"How do we in New York reconcile the decisions of law by members of our highest court that seem disconnected with the factual realities around rape and power differentials..."

"... that lead to sexual abuse in the workplace? After this Weinstein decision, how do we give faith to victims that the system can work to hold sexual abusers like Weinstein accountable?"

Asks Cyrus R. Vance Jr. in "What It Takes to Keep Harvey Weinstein, and Men Like Him, Behind Bars" (NYT)(free access link). Vance was the Manhattan D.A. who prosecuted Weinstein.

"Michael Cohen is now explicitly testifying that the invoices he was sending, which he has sought to tie to Trump, were false documents."

"He is going over the monthly invoices he created, which described him as having been paid for 'services rendered,' and testifying that they were false records. He stresses they weren’t valid legal fees, but 'reimbursements.' Michael Cohen confirms that in response to the false invoices, he received 11 checks in 2017 totaling $420,000...."

Here's a gift link to the NYT's live coverage of the Trump trial.

"[V]arious ax-grinders want to use Biden’s struggles to push the party toward their positions. Critics of Israel have fixated..."

"... on the problems created by encampments at elite universities. And it is true that the news media’s intense coverage of an issue that splits the Democratic coalition and unites the Republican coalition hurts Biden and helps Trump. But that does not accurately reflect the nature of Biden’s polling deficit. The Harvard youth poll found Israel-Palestine at the bottom of young voters’ concerns.... Overall, the public continues to sympathize with Israel over the Palestinians by a margin of 41 percent to 22 percent.... [S]iding with the unpopular protesters would not address the source of Biden’s unpopularity. Another, more traditional form of ax-grinding came recently from Mark Penn in a Times op-ed. Penn... a key strategist for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign... [has a] long-standing fixation... [on moving] to the center across the board.... In reality, taxing the rich and corporations is Biden’s most popular issue.... The economy is still healthy, and the anti-Israel protests might — might — die down. But the trajectory remains grim...."

Writes Jonathan Chait, in "No, Your Pet Issue Is Not Making Biden Lose/It’s inflation, not Israel or class warfare" (New York Magazine).

"This is all so unbelievable. It seems like a big joke. But the damage being done to America is a tragedy."

Writes Juan Williams in "Get ready to see Trump go to jail" (The Hill).

Nice use of the passive voice! Who's doing the damaging??!!

"Researchers are unsure... but theories include that it is a playful manifestation of the mammals’ curiosity, a social fad or..."

"... the intentional targeting of what they perceive as competitors for their favourite prey, the local bluefin tuna."

From "Yacht sinks after latest incident involving orcas in strait of Gibraltar/Vessel measuring 15 metres in length sank after encounter with the animals, Spain’s maritime rescue service reports" (The Guardian). 

Also: "Experts believe them to involve a subpopulation of about 15 individuals given the designation 'Gladis.'"

From last year in The Guardian: "The orca uprising: whales are ramming boats – but are they inspired by revenge, grief or memory?" That's a much more interesting article....

Kamala Harris says sometimes "You need to kick that fucking door down."

Here's the whole context, "Vice President Harris Remarks at APAICS Summit Vice President Kamala Harris sat down for a conversation with comedian and actor Jimmy O. Yang during the National Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies leadership summit in Washington, DC. She spoke about breaking down barriers and the importance of democracy. The vice president also spoke on women’s reproductive rights and gun control."

It's a bland occasion and the topics are routine, so the occurrence of "fucking" comes as a surprise. It gets attention. But it made me think of 3 things, in this order:

At this point, they're only asking you to suffer physically for the sake of the environment.

But you really ought to take that shower in "warm or room-temperature water — or even cold water"

I'm reading, "Why you should embrace using cold water, almost all the time/Heating water gobbles energy, leading to higher utility bills and more planet-warming emissions" in The Washington Post.

If I keep the house at 62° or lower all winter, may I still take the hot bath I think need to restore heat to my inner core? Or will the failure to take cold showers count as a sin henceforward? 

Look at the backhanded treatment of baths:

Instead of taking long hot showers or baths that can dehydrate your skin, dermatologists recommend showers of no more than 10 minutes, using warm or room-temperature water — or even cold water — which is less drying to skin.

