King Charles arrives at the White House.

I don't know why I find this so charming. I dreamed about King Charles last night. I felt sorry for that poor man somehow.

From Trump's speech: "For nearly two centuries before the revolution, this land was settled and forged by men and women who bore in their souls the blood and noble spirit of the British. Here on a wild and untamed continent, they set loose the ancient English love of liberty and Great Britain’s distinctive sense of glory, destiny, and pride. And that’s what it is: glory, destiny, and pride. The American patriots who pledged their lives to independence in 1776 were the heirs to this majestic inheritance. Their veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage. Their hearts beat with an English faith in standing firm for what is right, good, and true.

"First photo from the far side of the Moon...."

EARTHSET.
April 6, 2026.

Humanity, from the other side. First photo from the far side of the Moon. Captured from Orion as Earth dips beyond the lunar horizon. Photo: NASA pic.twitter.com/ZEBTQA85TY

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) April 7, 2026

Of course, it's not actually the first photo from the far side of the moon. It's a photo from this new trip to the moon... to the vicinity of the moon. They always overhype space travel and ruin the potential for a real emotional response.

"If, at any point in your life, you have ever believed that women say they want nice guys but really want bad guys, or that love has to hurt to be real..."

"... or that romance and stalking are basically the same thing, I think we all know which entities are to blame: 

1. The manosphere

2. The patriarchy

3. A young British woman who died in 1848 of tuberculosis at the age of 30, but not before unleashing upon the world the most problematic love story of all time, 'Wuthering Heights.'"

Ha ha. I'm reading "'Wuthering Heights' and the birth of the toxic boyfriend/Heathcliff and Catherine’s trauma-bonded romance is dysfunctional and despicable. But you can’t help but weep" (WaPo).

There's a new movie version of "Wuthering Heights." You've probably noticed. This one stars Margot Robbie — the same actress who played "Barbie" and who is 35 years old, playing a character who, in the book, dies at the age of 18. I've seen some reviews of the new movie, and I was motivated to rewatch the great 1939 version.

"Althouse takes boxing day pretty seriously."

Said Old and slow in last night's open thread, "Sunrise — 7:13." It was only the second post of the day. The first, "Tea with Larry," at 9:29 a.m., was also an open thread. It consisted of 2 photographs and the single sentence, "It's a no-news Saturday, the day after the day after Christmas."

It was the day after the day after Christmas. But it was not Boxing Day. Boxing Day is the day after Christmas, and there were 5 posts on Boxing Day. So what was this day after the day after Christmas? Do we call it nothing but the day after the day after Christmas (or, if we say Boxing Day, the day after Boxing Day)?

It is the Feast of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist. Those who have grown weary of the Christmas holiday might turn to the Feast of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist for fresh inspiration.

But now it is December 28th. Is it a back to normal day? Will scanning the headlines in the usual way yield blog posts with the natural flow that is my long custom? If not, is it a day with a name — like Christmas, Boxing Day, and the Feast of St. John the Apostle and Evangelist — a day we might observe with special activities?

It is a special day, but it's a day I wouldn't want to focus on: It is the Feast of the Holy Innocents:

The Feast of the Holy Innocents was one of a series of days known as the Feast of Fools, and the last day of authority for boy bishops. Parents temporarily abdicated authority. In convents and monasteries the youngest nuns and monks were allowed to act as abbess and abbot for the day. These customs, which were thought to mock religion, were condemned by the Council of Basel (1431). In medieval England children were reminded of the mournfulness of the day by being whipped in bed in the morning; this custom survived into the 17th century....

I thought it was just me, but apparently it's a big, sad trend.

I don't like shopping. I can't make myself go (other than food shopping). Occasionally, I consider forcing myself to go shopping — find some clothes to try on and buy at least something — but I'm beset with boredom, and I do not go. Have I even set foot in a clothes store in the past year? Somehow I pictured other women going into the shops, getting excited about clothing items, and splurging on things.

