"Following days of legal threats and accusations of antisemitism lobbed at the owners of Good Pierogi after last week’s incident when the vendor denied him service, Dershowitz showed back up..."

"... on Wednesday to once again purchase some potato-stuffed dumplings in 'an effort to try to restore community.'"

I'm reading "Alan Dershowitz once again denied pierogi as Martha’s Vineyard residents chant ‘time to go’/‘I am very surprised that you’re here because of the things that you’ve been saying about us and the business online,’ the pierogi vendor told Alan Dershowitz on Wednesday" (Independent).

We're told there was a "large crowd" that chanted "Time to go! Go home Alan!"

"As for Dershowitz’s antisemitism claims, [the pierogi vender Krem] Miskevich noted that they are Jewish and have immediate family members in Israel, noting that friends call them 'Rabbi Krem' and that they have personal relationships with other rabbis on the island. 'Finally, we don’t back down to bullies – no matter their size,' Miskevich concluded the Tuesday night post."

There are some photos of the encounter at the link, and what jumps out at me is that Miskevich and Dershowitz are smiling at each other. Pleasantly, I think. Not villainously. 

"Interestingly, I think there is an argument to bring back the MRS degree."

My latest: I went inside Turning Point USA's conference for conservative young women

To get a sense of what I saw, watch this video of Charlie Kirk telling a 14-year-old in braces that she should only go to college to get an "MRS degree"

Subscribe to my newsletter below ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/lNdIS0Ia9v

— Madeline Peltz (@peltzmadeline) June 18, 2025

I don't think he said only.

And I don't think you can ignore the smile that broke out on that girl's face at 0:30. You can want more than one thing, and you don't have to pretend to yourself that you don't want those things that are not your career. 

"The event in Washington DC where two Israeli embassy workers were shot dead was aimed at alleviating the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, in 'brutal and tragic irony'....

"... according to an Israel-based aid group. 'All participants came together to find practical solutions to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,' IsraAid, an Israel-based international emergency response group said in a statement. The event was a reception for young Jewish diplomats and foreign policy professionals, and was hosted by the American Jewish Committee at the Capital Jewish Museum. The event 'focused on delivering aid to Gaza through Israeli-Palestinian and regional co-operation. It was driven by humanitarian values and a belief that collaboration is the only path forward for all people in the region,' IsraAid said."

The London Times reports.

Was the murderer misinformed? It seems more likely that he — along with many others —  opposes "practical solutions," "regional co-operation," "humanitarian values," and "collaboration" as "the only path forward." 

Look at the hopeful faces of Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, who are now dead. Perhaps they were smiling so beautifully because they believed in humanitarian values.

The arrested man, Elias Rodriguez, "had been waving a red keffiyeh, which is often associated with the Marxist–Leninist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)."  He asked for the police to be called, and, as you can hear, in video at the link, he shouts "Free Palestine! Free Palestine!" after he is handcuffed. 

"I learned... what people write. Cultural references, jokes, weather conditions, or the difficulty of an ascent. Sarcastic comments..."

"... about needing to quit smoking or arriving stoned. A lot of humorous begging for a helicopter ride down. Catalogs of wildlife spotted or lamentably not. A lot of misspellings (which I’ve retained). A lot of thanks to God."

From "Why Do We Leave Notes on Top of Mountains? It’s Personal/For centuries, people have left all sorts of notes in summit registers. I looked through 100 years of love letters and spontaneous exaltation, including my own family's, to find out why." (Outside).

You can see trends in handwriting styles (neat cursive, like the kind taught by nuns, giving way over time to chicken scratch), as well as music and literature (lots of Grateful Dead and Dharma Bums). Some writers refer to previous entries. Most seemed not to have thought about what they’d write until they arrived. Instead, the words left in registers are simply tactile evidence that someone was there at a certain point in time: alone, with friends, or with the people they love.

One register entry found by the author: "If you are a single woman and made it this far to read these scribblings: I love you!! Marry me!"

And — this isn't in the article, but — here's a quote from "The Dharma Bums": "Oh my God, sociability is just a big smile and a big smile is nothing but teeth, I wish I could just stay up here and rest and be kind."

"That was a bad bump."

How to react to turbulence, Trump-style:

A livestream of Fort Knox would be 🔥🔥
pic.twitter.com/hFJXMnEjvy

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 20, 2025

And, yes, please check on the gold in Fort Knox. A walk-though, live-streamed, would be so reassuring. Let's all grimace playfully. It's the new whistle a happy tune. 

ADDED: What if they went into Fort Knox and all they found were empty bottles of Prohibition Era hootch?

Wipe that smile off your face.

"Why are you doing your mouth like that? Someone needs to tell you to stop."

