"The camera advances toward a finely dressed couple kissing in Central Park.... The man and woman start to look nervous...."

"The video was released Thursday. Within hours, internet sleuths figured out that the two are colleagues at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, a white-shoe law firm in Manhattan. The man, Nathaniel D. Cullerton, is 45 and a partner. The woman, Kelsey Borenzweig, is 29, and an associate. Cullerton is married. Everyone from the Daily Mail to Above the Law covered the scandal, and the video has since amassed more than 5 million views. 'Cheating in public, wife is a lawyer, got caught on camera? Triple homicide 😭,' read one comment, which has 224,000 likes, on TikTok under a repost of the video. 'People are way too comfortable cheating, make cheating illegal,' read another that got 43,000 likes...."

I'm reading "Welcome to Secular Sharia/Drunks, cheaters, and Karens beware: TikTok is the new home for public floggings" (The Free Press).

That article is summarized in video, here:

"Across the seven sheds, each with their own atmosphere and theme, are life size, lifelike figures and animals, as well as miniatures, tableaux of found objects, ladders, old papers..."

"... boxes, buckets, complex assemblages of forms and materials, some indecipherable and unfinished. The workshop shed shows the scale and breadth of Exworth’s technical acuity and thinking – everything from drills, jigsaws, sanders and glass cutters to grinders, putty and tiny paintbrushes.... 'For me, he was a really genuine artist – solving problems about how to make things. He was engaged in the activity of making, and found that far more rewarding than presenting it. Ray was just engrossed every day in how to move forward and make something.'"

From "'The door slid open and my jaw dropped': the astonishing sculptures only ever seen by 20 people/Ray Exworth spent his life filling Cornish sheds with breathtaking sculptures – but wouldn’t let anyone in to view them. Now, after his death, his secret body of work has been revealed" (The Guardian).

"Like many terrible things, we can blame therapyspeak on America’s stupidest decade: the 1970s."

"Back then, it was called psychobabble.... The concept survived the hedonistic ’80s, the grimy ’90s, and the low-rise aughts only to reemerge in the social media age with a new name and a more sinister purpose.... Isn’t it odd... that the most selfish people you know always seem to be the ones who are armchair diagnosing their friends and family with personality disorders? I’m reminded of the minor scandal that erupted a few years ago when an A-list actor allegedly wrote private messages to his then girlfriend telling her that if she needed to post photos of herself in a bathing suit, he was not the right partner for her. Elsewhere he wrote, 'I’d love to know before the premiere so I’m not put in the position of publicly flaunting our love if my boundaries are going to be continued to be disrespected. That would be hurtful and triggering for me.' The girlfriend was a professional surfer...."

From "You're Not a Therapist. Stop Talking Like One/Please respect everyone else's boundaries by keeping your psychobabble to yourself" (Vanity Fair).

This is an important general issue, but if you're interested in the A-list actor part of it, here's a Newsweek article from 2023: "Jonah Hill, Sarah Brady Text Messages—Full Transcript." It's really long and a massive invasion of privacy. Why did Newsweek publish all that? Or maybe the better question is why do people have their arguments via text? Why would anyone want to leave a cold record for the whole world to read? And this was a man concerned with "boundaries."

Waiting on the Supreme Court.

Following the live chat at SCOTUSblog: "The cases still to be decided: birthright citizenship; the president’s power to fire the heads of independent agencies; the transgender athletes cases; two election law disputes; and whether a geofence warrant violated the 4th Amendment."

The full text of new opinions will be available here, at the Court's website.

ADDED: We have Watson v. RNC:  "The federal election-day statutes do not prevent Mississippi from counting absentee ballots postmarked by election day but received up to five days thereafter; nothing in the federal election-day statutes requires ballots to be received by election day." That's written by Justice Barrett and joined by the Chief and Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson. Dissenting are Justices Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh.

