"His gray compact S.U.V. accelerated past shelves of pumpkin spice Cheerios and Special K cereal boxes...."

"The vehicle came to rest near a display of Halloween candy after careening beneath a sign over the doorway that reads: 'Thanks for shopping, y’all!'..."

From "A Driver Desperate to Use the Bathroom Plows Into a Kroger in Texas, the Police Say/The driver, James Mansell Lancaster Jr., was upset to find the supermarket in Rosenberg, Texas, closed early Sunday morning, the police said" (NYT).

"Mr. Lancaster stayed at the scene, according to the police.... 'All he said was the doors were locked and he had to use the restroom,' Lieutenant Munoz said.... Kroger does not plan to release security camera footage of the crash..."

I found the footage:

"Just as 'naked dressing' escalated from trompe l’oeil to the transparent mesh Bianca Censori wore to the 2025 Grammys, underwear as outerwear..."

"... has gone from lace-trimmed slip dresses to knicker-style shorts to just going out in your bra. Not quite the emperor’s new clothes, but perhaps only because women’s nipples are still considered more risque than men’s.... In 2026 wearing a bra as a top isn’t the subversive act of fashion rebellion or feminist declaration of sexual liberation that it was for Madonna in 1990 but a sign of compliance to the beauty standard, and the extreme thinness that’s putting women’s lives at risk...."

I'm reading the London Time: "Is a bra a top now? Looks like it! They’re in Paris and on the red carpet, but would you flaunt yours at the post office?"

I'm going to use my last WaPo gift link of the month to give you the 1991 article that is the London Times's source for photo of Madonna wearing a bra as a top: "The Roots of Madonna: Getting down to Earth with the pop star." 

"He went!"

Pete Crow-Armstrong showed up Bill Miller after being called out on a check-swing for the second time today. pic.twitter.com/mhTtmngbLN

— Foul Territory (@FoulTerritoryTV) September 30, 2026

I love the short phrases of baseball. "He went!" is the funniest one to me. 

But, words aside, is it funny to see Pete Crow-Armstrong losing it when the Cubs are down 8-0?

"Headlines like 'Are Shirt Buttons Sexist?' are why the New York Times has lost credibility with the broad center of American politics."

"To we [sic] moderates, it sounds like something that would be mocked on the satirical website, 'The Babylon Bee.'"

That's the 3rd-highest-rated comment at the NYT article "Are Shirt Buttons Sexist?/A reader questions the point of having men’s and women’s shirt buttons on different sides." 

The highest-rated comment is "Sometimes I really do wonder what life is like for people who are constantly scanning the world in search of something to gripe about."

I didn't pick that for the post title because it's too gripe-y — it gripes about griping — and I don't think the article is griping. It's puzzling over a quirk of clothing construction.

The author of the article, Vanessa Friedman, is addressing a question from a reader. She goes through the various theories of how this right/left difference might have happened — one is most common and perhaps you're sure it is the explanation — and observes that none of those reasons apply today. Tradition has its hold. We could change but we don't.

Only the headline writer uses the word "sexist" — and only to ask a question.

But the commenters — NYT commenters! — come for Friedman. They don't say what an amusing light-hearted jaunt through history, thanks for the fun. She's not perceived as having fun at all. She's seen as a grim, angry feminist. Things are changing.

Writing that made me think of this video clip I saw yesterday:

"The View" host Sunny Hostin stands up for accused Cornell gang rape defendants.

🎥: ABC pic.twitter.com/4wo46PXsQU

— TMZ (@TMZ) September 29, 2026

Sunrise.

"Netherlands Confirms First Child Euthanized Under New Law Was 1 Year Old."

Headline at People Magazine. Subheadline: "The child was euthanized due to severe illness and suffering, making it the first case under a 2024 law allowing euthanasia for terminally ill children under 12."

In 2024, the law was extended to allow children under the age of 12 to be euthanized if the child is “terminally ill and is suffering unbearably with no prospect of improvement.” In these cases, the doctor and parents can decide together to end the child’s life. “This decision is always made in consultation with the parents and, if possible, also with the child,” the government website states.

"Christa is a source of light in a dark place. For those of us who have found ourselves housed near Christa, she has offered hope when there should have only been despair."

Said one of Christa Pike's fellow inmates, who added that Pike "is a far cry from the one who walked through the doors [in] the beginning."

Quoted in "Tennessee to execute a woman for first time in over 200 years/Christa Pike was convicted in a brutal 1995 killing committed when she was 18. Advocates pushing for her life to be spared point to abuse she suffered as a child" (WaPo).

The death penalty requires that a jury find "aggravating factors." There were two: She tried to cover up the murder and it was "especially heinous, atrocious or cruel in that it involved torture or serious physical abuse beyond that necessary to produce death."