But here's Robin Givhan — in "Why Is Shopping an Abyss of Blah?" (NYT) — "Shopping has become a drag. A bore. An obligation. A thing you do alone on your phone, not out in the world.... Shopping should be about lust. Instead, shopping has become a slog.... Our senses are flattened, our appetites dulled. Nothing seems quite right.... Shopping has become a grotesquerie of commodified consumerism and environmental waste.... Retailers became more corporate and mimed soliloquies on status and trends. Shoppers’ aesthetic discernment grew weak and flabby. A once lively conversation between sellers and buyers quieted. Shopping lost its fizz...."

"I thought the audiobook was the move, but hearing this in her own voice is so much worse than reading it. I couldn’t even make it through the intro."

Said Instapundit's friend, who bought the Olivia Nuzzi book.

Ha ha. I was going to listen to the audiobook (commission earned), but I clicked the "Audible sample" button and as soon as Nuzzi's voice began, I clicked it off and exclaimed "Oh, no!"

She was able to get out exactly 6 words: "For the women who have mothered me...."

I was reacting to the voice alone, but the meaning lingered — For the women who have mothered me.... No no no no! I don't know who she's talking about or what they did that constituted "mothering" in her world view and I don't want to know. 

CORRECTION: 7 words.

I feel as though unseen readers are leaning on me to write about certain topics that I see out there.

That provokes me to resistance. I've been writing this blog for almost 22 years, and the reason it works for me is that I only do what motivates me. I realize that this feeling that you're leaning on me to write about [whatever] must necessarily come from within — It's coming from inside the Althouse — but please know that if it were coming from you, I would be asking you to cut it out.

"All the women of my generation, including Hillary Clinton, were wearing jeans in the 1960s. But where do you go from Woodstock?"

"How do you professionalize that look when those women start entering the work force? You professionalize it by wearing a feminized suit from Armani."

Said costume designer and historian Deborah Nadoolman Landis, quoted in "Giorgio Armani, Fashion’s Master of the Power Suit, Dies at 91/He created a male uniform whose feminized form won favor with women. An alliance with movie stars made his name all but synonymous with red-carpet dressing" (NYT).

Longtime readers of this blog may remember the time I bought an Armani suit. It was 2008, and I seriously believed it was going to be infinitely useful:

Here's the Giorgio Armani store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, where a lovely saleswoman sees that I admire that jacket trimmed with fur and feathers and says something to me — "It's fox" — that prompts me to ask a question about sizes and the long-nurtured desire for the perfect pantsuit.

I have — a thousand times — wished I'd bought the quirky jacket instead of what I'd thought would be so practical. I'd have worn the jacket a hundred times a year since then —1700 times — and I have worn the suit exactly... never. And that's the argument in favor of impulse buying. 

"It is the idea that we all contain the world and the world disappears when we disappear. There’s a word for that and I can’t f***ing remember what it is."

"That’s what I’m afraid of. I’m afraid of that happening to me and every time that I can’t remember a word or something, I think, 'This is the start.'"

Said Stephen King, quoted in "Stephen King on dementia — ‘I’m afraid of that happening to me’/The bestselling author, 77, talks about why he writes every day — and says each time he can’t remember the right word he worries: 'This is the start'" (London Times).

The article isn't entirely about the fear of your own brain pre-deceasing you. It's about other fears, including the fear of AI. King says:

“I don’t really care about AI. My sons [Owen King and Joe Hill] are both writers … and they’re all hot to trot about AI and how awful it is for writers.... I just think that it’s a foregone conclusion that people are going to write better prose than some kind of automated intelligence.... I think that once there is a kind of self-replicating intelligence, once it learns how to teach itself, in other words, it isn’t going to be a question of human input any more. It’s going to be able to do that itself. And then … have you ever read The Time Machine by HG Wells? In it, a Victorian scientist travels to the year 802,701...

I like how he has the precise year, down to the 1, still in his mind and worth saying as a challenge to the fiend, Dementia, that wants to infiltrate and destroy.

"Share this video with someone you'd love to visit these incredible places with."

Says the robot voiceover at the end of "12 Must See Places Before Living [sic] This World!" — a TikTok that Meade shared with me... not because I was someone he'd "love to visit these incredible places with."

He knows and I know that neither of us would feel that we must see those places/"places" and both of us know that about the other and both knew that the other would find the idealized pictures absurd.

