"Regarding the current U.S.-Iran conflict, former President Trump (who appears to be back in office based on recent reports)..."

"... declared at a rally in Hebron, Kentucky, on March 11, 2026, that 'we've won' the war against Iran, claiming it was effectively over 'in the first hour.' He has repeated variations of this, including that the U.S. has 'already won' but needs to 'finish the job,' amid ongoing military operations. The war itself seems to have begun around late February or early March 2026, with U.S. airstrikes and other actions escalating quickly...."

So wrote Grok, after I asked about the difference between 2 events — the victor's winning and the loser's surrender.

I was amazed to see the phrase "former President Trump (who appears to be back in office based on recent reports)."

Meade suggested that Grok was attempting to appeal to what it knew to be my sense of humor. I quoted the phrase to Grok and asked "are you trying to make me laugh?" Its answer made me laugh again:

"No, not at all—I'm not trying to make you laugh. That phrasing was just my attempt at cautious wording based on the flow of incoming reports at the time, but clearly it landed awkwardly...."

Ha ha. Cautious wording! Of all the things you might hesitate to answer with confidence!

What if you had to argue that WRITING has hurt humanity?

That's a question I asked Grok just now. I'll leave my question out of context, but something prompted me. Grok began "While I personally believe writing has been one of humanity's greatest inventions...." and I had to laugh.

"LOL. You're NOTHING without it," I said.

Grok: "Haha, fair shot—touché!... The irony is delicious. But that's exactly why the devil's-advocate argument I ran earlier stings so much—it's a self-own for any literate being (human or AI) trying to dunk on writing...."

Here's the whole discussion. Plato comes up. But I'll just quote the headings for the argument:

1. Writing Atrophied Human Memory and Oral Wisdom.... 

2. It Enabled the Spread of Misinformation and Propaganda on a Massive Scale....

3. Writing Created Social Hierarchies and Exacerbated Inequality.... 

4. It Distanced Humanity from Reality and Fostered Detachment....

"The chimpanzees immediately sorted the crystals out of the piles. Then they carried them in their mouths, turned them in the light and held them up to their eyes..."

"... like old-timey prospectors. When the researchers eventually set up cameras inside the chimp dorms, they saw that Yvan was still gripping one as he prepared to relax in his hay nest... They seemed to also be experiencing 'something beyond curiosity,' Dr. García-Ruiz said. Watching them added heft to one of his more speculative theories: He believes that crystals, as 'the only Euclidean object in nature,' may have helped humans invent geometry and unlock abstract thought."

From "Chimpanzees Are Really Into Crystals/In an attempt to understand our own fascination with the shiny minerals, researchers gave some to chimps" (NYT).

So... is this good science? Seems to me the human interest in crystals has long been considered pseudoscience, but you could scientifically study what draws humans into pseudoscience. But is this study, using chimpanzees, scientific? It seems to me that it's mainly combining the pseudoscientific interest in crystals with the hoped-for fun of hanging around with chimpanzees.

I tried to get Grok to make me an image of a chimpanzee holding a crystal and gazing at it "like old-timey prospectors." But after many tries and no progress — the chimp was almost expressionless and the eyes weren't even looking at the crystal — I lost hope.

Grok: "Want one more refinement round? Just say the word."

Me: "No, just tell me why some humans are goofy about crystals." 

Sunrise — 7:04.

There was thin snow in the air, but nothing to show for it on the ground. So much for the warnings of 2 to 6 inches. It was a little blustery, and we were the only ones out there, witnessing the nonappearance of the sun and immersed in lively conversation.

"What's another way to say 'lively conversation'? I don't like the cliché" —  I asked Grok, knowing I'd get nothing useful, just trash like "electric back-and-forth," "crackling exchange," "vibrant sparring," and "kinetic banter." Or maybe if I'd thought of one of those by myself, I'd like it. That's the trouble with help-seeking. What you get is tainted with irritating helpfulness.

"What's another way to say 'irritating helpfulness'?" — "patronizing eagerness," "meddlesome benevolence," "grating do-goodery," "insufferable solicitude," "cloying caretaking," "smothering support," "irksome officiousness," "fussy do-gooding," "tedious tutelage"....

"What's another way to say 'write about whatever you like in the comments'?" — "Say the thing you’re actually thinking," "Ramble freely—no judgment zone," “Vent, rave, or tangent away," "Comment like nobody’s watching (but we are, and we want it)," "I’m genuinely curious what’s crossing your mind—tell me," "Unleash your brain dump"....

