Meade: "Super bloggable, no?" Me: "trying to find an inroad/the photo is overwhelming emotionally"

That's the text conversation here in Meadhouse after I send this to Meade:

 

The eagle — encrusted in gold and seemingly headless — launches into flight, away from us.

Let's see what the particular example of corruption this is — this, the worst example ever. There's never even ever been anything like this. Do you know what example this one is? There have been reactions of horror to so many things Trump has done, but "corruption" is a key hint, suggesting a money grab, and yes, you guessed right, didn't you?

President Trump’s Justice Department is using taxpayer money to create a $1.8 billion political slush fund. Ostensibly set up to compensate those who the department claims have “suffered weaponization and lawfare,” it will in fact reward loyalists willing to defy the law and commit violence on behalf of the president.

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

Out of the blue, Spotify decided to celebrate my first day of Spotify with the news of the first song I ever played there.

And it's something that's a complete mystery to me. I can't remember ever hearing of it. Can't think of a reason I'd have stumbled across it and gone to Spotify to start up with it so I could hear this thing. Is Spotify pulling my leg?

I asked Grok what the hell it was and got: "'Chatty Cats' is likely some super-obscure or random kids'/background track that got logged as your very first play. It's extremely common for Spotify's 'first song ever' to be something you don't recognize at all." 

"So, we were just talking about this wild crime spree that happened this weekend in Austin.... they stole cars and stole guns and switched cars and they shot at like 10 different locations...."

"They shot multiple people.... &ou were saying that the reason why they had a hard time catching them is because they had Flock cameras in Austin, but then they shut those cameras off for political reasons...."

Said Joe Rogan, inviting Mark Andreeson to talk about Flock, which applies AI to info from municipal cameras to find cars for the police. Andreeson is a big investor in Flock.

 

Andreeson: "It's used all over the country. It solves crimes every day. We get reports on carjackings with kids in the back seat and their lives get saved because they track them down. So a lot of towns and cities have this and they love it. In cities like Austin with the intense politics, they run into backlash on privacy and surveillance concerns. And so Austin had Flock and then turned it off. And as a consequence, they were not able to find these guys for several days. And then what happened — the late breaking news today is these guys drove into some adjacent town up against Austin and Flock was live in that town. And so Flock tagged them the minute they drove into that town and then they caught the guys. Subsequent to that, the mayor and your chief of police gave a press conference and said, 'We really need to rethink this,' because it's crazy to have the ability to solve crimes and stop crimes and not be able to use it...."

"I'm reading this crazy article in The New Yorker...."

I wrote, in June 2025. 

I can't believe I need to take this guy seriously enough to worry about him, but The New Yorker wants me to feel that I do. ... I see I've written about Yarvin before. Did I take him seriously or was he even funnier last time?... The one old post... is about a NYT interview with him. So his visibility to me has solely been a consequence of elite liberal media telling me to worry about him.... It was liberal media asserting that he's important to conservatives. Is he?!

This morning, I'm seeing that "crazy article" won an award: "The New Yorker’s Ava Kofman Wins a 2026 National Magazine Award/The prize, for a Profile of the far-right blogger Curtis Yarvin...."

To report the winning Profile, Kofman delved deeply into the writings of Yarvin, who popularized the concept of being “red-pilled”—a riff on a scene in “The Matrix”—and turned it into a rallying cry among conservatives. A former tech designer, Yarvin has advocated for “the liquidation of democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law,” and called for the establishment of an American monarchy, arguing in 2011 that Donald Trump is “biologically suited” to reign as king....

I still can't believe I need to take this guy seriously enough to worry about him, so please nudge me if I'm languishing in blissful complacency.

"Mr. Frank was also known for championing gay rights, civil rights and women’s rights. He did so by force of personality and by example."

"He insisted that his male partner be invited to all events to which the spouses of other representatives were invited. In 2012, at age 72, he married Jim Ready and became the first sitting member of Congress to wed someone of the same sex. He also worked quietly behind the scenes to advance his causes. In one of many examples, according to his memoir, 'Frank: A Life in Politics From the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage' (2015), he helped persuade President Bill Clinton not to appoint Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia as secretary of state because of his track record of homophobia...."

