There's a strong temptation to uglify what Trump has made such a show of trying to beautify.

There's all that water in the Reflecting Pool. Is it well guarded? There are all those fountains and statues. And then there are the great stretches of well-tended lawn.

Now, we're seeing "Large etchings of numbers signaling opposition to Trump appear on National Mall/A White House spokesman decried the numerals '86 47' marked into the grass near the World War II Memorial as an endorsement of political violence" (WaPo)(gift link).

White House spokesman Davis Ingle responded to a request for comment on the markings with an email. “Anyone who engages in or endorses political violence or assassination culture must be condemned in the harshest terms possible,” Ingle wrote. “They should also immediately seek psychiatric help to treat their severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has warped their brains and made them sick in the head.”

I just wrote, at the end of the previous post, "The more grim, puritanical, humorless, imperious, and repressive you are, the funnier it is to make fun of you." There's a similar concept at play here: The more you show how much you care about pristine beauty, the more exciting it becomes to besmirch it. We can't have nice things.

Oh, but those who endorse the idea "86 47" might respond, these "nice things" are not nice. They are Trump things and therefore the ugliest things of all. To desecrate them is to move in the direction of true beauty. 

The grandeur of extreme cold.

The numerical reality:

Meade's interpretation:

"For Nguyen, the point — and pleasure — of games is play, not efficiency; a person who simply wants to catch more fish would trade Nguyen’s feathery hand-tied flies..."

"... for a big net or a blast of dynamite.... Nguyen, whose day job is as a philosophy professor at the University of Utah, contrasts the delightful thrill of playing games like basketball, The Legend of Zelda and Dungeons & Dragons with the demoralizing pursuit of university rankings, page views and social media likes: 'Why is it that mechanical scoring systems are, in games, the site of so much joy and fluidity and play? And why, in the realm of public measures and institutional metrics, do they drain the life out of everything?'... Nguyen, 48... brought out various toys...yo-yos, spin tops, a Japanese ball-and-cup thingumajig known as a kendama.... 'All of my hobbies involve basically micro-dosing epiphanies,' Nguyen said at one point. 'Every time you’re yo-yoing, you’re like, If I change my angle this much, or if I pull a little bit here, or if I drop it, oh, then it works!' The fact that the stakes are so low is not a deficit of the yo-yo (or the kendama, or D&D, or fly-fishing); low stakes are part of the point, allowing us to move from one game to another. Nguyen argues that problems emerge when the stakes become all-consuming, taking over our sense of self and dictating what we should value...."

I'm reading "Why Keeping Score Isn’t Fun Anymore/In a new book, C. Thi Nguyen looks to his personal passions — from video games to yo-yoing — to illuminate the downside of our increasingly gamified world" by Jennifer Szalai (NYT)(gift link).

I see the connection to blogging. I'm going to read Nguyen's book, "The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game" (commission earned).

I thought the article was going to have something in it about how sports betting ruins the fun of spectator sports, but no. Is that in the book? I can tell you that the word "football" does not appear in the book and "baseball" only appears in the context of a baseball cap worn by Tsukasa Takatsu, "a minor saint, beloved of a very tiny sect of passionate yo-yo players."

ADDED: Nguyen sees low stakes as a positive force, but the most famous thing anyone ever said about low stakes is Sayre's law: Responding to "In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake," Sayre quipped: "That is why academic politics are so bitter." Usually restated as: "Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small." 

How to stop fretting about the coming and going of Daylight Savings Time and live by the light not the clock.

I know you have appointments and work and social obligations and need to observe the time of the clock to some extent, but your waking and sleeping and much of the rest of what you do — eating, going out walking, chores, reading, napping, conversing, and generally being the human animal that you are — can and should be done according to the time of the sun, which doesn't leap forward and fall back in one hour chunks semiannually, but changes very slightly day by day.

The easiest adjustment you can make is to get up at dawn, which is about half an hour before the sunrise. I recommend getting out and about and really experiencing the early light. Lots of health benefits to that — circadian rhythms and so forth. There's nothing about your "o'clock" affairs that should stop you from doing that. Set your day by the sun. I've done that since 2019, and I didn't need to be retired to do it. 

