At the Thursday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

"Salmon given antianxiety drugs take more risks, study finds."

Says the headline at The Washington Post — free-access link. Your first thought might be: Scientists, leave those fish alone! But they're not just getting the drugs from scientists:

We’re turning our rivers, lakes and oceans into soups of pharmaceutical pollution.... Nearly 1,000 pharmaceuticals have been detected in waterways around the world.... 

"We have now seen that the Trump administration manages the economy with the same expertise and competence it manages higher education, and as a result we might begin to rally the American people."

I'm reading "I’m a Columbia Professor. Here’s the Really Disheartening Part of This Mess," a NYT op-ed by Matthew Connelly, a Columbia history professor.

I'm all for expertise and competence, but who is this "we" threatening to "rally" us in the name of longing for expertise and competence?

Well, it doesn't say "rally us," it says "rally the American people." I used the "us" pronoun for "the American people," but that doesn't work very well with the "we" that is used twice in the quoted sentence.

Professor Connelly sees himself and his New York Times readers as the "we" who look on as Trump breaks things and hope to excite "the American people" to oppose and resist Trump. But the American people have supported Trump because the American people have seen what your "we" has done with its power when it has had the chance. "Let the Experts Handle It Again" is not a great rallying cry these days.

I'm railing about one sentence. Most of the column is about Columbia working with the Trump administration and professors at other schools boycotting Columbia. Connelly's "we" is not cohesive. It's in no position to "rally the American people." It's in what Connelly calls a "circular firing squad." And you want to be our "expertise and competence" providers?

"On American TV shows, the London native starred as an android brought to an asteroid to keep a prisoner (Jack Warden) company on 1959’s 'The Lonely'..."

"... the seventh episode of CBS’ 'The Twilight Zone,' and she was the self-described 'office bitch' Roz in 1982-83 on ABC’s adaptation of '9 to 5.'"

From "Jean Marsh, ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’ Actress and Co-Creator, Dies at 90/The British actress won an Emmy for her performance as the prim and proper parlormaid Rose Buck on the acclaimed ITV drama ['Upstairs, Downstairs']" (Hollywood Reporter).

I saw that yesterday and immediately watched the "Twilight Zone" episode, "The Lonely." Marsh plays a robot, given, mercifully, to a man condemned to 50 years alone on a desolate asteroid:

It's a great robot story! Watch the full episode here, on Vimeo. Great ending (with a great teaser for next week's show). I don't remember having seen "The Lonely" before, and I devotedly watched the show at the time, but perhaps not until after the first season, which aired in 1959, when I was 8. 

The actor who plays the condemned man in "The Lonely" is Jack Warden. That blew my mind! I had just finished watching "Shampoo" (on The Criterion Channel) the previous night.

In "Shampoo," Warden plays the male character who is not played by Warren Beatty. I never go around thinking about Jack Warden! And yet yesterday, before I got the prompt to watch "The Lonely," I was thinking about Jack Warden. Here's the trailer, which has everything you need to know about Warren Beatty and just a bit of Jack Warden:

"My friends and I are being described as like Satan’s lapdogs, the devil and the Manson family all rolled into one."

Wrote Michelle Zajko, in a letter from jail, quoted in The London Times, which looks like this:

 

Note the caption — The Times doesn't seem to know the difference between "peddle" and "pedal." Imagine riding lies around like they're some kind of bicycle!

As for these Zizians:

The Zizians have been described by authorities as an “extremist group”. A woman who knew one of their alleged members described them as a group of “highly intelligent, transgender, vegan” individuals. Social media posts attributed to the group have mentioned “evil people ganging up to kill off good people”, and a wish to “strip society of morality”....

About that figurative use of "lapdogs," the OED finds it first in the 1838 novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton novel "Alice, or The Mysteries," where a character says:

"I allow that your beauty and talent were sufficient of themselves to charm a wiser man than Doltimore; but had I not suppressed jealousy, sacrificed love, had I dropped a hint to your liege lord,--nay, had I not fed his lap-dog vanity by all the cream and sugar of flattering falsehoods,--you would be Caroline Merton still!"

Now, that's writing! Perhaps you remember The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, which "challenged entrants to compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels."

Sunrise — 6:16.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments. And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

I remember a blog post from December 6, 2021 titled "I remember...."