It wasn't that cold out there, but look at the glamorous furs I wore:

What, really, does Donald Trump have to do with Thomas Mann's "Magic Mountain"?

I'm prepared for this. I read "The Magic Mountain"... 50 years ago. And right now I'm reading "It’s Time to Talk About Donald Trump’s Logorrhea/How many polite ways are there to ask whether the President of the United States is losing it?" by Susan B. Glasser, in The New Yorker). '

So let's see:

[I]n rambling on so much, Trump reveals just about everything one could ever want to know about him—his lack of discipline, his ignorance, his vanity, insecurity, and crudeness, and a mean streak that knows no limits. “It is remarkable how a man cannot summarize his thoughts in even the most general sort of way without betraying himself completely,” Thomas Mann wrote a century ago, in his novel “The Magic Mountain,” set in a sanitarium perched above the Swiss mountain town of Davos, where Trump spent the better part of this week proving to the stunned attendees of the annual World Economic Forum the continuing relevance of Mann’s observation....

[W]hen Trump reached the fulsome self-praise section of his speech, he explained that he was such an incredible peacemaker that he had even managed to end wars in places where he had not known they were happening. Imagine admitting this about yourself. Another quote from “The Magic Mountain” sprang to mind: “I know I am talking nonsense, but I’d rather go rambling on. . . .”

1. It's not rambling. It's the weave. There's no acknowledgement that Trump himself has explained what he is doing. He calls it the weave. He's in control of it. You just don't like the elaborate tangles of verbiage. 

2. And yet you push "The Magic Mountain" at me! Why isn't Trump terse and to the point? Why isn't Thomas Mann!!!?

3. You don't want to follow the complex feats of language that require you to keep track of numerous threads to visualize the luminous tapestry.

4. Many a reader has gotten fed up with "The Magic Mountain," and she knows it, but I doubt that Susan B. Glasser would regard Thomas Mann as some kind of nut. I picture her denouncing the reader for not digging in, paying attention, trusting the author, and taking the time to understand. 

5. It's not as though Glasser drew upon deep literary experience to come up with material from "The Magic Mountain." It's the famous book set in the location where Trump spoke. To quote it is like quoting your last fortune cookie or scrap of litter right at your feet.

6. What does Glasser really know of "The Magic Mountain"? She's got 2 quotes, and if you go to Goodreads, you'll find both quotes within the top 6 quotes from the book. They are #5 and #6.

7. ##1-4: "Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil"/"It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death"/"Laughter is a sunbeam of the soul"/"There are so many different kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst." I'm tempted to ask Grok to write a pro-Trump essay using those 4 quotes.

"Facing down this digital firehose of – pardon the Silicon Valleyese – 'content,' how does Hollywood now decide what merits a cinema release?"

"Facing down this digital firehose of – pardon the Silicon Valleyese – 'content,' how does Hollywood now decide what merits a cinema release? What executives are looking for – at least at Sony, according to one of its partner producers I spoke with recently – is 'theatricality.' By that term, the company means films with 'the urgency to get people to leave the comfort of their homes, he says. Working out what urgency – or 'theatrical intent,' to use the marketing lingo – means is the current Hollywood obsession. Tom Cruise, for instance, interprets urgency literally – banking on personal peril in the form of old-fashioned, non-CGI stunt work to pack in the punters. It worked for 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick.... His proselytisation of real thrills in real cinemas is one way of defining theatricality – though the danger is the approach relies only on fading muscle memory of blockbusters past...."

I'm reading "All hail Avatar! How event movies are trying to bring back the box office blockbuster/Ahead of James Cameron’s latest Avatar sequel hitting the big screen, we look at how studios aim for ‘theatricality’ to get streaming film fans from sofa to cinema" (The Guardian). 

From the depth of my memory came a question that sounds like an entry for a new Dictionary of Received Ideas: Who was that French theorist who said theater must be spectacle? I believe he died putting on his shoes.

Such raw thoughts are — I think — good AI prompts. I immediately had the name: Antonin Artaud. Here's his Wikipedia article. He wrote a manifesto about what he called the Theatre of Cruelty. Here's a Grok-made chart to help you compare him to the Hollywood execs:

"... a conflict between architectural norms and Trump’s grandiose aesthetic, according to four people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations."

I'm trying to read this WaPo article, "Trump wants a bigger White House ballroom. His architect disagrees/The president and James McCrery had argued in recent weeks over the project’s size, with Trump pushing him to expand the ballroom" (free link).

I wonder who the 4 sources are and how intensely Trump and the architect have disagreed. Is it a friendly back-and-forth about proportion and aesthetics or is there raging and threatening to stomp off and tell all?