To what extent does Trump's new official portrait look like his mugshot?

 Surely, the resemblance is intentional... but so are the differences:

The similarities include the framing of the picture. Notice how the side of the collar and lapel line up under the ear (the famous ear!) and how much of the top of the head is showing, with the chin down. There's a lack of symmetry in the eyes, and a distinctive arced wrinkle over his left eye.

But the mugshot face has garish color and harsh light and shade and a deep frown line on the left side of the mouth. The official portrait lighting puts the shadow where it is flattering and where it reveals the individuality and humanity of the face. By comparison, mugshot Trump seems cartoonish. It's almost as if the light were adjusted to create the look of a Hitler mustache. 

In both pictures Trump's right eye seems more active. It's more narrowly pinched than his left eye. It's the eye that's looking right into you. The portrait eye is gentler, wiser, and it influences my interpretation of the mugshot eye. Mugshot Trump is angry. And, oh!, those mugshot eyebrows. They overhang the eyes ominously. He's saying he will fight, fight, fight. Portrait Trump is more complex.

What do you see in him? Whatever it is, it includes his intent to make you think about the mugshot and all that it represents. His adversaries threw everything they could at him, and he fought back and triumphed. But he's not smiling. He's not the Trump in the 2017 portrait:

But who is he? Who is he, now that he's Trump 47?

"AI will be incredible," tweets Elon Musk...

... showing us this:

AI will be incredible
pic.twitter.com/1fU4Jn7yN9

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 25, 2024

But that is not incredible. Everything is credible now that we know A.I. does things like that. It's no more incredible than movies, which amazed people at one time, and in fact, right now, what A.I. did to those famous paintings is worse than any random few seconds in a well-made movie because it is in low taste and it is a step down from the artist's vision, which froze one moment and presented it to signify everything in the surrounding moments. Unfreezing that moment is utterly banal, and it misunderstands what the painting offers, which is to activate our mind about whatever might relate to that picture.

A.I. steps in and generates the next few seconds in the most obvious and superficial way. Let's have the Girl with a Pearl Earring break out of her subtle expression and into a modern-day movie-star smile. There, now, you are relieved from contemplating the mystery of human emotion and entertained by the comfortable reminder that when young beautiful women smile they are simply fantastic. 

"Some scholars have been surprised by their findings about gender and how candidates translate to viewers."

"One experiment enlisted actors to re-create a Clinton-Trump debate — repeating lines, gestures and facial expressions but with the genders swapped. Audience members were asked about their views afterward.... 'That project was really shocking for me,' said Joe Salvatore, a New York University professor who co-led the experimental performance. He had thought that viewers would react more negatively to a female Trump and more positively to a male Clinton because of gender bias — for instance, an aversion to a confrontational woman. But plenty liked that the female Trump was 'strong' and 'concise' — and conversely took issue with how much the male Clinton was smiling."

From "Analysts say Trump faces risks heightened by gender when he debates Harris/Political analysts say there are particular risks for Donald Trump — heightened by gender — in coming across as a bully when he debates Kamala Harris" (WaPo).

I blogged about Salvatore's project back in 2017 — with video of the gender-reversed debate. What a revelation! Watch:

I think it's great that the audience appreciated a woman talking like Trump and didn't like the Hillary mannerisms in a man. And Kamala Harris has a lot of feminine style that I'm afraid comes across as subordinate: the laughing, the smiling, the whole-body shaking, the nodding of the head as if desperate for approval, the ever-changing voice. It doesn't show leadership ability, and we can see why Trump is getting mileage out of saying that world leaders will "walk all over her" and "She'll be like a play toy."

"Adopting joy as a political shield has also allowed Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz to throw some bare-knuckled punches at Mr. Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio."

"Ms. Harris, a former prosecutor, has targeted Mr. Trump for his many legal problems — 'I know Donald Trump’s type,' she now likes to say, to uproarious applause and chants of 'Lock him up' that she only recently began to discourage. Mr. Walz has castigated Mr. Trump for 'servicing himself' instead of helping others, and made an off-color reference to a debunked rumor about Mr. Vance and furniture. Both Democrats do it with a smile, and the crowd eats it up.... Of course, Ms. Harris’s joyful-warrior approach has so far not been substantive from a policy perspective...."

Writes Katie Rogers in "Harris Used to Worry About Laughing. Now Joy Is Fueling Her Campaign. Democrats are smiling again, and so is a vice president who once weighed the political risks of cheerfulness. The high spirits are also providing air cover for scathing attacks on Republicans" (NYT).

But maybe get-happy is policy enough: "In 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt adopted the song 'Happy Days Are Here Again' to offer a promise of a bright future to Americans stricken by the Great Depression.... In a time of war and economic recession, Barack Obama’s likeness was plastered on a poster [with] the message... 'Hope.'"

