At the Ice Lake Café...

... you can talk about the Packers or anything you want.

"On April 13, 2023, former President Donald Trump sat for a pre-trial deposition in his civil fraud case in New York."

"CBS News obtained recordings of the questioning from the New York Attorney General's Office after a public records request...."

"The evolution of cooperation required out-group hatred. Which is really sad."

Said the sociologist Nicholas Christakis, quoted in "Science is revealing why American politics are so intensely polarized/Political psychologists say they see tribalism intensifying, fueled by contempt for the other side" (WaPo).

The article is by Joel Achenbach, who cites this study:

Social psychologist Muzafer Sherif took 22 Boy Scouts and separated them into two groups camping at Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma. Only after a week did they learn that there was another group at the far end of the campground.What they did next fascinated the research team. Each group developed irrational contempt for the other. The boys in the other group were seen not just as rivals, but as fundamentally flawed human beings. Only when the two groups were asked to work together to solve a common problem did they warm up to one another.

Ironically, the top comments over there are about how Republicans are fundamentally flawed human beings. 

"She looks so simple in her way/Does the same thing every day/But she's dedicated/To having her own way/She's very complicated...."

I'm listening to the old Rolling Stones song a propos of this NYT headline:

"'Brb — trying to think up a witty pickup line'.... He skimmed her dating profile, which mentioned that she liked men who..."

"... cared about their mental health and used proper grammar. 'My first thought is, think up how many ways I can use "your" and "you’re" incorrectly in a sentence,' he joked...."

From "She Went on 100 Dates Before They Met. He Hadn’t Been on Any in Years. After Molly Hunt matched with Harry Rimalower on Bumble, they went out to a bar — Mr. Rimalower’s first date since his separation" (NYT)(a wedding story).

“I awkwardly asked, ‘What are you looking for?’” he said, to which she replied, “I’m on the fast track to marriage and kids.” So was he.

"Look at the way Mary looked then! Good Lord, she was only 15! She had the perfect tough girl image."

"Hers was a look that in those days -- where I was anyway, in northern New Jersey -- we called 'hoody.' It was the alternative to the mod look, which I personally favored. I knew one girl, a friend of my sister's, who had the Mary Weiss look. It was sort of the dark side to the candy-colored mod/psychedelic style that I believed would conquer all. But this other thing! It came from the wrong side of town. My sister's friend scared me a little. She didn't live with her parents. She was from over in Boonton. She wore Tabu perfume. Really, I would never wear Tabu perfume. It's unbelievably sweet and strong. But I'd love to have some to dump into a handkerchief to inhale while listening to old Shangri-Las records."

I wrote, about Mary Weiss, back in 2007. 

Now, I see this morning, she has died.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no no no no no.

"You distance yourself from 'other' white people. You see only unapologetic bigots, card-carrying white supremacists and white people outside your own circle as 'real racists.'"

"You put other white people down, trash their work or behavior, or otherwise dismiss them. You righteously consider yourselves white people who have evolved beyond our racist conditioning. This is another level of denial. There are no 'exceptional white people.' You may have attended many anti-racism workshops; you may not be shouting racist epithets or actively discriminating against people of color, but you still experience privilege based on your white skin color. You benefit from this system of oppression and advantage no matter what your intentions are. This distancing serves only to divide you from potential allies and limit your own learning."

That's the "reality check" on item #21 of a DEI handout called "Common Racist Attitudes and Behaviors That Indicate a Detour or Wrong Turn into White Guilt, Denial or Defensiveness."

"Immediately I knew that’s not a wild rat... It had a shorter, rounder nose, its ears were on the side of its head and it was white. … If you know rats, you know rats."

Said Elm Dylan, quoted in "A waterfront park is overrun with rats. Rescuers are trying to find homes for them. A group of volunteers believes the rodents at Harbor View Memorial Park in Portland are domestic, not wild, and is working to rescue them and find foster homes" (Portland Press Herald).

The rats must be saved... because they are white? White rats, unlike brown rats, are perceived as pets.

"The problem with eating out in America today is that it’s making us fat."

"Studies done at my laboratory at Tufts University showed that the relationship between eating out and weight gain is very straightforward: The more frequently you eat out the more likely you are to carry excess pounds.... Our metabolism, hunger, and even the synthesis of addiction neurochemicals like dopamine are controlled by our environment.... When we see, smell, or taste something good, the sensory signals that get into our brain through our eyes, nose, and mouth activate what is known as the cephalic (preparatory) phase of digestion. Our saliva secretion increases; our blood glucose drops; our stomach muscles relax (so we have a larger stomach that needs more food in it to feel full); and our digestion accelerates (so we can put away that food more quickly to get ready for more)....."

From "Why Restaurants Make You Fat/Restaurant Syndrome: 1. Eat out. 2. Eat too much. 3. Feel bad. 4. Repeat" by Susan B. Roberts (The Daily Beast).

By chance, last night, I was watching a movie where there were characters who regarded a restaurant as a strange new form of business that was going to wreck the good thing that they had going (a saloon). 

Dialogue: 

"Have you ever seen a restaurant? They serve food. Next, the church will open up again...."

"The Judge is losing his grip. He's afraid of a place that sells vittles. Vittles and a pack of calf-faced girls...."

The "calf-faced girls" were the wholesome women who were coming to town to work in the restaurant — so different from the saloon women. 

Joe Biden campaign style: He shows up, with fast-food take-out, at this one guy's house.

Yesterday in North Carolina, I stopped by Eric’s house to have lunch with him and his two sons. I brought some Cook Out. They were an impressive family—Eric’s an award-winning educator and his sons are both athletic and academic all stars. We talked about the importance of… pic.twitter.com/UX9JMpWD4z

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 20, 2024

I hope Biden fans don't feel body-shamed. Are your kids athletic? You'd better be "an impressive family" if you want a chance at being the place Joe stops by next. Ease up on that take-out food, for now. Get your kids in shape. Then maybe Joe will come around with a bag of Cook Out.

At the Friday Night Café…

 … you can talk about whatever you want. 

Malia Ann — AKA Malia Obama — hopes her film makes you feel "a bit less lonely."

It's "an odd little story," we're told, and, judging from the photographs and the voiceover, it seems to be about man who needs to follow instructions left in his mother's will to do something with her heart — her actual physical heart, which we see him holding in a jar.

"[Authentic Brands Group] has owned [Sports Illustrated] since 2019 and sold the publishing rights to a company called the Arena Group."

"The Arena Group missed a recent payment for those publishing rights, prompting ABG to pull the publishing license.... 'As a result of this license revocation, we will be laying off staff that work on the SI brand,' the note to staff read...."

From "Sports Illustrated lays off most of its staff, threatening iconic brand’s future" (WaPo).

IN THE COMMENTS: There are many variations on "Get woke, go broke" — including "Sports Illustrated Bud-lit itself" (from Ice Nine) — but I like this from Prof. M. Drout:

"Following the E. Jean Carroll trial feels like watching one 80-year-old woman realize there is just nothing she can do to rid herself of this omnipresence..."

"... and then realizing that we are, all of us, that 80-year-old woman. That we have been, for some time, subsumed and consumed by one man and his very strong MAGA base. In the future when sociologists and historians study this period of time, I wonder if this will be the most lasting psychological stain. Not any specific acts, but the general weight, the inescapable pull, the black hole, the fog, the fug, the reality that our atmosphere is coated in a thin, smoggy layer of Donald Trump...."

Writes Monica Hesse, in "E. Jean Carroll used to be somebody/Once you enter Trump’s world, your own world evaporates" (WaPo).

Trump is responsible for whatever bad acts he's committed, such as, if Carroll is right, raping a woman in a department store dressing room, but subsuming and consuming the entire world and coating it with thin smog... that's something that you're doing to yourself.

"Nearly 50% of elites believe the U.S. provides 'too much individual freedom' — compared with nearly 60% of voters who believe there is too much 'government control.'"

"Seventy-seven percent of elites support 'strict rationing of gas, meat, and electricity' to fight climate change, vs. 28% of everyone else. More than two-thirds of elite Ivy graduates favor banning things like gasoline-powered cars and stoves and inessential air travel in the name of the environment. More than 70% of average voters say they'd be unwilling to pay more than $100 a year in taxes or costs for climate -- compared with 70% of elites who said they'd pay from $250 up to 'whatever it takes.'... While this elite is small, its members are prominent in every major institution of American power, from media to universities to government to Wall Street, and have become more intent on imposing their agenda from above. Many American voters feel helplessly under assault from policies that ignore their situation or values."

Writes Kimberley Strassel, in "The Them-vs.-Us Election" (Wall Street Journal).

Drooling winters.

I don't have an EV, nor did I want one... even before all the talk this year about how bad they are in cold weather. But somehow I clicked on "Frigid weather saps EV batteries. Here’s how to keep yours running."

Is there really any good advice, or are you just screwed when it's really cold?