Now, I've been designing an app in my head for a while. I wanted something that would display Sun Time next to clock time. It would know where I am located and display the clock time of dawn, sunrise, sunset, and dusk along with the passage of the sunlight over the course of the day. I pictured Sun Time as a percentage, with dawn at 0% and the end of dusk at 100%. So every day in Sun Time has an equal number of daylight gradations understood in terms of percentages even though the number of hours in clock time varies greatly over the course of the year and includes the brutal jumps when DST comes or goes. The Sun Time gradations are perfectly gentle — because they are tiny and because they put you in close touch with the natural world of sunlight.

I thought I could get A.I. to write the code for this app I had in mind, but I had the sense to ask first if there already was such an app. There are a few. I picked Sundial. It looks like this:

I would like to see the Sun Time percentages displayed on the dial, but you can see at the bottom right that I was 45.1% into today's daylight when I took the screenshot. I want to maximize my thinking in terms of that percentage, which, of course, ticks by faster in the winter than the summer. But that's good if you want to be adjusted to nature. You've got to hurry a bit to get out for a walk (or whatever) in the daylight, and it's cold, so you'll want to move fast. You've got a longer night in the winter, but confront it, full on, and make something of the dark.

I've had it with complaints about Daylight Savings Time. I have shown you the better way to live. Step into the Sun Time and don't go back.

Should have been 34D.

I'm reading Rex Parker's write-up of today's NYT crossword: 

35D: Annual breast cancer awareness observance (NO BRA DAY) — I did not know this was a thing, or still a thing. Seems like an impractical option for many women. According to wikipedia, "The day is controversial as some see it as sexualizing and exploiting women's bodies while at the same time belittling a serious disease." I misread the clue as [Annual breast cancer awareness month] and, having the "NO-," wrote in NOVEMBER (which fits ... it's wrong, but it fits). Breast Cancer Awareness Month is actually right now, October, and NO BRA DAY is next week (October 13).

I'd never heard of "No Bra Day" — I don't think — until I did today's NYT crossword. A search of the NYT archive shows it's only ever been used in the crossword. This annual "observance" — ahem — has never been spoken of in an actual article or column. It's not like Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which is talked up all the time.

I'd say it’s ridiculous to have a day where women are urged to invite people to focus on their undefended — unshielded, unsupported — breasts. Making breasts more gawkable does not create awareness of cancer. It creates awareness of breasts, especially healthy, good-looking breasts. But we don't want a special event for that, because it seems to legitimate staring. If the idea is to increase awareness of the comfort of not wearing a bra, it fails. The best bralessness happens when you believe no one notices, whether your belief is true or false.

Anyway, too bad the NYT made the clue 35D and not 34D or 36D. 35D almost sounds like a bra size.

"If I have 2086 blog posts in 2025 at the end of today, how many blog posts must I publish per day in the remaining days of this year to have a total of 3000 for the year?"

I asked ChatGPT. Answer: "You must publish about 9 blog posts per day for the rest of 2025 to reach 3000."

"And how many per day have I averaged so far?" Answer: "You’ve averaged about 7.9 posts per day so far in 2025."

Me: "I've had over 3,000 for many years, and I'm not blogging less, just writing longer posts. It would be easy to throw in 2 very short things a day or break a long thing up into 2 things if I got goal oriented, but I have been doing things naturally. Look how consistent my weekly output is" — I reprint the 2025 numbers that you can see in the sidebar.

ChatGPT offers to show me "what the year-end total would look like under a 'natural' pace vs. a 'goal-oriented' pace (say, 2 extra/day)?" I agree, read the answer, then say, "The natural pace is so bizarrely consistent that I think I should respect it as a secret and personal power that transcends the obvious value of the very round number, 3000. What is base 10 to me?"

"I've written 1274 blog posts so far this year, and I will write 1 more today."

"Starting tomorrow, how many posts must I write per day in order to have 3,000 when the year ends?"

Answer: 8.4559 posts per day.

"For a long time, I've done at least 3,000 a year, but the last 2 years, I've cut it close. That's not because I'm writing less. I'm probably writing more, just writing longer posts. But there's something motivating about the 3,000 goal, which I've hit ever year beginning in 2008. Give me a structured framework for analyzing whether I should go for the goal or break it on purpose or just go without calculating and let what happens happen."