From "Barney Frank, Gay Pioneer and Liberal Stalwart in Congress, Dies at 86/Often voted the 'brainiest,' 'funniest' and 'most eloquent' member of the House, he was also the first to come out voluntarily and helped normalize being openly gay in public office" (NYT).

Squelching, Part 2.

Having already written a blog post called "Squelching" this morning, I feel compelled to show you this London Times article: "Mumbling, [squelching] and the danger of badly captioned TV subtitles/Half of the nation like to watch with words appearing on screen. For most people, it’s not that they can’t hear":

[S]ubtitles can be worse when they get it right, especially during a sex scene. No one wants to be sucking peppermints with their Aunty Pam when the words, “Yes! Yes! Harder!” and “Is that good for you, baby?” pop up on screen. Descriptions of sound effects can be quite appalling, such as “[groans of pleasure]”. Or just “[squelching]”. In Stranger Things there was once a caption reading “tentacles undulate moistly”, though I don’t think it was describing sex, mercifully....

"It turns out that the United States and Israel went into the conflict with a particular and very surprising someone in mind: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad..."

So it says here in "Early War Goal Was to Install Hard-Line Former President as Iran’s Leader/An Israeli strike designed to free Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from house arrest in Tehran, U.S. officials said, was part of an effort to bring about regime change and put him in power" (NYT)(gift link).

To say that Mr. Ahmadinejad was an unusual choice would be a vast understatement. While he had increasingly clashed with the regime’s leaders and had been placed under close watch by the Iranian authorities, he was known during his term as president, from 2005 to 2013, for his calls to “wipe Israel off the map.” He was a strong supporter of Iran’s nuclear program, a fierce critic of the United States and known for violently cracking down on internal dissent.

It seems incredible. And, we're told, it "quickly went awry."

Mr. Ahmadinejad was injured on the war’s first day by an Israeli strike at his home in Tehran that had been designed to free him from house arrest, the American officials and an associate of Mr. Ahmadinejad said. He survived the strike, they said, but after the near miss he became disillusioned with the regime change plan. He has not been seen publicly since then and his current whereabouts and condition are unknown.

Why are we hearing about this now? Is this disinformation?

Squelching.

I'm reading a letter to the NYT "Ethicist" in "I Think Someone Is Living in the Storage Unit Next to Mine. What Should I Do? I was so uncomfortable I just threw my things inside and left":

"... there was a man in the unit directly across from mine — bags in the hallway, sitting on a five-gallon bucket, barefoot, writing on a notepad and eating cup noodles. As I approached, he pulled down a makeshift curtain of old plastic sheeting hung on a rope where the door would close. I was too surprised to get a good look inside, but I did see a large jar of yellow liquid and a semi-used roll of toilet paper, along with floor-to-ceiling bags and boxes that looked as if they had been there for many years. Behind the plastic it sounded as if he just continued to write. I had planned on organizing my unit that day but was so uncomfortable I just threw my things inside and left. On almost every subsequent visit of mine, he has been in there. He always pulls the plastic down, but it doesn’t cover the whole doorway, and it’s deeply uncomfortable shuffling around my own things (or using the hallway) while someone sits there five feet away. We don’t interact; sometimes I think I hear a pen scratch, but once I heard rhythmic squelching and got really grossed out jumping to an obvious conclusion...."

Observing the structure of my own thoughts — you can tell me yours — I saw:

"We have reviewed video footage from the area which suggests that the cover was dislodged after a multi-axle truck turning onto 52nd Street from 5th Avenue drove over it.... manhole covers can get displaced by heavy vehicles...."

Said a representative from Con Ed, quoted in "Donike Gocaj, grandmother who ‘dropped’ into NYC manhole, hauntingly screamed ‘I’m dying’ — as witness claims there was nothing blocking it off" (NY Post).

