"Science is truth."

Please share this with everyone. Let’s never listen to these liars ever again. I guess CNN doesn’t need Sanjay to be a useful idiot anymore pic.twitter.com/XawCqUEWUB

— Adam Carolla (@adamcarolla) July 30, 2026

The invocation of science ought to be a call to calm rationality, but there we see it used like a tagline for a horror movie: Be afraid, be very afraid.

ADDED: Did you know that the line "Be afraid, be very afraid" originally came from Mel Brooks?

"Barack Obama... restricted his outfit choices mostly to gray or navy suits, based on research into 'ego depletion'..."

"... or the concept that one might exhaust a given day’s reservoir of decision-making energy. When, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, Obama was told that money 'framed' as income was more likely to be spent than money framed as wealth, he enacted monthly tax deductions instead of sending out lump-sum stimulus checks. He eventually created a behavioral-sciences team in the White House.... But as these ideas began to intermingle with those in the adjacent field of social psychology, the reasonable notion that some small changes could have large effects at scale gave way to a vision of individual human beings as almost boundlessly pliable.... [A] researcher at Cornell, reported that an attractive wire rack and a lamp increased fruit sales at a school by fifty-four per cent, and that buffet diners likely consumed fewer calories when 'cheesy eggs' weren’t immediately at hand... [A] Harvard Business School... purported to show that subjects who held an assertive 'power pose' could measurably improve their confidence and 'instantly become more powerful.' In advance of job interviews, prospective employees retreated to corporate bathrooms to extend their arms in victorious V’s...." "

From "They Studied Dishonesty. Was Their Work a Lie? Dan Ariely and Francesca Gino became famous for their research into why we bend the truth. Now they’ve both been accused of fabricating data" (The New Yorker). There's much more in that article obviously. I didn't choose a representative clip, just something that struck me as interesting and that didn't overlap with the NYT article on the topic of dishonest behavioral economists, which I blogged here yesterday.

I'm glad to see I have a tag "Obama's clothes," and of course, this post gets the tag "The Fly," because under the secret rules of this blog I am required to compare Obama's dressing methodology to Seth Brundle's:

I've sometimes thought I could set up AI to keep writing this blog after I can no longer go on.

 It seems James Taranto had a similar idea...

"[N]o one took the idea that a life of the boundless mind was reflected in a life freed from petty concerns like clothing further than Mr. Bankman-Fried..."

"Not for him the physical cage of a suit and tie. Instead, the T-shirt, cargo shorts and sneakers, often worn with white running socks scrunched down at the ankle. And not just any T-shirt and cargo shorts, but what could seem like the baggiest, most stretched out, most slept in, most consciously unflattering T-shirts and shorts; the most unkempt bed-head. While the look may have evolved naturally, it became a signature as he rose to prominence, a look he realized was as effective at pushing the Pavlovian buttons of the watching public (and the investing community) as the Savile Row suits and Charvet ties of Wall Street.... 'It’s the ultimate billionaire white boy tech flex: I’m so above convention. I’m so special I am not subject to the same rules and propriety as everyone else.'"

Writes Vanessa Friedman in "Hey Silicon Valley, It’s Time to Wear a Suit Sam Bankman-Fried’s choices may signal an end to the schlubby mystique" (NYT)(internal quote by investor/podcaster Scott Galloway).

"Ask yourself: do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters? Really?"

Joe Biden went to Pittsburg today, where he read a speech indoors. Here's the video. I can't tell if he has an audience. There's no engagement with any questioners. I don't really know how this is different from speaking from his own home, but it was presented in the press as an important occasion. The NYT says: "Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Monday issued a forceful rebuttal to President Trump’s misleading charges that he would preside over a country wracked by disorder and lawlessness...." I watched the first minute of the video, but it was too tedious. I was distracted by the metal grid behind him.



I thought it looked like a screen and fantasized about a remake of "The Fly."



