Sunrise — 6:53, 6:54, 6:57, 6:59.

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Andrzej Bargiel took 4 days to ascend Mount Everest from base camp and then 2 days to ski down.

I'm reading "Polish Skier Climbs Everest and Skis Down Without Extra Oxygen/Andrzej Bargiel, 37, became the first person to complete the feat" (NYT).

In the videos, Mr. Bargiel is... seen peacefully gliding through pristine snow, almost as if he were a recreational skier.... But he is also seen navigating tricky and dangerous situations, like narrow ridges, nearly sheer mountain faces and drop-offs.... The most dangerous part of the journey came near the end, Mr. Bargiel’s team said, at the treacherous Khumbu Icefall, not far above base camp. The team described him “navigating a labyrinth of shifting ice and deep crevasses — without ropes or fixed lines.”... Despite his exertions, Mr. Bargiel reported: “I came back safe and strong. I’m healthy, fit and happy.”

"It didn’t have its spark. It didn’t have its distinctive definition in the lines, in the swirls. It just lost — it just lost its oomph...."

"You take the Twombly. I mean, to some people it just looks like fifth grade scribbles. To me it looks like a symphony orchestra."

Said Ronald Perelman, quoted in "Judge Rejects Ronald Perelman’s Claim That His Art Had Lost Its ‘Oomph’/The collector’s holding companies had sued his insurers for $400 million to cover paintings that they say had been damaged in a fire. The insurers said they had survived untouched" (NYT).

The OED traces "oomph" — "The quality of being exciting, energetic, or sexually attractive; energy, vigour" — back to 1937: "With actors, the 'it' quality has to do with their visual personality—sex appeal, magnetism, or whatever you care to call it. Back of the camera, we refer to the ingredient as 'umphh.'" The etymology is "An imitative or expressive formation." I presume what it is imitative of is sexual intercourse.

Meanwhile, you know Cy Twombly — pencil-scribbly things like this:

If the collector sensed oomph and the oomph is now gone — it's like the spark gone out of a love affair — how can he convey his anguish to the judge? His anguish, if any. Who's to believe it ever existed? How can you insure something so ineffable?

"Hughes’s libretto is full of smart, Maga-bashing one-liners, dodgy rhymes and contrived but nevertheless funny exchanges that (possibly) hold a mirror up to the weird actualite of family life in Trumpland."

"At one point we learn that the president has mistaken Melania’s body-double for his wife — with predictable consequences. The comedy isn’t subtle, but neither is its target."

From "Melania the Opera review — a sweary, funny first lady faces the music/The year is 2027 and Russia invades Slovenia: what would Melania do? The composer Jeremy Limb and singer Melinda Hughes dive into Trumpland in a smart, Maga-bashing piece" (London Times).

Is "actualite" a typo (for "actuality") or is the Times using the word the OED spells "actualité" (with an accent on the "e")? That word is defined as "An event from real life, a news item; (in plural) news, current affairs. Also: a work representing or recording such an event."

Among the quotes, from 1859, "the subject of her Saintship is not a matter of mere historical interest, but aspires to the dignity of an 'actualité.'"

"Assata Shakur, the Black revolutionary once known as JoAnne Chesimard... died on Thursday in Havana. She was 78...."

"Assata Shakur was both lionized and demonized long after she and the Black Liberation Army, the militant group she had embraced, faded from broad public consciousness. To supporters she was a tireless battler against racial oppression. To detractors she was a stone-cold cop killer, the first woman to land on the F.B.I.’s 'most wanted terrorists' list, with $2 million in state and federal money offered for her capture. For her part, Ms. Shakur regarded herself as 'a 20th-century escaped slave.'..."

From "Assata Shakur Dies at 78; Convicted Revolutionary Found Refuge in Cuba/A member of a militant Black group, she was found guilty in the 1973 murder of a New Jersey state trooper, escaped from prison and fled to Cuba, where she taught and wrote" (NYT).

"I can’t forgive them, they tried to hurt you"/"We can’t do this, we should stay safe, you’re not safe.”

Donald Trump and Melania Trump, each protective of the other, according to lipreaders quoted in "Trump and Melania’s finger-waving ‘spat’ was actually prez raving about UN escalator snafu: lip readers" (NY Post).

"In the two weeks since Kirk’s killing, pastors across the country have reported a spike in attendance usually reserved for Christmas or Easter."

"Social media has been filled with testimonies from young people turning to Christianity for the first time, with even atheists saying they are reconsidering their position on religion. Pastors have coined a term for the religious revival galvanised by Kirk’s death: the Charlie effect.... In Irvine, California, a 20-year-old student named Bryce Bohorquez filmed the overfilled parking lots outside Oceans Church, where he is a longstanding member. 'Charlie Kirk, look what you did. No parking. Everyone wants to come now. Amen,' Bohorquez said in the video, which has been viewed more than three million times...."

From "The Charlie effect: how a political murder sparked a religious awakening/The shooting of Charlie Kirk has led to a wave of Christian fervour across social media. Even atheists claim to have been converted" in the London Times.

By the way, look at this insane and distracting distracting ad the London Times had right in the center of the page, right after the words "God's way of reminding us to live for him":

Live for him... indeed.

"What drove you to want to try to assassinate President Ford?"/"Well, everybody asks that. And the thing is that everybody was talking about it."

"They say, 'Where did you get the idea?' I don’t know about the rest of the country, but in San Francisco people were saying this all the time. Number one, we elect our presidents. We don’t appoint them. And Gerald Ford was appointed — and he was appointed by a crook, if you will pardon the expression. So it wasn’t a unique feeling. It was partly that there were other people who had talked about it, who I thought were much more important to what we were thinking of as a revolution, and we really, truly thought there was going to be one. And I thought somebody like me — I was a nobody — it would be better coming from somebody like me and not destroying these people I thought were leaders. If they did this, it would destroy their leadership."

