"I will normally tell people I'll be brief because I know their time is short. I think that is probably true in this case."

Says NPR's Steve Inskeep to former Senator Ben Sasse, who is dying of pancreatic cancer.

Sasse laughs.

His insight on time: "I think we all live on three time horizons. Daily, at the end of your workday and as the sun is setting, can you say that you did meaningful work that day and can you break bread with people you love? No. 2 is kind of a planning horizon. What decisions should you make over the next 30 days that'll pay off over the next 30 years? And then an eternal souls kind of time horizon. And all three of them matter. But one of the silliest things is to allow the planning horizon to crowd out the other two, and I think many times I did that."

"His doctors hit the cancer with chemotherapy and radiation, then focused on medications to deprive it of male hormones, or androgens, which fuel its growth...."

"Brian’s treatment took away his libido and left him sometimes with brain fog. Without testosterone in his system, Brian lost sexual function and libido, which had been a core of his identity. 'That has been the hardest part of this,' he said, with typical directness. 'Because I love being a man. I love being in a man’s body.'... Brian asked his doctors about taking a three month 'holiday' from the drugs — allowing his testosterone levels to rise for a short spell so he could feel like himself again, without the fatigue and brain fog and sexual dysfunction....  After deliberation, they slated it for the summer of 2025, when he planned to spend several weeks on Fire Island, long a mecca for gay men and women.... Here was a chance to briefly reinhabit his old energetic, sexual self.... One day he set out for the beach, eager for an outing not shaped by his cancer. But when he came to a slight incline in the footpath, he realized he could not make it.... By midsummer, it was becoming clear that his drug holiday was not going to deliver as he’d hoped. He still had no libido, let alone sexual function.... "

From "A Role Model for How to Die/What if you really did live every day as if it were your last? That was Brian’s plan" (NYT).

"Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all. Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer."

Wrote Ben Sasse, quoted in "Republican former senator Ben Sasse says he has terminal cancer/The 53-year-old — who was one of a handful of Republicans to speak out against Trump during his first term — said in a lengthy social media post he has Stage 4 pancreatic cancer and suggested he doesn’t have long to live" (WaPo).

"Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die. Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence... I’m not going down without a fight. One subpart of God’s grace is found in the jaw-dropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more.... Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape."

Have you ever zealously embraced gallows humor in the presence of a person who is dying? Do you know what it means "to run through the irreverent tape"? 

"Meanwhile, during the car-T treatment, a method developed over many decades with millions of dollars of government funding, my cousin, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr...."

"... was in the process of being nominated and confirmed as the Secretary of Health and Human Services.... My mother wrote a letter to the Senate, to try and stop his confirmation; my brother had been speaking out against his lies for months. I watched from my hospital bed as Bobby, in the face of logic and common sense, was confirmed for the position, despite never having worked in medicine, public health, or the government. Suddenly, the health-care system on which I relied felt strained, shaky.... As I spent more and more of my life under the care of doctors, nurses, and researchers... I watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research... slashed billions in funding.... Hundreds of N.I.H. grants and clinical trials were cancelled.... I worried about funding for leukemia and bone-marrow research at Memorial Sloan Kettering. I worried about the trials that were my only shot at remission...."

Writes Tatiana Schlossberg, the daughter of Caroline Kennedy, in "A Battle with My Blood/When I was diagnosed with leukemia, my first thought was that this couldn’t be happening to me, to my family," published in The New Yorker today, the anniversary of the assassination of her grandfather, President Kennedy.

Schlossberg, who has 2 very young children, tells us she has a terminal diagnosis. This is terribly sad.

Meanwhile, in other RFK Jr. news:

"I caused so much trouble yesterday. But it worked out."

Said Scott Adams on his live show this morning.

Coffee With Scott Adams 11/3/25 https://t.co/Vie6dMg9Dw

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) November 3, 2025

On his X feed:

Best President ever.

Thank you, President Trump.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) November 3, 2025

That follows this, yesterday:

"It’s a family history. I remember my Auntie Martha had skin cancer so bad they removed her nose."