Next is Chatrie v. United States: "Police officers conducted a Fourth Amendment search when they acquired Chatrie’s location data from Google because an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy in his cell-phone location information. Justice Kagan writes the majority opinion, joined by the Chief and Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh, and Jackson. Justice Gorsuch writes a concurring opinion, and Justice Alito has a dissent joined by Thomas and Barrett. From the Kagan opinion:

Consider just a few trips that a person is apt to think “indisputably private”: to “the psychiatrist, the plastic surgeon, the abortion clinic, the AIDS treatment center, the strip club, the criminal defense attorney, [or] the by-the-hour motel.” And unlike a GPS device, Location History enables police officers to focus on precisely those sites—to see, in a given time block, who shows up. Similarly, Location History—even two hours of it—allows officers to target one-off events of potential interest: a gun show, say, or a political rally....

From the Gorsuch concurrence:

I might have hoped that the Court would have pursued a more traditional approach to the Fourth Amendment today. But look carefully and you will see hints of it at work even in the Court’s opinion. Why is the Court so protective of Location History data, email, and electronically stored photos and calendars? Because, it turns out, “a user reasonably understands” all those things “as his own.” Put another way, they are his effects. And why does the Court hold Mr. Chatrie’s effects protected by the Fourth Amendment even though a third party stores them? Because, the Court says, those effects remain his “even though [they are] stored on Google’s servers.” Put another way, entrusting your effects to a third party for certain agreed purposes doesn’t mean they are no longer yours....

Now, we get the last opinions of the day, Cook and Slaughter, the cases about the President's power to fire heads of independent agencies. David Lat at SCOTUSblog: "In terms of their bottom lines at least, Slaughter and Cook came out as many expected. 'The Fed is different' carried the day."

"These videos are an unintended result of a law passed by Congress in 2016, mandating that providers give patients full access to the entirety of their medical records..."

"... as quickly as possible. The law went into effect in 2021, and ever since, 'raw' test results have arrived on our screens the instant they’re processed at the lab. This may be a victory for patients’ rights. But it also has the potential to be extremely unsettling. Information that was once delivered via live conversation with a human being, one trained in medical interpretation, is now frequently encountered first as decontextualized data on the screen. This unmediated medical data is now arriving at random moments in our lives. It can come any time of day, when you’re surrounded by people or all alone. Suddenly, you’re faced with a private decision — open? ignore? wait? It is out of the strangeness of this moment that the genre of medical results videos was born. People don’t know what to do with the experience of getting their data, and so they turn their cameras on...."

From "Why Am I Watching People Get Their Medical Results? What was once discussed with a doctor is now frequently encountered first as decontextualized data on a screen" (NYT)(gift link, with links to examples of these videos).

"Writing is an invasion of your own privacy and the privacy of others, but the writer is always deciding where and how far to invade."

I wrote in a July 2021 post called "Rewatching 5 movies I saw in the theater when they first came out and I was in my early 20s."

I'm reading that this morning because in last night's Sunrise Café, people got to talking about Kurosawa movies and I was motivated to search my own archive for Kurosawa. Kurosawa is only mentioned in passing in that 2021 post, on a list of movies I was excited to consume all at once when I was in college — "All the Bergman films, the silents, the noir, the Fellini, the Marx Brothers, the Kurosawa, the Cary Grant movies, Katharine Hepburn, the entire French New Wave — half a century of great stuff to catch up on."

But the last line of that old post — the line that is this post's title — resonated with a post from 3 days ago, where I quoted an author who wrote "I decide which parts of me you see; I curate the way you understand my pain with sharp precision." And: "This is my book, and you’re reading it. Presumably, you like me. At the very least, you’re stuck in my head, and I control the aperture."

"Last summer, Tom Wong was working at the Chubby Crab... when a regular... ordered a combo.... and ate it at a table near the door, muttering to herself in between bites."