So I'm just going to read the transcript and react to it for you as I read:

In recent days, we’ve had a lot of talk about who’s going where and how I’ve decided to come to Pittsburgh to talk a little bit about what’s going on right now....

So vague. Such a weak beginning. You'd think he'd specify what the talk was. Trump's going to Lake Charles, Louisiana and Kenosha, Wisconsin? If he'd specified, we'd know Trump's decisions were based on the hurricane and the Jacob Blake incident. But there's no reason for choosing Pittsburgh. It's just: Here I am in Pittsburgh, talking a little bit. There's a lack of drive and purpose.

"You'll be all right now, I know it w- AAAAAAAAAAAAA..."

"David Hedison, who starred in the original sci-fi classic 'The Fly' [1958] and appeared in two James Bond films, has died. He was 92" (Fox News).

ADDED: "Help me!" (Spoiler alert):

2 longterm interests of mine intersect: Men in Shorts and Jeff Goldblum.

I'm normally censorious about grown men in shorts, but I'm going to give Jeff Goldblum a pass, because he found his own way and, also, because to me, he will always be Brundlefly:



Apparently this has something to do with "Sonic" (a new movie based on the old video game about a blue hedgehog), but it's not as though Goldblum is in it. Here's the trailer that just came out 2 days ago and has been viewed on YouTube almost 33 million times:



I'm not keeping up with present-day taste in movies. I'm just amused by Jeff Goldblum. And have you ever heard of hedgehog politics? Neither have I. Hedgehogs don't have politics. They're very... brutal. No compassion, no compromise. We can't trust the hedgehog.

"You go not just where it’s comfortable but where it’s uncomfortable. And to me that means being there."

Being There! I saw that movie.



The quote in the post title is from Amy Klobuchar, interviewed by The New Yorker about "How Democrats Can Defeat Trump in 2020."

I'm the person who once said, "Why aren't the Democratic candidates better? I'm just going to be for Amy Klobuchar," so I guess I have to read this, even though I expect it to be boring. (I've often said I like elected officials to be boring, but that doesn't mean I want to consume their boring words, and I'm also wary that a boring candidate will not make it to the position of elected official.)

Let me put the quote in context. Unboringly enough, the context is Insect Inferno.

Klobuchar was asked how she (in getting reelected Senator) was able to speak to Trump voters. She says "you have to show up," and she visits all 87 counties in Minnesota every year:

One time I found myself in a business called Insect Inferno because we had run out of places to visit. It was near the Canadian border, a Trump county, and I was in this truck, and it said, on the outside of it, “Insect Inferno: we kill bedbugs with heat,” and the whole concept was they would drive around and you put mattresses in them and then they’d put the temperature up to three hundred degrees. So when I was in there they put it up to only a hundred. But, again, I thought to myself, You go not just where it’s comfortable but where it’s uncomfortable. And to me that means being there....

Insect Inferno?! Have you ever heard of insect politics?



Later in the interview (after some grilling — mild grilling — about the Kavanaugh hearings), Klobuchar is asked , "On a scale of one to ten, where are you in terms of running for 2020?" Her answer:

Well, as I have said before, I am considering it, but I never rate, scale things. So I’m not going there, but I have been talking to people in my state and people around the country about it. I think that there are a lot of good people considering this, but I do think you want voices from the Midwest....

The interviewer (Susan B. Glasser) observes that the 2016 election was determined by the voters of the Midwest, and Klobuchar — quite unboringly — comes out with an anecdote and a metaphor:

But I do think, on the Midwestern front, my husband is the third of six kids, and his mom, they grew up in a trailer home and... they would go out on vacation. And oftentimes when they came out of the gas station she would have them each count off to make sure they were all in the car, because my husband was always the sweet, quiet one, and she was afraid he would be left at the gas station. And the Midwest was left at the gas station, and we’re not going to let that happen again. And I think that is more than a metaphor just for the Midwest. It was a lot of middle-class voters, it was a lot of citizens that felt that they weren’t getting a fair shake in the system, that they were, like, having to ration their insulin, like a kid that died, a Minnesota restaurant manager recently was doing, they weren’t feeling like they were treated right. And I think our party and whoever is our nominee has to be able to respond to those people in a way that we weren’t doing in that last election.