Trump walks out into the GOP convention: What was your reaction?

I watched live last night — did you? — and I'm rewatching now:

0:06 — Trump ambles out slowly. He's got a patch of white gauze atop his upper ear. 

0:16 — We're seeing him backstage, where he can — with his famous and his unfamous ear — hear the crowd cheering. He looks serious... and tired.

0:22  — Lee Greenwood, live on stage, begins Trump's theme song — If tomorrow all the things were gone — and Trump raises his arm into a fist pump — the gesture last seen 2 minutes after he nearly died.

0:35 — He's mouthing some words, he waves, does another fist pump, looks down, gives a thumbs up, mouths "Thank you, thank you."

0:57 — I remember thinking last night that he looks different and I flashed on the possibility there could be a body double then estimated it at zero when he turned sideways and we could see his idiosyncratic ducktail.

2:00 — Ascended onto the podium, he looks happy now. He moves to the speaker's position, but he gives no speech, only a mouthed "Thank you" and another fist pump. He smiles for a moment then walks over to join a select group of family and friends. Not Melania, but Tiffany and the 2 older boys. J.D. Vance, Byron Donalds, Tucker Carlson. Lee Greenwood: "He is here tonight to show his courage, his defiance against somebody who tried to kill him."

2:08 — His facial expression becomes softer, gentler. He seems as if he might cry.

2:25 — From the lakes of Minnesota, to the hills of Tennessee — we know he is sensitive to music, and hearing this song again, now, must be an overwhelming emotional experience. Watch his face at this point.

2:53 — He dances slightly. 

3:13 — He's calmed down a bit now and is smiling and waving. 

3:43 — There's some restrained interaction with Vance after which his eyes swivel Vanceward, as if it might be possible for Trump to observe him unnoticed.

3:51 — Vance points at something, which seems to warm things up, and the 2 men chat. Then the 2 men point together. Pointing at something out of our view — perhaps at nothing at all — is a standard political gesture, and the 2 men seem to flow smoothly into this performance.

4:09 — The song ends, Trump salutes, the crowd chants the chant from the scene of the attempted assassination: "U-S-A! U-S-A!"

4:24 — Trump joins the chant. He's got a very wide smile, and again, I feel that he's holding back tears.

"It felt like he was still the smart, witty guy we’ve all followed for many years, but the volume and speed are turned way down — to an alarming level."

Said an unnamed female Democratic Party donor quoted in "Inside the glitzy fundraiser where Biden lost George Clooney/At the June 15 event at L.A.’s Peacock Theater, some donors said this week that they noticed Biden seemed slow. He seemed frail. As he greeted donors lined up for photos, he trailed off or spoke too quietly in small talk conversation to be heard" (WaPo).

Making small talk with the current and former presidents while preparing for a photo, the donor said that she and Obama shared a brief joke that Biden initially seemed to miss. The current president only attempted a retort “in a barely audible voice” after the photo was over and others had moved on, she said.

So this lady got her big moment, wafted a joke/"joke," and Obama laughed, because that's what sharp people do when someone they want to please say something intended as a joke, and Biden did not laugh. In the wealthy woman's opinion, conveyed to The Washington Post with a demand not to use her name, Biden seemed to miss the joke/"joke." Initially. What was the purported joke and was it explained to him so that eventually he acted as though he got it? Maybe Obama explained it: Joe, this woman and her husband donated $100,000 and she believes she's said something amusing — don't you understand? And then Joe seemed to understand. But Joe had to have known he was at a fundraiser. And who could this lady be but a donor?

Trump is now on TikTok.

Here's his first post... followed by some Trump-related TikToks you might appreciate:

I love that little smile she gets when she sees the opening and how many openings she sees.

She’s way above the average member of Congress in how she questions a witness. Most give speeches or ask prepared questions without an ability to follow up. VP? https://t.co/DBAKc0GYMw

— Randy Barnett (@RandyEBarnett) May 15, 2024

"Schools were closed, cars veered into ditches, and DeSantis did his best to bond with locals over their strange, snowy ways."

"'I actually do have a winter coat, and I forgot it,' he told a group of highway-construction contractors, on Wednesday morning. 'So the next people that are coming up from Tallahassee, they’re going to bring it.... But I think I’m going to need earmuffs and all that other stuff. So any tips you can give me....'"

Writes Sarah Larson, in "When Ron DeSantis Forgot His Coat/On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, the Florida governor faces blizzards, skeptical voters, and the chill of his own campaign" (The New Yorker).

Lots more at the link. I just want to quote this sentence: "Posing for photographs, DeSantis looked as if he were trying to keep his smile perfectly still while it attempted to crawl off his face."

