Sunrise — 7:15, 7:23.

We're taking the TikToks up to 11 tonight. Some people love them.

 1. In Japan, they don't say "See? I told you!"

2. Stop saying "This photograph looks like a Renaissance painting."

3. In what world would he eat 20 tortillas?

4. She made a pact with herself to have higher standards.

5. When your partner makes a bid for your attention.

6. Do you want to go to a haunted house?

7. Do you want... a what?

8. Here, take this harmonica.

9. Hey, a tambourine man.

10. And, here, just in case you need a dancer to interpret "Like a Rolling Stone."

11. The heterosexual man who wants a husband... why?

Glenn Greenwald will never stop talking about this and doesn't care if it's annoying.

I'll never stop talking about this and don't care if it's annoying.

This is a huge journalistic scandal: almost every major news outlet ratified an outright lie to manipulate the 2020 election and - to this day - not one of them, not one, has apologized, explained or retracted. pic.twitter.com/O6ooGGlWHz

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 14, 2022

"President Joe Biden appeared to grab a young girl by her shoulder telling her 'no serious guys till you're 30' while posing for a photograph with the teen and her friends at Irvine Valley College in Irvine, California, on Friday...."

The Daily Mail reports.

President Joe Biden grabs a young girl by the shoulder and tells her “no serious guys till your 30” as she looks back appearing uncomfortable, secret service appears to try to stop me from filming it after Biden spoke @ Irvine Valley Community College | @TPUSA @FrontlinesShow pic.twitter.com/BemRybWdBI

— Kalen D’Almeida (@fromkalen) October 15, 2022

"In a grunt for attention, third-party Congressional candidate Mike Itkis has released a sex tape to highlight his sex positive campaign platform...."

"His issues include legalizing sex work, and making sexual rights explicit... Itkis said the video.... was his first time having sex on camera, and insisted he’s not an exhibitionist. 'I’m very much an introvert... I’m kind of a nerd who doesn’t like to be the center of attention if I can avoid it. But I thought the issues I’m trying to address are so important… I wanted to have my issues talked about in some way.'"

From "Manhattan congressional candidate publishes a porn video to highlight his sex positive platform/Mike Itkis is running against Rep. Jerry Nadler, and wants to legalize sex work" (City & State).

I'm not going to look at his "sex tape" but I see the photograph at the link and suspect that there's not much to see in the video. The mere idea of making a "sex tape" is supposed — correctly — to be enough to get our attention. Maybe I shouldn't blog this. I'm going out of my way to not blog other things in the news that are people getting attention for doing something to get attention. I guess I think this one is a bit funny and no Van Gogh paintings were harmed.

"Litter boxes in schools" is a Wikipedia article — with an active discussion of whether it should be retitled "Litter boxes in schools hoax."

It begins:

 

I used a screenshot because I wanted you to experience the absurdity of the picture of an actual cat litter box. Surely, if there were a litter box for a human being it would need to be proportional, and I think a third grader is about 6 times as large as a cat. I don't know the urine output of a child versus a cat, but, seriously, you're going to need a bigger box. But if it is a hoax — and Wikipedia assures me it is a hoax — then there is no box and that's the whole point.

I was going to make a joke using the phrase "Schrödinger's cat box," but the Wikipedia entry "Schrödinger's cat" was a real rat hole.

"Justice Kagan... suggested we could be headed toward a future where blue states forbid the sale of goods produced by non-union labor..."

"... while red states respond with their own laws forbidding the sale of goods that are made by unionized workers. Justice Amy Coney Barrett worried about states prohibiting the sale of goods produced by unvaccinated workers; or by employers who won’t pay for gender-affirming surgery for transgender employees. Justice Brett Kavanaugh imagined a red state that bans the sale of fruit picked by undocumented immigrants. Their point was that, if California is allowed to effectively decide how pig farms will be run in all 50 states, that could permit... 'economic Balkanization'... Every state could start using their own laws to impose their will on their neighbors. And manufacturers might have to choose between selling their products in California (and complying with California's left-leaning rules) or selling their products in Texas (and aligning with Texas’s conservative values). But none of the justices seemed sure where to draw the line to prevent this kind of dystopia from emerging, while also permitting states to enact the kind of ordinary economic regulations that have existed for many years."

From "High-stakes case about pigs/National Pork Producers v. Ross presents difficult questions about when one state’s laws can impact life in other states" (Vox).

The case is about a California law banning the sale in California of pork from pigs not raised according to California standards. The constitutional law in question is the "dormant" Commerce Clause doctrine — the idea that Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce implies a loss of power to the state to engage in regulation that would damage interstate commerce.

You can listen to the lively oral argument here.

ADDED: This is good, from Justice Gorsuch (transcript):

[W]hy isn't [the Pike balancing test] just a form of enshrining non-textual economic liberties  into the Constitution... a project this Court disavowed a long time ago? We're going to have to balance your veterinary experts against California's veterinary experts, the economic interests of Iowa farmers against California's moral concerns and their views about complicity in animal cruelty. Is that any job for a court of law? I mean, the Commerce Clause, after all, is in Article I, which would allow Congress to resolve any of these questions.

"Laboe is credited with helping end segregation in Southern California by organizing live DJ shows at drive-in eateries that attracted whites, Blacks and Latinos who danced to rock-n-roll..."

"... and shocked an older generation still listening to Frank Sinatra and Big Band music. Laboe is also credited with coining the 'oldies, but goodies' phrase.... His radio shows gave the families of incarcerated loved ones, in particular, a platform to speak to their relatives by dedicating songs and sending heartfelt messages and updates.... He often told a story about a woman who came by the studio so her toddler could tell her father, who was serving time for a violent crime, 'Daddy, I love you.' 'It was the first time he had heard his baby's voice,' Laboe said. 'And this tough, hard-nosed guy burst into tears.' Anthony Macias, a University of California, Riverside ethnic studies professor, said the music Laboe played went with the dedications enhancing the messages. For example, songs like Little Anthony & the Imperials' 'I'm on the Outside (Looking In)'... spoke of perseverance and desire to be accepted...."

From "Pioneering DJ Art Laboe, who coined 'oldies but goodies,' dies at 97" (NPR).

Sunrise — 7:05, 7:06.

"Drink wine and look at the moon and think of all the civilizations the moon has seen passing by."

The fall of a tyrant. Ayatollah Khomeini was a man who used religion to terrorize people. The regime in Iran continues his legacy. The regime in Iran must fall. #MahsaAmini #mahsaminiمهساامینی https://t.co/ZXIOG8y7zo

— Asra Q. Nomani #FreeFromHijab 🐾 (@AsraNomani) October 14, 2022

"The same group of Radical Left Democrats who utilized their Majority position in Congress to create the fiction of Russia, Russia, Russia, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2..."

"... the $48 Million Mueller Report (which ended in No Collusion!), Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, the atrocious and illegal Spying on my Campaign, and so much more, are the people who created this Committee of highly partisan political Hacks and Thugs whose sole function is to destroy the lives of many hard-working American Patriots, whose records in life have been unblemished until this point of attempted ruination. The double standard of the Unselects between what has taken place on the 'RIGHT,' and what has taken place with Radical Left, lawless groups such as Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and others, is startling and will never be acceptable, even to those who will be writing the history of what you have done to America...."

So begins Donald Trump's written response to the January 6th Committee. Actually there's a heading before that paragraph, in all caps: "THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020 WAS RIGGED AND STOLEN!"

Can we conclude — based on the literary style and the odd capitalization — that Trump wrote this letter himself?

ADDED: A crucial bit:

Sunrise, 7:16, and foliage, 7:29.

"In its early days, the pleasure of 'The Great British Baking Show' was in the reassuring fantasy it built under a high-pitched country tent..."

"... an endless source of cheeky innuendo, serious amateur baking and absolutely nothing else. The worst thing imaginable was that someone’s Battenberg cake would come out a bit asymmetrical, or that one baker might accidentally use another baker’s custard.... But over its 12 years on the air, the worst thing imaginable on Bake Off has gotten worse, again and again. Last week, the hosts, Noel Fielding and Matt Lucas, strolled up a grassy slope dressed in fringed serapes and straw sombreros to introduce 'Mexican Week' with tired puns, saying they shouldn’t make 'Mexican jokes' but proceeding to do just that. The show had hit rock bottom, revealing what it had managed to obscure in the past with a bit of charm.... The 'Bake Off' clips were shared incredulously and angrily on Twitter, days before the episode even aired. The phrase 'Mexican Week' quickly became shorthand for profound culinary blunder, presented with a sense of naïve triumph. An image of a cursed avocado, lopped away with a knife, became the episode’s unofficial mascot, as if a home cook unfamiliar with peeling an avocado should feel humiliated."

From "‘Mexican Week’ Was Not an Accident for ‘The Great British Baking Show’/After 12 years, the show’s long, inexorable journey from comfort to cringe is complete" (NYT).

From the top comments over there:

Like so many articles in the New York Times that cover accusations of racism or cultural appropriation, readers are left pondering what actually happened. Other than straw sombreros, an abused avocado and a reference to a reference about “tired puns”, there’s no real reporting in here that actually informs readers about what was done that was so bad.

And:

The gym stays quiet for the first 10 points so the autistic, noise-sensitive brother of a player can attend a volleyball game.

WAOW reports. 

"My coach, [Justin] Jacobs, came up to me and asked if Payton was going to come to any of the games," [the player, Malina Carratini] recalled.... "Two days later, [Jacobs] came up to me and was like, 'I came up with this idea. It really hurt me that Payton wouldn't be able to come,' so he was wondering if we would do a silent night"....

Abject fealty.

Don’t miss the inside scoop on Tim Michels’s abject fealty to Donald Trump election denialism—to the point of declaring his interest in overturning the LAST election—in this brilliant investigation https://t.co/60TMEu1egG

— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) October 14, 2022

"Abject" means "of low repute; despicable, wretched; self-abasing, servile, obsequious" — according to the OED, which gives this example of the usage of the word from 1579:

1579 G. Harvey Let.-bk. (1884) 87 Lerned philosophers..are the dryest, leanist, ill-favoriddist, abiectist, base-mind[e]dist carrions.

And I like this Tobias Smollett's "Humphry Clinker":

I know nothing so abject as the behaviour of a man canvassing for a seat in parliament.

Yes, everyone running for everything is abject. 

Here's Samuel Beckett (from "No's Knife," 1967):

The aversion my person inspired even in its most abject and obsequious attitudes.

Now, "fealty" is "The obligation of fidelity on the part of a feudal tenant or vassal to his lord" (OED). It's also used figuratively, which how Wikler — the chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin — is using it. 

He's not quite saying that Michels is acting like a vassal to Lord Trump. The accusation of fealty is not to Trump the man, but to Trump's idea that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected. 

When is the dedication to an idea low, despicable, and wretched or self-abasing, servile, and obsequious?

Xi Jinping's miracle of the tiny potatoes.