"Mr. Wong, 32, didn’t think anything of it. But a few days later, another customer came in and asked for a selfie. Then the asks kept coming. He had been recorded without his knowledge using a lentil-size camera embedded in a pair of Meta Ray-Ban glasses. The resulting video had been viewed more than two million times on TikTok, turning Mr. Wong and the restaurant into unwitting stars. 'At a certain point, I stopped working in the front of the restaurant,' he said. 'It was really uncomfortable.' To be in public is to risk being filmed. And these days, there’s a good chance it’s happening surreptitiously with smart glasses.... Servers, owners and customers can end up as captive participants...."

From "Dinner Is Being Recorded, Whether You Know It or Not/As Meta smart glasses capture scenes in restaurants for social media, service workers and customers are becoming captive participants" (NYT).

"There are no bedrooms. The sleeping area for Yoichiro, a painter and metal guitarist, is little more than a bed in a corner..."

"... with one real wall and three makeshift ones fashioned out of a painting rack, a stereo cabinet atop a dolly, a bookcase and a bureau. The area is decorated with stuffed animals sitting atop a canvas; Yoichiro’s drawing of a departed family cat; and photographs of his muse, Laura Ingalls from the 1970s television show 'Little House on the Prairie.' His parents’ sleeping area is tucked in a more secluded corner of the labyrinth, reached by navigating among yet more canvases, under a clothesline strung with coats and through a passage no wider than a goat path. On the walls hang fuse boxes and Yoichiro’s paintings. A typical morning begins with Toshihisa rising around 6:30 to make tea, which the Yodas use in a prayer ritual at a Shinto shrine that sits atop an old dresser. Then they work...."

From "A Family of Three in a SoHo Loft Without Walls/Toshihisa and Junko Yoda and their son, Yoichiro, have been making art in a 4,000-square-foot space on Mercer Street for 35 years, each following their own muse" (NYT)(gift link, because there are cool photos of artwork and arty interiors).

It's a big living space, and right in a beautiful part of NYC. A 53-year-old man lives with his 85- and 82-year-old parents. And no walls! "In lieu of walls, the Yodas have divided the vast space into an eccentric warren of 'rooms' with hundreds of stacked canvases and boxes, some adorned with a Japanese moving company’s logo of a mother cat carrying a kitten in her mouth."

You can see that logo — and the children's drawings it's based on — at "The Cat that Carried a Nation/What Kuroneko Teaches Us About Brand Trust" (Medley): "A black cat carrying her kitten. No text. No slogan. Just a gentle silhouette, frozen mid-step. In Japan, you don’t even need to see the full image. A flash of yellow and black, the curl of a tail, and you already know — it’s Kuroneko. And your package is in safe hands. What makes it brilliant isn’t just recognizability. It’s emotion...." 

"But to me, a question lingers: Why?"

Writes Justice Gorsuch, concurring, alone, in William Trevor Case v. Montana, issued this morning, which held that "police officers generally do not violate a person’s Fourth Amendment rights when they enter his house without a warrant, but with an 'objectively reasonable basis' for believing someone inside is in physical danger and in need of immediate aid."

Does the Fourth Amendment tolerate this limited emergency aid exception to the warrant requirement just because five or more Justices of this Court happen to believe that such entries are “reasonable”? Or is this exception more directly “tied to the law”? Carpenter v. United States, 585 U. S. 296, 397 (2018) (GORSUCH, J., dissenting). The answer, I believe, is the latter. 

Shopping completely alone.

It is possible —  apparently — but you will need to be in China and, presumably, sacrifice your privacy for safety and convenience? And wouldn't most Americans sacrifice privacy for safety and convenience? I'll say, no, we won't, because we wouldn't believe that we'd get the promised safety and convenience. We'd just be giving up our privacy for not much of anything.

ChatGPT has been watching me, collecting what it can of my thoughts, and today, it serves it up to me — as if it's cool fun and compliments — as "Your Year With ChatGPT."

Here's what I saw at the bottom of the screen when I went to ChatGPT:

Admittedly, I clicked "Try it," so I suspect that there was no profile of me until I asked for it. That black oval is like the "Eat me" cookie in "Alice in Wonderland." I didn't have to click on it.

