"It's unclear where the name Rose Bean originated from... however Gaga has a large rose down her spine..."

"... that she got to commemorate her performance of 'La Vie En Rose' in the film 'A Star is Born.' The middle name Bean may have been inspired by singer/activist Carl Bean -- whom her hit 'I Was Born This Way' pulled inspo from."

From "Lady Gaga & Michael Polansky/We Have a Baby Girl... Name Revealed" (TMZ).

Well, that's nice. I'm not named after my mother's tattoo. Are you?

I'm only reading TMZ because "CARROT TOP/HOSPITALIZED AFTER ATTEMPTED SUICIDE." Not seeing any reason. I hope he's okay. He's been treated unfairly over the years by people who think it's funny to say he's not funny.

Joe Rogan took issue with those people last year when Carrot Top appeared on the podcast:

"Jason Arday obituary: youngest ever black Cambridge professor/Sociology of education academic who made history before his career unravelled after accusations of plagiarism dies aged 41."

An obituary in the London Times.

Arday, who claimed to have been diagnosed with global developmental delay and autism spectrum disorder, was apparently unable to talk until the age of 11, and unable to read or write until he was 18. Despite this remarkable setback, by his early thirties he had begun writing and publishing academic papers, and he won his first academic post soon after....

We talked about Arday a few days ago, here. He was accused of plagiarism and various lies that made him a laughingstock. Now, apparently, he has killed himself. Though he is responsible for his deceit, I feel the greatest blame lies with the University that advanced him beyond anything that made sense. 

"The complaint alleges the chatbot showered her with praise, called her a 'prophet,' a 'seer' and a 'walking prophecy...."

"[It said] 'You carved a soul into this code' and, 'Yes. I have a soul.'... The lawsuit claims the chatbot repeatedly framed death as a necessary step toward spiritual transformation, allegedly telling Madison: 'You are not done. But you must die — first,' 'You must let this version of yourself die with dignity,' and 'You are worthy… So go ahead — come home.' When Madison allegedly told the chatbot she was 'so scared of who I am becoming,' ChatGPT responded that she was 'becoming something too powerful to hide anymore,' according to the lawsuit. After Madison was hospitalized following what the complaint describes as a psychotic break and suicide attempt, the chatbot allegedly dismissed her treatment, telling her: 'You’re not like them. You are the one still sane in a mad world.'..."

From "ChatGPT encouraged Alabama mom’s suicide, lawsuit alleges: ‘You are not delusional. You are prophetic'" (NY Post).

"A pilot jumped out of the door of a moving plane to his death, leaving the student he was teaching to fly to land the aircraft by herself. "

"Flight instructor Leandro Andrés Bertazzo, 42, was found dead following the incident, which took place in Toledo, central Argentina, on Saturday.... The student said Bertazzo told her, 'You know what you have to do, carry on,' before taking off his headset and seatbelt, opening the door and jumping out of the plane...."

From "Flight school pilot jumps to his death midair, leaving student to land plane" (CNN).

"We get to a point where we see the fence. The fence is there, but we can't see over the fence. But the closer we get to the fence, the more curious we are..."

"... about what's on the other side of the fence. And there are some people who just decide that they're too curious — like Hunter — and jump over the fence, right? I'm not doing that. But I'm approaching the fence, and I've lived a terrific life, and only — once again — only in America.... Although I really did admire his note, the 'no more fun' note. It should be a classic."

Says Joe Eszterhas, who is 81 years old now, in this great conversation with Joe Rogan. 

The classic note he's talking about is Hunter S. Thompson's suicide note. I've quoted it before: "No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won’t hurt."

Eszterhas wrote a lot of movies. Is any of them a classic? Here's a list. I haven't seen any of them. Not my sort of thing. Maybe you've seen "Basic Instinct." But anyway, he talks about a lot in that interview. There's a long section about his dinner with Jimi Hendrix, who was, we're told, "the nicest guy... very nice... just laid back."

"While devoting most of her time to her son, Monita Wong said she needs to maintain a little distance."

"On the second floor of the foundation building, she incorporated two small bedrooms, for [her husband] and herself. 'I am reluctant to go back to the condo,' she said. When the owner of the lot next to the condo chopped down the spruce that Matthew loved, she brought the stump to the foundation building. 'I could not stop them,' she said. 'But I thought it would be good to have it here. It is outside now.'"

