Sunrise — 5:56, 6:15, 6:21.

Write 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.)

"Vice President JD Vance's... comments about being prepared to assume the presidency in case of a 'terrible tragedy' befalling President Trump set tongues wagging."

"The timing of these remarks drew attention within the political landscape as keyboard warriors started connecting dots to the prominent bruise on Trump's right hand that went viral.... The story has generated substantial engagement on social media platforms, particularly on X. Below are some tweets...."

From "'Trump is Dead' trends on X: J D Vance's remark over US president sparks frenzy; Simpsons prediction adds fuel" (Times of India).

"Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson had fans eating up their flirty press tour, but behind the scenes, it was all a PR 'bake-off'...."

TMZ reports, based on "sources with direct knowledge."

I had some trouble understanding the expression "bake-off," since there was no competition, only collusion, pretending to have found love together. But...

A big slice of the stunt involved Pamela claiming she was baking muffins and sourdough bread for Liam -- something he even played along with in interviews leading up to the premiere. It makes us now assume that was also part of the strategy ... pure role-play PR, not reality.

So some literal baking was involved, but there was no literal or figurative bake-off.

Actors promoting a movie are still acting. Why not act as if they'd fallen in love? 

If you go searching into the term "bake-off," you'll probably quickly arrive at something called the "First Lady Bake-Off." That's something that began in 1992, and it was an unwholesome alliance between the press — Family Circle Magazine — and the Clinton campaign. Wikipedia explains:

"Trump’s team again defined classical broadly as all premodernist architectural styles, with roots in Greco-Roman antiquity..."

"... though art deco, which is on the list, is not typically considered traditional. The order defines 'traditional architecture' as Gothic, Pueblo Revival, Spanish Colonial, and Mediterranean styles historically rooted in parts of the United States. 'Designs diverging from classical architecture must convey the dignity, enterprise, vigor, and stability of the American government and command public respect,' the White House said in a fact sheet for the order, which also requires that Trump is notified when a building design deviates from the preferred style...."

From "Trump orders classical and traditional architecture for federal buildings" (Yahoo, passing along something from WaPo).

Justin Shubow, "the head of the National Civic Art Society [who] helped draft the order," taking the position that this wasn't a political issue, reminded WaPo about the time Barack Obama "accept[ed] the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 in front of classical Greek backdrop. 'Whoever was stage-managing understood that this is how Americans think of the presidency. They do associate it with classical architecture.'"

I'd say that shows that it is a political issue. Obama was being political. It was not that he shared the ordinary American's taste for traditional architecture, but that he was trying to influence Americans to see him as belonging within the tradition that he and his handlers presumed they believed in. He wasn't elected yet, but, as we all saw at the time, he was acting as if he was already ensconced in the trappings of power.

WaPo moderates anti-Trump hysteria with the headline "New FDA coronavirus vaccine rules bring U.S. closer to other countries."

Subheadline: "But confusion over who can get shots and resignations by officials who say the Trump administration is undermining vaccine science have few parallels elsewhere."

Who is sowing this confusion? If the Trump administration is aligned with what other countries are doing, why are "officials" resigning and performing outrage? 

"Blazes in these areas consume, in addition to brush and undergrowth, all sorts of manufactured materials: lead paint and piping, lithium batteries and computers..."

"... cleaning solutions and artificial fibers, automobiles and electric wires. Soil samples collected from the Palisades and Altadena have revealed the presence of heavy metals and other toxic elements, including arsenic, lead and mercury. If not properly remediated, such contamination can linger, with potential effects including not only cancer but also damage to the brain and nervous system, especially in children under 3.... For all the visible damage to Altadena and the Palisades, in other words, there is a more insidious set of dangers, both in the homes and structures left undamaged and throughout the broader region. Even after the January fires stopped burning, wind distributed toxic smoke and ash across much of Los Angeles County, before blowing them out to the Pacific by way of Long Beach...."

Writes David L. Ulin, a USC English professor who wrote a book called "Sidewalking: Coming to Terms With Los Angeles," in "Los Angeles Is Contaminated Now" (NYT).

Sunrise — 5:47, 6:10, 6:21.

Write 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.)

"Thank you for making this trip such a happy experience. Thank you for being here at the exact right moment, by my boat. Thank you for taking my bait. Thank you. We love you."

Said Garvin Watson, as he kissed the orange shark and let it go.

Quoted in "Fishermen Pulled In an Orange Shark Off Costa Rica: ‘My God, What Is This?’/Scientists published a study this month on the nurse shark, which was caught and photographed by sport fishermen last year" (NYT)(gift link, so you can see the pictures and lose yourself in sharkdom).

"You hear the term 'slop' a lot now. There’s a good reason for that: A lot of janky internet content is being churned out with A.I., and slop..."

"... is a handy name for this. But there’s another phenomenon—not unconnected, but a little different—that I also think it’s worth getting a handle on. I’ve been thinking about it as 'slurry.' In the non-metaphorical world, slurry means an unresolved mix of liquid and solid; in agriculture, a thin mixture of manure and water. The word comes to mind with this very pervasive kind of content that’s gunking up my feed, where different content types are running together into one, half-resolved substance. Where everything assumes the qualities of everything else. It’s painters having to perform incongruously as influencers to get some attention for their work. It’s audio interviews, auto-transcribed and posted without any editing so that you get not only weird errors but also all the 'you knows' and 'uhms.' It’s long video essays chopped up into little incoherent bits and posted with gibbering subtitles. What these have in common is a feeling of clunkiness that comes when something originated in one medium and hasn’t quite been thought through for another...."

