The news from Sicily.

1. "American Hiker Dies After Lightning Strike on Mount Etna in Italy/Rescuers found a 29-year-old man in serious condition on the volcano’s eastern slope on Sunday. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital in Catania" (NYT gift link)("On Monday, Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology reported that another volcanic vent had opened in the valley, with fresh lava flowing overnight.... During a volcanic eruption, tiny collisions among the rising particles of ash can create static electricity, which may in turn produce volcanic lightning").

2. "Thieves Steal 4 Renaissance Paintings From Italian Museum in Brazen Heist/The works, by Antonello da Messina, were taken as the Sicilian city of Messina held a religious celebration" (NYT gift link)("The celebration, the Procession of the Vara, is a religious ritual that takes places every Aug. 15. Some 100,000 people attended the celebration and the city’s law enforcement officials were focused on maintaining order there, city officials said....The theft is a blow to the city.... [F]or the past few years the city has focused on the 'Messina, City of Antonello' brand...).

3. The Procession of the Vara:

Comedian strategies.

Link.

I want to know more. Was this a prank of a sort that some people will admire and think of as what the supposedly legitimate polling business deserves?

ADDED: What else did Median Strategies do? My first thought was Spencer Pratt.

It doesn't take much these days to be considered "formal."

I'm reading "Think It’s Cool to Wear Fancy Sneakers to Work? You Might Be Old. After years of office casual, young people are embracing loafers, derbies and oxfords" (NYT gift link).

Earlier this year, Esquire described the trend as the loafer’s “big generational shift,” describing how younger consumers “were bypassing sneakers in growing numbers.” And in January, The Times UK deemed 2026 “the year of the loafer.”...

The surging interest in formal footwear fashions has simultaneously been a boon for both high-end luxury retailers and heritage brands with classic shoe offerings, like Allen Edmonds, the Wisconsin-based retailer. Nick Wooster, the brand’s consulting creative director, said that they have “absolutely” seen a recent increase in interest in their handmade leather loafers and derbies among younger customers. 

Even sneaker brands are trying to be more dressy.

"Being a good teacher requires being sort of odd, even a bit immature."

"Some of my favorite professors married scholarly expertise with considerable eccentricity. My dissertation adviser insisted her students take up social dance like polka, line dancing and zydeco; another of my former professors would alight at 4 a.m. to teach himself Japanese before undertaking woodworking projects like making a life-size chess set. The passions are nonconformist. To be moved is to be a little bit weird."

Writes Matt Dinan, the director of the great books program at St. Thomas University in New Brunswick, in "I Let My Students Watch Me Struggle With a Masterpiece. It Changed Everything" (NYT gift link).

"What I discovered anew in my encounter with 'The Brothers Karamazov' last term was that if you want students to be passionately engaged, not worried about the future, grasping, careerist or disengaged, you must transmit the spark of passion in your deeds, your mien — let’s face it, in your own soul. If you expect your students to choose books, ideas and genuine learning over shortcuts and distraction, you must be a bit courageous, too.... As [the Karamazov brother] Alyosha memorably notes, all capable people 'are awfully afraid of looking ridiculous, and it makes them unhappy.'"

"They were going to build an F.B.I. headquarters three hours away in Maryland, a liberal state. We’re going to stop it."

Said Trump, last year, quoted in "Judge Rules Trump Administration Can’t Scrap F.B.I. Move to Maryland/The ruling is almost certainly not the end of the lengthy fight over the F.B.I.’s future headquarters, which has lasted for years" (NYT gift link).

In a 47-page ruling, Judge Theodore Chuang of the Federal District Court in Maryland wrote that “the F.B.I. erroneously concluded” that it could select a new headquarters for itself without consulting Congress. In reality, Judge Chuang wrote, Congress had already approved the Biden administration plan for the F.B.I. to move to Maryland.... Maryland state officials cheered the ruling, which blocked the Trump administration from diverting about $1 billion to be spent on a sprawling campus near the Greenbelt Metro station in Prince George’s County....

Sunrise reprise.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

Sunrise.