They can't time limit a bath. Unlike a shower, the water usage is complete at the point when you get in (unless you stay in so long you need to reheat it with new water). But maybe you know the number of minutes it takes to fill your bath, so you could take a "10 minute" bath. Would that fill your bathtub? I ask Siri to set my timer to 15 minutes, and of course, I use hot water. Maybe I should only fill the bath 2/3 of the way — with room-temperature water — for the planet. I'd rather take a 3-minute shower and have it hot.

Taking away our hot showers and baths? It feels as if you want to deprive us of the most basic pleasures of living in the modern world.

Sunrise — 5:35, 5:40, 5:41, 5:46.

Write about whatever you like in the comments, but yes, those are insects in the last photo.

"Worth going to see? I can well believe it. Worth seeing? Mneh!"

Wrote W.H. Auden in the poem "Moon Landing," published in The New Yorker September 6, 1969. Here's the facsimile page for subscribers. But anyone can read it here.

I ran across it just now because, writing about a perfectly healthy woman who'd undergone assisted suicide, I'd stumbled across a 2011 piece in The New Yorker that brought up the word "meh," which naturally sent me to the OED. 

According to its etymology page, "meh" probably came from the Yiddish word "me" — which means "be it as it may, so-so" — and, we're told, "It is unclear whether there is any direct connection with (earlier) mneh."

The OED's quote for "mneh" was what you see in the post title, W.H. Auden, in 1969, poetically dumping on the trip to the moon.

"The procedure, or the appointment — none of us seem to want to say the word death — has been moved from Thursday morning to the early afternoon."

"Another lifetime of waiting. By 9 a.m., the clouds have broken, and my mother is already dressed, her hair in curlers. She is sitting on the bed, looking at her computer. My sister and I suggest a walk. My mother declines: 'I’m doing emails. Just unsubscribing from Politico.' 'Mom!' We splutter. 'We can do that! It’s your last day on earth!' Which it is, and so we desist. Around noon, we go down to the hotel bar. My mother orders a whiskey-soda, ice cream, and a glass of Barolo. She enjoys the wine so much that I suggest she could just not go through with it and stay in this exact hotel and drink herself into oblivion for the rest of her life. Like Bartleby, she’d prefer not to."

From "The Last Thing My Mother Wanted/Healthy at age 74, she decided there was nothing on earth still keeping her here, not even us" (NY Magazine)(the mother opts for assisted suicide, available in Switzerland)("She had a three-pronged rationale... The world was going to hell, and she did not want to see more; she did not get joy out of the everyday pleasures of life or her relationships; and she did not want to face the degradations of aging").

I don't think I'd ever seen Bartleby used in the context of suicide, but here's a 2011 New Yorker column by Ian Crouch, "Bartleby and Social Media: I Would Prefer Not To":

"Commit great poems to heart, starting with those by Gerard Manley Hopkins and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Recite them aloud on solitary walks."

"Recite them aloud on solitary walks. Compose dirty limericks in your head. Read more for pleasure, less for purpose. Read, immediately, Marguerite Yourcenar’s 'Memoirs of Hadrian.' Imitate the writers or artists you most admire; you’ll find your own voice and style in all the ways your imitation falls short. Don’t post self-indulgent glam shots of yourself on Instagram, and please stop photographing your damn meals... Make only enough money so that you don’t have to think about it much.... Never join a cause if you aren’t fully familiar with the argument against it. Heed the words of Rabbi Hillel: 'Where there are no men, be thou a man.' Or woman...."

Says Bret Stephens, recounting what he said in a commencement address, in a conversation with Gail Collins, in the NYT.

Collins reacts: "That’s pretty damn good.... But I’m not going to go so far as to suggest student protesting is a bad or silly idea." Yeah, I guess students are never fully familiar with the argument against their cause.

"[T]he voyeuristic new 'Portal' street exhibit in the Flatiron District connecting New York City and Dublin with a 24/7 live video feed has already caused chaos..."