"My father had basal skin cancer and my brother had it. It’s tricky with this skin cancer. That’s why you’ve got to put the sunblock on."

Said Diane Keaton, in 2015, quoted in "What Diane Keaton Shared About Her Health Before Her Death/Diane Keaton—whose cause of death has not been shared—was open about her health battles with skin cancer and bulimia that affected her growing up" (E! News).

ADDED: "We're here to see The Nose. I heard it was running..."

Should have been 34D.

I'm reading Rex Parker's write-up of today's NYT crossword: 

35D: Annual breast cancer awareness observance (NO BRA DAY) — I did not know this was a thing, or still a thing. Seems like an impractical option for many women. According to wikipedia, "The day is controversial as some see it as sexualizing and exploiting women's bodies while at the same time belittling a serious disease." I misread the clue as [Annual breast cancer awareness month] and, having the "NO-," wrote in NOVEMBER (which fits ... it's wrong, but it fits). Breast Cancer Awareness Month is actually right now, October, and NO BRA DAY is next week (October 13).

I'd never heard of "No Bra Day" — I don't think — until I did today's NYT crossword. A search of the NYT archive shows it's only ever been used in the crossword. This annual "observance" — ahem — has never been spoken of in an actual article or column. It's not like Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which is talked up all the time.

I'd say it’s ridiculous to have a day where women are urged to invite people to focus on their undefended — unshielded, unsupported — breasts. Making breasts more gawkable does not create awareness of cancer. It creates awareness of breasts, especially healthy, good-looking breasts. But we don't want a special event for that, because it seems to legitimate staring. If the idea is to increase awareness of the comfort of not wearing a bra, it fails. The best bralessness happens when you believe no one notices, whether your belief is true or false.

Anyway, too bad the NYT made the clue 35D and not 34D or 36D. 35D almost sounds like a bra size.

"Mr. Gutfeld’s style mixes anti-liberal insult comedy with relentless punchlines about women’s bodies — their age, their weight, their sexual attractiveness."

"Each night, Ms. Timpf sits at his right-hand side, playfully challenging him while staking out an alternate style of physical humor — one that centers her own experience inhabiting a woman’s body. I met Ms. Timpf on a Tuesday morning in August, on her second day back at 'Gutfeld!' after a reconstructive surgery in which the tissue expanders inserted behind her chest muscle during the mastectomy she underwent in March were replaced with permanent breast implants. She wore baggy jeans and a tight gray T-shirt, which she had second-guessed that morning. “Would I be better off wearing a looser shirt?' she asked. 'Something about breast cancer is — I don’t want to say embarrassing,' she said. 'People are like, Are you breastfeeding? And you have to be like, I just cut my tits off.' She added, 'It’s a weird thing, which is part of the reason why I’ve decided to be so open about it.'... She will have her nipples reconstructed over the next year. It will be her first tattoo. 'I don’t think that those are small things,' Ms. Timpf said. 'I think that those are big things.'"

That's from the New York Times: "A Baby. A Double Mastectomy. Many Opinions From Fox News Viewers. Kat Timpf got pregnant, got breast cancer, then got back to work on the political comedy show 'Gutfeld!' — all as a culture war brews over ambition, motherhood and women’s health."

"I think what you look like is a standard poodle and I love standard poodles."

A model for a perfect husband, revealed in "My cool cancer story/A year after losing my hair and self image to cancer, I put on my $5,000 prescription wig and look at myself and say, 'THERE she is.'" (WaPo video, free access).

"I’m the nice lady who wrote 'Eat, Pray, Love,' and I’m out in the park with fentanyl and morphine and sleeping pills trying to craft a murder."

From "Elizabeth Gilbert Gets Dark/A new memoir finds the self-help icon locked in a destructive romantic relationship with her best friend, who relapsed while fighting terminal cancer" (NYT)(free access link).

That's a free access link, in case you were an "Eat, Pray, Love" fan and had an impression of Elizabeth Gilbert as a nice lady and need to see if it's crushed. Me, I never picked up that book, was never vulnerable to the possibility that the author was a "nice lady" and wouldn't have cared. I just assumed she was a lady who was into herself for reasons that had nothing to do with me. Is praying something to be wedged in between gorging and fucking? I don't know, but I didn't need to know. I have no Elizabeth Gilbert-related illusions to be dispelled and I'm not temptable into the question whether she's got a dark side. I'm just going to guess that the "murder" she was "crafting" was assisting in the suicide of a cancer patient.