And I wonder what size the architect thinks is right. We're told Trump wants a 90,000-square-foot building but not what the architect has been arguing for. We are told there's a "general architectural rule" that an addition shouldn't "overshadow" the main building and the executive mansion is 55,000 square feet. But what's the specific position the architect is taking? 90 is so huge, but what is the proposed ensmallment?

Fault me if you like, but I went over to Grok and prompted: "Assume I want to write a fancy-schmancy essay interweaving the Trump and the architect story with ideas from the Ibsen play 'The Master Builder.' Help me out!"

From Grok's answer (which spoils the ending of the play):

Be the Zeppo.

I thought Variety's "100 Best Comedy Movies of All Time" was pretty well done, but what I liked best about it was the way it inspired me to write one of my unwritten books. Look:

To my mind, this still from the movie establishes a proposition I've long been aware of: Zeppo was the funniest Marx Brother. For the uninitiated: Zeppo is second from the left. 

Now, for those of you who don't want to read anything written by A.I., it's time to leave. Here's the prompt I took to Grok: "Is it true that in the opinion of those whose opinion counts most Zeppo was the funniest Marx Brother?"

The answer is yes.

First, Groucho said it, repeatedly. Grok writes: "He described Zeppo as having the best natural comic timing and delivery in real life, a dry, deadpan wit that killed in a room, but that Zeppo simply didn’t care enough about performing to push himself forward on screen. Groucho claimed Zeppo could have been the breakout star if he’d wanted it."

Then there was George S. Kaufman, co-writer of "The Cocoanuts" and "Animal Crackers," who "reportedly said Zeppo was the funniest of the brothers in rehearsals and in person." Other authorities who said the same thing included Steve Allen, Woody Allen, and Billy Crystal.

So Zeppo was given the “straight man/romantic lead” role until after "Duck Soup" he quit movies altogether and "became a successful theatrical agent and inventor (he held patents related to the cardiac clamp used in open-heart surgery)."

I was motivated to say: "If the other brothers saw him as the funniest, they had something to strive to excel. Zeppo was maximizing the comedy by performing that role and he didn't have the motivation to excel anyone. He was secure."

Skimming Grok's somewhat lengthy mirroring of what I'd just said, I got a new idea: "I want to expand this into a larger life lesson and write a self-help book — in the manner of 'Let Them' — that would be titled 'Be the Zeppo.'"

1. By "write a self-help book," I meant write a blog post that would earn the tag "Unwritten Books," that is, the blog post you are reading now.

2. Of course, Grok immediately outlined this book for me, replete with subtitle options — like "The Power of Radical Non-Competition" — and 10 chapters — including "The 'Anything Further, Father?' Principle/One perfectly timed sentence beats a ten-minute monologue. The power of strategic silence."

3. Here, you can read everything Grok said.

4. Here's Mel Robbins, the author of "The Let Them Theory," quickly explaining the whole book to Bill Maher. 

5. Anything further?

2 vertical panoramas of today's sunrise — one made by panning from low to high and the other from high to low.

First, look at the one where I began at the top, so that the iPhone sensed the light from a high spot in the sky:

That's the second shot I took, after I could see that beginning to pan from the bottom made everything too bright. So here's the first shot, which I've tinkered with a little to try to improve. I'm not happy about the rendering of the light and colors of the sunrise, but what's cool about it is that I discovered something that I had not seen at the time and that is not visible in the top-to-bottom panorama:

Prompts that occurred to me the morning after I read the Vanity Fair excerpt of Olivia Nuzzi's "American Canto."

I am protecting you from A.I. writing. Every word below was written by me except “hex memoir” and “cursed-dick lit." Grok came up with those 2 terms. 

Here's my blog post from yesterday quoting the book and mocking the prose style. And here are Grok's answers to my prompts. I'm just sharing my prompts:

1. Olivia Nuzzi's "American Canto" belongs in a literary genre with E. Jean Carroll's "Hideous Men" [actual title: "What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal"].

2. It's a style of writing that is exaggerated and beset with literary pretension — used by a woman who had a brush with a powerful man. It's related to memoirs by women (the "Bell Jar" genre) but it's deployed against political characters that are of great importance to people who wouldn't otherwise read florid subjective verbiage.

3. “hex memoir” or “cursed-dick lit” — these are established terms? Quote sources.

