"As a Frida Kahlo portrait glared protectively at me over Madonna’s shoulder, we talked past, present, future, prayer, dicks, nutritional yeast, and more…"

Writes Mel Ottenberg, introducing "The Madonna Interview" in Interview Magazine.

EXCERPT:

OTTENBERG: When was the last time you confessed?

MADONNA: Well, every song on this record is—not every song. Some are just joy. “Love Sensation” is just joy. But a lot of the songs here are confessional.

OTTENBERG: What about the last time you confessed in a church?

MADONNA: Oh, that’s been a while.

OTTENBERG: Do you have a relationship with organized religion?

MADONNA: Well, I was raised a Catholic and I’m a cultural Catholic.

"The storm comes and splits at the White House and goes around the White House and the Ellipse. The President believes that… it was divine intervention."

Dana White on the storm going around UFC Freedom 250: “The storm comes and splits at the White House and goes around the White House and the Ellipse. The President believes that… it was divine intervention.” pic.twitter.com/uWFETwVL9H

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) June 17, 2026

"Tucker Carlson... has called the nicotine pouch brand ZYN a 'lifesaving' product that can increase productivity and 'male vitality.'"

"Mr. Carlson went so far as to say that the pouches are 'like the hand of God reaching down and massaging your central nervous system.'...  'What the Make America Healthy Again movement is saying is, "I am going to question what I’m told," said [biohacking influencer Dave Asprey,] who has encouraged his followers to do their own research on and experiment with nicotine, which he calls one of 'Mother Nature’s cognitive enhancers.'... Another common refrain among MAHA supporters is that the medical establishment has made Americans sicker by suppressing information about natural cures and instead pushing prescription medications. That was the focus of an episode last year of the popular 'Culture Apothecary' podcast, titled 'Nicotine is NOT the Villain: What Big Pharma Hides from Parents.' Alex Clark, the podcast’s host and a leading figure in the MAHA movement, interviewed a chiropractor and alternative medicine practitioner who suggested that the drug industry had buried information on nicotine’s benefits and claimed that nicotine could treat Covid, cancer and more...."

From "Influencers Are Spinning Nicotine as a ‘Natural’ Health Hack/The influencers, many of them aligned with the Make America Healthy Again Movement, say the medical establishment has unfairly demonized the compound" (NYT).

like the hand of God reaching down and massaging your central nervous system — reminds me of that Trump-is-like-Jesus illustration:

"In one particularly revealing passage from 'Good Energy,' she wrote: 'I felt myself as part of an infinite and unbroken series of cosmic nesting dolls of millions of mothers and babies before me from the beginning of life.'"

I'm reading "The danger of letting a mystic lead public health/A look at Casey Means shows the weakness of her nomination and the surgeon general position itself" (WaPo)(gift link).

The Means nomination exposes how unserious the role really is. In her book “Good Energy,” Means recounts hearing an “internal voice that whispered” to her that it was time to try psilocybin — commonly known as magic mushrooms — which she began using in 2021. She described the experience as offering “a doorway to a different reality.”...

"Internal voice that whispered"? — in other words, her thoughts. She thought it was time to try psilocybin, and presumably that worked out well for her. What is unscientific there? What about that makes her unreliable? 

"Malinin, who in his youth chose the Instagram handle 'QuadG0d'... was rightfully saddened and a bit angry at the end of his free skate..."

"'I had so many thoughts and memories flood right before I got into my starting pose that it almost, maybe, I think, overwhelmed me a little bit, he said afterward.'... Malinin is a self-described adrenaline junkie. He embraces the idea of conqueror like no other American skater.... On Friday, he at first appeared to be feeding off the Olympic energy. When he initially stepped on the ice for the top six skaters’ final warmup, he made fun faces with the camera man and coolly glided on the ice. Then came the disaster. After Shaidorov skated the performance of the night, the mood slowly dampened with poor skates from France’s Adam Siao Him Fa, who sunk from third to seventh, and Kagiyama, who skated clumsily without his trademark speed.... When Malinin returned to the deflated arena, something about him seemed to be missing as well.... Other Olympic champions had chosen... big music to seize victory.... But Malinin chose to channel himself and his vulnerability, skating to his own voice delivering quiet affirmations that he hoped described the man inside the persona of the 'Quadg0d'..."

