At the Saturday Night Café…

 … you can write about whatever you want.

"Musk has become a hyper-exposed pop-culture figure, and his sharp turns from altruistic to vainglorious, strategic to impulsive, have been the subject of innumerable articles..."

"... and at least seven major books.... But the nature and the scope of his power are less widely understood. More than thirty of Musk’s current and former colleagues in various industries and a dozen individuals in his personal life spoke to me about their experiences with him. Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, with whom Musk has both worked and sparred, told me, 'Elon desperately wants the world to be saved. But only if he can be the one to save it.'"

Writes Ronan Farrow, in "Elon Musk’s Shadow Rule/How the U.S. government came to rely on the tech billionaire—and is now struggling to rein him in" (The New Yorker).

Oliver Anthony is aggravated to see conservatives acting like he's one of them.

Oliver Anthony making the obvious point and expressing the self-evidently true grievance: how the GOP candidates on the stage tried to wrap themselves in and identify with Rich Men North of Richmond" even though, as he says, they're the ones (but not only them) who it's about: https://t.co/SMxTqDoQxo

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 26, 2023

"In job postings and public statements over several years, SpaceX wrongly claimed that under federal regulations known as 'export control laws'..."

"... SpaceX could hire only U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, sometimes referred to as 'green card holders.' Export control laws impose no such hiring restrictions. Moreover, asylees’ and refugees’ permission to live and work in the United States does not expire, and they stand on equal footing with U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents under export control laws...."

From a Justice Department press release, "Justice Department Sues SpaceX for Discriminating Against Asylees and Refugees in Hiring."

Musk's reply:

"I sleep with my friends, and I befriend the people I sleep with. As a result, my social life mostly consists of a sort of merry traveling band of fellows..."

"... with whom I have happily porous and shifting relationships. This is what we all used to do when we were young and then grew out of when we moved into the serious part of life. Except I just didn’t. I know this sounds like hell to most people.... When it works, though, it feels like a vindication that the worth men and women can hold for one another is beyond sexual and romantic and also that it can continuously change, like everything else. When it doesn’t, it’s still pretty hot."

Said Megan Nolan, one of 16 writers asked to name one "irresponsible, immoral, indulgent" thing they do. 

This collection of confessions — in the NYT — goes along with an opinion piece, "I Don’t Need to Be a ‘Good Person.’ Neither Do You" by the clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster. 

Nolan, a novelist, should add: And to whatever degree it works or does not work, I get raw material for novels.

By the way, the comments over there are all about the one person who confesses to shoplifting. That person, Thomas Morton, tries to sort of justify his behavior on the ground that the prices — in the airport where he commits his crime — are high, the employees are underpaid, and he loves the feeling of "having stuff... that I didn't pay for." I think that entry should have been left out, because it distracted readers from all the interesting material 15 other writers contributed.

Morton was an editor at Vice Magazine. Here's his Wikipedia article, which has already been updated to contain the report of his confession "to habitual shoplifting at airport stores." I would expect to hear from him soon that he was describing a fantasy — nothing he really does.

At the Friday Night Café...

 ... you can write about whatever you want.

11 key risk factors for dementia.

According to a study reported in The London Times: "being aged over 60, living alone, poor education, having parents with dementia, being from a deprived background, male sex, having diabetes, depression, stroke, high blood pressure and high cholesterol."

"But during the Globe’s first Shakespeare and Race Festival... she hosted a workshop in the theater with actors of color and learned how they were disadvantaged by some of the set and lighting design decisions."

"'What we have proved subsequently is that it does not work for actors of the global majority,' she said, using the Globe’s preferred language to describe actors of color. 'It feels like a space of empire.' With this in mind, the Globe has plans to change the design when it raises the money, repainting the space in a lighter hue and reconsidering the Renaissance-inspired ceiling mural that depicts the white-skinned goddess of the moon surrounded by similarly complexioned cherubs...."

From "This scholar is pulling back the curtain on race in Shakespeare/Farah Karim-Cooper argues that the Bard has a race problem. But that doesn’t mean we have to love him less" (WaPo).

"With its psychologists overbooked, the clinic relied on external therapists, some with little experience in gender issues, to evaluate the young patients’ readiness for hormonal medications."

"Doctors prescribed hormones to patients who had obtained such approvals, even adolescents whose medical histories raised red flags. Some of these patients later stopped identifying as transgender, and received little to no support from the clinic after doing so.... Pediatric gender medicine is a nascent specialty, and few studies have tracked how patients fare in the long term, making it difficult for doctors to judge who is likely to benefit.... In the United States, health groups have endorsed what’s known as affirming care even as their peers in Europe have grown more cautious.... In a statement to The Times, [Washington University] said that it would not address specific allegations because of patient privacy, and that 'physicians and staff have treated patients according to the existing standard of care.' But doctors in St. Louis and elsewhere are wrestling with evolving standards and uncertain scientific evidence — all while facing intense political pressure and an adolescent mental health crisis...."

From "How a Small Gender Clinic Landed in a Political Storm/Washington University’s youth gender clinic in St. Louis, like others around the world, was overwhelmed by new patients and struggled to provide them with mental health care" (NYT).

"The mugshot was completely unnecessary and vindictive, of course."

He's the most photographed person on Earth. The mugshot was completely unnecessary and vindictive, of course. But it's going to backfire dramatically, since this image is instantly iconic. pic.twitter.com/msgEktyVYd

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) August 25, 2023

ADDED: Here's how The New York Times addresses the mugshot: "Trump’s mug shot is released, a first in his four criminal cases this year":

Sunrise — 6:18, 6:19, 6:21.

I'm too much of a morning person to live-blog debates anymore, and live-blogging is really hard anyway...

... because if you don't pause, how are you supposed to write about something you just heard when you're supposed to be hearing the next thing they say? You have to let many things roll by unnoticed and you can't be fussy about verbatim quotes. I think if I were ever to try live-blogging again, I'd just forget about quotes and even the substance of what they are saying and just — on the fly — let you know how this and that made me feel.

But something I can do that's much less stressful that might be worthwhile and even kind of fun is to watch the video the next day after and use a transcript to cut and paste key quotes.

So here's the video:

And here's a transcript.

I really thought, at this point, that I was going to go through the entire debate and make a number of posts. I was just going to take little break first. Time passed. 3 hours. I came back to this project, watched the first half hour of the debate. Somewhere around this...

"Once the gifting took over — and women realized they could charge tens of thousands of dollars per social media post — the originality essential to fashion blogging’s initial success receded."

"In its place came the veneer of a successful, aspirational lifestyle; the idea was for an influencer to look as cool and carefree as possible so that women could understand exactly what they don’t have (and needed, immediately). What seemed like a fun alternative quickly became homogeneous. 'The kernel of this innate, benevolent desire to disrupt the system became its own form of establishment,' as [Leandra Medine AKA Man Repeller] put it. 'And so no longer was the desire to become part of the disruption, so much as part of the new establishment.' And consumers seem increasingly skeptical of the idea that they should buy a handbag or visit a place just because an influencer posts about it. So prevalent is the sense that digital marketing and data have too much control over what we want and desire, that TikTok is experimenting with letting users turn off their algorithm...."

Writes Rachel Tashjian in "Whatever happened to having taste?" (WaPo).

"He’s a bitchy little man.... He’s a little fussy man...."

Says Tucker Carlson after Trump brings up Chris Wallace who, he says, is "probably not a friend of yours."

From the transcript of last night's interview.

Trump says Wallace "wanted to be his father, but he didn’t have the talent." And Trump reminds us that Chris Wallace cut Trump off when he tried to ask Biden — at the first presidential debate in 2020 — "Why is it that the mayor of Moscow’s wife is allowed to give you three and a half million dollars?"

"Are you worried that they’re going to try and kill you? Why wouldn’t they try and kill you? Honestly?"

Tucker Carlson asks Trump to his face in last night's interview — video here, transcript here.

This is something that I've thought about but avoided ever saying, and I've even deleted comments that bring this up, because I'm afraid of stimulating deranged thinking, but Carlson brought it up so conspicuously that my restraint serves no purpose. 

But Trump avoids a direct response. I suspect he didn't appreciate Carlson's floating the idea of assassination. But he doesn't even say that. He says:

"Candidates repeatedly disregarded the debate rules, with little in the way of an attempt to keep the proceedings on track."

"When candidates talked over moderators Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum as they tried to move on, the moderators often just relented and gave them the stage. But the problems were most evident in the moderators’ handling of hand-raising questions — a good and helpful entry at any debate. The first time they requested such responses, DeSantis objected to the format, and they let him do it, declining to make the request again. Later, they asked whether the candidates would support Trump in the general election if he is convicted. Only Christie and Hutchinson declined, but both DeSantis and Pence were slow to raise their hands. And for some reason, there was no follow-up with them."

 
In "The winners and losers from the first Republican debate" (WaPo), Aaron Blake counts Fox News among the losers.

In contrast to the loud chaos of the debate, there was the gentle fireside conversation between 2 calm men:

Ep. 19 Debate Night with Donald J Trump pic.twitter.com/ayPfII48CO

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 24, 2023