"The emergency request marks the latest turn in a dizzying legal fight over mail-in voting, even as states begin distributing mail-in ballots to voters."

"The upshot has become clear in recent days: It will be the Supreme Court that has the final say on President Trump’s plans to restrict mail voting in the midterms. It’s unclear how fast the justices will move and announce a ruling.... The Trump administration had already filed emergency request to the justices challenging a shorter-term pause [the trial judge] had imposed on the plan. But the trial court judge acted to extend her freeze before the justices ruled, necessitating a new request from the administration for Supreme Court action...."

I'm reading "Trump Administration Again Asks Supreme Court to Allow Mail Voting Restrictions/The filing puts the legality of the president’s push to impose limits on mail voting squarely before the justices even as states begin sending out ballots" (NYT gift link).

"Ha ha. Wouldn't it be funny if I started it up again? 18 years have passed!"

"But in the larger scheme of things, what is 18 years? The whole idea was to liberate myself to wander around on the time line."

I left a comment on an old blog post, here.

"Trump is going to get his ballroom — even if courts conclude it’s illegal."

Said lawprof Leah Litman, quoted by Adam Liptak in "Trump’s 'Lightning Speed' Outpaces the Courts/In his breakneck construction of a grand ballroom and in many other initiatives, critics say, the president has tried to outrun judicial review" (NYT gift link).

When the ballroom case was argued before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in June, Judge Patricia A. Millett asked... If the government were to move very quickly to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty... was it true that “nothing can be done” by the courts? 

Yaakov Roth, a Justice Department lawyer, did not try to duck the question. “I think that’s right, yes,” he said.... 

When the case reached the Supreme Court last month, the challengers warned the justices that Mr. Trump had “decided to try to outrun judicial review.” In response, Solicitor General D. John Sauer did not exactly deny the charge. He crowed that a 250-person crew had been working 20 hours a day, seven days a week, and that the project, which he said included key security upgrades for the White House, had passed the point of no return....

It's in the structure of things that the Executive has speed as a tool. Remember when Justice Robert Jackson quoted Napoleon — "The tools belong to the man who can use them"?

"Making daylight saving time permanent, Orthodox leaders say, would disturb their community rituals and create logistical problems..."

"... for Jews who work or attend school in the winter, when sunrise and sunset — which coincide with morning and evening prayers — would occur an hour later. For those who work secular jobs, praying nearly an hour later than usual would make it difficult to arrive at work on time, they argue."

The NYT reports, in "Why Some Orthodox Jews Oppose Permanent Daylight Saving Time" (gift link).

Get ready. It's coming. That thing you thought you wanted.

This will be such a nightmare. pic.twitter.com/qrD03wxEdl

— Julian Mille☈ (@ATLAreaWx) July 14, 2026

Children going to school in the dark. Dangerous. It will become obvious. A child's name will be on the repeal legislation.

ADDED: It’s important to note that morning light does not begin at sunrise. It’s already getting light an hour before sunrise, and half an hour before sunrise you’re free of the sense that you’re going out into the night. Using the sunrise as the time that matters is alarmist.

"The really worst part about being 80 is that you find, at last, you’ve got an understanding of something that might have altered everything in the past, had it come at a time when something could still be altered."

"When you’re young you think that time moves forward. At 80 you know that it doesn’t, it stands still. We’re the ones that move."

Writes Bob Dylan, answering the NYT's question what are the best things and the worst things about being 80, in "Bob Dylan and Liza Minnelli Already Turned 80. They Have Thoughts for Trump." Yes, Bob Dylan responded to a journalistic query on the occasion of Donald Trump's birthday.

Time doesn't move, but the world moves. Bob also says: "The worst thing about being 80 is that you still want to say yes to everything, but the world moves without asking. The old fire in your heart still tells you to do this and that, but your body says we already did it...."

And was time moving in the past? Bob also says: "The best thing about being 80 is that you outlive the clocks that have been chasing you. It’s freedom from that lie that anything was ever under control. You don’t chase the parade anymore. You’re an old king from some vanished country.... You’re not rushing to become anything and you’re not haunted by things that you did. You’re haunted by how little of it really mattered in the way you thought it would."

ADDED: Based on what I quoted, you might find the headline confusing. Bob didn’t say anything about Trump and what’s Liza Minnelli doing there? But the article actually has a bunch of other celebrities — Robert De Niro, Art Garfunkel, Gloria Steinem, and Dionne Warwick. And all of them, including Liza, are shown answering the question “Any advice for the president as he turns 80?” I presume Bob was asked that question too, and he refused to answer. Nevertheless, Bob’s answering of the two questions he did answer – what’s the best thing and what’s the worst thing about turning 80 – is put at the top of the article. So The New York Times wanted to make it about Trump and all the other celebrities went along with that but whatever it is Bob happened to say about aging and time mattered more, and I’m glad The New York Times was able to see that. And thanks to Bob for seeing, once again, that you don’t have to answer the question asked by the one who walks into the room with a pencil in his hand, sees the President of the United States standing naked and asks, How would you advise that man?

"The air is loud."

"What is that sound that that we hear irritating us so dreadfully?" Dick Cavett asks Jimi Hendrix, as some kind of background noise, emanating from the musical equipment, is interfering with our effort to hear the very soft-spoken guest.

Jimi Hendrix: "Well, it sounds it sounds something like the New York street. I don't know. It's like today the air is all static, so the amplifiers are static. Music is loud, the air is loud, and you know, we're trying to settle things down a little bit, but it's going to take it like a rest."

The idea of trying "to settle things down a little bit" gets the mind of Cavett going toward the idea of human beings settling down, and later he asks Jimi if he sees himself getting married. When Jimi says he hopes not, Cavett delivers a punchline: "But you'll never get a situation comedy on television." That's funny, because sitting on the other side of Hendrix is Robert Young, the father of "Father Knows Best."

Young looks like an funny throwback to an earlier time, but Hendrix died a year later, and Young lived for 3 more decades.

"It's discouraging to come up here and see all the heads down..."/"Sir, you're on a 2-minute timer here so let's go."

Resident speaks at the Seattle City Council

The Democrat city council wouldn’t even look up at him. He asked them to at least look at him and they rudely tell him his time is almost up

He tells them they’re like Animal Farm

“It reminds me of George Orwell's famous saying from… pic.twitter.com/Unkx9ZEYcs

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) April 22, 2026

I love the elegance with which the citizen adapted to the city council's effort to throw him off, to reduce him to nothing. He made the experience into the substance of what he was able to say within the harsh time constraint. He spoke slowly and with dignity and even worked in a George Orwell quote. 

"Because the beauty of the less-than-an-hour show is that it ends before 10. You can get a drink or even dinner or hustle home..."

"... in time to watch James Austin Johnson do his Donald Trump in the SNL cold open. Or just go to bed early...."

Writes Geoff Edgers, in "Very short concerts aren’t a scam. They’re brilliant. Lily Allen’s shows of under an hour have drawn some backlash. But many fans are content to go home early" (WaPo).

"'She’s offering something different — and I’m paying to see that.' It was a special show, reminding me more of a play than a pop concert. Allen delivered a performance as the scorned wife that was both heartbreaking (the contemplation of pills and drink) and defiant (one performance delivered in lingerie and heels). At one point, she’s wrapped in the 'revenge dress,' a length of green fabric printed with what’s said to be images of receipts she found documenting what her ex spent on other women. Even without a band, I found some of the songs coming alive in a way they didn’t on the record...."

From the comments over there: "150-250 bucks with no supporting musicians to pay? Just vain costume changes? 60 minutes? That's hubris. Nothing more."

"Méliès... filmed ordinary scenes at first, but after accidentally discovering that a jump cut appeared on film as an astonishing transformation..."