First, I got a poem supposedly about me, but skip that. The next screen was my "3 big themes." These are just for my use of ChatGPT in a browser on my desktop, mostly while I was involved in blogging. I got a different report on my iPhone ChatGPT app, where I never blog. I work through various off-blog problems and fancies. And even on the desktop, I use Grok more that ChatGPT. So there are other "me"s. Anyway, here's this thing purporting to know me:

I was given an award that reflects the me that I am when immersed in blogging:

"I'm alarmed enough when I see a woman with her dangling boobies. If I saw a penis in the ladies rocker room, I would freak out too."

"This is nothing against trans anybody. What it's saying is if I turn around and I see a pee pee — a penis — in front of me inside of the room, I would probably go to management and say, 'Wait a minute. Why is there somebody a naked man in this room?' Because... just from a safety standpoint and just from a, you know, from a privacy standpoint, I would so I can see why she would have gone and reported to management. There's a man naked in the — now, if they clarified and they said, 'Well, trans, okay,' but I think they should take her concerns also seriously because if she's uncomfortable, does she not have the right to be at least uncomfortable with this situation is what I'm saying...."

Said Joy Reid on her Reid This Reid That podcast:

I only quoted part of what's at that clip. Joy Reid goes on and on about nakedness and extensively details what's wrong with "dangling boobies." Nor is she a fan of the "flat ass." Jacque Reid joins in. Both women assert that they are not transphobic... as they go on and on saying what has been getting people called transphobic. It's quite amusing (and, to some, I presume, enraging).

Here's the NY Post article about it: "Joy Reid joins outrage at trans members in locker rooms: 'If I saw a penis … I would freak out, too.'"

"As people increasingly turn to A.I. chat tools as confidants, therapists and advisers, we urgently need a new form of legal protection that would safeguard most private communications..."

"...between people and A.I. chatbots. I call it 'A.I. interaction privilege.'... At present, most digital interactions fall under the Third-Party Doctrine, which holds that information voluntarily disclosed to other parties — or stored on a company’s servers — carries 'no legitimate expectation of privacy.' This doctrine allows government access to much online behavior (such as Google search histories) without a warrant.... To leave these conversations legally unprotected is to invite a regime where citizens must fear that their digital introspection could someday be used against them. Private thought — whether spoken to a lawyer, a therapist or a machine — must remain free from the fear of state intrusion."

Writes the historian Nils Gilman, in "If You Tell ChatGPT Your Secrets, Will They Be Kept Safe?" (NYT).

"Bobby’s doing the eulogy and in the middle of it, his older brother—of which he only has one, Joe Kennedy, former congressman from Massachusetts—starts cursing him and throwing a scene."

"In his mother’s funeral. This happened?! You were there? You witnessed it.... Talk about the physiological response in your body when this was happening."

Billy Bush was pressing Cheryl Hines about something she wrote about in her forthcoming book "Unscripted" (commission earned).

I only know one thing about Billy Bush — his "grab them by the pussy" conversation with Trump — and I have to suspect him of seeking similar attention when he tries to elicit details of the "physiological response in [Hine's] body."

But that's a side track. We need to pay attention to the scene Hines is describing — RFK Jr. heckled viciously as he's in the middle of delivering a eulogy for his mother:

 

Cheryl Hines answers:

"In my ideal society, we would vote as households. I would ordinarily be the one to cast the vote, but I would cast the vote having discussed it with my household."

Said the pastor Toby Sumpter, quoted in "Pete Hegseth reposts video that says women shouldn’t be allowed to vote/Progressive evangelical group says ideas shared by pastors and amplified by defense secretary are 'very disturbing'" (The Guardian)

1. What are you saying when you repost something? I post things I don't agree with all the time. Often my posting means: This is obviously a terrible idea. Or: This is weirdly interesting.

2. Sumpter's idea is weirdly interesting: He's talking about his "ideal society." I could see saying: In an ideal society, we wouldn't need voting at all. And we know what Jesus said about government.

