"Would I rather watch the cast of 'Hamilton' at the White House than men pummeling each other into bloody pulps?"

"You bet. But there’s a chasmic difference between brilliant Broadway performers and hyped-up men kicking and punching for spectacle. I can’t bear to think what the rest of the world sees when it watches the most powerful country on Earth, the heart of democracy, descend from the hilltop into the primal muck where man-as-beast triumphs over the sublime. (That’s me being polite.)"

Writes Kathleen Parker, in "Trump’s big, beautiful brawl was the worst birthday present ever/A $60 million South Lawn cage match cheapened the People’s House" (WaPo).

"[If] the jury were to find Mangione guilty while accepting the emotional disturbance defence, they would have to convict him of manslaughter."

"That would carry a sentence of up to 25 years in prison, rather than murder, which could mean a life sentence. An extreme emotional disturbance defence only applies to defendants in New York state who are accused of murder. It differs from a 'not guilty by reason of insanity' defence, which would allow a defendant to go to a psychiatric facility instead of prison...."

From "Luigi Mangione withdraws plans for psychiatric defence at murder trial/Lawyers earlier said they would argue the Ivy League graduate, 28, was suffering from ‘extreme emotional disturbance’ when he allegedly shot Brian Thompson" (London Times).

"Days after his arrest and before Mangione retained her as his lead attorney, [Karen Friedman] Agnifilo told CNN that a psychiatric defence could be the right move for him. 'There might be a not guilty by reason of insanity defence that they’re going to be thinking about, because the evidence is going to be so overwhelming that he did what he did,' Friedman Agnifilo, then a CNN legal analyst, told the network."

"The videos are all over social media... Go ahead and let A.I. do your homework — with the latest technology, you won’t get caught...."

"Humanizers rewrite A.I.-produced text to make it sound less robotic, formulaic and trite. Autotypers slowly drip words and sentences into documents, making it appear as if papers were typed at a human pace when in fact, they were produced by A.I. They even fabricate typos, deletions and revisions. Both tools can help students evade software designed to detect A.I.... In some cases, the very same companies selling detection tools are also making apps that allow students to cheat...."

From "Student Cheating Is Becoming Impossible to Detect in an A.I. Era/Big tech companies and small start-ups are using social media to hype new tools that allow students to trick teachers and A.I. detectors" (NYT).

"['The Ring,'] a remake of a Japanese film, 'Ringu,' received mixed reviews, but the image of Samara crawling through a blurry television screen became seared in the cultural memory..."

"... and Ms. Chase won the award for best villain at the 2003 MTV Movie Awards. That year she returned to Lilo in the sequel 'Stitch! The Movie' and in the 'Lilo & Stitch' TV series, which ran from 2003 to 2006. She then transitioned to her biggest TV role yet. In HBO’s 'Big Love' — which chronicled the trials and tribulations of Mormon polygamists — she starred as Rhonda Volmer, a cunning 14-year-old bride in waiting, in 32 episodes between 2006 to 2011...."

From "Daveigh Chase, ‘Lilo & Stitch’ Voice Actor and ‘The Ring’ Villain, Dies at 35" (NYT). Chase died of "complications of bacterial meningitis and a blood infection" while she was "homeless and living in Los Angeles with her boyfriend."

Accepting accolades.

Patience rewarded.

"Wordle’s Hard Mode Is Actually Easier, 730 Million Games Show."

The NYT reports, and here's a gift link. I've always played in hard mode. I don't know if that's because my intuition told me it was easier or because I could see it would be more fun, but it certainly wasn't in order to make it harder on myself.

Players in hard mode solve in fewer turns on average.... Those in hard mode have a lower rate of failing to solve in six turns.... Hard mode seems to help players avoid poor choices.... Standard-mode players have more freedom but often don’t know how to use it. Not needing to use revealed letters, they have many more choices on their second and third turns.

David Epstein, author of “Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better,” said in an interview that in any area of life, “when options are really large” there’s a tendency to “back out of a decision or make a poor one.” Citing the cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham, he said the brain is mostly not for thinking, but for preventing you from thinking. “It’s wired for convenience, the easy thing, the first thing to pop to mind,” he said, while constraints can paradoxically lead to creativity and productivity....

I get it. We're supposed to think: The choice of hard mode or easy mode in Wordle is like a choice we make in how to live our life. And that's why you might want to stick to tradition (if you are conservative) or have government experts eliminate most of the choices (if you are progressive).

Sunrise.

Talk about whatever you want in the comments.

"You did it all with such grace and class and cool that you made the hardest job in the world look like a walk in this beautiful park."

Said Michelle Obama, as "Mr. Obama looked down and wiped away tears."

She's quoted in "Presidents Line Up for Obama’s Long-Awaited Center in Chicago/Thursday’s opening drew four former presidents, as well as Bruce Springsteen, Bono and Jennifer Hudson. Chicago has seen years of planning and legal fights" (NYT).