A woman selling crickets and worms in the NYC subway "suddenly threw them all over the crowded car" — and it was so crazy...

... that some fool did the one thing you might think to do — because it is an emergency — but you absolutely should not do if you want to get to the next station as quickly as possible: He pulled the emergency brake!

The air conditioning shut off and the screaming passengers were all stuck inside the sweltering car with the woman, who then treated them to antics for half an hour as the crickets jumped on passengers. The worms just wriggled on the floor.

“She was banging on the doors and trying to climb out the windows. Everyone had crickets on their arms. My girlfriend was crying,” said Calabrese. “Then some men were trying to hold her down and she started trying to throw up on them.”

It could have been worse. It could have been underground. Luckily, the train was crossing the Manhattan Bridge, so there was light and a view of the real, noncrazy world. And you could tweet. E.g.: "There are crickets in subway rn and they won't stop being loud af." 

By the way, did you know that crickets stink? I learned that from the David Sedaris story "April in Paris" (April is a spider):

April hadn’t eaten in more than a week when, just by chance, I happened upon a pet store and learned that it sold live crickets, blunt little black ones that looked like bolts with legs. I bought a chirping boxful and felt very proud of myself until the next morning, when I learned something that no nature show ever told me: crickets stink. They reek. Rather than dirty diapers or spoiled meat—something definite you can put your finger on—they smell like an inclination: cruelty, maybe, or hatred.

IN THE COMMENTS: EDH said:

“Then some men were trying to hold her down and she started trying to throw up on them.”

We need an "Insect Politics" tag over here!

I like to use my insect politics tag whenever I can, but I didn't see how to make the stretch here. EDH provides the video that clinches it:

"After reading Monday’s front page story ("Golden retriever proposed as official ‘state domestic animal,’" Nov. 17)..."

"... telling of the harmless, well-intentioned efforts of children to determine an animal deemed worthy by Sen. Aaron Osmond and his cohorts to be Utah’s 'state domestic animal'... I am truly bewildered by the placement, column inches and content of the story, but who am I to judge what should appear on the front page of a major city’s daily newspaper?... I do hope the children being taught by Ms. Meyer are able to learn from their efforts to affect the actions of the state’s lawmakers. Keeping the state Legislature busy with such matters seems far better than letting them have time to carry out their usual lunacy. If the children involved actually learn how those governing this state operate, their quest will be eye-opening but ultimately disappointing and maddening. May I suggest an animal that represents this state far better than any dog or cat. The domestic creature most emblematic of the residents of this state is the sheep."

Letter to the editor of The Salt Lake Tribune by John K. Dallimore of Cottonwood Heights.

Ms. Meyer = Daybreak Elementary School teacher Alli Meyer, who led her 4th grade class in " just really a fun project to partner with these kids to teach them about the legislative process." Her class got the idea to influence a state senator to propose a state domestic animal after seeing that some other Utah students had successfully influenced the legislature to change the state tree from Colorado blue spruce to quaking aspen. Those students had made the persuasive political argument that a tree with "Colorado" in its name should not be the state tree of Utah. I don't know the extent to which they considered fact that "Aspen" is a city in Colorado.

"We wondered if we could do something similar. We thought of replacing the California seagull as the state bird, but didn’t think that would happen since the seagulls helped save the pioneers from crickets," Meyer said. "We noticed we didn’t have a state domestic animal," as Wisconsin does (the dairy cow). She said the students decided to pursue that. (Utah already has an official "state animal," the Rocky Mountain elk.)

10 thoughts:

1. Thanks for emulating Wisconsin, but the significance of golden retrievers to Utah scarecely parallels the significance of cows to America's dairyland.

