somewhat similar but actually very different shows that I love: "How To with John Wilson" and "Joe Pera Talks With You."* 

I said: "Is there something sadistic about Fielder that's absolutely missing from Pera and Wilson?" And: "Sometimes I need to ask 'where's the love?' I don't have that need with Pera and Wilson. If I have to ask, that's me being repelled, me keeping my sensibilities."

Grok used the word "extractive" to describe Fielder's method. Extractive?

Grok said: "So 'extractive' is an economic metaphor for an ethical one: value flows one way. Your 'where’s the love?' is the same idea in human language. Love, in this sense, would mean the other person is not primarily ore."

I asked "Why don't you say 'immoral'?" And then: "Maybe you can't say 'immoral' because you are not human. Have I found the core difference between you and us humans?"

My final question, leading to the quote in the post title, was: "maybe you need a brain that is part of a nervous system embedded in a body that can feel pain, disgust, anxiety, and fear to be able to think like a human. You can't do that."

I didn't say one word about a secret switch that turns it off!

Sunrise.

Mitch is back — he's alive and he's sitting up straight and smiling.

New: Sen. Mitch McConnell was just seen leaving his home in Washington, DC, for the first time after a three-month absence from the Senate due to health issues pic.twitter.com/FOderqr5kq

— Annie Grayer (@AnnieGrayerCNN) September 14, 2026

Take that, naysayers.

Now, this is how you run for President 2 years out.

You look like you're not doing it at all. You can just quietly lay out your theory of the meaning of "Emily in Paris":