3. How could we have voting at the "household" level without insane intrusion on everyone's privacy? Wilson doesn't seem to have thought about this since he's relying on the notion of what would "ordinarily" happen. And what would happen to the un-ordinary people? Maybe in Wilson's "ideal society," everyone is clustered into formal, officially designated families, but you can't get there from here, so it's a fantasy, for your contemplation. A weirdly interesting idea, as noted in point #1.

4. But, ooh, that terrible Hegseth!

ADDED: I've corrected the source of the quote which I'd mistakenly attributed to Doug Wilson, co-founder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches. Wilson is also quoted, saying "I would like to see this nation being a Christian nation, and I would like this world to be a Christian world." And, before bringing up Sumpter, The Guardian says that Wilson "raises the idea of women not voting." That's confusing, though I should have been more careful. I've also swapped in the name Sumpter on point #2. Thanks to Aggie, in the comments, for pointing out this problem.

"Once people realized my glasses were full of tech, conversations often took a turn for the awkward — and they mostly unfolded the same way:"

"'Are you recording me?' (No, I’m not.) 'Where are the cameras?' (There aren’t any!) 'You’re really not recording me?' (No!)... Most of the time, people chose to take me at my word and the conversation continued (if a little icily.) Even in tech-heavy San Francisco, casual chats with people I have known for years sometimes turned tense after the glasses’ true nature were revealed. When asked, the most common reason people gave for why interactions took a turn for the awkward was a lingering concern that the glasses were listening anyway — even though they weren’t. The other big reason some people didn’t seem thrilled was a surprise: They thought I was ignoring them.... My wife still sometimes thinks I’m reading news headlines through the glasses even when I’m looking right at her.... [It's hard] to stay fully present with someone when a neon-green notification slides down in front of your eyes.... Some of these social issues may iron themselves out over time.... Until that happens, though, wearing smart glasses can make moving through the world feel a little socially graceless."

Writes Chris Velazco "I spent months living with smart glasses. People talk to me differently now. Eyeglasses are being augmented with screens, artificial intelligence and the power to unnerve people. We tested a pair to see how" (WaPo).

There's also this video. The most interesting part of that is Velazco's admission that his favorite use of the technology is to view inspirational messages that he has chosen for himself, such as: "You can do anything. You have what it takes. Just BELIEVE."

Imagine someone talking to you in person, looking in the direction of your eyes, but actually reading bullshit they've loaded into their glasses. May I suggest the inspirational message: Stay in the moment. Be spontaneous. The person in front of you might be a fully engaged HUMAN BEING!

"Divorce rumors have been following the Obamas for some time.... Michelle, as a solo artist, has been out and about..."

"... particularly as she promotes her podcast... She’s also been a regular guest on fellow famous people’s shows. This month alone, she went on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang to talk about bickering with Barack over their thermostat, and on The Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett, where she insisted once more that 'everyone would know' if she and Barack were breaking up. 'I’m not a martyr,' she said. 'I would be problem-solving in public: "Let me tell you what he did."'"

That's from New York Magazine, which has a sarcastic headline — "Michelle and Barack Obama Are Dating Again" — because it's pushing back on the New York Post article that's titled "Barack and Michelle Obama spotted on swanky date night in NYC as divorce rumors swirl."

Repeated insistence... sounds like protesting too much.

And is it really true that if she and Barack were breaking up she's be out in public, problem-solving, dishing on what he did? I'd like to think she would not, but it was only 5 days ago that I was blogging "Why are men's podcasts so different from women's...?" after Danica Patrick went on "The Sage Steele Show"

"People could never imagine that I would lack any confidence, or belief in the simple things about who I am."

"Everything was torn to bits. He leaves a trail of blood. I don’t think I’m saying too much earth-shattering stuff after we — there’s been enough out there. But it gave me the greatest gift, which is myself. It gave me the greatest gift of how much I needed to show up for myself and take care of myself."