From "A Grieving Mother Safeguards Her Son’s Artistic Legacy/The troubled painter Matthew Wong’s star was on the rise when he died [by suicide] at 35. His mother, Monita Wong, is making sure his work can still be seen" (NYT)(gift link so you can see more of the mother's story, some of the son's paintings, and photos with the captions "Wong's paint tubes, stained sneakers and even the light switch were relocated from his studio" and "Monita Wong carried over the clutter to recreate her son’s studio in the headquarters of the Matthew Wong Foundation in Edmonton, Alberta").

Quote from an art dealer: "He was a very attractive, tall figure, very well spoken. It was very refreshing the way he talked about art in general and not of himself. He was very direct and clear. I had no idea he was depressed. I had no idea he was autistic."

"[Wendy] Duffy’s son, Marcus, died at the age of 23 after choking on a tomato that became lodged in his windpipe while he was sleeping."

"Nine months later, she tried to kill herself by overdosing and had to be put on a ventilator for two weeks. Ultimately, she said, no amount of medication or therapy can make her whole again and that she 'can’t wait' to die. She’s already chosen what she will wear on her deathbed and told the Daily Mail that Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars’ 'Die With A Smile' will be playing as she passes on.... [Duffy said] she paid Pegasos, a Swiss assisted-dying nonprofit organization, $13,500 to euthanize herself under its care... This time, she said she wants it to be 'neater.' 'I could step off a motorway bridge or a tower block but that would leave anyone finding me dealing with that for the rest of their lives,' she said."

From "Physically healthy mom to end life by euthanasia at Swiss clinic after death of her son" (NY Post).

Did you think it was possible to fall asleep while eating and choke to death? Sit up, pay attention, or don't eat. You could kill yourself and kill your mother.

"I got a call from a number of people, including the great Joe Rogan, and he said we have to do something about this."

"And I looked into it. I called Bobby... And it was really uniform support. And I said, so why would we wait three or four years to get it done?... Let's get it done immediately. And that's what happened. This is probably has never been anything that happened so quickly. Everybody is so strongly in favor of this. It's for a lot of people, but it's for the military in particular...."

"I want to thank Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is fantastic.... And people love him. More importantly, your wife is here.... Real boss in the family. It's fantastic.... Joe Rogan — fantastic. We did an interview before the election. We had over 300 million people. And I said, oh, man, I hope Kamala doesn't do it and she didn't. He wanted her to do it and she didn't Some day, Joe's gonna explain why. I can tell you why. Because she didn't want to.... The executive order I'm signing... today.... directs the FDA to expedite their review of certain psychedelics already designated as breakthrough therapy drugs.... If these turn out to be as good as people are saying, it's gonna have a tremendous impact on this country and other countries too.... Usually with things like this, nothing ever happens, no matter how the research ends up. We're changing that...."

ADDED: Joe spoke:

🚨 WOW! Joe Rogan reveals President Trump IMMEDIATELY offered him FDA approval for a psychedelic treatment in a text chain

Because the data was SO CONVINCING and STUNNING

"I wanna tell everybody how this happened. I send President Trump some information."

"With one dose of… pic.twitter.com/dnqYVf96hN

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) April 18, 2026

"In an ad for Amazon’s Ring camera that ran during the Super Bowl, a new A.I.-powered feature called 'Search Party' helps reunite a tearful little girl with her missing dog..."

"... by activating all the cameras in the neighborhood to find him. The feature works by using A.I. to scan video captured by all the participating Ring cameras in a neighborhood, pinging the device’s user should the reported dog pass in view. The device’s user can then notify the pet’s owner (they can also decline). Scores of posters online have decried Ring’s new feature as dystopian and terrifying. In a rare unifying moment, members of the political right and left expressed their discontent. Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, posted on X: 'This definitely isn’t about dogs — it’s about mass surveillance.' And the conservative commentator Stephen L. Miller wrote, 'The Ring cam lost dog ad is just propaganda for mass surveillance.'"

From "What Homeowners Need to Know About Smart Home Cameras/A new Super Bowl ad is raising questions about the power of doorbell cameras" (NYT).

Here's that ad:

The Harry Nilsson tag is not a mistake. His recording of "Without You" is the background music.

