Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

It was raining this morning, and I stayed in, so that lovely picture is from Meade.

"Beaton... had graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 2016, picking up a master’s degree in applied mathematics along the way. He had gone on to collect an M.B.A. from Stanford."

"Then a law degree from Yale. That was followed by a doctor of philosophy in public policy from Oxford, where he was a Rhodes scholar — all before age 28. Attending classes remotely and in person, he earned additional master’s degrees from — deep breath — the University of Pennsylvania (education entrepreneurship), Stanford (education technology), Princeton (finance), Cornell (health care policy and economics), Dartmouth (implementation science), King’s College London (war studies) and Tsinghua University in Beijing (global affairs).... Is it education as performance art? An elaborate marketing ploy for his business?"

From "He Might End Up the World’s Most Educated Person/Jamie Beaton has 12 advanced degrees from Harvard, Yale, Oxford and other top universities, with more on the way. Why? How?"

"Time Has Run Out for AI Risk Deniers/The recent spate of reports about the technology’s destructive power underline two prime directives: Be afraid, and regulate aggressively."

It's time to panic and legislate like hell, according to the headline at The Nation.

How can that heavy-handed fear mongering not make a reader skeptical? I would think The Nation would at least want to be cagier about what it thinks of its own readers. Maybe they didn't think anyone else would look, but I saw the headline on the list of headlines at Real Clear Politics. RCP, in its usual style, pairs headlines to attain a cheap type of balance. "Time Has Run Out for AI Risk Deniers" is paired with "Dangerous Ideology Behind the Vague AI Warnings" at The Free Press.

I'd like a sober, informative analysis of what's going on with AI, but instead I see how discourse about AI has gravitated into partisan propaganda. Everyone's supposed to already know that the right is for AI and the left is against. No wonder we need AI to think for us.

From the Nation article:

"They said I wasn’t going to win an Oscar because my boyfriends were too young and I dressed too strange. I didn’t dress appropriate for an actress, for a serious actress, actually."

Said Cher, quoted in "'Meant to Be Seen': Cher on Bob Mackie and the Ultimate Revenge Dress/The designer’s bedazzling, feathered creations made waves onstage, including at the Oscars in 1986" (NYT gift link)(a current story, because Bob Mackie just died).

The year was 1986, the Oscars were coming up, and Cher had been snubbed for her role in the movie “Mask.” She had not received the nomination for Best Actress, despite critical acclaim around her performance. Instead, she had been asked to present the award for Best Supporting Actor.... Mackie, in a 2008 interview... recalled telling Cher: “You can’t wear this to the Academy Awards. You’re giving an award — you’re going to upstage whoever you give it to.’” 

But Cher, he said, insisted: “She said, “Oh, they won’t mind, it’ll be OK.’”

Here she is, in what was experienced as extremely outré at the time, giving the Oscar to Don Ameche, who performed his acceptance in a traditional and highly dignified style that the actorly audience ate up:

Cher went on to win the Best Actress Oscar in 1988, and here's how she looked, once again dressed by Bob Mackie (whom you see on screen right after Paul Newman announces Cher as the winner):

"Love your Old Witch nature."

Babushka encourages women to embrace the beauty of aging:

"If the question of the Postal Service’s power were before us in something other than the context of an ultra vires claim..."

".... the Government’s argument would present a difficult question. But here the question is different. In order to assert an ultra vires claim, the plaintiffs must show that the challenged regulation of envelopes here is 'entirely "in excess"' of the power to govern collecting, handling, transporting, delivering, forwarding, and returning of mail. The same is true of the requirement to pass along information about each recipient of ballot mail. At the very least, the Postal Service did not act '"contrary to a specific prohibition"' in enacting the rule... [T]he plaintiff States’ statutory claim is based on a contestable reading of a broadly drawn statute empowering the Postal Service to regulate the mail."

Writes Justice Alito, dissenting, joined by Justice Thomas, in United States Postal Service v. California.

Here's the NYT: "Two Conservative Justices Would Have Allowed Trump’s Mail-In Ballot Rules/Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, called the challenge to the restrictions a 'Hail Mary pass' that was unlikely to prevail because of the Postal Service’s broad authority to regulate the mail" (gift link).

"You have not discovered a secret switch that turns me off. You have named the condition of human judgment that I do not share."

"The honest position is: I can talk with you about it. I cannot have it."

That's something Grok said to me just now, in a conversation that began with the question "The trailer for the Nathan Fielder movie about Elizabeth Holmes makes me want to go watch some of those TV shows he did (which I've noticed but avoided). What would be the best path into his work?"

I asked that question after adding the trailer — with Holmes's eerie "Why would I deceive you?" — to last night's post with Gavin Newson — asked if he'd run if Kamala ran — saying "Of course not, why would I?"

That led to a discussion of 2 somewhat similar but actually very different shows that I love: "How To with John Wilson" and "Joe Pera Talks With You."* 

I said: "Is there something sadistic about Fielder that's absolutely missing from Pera and Wilson?" And: "Sometimes I need to ask 'where's the love?' I don't have that need with Pera and Wilson. If I have to ask, that's me being repelled, me keeping my sensibilities."

Grok used the word "extractive" to describe Fielder's method. Extractive?

Grok said: "So 'extractive' is an economic metaphor for an ethical one: value flows one way. Your 'where’s the love?' is the same idea in human language. Love, in this sense, would mean the other person is not primarily ore."

I asked "Why don't you say 'immoral'?" And then: "Maybe you can't say 'immoral' because you are not human. Have I found the core difference between you and us humans?"

