They're frying the animals.

Trump on solar panels: "They kill all the animals. The animals jump on them and they fry." pic.twitter.com/EShkbJ7oJ1

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 28, 2026

"The age of AI will disrupt the workplace in all sorts of ways. But the work will continue..."

"... as other kinds of work have continued through technological disruptions. People still run the 100-meter dash, even though a car or a cheetah could do it faster. We still cook elaborate dinners, even though the frozen food aisle is crammed with highly palatable substitutes. We still have dinner parties, even though we could stream wittier banter from Netflix — because we are humans, and we want to seek excellence, not just consume it. AI may make it harder for us to get paid for our work. But if so, it will also make it easier for us to focus on the reasons that work is worth doing."

So says Megan McArdle, in "Every novel might have to pass an AI test soon/Artificial intelligence threatens writers’ livelihoods. It may also remind them why they write" (WaPo)(gift link).

The frozen food aisle is crammed with highly palatable substitutes? I don't believe that for one minute. Strike the "highly" and maybe you've got the beginning of a good enough analogy.

Also: "a car or a cheetah could do it faster" — there's no antecedent for "it." Do what faster? Anyway, it's not that people run the 100-meter dash, it's that other people care about and watch them running. Speed is interesting to us because of whatever it is that is going fast. We also care about and watch cars and cheetahs going fast, but it's not the speed per se that matters. It's the thing that's managing to go that fast. I've been impressed by a fast-moving tortoise.

As for reading, there are different kinds of readers. I don't think I'm the kind of reader who reads the novels that AI is going to get away with writing — conventional, fast-moving narratives with heroes and villains. Does it bother me if readers of hackwork are not getting human hacks? Maybe it does!

"The color, I think, for many people maybe has been drained out of life..."

"... and when they were to point at it, maybe, if the reality is, yeah, dude, you're distracted all the time, and you scroll easily forgettable largely gray homogenous slop on a daily basis and your body is made out of everything you put in your mouth and your brain is made out of everything that you put into your eyes and ears you think about what that consumption pattern is like you are basically feeding yourself fast food for your amygdala on a daily basis...."

Said Chris Williamson on the new episode of the "Modern Wisdom" podcast, titled "Why Life Feels So Dull All The Time (and how to fix it)."

He's talking with Robert Greene, who has a new book called "The Law of the Sublime" (commission earned). Maybe he's got the answer to our problem of colorlessness. 

Williamson prompts:

"Fat sea lions ruined her town. Now this woman wants to kill them."

Headline at the London Times makes it seem as though the lady is fatphobic.

“They need to be killed,” says Reyhan Higgins, 52, a fishing guide on the Columbia River, brandishing a rubber-bullet gun he uses to deter sea lions from stealing salmon. “I’d shoot them myself if they would ever let us.”

On the river, the sea lions are barking with satisfaction after a summer of excess. They heave themselves on to the docks, waddling in search of a comfortable position to rest their swollen bellies. For months they have been feasting on salmon — the fish that is the lifeblood of Chinook, a small town in Washington state.…

ADDED: I see the pronouns are confusing. I should have excerpted the first sentence: “In most Democratic districts, campaigning to slaughter a cute mammal would probably not win many votes. But Marie Gluesenkamp Perez appears to know her electorate.”

The rescue opossum just can't stop playing possum.

"I am a virgin. I grew up with no friends. I didn't have anyone growing up besides my two girlfriends that I'm still very close with today...."

"And I didn't like like I didn't do extracurricular activities. Like I didn't go out. I didn't have fun. Like I was just school home school home. So like I never had a relationship with anyone. And then I started working. I was serving for about four years at a mom and pop restaurant. I was a waitress.... And then now I'm here and I'm just waiting for the right person. But now everyone knows me and it's like weird. So like I'm trying to date but it's going to be a little weird now. It's hard. It's hard now. So I'm just waiting for the right person. Worth it. You know I'm waiting. Worth 100 million...."

Said Sophie Rain, the 21-year-old biggest moneymaker on "Only Fans," talking to the 70-year-old Bill Maher for nearly 2 hours. Creepy? Or is this helpful insight into a business you ought to understand? She's made $100 million. And yet: lonely! 