"... he pioneered other tricks such as double exposure, black screens and forced perspective. All of these became staples of cinema. On screen, he could make a man appear to take off his head and flip it in the air, or a woman disappear, reappear and double.... Méliès made more than 500 films but never progressed beyond his early technical achievements. The film world passed him by. In World War I, the negatives for most of his films were melted down for silver and celluloid, and he burned more himself after the war. But because his work had once been so popular – and because of widespread pirating – duplicate copies remained, and today about 300 of his films are known to exist. The Library has about 60...."

I'm reading "Lost 19th century film by Méliès discovered at the Library" (Library of Congress).

And here is that amazing 45-second film from 1897 — "Gugusse and the Automaton" — with its delightful jump cuts:

That is, the Library of Congress tells us, "was the first appearance on film of what might be called a robot." That words "might be called" may be there to fend off pedants who will say the word "robot" did not exist until 1920. It comes from a Karel Čapek play titled "R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots" — an etymological detail well known to solvers of crossword puzzles. 

The word "automaton" — used in the Méliès film title — goes back to the 1600s. There's an essay from 1616 with the line, "The soule doth quicken and giue life to the body, the body like an Automaton, doth moue and carry it selfe and the soule."

The quote seems to expect the reader already to have a picture of an automaton. What is that picture? Mechanical toys? Elaborate clocks like the Prague Astronomical Clock (built in 1410)?

Maybe you thought "Gugusse and the Automaton" was — compared to the CGI action movies of today — rather dumb and dull!

And maybe you've journeyed to Prague only to be disappointed by their stupid clock... or were you disappointed by all the tourists wrecking the medieval mood with their disappointment?

"Do you think people are too mean to the clock?"

Waxing gibbous.

The full moon rises this afternoon, at 3:42 p.m. here in Madison, and it won't set until 7:17 a.m., but we think tomorrow will be very cloudy, so we wanted to see the near full moon today, and the setting time was 6:40 a.m.

Do you understand why the setting times are 37 minutes different on 2 consecutive days? The sunrise times on those 2 days are only 2 minutes apart, 7:14 and 7:12.

The video above is from Meade, and that's me in the corner at the beginning, capturing this:

"It is a slow craft in a fast world, learned through years of hands-on apprenticeships.... Each piece, including utilitarian bowls, art objects and more, requires over 100 steps..."

"... and a retinue of specialists — from shapers of the wooden bases to artisans who apply layers of lacquer to produce a veneer thick enough for artists like Yamagishi to carve or incise.... The speed of contemporary culture is also light years removed from the patience and precision required to produce lacquerware, originally intended to store paper, inks and brushes for calligraphy and for writing poems and haiku, said Hiro Minato, the owner of Design Work Studio in Nara. 'In lacquer and other hand crafts, you have to feel each moment'...."

From "After an Earthquake, Preserving a Slow Craft in a Fast World/In Wajima, Japan, where hundreds of homes and studios were destroyed, master-class artisans are struggling to keep lacquer alive and nurture the next generation of creators" (NYT)(gift link, so you can read more and see many good photographs of the laquerware and of the earthquake destruction).

Time only seems to go faster when you’re older because of the way your memory works. Does that mean you should seek out novelty?

Interesting: Here is the reason that as you get older, entire years feel like a week: 🙇‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/V6spUNMrFT

— AlphaFox (@alphafox) January 4, 2026

Assuming he's right about that, I don't jump to agree that one ought to seek out novelty. I'm thinking:

1. There is no problem to be solved. You experience your life in the present in real time. It only looks compressed in your memory. You're not being deprived of time in which to live. You're just freed from detailed memory.

2. Even though novelties would cause your memory to seem to contain more time spent doing the things you have done, you can always find more detail within your familiar activities.

They're already 5 hours into the new year in Thailand.

Happy New Year 2026 Thailand 🇹🇭 pic.twitter.com/tc4oJkEMYt

— Pretty Cities (@PrettyCitiesX) December 31, 2025

It is 2026. It's okay to go to bed now.