Things I asked Grok.

Alternative meaning.

Goal achieved... on the last day of the year beginning on the first Sunday in January...

... as displayed in the Blogger sidebar...

... I hit 3,000 posts for the 17th year in a row. 

There were also more than 3,000 if you count the year from January 1, 2024 to December 31, 2024, but those numbers in the sidebar are what I've been looking at all these years. It's only this year that — after 20+ years — I noticed the numbers are aggregated by week, weeks that begin on Sunday, and years are simply 52 weeks. 

And, in that light, the last day of "2024" is today, Saturday January 4th.

I was wrong about hitting 3,000 blog posts in 2024.

On December 27th, I wrote "Unless I write 70 more posts in the next 4 days... this will be the first year since 2007 when I have less than 3,000 blog posts." 

But I didn't understand that the post count in the side bar is week by week, so the year doesn't begin on January 1st and continue thought December 31st. It begins on the first Sunday of the year, and in 2024, the first Sunday was January 7th. That means the first 6 days of 2024 were added to the count for 2023, and it means the count for 2025 will not begin until January 5th. With the count now at 2968, I have 4 days to write 32 posts. I'm sorry I started to pay attention to this, but nothing I can do about that now. I'd like to continue in my usual intuitive, intrinsically rewarding style and let the numbers fall wherever they do. I just wanted to note that in the world of blog post counting, it's still 2024.

Feel free of accusing me of padding... until Sunday.

Here we are in 2025 — the quarter century mark.

It's a nice solid milestone. 25 has a substantiality that exceeds that of 22, 23, and 24. It's more "famous," no? It's the atomic number of manganese.

Unless I write 70 more posts in the next 4 days...

 ... this will be the first year since 2007 when I have less than 3,000 blog posts. In the first 4 years of the blog — 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 — the posts numbered in the 2,000s. Then all those other years were at least 3,000 — mostly in the 3,000s, but 2 were in the 4,000s and one was even over 5,000! After hitting 5,117 in 2013, I returned to the zone of the 3,000s and stayed there for 10 years straight. I don't know where that consistency came from, because I don't count and I don't try to hit particular goals, either daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly. I just proceed post by post intuitively. But I do look at the numbers in the sidebar, after the fact, and observe the patterns... and find it genuinely... bizarre.

"Goal for 2024: 400 books. Last year I did 388. The year before I did 350. So I’ll just see if it’s possible to do 400. I think I’ll make it...."

Says a retired man in Los Altos named Paul Scott, quoted in "Want to finish more books? Super readers share their tips" (WaPo)(free access link).

People say to me, “Are you playing a lot more golf since you retired?” But now that I can golf every day, what I’d rather do is read. The pandemic crystallized how I wanted to spend my spare time. There was nothing on TV. All of a sudden I had this time from 4:30 to 8:30 in the morning, and I thought, “Gosh, I should really spend more time reading.”...

His tip:

"The rule is projected to eliminate more than seven billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over the next 30 years...."

That's what it says in "What to Know About the Clean Auto Rule: It’s Not a Ban on Gas Cars/The measure aims to encourage sales of electric vehicles and hybrids. Here’s how it works" (NYT).

Is "seven billion tons" supposed to sound like a lot when we're talking about the earth's atmosphere? I realized I had no idea of the weight of the entire earth's atmosphere. The answer isn't in the article. 

It's 5.5 quadrillion tons. A quadrillion is a million billion.

Also, what's "unclean" about carbon dioxide? When it comes to cleanliness, aren't electric cars worse that gas cars? From a recent article in The Atlantic:

New EV models tend to be heavier and quicker—generating more particulates.... In other words, EVs have a tire-pollution problem, and one that is poised to get worse as America begins to adopt electric cars en masse.

The use of the word "clean" in the title to the rule is deceptive. And it's deceptive to try amaze us with the number 7 billion when it's in relation to 5.5 quadrillion.

The day 123123 is here at last.