2. It's hard to oppose dog lovers... dog lovers and 4th graders... but that's how politics works, right? What a lesson! Patch together bits of sentiment and make it harder to say no than yes.

3. What's up with picking a particular breed? It's not like Wisconsin picked the Holstein as its state domestic animal, and we have the experience of seeing those iconic black-and-white cows dotted all over the rolling green farmland. If I had photoshop skills, I'd produce an image of golden retrievers in a comparable pattern on a stark desert landscape.

4. Okay, what's the story of the crickets and the seagulls? Here's the Wikipedia entry for "Miracle of the gulls":

Although late frosts in April and May destroyed some of the crops, the pioneers seemed to be well on their way to self-sufficiency. Unfortunately, swarms of insects appeared in late May.... According to traditional accounts, legions of gulls appeared by June 9, 1848. It is said that these birds, native to the Great Salt Lake, ate mass quantities of crickets, drank some water, regurgitated, and continued eating more crickets over a two-week period. The pioneers saw the gulls' arrival as a miracle, and the story was recounted from the pulpit by church leaders such as Orson Pratt and George A. Smith (Pratt 1880, p. 275; Smith 1869, p. 83). The traditional story is that the seagulls annihilated the insects, ensuring the survival of some 4,000 Mormon pioneers who had traveled to Utah. For this reason, Seagull Monument was erected and the California gull is the state bird of Utah.

5. So "California" was in the name of the state bird, which made it look like a sitting duck of a Colorado blue spruce variety. But the children learned that the seagull had a monumental role in the history of Utah.


Credit: Intothewoods29

6. Of course, the cricket — not that they were crickets (they were some kind of katydid) — can't be the state insect of Utah. The state insect had to be the bee... as a 5th-grade class back lobbied the legislature to acknowledge: "The honey bee is significant in Utah history, as Utah was first called by its Mormon settlers, 'The Provisional State of Deseret,' a Book of Mormon word meaning honey bee."

7. Can we get an Establishment Clause lawsuit over the honey bee's status as state insect?

8. Would that there were somewhere a Provisional State of Golden Retriever!

9.  Have you heard of golden retriever politics? Neither have I. Golden retriever don't have politics.... they're very gentle... all compassion.... all compromise. We can trust the golden retriever. I'd like to become the first golden retriever politician. I'd like to, but.... I'm a golden retriever... who dreamed she was a woman, and loved it. But now the dream is over, and the golden retriever is taking another nap.

10. What happens when a golden retriever goes on "Meet the Press"? 

What if I forget my talking points? These journalists can be ruthless... hard-hitting... always looking for sound-bites, gaffes, gotcha moments.... What? My position? (Uh oh, here it comes) On what? — my position on CATS ??? Uh... well, cats are... uh, cats are...

About that scientist's sexy-lady shirt.

You know this story. The Rosetta project scientist, Matt Taylor, on the day of the landing on the comet, wears a ridiculous shirt, gets criticized, and makes a tearful apology. I wasn't going to talk about it because I didn't know what to say. Then I read this from WaPo's Rachel Feltman:

Of course, I personally hope that one day (when he's a little less busy) Taylor will say a bit more on the subject, and show that he understands why the shirt wasn't okay. Science is not a welcoming place for women, even today, and the only people who can truly make it more welcoming are the men who run the show. If a stellar scientist walks into work -- and then says hello to the whole world -- wearing a sexist shirt, what kind of message are we sending to future scientists?