"... with mischief-makers on Ireland’s side flashing everything from their bare bums to swastikas and a photo of the Twin Towers in flames on 9/11.... [The] earnest utopian vision proved no match for the pub-lined Dublin thoroughfare, whose Guinness-glugging patrons were quickly drawn to the futuristic-looking exhibit like moths to a flame in videos circulating online. Within hours of the Dublin portal going live, a 'very drunk' woman in her 40s was led away by cops and arrested after 'grinding' her backside against the screen... Adam Nunan, a cruise ship audio engineer originally from Dublin and in New York while the ship is docked here, said, 'That doesn’t represent Ireland very well when you do that. That was everyone’s thoughts back home, there was a lot of people who didn’t want the portal to be built for that reason, that Americans might look at Irish people in the portal doing weird stuff....'"

From "NYC-Dublin live video art installation already bringing out the worst in people with lewd displays" (NY Post).

Earnest utopian vision? Why was this invitation to exhibitionism able to be promoted as utopian? And on what basis does the NY Post present the "utopian vision" as earnest? And why does the headline say "bringing out the worst in people" when the article is all about what's happening on the Irish end of the portal? 

Large rock the size of a small rock.

A TikTok video:

"While [Michael] Cohen is not under a gag order like Trump, it’s generally not beneficial for the prosecution to have a chatty witness publicly discussing ongoing proceedings."

"'Trump 2024? More like Trump 20 to 24 years,' Cohen said on a recent stream.... While it’s not disclosed how much money Cohen earns on these streams, the longer and more frequently he goes live, the more potential earning opportunity he has. It’s possible that Cohen sees his platform as an opportunity for character redemption. Once a Trump confidant, he now tells his audience to 'vote blue down-ballot.'"

From "The weird world of Michael Cohen’s live TikTok streaming/The former Trump fixer, now a critic, is expected to take the stand this week in Donald Trump’s hush money criminal trial. Meanwhile, he is live wearing cowboy hat filters, receiving calls from Rosie O’Donnell and sharing his feelings on TikTok" (WaPo)(free access link, so you can view a bunch of clips without going to TikTok looking for Cohen's account).

Cohen is the prosecution's star witness, and he's taking the stand today. 

"Mr. Trump fares especially well among those who believe that the political and economic systems ought to be torn down, a group that represents about 15 percent..."

"... of registered voters. He leads among these anti-system voters by 32 points, and the tear-it-down voters are especially likely to have defected from the president. In contrast, Mr. Biden retains nearly all of his 2020 supporters who believe only minor changes are necessary. These change voters are not necessarily demanding a more ideologically progressive agenda.... Instead, Mr. Biden’s losses are concentrated among moderate and conservative Democratic-leaning voters, who nonetheless think that the system needs major changes or to be torn down altogether."

From "Trump Leads in 5 Key States, as Young and Nonwhite Voters Express Discontent With Biden/A new set of Times/Siena polls, including one with The Philadelphia Inquirer, reveal an erosion of support for the president among young and nonwhite voters upset about the economy and Gaza" (NYT)(free access link/useful charts and details).

Also: "Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden are essentially tied among 18-to-29-year-olds and Hispanic voters, even though each group gave Mr. Biden more than 60 percent of their vote in 2020. Mr. Trump also wins more than 20 percent of Black voters — a tally that would be the highest level of Black support for any Republican presidential candidate since the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The polls suggest that Mr. Trump’s strength among young and nonwhite voters has at least temporarily upended the electoral map, with Mr. Trump surging to a significant lead in Arizona, Georgia and Nevada — relatively diverse Sun Belt states where Black and Hispanic voters propelled Mr. Biden to signature victories in the 2020 election."

"The phrase cold lava is a translation of the term 'lahar' in Indonesian and Tagalog. Temperatures range between 0°C and 100°C..."

"... according to how they are formed, but are typically below 50°C [122°F], according to several academic reports on the phenomenon. A moving lahar resembles a 'roiling slurry of wet concrete' that can grow in volume as it incorporates other debris in its path, said the US Geological Survey."

From "'Cold lava' sweeps villages near volcano, killing 41" (BBC)("I heard the thunder and the sound similar to boiling water. It was the sound of big rocks falling from Mount Marapi").