A bystander: "She was just in the hole screaming that she was dying. Over and over she was like, 'I’m dying, I’m dying.'"

ADDED: Here's something I wrote in the comments to a post of mine that was about the only time Martin Heidegger laughed: 

Woody Allen famously said "If I got a paper cut, that’s a tragedy. If you fell down an open manhole and died, that's comedy."

There's a Woody Allen movie where he suddenly falls into an open manhole. Can't remember which one, but I saw it in the theater in London (for some reason), and the audience that hadn't been laughing at any of the numerous verbal jokes laughed heartily. Slapstick is a universal language. And yet some people reject slapstick. They think it's cheap or mean or something. Why would you laugh when someone falls?

Thanks to tcrosse for reminding me of that old quote.

ALSO: Was it Woody Allen who said that or Mel Brooks?

Cher is 80.

Today.

I'm the original Cher fan, so I don't need to link to anything. I remember the first time I heard Cher — "I Got You Babe" on a radio station that only came in late at night, before the song had made the playlist on the New York City stations that dominated the airways during the day. I wrote the song title down. 

"They say we're young...."

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"The San Diego mosque shooters were 'radicalized online,' cops say — as it’s revealed they wore Nazi symbols and etched racist statements on their gear..."

"... as they opened fire outside an Islamic Center, killing three people in the process. The two teens 'did not discriminate on who they hated,' law enforcement officials said in a press conference Tuesday, adding they had recovered over 30 guns and a crossbow in connection to the suspects. A livestream video of the horrific attack, currently being probed by the FBI, shows Cain Clark with a Black Sun symbol, which is associated with Nazi Germany, square on his chest. Nazi SS commander Heinrich Himmler had the symbol inlaid into the floor of the Wewelsburg castle. Another symbol associated with a small online neo-Nazi group, the Atomwaffen Division, can also be seen on one of the shooters’ shoulders. Atomwaffen is the German phrase for 'atomic weapons.' Also seen on the handgun of one of the shooters is the statement, 'race war now,' right above a swastika. Neo-nazis and white nationalists are known for promoting race wars to overthrow the government or create a white ethnostate...."

The NY Post reports, in "San Diego mosque shooters were ‘radicalized online,’ wore Nazi symbols, inscribed vile 3-word message on guns."

What duck?

Grok insists this interesting character is a "mutt duck," the offspring of a mallard and a "fancy/ornamental duck" that some human took the liberty to release into the local environment.

If you like the music Meade chose for this video, listen to more of Stephen Spencer here. He gets the lyrics from the stories his 3-year-old daughter tells.

It's not worth my time to keep track of the Trump/Mark Cuban love/hate relationship..."

... but here they are theatrically performing the love version of whatever it is they have going, which I'm just going to assume is about self-interest and getting something that looks good done:

"I want to thank the leaders of several major pharmacies and generic drug makers who are partnering with us on this effort, including the co-founder of Cost Plus Drugs, Mark Cuban. Mark, thank you very much. Mark, looking good, Mark. Come here, Mark. Nice to be with you.... We have the same thing, one thing in common. We want to make people better and keep them wealthy, right? Good. Good to be with you."

"Devastating to the prosecution’s case was Mr. Fuhrman’s turn as a witness — specifically his repeated past use of a racial epithet that he initially denied having uttered."

"That denial was shown to be untrue when the Simpson defense team introduced audiotapes of him using the word dozens of times. Mr. Fuhrman then acknowledged having used such language, but said it was in the context of creating a screenplay that he hoped would become a movie. Other trial witnesses testified that Mr. Fuhrman had indeed used the word in earnest; one of them recalled his having said that if it were up to him, Black people 'would be gathered together and burned.' On the tapes, he was heard saying that there were police officers who 'would just love to take certain people and just take them to the alley and just blow their brains out.'"

From "Mark Fuhrman, Flawed Witness in O.J. Simpson Trial, Dies at 74/A Los Angeles police detective, he was discredited during Mr. Simpson’s 1995 murder trial by defense lawyers who pointed to his past use of racist language" (NYT).