She wants him to say why the shirt wasn't okay. That's just dragging out the apology, making it into more of an abject ritual. She already knows the reason why it's not okay, but just wants to hear him recite the reason that he's already had his face rubbed in to the point where he's sniveling. What I want him to talk about is what we don't know: Why did he think it was okay... not just okay, but a good idea? I don't know what else Mr. Taylor has in his closet, but what was that like — knowing it was the day of the landing, when eyes would be on you — to look at your array of clothing and to have it dawn on your big brain that this is the best costume for the day. I'd like a verbal depiction of that mental process, perhaps in the style of Little Edie:



That's from one of my favorite movies, "Grey Gardens." Another favorite movie of mine is "The Fly," the 1986 one with Jeff Goldblum as Seth Brundle. Brundle's a brilliant scientist — a tad odd, but brilliant. And in one of the lesser scenes — lesser, but memorable — he has to explain his clothes to his girlfriend Ronnie (Geena Davis):

Ronnie: Do you ever change your clothes?
Seth Brundle: What?
Ronnie: Your clothes. You're always wearing the same clothes.
Seth Brundle: No, these are clean. I change my clothes every day.
Ronnie: [looking in his closet] Five sets of exactly the same clothes?
Seth Brundle: Learned it from Einstein. This way I don't have to expend my thought on what I have to wear next, I just grab the next set on the rack.

So, now, I'm picturing Matt Taylor's closet — his Einstein-informed closet — packed end to end with shirts garishly patterned with cartoonishly bosom-y women. Come on, Matt, stop your sobbing and say something interesting.

The best song for the day:



"Do you have a shirt that you really love, one that you feel so groovy in?"

Myrmecochory.

It's the word of the day here at Althouse. Used here, by Meade, in the comments to "Bloodroot":

The plant colonizes in an interesting process known as myrmecochory.

The link goes to Wikipedia:

Myrmecochory... is seed dispersal by ants, an ecologically significant ant-plant interaction with worldwide distribution. Myrmecochorous plants produce seeds with elaiosomes, a term encompassing various external appendages or "food bodies" rich in lipids, amino acid, or other nutrients that are attractive to ants. The seed with its attached elaiosome is collectively known as a diaspore. Seed dispersal by ants is typically accomplished when foraging workers carry diaspores back to the ant colony after which the elaiosome is removed or fed directly to ant larvae. Once the elaiosome is consumed the seed is usually discarded in underground middens or ejected from the nest....

Myrmecochory, elaiosomes, diaspores....

Bloodroot... putting the "ant" in "plant."

This is a good metaphor for... something! I hope it's politics, because one of the big themes here at Althouse is insect politics.

There is... no return. No... mediation. It's very brutal. We are under assault. Assault from heat-loving insects.

The NYT reports:

The effects of human-induced climate change are being felt in every corner of the United States, scientists reported Tuesday, with water growing scarcer in dry regions, torrential rains increasing in wet regions, heat waves becoming more common and more severe, wildfires growing worse, and forests dying under assault from heat-loving insects.

Assault from heat-loving insects. You may think this sounds political... but...

... insects... don’t have politics. They’re very brutal. No... compassion. No... compromise. We can’t trust the insect... 

As William Beard explains, Brundle’s desire to function as the intermediary between the human and insect must fail

... because insectness is so intractably and horrifyingly evil in human terms that it cannot be mediated. There may be shades of humanity, signifed by various degrees of trust, compassion, compromise – but there are no shades of insectness. (Beard, 2001, 220)

Brundle’s transformation removes him from the human and takes him to a place from which there can be neither return nor mediation... This movement towards a limit point of human experience....

There is... no return. No... mediation. It's very brutal. We are under assault. Assault from heat-loving insects.

"Cartoon characters wear the same clothes every day, because their animators are lazy."

"You are not a cartoon character."

From "6 Telltale Signs It's Time to Upgrade Your Style." [A "sponsored" article at Gawker.]

Does that mean Steve Jobs was lazy and needed to upgrade his style? And as long as we're doing lists, we might as well shift over to "18 Famous People Who Always Dress The Same": Jobs, Zuckerberg, Tom Wolfe, Michael Kors, Larry Page...

These people are so not lazy. They're style icons, projecting power. The same clothes every day projects industriousness, efficiency, and — if you pick the right stuff — style.