I enjoyed the first clip — a man cartwheeling into clear turquoise water — but scoffed aloud at the notion of going all the way to the Maldives because the water there might perhaps be clear and colorful.

But the second destination provoked my horror of traveling:

  

Somehow I don't think that will be my point of view.

I resist even examining why I have a strong mental barrier that stops me from reading this article.

"They’re torturing themselves now, which is kind of fun to see. They’re afraid that their little AIs are going to come for them."

"They’re apocalyptic, and so existential, because they have no connection to real life and how things work. They’re afraid the AIs are going to be as mean to them as they’ve been to us."

Said Doug Rushkoff, quoted in "'They’re afraid their AIs will come for them': Doug Rushkoff on why tech billionaires are in escape mode/The leading intellect on digital culture believes the recent tech reckoning is corrective justice for Silicon Valley barons" (The Guardian).

I don't know know whether to be afraid of AI. I observe from a distance and occasionally dip into it whimsically, like this:

 

Clearly, AI can't keep up with me, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't worry. The whole world is drifting somewhere I won't understand.

ADDED: Having tried Bard, I gave ChatGPT a chance:

Just say no.

 

Please don't comment "meow" as some of you did on yesterday's post about what Majorie Taylor Greene wore to the SOTU.

That would be sexist.

I'm reading "Melanie Lynskey Responds to America's Next Top Model Winner Adrianne Curry's Critique of Her Body in The Last of Us/'I am supposed to be SMART, ma’am. I don’t need to be muscly,' the actor tweeted" (Vanity Fair):

On Wednesday, the America's Next Top Model cycle 1 winner responded to a photo of the actor, critiquing her appearance as not being befitting of her role in the post-apocalyptic TV series The Last of Us. She wrote in a since-deleted tweet, “her body says life of luxury...not post apocolyptic [sic] warlord.” She added, “where is Linda Hamilton when you need her?,” referring to the Terminator star. Lynskey saw the social media message before the model deleted it, screenshotting the exchange and tweeting it out with the caption, “Firstly—this is a photo from my cover shoot for InStyle magazine, not a still from HBO’s The Last Of Us.” She added, “And I’m playing a person who meticulously planned & executed an overthrow of FEDRA. I am supposed to be SMART, ma’am. I don’t need to be muscly. That’s what henchmen are for.”

"FEDRA" is an acronym. You need to know the show to get it. Or look it up. 

"SMART" not an acronym. Lynskey is just yelling. I recommend not yelling that you're smart. It's too...

"They just needed a disease and they don't need it anymore."

 That's what I said out loud — just because I wanted to blurt something out — after reading the NYT headline "What Happened to Monkeypox?" 

I'm reading the article now, and I see that it's not about the political use of this disease. It's about how the cases are declining — down 85% since August, we're told.

"Experts" cite 4 factors:

First, vaccines helped slow the virus’s spread (despite a rocky rollout). Second, gay and bisexual men reduced activities.... The third reason is related: the Pride Month effect...

That is, apparently, during Pride Month (June), gay men had "more parties and other festivities [that] involved casual sex.

The fourth factor, experts tell us, is that a disease that spreads through close contact is "harder to transmit" and therefore "self-limiting virus." 

So what do you think of my knee-jerk, it's-all-politics answer? Was I just amusing myself, imitating a cynic?

"Nordic larpers... 'are emotional junkies.... Most of us larp because we can feel it and smell it with our bodies.' 'Nordic larps—they’re not for everybody'...."

"Some of them 'can be intense experiences, and that is probably not what we want to offer to our mainstream audience.'"

That's just an isolated snippet from "LARPing Goes to Disney World/On a 'Star Wars' spaceship, the company has taken live-action role-play to a lavish extreme. Guests spend days eating, scheming, and assembling lightsabres in character" by Neima Jahromi (The New Yorker).

LARP = live-action role play. 

We're told that in the "Nordic larp scene," they prefer "games with deep emotional involvement and few rules." Nordic designers of LARPs were inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, but they rejected the idea of using actuarial tables to determine who wins and loses a fight. That "didn’t really fit the culture here.... Nordics are way more collaborative than adversarial." 