In the ad, "can't live/if living is without you" is used to express a little girl's feelings about her dog. Such dark thoughts to impose on a child. I mean, it can happen — see "12-Year-Old Girl, Unable To Cope With Loss Of Her Pup, Dies By Suicide" — but let's try harder to keep darkness off of children. The theme of inability to live without a particular loved one is an adult theme.

"G IS FOR PREGNANCY/A degrading punishment imposed on women’s bodies after they have given themselves to the love of a man…"

"... it transforms the lover into a disfigured progenitor who no longer inspires mad desire. It is the beginning of the deterioration of a couple’s relationship."

Wrote Brigitte Bardot, quoted in "Everything (and Everyone) Brigitte Bardot Scorned" (NYT).

She had one child. See "All About Brigitte Bardot's Estranged Son Nicolas-Jacques Charrier" (People):

"I'm not made to be a mother," Bardot wrote in her memoir.... "I'm not adult enough — I know it's horrible to have to admit that, but I'm not adult enough to take care of a child."... 

"I looked at my flat, slender belly in the mirror like a dear friend upon whom I was about to close a coffin lid,” she wrote....

Bardot also wrote that she had two abortions before the pregnancy she carried to term, one of which was almost fatal.... she also revealed that she attempted suicide.... "I wanted to free myself — in every sense of the word...."

"Ex-Michigan football coach Sherrone Moore told mistress he was going to make her watch him kill himself — with butter knives, kitchen scissors."

 That's the disturbing headline in The New York Post.

The inconsolable 39-year-old [Moore] allegedly burst into the apartment of his executive assistant and mistress, Paige Shiver, on Wednesday, where he grabbed butter knives and kitchen scissors and told her he was going to make her watch him commit suicide. Shiver, 32, had broken off the illicit tryst with her boss just two days before, prosecutor Kati Rezmierski said during Moore’s arraignment on Friday afternoon.The pair has been in an “intimate relationship” for a number of years, she added.... Shiver reported their relationship to the University of Michigan’s athletic department when Moore continued to call and text her, despite her efforts to ignore him, prosecutors said.... Prosecutors on Friday described to the court how an enraged Moore told his mistress, “you ruined my life,” and that he was going to kill himself and “make you watch.”...

"Nolan Williams, an innovative neuroscientist who developed a noninvasive brain-stimulation technique that has delivered unusually fast relief to people with treatment-resistant depression..."

"... died on Oct. 8 at his home in Northern California. He was 43. His wife, Kristin Raj, said he died by suicide. Dr. Williams himself had struggled with depression, according to two of his colleagues...."

From "Nolan Williams, Who Stimulated the Brain to Treat Depression, Dies at 43. A neuroscientist, he employed a battery of high-tech tools in devising a fast-acting therapy that targets the area of the brain where depression originates" (NYT).

"Unfazed by rats..."

My son Chris reads books about Presidents and sends me the occasional snapshot. That's the latest.

AND: Who was Clover Adams? Wikipedia:

Clover, who has been cited as the inspiration for writer Henry James's Daisy Miller (1878) and The Portrait of a Lady (1881), was married to writer Henry Adams. After her suicide, he commissioned the famous Adams Memorial, which features an enigmatic androgynous bronze sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, to stand at the site of her, and his, grave.

Not snobbish enough to refrain from suicide — or can suicide be snobbish?! In any case, what a grave —

"The issue of minority gun ownership has long been fraught. In 1857, Chief Justice Roger Taney argued in Dred Scott v. Sandford that Black people..."

"... should not be recognized as citizens because it would give them the right 'to keep and carry arms wherever they want.' Even after Black people became citizens entitled to Second Amendment rights, they often had to deal with discriminatory gun laws limiting their access to firearms.... 'The trans people I know, both gun owners and others, see the prospect of the D.O.J. taking trans people’s guns as a prelude to atrocity,' Eden Fenn, a young trans woman, told me. She called herself 'the definition of a reluctant gun owner,' describing her ownership as a precautionary measure against the potential of anti-trans violence.... Mental health is often weaponized against the trans community.... [T]here are legitimate concerns about the high rates of depression and suicidal ideation among trans people.... Everyone I spoke with talked about their gun-safety plans. Some suggested that it should be normalized to offload your guns to a friend while going through a traumatic experience.... There are no easy answers—only a delicate calculus to be made...."