"The modest crowd of 12,479 in Oakland, Calif., rose to its feet at Germán came out to start the ninth inning and chanted 'Let’s Go, Yankees' as he faced the first batter of the inning."

From "Yankees Pitcher Throws M.L.B.’s First Perfect Game Since 2012/Domingo Germán was masterful, cruising through the Oakland Athletics and securing baseball’s 24th perfect game" (NYT).

Sounds like the opposing team was utterly demoralized. When do your own fans root for the other team?

Germán. HISTORY! pic.twitter.com/ktEZbxZNIo

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) June 29, 2023

Congratulations to Germán, but I must say I strongly object to 0 as a player's number. I don't think it should be permitted. Too nihilistic.

To be fair to the fans, when Germán came out to pitch in the bottom of the 9th inning, the score was 11-0. You can understand the fans switching sides at that point. Instead of a horrible trouncing, they — by sheer force of their (traitorous) mind — could seize bragging rights. They saw a perfect game. 

"Grief reigns in the kingdom of loss. I refer to not only the loss of a loved one but also the loss of a hope, a dream, or love itself."

"It seems we don’t finish grieving, but merely finish for now; we process it in layers. One day (not today) I’m going to write a short story about a vending machine that serves up Just the Right Amount of Grief. You know, the perfect amount that you can handle in a moment to move yourself along, but not so much that you’ll be caught in an undertow."

That's item #13 on "MONICA LEWINSKY: 25 'RANDOMS' ON THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BILL CLINTON CALAMITY/My name became public 25 years ago this week. What have I observed and learned in the quarter century since? Oh, plenty" (Vanity Fair).

Okay, let me try to write 25 "Randoms" on the text printed above:

"Aw, twenty-three!"

"By the way, I have come upon a new piece of slang within the past two months and it has puzzled me. I just heard it from a big newsboy who had a ‘stand’ on a corner. A small boy with several papers under his arm had edged up until he was trespassing on the territory of the other. When the big boy saw the small one he went at him in a threatening manner and said: ‘Here! Here! Twenty-three! Twenty-three!’ The small boy scowled and talked under his breath, but he moved away. A few days after that I saw a street beggar approach a well-dressed man, who might have been a bookmaker or horseman, and try for the usual ‘touch’. The man looked at the beggar in cold disgust and said: ‘Aw, twenty-three!’ I could see that the beggar didn’t understand it any better than I did. I happened to meet a man who tries to ‘keep up’ on slang and I asked [about] the meaning of ‘Twenty-three!’ He said it was a signal to clear out, run, get away."

Wrote George Ade, in 1899, quoted in the Wikipedia article "23 skidoo (phrase)."

But why did 23 come to mean get out?

Some people think it originated with Dickens's novel "A Tale of Two Cities"! It has to do with the numbers given to the doomed prisoners going to the guillotine:

The ants go marching quadrillion by quadrillion.

"A new estimate for the total number of ants burrowing and buzzing on Earth comes to a whopping total of nearly 20 quadrillion individuals. That staggering sum — 20,000,000,000,000,000, or 20,000 trillion — reveals ants’ astonishing ubiquity even as scientists grow concerned a possible mass die off of insects could upend ecosystems. In a paper released Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a group of scientists from the University of Hong Kong analyzed 489 studies and concluded that the total mass of ants on Earth weighs in at about 12 megatons of dry carbon, a standard way of measuring animals’ biomass. Put another way: If all the ants were plucked from the ground and put on a scale, they would outweigh all the wild birds and mammals put together. For every person, there are about 2.5 million ants."

WaPo reports.

Eminent songwriter Diane Warren asked "How can there be 24 writers on a [Beyoncé] song?" and ended up apologizing!

She'd added an eye-rolling emoji — the L.A. Times reports — and then softened the snark with "This isn’t meant as shade, I’m just curious."

The L.A. Times casually displays bias:

Bey’s empowering track “Alien Superstar” has 24 songwriters on it....

It uses the cute pet name "Bey" and designates the song as "empowering."

Here are the lyrics. You tell me if it's empowering: "I'm too classy for this world, forever, I'm that girl/Feed you diamonds and pearls, ooh, baby/I'm too classy to be touched, I paid them all in dust/I'm stingy with my love, ooh, baby."