"I never liked that term, 'guy's guy.'"

Said Meade, reading the previous post, the one about the man who shot the rooster named Nixon.

That sounds like one of those sentences that makes me think I'm experiencing another bout of transient alexia.

What's wrong with the phrase "guy's guy"? I'd ask Meade but he's watching that video I sent him, the one with a guy named Larry listing a lot of things he's not going to do anymore now that he's 72.

Left to my own devices I went looking for "guy's guy" in my blog archive. I believe I've only used the phrase once: "Now, if everyone would please dial down all the criticism and let Obama get on with his un-self-conscious guy's guy agenda, it will all work out just fine."

That was in an October 26, 2009 post called  "Obama's White House boy's club." And I was using the phrase jokingly echoing something the NYT had written: 

"My wife and I have been married over sixty years.... Like most we struggled with intimacy from time to time but being best friends forever we journeyed on...."

"Then it happened. My wife was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and we were devastated by thoughts and fears of what might be ahead.... I finally began to appreciate this unconditionally loving person I'd lived with for all these years in ways undreamed of. We found more intimacy than we'd known by sitting close and talking about our day, by holding hands as we took our walks, walks that became increasingly slow. Caretaking for my wife has allowed me to see and experience the depth of her caring and kindness and humility in allowing me to care for her. I have discovered, too late in some ways, the marvelous intimacy of simply giving to the other without measuring or thinking of what may be in it for self...."

From the top-rated comment — by far — on "The Best Sex Advice Might Also Be the Hardest to Follow/Some couples would rather get divorced than talk openly about their intimate lives" (NYT gift link).

The advice that's hard to follow is — big surprise — you're supposed to talk to each other.

Have you noticed the talking-to-strangers trend?

People are adopting a deliberate practice of making themselves talk to strangers.

I suspected as much — I noticed a pattern of 2 or 3 incidences — and asked AI to find me some writings on the subject. There are these, all from this year:

The Amish method of dating makes sense to me.

Ex-Amish social media creator Lovina Hershberger Zook, who has amassed some six million followers sharing Amish recipes and stories, explains the traditions of dating in the community she grew up in, one of the most conservative among the Amish.

The 23-year-old tells @faithsalie… pic.twitter.com/tRylTEwCZm

— CBS Sunday Morning 🌞 (@CBSSunday) August 14, 2026

They get in bed together from 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. and talk or sleep. If it goes well they do it again 2 weeks later. This seems more likely to find what you need in a life partner than sitting across a table in a bar or restaurant. More likely to lead to a rewarding and deep or amusing conversation. 

That made me think of this "Modern Love" discussion in the NYT: "Am I Too Anxious for Love? Jenny Singer worried the deep, loving relationship she wanted wasn’t something her brain would let her have" (gift link).

"Dog owners love pretending dogs are these magical social connectors, but in reality they just attract endless unwanted interactions with random weirdos."

"Every walk becomes an open invitation for strangers to stop you for pointless conversations about dogs. Suddenly some bloke you’ve never seen before is standing there for 15 minutes talking about breeds, dog food, dog behaviour or telling you stories about his own mutt while you awkwardly stand there wanting to leave. Half the people that approach dog owners are bizarre as fuck too. I never once understood why I was expected to happily stand around talking to random strangers in the middle of nowhere just because they spotted a dog. And honestly, I’m convinced a lot of dog owners enjoy this because the dog gives them instant validation and attention from other people. The animal becomes a social prop."

From a rant at Reddit called "I dated a dog owner and this is what I found." I'm only quoting one point on what is a 5-point list. To get the full effect, read the whole thing.

The ranter has a very receptive audience, because it's on the Subreddit "Dogfree: We Don't Like Dogs." It's not really anti-dog so much as anti-dogpeople: "This is a subreddit for those who do not like or own dogs to discuss modern-day dog ownership and its effects on society. This is our corner of the world. Weigh-in from dog owners is off topic and disallowed. Thank you for respecting our space."

"'It shows you that there are people interested in stuff beyond just living and existing,' Bridges said, chatting with fellow residents over Golden Oreos and cranberry juice after her virtual trip to Santorini. 'It’s an escape from reality.'"

From "How Older Adults Are Using V.R. to Counter Social Isolation/New tools tailored for use in senior living communities allow for shared experiences and social bonding" (NYT).

I'm not using a gift link for this one, so you'll just have to picture old people with a big VR device strapped to their face. And imagine many paragraphs puffing the joys of VR — and the joys of travel.

But VR and travel are touted as a means to an end, and the end is the all-important social connection: “When V.R. is done well, you get mentally transported to a place,” said Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University.... A few minutes together on a virtual hike or sunset cruise can change a silent dinner to a lively conversation about past travel experiences...."

Bedeviled.

 

This is found art — wordplay that appears by chance.

I was doing a word search in the OED, looking up "bedevil," because it had come up in an article I just blogged. The NYT writer crafted this sentence: "Was [Trump] upset that [Melania] had single-handedly thrust this story that had so bedeviled him back onto front pages around the globe?" (Don't get me started on "thrust" and "globe.")

That blog post ends with a quote from Lord Byron, and I see the OED entry for "bedevil" also has a quote from Lord Byron — worrying about critics of "my poor, gentle, unresisting Muse, whom they have already so be-deviled with their ungodly ribaldry."

I like the word bedevil. It's vivid, perhaps too vivid. Are we to picture devils? Does anyone think of Jeffrey Epstein as literally The Devil? I know JD Vance seems to think the UFOs are devils — "I don’t think they’re aliens, I think they’re demons anyway, but that’s a longer discussion."

Have I been casually summoning up The Devil over the years by using this word that I like? Checking the 22-year blog archive, I see I've quoted it a few times and I've used it twice. Both times came in 2014. Once, in July, on the topic of ObamaCare:

"Couples who forgo honest conversation about bot usage may do so at their own peril."

"That was the case for Rhea Srivastava, a 24-year-old living in Washington, whose fights with her ex-boyfriend often resolved over text message. The messages he sent were emotionally mature, thoughtful and well-reasoned. They just didn’t seem to be written by him. 'There was no vulnerability on his end,' she said. Over time, she observed that the things he wrote didn’t seem like natural outgrowths of their conversations. They were the result, she began to suspect, of a more unguarded back-and-forth with ChatGPT, which then resulted in a carefully crafted text to her. 'It was as though our relationship problems were being solved with him, through Chat.... As time passed, it was pointless to argue with him because I could just ask Chat what he was about to say,' she said."

From "She uses AI for everything. Her husband thinks AI is a menace. What happens to a relationship when one partner depends on a chatbot, and the other is an AI skeptic?" (WaPo).

Pointless?! I think they can have better arguments — that is, conversations — by using AI to analyze what they are saying and what the other person might feel or be trying to say and then talking together again. This could be true even if only one of them is using A.I. If either person is annoyed to think they are reading texts written by A.I., you have at least 2 options: 1. Talk in person (after reflecting with or without the assistance of A.I. (or your therapist or other confidante)), and 2. Agree and trust each other never to send texts composed by A.I.

A third idea is that when you think it's pointless to argue because you could just ask Chat what he was about to say why no tell that to Chat and have Chat to predict what you're about to say? Send that. Let him respond, then respond to that with A.I.-composed text, and see how long before the 2 of you meet on a higher plane and laugh about everything. 

Guarantee: No part of this post was composed by A.I.

"The Grapes of Wrath tortoise enters the chat."

Tubagoat writes, on the mildlyinfuriating subreddit, after ugly_duckling_5 — commenting on a post about a woman who gave an overlong answer to the question "How was your day?"  — said:

"I'm lost on talking about your day for 45 minutes. Reminds me of books where the author spends an entire chapter describing a wall."

Classy-girl-93 follows up: "At least the tortoise was going somewhere."

Was he, really? I was curious. I looked it up. From the full text:

"There’s pasta in the pantry and jarred sauce in the refrigerator. So what compels Kiely Reedy to keep having spaghetti with marinara delivered..."

"... from the restaurant down the street, for several times the cost of cooking the dish herself? It’s not that the restaurant dish is particularly good, she said. 'It’s the instant gratification.' From her roughly $50,000 annual salary as a data processor in San Diego, Ms. Reedy, 34, spends at least $200 to $300 a week on food delivery.... Between raising two young boys and putting in long hours at a marketing job in Atlanta, Kevin Caldwell can almost never find the time to make dinner. So he and his husband spend about $700 a week to order in. 'I am so burned out and tired, I would rather just throw my credit card at the problem and delay that unhappiness until the bill comes,' he said. His 4-year-old son doesn’t read yet, 'but he can put together an order' on the Chick-fil-A app, said Mr. Caldwell, 39. 'I am impressed, but I am also terrified.'"

From "Freedom With a Side of Guilt: How Food Delivery Is Reshaping Mealtime/Almost three of every four restaurant orders in the U.S. weren’t eaten in a restaurant, according to recent data. We spoke to readers who are devoted to delivery but question the costs" (NYT)(gift link).

I've never ordered in prepared food. I mean, back in the 1900s, I would order pizza sometimes, but not since then. I know about these services — Door Dash, Uber Eats, etc. — but I simply don't want them. We don't go to restaurants either, but I wonder if delivery is preferable to restaurants. Restaurants involve going out, which could be either a positive or a negative. Do you have time to burn? Even if you do, do you want to spend it sitting at a table waiting and under social pressure make conversation (and not to look at your phone)? Maybe that's just not what people do anymore. 

The news of authenticity.

1. "Museum of Authenticity Annex Closes, Exhibits Feature is Expanded in Original Location" (Ark Valley Voice): "The Museum of Authenticity has offered unique, curated exhibits of art and utilitarian artifacts in Salida for years. While the larger annex off of F Street has closed, the museum itself has not gone anywhere...." 

2. "Time To Get Serious About Workplace Authenticity" (Forbes): "Think of your favorite leaders, whether political icons, sports captains, or CEOs. How would you objectively measure their authenticity? There is no baseline. No benchmark. If you find Trump authentic you probably adhere with his values; same goes for Obama. By the same token, not many Trump fans would find Obama authentic, and vice-versa."

3. "The authenticity double standard is negatively impacting female leaders/We tell brands that humanity drives commercial success, so why do we still advise women leaders to suppress theirs?" (MarketingWeek):

"For reasons I don’t need to go into, you may feel that now is a bad time to visit the once United States. I thought the same..."

"... but having just returned from a tour of Arizona, I’d argue that it’s the perfect time. What Barack Obama described as 'an inflection point' is America’s worst domestic crisis since the civil rights movement of the 1960s: the relationship problems of a democracy still a few months short of its 250th birthday. For curious travellers and for those who prefer to make up their minds based on what they’ve seen rather than what they’ve been told, now offers the opportunity to witness not only history in the making but the events that brought America to where it stands today. Arizona is the place to start. Everywhere is open, everyone is delighted to see you...."

I'm reading, in The London Times, "My week taking America’s temperature in the Grand Canyon state/The history is fascinating and the scenery is astonishing but is the welcome as warm as it used to be? Chris Haslam finds out on a slow drive through Arizona."

Sample text:

Gavin Newsom miffed that right-wing tough guy Joe Rogan won't have him on his show.

Here's Joe Rogan, a 02:11:01, in a recent podcast:

Do you like people? I love people. I could never be a hermit. I love people. I love hanging out. Like I love having fun. I love meeting people that are fun. I love it. The only way that happens is if people make people. You have to make cool people. Yeah. Make cool people that other people wanna hang out with....

Joe's podcast is great because he's a cool person hanging out with cool people and he lets us sit in on that love and coolness. How does anyone get on Joe's show? I think it's by making him feel that you are a cool person who loves having fun that he could love having fun with.

Meanwhile, here's Gavin Newsom bitching about not getting an invitation onto Joe's show and revealing that he has no idea what makes Joe Joe:

"The New York Times reviewed more than four dozen of Mr. Kirk’s debates, stretching back to 2017, and discussed them with four debate coaches and university professors."

"The Times review — which examined content, tone, techniques and other hallmarks of each confrontation — reveals how Mr. Kirk used the debate format to deliver a consistent hard-line message while orchestrating highly shareable moments...."

I'm reading "The Debate Style That Propelled Charlie Kirk’s Movement" and I'm using my last gift link of the month so you can see the analysis, the many examples, and the video clips.

Key attributes of Kirk's debate style, as perceived by the experts:

"Please. Stop now. Stop printing articles about him. Stop helping Trump & the gop turn him into a martyr for their cause."

"Two weeks of coverage for a right wing provocateur known for his anti-LGBTQI, bigoted, anti-feminist, & pro-Christian nation rhetoric is beyond enough."

So says one of the most highly rated comments at the New York Times article "Behind Charlie Kirk’s Spiritual Journey That Fused Christianity and Politics/Sunday’s memorial showcased how Mr. Kirk’s experience dovetailed with the broader story of American evangelicalism over the past decade."

That's gift link, so you can see the extent to which the NYT may have slanted the story — clearly, not enough for that commenter.

Charlie's approach was to engage his adversaries in endless, ongoing conversation — more and more speech. The commenter insists on an end to speech. That too is speech — saying you want an end to the speech on a topic you don't want to have to speak about. It has an eloquent implication: The listener may assume you don't have a powerful contradiction. 

"This guy is reaching out to his mortal enemy saying, we need to be gentlemen, sit down together and disagree agreeably. And the next day, he's killed."

Says Van Jones about the message Charlie Kirk sent him on September 9th, which he didn't open until the next day, after Kirk had died.

Jones appears broken up about it — on camera, on CNN, interfacing with Anderson Cooper. If it's political theater, it's good political theater. If Van Jones is experiencing a true change of heart, I hope he is one of millions:

JONES: "Everybody knows we were not friends, okay? At all. But you praise the good when it’s time to memorialize somebody and what he did. And I didn’t even know it was good. He was not for censorship. He was not for civil war. He was not for violence. He was for dialogue, open debate and dialogue. Even with me. Even with me."

COOPER: "Would you have gone on his show?"

"Ted Pellegatta... did odd jobs his whole life and lived in a studio apartment attached to a vacant barn."

"He often stood outside a local restaurant hawking copies of his self-published books of poetry and photos to supplement his $1,000-per-month Social Security check..... But Pellegatta died a happy man when he succumbed to metastatic cancer last month at the age of 85.... He was a MAGA guy who was beloved by liberals. He was an old Marine, waiter and farmhand who made friends with all classes, ages and colors.... His signature achievement was the coffee klatch he convened at the local coffee shop, Before & After, just about every morning for the past 10 years, and in other locations before that. Day after day, he’d sit in the front of the shop, wearing his cowboy hat... over his wild silver hair, and serve as the unofficial chairman.... Anybody who walked in was welcome in the discussion. The ground rules were simple: Show interest in one another... and refuse to fight.... If an argument got too hot, he’d shut it down with a 'meow.' If somebody was pontificating, he’d drop his head and snore. If the conversation annoyed him, he’d get up and leave — then start again the next day...."

From "A dying man said he found the key to happiness. Science backs him up. Ted Pellegatta was a MAGA supporter beloved by liberals in Sperryville, Virginia, whose friends transcended political allegiances" (WaPo)(gift link).

The article — by Dana Milbank — mentions Charlie Kirk, but only like this: "Last week’s gruesome slaying of conservative leader Charlie Kirk was followed predictably by finger-pointing and cries for vengeance in many corners of the United States. But not at Before & After...." I wanted it to mention Charlie Kirk as a model for communication between people who disagree. Anybody who walked in was welcome in the discussion. 

"Czechs agog as national archive prepares to open mysterious envelope sealed for 20 years."

CNN reports.

Today is the day!

What were the last words of the country’s revered first president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk?...

The final thoughts of the statesman, who governed the Czechoslovak Republic from 1918 to 1935, are believed to have been recorded by his son Jan Masaryk just before his death in September 1937 and have been sealed in a letter ever since, according to Czech public radio, which has set up a special section of its website to cover the opening of the envelope on Friday. 

"But one man — who did not agree with the protesters — decided he would occupy the central spot. To the consternation of the others, he invited people to come talk to him one-on-one."

I wrote on March 4, 2011, in "A Free-Speech Countervoice Takes the Center of the Wisconsin Capitol Rotunda."

This interlude in the Wisconsin protests came to mind as I was thinking about the death of Charlie Kirk and what his supporters might do without him. I think there is a method of engagement with people, showing courage and openness to the exchange of ideas, that is available to everyone, and it is what this one man did in 2011.

I wrote at the time: "I started to imagine Wisconsinites coming back to the building every day, talking about everything, on and on, indefinitely into the future. That man who decided to hold dialogues in the center of the rotunda is a courageous man. But it isn't that hard to be as courageous as he was. In the long run, it's easier to do that than to spend your life intimidated and repressed. That man was showing us how to be free. He was there today, but you — and you and you! — could be there tomorrow, standing your ground, inviting people to talk to you, listening and going back and forth, for the sheer demonstration of the power of human dialogue and the preservation of freedom."

"Kirk was practicing politics in exactly the right way. He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him."

"He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion. When the left thought its hold on the hearts and minds of college students was nearly absolute, Kirk showed up again and again to break it. Slowly, then all at once, he did. College-age voters shifted sharply right in the 2024 election.... ... I envied what he built. A taste for disagreement is a virtue in a democracy. Liberalism could use more of his moxie and fearlessness.... It is supposed to be an argument, not a war; it is supposed to be won with words, not ended through bullets. I wanted Kirk to be safe for his sake, but I also wanted him to be safe for mine, and for the sake of our larger shared project...."

Writes Ezra Klein, in "Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way" (NYT).

That resonates with something Meade just texted me:

"When people stop talking, really bad stuff starts. When marriages stop talking, divorce happens. When civilizations stop talking, civil war ensues. When you stop having a human connection with someone you disagree with, it becomes a lot easier to want to commit violence against… pic.twitter.com/Kq1Cbq744S

— DiploAct (@diploact) September 10, 2025