Writes Robert Samuels, in "Mikhail Shaidorov was everything Ilia Malinin wasn’t for one night" (WaPo)(gift link).

He was skating to the sound of his own voice, delivering affirmations.... 

Imagine a true God skating extravagantly to the sound of his own voice, delivering affirmations. Don't click for more unless you want to read Grok's 12-point answer to my question: If the God of the Old Testament were delivering affirmations to himself, what would he say?

"Many of my Christian friends have asked me to find Jesus before I go. I’m not a believer, but I have to admit the risk-reward calculation..."

"... for doing so looks so attractive to me. So here I go. I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior and look forward to spending an eternity with Him. The part about me not being a believer should be quite quickly resolved; if I wake up in heaven, I won’t need any more convincing than that. I hope I’m still qualified for entry."

Wrote Scott Adams, just before dying.

It's an impressive mix of intelligence, respect, humor, and honesty. He implicitly concedes that he doesn't really believe, but anticipates instant arrival in a state of true belief if he finds himself waking up in Heaven. He acknowledges that that form of belief might not count as sufficient, but he expresses hope. And he did have that part where he incanted the key phrase: "I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior." That might be what it takes, and it's worth the risk — no risk. It will make some of his friends feel better, and if there are others who don't like it, they can take comfort in his assurance that he's not a believer. 

ADDED: In the preceding post, Paul Zrimsek said: "His support for Trump probably means he's been darned to Heck, and that Phil, the Prince of Insufficient Light, is poking him with that big spoon now." That nudged me to find this:

"There’s coffee stations, then you’ve got smoothie and juice stations. You’ve got the wine bars and the beer bars. You even have kegerators..."

"... in people’s offices, then you’ve got seltzer stations, and you’ve got the juice boxes and stuff for kids," said Wendy Trunz who "recently helped her 24-year-old niece, Noelle Mosby, organize supplies for making sparkling waters — syrups, coconut cream, flavored teas, a soda maker — on a tray in her kitchen. 'I’m just not much of an alcohol drinker,' said Ms. Mosby, who is studying Ayurvedic medicine in Asheville, N.C. 'But I do like my sugary drinks.'"

From "Coffee in the Closet, Diet Coke on Tap/Customized drink stations are appearing all over the home, from the kitchen to the bedroom" (NYT).

The article begins with a profile of a TikTok "influencer," a mother of 10, who has "a five-gallon water dispenser for hot and cold filtered water; two coffee-making stations; a wine fridge in the master bedroom for bottled water, protein drinks and her husband’s Red Bulls; a hot cocoa and toppings bar... two countertop nugget ice makers; and...

"The convention is one of the many ways that monks around the country are working to demonstrate the modern relevance of a religion that some young people see as old fashioned, esoteric and..."

"... relegated to secluded mountaintop temples.... ... Buddhism faces a particularly steep challenge in South Korea, where Protestantism, a branch of Christianity, overtook it to become the most popular religion for the first time in the latest census. In South Korea and some other Asian countries, Christianity tends to be associated with modernity and rationality, while Buddhism and folk religions are often seen as more old-fashioned, Professor Chia said. Some young people at the Busan expo said they were trying to shake that idea. South Koreans tend to see the religion as one that is for older people and can only be encountered at 'temples deep in the mountains,' said Ju Yeo-jin, 30, a vendor selling casual streetwear style clothing and accessories, wearing a pageboy cap over her short bleached hair. 'The Buddhism I’ve experienced is fun and cool. I want to convey that feeling.'"