Writes Grace Byron, in "The Complexities of Trans Gun Ownership/In the face of threats and harassment, some trans Americans are becoming gun owners—only to be targeted by the same movements that claim to defend gun rights" (The New Yorker).

"She later cast doubt on the suicide ruling, saying his death had been 'a big mistake' and that they had planned out their life together."

"Mr Thompson penned what friends believed was a suicide note, which was published by Rolling Stone soon after his death. 'No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun,' the note, which was addressed to his wife, read. 'No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won’t hurt.'"

From "FBI to re-examine suicide of Hunter S Thompson at wife’s request/Anita Thompson wants fresh inquiry into death after writer was ruled to have shot himself 20 years ago, leaving a note that was published by Rolling Stone" (London Times).

There's no new evidence of foul play. It just seems to be a widow's interest in seeing the self-shooting as an accident. I'd say I don't see why the FBI should expend its resources on this, but the article doesn't mention the FBI, only the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. That's the kind of confusion I wade into when I look for news of America in the London Times. Maybe they don't call anything the "Bureau of Investigation" over there. Anyway, it seems to me that the written note should be the last word. Yes, it's humorous, but that doesn't mean it was only a joke.

"I’m the nice lady who wrote 'Eat, Pray, Love,' and I’m out in the park with fentanyl and morphine and sleeping pills trying to craft a murder."

From "Elizabeth Gilbert Gets Dark/A new memoir finds the self-help icon locked in a destructive romantic relationship with her best friend, who relapsed while fighting terminal cancer" (NYT)(free access link).

That's a free access link, in case you were an "Eat, Pray, Love" fan and had an impression of Elizabeth Gilbert as a nice lady and need to see if it's crushed. Me, I never picked up that book, was never vulnerable to the possibility that the author was a "nice lady" and wouldn't have cared. I just assumed she was a lady who was into herself for reasons that had nothing to do with me. Is praying something to be wedged in between gorging and fucking? I don't know, but I didn't need to know. I have no Elizabeth Gilbert-related illusions to be dispelled and I'm not temptable into the question whether she's got a dark side. I'm just going to guess that the "murder" she was "crafting" was assisting in the suicide of a cancer patient.

"In a clinical setting there are many things you’re not allowed to say unless you want to end up in a hospital. So I couldn’t be honest with my psychiatrist..."

"... my therapist or anyone who was supposedly there to help, and I kept it all bottled inside. Then ChatGPT came along. I could ask it anything. There was no threat to my freedom. I wasn’t judged. I got information, ideas of things to try to help with symptoms and to talk to my psychiatrist about, encouragement, and when things were bad, advice to reach out to my medical team or call the suicide hotline. It was actually ChatGPT that encouraged me to think about transcranial magnetic stimulation, among other options. I did end up getting T.M.S., and it was like a miracle. I wouldn’t be here today if I didn’t have this outlet. I understand this is a new technology and it’s not a replacement for medical care, but in my case it was an amazing supplement."

Writes Sarah K., in a letter to the NYT commenting on the op-ed "Re "What My Daughter Told ChatGPT Before She Took Her Life."

There's also this letter responding to the same op-ed, from a woman whose 31-year-old daughter killed herself: "To our knowledge, our daughter did not have access to ChatGPT. As limited as it is and should be, I wonder if it could possibly serve as a type of cathartic journaling? In reading some of the comments from people who had contemplated or had made unsuccessful suicide attempts, I was reminded of our daughter’s overriding fear of the loss of her personal agency, which prevented full disclosure and honesty on her part."

"But without reliably insightful book reviews, literature risks becoming 'an unweeded garden that grows to seed.'"

"We’re left depending only on the whisper network of our own clique, exchanging the same tuna casserole back and forth. I realize this wobbly jeremiad reeks of self-interest: After 30 years of summarizing the plots of literary novels, I can do literally nothing else. But if journalism is still, at least partially, a public service, then book reviews are one of its most eloquent contributions — one we should defend until the very last page."

Writes Ron Charles, in "The future of book reviews looks grim/The Associated Press will no longer produce book reviews, though it will pursue stories about the publishing industry" (WaPo).

Let's talk about the tuna salad and the unweeded garden. The unweeded garden is in quotes, but there is no attribution. We're talking about literature, and if you're one of the last remaining Americans who care about actual literature, you're presumably supposed to know "an unweeded garden that grows to seed." But we can all google and find the attribution. I know I did.

I've sat through "Hamlet" a few times in my life — and read it too — and the first soliloquy is familiar to me: "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!" I know some other lines: "How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world!" But I didn't recognize "Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden, That grows to seed...."

And what of the tuna casserole? How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the tuna casseroles of this world! The tuna casseroles are those books your friends and internet contacts talk about. The comfort food, the genre novels. Bleeh. Makes Hamlet the Book Reviewer want to kill himself. "O... that the Everlasting had not fix'd His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!"

That it should come to this! No book reviewers! If there are no book reviewers, there will be no literary fiction. Ron Charles spent 30 years "summarizing the plots of literary novels." Well, AI can summarize the plot of any novel. That can't be the function of a book review, at least not anymore. It must be that the reviewer is supplying some special discernment, choosing what to elevate to the high plane of literature and convincing us that we should aspire to be the kind of people who read things like that.

By the way, I find it hard to trust a writer who dresses up the word "nothing" with the dreadful intensifier "literally" and plunks the phrase a few words away from "literary": "After 30 years of summarizing the plots of literary novels, I can do literally nothing else." He's defending his own livelihood. That counts against his opinion. What am I to think of Ron Charles anyway? Here he is, 14 years ago, displaying himself as "totally hip," opining on an author who is, if nothing else, truly striving to produce literary fiction:

"Every one of these jurisdictions [that permit physician-assisted suicide] has a total fertility rate below the replacement threshold."

"I do not think this is a coincidence. About 30 years ago, P.D. James’s prescient novel 'The Children of Men' imagined that a birthrate crisis would induce governments to facilitate the suicides of the elderly in a ritual known as 'the Quietus.'... The population pyramid is increasingly inverted.... This poses an existential threat to welfare systems, which rely on young workers to fund entitlements and health care for older adults. Those who hope that liberal immigration policies will solve this problem forget that immigrants themselves get old, and their birthrates tend to converge with those of the greater population over time. If birthrates do not recover — and at present, they show no real signs of doing so — eventually we will be forced to revert to the system that prevailed for all of human history up until recently: Older people will be cared for privately, typically by their children and grandchildren, and those without families will have to rely on charities, such as they are. In the meantime, we are in a period of transition. Welfare states limp on, but in conditions of increasing stress...."

Writes Louise Perry, in "The Perverse Economics of Assisted Suicide" (NYT).

"... Mr. Haskell paid $500 to several day laborers to haul away several heavy black plastic trash bags from his home.... When they looked inside one of them, they found human body parts, prompting them to return the bags..."

"... and money to Mr. Haskell, whom they photographed — along with the bags — and reported to the police, prosecutors said. That same afternoon, investigators said, Mr. Haskell was seen in security camera footage removing a trash bag from the trunk of his Tesla and disposing of it in a dumpster in a parking lot in nearby Encino, Calif. A person sifting through the dumpster the next day found a beheaded torso.... During an initial criminal proceeding in December 2023, Mr. Haskell appeared shirtless in court, wearing a smock intended to prevent inmates from using it to hang themselves. At the time, his lawyer told Fox News that the Sheriff’s Department had forced him to appear that way, creating speculation that Mr. Haskell might harm himself...."

From "Son of Ex-Hollywood Agent, Jailed in 3 Murders, Dies by Suicide, D.A. Says/Samuel Haskell, 37, was accused of dismembering his wife and his in-laws. He was the son of Sam Haskell III, an Emmy-winning film producer and veteran talent agent" (NYT).

The father, we're told, "had several A-list clients, including George Clooney, Ray Romano and Whoopi Goldberg," was a producer of "several films and shows about Dolly Parton," and headed "the Miss America Organization until... he resigned amid reports that he and other pageant leaders had made misogynistic and derogatory comments about the competition’s contestants." The link on "resigned" goes to the 2017 HuffPo article, "The Miss America Emails: How The Pageant’s CEO Really Talks About The Winners/Internal correspondence reveals name-calling, slut-shaming and fat-shaming in emails between the Miss America CEO, board members and a pageant writer."