I remember it began: "I remember something made me read this old blog post of mine, from 2013, when I had a little project going where I'd take one sentence from 'The Great Gatsby' and present it for discussion.... The sentence of the day was 'I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This-or-That’s and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances, and the matchings of invitations: 'Are you going to the Ordways'? the Herseys'? the Schultzes'?' and the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands.'"

I'm looking back at that post because I just did a search of my archive for "Brainard," because I'm reading a new article in The New Yorker, by Joshua Rothman, "What Do You Remember? The more you explore your own past, the more you find there" and it begins: "Last year, for my birthday, my wife gave me a copy of 'I Remember,' an unusual memoir by the artist Joe Brainard. It’s a tidy little book, less than two hundred pages long, made entirely from short, often single-sentence paragraphs beginning with the words 'I remember.'"

Writing about that "Gatsby" sentence, I'd said: "Things remembered: fur coats, chatter, hands waving, matchings of invitations, and long green tickets. These remembered things give the reader a sense of the incompletely delineated human beings.... This is a mass of faceless humanity, cluttered with hands, waving and clasping.... " And a commenter, gadfly, said: "Althouse is doing her Joe Brainard, 'I Remember' schtick - but she can't top the master." He quoted Brainard's book, and it was obviously my kind of thing — very sentence-y. I immediately read it. I'll read it again, now that I'm reminded of it.

But what is Joshua Rothman saying about it?

"The Trump administration has begun to scrutinize the real estate transactions of New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, in what could be the opening move..."

"... of President Trump’s first investigation into one of his foremost adversaries. The head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency sent a criminal referral letter to the Department of Justice this week, saying that Ms. James 'appeared to have falsified records' related to properties she owns in Virginia and New York in order to receive favorable loan terms.... When purchasing the Virginia residence, Ms. James signed notarized paperwork attesting that she would use it as a principal residence.... The referral letter also accused Ms. James of misrepresenting the number of units in a Brooklyn home she purchased in 2001, possibly in order to receive better interest rates.....The month before Ms. James’s lawsuit against Mr. Trump went to trial, anonymous complainants began to file documents with New York City’s Department of Buildings, several of them related to the number of units in the home.... One of the complaints, in October 2024, asked why Ms. James was 'NOT being prosecuted for fraud and filling false documents when other people have been persecuted for far less crimes,' then added a pointed question: 'a Double Standard???'"

From "Trump Official Scrutinizes N.Y.’s Attorney General Over Real Estate/The head of a U.S. housing agency told prosecutors that Letitia James appeared to have falsified real estate records, a move that could be the start of an investigation of a key Trump adversary" (NYT).

"The man accused of setting fire to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s residence Sunday indicated he was motivated by his views on the Israel-Gaza war and believed Shapiro needed to stop the killing of Palestinians..."

"... a newly unveiled search warrant says. Cody Balmer, 38, made the declarations in a 911 call after he left the property, in which he reported his own attack to dispatchers.... Balmer — who reportedly struggled with untreated mental illness — said the governor needed to stop having [Balmer's] friends killed and said 'our people have been put through too much by that monster,' according to the affidavit. He also said, 'All he has is a banquet hall to clean up.' Balmer allegedly identified himself by name and told the dispatcher he would “confess to everything that I had done.... Shapiro has expressed support for Israel, and last year pushed for the University of Pennsylvania to disband a pro-Palestinian encampment...."

From "Suspect who targeted Shapiro cited views on Palestinians, warrant says/Cody Balmer, 38, described his views in a call to 911 reporting the attack. His brother said that Balmer suffered from mental illness" (WaPo).

We're told that Cody Balmer's brother Dan says Cody "was diagnosed with bipolar disorder" and has expressed the belief that his sister-in-law is a witch. And: "Dan Balmer also said Cody Balmer was politically independent and had urged his family to vote for Donald Trump in November."

"August finally came in with a blast that shook my house and augured little augusticity. I made raspberry Jello the color of rubies in the setting sun."

"Mad raging sunsets poured in seafoams of cloud through unimaginable crags, with every rose tint of hope beyond, I felt just like it, brilliant and bleak beyond words. Everywhere awful ice fields and snow straws; one blade of grass jiggling in the winds of infinity, anchored to a rock. To the east, it was gray; to the north, awful; to the west, raging mad, hard iron fools wrestling in the groomian gloom; to the south, my father's mist...."

So begins the last chapter of "Dharma Bums," by Jack Kerouac. Full text at the link. Now, I've finished it. I read it because it came up in the context of notes that people leave at the top of mountains, blogged here.

No, I don't know what "groomian" means, but somehow the Jello made me feel grounded. The word "groom" does appear elsewhere in the book. Maybe that's a clue. It's in this description of colleges as "nothing but grooming schools for the middle-class non-identity

Magnolia.

"I'm reading about a tennis player who smelled so bad that her opponent was heard complaining, and I'm wondering..."

"... if a sports player might in some cases, perhaps this one, deliberately acquire a bad smell to gain a competitive edge? Are there known cases? Do the rules cover this behavior? It could be a way of cheating. Beyond sports, what other areas of human competition offer opportunities to gain an advantage through smelling bad?"

For the annals of Things I Asked Grok.

You can read Grok's answer here.

And here's the news story that prompted my question: "British tennis player Harriet Dart apologizes after asking opponent to wear deodorant during match/Dart told the umpire that her opponent, Lois Boisson, 'smells really bad'" (CBS Sports).

"After becoming pregnant with their son, St. Clair and Musk’s relationship progressed.... In November, Musk responded to a selfie she texted him saying: 'I want to knock you up again.'"

"While she was pregnant, Musk had urged her to deliver the baby via caesarean section and told her he didn’t want the child to be circumcised. (Musk has posted on X that vaginal births limit brain size and that C-sections allow for larger brains.) St. Clair is Jewish and circumcisions are an important ritual in the religion, and she decided against a C-section. He told her she should have 10 babies, and they debated the child’s middle name.... She complied with the request to not name Musk on the birth certificate. Not long after the birth, [Musk’s longtime fixer, Jared] Birchall pushed St. Clair to sign documents keeping the father of the baby and details regarding her relationship with Musk secret in return for financial support. The offer was a one-time fee of $15 million for a home and living expenses, plus an additional $100,000 a month until the baby turned 21. Musk told her by text it was dangerous to reveal his relationship to the baby, describing himself as the '#2 after Trump for assassination.' He added that 'only the paranoid survive.' But she didn’t sign...."

From "The Tactics Elon Musk Uses to Manage His ‘Legion’ of Babies—and Their Mothers/The world’s richest man juggles more than a dozen children and ‘harem drama’ along with running his companies and advising Trump. He recently took a paternity test in a battle with one woman over money and privacy" (Wall Street Journal).

The life of a one-man genius sperm bank is not easy.

An "SNL" sketch that surprisingly spoofs the idea that you're not allowed to ask where that baby came from.

"This is going to anger a lot of people.... People say they want change in the Democratic Party, but really they want change so long as it doesn’t potentially endanger their position of power."

"That’s not actually wanting change. That’s selfishness.... 'What we are not saying here is, ‘Oh, you’re old, you need to go.' What we’re saying is we need to make room for a new generation to step up and help make sure that we have the people that are most acutely impacted by a lot of the issues that we are legislating on — that are actually going to live to see the consequences of this."

Said David Hogg, who is a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee and also the president of Leaders We Deserve, which has a plan to back young challengers to Democratic incumbents in Democratic primaries.

Hogg is quoted in "A Top Democratic Official Plots to Take Down Party Incumbents/David Hogg, a young liberal activist and now a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, is leading an effort to unseat the party’s older lawmakers in primaries" (NYT).

At a private meeting last month, a “neutrality policy” was circulated asking the party’s top officers to refrain from any activity that would “call into question their impartiality and evenhandedness,” according to two people with knowledge of the pledge, which sought to cover officers “both in their D.N.C. capacity and in their personal capacity.” Everyone signed it — except Mr. Hogg.

Donald Trump presents — without a word of commentary — Joe Biden, saying "colored kids."

pic.twitter.com/Y6OFeGKS4l

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 16, 2025

What do we think of Joe here? It can't be that he's racist for saying "colored kids." It's not as though Biden is attempting to revive the old expression. It's not like what the other Joe — Joe Rogan — has been doing with the word "retarded." Biden is painting a picture of the past, when he was boy: "I remember seeing kids going by — at the time, called 'colored kids' — on a bus going by." Part of the memory is the memory of what the black children were called. It was the completely common speech of that time and, I believe, the preferred term. Not racist. To cling to it, after the 1950s, became problematic, but Biden isn't clinging to it. He's recreating his boyhood experience, sensing and learning. I think Trump knows all that, and by merely showing the speech and saying nothing, he avoids criticism. He just hangs it out there for people to react to, as if Biden's mere voicing of the now-disfavored words is the same as his actually using the word as his go-to way to refer to black people today. Many will take the bait.