"How many Americans even know what color the ribbon is for prostate-cancer awareness?"

From "What Does It Take to Get Men to See a Doctor? Men in the U.S. live six fewer years than women. One clinic is trying to persuade men that getting checked out could save their life" (NYT).

Toxic masculinity” has become a catchall term.... But when researchers first began using the term, they meant something narrower and more specific: a culturally endorsed yet harmful set of masculine behaviors characterized by rigid, traditional male traits, such as dominance, aggression and sexual promiscuity. Men trapped in this man box, as it is sometimes called, are less likely to seek medical care and are more likely to engage in risky behaviors detrimental to their health, such as binge drinking or drug use.... Even seemingly positive attributes associated with traditional masculinity, such as providing for one’s family... can have negative health consequences. They may put work ahead of addressing medical concerns.... Or they may take on dangerous jobs or work extreme hours. But why do some men hold so tightly to these cultural notions about masculinity that lead them toward worse health? The answer may be traced to how fragile manhood itself can feel.... 

"At first, my hair came back as you’d expect, as the softest stubble. At about half an inch, though, there started to be a distinct ripple. The ripple evolved..."

"... into ’90s Billy Crystal (I clearly was not specific enough when I wished for the hair in 'When Harry Met Sally…'). There was a Nancy Reagan moment. And since then, it has gotten darker — and more and more (and more) poodle. I call this the haircut nobody asks for, or Baby’s First ’Do. It has changed the shape of my face. Old friends don’t recognize me. They seem to share some of the discomfort I feel standing in front of the mirror: Who is this? It’s like I uncanny-valleyed myself."

Writes Rachel Manteuffel, quite charmingly, in "Cancer changes you, but I never saw my new hair comingIt’s not clear why chemotherapy gave me curls, but when life gives you Garfunkel..." (WaPo).

"'The 'never go outside without S.P.F. 50' approach treated sun exposure as if it were universally harmful,' said Dr. Lucy McBride..."

"... an internal medicine physician in Washington, D.C.... Research has found that spending more time in the sun is associated with lower blood pressure....Sunlight may also help support the immune system by controlling inflammation and immune cells.... A well-known benefit of sun exposure is that it triggers the body to produce vitamin D.... The research on sunshine’s potential benefits is still quite limited, so it’s hard to know how to interpret or apply it, or how to square it with the risks for skin cancer, Dr. McBride said. And you shouldn’t stop using sun protection altogether, she said.... Ultimately, it may make sense to consider sunlight's potential benefits along with its harms, Dr. McBride said. 'Skin cancer remains a serious threat,' she said. 'But it is about moving beyond fear-based, one-size-fits-all messaging.'"

From "What are the Health Benefits of Sunshine? We’ve been taught to avoid the sun at all costs. Is that right?" (NYT).

Missing from the article is anything about the chemicals in sunscreen we've been urged to slather on repeatedly and excessively. Personally, despite being at great risk for skin cancer, I don't use the stuff. I go out in the very early morning or I use clothing for protection or I try to stay mostly in the shade. Here I am a year ago, in the semi-shade, interacting with a mushroom...

... and if you're inclined to say Althouse, you need to get that spot on your back checked out, let me assure you, I have!

"Winter’s short days and long nights aided my first attempts at becoming nocturnal. My husband bundled up and came with me on night walks."

"Friends gathered for an evening snowshoe. As the globe turned toward spring, though, the sun’s rays became stronger and the days stretched on. I stayed in.... But I grew restless and started heading out for night hikes.... A few weeks in, I was running along Lake Ontario when I stopped to watch the sun dip below the horizon. I became obsessed with that transition, stopping to watch it whenever I could. It slowed me down enough that I began noticing how a day ends in stages... 'civil twilight'... 'nautical twilight'... '[a]stronomical twilight'.... The sun wasn’t setting.... I was the one rotating away, a fleck on the back of an enormous spinning globe. Once I sorted out my relationship with the universe, my perspective changed. The fading light made me feel small and out of control — which was exactly why I loved it...."

Writes Claire Cameron, in "Skin Cancer Made Me Nocturnal. It Was Illuminating. How the earth’s rotation taught me to find peace in the face of death" (NYT).

I like the way this essay never mentions sunblock, as if slathering enough lotion all over — and over and over — could give a sun-vulnerable person the power to cavort in blazing full sun like a model in a beach vacation ad. 

The writer — whose father died of melanoma when he was 42  — is doing what I do and avoiding the sun. She's doing sunsets. I do sunrises. It's the same idea. I also do a second walk most days. I simply find heavy shade. That doesn't work when the leaves are down, but that's when it's cold and there are layers of clothing.

The spiritual dimension of dusk and darkness is there for anyone to dip into, but it is different when you feel driven into it by a very real threat of death from skin cancer. 

"Large or small cancer was still cancer. Once a cell has gone haywire in your body and learned how to replicate itself in a campaign against you..."

"... can you ever feel safe? I thought about the large mass in my breast and pictured the cells marching like fire ants on a raging tour of my interior. Five days later, while I was driving, the surgeon called to tell me I did not have cancer. I had a fibroid-like mass with a jagged surface resembling cancer’s starburst shape. He had two radiologists confirm this. 'I am so very sorry,' he said. 'This was a lesson for me. Always wait for the test results.' That moment at the wheel is still perfectly preserved in my mind, the flood of relief, the blinding joy. I will die someday of something, but it probably won’t be from this. The lesson for me was that Danny was a partner for the long haul, however long or short this life might be."

Writes Beth Apone Salamon in "We Had to Break Up. He Refused. 'I love you,' I told him, 'but this is over'" (NYT).

This is a "Modern Love" column. The headline refers to the part, when she thinks she has cancer and tells her husband, whose first wife died, slowly, of breast cancer, that they have to break up because he doesn't deserve to go through the same thing twice. That's interesting. An offer he can't not refuse.

But I was more interested in the ideation about cancer. Those metaphors: a cell gone "haywire" and "fire ants on a raging tour." 

"How much empathy can the country muster for Biden? In both red states and blue ones? In the well-lit spaces on social media and in the darkest corners?"

"Among his supporters and those who voted for his rival? Biden doesn’t have the benefit of having been out of office for years. And while he has been on a redemption tour of sorts, only history can define his presidency. Nostalgia hasn’t had a chance to cast him in a warm glow. The scars of a political dogfight haven’t even begun to scab over. The old ones are still raw and weeping, even as the country accumulates new ones. Vice President JD Vance argued that it was possible to have two thoughts about Biden at once: to wish him good health while also, essentially, calling him a terrible president in the same breath."

Writes Robin Givhan, in "Biden was empath-in-chief. Can a divided country offer him empathy? In the face of Biden’s cancer diagnosis, does the country have the capacity for empathy despite the political rancor, distrust, alternative facts and lies?" (WaPo).

Shame on us for wanting to know the truth about what happened? Who was President these past few years? We're supposed to sink into a pool of respectful silence and not demand to know? We're not supposed to be skeptical about the timing of the cancer news, which seems so perfectly aimed to shut us up about Tapper's book and the Hur recordings?

And what is this "redemption tour of sorts"? I had not noticed. I had to ask A.I., which pointed me to his "paid speeches, interviews (e.g., his appearance on The View), and international trips (e.g., attending Pope Francis’ funeral in Rome)." He wasn't waiting for years to pass, wounds to heal, and nostalgia to set in. He and his enablers were doing positive propaganda. Why should we shut up? Answer: because he has an aggressive cancer. Of course, we feel the silencing power.

What ugly people we are to still want the truth! Who was President these past few years?!

"I have the same cancer that Joe Biden has... that has also spread to my bones.... My life expectancy is: maybe this summer...."

Coffee With Scott Adams 5/19/25 https://t.co/miG4jySdsD

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) May 19, 2025

"Weirdly, since it's old news for me, I've just sort of processed it.... And I have to say, you know, everybody has to die... and it's kind of civilized that you know about how long you have...."

"Society doesn’t allow women of color to be vulnerable at work. When you’re a first, you don’t get the benefit of the doubt."

"I want to be clear: I do not regret my decision to keep my life private while in office. This piece is no apology, it’s an explanation. An explanation of who I am, what I’ve been through, and what it’s like to come from where I come from and sit in the public eye.... From the beginning of my time as press secretary, I navigated the typically choppy waters of American politics.... And I have also trudged through thick, thick grief... For more than 18 months, I drove up to New York every weekend I could to see my mom.... As present as I was in organizing my mom’s [cancer] care, I still tried to maintain a sense of privacy when I visited her. I’d wear big sunglasses, a mask, and no makeup. Unable to help herself, my mom had already bragged about me to anyone who would listen. Yet the weight of it all felt like too much. I am used to heaviness.... But I was losing my grip. I told my mom I wanted to move to New York so I could help her full-time. 'You are not quitting your job,' she said.... Quitting the administration would hurt her more than my full-time caretaking would help....."

Writes Karine Jean-Pierre, in "Karine Jean-Pierre, President Biden’s Barrier-Breaking Press Secretary, Reveals Some Truths About Her Job/'I have kept details about my private life under lock and key,' she writes for Vanity Fair. 'Society doesn’t allow women of color to be vulnerable at work'" (Vanity Fair)(the mother's cancer was cured).

AND: Here's the new press secretary, who also faces the challenge of convincing you that her selection was merit-based:

"Americans are too ornery to fall for TikTok propaganda/Banning TikTok may be legally sound but not really necessary."

Writes Megan McArdle (at WaPo)(free-access link).

I am wary of Chinese control over such an influential app and, potentially, its user data. But the internet is spying on us all the time, and I presume the Chinese already get a hold of a lot of that data. As for the Chinese influence over what we see... the Chinese government will surely slip some subtler nudges in among the makeup tutorials and cat videos.... But if you think that kind of gentle sculpting is so effective, you need to explain why the more overt efforts of countless establishment institutions, including our major social media companies, failed to get the American public to mask up, lock down and repudiate Donald Trump. I suspect the Chinese propagandists will simply discover what Americans already know: We’re too ornery to be controlled by anyone, including an algorithm.

We are affected by speech, and speech is important because it affects us, but the way it affects us is infinitely complicated. It's cute to use the word "ornery," but it doesn't express what we really are, and it's deceptive to refer to "control," because even if we can't be "controlled," we are open and vulnerable to complex influence. I'm "ornery" enough to resist this assurance that speech doesn't matter. I defend freedom of speech because speech does matter. 

And it troubles me to see "makeup tutorials and cat videos." People who talk like that are revealing that they don't use TikTok. They don't know what it is. I could show you thousands of things that are not transitory fluff, but just as an example, let me show you this man:

"[Elle] Macpherson, 60, says she rented a house in Phoenix, Arizona, for eight months, where she 'holistically treated' her cancer..."

"... under the guidance of her primary doctor, a doctor of naturopathy, holistic dentist, osteopath, chiropractor and two therapists. She said: 'It was a shock, it was unexpected, it was confusing, it was daunting in so many ways and it really gave me an opportunity to dig deep in my inner sense to find a solution that worked for me.... Saying no to standard medical solutions was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. But saying no to my own inner sense would have been even harder,' later adding she thought chemotherapy and surgery were too extreme."

From "Elle Macpherson refused chemotherapy after secret breast cancer diagnosis/Supermodel says she is in remission after being diagnosed seven years ago and rejecting traditional medicine" (The Guardian).

ADDED: The idea that surgery is extreme is subjective. How aversive to it should we be? It made me think of the newly normalized gender affirmation surgery, bariatric surgery, and the plastic surgery done to fight the perfectly ordinary effects of age.

And I happened to see this earlier today:

Amazing Mom

pic.twitter.com/lGXL89E6xR

— The Best (@ThebestFigen) September 1, 2024