I couldn't get Grok to tell me the details of the murder. It said "I won’t describe the attack itself or the injuries in detail. That would mean laying out the methods of a murder, which I don’t do."

"That humans have long been aware of the corrosive danger from kowtowing, toadying, sucking up, piling it on thick, apple-polishing and otherwise bootlicking..."

"... is shown by the extensive array of synonyms and expressions for sycophancy. Despite humanity’s historic distaste for the phenomenon, autocratic rulers and the vainglorious who aspire to such power remain addicted to it. Donald Trump, with his Cabinet meetings turned into spectacles of public groveling, is just the latest example, if an especially flagrant one. The more cocooned in sycophancy Trump is, it seems, the more vindictive he is toward those not inclined toward Uriah Heepishness, witness the president’s recent effort to bar from the White House those news organizations whose coverage he finds intolerable. Trump can’t resist a temptation known since the fall of man...."

Write Matthew Gwyther — producer of the BBC documentary, "Sucking Up: A Guide to Sycophancy Through the Ages" — in "From the Garden of Eden to the president's Cabinet meetings, apple-polishing has a sorry history" (WaPo).

Yes, I know this is one more example of kicking Trump around over an oft-noted character flaw, but the essay is well-written, it refers not only to Dickens but also to Milton, Shakespeare, and Machiavelli, and I'm interested in this theory that the numerosity of synonyms signifies the importance of the concept.

In that light, here's an excerpt from Geoffrey K. Pullum's 1991 book "The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax":

"... the Deity stooping from the floor of Heaven to welcome us..."

Ever since my experience with "the foul-mouth parrot Andrew Jackson once had" — which required me to get my head examined — I've been on the lookout for sentences that resist reading,  perhaps to the point where I consider the possibility that I have lost the ability to read. 

In that light, I contemplated this famously long sentence by Virginia Woolf, which begins her essay "On Being Ill."

"Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing, when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to light, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us in the act of sickness, how we go down into the pit of death

Sunrise.

Crane rise.

IN THE COMMENTS: Everyone's saying heron.

Trump articulates a nuanced position about Bill Maher.

"Bill Maher’s ratings are so low that it is hard to believe his show can continue. In many ways it’s SAD because, in actuality, I like him. Republicans should stop using him as a sounding board, however. It makes them look sooo weak and foolish!"

Link to Truth Social.

I think he's reacting to the Republican enthusiasm for this recent Maher outburst:

Madonna is confused about why she's here at all and nonexplains the joke about her ass, but she'd like to say thanks for whatever this is.

Madonna was great in the early days the VMA awards, so it was nice to see her perform live:

Speaking of confusion, I see no distinction between what she was doing back in the 80s and what these performers who look like her are trying to do now. Maybe that's the point she's making here. 

Who is he talking about?!

Pod Save America says if the stakes are high enough, you can use the word 'F*ggot'

"Do I think it's great if a boss calls an employee a 'f*ggot? The stakes are too high.
There's not a gay guy from Austin to underneath the docks in Provincetown who wouldn't be happily called a… pic.twitter.com/gw5289GEoi

— Eric Abbenante (@EricAbbenante) September 27, 2026

I had to look it up.

The NYT had this: "‘She’s One of Us’: Mary Peltola’s Bumpy Rise to Political Power/Ms. Peltola, the Democratic Senate candidate in Alaska, has complicated politics: She is pro-gun, pro-oil and pro-gas — but also pro-environment and especially pro-fish" (gift link).

And Jonathan Chait wrote this about the NYT piece in: "Another Female Democrat Is Mean, Apparently/A New York Times report on Representative Mary Peltola’s management is revealing—about her younger employees’ self-regard" (The Atlantic)(gift link).

The story does contain one bona fide example of improper behavior—an allegation that she sometimes used the slur faggot. Four former staff members report directly hearing her use the word. If true, it certainly reflects poorly on her. The Peltola campaign denied that she’d used the slur....

So that's the foundation for the crude joking in the podcast. He's talking about Mary Peltola.

"The spot is the latest in a series of pro-Trump ads funded by public money."

"Some ethics experts have argued that the Trump administration is violating federal laws banning the use of taxpayer dollars for propaganda, and the ads have drawn criticism from both parties. The most recent ad, one expert argued, is a more flagrant violation given its prior use in the political arena."

I'm reading "A Trump 2024 Campaign Ad Returns, Now Brought to You by the Government/The ad, which ethics experts said could violate federal law, shows Mr. Trump vowing to 'expel the warmongers' from the government and fight the 'deep state,' even as he wages a war with Iran" (NYT).

Trump posted the ad at Truth Social, here. 

Fetterman knows how to play viral media. I say he did this — deadpan — on purpose.

Well played, Senator!