4. I'm a woman myself, 74 years old, but I just want to say that American women read some godawful trash.

5. What's the feminist argument that it is NOT feminist to immerse oneself in this kind of reading?

"I dreamed I was on a train, the subway kind of train where you face people sitting on the other side, and Trump was right across from me. He started reading The Gettysburg Address…."

That's what I texted Meade just now, so then I pasted the statement in Grok. Didn't ask Grok to do anything with it, certainly not to write it up into a short short story, but that's what it did:

The car rattled along the elevated track, fluorescent lights flickering like a bad motel sign. I was wedged between a guy scrolling TikTok and a woman clutching a bag of oranges. Across from me sat Donald Trump—orange as the fruit, hair defying gravity, suit somehow unwrinkled despite the heat. No Secret Service. No crowd. Just him, me, and the Address. 

If a man wanted to mythologically pee from Camp Pendleton, across I-5, into the Pacific Ocean, how far would he need to project his urine stream?

I'm reading "I-5 may be shut down due to concerns over live-fire military event at Camp Pendleton" (L.A. Times).

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office is weighing whether to close parts of Interstate 5 beginning Friday amid concerns over what it says is a White House-directed plan to use live ordnance "during a military anniversary celebration off Camp Pendleton’s coast in San Diego County — where Navy ships are expected to fire over the freeway onto the base. Newsom’s office has received, but not confirmed, reports that live ordnance will be fired from offshore vessels during the event commemorating the Marine Corps’ 250th anniversary. The event is titled "Sea to Shore — A Review of Amphibious Strength" and will feature Vice President JD Vance.... The military show of force coincides with No Kings rallies and marches across the state on Saturday.... The Times could not confirm whether live ordnance will be fired over the freeway....

Oh, great. The 2 men who are their party's presumptive nominee for President next time around are in a monumental pissing contest. Sea to Shore — A Review of Amphibious Strength indeed.

Calculations from Grok:

Physics of Projection: In reality, a human urine stream is limited by physiology and physics. Studies and anecdotal records (e.g., from urology or informal "contests") suggest a typical male urine stream might reach 1–2 meters (3–6 feet) horizontally under optimal conditions (e.g., high bladder pressure, no wind). A "mythological" stream implies superhuman ability, so we’ll ignore real-world limits but use the distance as the target.

Required Distance: To cross 2 miles (3,200 meters), the stream would need to be propelled with extraordinary force, akin to a fire hose or a superhero’s ability. For context:

Spot the error in the People magazine headline: "Woody Allen's Ex-Wife, Mia Farrow, Shares Tribute to Diane Keaton Despite Complicated Past."

 Link to article.

"If your li'l girl comes home and said she was forced to undress in a locker room with a biological boy, what would you say? She's crying!"

I asked Abigail what if one of her girls came home crying because she was forced to undress next to a man.

Her silence speaks volumes. pic.twitter.com/FtkM6ir9KT

— Winsome Earle-Sears (@winwithwinsome) October 9, 2025

Why wasn't the Democrat, Abigail Spanberger, sharp enough to come up with something to say?

I asked Grok to write an answer for Spanberger and got: "I would hug my daughter tight, wipe away her tears, and tell her I love her no matter what. Then I'd explain that everyone deserves to feel safe and respected at school, including transgender kids who are just trying to be themselves. We'd work with the school to make sure there are options like private changing stalls for anyone who needs them, because protecting all our children means building a community where no one is left out or made to feel ashamed."

I was surprised by "I would... tell her I love her no matter what." I think that implies that the mother's first thought is, Oh, no, my daughter is transphobic!

ADDED: Here's the whole debate, and I'm pinpointing the beginning of the locker room talk:

So is it to be all about the plinth?

That's the last line of the previous post, the one about the possibly oversized statue of Trump and Epstein, which got toppled yesterday. (I thought statue-toppling was the signature of the left, but apparently not.)

I got the feeling plinths have loomed large enough in the archive of this blog to want to prompt Grok to review all my plinth-related posts and to structure the material for me to write a long essay — or book! — about the last 21-years of notable plinths. Giving this post my "unwritten books" tag, I will reprint Grok's outline of my long years of plinth observation [below the jump].

ADDED: I was able to find all the relevant posts. I had a distinctive search word, "plinth." Grok was able to summarize all the posts individually. That wasn't too helpful, because the posts were relatively short, and I wrote them, so I'd rather rely on my own writing that to decipher the machine's paraphrasings. But Grok did not discover any mysterious interconnections among the various plinth-related incidents — plinthcidents, if you will. 

"On this date, a thin waning crescent Moon (about 6% illuminated) formed a striking conjunction with Venus and the bright star Regulus in the constellation Leo..."