Why withhold video of death?

I'm reading "Trump says Hegseth will decide whether to release boat strike video/The comments come after the president previously said his administration would release video of a controversial military operation, 'no problem'" (WaPo).

If there's something people want to see, why not let them see? I don't want to see it, because I was taught as a child not to look, and I've always regarded this a moral requirement. If I know it is video of a real person dying, I will read about it if it is newsworthy but I don't watch. I read about the death of George Floyd, but I did not watch. 

Do people gain better understanding by watching video of human beings dying? In the case of the boat strike, there are fact questions, and it is evidence – inflammatory evidence, but evidence. And some people want to stare at it and make up their own mind — stare at human beings, desperate and then blown up. How much can be seen?

"It’s fine for her to work, but she should not be getting other people involved. Everyone is in bed at that time of day. It’s a very sad attitude for the top leader of the country to show."

Said Yoshihiko Noda, a former prime minister, quoted in "Japan’s Leader Started a Meeting at 3 A.M. Then Came the Backlash. Sanae Takaichi drew criticism for requiring staff to work in the wee hours in a country scarred by 'death from overwork'" (NYT).

Kenji Koshio, chief executive of Shindenki, a small electronics company in the city of Kobe, wrote on his blog that troops, police officers, firefighters and medical workers were expected to work around the clock. Why not Japan’s prime minister?

Responding to the uproar over the meeting, he wrote: “Why don’t you just stop being so lame and be grateful to the people who are working hard for the people of Japan?”

Any other leaders calling meetings this early? Not just starting work themselves but imposing it on others. I found a few historical figures who did: Napoleon, Frederick the Great, Oliver Cromwell, and — in the summer when first light came early — Genghis Khan.

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.

The Paisley Curse.

Brad Paisley has officially sung the national anthem for:

World Series Game 2 in 2017 (11 innings)
World Series Game 3 in 2018 (18 innings)
World Series Game 1 in 2024 (10 innings)
World Series Game 3 in 2025 (18 innings)

h/t @SarahWexler32 pic.twitter.com/cgaSEVcdSq

— MLB (@MLB) October 28, 2025

"Reckless and intense: we are headed straight to the point of the matter, and there is no time."

"This urgency, this wildness, the seeming unruliness of his style, which is echoed in the many abrupt twists and turns in the action toward the end of the chapters—the reader must be kept in a state of suspense until the next installment—runs against something else, something heavier and slower, a patiently insistent question that is related to everything that is happening: What are we living for?"

Writes the great novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard, in "The Light of 'The Brothers Karamazov'/Although Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote with wildness and urgency, he patiently insisted on asking an essential question: What are we living for?" (The New Yorker).

Dostoyevsky was rushing because he was writing installments and needed the money. His wife observed

"When I woke up, everything was, of course, still dark. Was it midnight? Dawn? I imagined it would be liberating..."

"... getting out from under the tyranny of the clock or the sun. Mainly it felt destabilizing: Apparently time tells you what to do and, by extension, who you are. I made my way to the pass box and found I’d slept through a [food] delivery. It was Saturday, midmorning, I decided. Von Bujdoss had prepared a delicious bowl of what might or might not have been kugel; I reached for my spoon, held the bowl to my mouth and gracefully shoveled its contents in. I was midbite when a projector switched on inside my skull. Gaza. Ukraine. Sudan. School shootings. Terrible images came roaring out of some corner of my mind.... In normal life, I struggle to summon visuals in my head; here I was Rembrandt.... One moment I saw my children navigating their climate-crisis future; the next I watched Seth Meyers slicing blue cheese in a galley kitchen. Here was a friend’s death, and then my own gravestone; there was my wife looking cute...."

Writes Chris Colin, in "'You’re Going to Lose Your Mind': My Three-Day Retreat in Total Darkness/The author spent days in a room with no light. Who would he be when he emerged?" (NYT).