But you know the answer when people are so remote and loveless. Animals! She's all:

I love animals. That's what I want to do is I just want to live on a farm. That's that's the goal for me is to own a lot of land and just rescue animals. That's all I want to do....

Maher is all Me too. I love animals too. I'd just love to live on a farm too.

Animals are easy. People are hard. But what do you want from people? If you have 2 very close girlfriends, why would you say I grew up with no friends? 2 is so much more than zero. 2 very close friends seems like more than any number of remote friends. Or do you love remote friends... in social media?

IN THE COMMENTS: Leland writes: "Successful farms don't 'rescue' animals. They raise them, grow them, and then sell them..."

That's true for the restricted meaning of "farm," but there is an extended version of "farm" — watch and see who uses it — that's just a home in the heart of the country.

I want a horse/I want a sheep/I wanna get me a good night's sleep...

"When I was younger, I definitely felt smug about how much money I was saving. I felt like I was doing something secretly smart..."

"... living this ultrafrugal lifestyle in preparation for a day when I wouldn’t have to answer to anyone but myself. But I don’t feel that way anymore. If I drop dead of a heart attack tomorrow, most of my friends will have had more fun in their lives than I had in mine. Right now, I’m playing catch-up on fun. But I’m still pretty far behind...."

From "She Retired at 35. The Only Problem? It’s Lonely" (NY Magazine).

"And only since I retired have I started looking hard at what achieving all this shit was actually going to do for me. What emotional need was I trying to meet? My ambition level, the way I used to think of it, is now gone. But what did it serve?... I have a lifetime goal to foster and adopt out 100 animals, and I’m three-quarters there already.... I am not bored or underchallenged at all. I feel like I am busier than I’ve ever been, just with different things. I have the flexibility to help my friends with their kids, which — as I don’t plan to have kids — is pure joy...."

"[RFK Jr.] was going to look into all of the vaccines and the food. He didn't do any of that. It's fake."

"So he's on some summer vacation with Cheryl and some yak.... On his Instagram... he's like, We did a 10 mile hike up the mountain and I saw a yak... The Secretary of Health and Human Services now doing content on social media with wild animals...."

"Look, I'm 30 years old. Not one of my friends has children. Zero. No one. No one's having kids."

"Do you know how hard you need to abuse a mammal to make them not have children? Like, for real? Let's step back a moment, right?... Look, GDP goes up. People have enough food and whatever. No one's having kids. And this is across the world. This is across both the West, the East, everywhere it's happening. So why do I not have kids?... Do you know what dating app algorithms do?... They don't optimize for you to meet the love of your life. They optimize for you to keep coming back to the app.... We have treated technology as a wild west. Absolutely. Just everyone can do whatever they want. Oh, just sell all of our younger generations' dating lives to corporations for profit. And who pays the cost for this? Who has liability for every person who doesn't find the love of their life because the whole dating market is fucked up? Who pays for this? No one. There is no responsibility. It's completely worthless. And these dating companies, they're not even profitable...."

That's Connor Leahy, and I've got a problem with his abuse-a-mammal theory. Of course, he meant to say "Do you know how hard you need to abuse a non-human mammal to make them not have children?" But non-human mammals don't have access to birth control (and abortion).

"By 1963 we had accumulated ten horses, eleven dogs, a donkey, two goats, pigs, my 4-H cow, chickens, pheasants, ducks, geese, forty closely related rabbits (I started with two)..."

"... and a coop of Hungarian homing pigeons, along with the hawks, owls, raccoons, snakes, lizards, salamanders, and fish in my personal menagerie. A pair of bush babies lived under the porte-cochère, a nocturnal honey bear slept away his days in the playroom crawlspace, while my coatimundi and my giant leopard tortoise roamed free in the house. A jill ferret fed her pups under the kitchen stove. The mailman, retreating to his car, might be chased by goats, geese, or an imposing pack of barking dogs, where he might find a sea lion lolling on the vehicle’s warm hood, playfully slathering the windshield with a fount of fishy saliva. Aunt Jackie captured this bedlam in one of her watercolors, depicting frolicking children pursuing a football among a herd of galloping horses, a worn-out cook leaving the driveway with her overnight bags as her replacement arrives similarly encumbered, while canines pursue an accountant, tearing at his clothes...."