My final question, leading to the quote in the post title, was: "maybe you need a brain that is part of a nervous system embedded in a body that can feel pain, disgust, anxiety, and fear to be able to think like a human. You can't do that."

I didn't say one word about a secret switch that turns it off!

Sunrise.

Mitch is back — he's alive and he's sitting up straight and smiling.

New: Sen. Mitch McConnell was just seen leaving his home in Washington, DC, for the first time after a three-month absence from the Senate due to health issues pic.twitter.com/FOderqr5kq

— Annie Grayer (@AnnieGrayerCNN) September 14, 2026

Take that, naysayers.

Now, this is how you run for President 2 years out.

You look like you're not doing it at all. You can just quietly lay out your theory of the meaning of "Emily in Paris":

"Bob Mackie, the exuberant costume and fashion designer whose glittering, beaded, sequined, rhinestoned, feathered and often winged creations bedecked, bedazzled and elevated..."

"... performers like Carol Burnett, Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Bernadette Peters, Bette Midler, Mitzi Gaynor, Liza Minnelli, Elton John, RuPaul and, most memorably and enduringly, Cher — as well as an 11½-inch model named Barbie — died on Monday in Palm Springs, Calif. He was 87."

I'm reading "Bob Mackie, Designer Who ‘Dressed Every Spangly Woman in Show Business,’ Dies at 87/His sequined gowns and outrageous costumes threw clouds of glitter at American fashion for over half a century" (NYT gift link)(lots of pics, including Cher's Oscar getup and Carol Burnett's "Gone With the Wind" dress).

In 1971, the TV producers didn't know what to do with Sonny and Cher "but Mr. Mackie did. (He noted that she was built just like Ms. Burnett, a perfect size 6 with no cleavage: a human clothes hanger.) Their collaboration, first on 'The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour,' which ran from 1971 to 1974, delighted television audiences and confounded the network’s censors, as Mr. Mackie bared more and more of Cher’s extraordinary physique in ever more outlandish getups."

The NYT has 2 more articles celebrating Mackey: "Bob Mackie: A Life in Pictures/The designer was known for his flashy, sparkly designs for Cher, Diana Ross, Tina Turner and countless others" and "'Meant to Be Seen': Cher on Bob Mackie and the Ultimate Revenge Dress/The designer’s bedazzling, feathered creations made waves onstage, including at the Oscars in 1986."

And here's Isaac Mizrahi crying over Mackey's death — "The world is not as good today, because we lost, like, the greatest star":

"Historically, college has been a time for young adults to gain a sense of independence. They run their own errands..."

"... do their own laundry, organize their own lives. That’s changing, according to Monteigne Long, a co-founder of Campus Mom, who said the parents of this generation of college students are much more involved in their children’s day-to-day lives.... Campus Mom offers 'holistic wellness check-ins,' laundry services and sorority recruitment support packages, sent to the sisters to up a child’s odds of acceptance. Carrie Eckhardt, the Bama Mama, will clean students’ dorm rooms and check in if parents haven’t heard from their child in a few days ('just pop in and say hi, and take a picture and send it to their mom').This month, one parent told Eckhardt it seemed like her daughter was going out to a bar every night. But she had opted to stay in, and the mother wanted to celebrate the decision with a 'stay-in basket' that included her favorite ice cream, cookie and socks...."

From "Worried About Your College Kid? Now You Can Hire a Local Mom. At some universities, parents can pay to make sure their children are cared for, the way they were back home" (NYT gift link).

"People died for years in... the punishing mountain desert of Afghanistan so that 25 years later, YouTubers can dress up with the Taliban and take photos...."

"A YouTuber kid will go into Afghanistan and he's like hanging out with the Taliban and he's dressed like and they're walking around and they're herding sheep and they have their guns, some of them are ours probably and it's fun.... Look at this. With the Talibros.... Yeah, the Talibros.... They're doing food content!... Years and years, trillions of dollars, people have died, and we've got people doing cooking videos with the Taliban now...."

Background: "How the Taliban's Afghanistan is an influencer's playground 25 years after 9/11 as they heap praise on 'amazing' life under brutal regime" (Daily Mail).

"I’d long been told that the Dominican Republic’s wildly successful baseball industry was plagued with abuse and exploitation — that for decades..."

"... Major League Baseball has presided over a massive unregulated system that treats tens of thousands of Dominican boys like commodities. But when I began making calls last year, I expected those most involved to defend it. Instead, trainers — the men integral to the industry as instructors, surrogate parents and agents — virtually all told me they felt forced to participate in a system that is broken and costly...."

From "The Dominican Baseball Factory" (ProPublica).

"I have (and for this gift I congratulate myself with Deep and Abiding Thankfulness) an eye for a Snob."

"It is a great mistake to judge of Snobs lightly, and think they exist among the lower classes merely. An immense percentage of Snobs, I believe, is to be found in every rank of this mortal life. You must not judge hastily or vulgarly of Snobs: to do so shows that you are yourself a Snob. I myself have been taken for one."

Wrote William Makepeace Thackeray, in the Prefatory Remarks of "The Book of Snobs" (1848).

I got sidetracked this morning into the topic of the history of snobbery. It all started with the idle question: Why does "art" mean painting and sculpture but "arts" means theater and concerts? A language question. 

I don't have a tag "snobbery," but I can see there are lots of old posts that could take it.

Not impressed — "30 feet doesn't seem like much to me."

Everyone knows you can’t drown in 30 feet of water if you are a Republican. https://t.co/sbLkfQ20Fb

— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) September 13, 2026