I'm not at all familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, but it was funny to read that it's based on insurance underwriting. 

Anyway, the article is mostly about a big Disney/"Star Wars" production. I had trouble understanding this. My point of reference was a Renaissance Faire, not that I'd ever attended one, but I've seen that phenomenon discussed and mocked for decades, most recently in episode 5 of "Love on the Spectrum U.S." Isn't this LARPing like going to a Renaissance Faire?

I've been on immersive Disney World rides like "Pirates of the Caribbean," where they load you into a fake boat and pull you though various scenes, but you're still a passive member of an audience. I did that only in the context of amusing my children. I can't imagine wanting further immersion with the pressure of being part of the show. But I will put some effort into trying to understand what other people are finding rewarding. 

And does this mean I'm a standoffish observer in life, missing out on the fun? I'm standoffish about manufactured things that you're supposed to get caught up in. If there's one thing that makes me feel like a separate individual, it's being in the midst of people who are having an emotional group transformation.

Jabbing with a sharp object — tolerated and not tolerated.

This is not about hyperdermic needles. Not another post about vaccines. This is about 2 movies I encountered last night, and the sharp objects involved — a surgical scalpel and a harpoon.

I began watching the 1950 movie — written and directed by Joseph Mankiewicz — "No Way Out." Sidney Poitier plays a young doctor, working in a prison ward, and Richard Widmark is his no-good racist patient. It's unfolding well enough. Here are some early scenes...

... but then a tray of medical instruments is left right next to racist Widmark so that it's easy for him to grab a scalpel. I had to turn it off. I wouldn't subject myself to the cheap suspense of waiting for Widmark to whip out the scalpel and stab Sidney Poitier!

I switched to a different movie, "Terror in a Texas Town." This is a 1958 western that's of interest because it was written by Dalton Trumbo during the blacklist days, and it stars Sterling Hayden and Sebastian Cabot. But it's an absurd refuge from that scalpel, because it's absolutely no secret — it's shown in part at the beginning of the film — that in the final showdown between hero and villain, the hero is armed with a harpoon! Watch the ending here:

I watched that entire movie. All that harpoon action. The harpoon was displayed and described again and again. It's so weird that I wouldn't put up with the scalpel business, but I watched an entire movie that was about one man harpooning another man. Unlike Sidney Poitier's character, the harpoonee deserved skewering.

Now, you're probably thinking that the harpooned villain was played by Sebastian Cabot, a fat actor who always played a fat man. He was a villain — an evil capitalist — isn't a cartoonish capitalist always fat? He's fat, and a harpoon is displayed over and over again, and Sterling Hayden is getting more and more focused and determined. Cabot must be his "whale."

If you watch the clip, you know — spoiler alert — that guess is wrong. In fact, Sebastian Cabot filmed all his scenes inside a single room — a hotel room. He didn't attend his own shootouts. He hired people, while he remained ensconced indoors with copious room service food and a beautiful secretary. Luxurious for the character and low-budget for the filmmakers.

"Ladies, if a man invites you to his place — and it's just the 2 of you — for a beverage... he has asked you if you'd like to fuck, and you said, yes, probably..."

"You have told that man, I'd absolutely be interested in fucking you — pretty much tonight.... If you send the message I pretty much am up to fuck, and the guy leans in to kiss you, he may be operating on bad information. Our system doesn't put him off the hook. The man is still required to respond to the signals as soon as they are clarified.... I suppose there could be such a thing as a 24-year-old who can be in a meeting with a Senator and is still too dumb to know what an invitation to come up to his place really means.... The Senator didn't read the signals wrong. The Senator read the signals exactly as they were sent. They were the wrong signals. I think it was very generous of the Senator to say he read the signals wrong. He didn't read anything wrong. The signals were crystal clear. They were sent wrong." 

Scott Adams takes a strong position on the Huma Abedin accusation against an unnamed Senator.

 

1. I initially resisted taking this story to heart because Abedin did not come out strongly on the side of women but is continuing a pattern of protecting Democratic Party men, as I showed you here, yesterday.