Biden was there too, bearing with unbearable sorrow:

At the Prairie Café...

... you can talk all afternoon.

(Video by Meade.)

"It was just like: I want to win the social competition. I want to be better than other people. And I wanted to go to the best school..."

"... so I got into Yale Law School. And I wanted the best jobs, and I wanted to make the most money. But the thing I realized is that this kind of striving had made me pretty hollow. It had made me less interesting than some of the Christians that I know who seemed to have things figured out much better than the 'elites' that I had surrounded myself with. And I just started searching for something that answered the more important questions, like: How do you be a good father? How do you be a good husband? So one way that I would put this is, and this goes back to the personal relationship thing, is, yes, I do think religion serves a socially useful role. I think the evidence is quite clear that people and families that are raised with some sort of institutionalized faith are happier and healthier and more well-adjusted. But I also think: Isn’t that evidence that there’s something about Christianity that’s particularly true? That if these people who believe these things and practice the faith in these ways — I come back to this phrase, I think it’s from the Book of Matthew: 'By your fruits you shall know them.'"

Says JD Vance, quoted in "JD Vance on the Morality of the Trump Administration/I asked the vice president what is Christian about this White House" (NYT).

Truth = what works.

"La la la la."

That's the call from the press as Trump arrives at Versailles Palace. 

Is that how reporters try to get a leader's attention in France? I don't think so. I think they would normally use "Mr. President." So is "La la la la" like shouting "Hey!"? No, I don't think that's the case either. I'm understanding "La la la la" as a more random filler sound. I consulted Grok: "'La la la la' functions more like rhythmic, attention-grabbing noise or an extension of the French interjection "Oh là là!" (often elongated for emphasis)."

"But they have a new group of leaders that I think is, uh, actually I think they're smarter. I think they're very smart. I think they're far less radicalized."

"And I think they're, uh, I think they're really good. They love their country. You know, you talk about regime change, nobody will say that. But I guess that's, look, their one set of leaders is all gone. Their second set of leaders is all gone. Their third set of leaders a little bit gone. But for the most part, and frankly, I think that's regime change. I think they're going to behave much differently. I think they see a different way of life that they were never exposed to. So the one thing I didn't want to see is I didn't want to see economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have happened. But all I know is every time we talked about the possibility of peace, the stock market shot up like a rocket ship. It never went down. They didn't like it. The people, you know, the stock market is more brilliant than anybody there is, including the people on the stage, other than me, of course.... What do you think, Scott? Is the stock market more brilliant than you?... And, uh, every time we said something amazing like we're going to settle, it would go up. And every time we said something negative like — guess what? — we're not going to be able to settle. It would go down.... And the one president I did not want to be was the late great Herbert Hoover. I didn't want that. And who knows what would have happened, but bad things happen. ..."

Sunrise on a rainy Wednesday...

"But, without Mamaw around to guide him, JD lost his faith in God. 'With her gone, no one really cared about my faith, and soon I stopped caring too.'"

"By 2006 'I was no longer, in any real sense, a Christian.' Instead, he took up the winner-takes-all, blessed-are-the-rich philosophy of Ayn Rand, which he summarises as 'stop whining, stop praying, and start working your ass off.' Hers was the materialistic faith he followed through Ohio State University and most of Yale Law School, where they regarded Christianity as 'a weird superstition.' He now thinks his loss of faith was not primarily intellectual, but the inevitable result of transferring his political allegiance to an ungodly liberal elite. 'It was the equivalent of divorce. I was severing myself from my roots.' But then, around 2014, after he’d fallen in love and got married, he began to see that by becoming 'so focused on winning the game of life… I had neglected the deeper truth.'"

From "God, guns and 'Mamaw' — JD Vance’s memoir is part rant, part sermon/In Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith, the US vice-president explains why the liberal elite pushed him into the arms of the Church — and Donald Trump" (London Times).

"So I decided to ask them: Can you tell me what, exactly, you like about ultimate fighting?..."

"I couldn’t get my 18-year-old to talk about it, but my 15-year-old — a thoughtful kid who last week told me, 'U.F.C. literally takes up 99 percent of my brain space' — was happy to oblige. He explained in excruciating detail the various weight classes and fighting techniques.... 'I know it’s marketing, I really do, but their characters are so entertaining and their work ethic really impresses me.' Another thing he finds compelling about U.F.C., he said, is how 'real' it is. Most professional sports are 'fictional' made-up games in which people throw or kick or hit round rubber things in order to amuse themselves and a bunch of strangers. Fighting, he pointed out, is primal, 'in our blood'...."

Writes Hope Reeves, in "My Teenage Sons Love U.F.C. Here’s What We Saw at the White House Cage Match" (NYT).