I'm reading "Is South Korea’s 'Buddhistcore' Aesthetic a Fad or a Spiritual Awakening? Young South Koreans are buying Buddhist merch. Monks and experts hope the buzz will translate into deeper engagement" (NYT).

I think Americans associate Buddhism with modernity and rationality — but not because of expos and "merch"! To me, it seems modern and rational to retreat to a temple deep in the mountains. Maybe to young people the religion of one's own region will always seem "old-fashioned" and based in tradition. Just imagine people from elsewhere looking over and perhaps it will seem newly modern. Or what the hell, buy a "red heart-shaped magnet reading, 'Sentient beings I love you'" or "key chains of the Buddha in neon and with hearts for eyes, and streetwear-style T-shirts with slogans like 'Shut up and meditate.'" Maybe that will work.

"My last wish will be just one thing/Be smilin' when I die/I wanna be one toke over the line, sweet Jesus...."

I blogged when Brewer died — last December — so I will blog the death of Shipley: 

"Tom Shipley, Whose Ode to Weed Reached the Top 10, Dies at 84/With their 'One Toke Over the Line,' he and Michael Brewer saw a musical in-joke turn into a timeless cultural phenomenon" (NYT).

ADDED: From last December's post: "The singer was 'sitting downtown in a railway station" and "just waitin' for the train that goes home, sweet Mary.' Even if the song originated from an exclamation about smoking marijuana, it seems that the substance of the song is religious. The metaphor of the train is seen in other songs, such as 'People Get Ready (There's a train a-coming....') and 'This Train (Is Bound for Glory).'"

"Hundreds of intrepid people would organize themselves into themed gangs and set out in homemade crafts of dubious seaworthiness..."

"... through Jamaica Bay to compete, 'American Gladiators'-style, with various props and pseudo-weapons. The 'boats' disintegrated once the shenanigans were over.... Mr. McNeill’s most ambitious project was... a 500-mile trip along the Ganges River... called... 'The Swimming Cities of the Ocean of Blood.' Mr. McNeill and a group of collaborators built five metal pontoon boats in Brooklyn — three of them powered by motorcycles, one by sail and oars, and another by paddle wheel — which he would captain. The boats were designed to lock together for camping on the water.... It was an arduous monthslong trip. Marauding monkeys attacked their camp..... Mr. McNeill’s godfather was the author William S. Burroughs, with whom the elder Mr. McNeill had collaborated on a graphic novel. Mr. Burroughs baptized Orien with a dab of vodka from his afternoon drink...."

From "Orien McNeill, Artist Who Made Mischief on the Water, Dies at 45/He was the pied piper of a loose community of DIY artists homesteading on New York City’s waterways, which he used as his canvas and stage" (NYT)(free-access link, so you can see the photos).

McNeill died on May 15 on his 52-foot-long ferryboat, and we are not told the cause of death.

"This garden is very interesting in that it’s part of a spiritual practice: It’s used for meditation. Moss is very tiny..."

"... and being in the garden, looking so closely to distinguish one type from another, requires a special kind of attention. It opens up a completely different kind of universe."

Said Harvard architecture professor Toshiko Mori, about the Saihoji Kokedera Temple and Moss Garden in Kyoto, quoted in "The 25 Gardens You Must SeeWe asked six horticultural experts to debate and ultimately choose the places that’ve changed the way we look at — and think about — plants" (NYT)(free-access link, so you can see all the photos and read about the other gardens).

I love the story of the creation of this garden: "In 1339, Muso Kokushi, a Buddhist high priest and master gardener, created what’s believed to be the first-ever karesansui (dry landscape)... carefully placed rocks and swaths of sand or gravel raked to invoke rippling water... In the nineteenth century, Saihoji was flooded repeatedly when a nearby river overflowed its banks... Rather than fight nature, the monks embraced change... With more than 120 varieties [of moss]... Saihoji looks quite different than it did in Kokushi’s day, but, in the hands of the monks who continue to maintain it, its purpose of encouraging serenity and contemplation hasn’t changed....."

The monks carry on a traditional practice of meditation, bound to this site for 7 centuries. But what would it be for you to drop in one day?

Don't say "Christmas." Don't even say "joy."

A Grok summary, at X:

During a recent event at the White House, Jill Biden mentioned the need for 'joy' during the holiday season, a comment which some interpreted as a subtle mockery of Kamala Harris's previous campaign slogan 'sense of joy.' Jill Biden later clarified that her remarks were not meant to be taken as an insult, emphasizing that the audience was reading too much into her statement. The incident has sparked discussions about the dynamics within the Biden administration. This story is a summary of posts on X and may evolve over time. Grok can make mistakes, verify its outputs.

Here's the relevant video clip.

🚨 JUST IN: Jill Biden is now OPENLY MOCKING Kamala Harris’ “joy” line

The audience even knows what’s going on, and breaks out into laughter 😂

Anybody still think Jill Biden DIDN’T vote for Trump? 🤣 pic.twitter.com/8ePBuLQVKD

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) December 11, 2024

"Joy" is a Christmas word: "Joy to the World/The Lord is come"/"Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring." It's a word that might be selected by someone who wants to avoid limiting her message to Christians. It seems more general, even as Christians hear it as specific to the Christian religion.

Jill also says "peace" and "light": "I hope that you all feel that sense of, you know, peace and light." 

"Peace" and "light" are also words that, for Christians, call to mind Jesus Christ. Jesus is "the light of the world" — "While I am in the world, I am the light of the world." Jesus is the "Prince of Peace" — "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."

But Jill's audience, hearing "joy," thinks not of Jesus Christ but of a worldly power-seeker who used "joy" as a political brand that worked for a couple weeks and then was recognized as idiotic emptiness. Now, it's a laugh line.

Jill hears the laughing and flaps her arms about. Instead of holding steady and conveying the beauty and seriousness of the hope for peace and light and joy at Christmas, she emits a scoffing laugh and acknowledges that she too can hear what they hear, a reference to Kamala Harris.

"The image is saintly."

Announces Washington Post fashion writer Rachel Tashjian, in "Jill Biden is Vogue’s cover star. What timing. The first lady covers Vogue for the third time, positioned by the magazine as a savior of the country’s fate."

Here's the image:

Tashjian proclaims that "a striking, fascinatingly out-of-character image in its storytelling."  What's the usual "character"? More smiley? More of a sidekick? I really don't know. Do you? We're told "the religious undertones are startling": "Her pose and visage, not to mention the color of her dress, recall religious paintings of saints communing with their higher power."

IN THE COMMENTS: Rafe — short for Raphael? — says "Which paintings? What a lazy comparison, to paintings which only exist, apparently, in her mind." 

I went looking for paintings of saints gazing upward. There's this, by Raphael:

Notice that Catherine's hands do not hang limply at her sides. They are expressive of ecstasy and placed in locations that would seem truly odd on a modern-day politico. Unlike Jill, she's got her weight shifted to one side, and also unlike Jill, she's leaning on what we know to be the device used to torture-murder-martyr her. Jill exists in an empty brown-gray void.

But it's the difference in the eyes that is most striking. Jill's eyes are rotated sideways, and only slightly upward, as if she is gazing fondly at her somewhat tall husband. They're not fixed on Heaven. 

Can we find paintings of saints with eyes rotated sideways, which seems mildly coy? Consider the entirely un-Jill-like Saint Lucy:

The saddest, loneliest Althouse blog tag: "Biden the healer."

I created this tag on November 8, 2020, and I don't create a new tag unless I think there will be a good number of other posts that will support that tag. I imagined Biden stepping up to the role of healer. I went back today, looking for "Biden the healer" in my archive, because I've been thinking how much better Biden might be doing — and, more importantly, how much better this country might be doing — if Biden had followed the path of healing — of bringing us together. But Biden was and is a divider. Maybe January 6th was too much of a temptation, such great raw material for tearing us apart. He could have said — like Lincoln — "with malice toward none, with charity for all" and forgiven everyone involved and called upon all of us — on his side and the other side — to "bind up the nation's wounds." But he didn't do it. And now it's too late.

