Sunrise — 6:49, 6:53, 7:00, 7:03.

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How to time a sunrise photoshoot.

You see the official sunrise time is 7:15, and you need to make it to a vantage point. How early should you go? I know from over 1,000 efforts at catching the best part of a sunrise that it depends on the kind of sunrise. But how can you know what kind of sunrise it is? This morning, the sky was unusually dark, and I felt I should delay going out, but it was crucial to go out early.

It looked like this at 6:53:

And then like this at 7:11:

That was still 4 minutes before the official sunrise time. I saw another woman who was just coming in toward the vantage point. I've been in her position many times, I'm sure, with no idea I'd missed a highly colored sunrise. Many times, too, I've seen the intense red through the trees and knew I was missing it.

Most days, getting to the vantage point 4 minutes before sunrise will work and you'll see the best color, as the sun breaks through. But the very red sunrises tend to come early. They're not at all about the sun coming into view. The sun is still pretty far below the horizon, but it's reflecting off the clouds. If it's half an hour before sunrise and you see a rosy tinge beginning to appear on heavy, bumpy clouds, move fast. Get to your vantage point. It might be the reddest sunrise of the year.

More pictures later. These aren't my best photos of the today's sunrise. I just wanted to make a point about timing.

Sometimes not understanding is the greatest understanding of all.

Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo discuss the viral “Holding Space” moment in recent Wicked interview. pic.twitter.com/kdbULBcwgB

— wicked news hub (@wickednewshub) December 7, 2024

Succinct perfection in hypocrisy.

The most overpaid actress ever. pic.twitter.com/2tx3PqdA8c

— MAZE (@mazemoore) December 6, 2024

"Musk is the dynamist, the believer in growth and innovation and exploration as the lodestars of American civilization..."

"[H]e has adopted a more libertarian pose, insisting on the profound wastefulness of government spending and the tyranny of the administrative state. Vance meanwhile is the populist, committed to protect and uplift those parts of America neglected or left behind in an age of globalization.... Despite this contrast, the Musk and Vance worldviews overlap in important ways. Musk has moved in a populist direction on immigration, while Vance has been a venture capitalist and clearly has a strong sympathy for parts of the dynamist worldview, especially its critique of the regulatory state.... And there is modest-but-real convergence between the Muskian 'tech' worldview and Vance’s more 'neo-trad' style of religious conservatism...."

Writes Ross Douthat, in "JD Vance, Elon Musk and the Future of America" (NYT). Douthat thinks dynamism needs populism and populism needs dynamism and, embodied in these 2 men, there's potential for a synthesis into something great, but also a risk of losing "downscale swing voters for the sake of an unrealistic libertarianism."

Count the many emotions that cross Trump's face in a few seconds.

Let the actors cast to play Trump in future movies study this clip and despair.

🚨 #BREAKING: President Trump has just met with Emmanuel Macron in France

It’s clear how much Macron respects Trump. America FINALLY has strong leadership again. pic.twitter.com/dfjeuz3A8N

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) December 7, 2024

Robot bird, robot rat.

"Happy Dark Month, Ann! Thanks for introducing me to this concept, of which I think yearly."

Writes Darconville, in the comments to last night's "Lake Mendota ice at noon."

Maybe Darconville is Alexander Louis Theroux, the author of the novel "Darconville's Cat," who is about 85 years old at the moment, or maybe he's a fan of that novel, or maybe Darconville built his pseudonym beginning with the word "dark."

I wonder if he began with a liking for the dark and the idea of Darkmonth played into his preference or if — like Christmas — it helped make a difficult time of year easier to bear. 

I first mentioned Darkmonth in the first year of this blog, 2004. And here's something I wrote in 2020: "My word for this time of year is 'Darkmonth'... I put the solstice in the center — it's December 21st — and count back 15 days to get to the first day, and that is today, the 6th. We have not yet reached the coldest month-long period of the year — and you never know exactly when that's going to be (and it's very rarely 30 consecutive days). But we have reached the 30 darkest days of the year, and by the first day of winter, we'll be halfway through the darkest month."

The winter solstice this year is also December 21st — it's not always December 21st — so Darconville correctly identified yesterday, December 6th, as the first day of Darkmonth. Revere the dark through January 5th.

On January 6th — it's always Epiphany — we will be out of the dark. 

Is there any alternative interpretation I should consider?

pic.twitter.com/eYTt40ahVq

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 7, 2024

I'm assuming this clunky labeling is correct. But why would Musk want his effort to be represented by a dust storm and the bloated government to be represented by an orderly suburban neighborhood?

Musk seems to feel comfortable — and amused! — portraying his worldly efforts as divine retribution. 

I remember, "it is written, 'Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,' says the Lord."

The dog is cute, so that takes the edge off, but Satan would take the edge off. Ha ha. So amusing. Destruction! 

"Rejection of genuine expertise is both a precondition and a function of autocracy. Joseph Stalin’s regime outlawed genetics as 'pseudoscience'..."