Writes RFK Jr., in "American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family – An Intimate Memoir of Father and Son, the Kennedy Legacy, and Hope" (commission earned).

That's the only mention of raccoons in that book, which I've read and enjoyed and which I was searching this morning a propos of the new story "Kennedy Jr/RFK Jr once cut penis off ‘road-killed raccoon’ in New York, new book reveals/Health secretary in a diary entry said his kids were in the car as he cut off animal’s genitals in 2001 to 'study them later'" (Guardian).

Here's Kennedy when he was asked about the raccoon penis yesterday. I love the reaction, a subtle chuckle as he walks away. I read his mind to say: If only you knew the life I've lived. Your windshield was never slathered with fishy saliva.

"I worked in a warehouse. It's where I felt so free. Then HR saw that video and terminated me."

I was good. I was great. I was busy moving freight. But I wanted to be funny, now the trucks will have to wait. I miss that icy freezer. I know that must sound odd, but now the smoke has cleared and my testicles  have thawed. I used to pick up pallets and I used to lift them high. It used to lift my spirits up. I felt like I could fly....

That's Blake Porter, via this Metafilter post by CrunchyFrog.

I enjoyed that. It was sweet and quirky, and I felt for the guy (even though I also think employers do need some rules about making your own videos at work, especially if you're working with heavy equipment like forklifts).

But it also got me wondering about Metafilter. I remember years ago, it had hot debate about political and social issues, but now it seems that everyone has agreed amongst themselves only to talk about sweet little quirky things and to be really nice to each other. It's a gentle pleasant atmosphere, but what the hell happened? What sapped all the vigor out of the place? If you go over there now, you'll see a post about what Isaac Asimov wrote about "1984" in 1980, how Jhumpa Lahiri is finding "quivering energy" in the works of Thomas Hardy, the rescue of a sea turtle, a walk to see (hear?) a sound sculpture, a bird that has relearned an old birdsong, a cat in a library, what rock art might be saying about Tasmanian tigers, etc. etc. 

Attempting to use Grok to explore my wonderment, I encountered the word "cozification." My search based on that word might have led me down various sweet quirky paths, but in the interest of keeping myself sharp and fast-moving, I decided to end this post with this screen shot (from Urban Dictionary) which I deem found art:

Meet Jeffrey Epstein.

wild find, how the media first introduced Jeffrey Epstein 25 years ago https://t.co/RZLXdHQvKr

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) February 10, 2026

AND: As long as I'm embedding things from Mike Benz this morning:

"Size of Life."

A beautiful and entertaining graphic depiction of the relative size of various life forms.

I've always loved perceptions about size. I've collected them over the years using my tag "big and small" — you know, the large boulder the size of a small boulder, the Santa Claus hat, and all the rest — so I'm happy to have something else, something so good, to add to my collection.

"The more I advance in my life, the more I fear humans. I’m more animal than human."

Said Brigitte Bardot, quoted in "Brigitte Bardot: I tried to kill myself many times. A miracle saved me/The 91-year-old screen icon discusses her struggles with depression as a young woman in a new 90-minute documentary titled Bardot" (London Times).

"Democrats say the use of silly inflatable costumes is a way to undercut Republican portrayals of such events as violent 'hate America rallies.'"

The Washington Post sets out to answer the question "Why protesters against Trump are wearing frog, chicken and T. rex costumes."

If you feel you need to put on a costume to disguise what you are, doesn't that suggest that you are the scary thing you're trying to cover up? I think of the wolf in sheep's clothing.

The image of wolf in sheep's clothing comes from in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus said: "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves."

From the WaPo article:

Vegetarian is not enough.

Photo by Meade, which he describes as "City bus 3 blocks from Ag school dairy building."

It's an impressive and persuasive slogan, but one might also say: Because you consume vegetables, rodents, birds, snakes, and amphibians die.

But the calf is a lovable being, one could respond, speciesistly. Look at its sweet face!

"A zoo in Denmark is asking the public for donations of unwanted small pets or horses to feed its captive predators."

CBS News reports

The zoo in northern Denmark said that chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs were an important part of the diet of its predators, which need "whole prey," reminiscent of what they would hunt in the wild.