2. I have personally lived my entire life, going back to adolescence, with the understanding that Scott Adams is putting very starkly, that one's actions are understood that way. In fact, I followed a personal credo: Don't give him any ideas. I'm sure I missed out on some lovely experiences because I was so cautious, and this was a caution that went way beyond avoiding sexual assault. I didn't want the other person to feel hurt or embarrassed. 

3. So I agree with part of what Scott Adams is saying, that by accepting the Senator's invitation, she gave him hope, and she ought to know that her action inspired hope.

4. But hope goes on only in his head (and the rest of his nervous system). He probably also had hope as soon as he saw her, as soon as she was friendly to him. He got ideas. Fine! The question is what can he do with that hope? 

5. Since I spent a lifetime operating under the credo Don't give him any ideas, I'm not in a great position to parody Scott's advice to ladies with a statement that begins, "Gentlemen, if a woman accepts your invitation," but there is one thing I'm sure of, so let me try.

6. Gentlemen, if a woman accepts your invitation into your place for a drink, you may be one step closer to fucking but you are also one step closer to humiliation and far worse things, and you'd better know what you are doing and not just plop down next her and kiss her, pushing your tongue into her mouth, pressing her back on the sofa.

7. Notice Adams's language: "the guy leans in to kiss you." That's like kissing in a romcom, where the man gradually and gently moves his lips closer to hers and observes her response, so that there's lots of nonverbal communication. That's not what happened (as far as we know from Abedin's description). The Senator suddenly advanced to French kissing (and whatever that "pressing" was). 

8. I would tend to think that Abedin had a lot of self-esteem and — rightly! — believed she could offer a man a wonderful relationship and intended to give this man a chance to enter into the highly valuable sphere that is her life. Let's keep talking about what actions mean. His action meant: You're not an important person in my life. 

"Not everyone will wake up at 4.30am and walk up 1,000 stairs to see the sun coming up, it requires discipline and a special type of personality."

Says Breathwork coach Aigul Safuillina, quoted in "Sunrise breathwork meditation and exercise on a Hong Kong hilltop combines fitness, mind and body detox, and a reset of your circadian clock/Breathwork coach Aigul Safuillina started the Lantau Sunrise Club to promote group exercise, teach the basics of proper breathing and embrace the natural world/Dozens have signed up to practise tactical breathing and learn the ‘rock and roll’ exercise. A club member explains they get his day off to a positive start" (South China Morning Post).

It's interesting for me to read about people who are doing something that's very similar to what I do but also very different. I'm intent on seeing the sunrise and I have a number of steps I need to do to get to my vantage point (about 1700 steps each way, according to my iPhone), but I have a lot of differences: I do it every day (not once a week), I don't have a set of physical exercises to do when I get there (I take photographs), I don't meet up with a group or have any sort of club. 

And I feel distanced from notions like "tactical breathing" and "mind and body detox" and "special type of personality." Just to harp on that last one, what is this "special type of personality"?! That's off-putting, suggesting that most people should just forget about it and leave it to hyper-disciplined freaks. I know I wouldn't have regarded myself as the "special type." 

I do regard it as a spiritual experience but I would not want an instructor of any kind speaking to me, especially speaking to me as a member of a group and stressing fitness and breathing. I could imagine an idealized guru speaking to me is just the absolutely perfect way, but better than nothing is, in this case, a very high standard.

Okay, guys, but I've got to tell you — even though I see what you're seeing — and in spite of my stoical distancing — I got chills — repeatedly, even on a second viewing.

OMFG. I made it 15 seconds in.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) March 24, 2021

Can I explain getting chills? I'm not a fan of the Biden administration or a sucker for social programs, but the music is familiar and emotionally effective, and the woman's commitment to the role — with added silliness — is disarming. I can't tell that this particular performer is a dimwit fan of the new administration. This clip made me think of this extremely silly extolling of Trump: 

 

It's humor. But does it sell the politician? Does my getting chills mean that propaganda is working on me? I rewatched "The Little Mermaid" sequence with that song, and I got the chills in all the same places. So I tend to think it's all about the music. That's some powerful emotional manipulation.