"... while he himself was declared an expert in all fields, from linguistics to biology. Contempt for expertise is not the only autocratic force at work in the case of S.B.1 [the Tennessee law banning puberty blockers and hormones for transgender children]....  I expect the court to uphold the Tennessee law.... [I]t won’t stop with trans care. Governments at different levels will be emboldened to meddle in what should be private, family decisions. In and out of government, people who know what they are talking about will be supplanted by people who perform their loyalty most loudly. Quackery will continue its ascent; expert consensus, not only in medicine but in all the disciplines that enable us to know and navigate the world, will be marginalized...."

Writes M. Gessen, in "The Supreme Court Just Showed Us What Contempt for Expertise Looks Like" (NYT).

Why did Gessen write "genuine expertise" if not to admit that experts can go wrong? Obviously, autocrats have their "experts" too, and respecting them has done great harm. I think first of Josef Mengele, who earned a cum laude doctorate in medicine from the University of Frankfurt for a thesis dealing with genetics and who conducted genetic research at Auschwitz. That doesn't make genetics a "pseudoscience," but it does show that we'd be fools to think there's a binary choice between deference to experts and marginalizing them.

Here's the Wikipedia article about the Soviets' banning of genetics. I can see that those who did the banning regarded themselves as experts:

Lake Mendota ice at noon.

Talk about whatever you want in the comments. And support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

We'll have to find a new way of living.

I'm reading "TikTok Loses Bid to Overturn Law Forcing a Ban or Sale/A federal court on Friday upheld a law that will ban the video app in the United States by Jan. 19 if its owner, ByteDance, does not sell it to a non-Chinese company" (NYT).

The decision [by a 3-judge panel of the D.C. Court of Appeals] could be a death blow for the app in [the U.S.]. More than 170 million Americans use TikTok.... The decision also raises new questions for President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has repeatedly signaled his support for the app, but who doesn’t have a clear path for rescuing it under the new law.... 

The company argued that the law unfairly singled out TikTok and that a ban would infringe on the First Amendment rights of American users....

ADDED: Will truth, beauty, and love save the world?

"Trump’s allies already pounced on the Hunter Biden pardon as evidence of their wilder allegations about the elder Biden’s own culpability in his son’s."

"There’s no doubt they would again spin additional pardons as validation for Trump's bogus claims that he has long been a victim of hoaxes, witch hunts, and 'deep-state' political attacks."

Writes Eric Lutz, in "Pardoning Trump’s Enemies Is a Double-Edged Sword/By offering preemptive pardons to the likes of Liz Cheney and Adam Schiff, Joe Biden might rescue them for legal retribution. But Trump would falsely use it as evidence that they committed crimes" (Vanity Fair).

It's always amusing to Democrats' problems phrased in terms of Republicans "pouncing" on them, and I like that the person writing "pounce" is named "Lutz" — both a pounce and a lutz are jumps.

"Children as young as 12 are being arrested on suspicion of extremism offences, Britain’s most senior counterterrorism police officer has said."

"Matt Jukes, assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan Police, said there was a 'conveyor belt leading children towards extremism' being driven by tech companies 'making vast amounts of money' from them.... [G]overnment figures revealed that the largest group of people referred to the government’s counterextremism programme Prevent were children aged 11 to 15, who made up 2,729 referrals — 40 per cent...."

The London Times reports.

"Pete Hegseth is doing very well. His support is strong and deep, much more so than the Fake News would have you believe."

"He was a great student - Princeton/Harvard educated - with a Military state of mind. He will be a fantastic, high energy, Secretary of Defense Defense, one who leads with charisma and skill. Pete is a WINNER, and there is nothing that can be done to change that!!!"

Writes Donald Trump, at Truth Social, wisely standing behind Pete Hegseth.

I say "wisely," because the moment Hegseth is defeated, somebody else will come under attack, just as strongly, and it will not end. The lust to destroy Trump will never be appeased, and he must know that. And don't his enemies know that he knows? They are making him more hardcore. I'm going to assume that's what they want.

"The University of Michigan will no longer require diversity statements as part of faculty hiring, promotion and tenure decisions...."

"Critics view them as a form of compelled political speech that are often used to evade legal restrictions on affirmative action.... [A] survey conducted for the committee found that more than half of Michigan faculty members believed diversity statements placed pressure on professors to express specific moral, political and social views.... Thomas Braun, a biostatistics professor who led the committee, said he hoped the university would still find a way to allow job applicants to discuss how their work related to diversity in the broad sense, without imposing ideological litmus tests. 'I think all faculty should be able to explain how their own personal experiences inform what they do everyday as a faculty member, and how it fits in the core values and mission of UM,' Mr. Braun said in an email. 'If that seems impossible to some individuals, then maybe UM is not the right fit.'..."

The NYT reports.

That word "fit" is doing a lot of work. Anyway, at least now faculty and prospective faculty won't have to formally explain how they fit the University's specific moral, political and social views, but they will still need to fit and to be able to explain how they fit. 

Isn't the formal statement the easier part of this fitness test? Especially with A.I.