Writes Ben Davis, in "The Great Enslurrification of Culture/Rosalind Krauss's 'post-medium condition' comes for writing, and everything" (ArtNet).

"President Donald Trump has revoked the Secret Service detail for former vice president Kamala Harris.... The decision comes about a month before Harris... is scheduled to embark on a national book tour..."

"... her first extended public exposure since leaving office. Federal law gives vice presidents six months of Secret Service protection after they leave office, though Biden, before his presidency ended, had extended her detail for another year, according to a person familiar with the decision.... With the termination of the Harris detail, Trump has canceled security for every protected holdover from the Biden administration except Biden and former first lady Jill Biden, who by law are guaranteed lifetime Secret Service protection. High-ranking administration officials are not automatically guaranteed protection after leaving government, nor are children of former presidents over the age of 16...."

WaPo reports.

"He was eight inches shorter in length than he was before he burned. That’s thermal fracture.... Not only are you riding on top of 3,000 pounds of batteries, this 'spaceship' design is a double-edged sword."

Said the plaintiff's lawyer, quoted in "Family sues Tesla after Cybertruck owner dies in 5,000-degree inferno, causing bones to disintegrate" (NY Post).

"It was just a country store for country people and that’s what it is today, they just don’t understand."

Said Tommy Lowe, the 94-year-old co-founder of Cracker Barrel, describing how things began (in 1969) and how things should remain, quoted in "Cracker Barrel co-founder, 93, slams CEO after ‘pitiful’ rebranding fail: 'Throwing money out the window'" (NY Post).

“They’re trying to modernize to be like the competition — Cracker Barrel doesn’t have any competition,” Lowe told WTVF Thursday. “I heard she was at Taco Bell. What’s Taco Bell know about Cracker Barrel and country food? They need to work on the food and service and leave the barrel — the logo alone.”...

"She" = CEO Julie Felss Masino, who Lowe claims, doesn't know who he is and has never met with him. We're told "Masino began implementing changes to the menu, interior design and prices soon after [becoming CEO] in November."

"This kind of violence is very recent. It's a new thing in human history. There was no time in the past when people would walk into a church or a classroom and start shooting people."

"It is not happening in other countries. It's happening here and we need to look at all of the potential culprits that might be contributing to that."

Said RFK Jr. on "Fox & Friends" yesterday, when he was asked about whether "drugs" used in transgender treatment might have had a effect on the Minneapolis shooter. RFK Jr.'s answer broadened the topic to "SSRI drugs and other psychiatric drugs," some of which come with warnings about homicidal and suicidal ideation.

"We do not have the luxury to fight amongst ourselves while that thing sits in the White House."

Said Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee in Minneapolis last week, quoted in "Democrats let it all out at their party meeting" (Semafor)[SEE UPDATE BELOW].

But oddly enough, "that thing" is sitting in the White House after Republicans fought amongst themselves and Walz badly lost the election to him after Democrats went out of their way to avoid fighting amongst themselves. It would make more sense to use the epithet "that thing" to refer to the unwholesome agglomeration that is the Democratic Party.

The three-day meeting of the Democratic National Committee, held to welcome new members and start building the 2028 primary calendar, was the first under new chair Ken Martin.... The party, Martin vowed, was now bringing “a bazooka to a knife fight,” and would no longer “play by the rules” if Republicans broke them.

I'm guessing Martin deployed his "a bazooka to a knife fight" metaphor — in Minneapolis — before the the shooting of children that took place nearby. 

***

Bazooka (Wikipedia):

The name "bazooka" comes from an extension of the word bazoo, which is slang for "mouth" or "boastful talk"... 

That's fitting, for politicians.

During World War II, "bazooka" became the universally applied nickname of the new American anti-tank weapon, due to its vague resemblance to the musical instrument invented and popularized by 1930s American comedian Bob Burns.

Video of Burns playing the bazooka here.

UPDATE: In the comments below, Olson Johnson is right! observes that Semafor has taken Walz's words out of context:

Sunrise — 5:55, 6:15, 6:27, 6:28.

Write 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.)

"I only keep [the long hair] because it is pretty much my last shred of being trans. I am tired of being trans, I wish I never brain-washed myself..."

"I can’t cut my hair now as it would be embarrassing defeat, and it might be a concerning change of character that could get me reported. It just always gets in my way. I will probably chop it on the day of the attack.... I don’t want to dress girly all the time but I guess sometimes I really like it. I know I am not a woman but I definitely don’t feel like a man."

Wrote Robin Westman, more or less rejecting trans identity, quoted in "Minneapolis school shooter Robin Westman confessed he was 'tired of being trans': 'I wish I never brain-washed myself'" (NY Post).

I don't understand why we are calling this person trans. If you're saying you "brain-washed" yourself, you've implicitly consigned the belief to the past. You might not reveal the loss of belief to others, but you've put it in writing — albeit in code — and we can read it. Why are people pretending to believe that he believed what he said he didn't believe? And he wrote it explicitly: "I know I am not a woman." 

I don't see why anyone wants this person to be a member of their group. What good would it do anyone to have Westman as one of their own?