Here's my November 8, 2020 post. Read it and weep. It's title is an eloquent quote from someone who has gone on to distinguish herself for her comical lack of eloquence:

"Joe is a healer, a uniter, a tested and steady hand, a person whose own experience of loss gives him a sense of purpose that will help us as a nation reclaim our own sense of purpose, and a man with a big heart who loves with abandon."

In that one crowded sentence, Kamala Harris — in her victory speech last night — stated the theme for Biden's presidency. 

I see the laying-on-of-hands concept that we were talking about yesterday.

"Activities and experiences have long been part of luxury hotel offerings. But many current offerings come with extra cachet...."

"That could mean an invitation to an artist’s private studio to learn about their process ($7,500) or mastering fish butchery and handcrafted sushi ($750)....  'When you get to the top of the mountain, you’re talking to God,' said [one hotel] manager.... 'I’ll send you up there with a bottle of Champagne and say, "Just sit down and have a chat."'... Hotel experts say that the arms race for bigger, bolder, more creative experiences will continue. 'Guests are starved for something new because everything around them has been turned into an algorithm,' said [one concierge team supervisor], who is constantly digging deeper to come up with the novel...."

From "Looking for ‘a Different Kind of Wow’: Next Level Hotel Experiences/From cooking with a Michelin-star chef to taking a chauffeured shopping spree in Singapore, hotels and resorts are offering ever-more-lavish activities for guests" (NYT).

The word "experience" appears 10 times in the article. You travel somewhere and the hotel has packaged what they call an "experience" that you can buy. Some of it is frankly bullshit — "talking to God" — and some of it is frankly off-putting — "fish butchery" — and some of it feels socially awful — intruding on an artist and "their process." Who is taken in by this sort of thing?

"Over and over throughout the conference, anxieties over the drop in birth rates — the issue that brought the speakers and audience together..."

"... gave way to fears that certain populations were out-breeding their betters.... I talk with Malcolm and Simone Collins, the husband-and-wife founder of Pronatalist.org.... [They] present themselves as rationalists, techies trying to solve the looming depopulation crisis by any means necessary.... The couple is committed to fighting the 'urban monoculture' that they claim has tricked a generation of young Americans into spending their most fertile years chasing professional achievements and personal fulfillment at the expense of building a family. 'The monoculture is not an evil thing,' Malcolm... but, he continues, it’s built on false promises. 'It promises people, if you join us, you can do whatever makes you happy, so long as it doesn’t interfere with other people’s quality of life, and you can be affirmed for whoever you want to be.' In reality, though, they become casualties of an elitist scam. The urban monoculture, Malcolm explains, breeds childlessness and therefore must poach other people’s children to survive. It lures them out of small towns and into large cities, encourages them to eschew their religious upbringings in favor of hedonistic secularism, and then leaves them to die alone...."

From "The Far Right’s Campaign to Explode the Population/Behind the scenes at the first Natal Conference, where a motley alliance is throwing out the idea of winning converts to their cause and trying to make their own instead" (Politico).

We experienced the longest darkness in Indiana...

... in Vincennes, Indiana (a place named after François-Marie Bissot, Sieur de Vincennes, who was burned at the stake in 1736, "during the French war with the Chickasaw nation").

His name glows on a vibrant mural:

I don't know if this is the town's official motto, but we talked a lot about it: "Where everyone fulfills their God-given purpose!"

It seemed to be a grandiose claim, but I said maybe the people interpret God's requirements narrowly, so that it's not understood to be terribly difficult. My son Chris, texting, said, maybe God does not give them any particularly challenging purpose. I contemplated whether Chris was saying something different from what I'd just said and decided he certainly was. My idea was that people are self-serving, and his idea was that God was easy-going and pretty darned nice. Hearing that, Meade noted that "fulfills" could mean that citizens are simply wherever they are in a process of fulfilling.