"When I’ve alluded to my penchant for audiobooks... I’ve occasionally been chided and told that they’re bastardizations of the real thing..."

"... and that printed volumes are truer to an author’s intent, better suited to lingering over language, superior through and through. Maybe so. But do the evangelists of that religion pause to wonder why we heretics exist? Some of us worship differently not because we haven’t seen the light, but because we don’t see well."

Writes Frank Bruni, in his newsletter (NYT gift link).

He describes his vision problem: "Almost nine years ago, I had a stroke that ravaged the optic nerve behind my right eye and rendered that eye pretty much useless. I wrote about that in this 2018 essay.... Since the incident, my slightly off-kilter monocular vision hasn’t deteriorated further.... [There is a] gap between what each of us struggles with and what the people in our orbits know or see of it.... It’s the source of so much ignorance, insensitivity and even cruelty."

(If you click through to the newsletter, you'll see the headline is "Buttigieg and El-Sayed Are Teaching Democrats to Speak Republican." You might want to read that. I did, but then I didn't want to blog about it... and did want to blog about the old audiobooks issue, even though I've blogged it many times before, as a click on my "audiobooks" tag will prove.)

"I just do not understand the mentality. If this is a representation of who our military is now… we’re just Rome sitting here waiting to burn. We’ve got nothing left."

From "Fox Host Trashes U.S. Sailors as ‘Weak’ for Speaking Out About Dire Conditions/Fox News host Joey Jones mocked service members speaking out about conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln" (MTN).

Joey Jones on concerns of service members on the USS Lincoln: pic.twitter.com/Va2npYmA9x

— Acyn (@Acyn) August 15, 2026

"After the 1997 Asian financial crisis South Korea realised that it was overly dependent on heavy industry, notably shipbuilding and carmaking."

"Ministers decided that the creative industries might successfully diversify the economy, after a team of economists pointed out that the film Jurassic Park alone had generated the same profit as selling 1.5 million Hyundai cars. They got behind everything from media and the arts to food and drink. A campaign for traditional Korean food supported restaurants, chef training and marketing. It has helped Korean food to travel alongside the 'K-wave' of pop culture. Kimchi is spreading like sushi and ramen did a generation ago...."

From "All points east — how the West got hooked on Korean and Japanese culture/K-pop titans BTS are taking on the Grammys, manga is on the London stage and Japanese literature is breaking records. What’s driving the boom?" (London Times).

We're told that BTS is very popular because of their "mix of pop, hip-hop, R&B and electronic music, with lyrics about mental health and social pressure," and it made me wonder what the group is saying about mental health and social pressure. So, the world being what it is, I said to Grok, "All I want from you is about 10 quotes from BTS songs that are 'lyrics about mental health and social pressure.'"

Click through if you want to know.

"Former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona is being sued in North Carolina under the state's 'homewrecker' law."

"Sinema admitted in a deposition to having a sexual relationship with her then-married former bodyguard. Sinema argues the affair did not happen in North Carolina, so she shouldn't be sued in that state. The lawsuit was filed by Heather Ammel, the ex-wife of Sinema's former bodyguard Matthew Ammel...."

I'm reading "'We went inside and had sex.' Sinema details affair with bodyguard" (The Arizona Republic).

Presumably, Ms. Ammel's argument is that the thing Sinema wrecked, the marriage, was located in North Carolina. 

"My hair stood on end and I became ferocious and, like, this is not happening, but I had nowhere to hide."

WATCH: Hayden Panettiere says she was 18 when a woman she trusted as a protector took her below deck on a yacht and physically put her in bed beside an undressed “very famous” man.

“By the time I’d realized I was in danger, I was quite literally out to sea.”

“She physically put… pic.twitter.com/rz5JAyxQo0

— Scott M (@EODWX5) August 17, 2026

Background: "Hayden Panettiere, Star of ‘Nashville’ and ‘Heroes,’ Dies at 36/In May, she published a memoir after a tumultuous decade that involved depression, substance abuse, losing custody of her daughter and stints in rehab" (NYT gift link).