Meanwhile, also in The New Yorker: "Trump Receives a Warm Embrace in Frigid Iowa/Before the caucuses, snow had kept the former President away from his enthusiastic crowds. On Saturday, he finally arrived in Des Moines."  The reporter, Antonia Hitchens, writes:

"So, in Poor Things, Emma Stone’s character is basically a woman with a child’s brain. And in this particular scene, she’s encountering dance and music for... the first time."

"How did you start to develop this dance? It’s such an interesting concept."

Asks the Slate writer Nadira Goff, in "How Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo’s Delightfully Weird Dance in Poor Things Came Together/Choreographer Constanza Macras on the standout scene, working with Yorgos Lanthimos, and expanding the idea of what dance is."

The choreographer answers: "It’s described in the script as a dance that is really going off because she’s just finding out [about dance]. So, with that in mind, I tried to create. [The director] was not convinced about some things; it looked too much like acting. When we passed it to the actors, then it grew and took shape. Emma Stone also had really good suggestions about her character because she was working, already, on this way that she moves. She brought in locking the knees. That gave shape to this dance as well."

Stone's character is a Frankenstein creation, so we may well compare the dancing to the Frankenstein in "Young Frankenstein":

That Frankenstein monster is able to dance smoothly, but his singing is very rough. That's the joke, and that gets to the question I was googling when I found that Emma Stone dance: Why do dancers always try to look as though what they are doing is very easy (for them) and pure joy (for them) while singers often act as though it's quite difficult and even painful? That's a big difference between singing and dancing, and I don't think it's because singing is more arduous and hurtful. Perhaps it's because the opposite is true, and the dancer must hide his feelings lest the audience turn away. But we don't turn away when a singer displays a horrible struggle and deep pain. We like that. What's our problem?!

I formulated my question after watching Fred Astaire and George Murphy in the first part of "Broadway Melody of 1940" (now streaming on the Criterion Channel). The first musical number is "Don't Monkey With Broadway" (modeling, for future satirists, how 2 men dance together in formalwear while wielding canes):

The men are unhappy with their job. We see them complaining back stage before they stride out beaming with joy — joy that does not exist but that the audience demands.

"George Santos Says He’s Making Over $80,000 a Day on Cameo."

Vanity Fair reports.

Less than two weeks after being expelled from Congress, the former New York representative is now making money hand over fist recording personalized videos on Cameo, for which he is now charging an astonishing $500 a pop, a 566.67% increase from his original asking price of $75.... 

"With his own lawyers questioning him, [Donald Trump Jr.'s] testimony adopted a rhapsodic tone that aimed to create a parallel universe..."

"... from the one that operated in the previous six weeks of the trial, when the attorney general’s office laid out its case. Whereas [Letitia] James’s office presented spreadsheets, emails and financial statements, Mr. Trump’s lawyers showed him dozens of pictures of luxury properties, and he opined about them lovingly and at length....  The judge who will decide the nonjury case, Arthur F. Engoron, has often been impatient with the Trumps and their lawyers.... But on Monday, Justice Engoron brushed aside objections from state lawyers to Mr. Trump’s testimony, saying, 'Let him go ahead and talk about how great the Trump Organization is.' Mr. Trump began at the beginning, describing his great-grandfather developing hotels in the Yukon during the gold rush.... ... Justice Engoron was patient and seemed to find something of a rapport with Mr. Trump. Several times, Mr. Trump turned his head and body toward the judge and spoke directly to him, often prompting the judge to smile...."

From "The former president’s son said the family’s properties showed his father’s brilliance" (NYT).

Hmm. That smiling. Is the judge falling (a little) in love with Trump or is the judge getting off on the prospect of depriving this man of his New York properties?

They're hungry.

That was my instant answer to the question in the headline of a NYT fashion article, "Why Do Runway Models Always Look So Grumpy?"

But the NYT fashion writer, Vanessa Friedman, says it's because runway models are under so much pressure that they can't smile convincingly. It's been tried, but they just look weird. If, as sometimes happens, the designer instructs the models to look happy, "it turns, very quickly, into a frozen rictus that doesn’t reach the eyes — a facial disjunction that can be very disturbing to watch."

"Back in the day when it wasn’t that easy to survive the winter, people had to struggle, and then it’s kind of been passed along the generations."

"Our parents were this way. Our grandparents were this way. Tough and not worrying about everything. Just living life."

Said Matias From, 18, quoted in "The Finnish Secret to Happiness? Knowing When You Have Enough.The Nordic nation has been ranked the happiest country on earth for six consecutive years. But when you talk to individual Finns, the reality is a bit more complicated" (NYT). 

This happiness does not look much like an America stereotype of happiness: