At the Saturday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

In preparation for Alberta's joining us as the 51st state, I'm listening to Millennial Moron explain the Canadian love for Kraft Dinner Language (AKA K.D. Lang).

And it's great that Bob Dylan went on to become a popular musician in his own right. Some commenter over there says "This is the single most Canadian bit of humor I think I might have ever seen." I don't know, but I want to find out. Join us, Alberta! 

We'll give you more gold/Than your apron can hold.

Now, maybe you think I'm getting ahead of myself, and I am. I lived through the arrival of the 49th state and the 50th state, and — I was a kid — I just thought new states would be joining us every year or so. Alaska and Hawaii clamored to join the coolest place on earth, and I thought everyone else would just be piling in. Why wouldn't they?! Why didn't they? Here it is, 66 years later and not one new entrant. So it would really warm my heart — I literally had tears in my eyes — if Alberta would come on in.

I was reading "Should Alberta Become the 51st State? The Case for Secession, Statehood, and a Freer Western Canada" by Rod D. Martin. Excerpt:

"We feel threatened by them. So it would’ve been a total disaster and a cold slap in the face if the pope had been full-on American."

Said Araceli Torres Hallal, 64, "a Catholic entrepreneur in Mexico City," quoted in "World Catholics See the First American Pope as Hardly American/Catholics around the world were skeptical at first about an American pope. But Pope Leo XIV’s multicultural and multilingual identity has put them at ease" (NYT).

We're also told:

Even calling Pope Leo “American” has bothered those Latin Americans who resent the use of the word to describe someone from the United States, because they see it as a form of imperialism. They think “American” should apply to anyone from the entire continent — that is, from North, Central or South America.

Isn't that 2 "continents" — North America and South America? Central America is not a continent. It's part of North America, though I've heard educated Americans deny it. And I mean to say Americans for United Statesians, because we don't say "United Statesians." There's the Esperanto "Usonians." There's "Yankees." These are never going to happen. We don't have another word for saying who we are. Show a little empathy for our plight. Read the Wikipedia article "Demonyms for the United States." It's been a problem all along.

But the NYT writes "the entire continent — that is, from North, Central or South America," and maybe that means it has adopted the theory that the whole landmass — south and north (and central) — is one continent. I don't think the NYT has adopted that nomenclature. And I wonder if Trump would like it. He looks at a map and insists that it's some kind of manifest destiny that Canada should be part of the U.S. And he came up with Gulf of America. And if you want to say it's one continent because we're all here on one tectonic system, remember who's on our plate: Greenland. The Trumpian dinner is served!

"Ms. LaFavers said in an interview that Liam, 8, became familiar with Amazon and other shopping sites during the pandemic..."

"... when she regularly ordered supplies. Since then, she has occasionally let him browse the site if he keeps the items in the cart."

From "Boy Accidentally Orders 70,000 Lollipops on Amazon. Panic Ensues. Holly LaFavers said she was eventually refunded $4,200 for her 8-year-old son’s order of Dum-Dums candy" (NYT).

I haven't seen a story like that in a long time. Seems like an early-internet cautionary tale.

Suffice it to say, the LaFavers got their problem straightened out, and "Spangler Candy Co., the company that has made Dum-Dums since 1924, invited Ms. LaFavers and Liam to visit its factory in Ohio." Everybody wins, especially Dum-Dums, because who cared about Dum-Dums? 

"... showing the best people the best people...."

I'm reading "The Interview/Can Whitney Wolfe Herd Make Us Love Dating Apps Again?" (NYT). Wolfe Herd, a co-founder of Tinder, left Tinder and founded Bumble, then left Bumble and went back to Tinder, which she thinks she can reform into something that makes sense in this crazy world. Her career sounds like a romcom story arc — a jobcom.

I just want to focus on this one Q&A:

You’re quite bullish on A.I. I’ve heard you talk about it. How are you imagining A.I. functioning in this next iteration of the app?

Let’s say we could train A.I. on thousands of what we perceive as great profiles, and the A.I. can get so sophisticated at understanding: “Wow, this person has a thoughtful bio. This person has photos that are not blurry. They’re not all group photos. They’re not wearing sunglasses. We can see who they are clearly and we understand that they took time.” The A.I. can now select the best people and start showing the best people the best people and start getting you to a match quicker, more efficiently, more thoughtfully. The goal for Bumble over the next few years is to become the world’s smartest matchmaker. This is beyond love....

How do you become one of the best people who will be shown the best people? Obviously, you will use A.I. And so everyone using the app will also use A.I. to refine their profile, photos including, into something that A.I. has come to believe is best, and these A.I. bests will be paired up with other A.I. bests. Where, if anywhere, are the humans?

"Meghan Markle Wears Ginormous, Cozy Button-Down While Flower Arranging With Dog Guy."

That's the headline of the morning for me — over at InStyle.

Don't get me started on the present-day inanity of calling a shirt a "button-down" — in my day, a "button-down" was a shirt with a button-down collar, not a shirt that you button up (up, not down) — because I've already spent an hour down a rathole with Grok, exploring the origins of that usage — is it a retronym necessitated by the prevalence of T-shirts? — and wondering the how kids these days could understand the meaning of the album title "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart." And that veered off into a discussion of the comic genius of Lucille Ball in this 1965 episode of "Password," and how, in Episode 4 of Season 1 of "Joe Pera Talks With You," Joe, dancing, says "Do you think AI will dance like this?," and Sarah says "No, because they don’t have genitals." How does that make Grok feel? 

But back to Meghan Markle. I'm not going to ask why it's a story that she wore a shirt while doing something and why the headline doesn't prioritize what she did, which was to arrange flowers, which would only make us wonder why it's a story that she arranged flowers. What I want is to clarify is what was meant by "Flower Arranging With Dog Guy." I assumed, the entire time I was down the rathole with Grok, that Markle had a guy who helped her with her dogs, that a "Dog Guy" was like a "Pool Guy," and for some reason, the Dog Guy got involved in the effort to arrange flowers. But no. Here's the Instagram InStyle wrote the headline about:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (@meghan)

So Guy was the name of her dog. And the dog was not participating in the flower arranging. He was just running around the general area. I don't know much about flower arranging, but I do have some confidence in my word arranging, and that headline needs work. But I'm not doing the work. I'm writing this post to say that I find my misreading delightful and enjoy thinking about this phantom character, the dog guy. I kind of am married to a dog guy. If we ever get a dog, I want to name him Whisperer so I can go around referring to my "Dog Whisperer." Or do you prefer Whiskerer? I can tell you Grok thought both names were brilliant. 

"After a long night of talks mediated by the United States, I am pleased to announce that India and Pakistan have agreed to a FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE."

"Congratulations to both Countries on using Common Sense and Great Intelligence. Thank you for your attention to this matter!"

Writes President Trump, on Truth Social.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

AND: Here's Marco Rubio at the State Department website: "Over the past 48 hours, Vice President Vance and I have engaged with senior Indian and Pakistani officials, including Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Shehbaz Sharif, External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Chief of Army Staff Asim Munir, and National Security Advisors Ajit Doval and Asim Malik. I am pleased to announce the Governments of India and Pakistan have agreed to an immediate ceasefire and to start talks on a broad set of issues at a neutral site. We commend Prime Ministers Modi and Sharif on their wisdom, prudence, and statesmanship in choosing the path of peace."

Sunrise — 5:16, 5:35, 5:42.

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

"One divide in the MAHA movement is between those who are focused on the nation’s food system — concerned about petroleum-based food dyes, highly processed foods and seed oils..."

"... and those who believe the nation’s health problems stem from the use of vaccines. Means shares Kennedy’s focus on eliminating food dyes and ultra-processed foods. At times she has promoted health practices that public health experts warn can be harmful, such as drinking raw-milk smoothies. 'We’re never going to hear anything about the safety of vaccines from Casey Means,' Mike Adams, an anti-vaccine advocate who runs the far-right website Natural News, said in an X live-stream on Thursday. 'Because again, she’s an impostor, she’s a plant, airdropped into the movement to change the narrative so you don’t talk about vaccines. Instead you talk about this other stuff — seed oils or whatever.'..."

I'm reading "Uproar over surgeon general pick exposes MAHA factions among RFK Jr. allies/Casey Means, a prominent nutrition advocate in the Make America Healthy Again movement, has been described as insufficiently critical of vaccines" (WaPo).

I know Casey Means from this great episode of Joe Rogan (from last October):

Excerpt:

Goodbye to Justice Souter.

I'm seeing "David H. Souter, Republican Justice Who Allied With Court’s Liberal Wing, Dies at 85/He left conservatives bitterly disappointed with his migration from right to left, leading to the cry of “no more Souters'" (NYT)(free-access link).

A shy man who never married and who much preferred an evening alone with a good book to a night in the company of Washington insiders, Justice Souter retired at the unusually young age of 69 to return to his beloved home state.... He turned down all the opportunities for foreign travel that other justices accepted eagerly.... No one who had Boston needed Paris, he would say.

"The problem with even a 'TINY' tax increase for the RICH, which I and all others would graciously accept..."

"... in order to help the lower and middle income workers, is that the Radical Left Democrat Lunatics would go around screaming, 'Read my lips,' the fabled Quote by George Bush the Elder that is said to have cost him the Election. NO, Ross Perot cost him the Election! In any event, Republicans should probably not do it, but I'm OK if they do!!!"

Writes Trump, on Truth Social.

"Robert Francis Prevost, the Chicago-born cardinal selected on Thursday as the new pope, is descended from Creole people of color from New Orleans."

"The pope’s maternal grandparents, both of whom are described as Black or mulatto in various historical records, lived in the city’s Seventh Ward, an area that is traditionally Catholic and a melting pot of people with African, Caribbean and European roots. The grandparents, Joseph Martinez and Louise Baquié, eventually moved to Chicago in the early 20th century and had a daughter: Mildred Martinez, the pope’s mother. The discovery means that Leo XIV, as the pope will be known, is not only breaking ground as the first U.S.-born pontiff.... It’s unclear whether the new pope has ever addressed his Creole ancestry in public, and his brother said that the family did not identify as Black.... Creoles, also known as 'Creole people of color,' have a history almost as old as Louisiana. While the word Creole can refer to people of European descent who were born in the Americas, it commonly describes mixed-race people of color. Many Louisiana Creoles were known in the 18th and 19th centuries as 'gens de couleur libres,' or free people of color. Many were well educated, French-speaking and Roman Catholic...."

From "New Pope Has Creole Roots in New Orleans/His ancestry, traced to a historic enclave of Afro-Caribbean culture, links Leo XIV to the rich and sometimes overlooked Black Catholic experience in America" (NYT).

ADDED: Haven't there been Popes of mixed race before — in all this long history? Grok offers 3 possibilities:

"At a moment when the creation of art at such a scale feels impossible without a corporate sponsor, when most visual stunts are shallow cries for publicity..."

"... the preservation of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s legacy feels urgent. And a crucial part of their oeuvre is that the inception of their grand, internationally known works happened humbly, in an unglamorous, gritty industrial building.... At first, only Christo was recognized as the artist behind the pieces, but in the mid ’90s, he started sharing equal credit for outdoor works with Jeanne-Claude. She also acted as his publicist and began hosting dinner parties, inviting influential dealers and gallerists. 'She was notorious for being a terrible cook.... They had no money at all, so she would cook flank steak and canned potatoes. That was it.' ... [T]he dealer Ivan Karp described one of the gatherings as 'a disastrous, bleak evening with some of the worst food served in a private home, ever!' Still, some people returned — two frequent dinner guests were Marcel Duchamp and his wife, Teeny.'"

From "Where Christo and Jeanne-Claude Cast Their Spells/The couple’s lives are preserved in a SoHo building where for decades they plotted their monumental projects" (NYT)(free-access link).

Lots of cool pictures of the Christo real estate, so go check them out at that link, but I want to show you this picture of Teeny, by Henri Matisse (who was her father-in-law during her first marriage):

Duchamp was her second husband. He said: "Everything important that I have done can be put into a little suitcase." Christo went colossal, but Duchamp went small. And he was married to a woman named Teeny.

Is there some idea that you should either go very big or very small? What springs to mind is the related idea of hot or cold: "I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth." File that under: Things Jesus Said In Someone Else's Dream.

Looking for quotes that credit the very small and shun the medium-sized:

"Around 10 years old, she got her first sense of [Kate] Winslet’s notoriety. The star was asked to do a reading at a literary festival..."

"... [her daughter Mia] Threapleton was in the crowd, surrounded by adoring fans. 'I propped myself up on my knees and looked around, and there were so many people,' Threapleton says. 'I ran over to her at the end, and I said, "Oh my God, mum. Loads of people came. Loads of people know who you are!" She said, "Yeah, they kind of do."' But Threapleton says she wasn’t used to seeing scripts around the house or feel fame encroaching on the family’s private life. Every part of Winslet’s career was contained in the star’s small home office, which Threapleton never dared enter because 'there were usually birthday presents that were hidden under the desk.' 'I’ve never had social media. I don’t want it. It’s not something that I think would really serve my life very much,' Threapleton continues. 'I never really read magazines either. So I was just never that aware of the knownness of her until I got a little bit later in my teenage years.'"

From "Mia Threapleton Is Wes Anderson’s Next Breakout Star—and Happens to Be Kate Winslet’s Daughter/Twenty-four-year-old Mia Threapleton, who gives a revelatory performance in The Phoenician Scheme, talks about being raised by an Oscar winner, landing the biggest part of her life, and establishing a blossoming career on her own" (Vanity Fair).

Sunrise — 5:39, 5:57, 5:58.

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

White smoke!

New pope about to show his face. 

ADDED: "The cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church elected Robert Francis Prevost as their 267th pontiff on Thursday, ending a two-day conclave in Rome with the election of the first pope from the United States" (NYT).

AND: Some background from the National Catholic Reporter, published  last week: here. Excerpt: "He is a polyglot who speaks English, Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese and can read Latin and German, giving him abilities to communicate with his fellow cardinals in ways that others cannot. The language ability, his international travel experience as head of his religious order, and his work in identifying Latin-rite bishops around the world mean that he will be among the best-known candidates going into this conclave. While fluent in languages, he is not garrulous. When he speaks, he does so with caution and great deliberation. A private man with a reserved style, he will not score high on the charm offensive. But his steely determination and clarity might comfort those looking for a leader who knows where he wants to go and how to get there."

ALSO: "Pope Leo XIV, Born in Chicago, Is the First American Pontiff/Robert Francis Prevost, who led the Vatican office that selects and manages bishops globally, has spent much of his life outside the United States" (NYT).