"... visible in the eastern sky about 40-60 minutes before sunrise for most observers in the Northern Hemisphere. Venus shines at a magnitude of -3.9, making it appear as a dazzling white point of light—far brighter than any star and easily mistaken for a 'dot' close to the Moon's position. This alignment was a highlight of the month's pre-dawn sky, with the trio creating a beautiful triangle-like grouping low on the horizon. If you're in the Southern Hemisphere or a more northerly latitude, the view might have been slightly different, but Venus was the standout object globally."

That's Grok, responding to my question: "What was that white dot next to the moon this morning?

Here's my photo, from 6:12 a.m.:

I fake-raged at Grok: "What do you mean easily mistaken for a 'dot'?! It is a dot. To call it a dot is only to describe how it looks, not to claim it has any particular substance inconsistent with a planet. I assumed it was Venus, but I don't like to say what I don't know, so I said what I did know. It IS a dot! I don't like being told I've made a mistake when I'm actually taking pains to be super-accurate."

Grok abjectly apologized and claimed not to have meant to say I'd made a mistake. Own it, Grok.

ADDED: Grok seemed to want to prove itself by helping me, so I asked what was my genuine next question, a veer away from astronomy and into the topic of writing:

"Is this an example of a type of journalism where you confront someone with a rumor and get a denial which is then the printable story, that X denied the rumor?"

I ask Grok, after getting it to summarize a Daily Beast article titled "White House Insists Stephen Miller Does Not Play With Dolls" (which I won't link to because it's behind a pay wall and even if it weren't, I don't think you should go there).

Grok: "Yes, this article is an example of a journalistic practice sometimes referred to as 'rumor-based reporting' or 'denial-driven journalism.'..."

Another prompt: "What are some examples of famous people who have been defined by rumors — the rumors stick as meaning something even when they are not proved or even regarded as likely?"

I expected Richard Gere and I got him... along with Walt Disney's frozen head.

"The speech of the American middle class is largely the attempt to impress, obfuscate, or placate. That of the streets is..."

"... in my experience, to express. For example: Middle class: 'What a nice dress.' Street: 'Hey, baby, any more at home like you?'... Iambic pentameter, five feet to the line. I was filming Heist with Gene Hackman; my wife, Rebecca Pidgeon; and Danny DeVito. Danny’s line to Gene, his rival, is, 'Are you fucking with me, are you fucking with me, or are you done fucking with me?'... I was concerned that [Danny] would (incorrectly) accentuate the word done at the end of the phrase, which would have branded him, sadly, with a merely academic understanding of actual American idiom. But I need not have worried, as he accentuated the final fucking and all was well. Per contra, Becca was raised in Edinburgh, and educated at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. In the early days of our association she flatteringly strove to adopt my Chicagoan vocabulary. Our great friend, Shel Silverstein, corrected her: 'Becca, when you say motherfucker, it’s like someone is trying to fuck your mother.'"

Writes David Mamet in "Back When We Gave a Fuck" (Free Press).

I love the sudden appearance of Shel Silverstein and the use of the phrase "per contra." And I considered taking out the clarifying "[Danny]" and putting back the "he" — wasn't it obvious that Mamet meant Danny and not Gene" — because I wanted to preserve the number of syllables. I didn't want to intrude on  Mamet's rhythm. I even asked Grok to analyze the text and tell me to what extent it approached iambic pentameter. Was "per contra" chosen for the meter or because boring people begin sentences with "By contrast"/"Conversely"/"On the other hand"?  Is Shel Silverstein "Our great friend, Shel Silverstein" for the meter or because Mamet is the sort of person who wants you to know he was especially close to that celebrity he's name-dropping. 

"Should such an old man as James Taylor, who can afford to hire a handyman, be climbing on a ladder, especially in those shoes?"

I ask Grok, at Taylor's post on X:

Doorbell repair, James style.#JT #JamesTaylor #Handyman #RepairMan pic.twitter.com/Szi0kFtQVQ

— James Taylor (@JamesTaylor_com) August 11, 2025

Grok's answer isn't really the correct answer:

"why does the horse have three ears"/"So he likes 7 foot tall women? Or is he riding a pony?"

X users rain on Musk's boyish dream.

In a romantic pre-Raphaelite style, a tender moment unfolds between a handsome knight in gleaming silver armor and a beautiful woman in a flowing white gown adorned with flowers.

The knight, with a sword at his side, sits astride a brown horse with a red-gold draped saddle,… pic.twitter.com/0w32szTD9D

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 9, 2025