Sunrise — 6:48, 6:53, 6:57.

Architect Vishaan Chakrabarti saw that "[t]he way to revamp the refinery... was to drop a freestanding building with desirable ceiling heights into the perimeter and use the old as a screen."

"The floors would align irregularly with the arched windows, but that unpredictability would be an asset, making each floor distinctive. At first glance, the result looks like a magic trick, a ship in a bottle — or rather a bottle in a ship — with a thick-walled headquarters of sugar production demoted to decorative sleeve.... What has been lost in this exercise of rationalism is the Gothic weirdness of the plant’s former guts, the platforms and voids and catwalks that characterized a place designed around inanimate objects and the transformation of a product from goo to granules. The result is plainer and more conventional, but preserving that interior drama would have come at the cost of clarity and usability...."

 
Writes Justin Davidson, in "Light-Drenched Offices Fill the Shell of Domino Sugar/A refinery with a dirty past, spotlessly reimagined" (NY Magazine).

Ron DeSantis tells Bill Maher "don't act like" it was a "unique thing" to say that the election was stolen...

... and gets applause from the "Real Time" audience:

"Let's go back to 2016. Your friends in Hollywood were cutting ads telling the Electoral College to vote against Trump... because the election was stolen. They said Russia stole the election. For years they said that."

"New York City’s sewer system is built for the rain of the past—when a notable storm might have meant 1.75 inches of water an hour."

"It wasn’t built to handle the rainfall from Hurricane Irene, Hurricane Sandy, or, more recently, Hurricane Ida—which dumped 3.15 inches an hour on Central Park. And it wasn’t built to handle the kind of extreme rainfall that is becoming routine...."

Writes Nancy Walecki, in "New York City Is Not Built for This/The city is seeing rainfall patterns that look more like Miami’s or even Singapore’s, an official said at The Atlantic Festival" (The Atlantic).

More than 8 inches of rain fell in NYC yesterday.

⚡🇺🇲 #USA - People grocery shopping in knee high water during the apocalyptic flooding in New York City today. #NewYorkFlood #NYC #flood #WeatherAlert pic.twitter.com/TokYZtxmdx

— X News Monitor (@xNewsMonitor) September 30, 2023

"The Senate's move to relax its unofficial dress code has led to a surprising development: an official dress code."

NPR reports.

It's not the way it always goes, but it shows the risk of seeking a new rule. You may end up with a reinforcement of the old rule. More precisely, it shows the risk of ending the enforcement of an informal practice. It led to the formalization of the old practice into an official rule.

In this case, the change that backfired was all about accommodating one person, John Fetterman, a man with mental problems — he was recently hospitalized for depression. It is, it seems, especially important to him to wear hoodies and gym shorts, and what is the big deal? Let the unfortunate man have what he seems somehow to need. 

But he's in one party, and there's the other party, and it was a ripe opportunity to drag out the age-old argument: What if everybody did that? And we easily picture the Senate full of unlovable oldsters dressed as if they're about to attend a backyard barbecue. Can't have that. And so, John Fetterman must be forced into a suit and tie, at whatever cost to his fragile mind.

They even resorted to teasing him, calling the new rule "The SHORTS Act" (for "SHow Our Respect To the Senate"). That resolution was introduced by Mitt Romney (along with Joe Manchin). Mitt Romney, teasing a man with mental problems? Fetterman still has the option of standing in the doorway in his hoodie and shorts and participating without entering the room.

Good thing they got that done... as a symbol of all the things they haven't got done. 

Sunrise in heavy fog — 6:55.

As well she should.

I'm reading "Melania Trump ‘quietly’ renegotiated prenup with Donald ahead of potential second presidential term, legal woes: sources" (Page Six).

Over the last year, Melania and her team have been quietly negotiating a new ‘postnup’ agreement between herself and Donald Trump.” The source further said, “This is at least the third time Melania has renegotiated the terms of her marital agreement,” but the source added that it’s not because the former first lady is going anywhere. “Melania is most concerned about maintaining and increasing a substantial trust for their son, Barron"....

"In June, I wrote an article in the Boston Globe titled 'I am the wrong kind of Black professor,' which criticized the default assumption..."

"... that Black academics should be interested in Black subjects. Afterward, I found myself inundated by a small flood of requests to write and talk about race in America. Ironically, saying that I’m sick of talking about being Black invited a rush of opportunities to do just that.... We all make choices, and I don’t want to suggest that Kendi is a victim or that we should pity him. He basked in the accolades and accepted lavish speaking fees. But though I don’t condone Kendi’s race grift, I do understand how easy it would be to become a grifter. His rise in 2020, and his ignominious decline today, are a mirror held up to liberal America. His failure, intellectual and moral, is as much ours as it is his."

Writes Tyler Austin Harper, in "Ibram X. Kendi’s fall is a cautionary tale — so was his rise/White American elites are always ready to turn a Black intellectual into a mouthpiece for their political agenda"  (WaPo).

Here's the Boston Globe article: "I am the wrong kind of Black professor/I’ve staked my career on my interest in the dead white men of 19th-century British letters. I can’t count the times I’ve been told what a waste it is that I’ve done so."