We walked through the festival atmosphere on historic Main Street, by the Wabash River, but given the hubbub and live, loud rock music, we kept moving until we arrived at the memorial for the men who died in the War of the Union....

We set up on the lush grass by the county courthouse, which looked like this at 3:01:51 — 3 minutes before the beginning of the total eclipse:

And here it is, at the very beginning of the totality:

Thanks to Vincennes for hosting us and many others. The show was free and the number of dollars we spent was equal to the number of minutes of the totality of the eclipse. Meade bought a pulled pork sandwich at a food truck:

The text at the pig silhouette in the lower right corner of the truck deserves contemplative comparison to the aforementioned "Where everyone fulfills their God-given purpose!" It says: "Every butt loves a rub."

"Shabbat is one of the most radical things you could do. One of the reasons we have a climate crisis right now is a product of disconnection..."

"... the result of undervaluing life, especially nonhuman life. Shabbat is a time of remembering we’re not machines; we get to be human with all other life. That kind of connection is what powers environmental and climate movements."

Says Rabbi Laura Bellows of Dayenu, "an organization mobilizing the United States’ Jewish community to confront the climate crisis," quoted in "Why reviving a 2,600-year-old spiritual practice made my life better" (WaPo).

This essay, by Michael J. Coren, begins with a focus on his own psychological wellbeing, as the essay title suggests, but it quickly devolves into a discussion of climate change, replete with suggestions of compulsory observance of the Sabbath:

"Being evangelical once suggested regular church attendance, a focus on salvation and conversion and strongly held views on specific issues such as abortion."

"Today, it is as often used to describe a cultural and political identity: one in which Christians are considered a persecuted minority, traditional institutions are viewed skeptically and Mr. Trump looms large.... At a recent rally in Waterloo, Iowa, Mr. Trump cast Christians as a broadly persecuted group facing down a government weaponized against them. Catholics are the current target of 'the communists, Marxists and fascists,' he said, citing a recent controversy about a retracted F.B.I. memo, and adding that 'evangelicals will not be far behind.'... As ties to church communities have weakened, the church leaders who once rallied the faithful behind causes and candidates have lost influence. A new class of thought leaders has filled the gap: social media personalities and podcasters, once-fringe prophetic preachers and politicians...."

From "Trump Is Connecting With a Different Type of Evangelical Voter/They are not just the churchgoing, conservative activists who once dominated the G.O.P." (NYT).

Does your floor have a soul?

I'm reading "Gray Floors Elicit Visceral Reactions. So Why Are They Seemingly Everywhere? Fueled by social media, a hatred for trendy gray flooring is thriving. But for many people, living with gray floors isn’t a choice" (NYT).

Lucía Massucco, a 28-year-old artist, is no fan of the flooring. “It’s impossible to have a warm, cozy ambience with them,” said Ms. Massucco. “They have a very soul-deprived and clinical feeling.”.... 

Claire Lower, a 36-year-old editor at Lifehacker, a blog for life hacks, bought her Portland, Ore., home, which came with gray floors, in 2020. She called the floors “soulless” and “corporate neutral,” but noted that they were, at least, easy to clean....

Do you think people are unconsciously relating "soul" to "soil"? Do your intimate inanimate objects seem imbued with "soul"? Should they? What would cause that perception? It's perception only, an association with something that you think or would like to think is part of the human being. Is the perceived soullessness of your floors a sign that you feel as though you have lost — or never had — a soul? Is it that gray floors are a trend, so when you see your own gray floors, you're seeing yourself as a mere follower of crowds, a minuscule fiber caught up in a drifting dust bunny? But what can you do? You're only catching up to the decline of the gray floor trend. To fight the gray is to follow the crowd, you lost soul, you.