"If you have a healthy animal that has to leave here for various reasons, feel free to donate it to us. The animals are gently euthanized by trained staff and are afterwards used as fodder. That way, nothing goes to waste — and we ensure natural behavior, nutrition and well-being for our predators," Aalborg Zoo said. 

The zoo said it accepts donated rabbits, guinea pigs and chickens on weekdays between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m., but no more than four at a time.

They're eating the dogs! They're eating the cats! No, they are not. It doesn't say dogs and cats. It says "chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs." 

Here's the notice. Is that the zoo's predator or somebody's unwanted cat?

 

That's easy to translate and to see that's a lynx: "Chickens, rabbits and guinea pigs form an important part of the diet of our predators – especially the European lynx, which needs whole prey that resembles what it would naturally hunt in the wild." 

Did this "longtime Democratic researcher" really ask "around 250 focus groups of swing voters" to name the animal each political party reminds them of?

I'm reading this free-linked NYT article — "Six Months Later, Democrats Are Still Searching for the Path Forward" — because my son John posted about it on Facebook.

I just couldn't believe this:

One longtime Democratic researcher has a technique she leans on when nudging voters to share their deepest, darkest feelings about politics. She asks them to compare America’s two major parties to animals. After around 250 focus groups of swing voters, a few patterns have emerged, said the researcher, Anat Shenker-Osorio. Republicans are seen as “apex predators,” like lions, tigers and sharks — beasts that take what they want when they want it. Democrats are typically tagged as tortoises, slugs or sloths: slow, plodding, passive. So Ms. Shenker-Osorio perked up earlier this year when a Democratic man in Georgia suggested that a very different kind of animal symbolized her party. “A deer,” he said, “in headlights.”...

Somehow Republicans do way too much, so aggressively, but Democrats don't get anything done? And these were swing voters? Sorry. Not believed. Sounds too much like the opinion of someone with left-wing policy preferences. You want more from the Democrats and you want it faster. And those terrible Republicans!

Anyway, asking people what animal Democrats and Republicans reminded them of reminded me of the old Barbara Walters question "If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?" Yeah, be skeptical about that too because she didn't ask that question... other than that one time, after Katharine Hepburn started it by likening herself to a tree. Barbara Walters followed up with "What kind of tree are you, if you think you’re a tree?" Of course, Hepburn gave the answer nearly everyone would give if they were asked what kind of tree they are: Oak. And poor Barbara was forever after treated as if she asked everyone what kind of tree they were.

"They found that human wounds took more than twice as long to heal as wounds of any of the other mammals."

"Our slow healing may be a result of an evolutionary trade-off we made long ago, when we shed fur in favor of naked, sweaty skin that keeps us cool.... Each hair grows from a hair follicle, which also houses stem cells.... 'When the epidermis is wounded, as in most kinds of scratches and scrapes, it’s really the hair-follicle stem cells that do the repair,' Dr. Fuchs said. Furry animals are covered in follicles, which help quickly close up wounds in mice or monkeys. By comparison, 'human skin has very puny hair follicles,' Dr. Fuchs said. And our ancestors lost many of those follicles, packing their skin with sweat glands instead.... Most furry mammals have them only in certain places, mainly the soles of their paws. But human ancestors went all-in on sweat — modern humans have millions of sweat glands all over our bodies, and they’re about 10 times denser than those of chimpanzees...."

From "Humans’ Wounds Heal Much More Slowly Than Other Mammals’/We naked apes need Band-Aids, but shedding the fur that speeds healing in other mammals may have helped us evolve other abilities" (NYT).

If you had to choose between the power to heal fast or to cool fast, would you not choose the cooling power? It's what evolution chose for us, but not for all those other animals. Why?

"In order to create a 'snowy' atmosphere the tourist village purchased cotton for the snow. But it did not achieve the expected effect, leaving a very bad impression on tourists who came to visit."

Chengdu Snow Village confessed on its website, quoted in From "China snow village ‘cheats’ tourists with cotton wool and soap/Chengdu Snow Village, in Sichuan, was forced to apologise after visitors were left feeling ‘insulted'" (London Times).

Other cheesy tourism trickery from China: