"There’s always trouble in the Church of England.... They’re always tying themselves in knots about something or other."

"But this is a big one, because they’ve decided that their whole operation is a festival of ableism and that their meek priests are not feeling very blessed at all. One, quoted in a new report called 'All Kinds of Minds,' says that the pressure of trying to appear 'typical' means that when he gets home after a hard day at work (me neither) he has to lie on the floor to literally ground himself.... [T]he report reckons that the pressure on vicars to be loud and interesting puts intolerable pressure on those who are 'neurodivergent.'..."

Writes Jeremy Clarkson, in "I know how to fill churches. Deconsecrate them/My idea to fill the pews would mean hiring out churches for parties — but a new report focuses instead on calming down neurodivergent vicars" (London Times).

Clarkson goes on to crack some jokes at the expense of the neurodivergent, but I didn't think the jokes were much good, so let's just read that article he linked to: "Church urged to embrace neurodivergent parishioners (and priests)/A report says the assumptions that preachers should be extroverts and worshippers must sit still were contributing to 'cultures of ableism.'"

"When I ask, rather too intrusively, what being locked-in feels like, she suggests I sit in a chair for three hours with my mouth taped up."

"If and when I get uncomfortable, I must not move. 'It sounds horrific, right?'"

From "Life with locked-in syndrome: ‘Despite everything, you are alive’/Matt Rudd has remarkable conversations with three Britons who, after life-changing accidents, have fully active minds but cannot move or speak, and can communicate only via the blink of an eye" (London Times).

"The artist Michaela Stark, who is known for binding her own flesh so that it spills over, confronting those who see it with their own idea of what is considered beautiful..."

"... and who also posed for a Met mannequin — put it... bluntly: 'It institutionalizes the idea that bodies are different.'"

From "The Met Makes a Statement With 9 New Mannequin Bodies/The latest Costume Institute exhibition expands its ideas of who, exactly, belongs in fashion. Will the gala follow suit?" (NYT)(gift link, so you can see the artist's bound flesh spilling over and the quite interesting mannequins in their fashions).

"Stark [said] that the images that come out of the gala matter, especially now. 'Who’s on that red carpet and what their bodies are like is a political statement,' she said. To really inspire change, she said, the party needs at least some 'fabulous fat women wearing fabulous gowns.' 'If it is watered down to an Ozempic-fueled event of skinny girls wearing paintings on the red carpet,' she said, 'that’s an active denial of what this exhibition is really about.'"

The idea of "wearing paintings" relates to the theme of the Met Gala this year, which is something about the way fashion has channeled fine art. We'll see how literally the gala-goers take it. I hope nobody uses the idea of walking about inside a picture frame. 

AND: The Gala is tonight, so watch for the picture frame idea. It's on my bingo card. So is a "Starry Night" star on each breast.

"You know, the hot one, with polio."

My son Chris took a photo of a sign in an ice cream shop in Austin, Texas:

Chris happens to reading a book about FDR at the moment — "FDR." On Sunday, he sent me this passage that describes FDR’s first public appearance after being paralyzed from polio:

"The American Cornhole League said in 2023 that Webber was a 'shining example of our slogan — anyone can play, anyone can win.'"

That's the last line of a Fox10 article with the headline "Quadruple-amputee cornhole player accused of shooting man to death during argument."

Dayton James Webber, 27, is a professional cornhole player. He was 10 months old when he had a blood infection that cost him his limbs.

It's hard to picture a quadruple amputee shooting a gun, but we are told that he was also driving a car, he shot the front-seat passenger, and there were also backseat passengers, and when they got out of the car and declined to pull the victim out of the car for him, Webber drove off with the victim still in the front seat.

And so it goes for the shining example of the notion that anyone can do anything.

By the way, who knew there was a professional cornhole league?

Gavin Newsom requests that we spare him our fake fucking outrage.

You didn’t give a shit about the President of the United States of America posting an ape video of President Obama or calling African nations shitholes — but you’re going to call me racist for talking about my lifelong struggle with dyslexia?

Spare me your fake fucking outrage,… https://t.co/ABNZJQJLcj

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) February 23, 2026

So Gavin's playing a major role in the normalization of "fuck." That's one of the ways he's like Trump. I'm starting a "Newsom is like Trump" tag. You'll see.

But I need to call attention to his use of the word "spare," which we were just talking about, here, 3 days ago, after the father of the gold-medal-winning figure skater said "I spared no money, no time." Compare that to Newsom's "Spare me your fake fucking outrage." "I spared no money" means I held no money back. And "Spare me your fake fucking outrage" means don't give me any of your FFO — hold it all back.

I've thought about it a lot, and "spare" is not a contronym (AKA a Janus word). It does not belong with the notorious "cleave" and the king of confusion "sanction."

"The reaction from the student body points to a larger issue: many people my age don’t want to take the easiest path but..."

"... if it’s being offered to hundreds of your peers, giving them the chance to earn higher grades or better job opportunities, that’s what you do. Otherwise, you feel like a sucker.... "

Writes Elsa Johnson, in "I exposed Stanford’s disability racket. I was stunned by the reaction on campus After my revelation that elite students are claiming to be disabled to get cushy perks, I expected blowback — but what happened next surprised me" (London Times).

"Many of my peers and I wouldn’t mind — and might even prefer — our teachers and administrators being tougher on us. After all, the accommodations we’re gaming today won’t help us in the real world. In the workplace you won’t have sympathetic OAE advisers giving you extra time to perform a surgery if you’re a doctor. No one is going to excuse you from a tricky business presentation because you claim 'anxiety.'..."

Here's my post from a few days ago about Johnson's original essay.

"And some 'disabilities' are just downright silly. Students claim 'night terrors'; others say they 'get easily distracted' or they 'can’t live with others.'"

"I know a guy who was granted a single room because he needs to wear contacts at night. I’ve heard of a girl who got a single because she was gluten intolerant. That’s why I felt justified in claiming endometriosis as a disability.... The application process was very easy.... The system is staffed largely by empathetic women who want to help students.... In addition to a single housing assignment, I was granted extra absences from class, some late days on assignments and a 15-minute tardiness allowance for all of my classes.... Had I been pushier, I am sure I could have received almost any accommodation I asked for. While I feel entitled to my single room, I would feel guilty about some of the perks I have — except that so many of my fellow students have gamed the system...."

Writes Elsa Johnson, a Stanford student, quoted in "Nearly 40% of Stanford undergraduates claim they’re disabled. I’m one of them/One of the most prestigious universities in the US offers perks to those who say they have ADHD, night terrors, even gluten intolerance. You’d be stupid not to game the system" (London Times).

"Newsom was profoundly dyslexic.... By the third grade, he had worked himself into a panic over his trouble with reading and math."

"'I’m faking being sick, because I hate school and I’m stressed, and they’re always having to pick me up early,' he recalled.... He was a scrawny, shy boy with a bowl cut. 'He always called himself stupid,' his sister said, and other kids apparently agreed. 'The guys kept saying, "If you’re looking for your brother, he’s hanging from his underwear on a lamppost."'  In middle school, Newsom took steps to reinvent himself as an athlete. 'Rocky' had recently come out, and he emulated the main character—running up and down hills, drinking raw eggs, learning to box. His sister remembers falling asleep night after night listening to the sound of him relentlessly practicing basketball: shooting, shooting, shooting, shooting. Learning to read was a similar feat."

Writes Nathan Heller, in "Gavin Newsom Is Playing the Long Game/California’s governor has been touted as the Democrats’ best shot in 2028. But first he’ll need to convince voters that he’s not just a slick establishment politician" (The New Yorker).

"When I asked Newsom about his dyslexia in his office one afternoon, he showed me an overstuffed folder of printed material, his reading from the previous evening. Almost every word of text was underlined. He flipped through a galley proof of his memoir, in which the underlining covered whole pages—the only way, he said, that he could read any book, even his own. He produced another folder filled with lined paper and covered with his handwriting: he copies all the text he underlines onto writing pads...."

Are you irked at the existence of a restaurant that serves excellent pasta on high tables where everyone must stand?

I'm reading "A restaurant with no chairs? This tiny pasta spot is worth standing for/Gemini in Dupont Circle is a wonderfully strange home for handmade pasta, natural wine and some of the best ice cream in the United States" (WaPo)(gift link, so you can see all the irked readers in the comments and some pictures of the food).

Sample comments:

1. "One thing about which I have not yet been 'disenchanted' in fine dining restaurants is a seat."

2. "I use a walker and anyplace I go must be accessible. This is a huge nope. Next."

3. "That's one way to ensure a young clientele...." 

4. "That might be a violation of the ADA...." 

5. "Wow. This business seem to have a lot of contempt for its customers. No chairs? Restrictive hours? No pasta outside??? No pasta for TAKE OUT? Good grief. I would never go there."

I'd say as long as people have a lot of choices of places to go, it's good to experiment, and I think it's nice to make a thing out of getting excellent pasta and moving along quickly, not sitting around. For people who want something else, there are all the other restaurants. 

"In the 19th century, virtuoso pianists, including Adolfo Fumagalli, composed left-handed works to wow audiences during encores. (Sometimes, Fumagalli used his right hand to smoke a cigar.)"

"'They were saying, "You think I’m good with two hands? Wait until you see what I can do with only my weaker one,"' McCarthy said. Around the same time, a disabled pianist was also trying to develop a one-handed repertoire: Géza Zichy, a Hungarian who had lost his right arm in a hunting accident as a teenager, transcribed pieces by his friend Franz Liszt, as well as J.S. Bach and others." 

From "Only 5 Fingers Playing Piano, but the Sound of So Many Hands/Nicholas McCarthy overcame rejection to make a professional career playing the surprisingly vast repertoire for left-hand piano" (NYT).

"The most important figure in the repertoire’s development was Paul Wittgenstein, a promising Austrian pianist, who fought with the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I, alongside his brother Ludwig, the future philosopher. Paul Wittgenstein was shot in battle, and woke up in a hospital to learn that doctors had amputated his right arm. Wittgenstein said later in interviews that he had never contemplated giving up music, and recalled drawing a charcoal keyboard on a crate when he was sent to a Siberian prisoner-of-war camp so that he could practice one-handed. In the decades after his release in a prisoner exchange, Wittgenstein used his family’s wealth to commission composers including Ravel, Paul Hindemith, Sergei Prokofiev and Richard Strauss."

"Biden's physical deterioration — most apparent in his halting walk — had become so severe that there were internal discussions about putting the president in a wheelchair, but they couldn't do so until after the election."

Write Jake Tapper and Thompson in a book they call "Original Sin," quoted in "Exclusive: Biden aides discussed wheelchair use if he were re-elected, new book says" (Axios).

The book will be out in a week, so presumably Axios can excerpt anything from the text and call it "exclusive."

Nothing wrong with needing a wheelchair while serving in government. Obviously, Franklin Roosevelt did it, but he also hid it. What's up with the shame? What does it say to people with disabilities to hide your need for a wheelchair? How can it be better to walk in a "halting" style and to risk falling? Was he in pain? Was he on painkillers?

It might be Bad Analogy Day on this blog — see the previous post — so I'll say it: It reminds me of a gay person in the closet. The hiding expresses shame that hurts others in your group and that underestimates the intelligence and empathy of those you're hiding from. Is that a bad analogy?

Speaking of things not done until after the election, here's Chuck Todd, denying responsibility for hiding Biden's fitness. I'm embedding this because Todd's inability to enact sincerity is so funny that I think an aspiring comic actor could use this as a model:

"Since I was born with no legs, it wasn’t long before news crews, national telethons and even the talk show host Maury Povich arrived to capture me in action..."

"... always portraying my simplest activities as inspirational. The short film... 'View From the Floor,' captures my journey navigating tropes, exploitation and the question of whether I’m talented or typecast, superstar or supercrip (a person with a disability who is seen as a superhero for doing everyday things)."

Writes Mindie Lind, about an excellent 5-minute animation, which you can watch at this free-access link to the NYT. 

If you got to that link, the headline is "Applaud My Talent, Not My Disability," but the teaser on the front page is "I’m an Artist, Not 'Inspiration Porn.'" I was interested in the term "Inspiration Porn," but it doesn't even appear on the article page, where the text is by the person who has the disability. Oddly enough, she uses the term "supercrip."

I clicked the link on "supercrip," and, helpfully, I got to an article that used the term "inspiration porn." It's a 2022 article Ben Mattlin, "I Am Not Your Supercrip": "Supercrip stories are a subset of 'inspiration porn.' That term, coined by the late Australian comedian and journalist Stella Young, a wheelchair-user with dwarfism, refers to portrayals of disabled people that treat them as inspirations (rather than as individuals) in ways that effectively say disabled people only exist, or are only worth photographing and writing about, to inspire or motivate nondisabled people."

"[T]he FAA under Trump in 2019 launched a program to hire controllers using the very criteria he decried at his news conference."

"'FAA Provides Aviation Careers to People with Disabilities,' the agency announced on April 11, 2019.... The link under 'targeted disabilities' is now dead, but the Wayback Machine retains links from June 2017 and January 2021 that show the page was unchanged during Trump’s tenure. The list included: Hearing (total deafness in both ears), Vision (Blind), Missing Extremities, Partial Paralysis, Complete Paralysis, Epilepsy, Severe intellectual disability, Psychiatric disability, Dwarfism...."

Writes Glenn Kessler, awarding 4 Pinocchios, in "Trump launched air controller diversity program that he now decries/At news conference, Trump read a list of disabilities he calls disqualifying, but his administration started such hiring in 2019" (WaPo)(free-access link).

"Now, people like Eby control their narrative and can use social media platforms to show the personal, day-to-day minutiae of living with a terminal illness."

"Eby’s first post to hit one million views on TikTok was a series of messages she received from men on a dating app, after telling them she used a cane. (A sampling: '“If I bring my light saber, we can do battles,' 'You’ll fall for me before we even get dinner,' 'Order another cane because girl u got me trippin.') Much like Eby, many successful influencers with terminal illnesses are female and young, or young for their disease. Their relative youth only punctuates the loss when they’re gone. In May, Madison Baloy, who shared her life with Stage IV cancer with almost half a million followers across TikTok and Instagram, died at age 26. In October, Rachel Yaffe, a 27-year-old creator with liver cancer, passed away. Days later, Bella Bradford said goodbye to her followers in a video she had recorded before dying of a rare soft-tissue cancer. 'Remember that you live every day, but you only die once,' she told them. She was 24...."

From "When Your Terminal Illness Makes You a TikTok Star/After being diagnosed with A.L.S. in 2022, Brooke Eby could have turned inward. Instead, she opened up — and found a fan base online" (NYT)(free-access link).

I don't like the use of the word "star" in that headline. The point here should be that there is real human communication on TikTok, and the platform does not deserve to be scoffed as and dismissed as though it's just a lot of kids being silly or striving toward some perverse notion of fame. Why not throw it all away in the name of abstract "national security"? It's just a bunch of dummies and narcissists.

"Singing Simon and Garfunkel’s 'America' to heal my brain 🧠 In 2017, I sustained a brain injury caused by never treated Lyme disease."

"My first symptom was a psychosis that would make me see horrific images nonstop 24 hours a day for 22 months.... About six or seven months into the psychosis I lost all control of the muscles in my body including the muscles in my face. I lost my ability to speak.... By then it was too late to treat the Lyme disease; it was all about strengthening my brain and getting my ability back. Two years ago, after progressing from wheelchair, to walker, to cane, back to my feet I was still struggling with my speech when I intuited that playing the ukulele could help by doing multiple things at the same time as a regular practice...."

Why I don't have any hobbies.

I'm reading "Six Underrated Hobbies to Try Out/Picking up a new pastime is no small feat" (The Atlantic). "What is an underrated hobby that you love?" it asks.

I don't think I've ever used the word "hobby" to refer to anything I do. I don't relate to the idea of a "hobby," even though I like to do what I want, what interests me, and I have almost nothing but free time. I don't think of this blog as a hobby and might be annoyed if someone I knew called it that. But maybe I would be better off if I did something that genuinely deserved the label "hobby." I don't consider walking in the woods a hobby. Or reading. Maybe photographing the sunrise every day is a hobby, but this is the first time I've connected it with that word, which, to my ear, sounds diminishing.

So let's check out these 6 things. 1. Collecting animal figurines, 2. Playing video games (why not count watching TV?!), 3. Paraclimbing (climbing for persons with disabilities (I don't think sports are "hobbies")), 4. Boxing (another sport), 5. Making pizza from scratch (cooking can be a hobby), 6. Walking the dog and paying attention to the plants and animals that interest the dog (I'm intrigued by the idea of paying attention as a hobby).

Well, it's Labor Day, and I like thinking of my own personal freedom from labor. I'm not decrepit enough to deserve the word "retired" — if you want to think about words. That has to do with withdrawing or receding, retreating, or falling back. I'm reading the OED. Maybe paying attention to words and looking them up in the OED is my hobby.

Did you know that the original meaning of "hobby" is "A small or middle-sized horse; an ambling or pacing horse; a pony"? That goes back to the 1400s. The meaning we know — which begins in the early 1800s — comes from the idea of riding a toy horse — a "hobby-horse." It's "A favourite occupation or topic, pursued merely for the amusement or interest that it affords, and which is compared to the riding of a toy horse...; an individual pursuit to which a person is devoted (in the speaker's opinion) out of proportion to its real importance."

When do you look at your own activities and judge your interest in them to be out of proportion to their "real" importance? It seems that if you're going to call something your "hobby," you're embracing the idea that your love of it seems foolish when viewed from the outside. By the same token, if you decline to use the word "hobby" for what you do out of interest and love, you are deprioritizing what other people think.

"One of the joys of my life in the social churn of New York is living with a son whose inability to read the room makes him incapable of telling anything but the truth."

"Once, as my husband, Harry Evans, and I left a pretentious social gathering in the Hamptons, Georgie told the host sunnily: 'Thank you very much. No one spoke to me really, so it was a very boring evening. The food was OK. I doubt I will come again.' 'I have never been prouder of you in my life!' shouted my husband in the car. How many times have all of us wanted to say that as we gushed about the fabulous time we just hadn’t had? Then there was the moment he went up to Anna Wintour at one of my book parties and asked if she was Camilla Parker Bowles. And the time at the intake meeting for a supported work program, when the therapist asked Georgie, 'Has anyone ever molested you?' 'Unfortunately not,' he replied. Georgie teaches me every day how much we depend on social lies to make the world go round...."

Writes Tina Brown, in "My Son and Gus Walz Deserve a Champion Like Tim Walz" (NYT)(free-access link).

Tina Brown, the famous author and editor, is the mother of "Georgie, a 38-year-old on the spectrum who still lives with me." She "recognized" Tim Walz's son Gus as "one of 'ours,' a sweet, unfiltered, slightly bewildered-looking young man who wasn’t quite sure what was expected of him in this epic moment of political adulation."

Imagine going to posh parties filled with celebrities at the Anna Wintour level and bringing along a 38-year-old man who does not — and seemingly cannot — refrain from saying insulting things to people. It's like being inside a Marx Brothers movie and forbidden to laugh. 

"Mr. Harrell’s team sank into his brain’s outer layer four electrode arrays that looked like tiny beds of nails."

"That was double the number that had recently been implanted in the speech areas of someone with A.L.S., or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, in a separate study. Each array’s 64 spikes picked up electric impulses from neurons that fired when Mr. Harrell tried to move his mouth, lips, jaw and tongue to speak.Three weeks after surgery, scientists gathered in Mr. Harrell’s living room in Oakland, Calif., to 'plug him in,' connecting the implant to a bank of computers with cables attached to two metal posts protruding from Mr. Harrell’s skull."

From "A.L.S. Stole His Voice. A.I. Retrieved It. In an experiment that surpassed expectations, implants in a patient’s brain were able to recognize words he tried to speak, and A.I. helped produce sounds that came close to matching his true voice" (NYT)(free access link).

"Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan revealed Friday that a Facebook user claiming to be a 'cousin' of a juror in former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial..."

"... suggested he had advanced knowledge of last week’s guilty verdict. 'Today, the Court became aware of a comment that was posted on the Unified Court System’s public Facebook page and which I now bring to your attention,' Merchan wrote in a letter to Trump attorney Todd Blanche and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. 'In the comment, the user, "Michael Anderson," states: "My cousin is a juror and says Trump is getting convicted … Thank you folks for all your hard work!!! …."' the judge explained. .... In his Facebook profile, Anderson describes himself as a 'Transabled & a professional sh** poster.'"

I'm reading "Hush money judge alerts Trump lawyer, prosecutors to Facebook post claiming prior knowledge of jury’s verdict" (NY Post).

It's hard to imagine how this can amount to anything... even if it turns out that the person who posted actually is the cousin of one of the jurors.

I've chosen to link to this story at the NY Post, because other news outlets did not include the detail that "Michael Anderson" called himself "transabled." According to Wikipedia, "transabled" is a term used by some persons with body integrity dysphoria, which is "a rare mental disorder characterized by a desire to have a sensory or physical disability or feeling discomfort with being able-bodied, beginning in early adolescence and resulting in harmful consequences."

Why would someone who presented himself as a "shit poster" — I'd write "shitposter" — also want to identify as "transabled"? Actually, it's hard to understand why a shitposter would want to call himself a shitposter. Wouldn't the usual game of shitposting be undercut by telling people that's what you're doing?