Said Sara Jane Moore, who was sentenced to life in prison but was out on parole and talking to CNN in 2015.

I'm blogging about Sara Jane Moore not because her reason for trying to assassinate Gerald Ford is chillingly resonant today: She got the idea from the way everybody was talking about it.

I'm blogging about her because I see her obituary in the NYT: "Sara Jane Moore, Would-Be Assassin of President Ford, Dies at 95/A mother of four on the fringes of radical leftist movements, she fired at the president outside a San Francisco hotel in 1975. She had hoped to spark a revolution, she said."

And here's a bit of Sara Jane Moore and Squeaky Fromme in the Stephen Sondheim musical "Assassins":

"Whether you like Corrupt James Comey or not, and I can’t imagine too many people liking him, HE LIED!"

"It is not a complex lie, it’s a very simple, but IMPORTANT one. There is no way he can explain his way out of it. He is a Dirty Cop, and always has been, but he was just assigned a Crooked Joe Biden appointed Judge, so he’s off to a very good start. Nevertheless, words are words, and he wasn’t hedging or in dispute. He was very positive, there was no doubt in his mind about what he said, or meant by saying it. He left himself ZERO margin of error on a big and important answer to a question. He just got unexpectedly caught. James 'Dirty Cop' Comey was a destroyer of lives. He knew exactly what he was saying, and that it was a very serious and far reaching lie for which a very big price must be paid!"

Signed, "President DJT," on Truth Social, this morning.

What, precisely, is the supposedly simple statement Comey made and why is it supposedly now utterly clear that it was not only wrong but a lie?

The "simple" statement is actually an elaborate back-and-forth with Ted Cruz at a Senate hearing on  September 30, 2020:

There should be somber professionalism around the wielding of criminal law...

Cool shell formation found on beach walk pic.twitter.com/VuouLGFG0m

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 26, 2025

... but it was Comey who, last May, Instagrammed a photo — with shells in the sand in the form of "8647" — and the cavalier caption "Cool shell formation on my beach walk."

At the time, Trump said: "He knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant. If you're the FBI director and you don't know what that meant, that meant assassination."

Sunrise — 6:23, 6:47, 6:50.

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Comey indicted!

 The NYT reports.

"The survey of 1,019 American adults, which was conducted between September 19-21, found that the public trusts Republicans’ plan..."

"... to address crime to the Democrats’ by 20 points (40%-20%), on immigration by 18 points (40%-22%), on foreign conflicts by 12 points (35%-23%), on the economy by 10 points (34%-24%), and on gun control (32%-28%) and political extremism (30%-26%) by four points. Democrats, on the other hand, are better trusted on the environment (37%-23%), women’s rights (38%-25%), healthcare (34%-25%), and respect for democracy (31%-29%)."

From "Republicans Mop the Floor With Democrats on the Economy and Immigration in Stunning New Poll" (Mediaite).

"There is a reason the world’s gardens are full of benches that nobody ever sits on."

"We aren’t built for leisure or built to relax. Rather, we are built to strive. We still need fulfilling work. The only difference, in retirement, is that we don’t have to worry so much about whether that work comes with a paycheck."

Wrote Jonathan Clements, quoted in "Five Pearls of Wisdom From a Legend of Financial Writing/Jonathan Clements, the longtime Wall Street Journal columnist, died this weekend. Here are some of his best ideas" (NYT).

Speaking of finance, I was just reading: "It was only last summer that women declared they were looking for a man in finance, 6-5, blue eyes. The goal posts appear to have shifted since then. Now, some social media users are extolling the virtues — with varying degrees of sincerity — of settling for a partner to whom they’re not initially attracted. Such a person, the thinking goes, will ultimately treat you better than someone who is more obviously desirable."

That's in "'Shrekking? Intelligence Gaps? When Did We Get So Cruel to Our Lovers? Social media users have coined new, even meaner terms for 'dating down'" (NYT).

"meh - candidate for worst puzzle of the year"/"perhaps worst of the decade!"

Comments at the NYT column about today's crossword, which wasn't that hard, but was rather annoying for those of us who like to — semi-spoiler — see what we are doing.

"Driven by the belief that liberal tech and media companies have unfairly silenced viewpoints on the right, [Brendan] Carr is working to transform the F.C.C. from a once sleepy agency..."

"... best known for licensing local TV stations and expanding 5G cellular networks into a protector of conservative speech.... Mr. Carr, who became the F.C.C. chairman in January, has argued in recent days that he has been a consistent champion of the First Amendment and said he was helping protect free speech by weighing in on local TV programming decisions that no longer serve the public interest.... Much of the F.C.C.’s power lies in its control over licenses for stations that lease access to airwaves. A license holder is 'required by law to operate its station in the "public interest, convenience and necessity,"' according to the agency, which has rarely revoked licenses.... '[Local broadcasters] have something special that distinguishes them from lots of other speakers, which is that they have this right to use the federal spectrum, which is a scarce resource,' Mr. Carr said at the public meeting. 'For a lot of years, the F.C.C. walked away from enforcing that public interest obligation.'"

I'm reading "Brendan Carr Plans to Keep Going After the Media/While 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' returned to ABC on Tuesday, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has promised to continue his campaign against what he sees as liberal bias in broadcasts" (NYT).

I don't trust Carr's judgment (or his ability to articulate the scope of the FCC's power), but I wish his critics would be meticulous about the broadcast media context and the "public interest" limitation imposed on licensees.