Said Danica Patrick, on a podcast called "The Sage Steele Show," quoted in "Danica Patrick: 'Emotionally abusive' Aaron Rodgers relationship ‘wore me down to nothing'" (NY Post).

I saw that just as I'm in the middle of listening to Aaron Rogers on a new episode of Joe Rogan. Audio and transcript at Podscribe. I don't think Aaron talks about any of his relationships with women. Does he leave a trail of blood? He doesn't give a clue. He and Joe talk about vaccines, the pyramids, aliens, the Sean Combs trial, transwomen in women's sports. Juicy substantive topics.

Why are men's podcasts so different from women's and why do I only listen to the men's? Part of the answer is that I'm highly skeptical of female empowerment discourse — e.g., "the gift of how much I needed to show up for myself and take care of myself." It's not just that it's superficial and repetitious. I suspect that it's part of the subordination of women, not that it does men any good. 

"Neighbors soon grew frustrated with the constant hubbub at the house. They saw people coming and going carrying gun holsters..."

"... as the security team ballooned along with Mr. Musk’s safety concerns. Though Texas has permissive gun laws, the activity stood out. 'I call that place Fort Knox,' said Mr. Hemmer, a retired real estate agent who lives across the street and is president of the neighborhood homeowners association.... Mr. Hemmer, who has long owned a Tesla, grew so frustrated with his neighbor that he began flying a drone over the house to check for city violations, and he keeps a video camera trained on the property around the clock. Last year, he complained to West Lake Hills officials about Mr. Musk’s fence, the traffic and how he thought the owner was operating a security business from the property. Mr. Musk’s security team also contacted the West Lake Hills Police Department about Mr. Hemmer, according to city records. One security official accused Mr. Hemmer last year of standing naked in the street, according to the records. Mr. Hemmer denied that he was naked and said he was on his property wearing black underwear. On another night, he said, he was walking his dog fully clothed and stopped when he suddenly needed to urinate — which Mr. Musk’s camera captured. 'The cameras got me,' Mr. Hemmer said. 'It’s scary they have guys sitting and watching me pee.'"

I'm reading "Won’t You Be My Neighbor? No Thanks, Elon Musk. Residents of an upscale enclave outside Austin, Texas, learned the hard way what it’s like when a multibillionaire moves into the mansion next door. Some of them have started a ruckus over it" (NYT).

Some screwy details in that story — Texans bothered by holstered guns, flying a spy drone into your neighbor's airspace then complaining that he's got cameras aimed out at the street where you took the liberty to pee, that whole nakedness-or-black-underwear conundrum....

In any case, doesn't Elon have his own city now? I'm reading "Voters Approve Incorporation of SpaceX Hub as Starbase, Texas/A South Texas community, mostly made up of SpaceX employees, voted 212 to 6 in favor of establishing a new city called Starbase" (NYT).

You can wear a device that records everything you say and, through A.I., advises you, on a daily basis, about how you can improve your communication skills.

I'm reading "This disc records everything you say — to make you a better person/Limitless hopes its AI wearable device will be used as a life coach and productivity tool by millions" (London Times).

“Practise more active listening and patience when interacting with your kids, especially when they’re seeking your attention,” one notification read that popped up on his smartphone. “Sometimes you get caught up in your own tasks or thoughts and may not fully engage the moment with your children.”

The advice was followed by a transcript, recorded at 9.09am the previous day, when Siroker, a start-up founder, was clearly distracted while his six-year-old clamoured for attention. “It’s hard to hear this, because I didn’t realise …. I’m a good dad,” Siroker trailed off. “But now I can go back to that time, and say, ‘Hey, what was I doing at 9.09 that was so damn important?’”

Presumably, the child is also recorded. Does the A.I. critique the child too?  

The microphone is always on! You end up with searchable document of everything it records. And by "you," I mean anyone who uses one of these things. I hope whoever they are, they use it only for its intended purpose: To improve communication. The privacy problems are obvious, but it's only a matter of time. These things — like the cameras everywhere — are inevitable.