Trump dances — Malaysian style.

🚨 EPIC! The moment President Trump notices the Malaysian dancers and JOINS IN!

It’s impossible NOT to love this.
pic.twitter.com/Rlbp4EqVCR

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 26, 2025

AND: Did Obama ever do anything comparable? There was this moment in Argentina in 2016. A very different mood:

"When going down into the hole... it was really scary, but this is indeed the duty of a firefighter; we have to overcome the fear and surrender to God."

"It is pitch black in that pipe. You don't want to know what's in there. It's full of human waste and other garbage. We decontaminate immediately after each dive."

Said a firefighter and a sewer worker quoted in "Search for woman swallowed by 8m sinkhole now 'too risky'" (BBC). It's been 8 days since the woman, Vijaya Lakshmi Gali, 48, "disappeared into a pavement sinkhole in Kuala Lumpur." There have been 110 rescue workers. "But apart from a pair of slippers found in an initial 17-hour search, their efforts have been unsuccessful."

There is security camera footage of the hole opening up beneath the woman, here.

"London-based artist Laura Melissa Williams woke up one morning last week to find thousands of messages for her on social media — all from Malaysia...."

"[O]ne of the English comprehension questions [on the teenaged schoolchildren's standardized exam] was about a fictional paraglider called Melissa. The question described the fictional Melissa hitting a storm-cloud - like 'being tossed around in a washing machine' - and having to be rescued from the roof of a farm by villagers. Following the exam, a student looked up the question on the internet, found Ms Williams (whose middle name is Melissa), realised from her social media she was a paraglider - and the hashtag 'The real Melissa' was born... 'I checked with some Malay-speaking friends as I started worrying, I got a bit concerned about any threats - they just said it was mainly immature,' [Williams] said. And then overnight in UK time, Ms Williams found herself the subject of another hashtag: 'Stop cyber-bullying Melissa.'... [F]rom then on, Ms Williams said, apologies had flooded in.... She has since received invitations to go to dinner in Malaysia, offers of gifts, and apologies from school teachers, influencers and the media.... In total, she has now received 210,000 Instagram messages, 30,000 tweets, countless direct messages and she has also acquired 5,000 new followers. 'I now have an army of people as my protectors and standing up for what is right and moral,' she said."

BBC reports.

"'The cries were deafening,' the elderly vendor says as she serves up dishes of grilled mackerel, yellow curry and steaming glutinous rice."

"She saw at least nine girls being carried out of their classrooms, kicking and screaming. She recognised some of them as regulars at her stall. 'It was a heartbreaking sight,' she says. She later saw a witch doctor enter a small prayer room with his assistants.... 'Women are softer and physically weaker,' [said Zaki Ya, a spiritual healer with 20 years of experience]. 'That makes them more susceptible to spiritual possession.... Science is important but it can't fully explain the supernatural... Non-believers won't understand these attacks unless it happens to them.'... Academic Afiq Noor argues that the stricter implementation of Islamic law in school... is linked to the surge in outbreaks... The theory is that such a constricted environment could be creating more anxiety.... To clinical psychologists like Steven Diamond, the 'painful, frightening and embarrassing symptoms' often associated with mass hysteria could be 'indicative of a frustrated need for attention. Might their remarkable symptoms be saying something about how they are really feeling inside but are unable or unwilling to allow themselves to consciously acknowledge, feel or verbalise?'"

From "The mystery of screaming schoolgirls in Malaysia" (BBC). Much more at the link, with interesting photographs of life in Kelantan, Malaysia and of a $2,000 "anti-hysteria kit" (containing formic acid, ammonia inhalants, pepper spray, and pain-causing bamboo 'pincers' intended to drive out evil spirits).

A Malaysian High Court has upheld a government ban on yellow T-shirts with the word "clean."

"Bersih 2.0, which challenged the ban in the High Court, will appeal the ruling, Ms. Abdullah said. 'I don’t know where they got the idea we are a national security threat'...."

"Rapp sat alone on a rock. A raven appeared. Unflinchingly, it approached..."

"... and patiently ate a piece of salami out of her hand. It had never happened to her before. 'The way the raven looked at me, so intently, so. …,' Rapp said, the thought drifting, unfinished. 'Yeah, it was Dean.'"

The last few lines of a NYT article by John Branch titled "Lost Brother in Yosemite/Dean Potter jumped. Graham Hunt followed. Potter’s longtime girlfriend snapped photographs. Then came confusion, hope and despair."

The writing style — "Unflinchingly, it approached... the thought drifting, unfinished..." — bugged the hell out of me, but refocus: There's interesting material about whether BASE jumping should be allowed in the National Parks, especially Yosemite, the best BASE jumping place in the world.

The frustration for Potter and other BASE advocates has been the apparent lack of consistency in park policies. It is generally legal to catch a fish but not to pick flowers. Horses are allowed on many trails, but mountain bikers are not. The Merced River is a jumble of colorful rafts carrying tourists; El Capitan is a dot-to-dot slate of climbers and ropes; and Yosemite even allows hang gliding on a limited basis off Glacier Point, not far from Taft Point. Potter was allowed to string tightropes between formations. But if he fell, it was illegal, in theory, to prevent his own death with a parachute.

Regulations. At least try to be consistent. Jumble of rafts tourists and dot-to-dots of climbers and ropes — that sounds bad. If that's allowed, things that seem less bad should be allowed... maybe. Do we want people in the parks, using these grand landscapes or not?

Who are the right kind of people for the national parks? People who drive through and stop at the lookout points and maybe take a short hike where they stay on the trail? That's pretty much what I do. I'm into quiet contemplation of unspoiled beauty.

From a selfish perspective, I'd like rules — in these great gems of American scenery — that enforce reverence. But I'm a little too freedom-loving to want to wreck the fun of folks who like their rubber-raft thrill rides or whatever.

And yet, there's a part of me that identifies with the Malaysians who arrested a British tourist for responding to a mountain they regard as sacred by stripping off her clothes:

Tan Sri Alfred Jabu, the deputy first minister of neighbouring Sarawak state... told state media: "Some places have their own historical background and are sacred to the local community and, as such, visitors to these places should respect the place, the local traditions and cultures. If we go to a mountain, there is what I call a mountain protocol to be observed. We local people believe that there is someone, the guardians of these places, and there is a form of order of sacredness for those who go to the mountain to respect."...

"To appease the mountain protector, the 10 western tourists who stripped and urinated on Mount Kinabalu should be fined 10 head of buffalo, according to local customs," said Tindarama Aman Sirom Simbuna [a tribal elder]. He said the fee was more than the usual fine of 10 chickens or one pig. 'According to local beliefs, the spirit of the mountain is very angry. The tourists who angered the guardian of the mountain should pay for their mistakes by giving 'sogit’ (a peace offering)," he said.

The anger was manifest by an earthquake, and readers of the liked article, in the British press, are of course, expected to regard the reverence for the landscape as ignorant and to embrace the lovely, young, selfie-taking Westerner. Here she is in her "yoga pose":

Yoga is a way to look cute and free and flexible. A mountain is just a mountain and a bendy twisty pose is just exercise. Or it is whatever it is to you. Or when do you you rein yourself in a respect what others revere?  A raven, unflinchingly, approaches and the thought drifts, unfinishedly... yeah, it was God.

"A Malaysian appeals court on Friday struck down an Islamic law that banned men from dressing as women..."

"... in what lawyers described as a landmark case in the country’s stormy battle between secular and religious authorities."

“The words ‘human dignity’ were repeated many times in the judgment,” [said Ambiga Sreenevasan, a lawyer and the former head of the Malaysian Bar Council]. “It brings us back to fundamental liberties.”...

The lead judge, Mohamed Hishamudin Mohamed Yunus, made it clear that the court was not ruling on homosexuality, which is illegal in Malaysia, and that transgender people had a disorder....

Transgender people were traditionally accepted in the culture of Malaysia’s dominant Malay ethnic group and served in a variety of roles, including performers and advisers to the country’s sultans. But the influence of conservative Islamic politics over the past three decades has often left transgender people ostracized.

"The Malaysians have kept American investigators at a distance since the plane vanished in the early hours of March 8..."

"... angering some lawmakers in Washington who believe the F.B.I. should have been playing a larger role in the investigation from the beginning."

And this, from someone related to a passenger: "The Malaysian government is a bunch of cheats. All the governments of the world must join together to pressure the Malaysian government to give an explanation."

The Flight 370 pilot, "Zaharie Ahmad Shah was an ‘obsessive’ supporter of Malaysia’s opposition leader, Anwar Ibrahim."

"And hours before the doomed flight left Kuala Lumpur it is understood 53-year-old Shah attended a controversial trial in which Ibrahim was jailed for five years...."

Copying the URL to make that link (to The Daily Mail), I was surprised to see it contained the word "sodomite": Doomed-airliner-pilot-political-fanatic-Hours-taking-control-flight-MH370-attended-trial-jailed-opposition-leader-sodomite. That must be an aspect of The Daily Mail's highly successful traffic-pulling game. It's not entirely unsupported by the text. Scrolling quite far down, there's the detail that the charge against Ibrahim was "sodomy."

Now, political supporters of Ibrahim see it as political persecution, and I would assume it is. Of all the sodomites in Malaysia, why is an important political leader imprisoned?

Whether or not Shah is the demon we now suspect, if you knew the facts about him we now know, would you get on a airplane he piloted? Knowing that you don't know anything about your pilot — or maybe he tells you his name once you are in the air under his complete control — how can you stand to get on any airliner? I guess the favorite answer to that question is: You're always only playing the odds, whether you get in a car or an airplane.

You could be "safe" at home when your building blows up. When your number comes up, it's up. Live for the day. Live while you can.

In Malaysia, Christian churches are firebombed after courts say that Christians have a right to use the name "Allah" to mean their God.

The NYT reports:

The line between race and religion is blurred in a country where the Constitution equates Muslim and Malay identities, said Jacqueline Ann Surin, editor of The Nut Graph, an analytical Malaysian news site that covers political Islam extensively.

“Malaysia is peculiar in that we have race-based politics and over the past decade or so we have seen an escalation of this notion that Malay Malaysians are superior,” she said. “That has been most apparent from consistent attempts by the U.M.N.O. leadership to promote the notion of ‘ketuanan Melayu,’ or Malay supremacy or dominance.” The United Malays National Organization is the full name of the governing party.

“So it’s a logical progression that if the Malay is considered superior by the state to all others in Malaysia, then Islam will also be deemed superior to other religions,” she said.