"The Supreme Court on Friday said it would... decide whether laws passed in Texas and Florida can restrict social media companies from removing certain political posts or accounts."

"Tech industry groups, whose members include Facebook and Google’s YouTube, asked the court to block Texas and Florida laws passed in 2021 that regulate companies’ content-moderation policies. The companies say the measures are unconstitutional and conflict with the First Amendment by stripping private companies of the right to choose what to publish on their platforms.... 'The act of culling and curating the content that users see is inherently expressive, even if the speech that is collected is almost wholly provided by users,' Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar told the justices. 'And especially because the covered platforms’ only products are displays of expressive content, a government requirement that they display different content—for example, by including content they wish to exclude or organizing content in a different way—plainly implicates the First Amendment.'"

From "Supreme Court to decide landmark Texas, Fla. social media cases and more" (WaPo).

Dianne Feinstein has died.

"Senator Dianne Feinstein Dies at 90/The California Democrat, the oldest member of the Senate, had been declining in health for months" (NYT).

ADDED: The NYT story is just a squib with the notation "This is a developing story. Please check back for updates." I can't understand why they wouldn't have a long and complete obituary ready to publish at the push of a button.

AND: From the WaPo obituary:

Mrs. Feinstein won her Senate seat in what became known as the Year of the Woman, an election that sent 24 new women to the House of Representatives and brought the total number of female senators to six.

"I was three years divorced, living in leafy, small-town New Jersey, when I looked out my kitchen window and saw a neighbor friend drop off some wildflowers he promised for my nascent woodland garden."

"He didn’t ring the bell. It was hot outside, so he placed them under the shade of a crape myrtle. As he pulled away, I felt, to my great surprise, maybe a half dozen little orgasms ripple through me. From that moment, I had touch-free orgasms whenever I saw him or heard his name. Suddenly, this man’s physical beauty was unparalleled. He was a creative genius. As I slid into an 11-year delusion that overtook my life, he became 'my beloved.'..."

Writes Teresa Riordan, in "My 11-Year Relationship That Never Happened/At 50, divorced and suffering from delusions, I experienced the greatest love I had ever known. If only it were real" (NYT).

ADDED: It's only by chance that this post follows the previous post, which is about "bristling" at the touch of a partner with whom you have an established sexual relationship. The shared topic is puzzling automatic bodily reactions. What do they mean? 

"If you’re the bristler, acknowledge how vulnerable your partner feels when he or she initiates sex, and honor your partner’s attempts to connect with you...."

"'You can say something like "Oh, sorry, honey, you startled me, let’s circle back to this tonight"'...."

From "Watch Out for This Common Intimacy Killer/For couples in long-term relationships, the 'bristle reaction' can make physical connection difficult, experts say" (NYT).

"Ramaswamy, whom none of the other Republican candidates for President can really seem to stand, either politically or in the most basic human way, spread his arms dramatically..."

"... to indicate the others onstage. 'These are good people, who are tainted by a broken system....' 'Not all of us are tainted!' the North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, who is polling around one per cent, called out, and then Scott, Ramaswamy, and the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, started speaking all at once. It took close to two minutes for their voices to become fully disentangled. When Ramaswamy tried claiming credit for disinvesting from China, Nikki Haley, Donald Trump’s former U.N. Ambassador, jumped in: 'Yeah, right before you ran for President,' perhaps the lone good line of the crosstalk apocalypse. Ramaswamy did not look flustered—his smile was broad, his hair was piled into a pompadour, his voice was declarative—but he also plainly had no idea what he was trying to say. At one point he tried to break through the noise, saying sardonically to his rivals, 'Thank you for speaking while I’m interrupting.'" 

Writes Benjamin Wallace-Wells, in "'Thank You For Speaking While I'm Interrupting': The Crosstalk Chaos of the Second Republican Debate/The event, which was billed as a chance for Donald Trump’s rivals to change their fortunes, only reinforced the confusion and aimlessness of their candidacies" (The New Yorker).

Here's a clip of that chaos:

"For better or worse, she wished the lawsuit were done with. 'It’s in God’s hands now,' [Olivia Hussey] said."

"'It’s all in God’s hands in the end.' Even if it failed, she said, she’d be okay. 'Most people on their deathbeds, even the most evil people, have to say, What have I done? And what was wrong? And what did I do right? I’m not afraid to die because I’m not scared of my reckoning.' She’d made her share of mistakes, and sometimes she wondered whether filing the lawsuit was one of them. But she could live with that. 'Nobody’s perfect,' she said. 'If we were perfect, there’d be no need for all this charade, this illusion that we call life. If we were perfect, we’d all be angels.'"

From "Romeo and Juliet Was a Tragedy/In 1968, Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting were the world’s most famous teens. In 2023, they sued Paramount for abuse" by Lila Shapiro (New York Magazine).

The lawsuit, filed the day before the Child Victims Act expired, is based on the idea that Hussey and Whiting were traumatized by the way the director, Franco Zeffirelli, forced them into appearing naked. They say the movie is "essentially pornography," "a poisonous product," and "evidence of a crime."

Sunrise — 6:45.

"I am Batman."

A new ad for Trump... featuring many celebrities who are made, against their will, to look like they love Trump.