UPDATE: From  "Emergency Responders Found Hayden Panettiere in Cardiac Arrest/After the authorities responded to a 911 call in Greenville, S.C., an initial police investigation found no evidence of 'foul play or suspicious circumstances'" (NYT gift link):

The cardiac arrest was caused by an apparent drug overdose, according to a person with knowledge of the situation... The person with knowledge of the situation said that Ms. Panettiere was with Brian Hickerson, a former boyfriend, at the time of her death.... 

According to Ms. Panettiere’s memoir, 'This Is Me: A Reckoning,' which she published this year, she met Mr. Hickerson in 2018 in Los Angeles. The two dated on and off for several years. Court records show that in 2021, Mr. Hickerson pleaded no contest to two felony counts of injuring Ms. Panettiere." 

Sunrise.

"In the exhilarating case of Madison, it’s important to pursue the frenzy, merge with the frenzy, ingest the frenzy."

"The frenzy beckons along State Street, the central nervous system of the city and the 50,000-strong university, with main quadrangle Bascom Hill at the end opposite the state Capitol. The frenzy churns up and down the streets and boulevards leading up to kickoffs, the multistory bars packed with people and red. It’s present in bits in the breakfast line at the famed Mickie’s Dairy Bar, or the doughnut line at Greenbush, or at State Street Brats, or the Memorial Union Terrace of the main student union. It’s bubbling at the Dane County Farmers’ Market, and it’s roaring at the frat houses near Camp Randall Stadium, where the inspiring sights might include a beer bong on the second floor delivering the nectar to a drinker on the ground. It reaches its peak, though, at the end of the third quarter.... If one seeks bouts of quiet, as unfitting as they can seem, there’s a daydream of a lake (Mendota), the Lakeshore Path, the city’s welcoming capacity for cyclists or the privilege of a lakefront room at the Edgewater Hotel...."

The Washington Post puts Madison first, in "The 10 best college football towns in America" (gift link).

Here's the daydream this morning, video'd by Meade:

 

Socialists in shorts.

I'm reading the NYT article "Is the Democratic Party Facing Its Own Tea Party Moment? A string of primary wins by progressive candidates has revealed the strength of a high-energy insurgent movement but also its potential limitations," which you can read for yourself at that gift link.

It's a topic I'm following, and I've recently blogged about. I said it a week ago: "The socialists are to the Democratic Party what the Tea Party was to the GOP."

So right now, all I want to do is put up something I cropped from one of the photographs:

"Dr. Abdul El-Sayed tried to attract young voters," and he did. They came toddling in wearing shorts, shuffling in slides and sneakers.

If I were a NYT essayist, I'd muse that they are showing us what real, human, embodied and, yes male power can look like.

ADDED: After publishing this post, I dashed off a question to Grok, "Can the males wear shorts and slides to the revolution?" Answer:

"Women remain, as linguists say, the 'marked' sex, the nonstandard, defined as the opposite of the male norm."

"There is no one effortless way to look as a congresswoman, no uniform of business suit and tie that allows her to blend in. Most female politicians handle this by approximating male attire with some tweaks. Usually that involves a blazer, pearls, and very discreet hair and makeup — ideally, none of which gets talked about. But there is power in rejecting this model. Power in embracing the variety of embellishments available to women — earrings, lipstick, dresses, different hair styles. And an extension of this power can be a woman experimenting with baring her belly, along with her reproductive journey. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is consciously working to fuse her body and mind on the public stage, to show us what real, human, embodied and, yes, female power can look like. She will not be a mere 'thing in a suit,' as she said."

Writes Rhonda Garelick, in "Ocasio-Cortez Rewrites the Rules" (NYT gift link).

It's an old idea — that feminine beauty is powerful and that power-seeking women can implement beauty to rise in the political world. Cleopatra, etc. But Garelick adds the notion that a woman baring her belly to the public and making a show out of shifting her fertility into the realm of science and technology will augment the power achieved through beauty and fashion. The old idea is a cliché. It works as far as it works. The new idea is barely coherent.