At the Sunrise Café...

... you can write about whatever you want.

Here's a panorama version that includes the moon (and the moon's shattered reflection in the water)(click and click again for a good enlargement):

"He was not only the greatest of baseball writers; he had also lived long enough to see Babe Ruth, of the Yankees, at one end of his life and..."

"... Shohei Ohtani, of the Angels, at the other. Age conferred authority. When Roger covered the Yanks in their late-nineties heyday, Joe Torre, the team’s heavy-lidded chief, would sometimes interrupt one of his avuncular soliloquies to a clutch of young reporters and look to him for affirmation: 'Roger, am I getting that right?' Sitting in his office, Roger, much like Torre, held court, telling stories about playing Ping-Pong with James Thurber, editing William Trevor and Donald Barthelme, and watching ballgames with the Romanian-born artist Saul Steinberg, who would put on a flannel Milwaukee Braves uniform before sitting down in front of the TV.... Roger died on Friday. He was a hundred and one.... His father, Ernest Angell, was a Harvard-trained lawyer who went on to lead the American Civil Liberties Union. His mother, born Katharine Sergeant, was educated at Bryn Mawr and became this magazine’s first fiction editor, a close editorial partner to Harold Ross. After divorcing Ernest Angell, she married another founding eminence at the magazine, E. B. White. Mrs. White, as she was known at the office, neglected to tell Roger the news of her wedding; Roger, who was nine at the time, heard about it only a couple of days later, through a relative who had read about it in Walter Winchell’s newspaper column.... Eventually, Roger led the fiction department; he was, as he often said, 'doing my mother’s job in my mother’s office.'... In 1962, he and the magazine’s editor, William Shawn, discussed the idea of his writing about baseball...."

Writes David Remnick in "Remembering Roger Angell, Hall of Famer/In the course of a well-lived century, he established himself as the most exacting of editors, the most agile of stylists, a mentor to generations of writers, and baseball’s finest, fondest chronicler" (The New Yorker).

"Someone needs to say it: Not everything's about you.... And it's okay to ask questions about something that's very new and involves children."

"How L.A. became a fridge-less aberration is one of the region’s more mysterious, least delightful eccentricities..."

"... along with absurdly long street parking signs or frigid days at the beach in June.... California law does not require refrigerators to be included in rental units, instead classifying them as 'amenities' that aren’t necessary to meet habitability standards. 'It’s like a hot tub'.... Buying and maintaining a refrigerator became an extra expense that landlords just didn’t want.... When they broke... tenants would complain that they had just gone to the grocery store and demand reimbursement. 'It was always the liability of food....'... But legal reasons alone do not explain Southern California’s relative dearth of refrigerators. Other large states like Florida and Texas do not require fridges either, but they come standard with apartments... Ingrid Gould Ellen, faculty director at the NYU Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, posited that the economic concept of 'multiple equilibria' might be at play. Basically, the idea is that small things that happen in the early creation of a market proliferate and become entrenched: In the 1950s, say, a few big L.A. landlords don’t provide Frigidaires as the appliances are becoming essential, others follow suit and a trend is born. 'No one is going to want to rent a home without a refrigerator if all other homes have them,' Ellen said. 'But if the norm is that rentals don’t offer refrigerators, then a separate market will develop.'"

From "Why do so many L.A. apartments come without fridges? Inside the chilling mystery" (L.A. Times).

I haven't used my "Hillary's in trouble" tag in a while.

...Of course, Clinton has pushed for state and corporate censorship while demanding a “global reckoning” with those who spread disinformation. Yet, while her campaign lawyer could be convicted, the Clintons have long avoided any personal "reckoning" in a long line of scandals.

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) May 21, 2022

Pelicans.

At 5:29 this morning on Lake Mendota: 

"If YOU can't connect with most modern day music, THIS is probably why."

"In my 30 year career, including the entire MeToo era, there’s nothing to report, but, as soon as I say I intend to restore free speech to Twitter & vote Republican, suddenly there is…"

Said Elon Musk, quoted in "Elon Musk calls claims of sexual misconduct ‘politically motivated’" (WaPo).

Musk commented at length on Twitter... writing that “those wild accusations are utterly untrue” and issuing “a challenge to this liar who claims their friend saw me ‘exposed’ — describe just one thing, anything at all (scars, tattoos, …) that isn’t known by the public. She won’t be able to do so, because it never happened.”  

“Moreover,” he added, “the ‘friend’ in question who gave the interview to [Insider], is a far left activist/actress in LA with a major political axe to grind.” 

“The attacks against me should be viewed through a political lens — this is their standard (despicable) playbook — but nothing will deter me from fighting for a good future and your right to free speech,” Musk tweeted. 

He ended the thread: “Finally, we get to use Elongate as scandal name. It’s kinda perfect.”

The top-rated comment over there is: "Musk is starting to sound an awful lot like Trump." And, yes, he is: He's a master of the tweet. But don't worry. He can't run for President. We are securely safe from the foreign-born man following the Trump path to power. And Musk himself is safe from that temptation (and from our suspicion). That door is closed.

Of course, if the allegations are true, that's very bad. But what I'd like to know is how many men are inhibited from coming out as conservative — or just anti-Democrat — because they know there are or could be allegations like this held in reserve. How much control is achieved by this method of only going after political enemies? We can't get all the allegations out, because some men are protected, protected by their own political pretense.

By the way, do you think there's anything odd about Elon Musk's genitalia, or is this a rhetorical trick to make us think he has a means of refuting his accuser? Remember when Michael Jackson was subjected to a bodily search to see if his accuser had accurately described his penis?

"In the first week after the new rules we literally had customers with calculators out. It was a real novelty. And for the first two to three weeks..."

"... people would opt for the lighter dishes. For instance, orders for our mother butter chicken dish fell but orders for our lower-calorie agra chicken dish rose. But after about three weeks everyone got fatigued with it and we are now back to normal. It hasn’t made any difference to sales at all."

Said restaurant owner Nisha Katona, quoted in a London Times article about the calorie counts that have been required in the U.K. since last month.

The article cites a study of American restaurants with calorie counts that "in the first month, diners opted for dishes with an average of 60 fewer calories but after a year, the average reduction had fallen to 23 calories." And, we're told, the main difference is that people are taking more time to figure out what to order.

And here's another article on fatness in the London Times today: "Ancients believed in survival of the fattest/For most of human history food was precious and plumpness was something to be proud of, but then fashions changed" by Ben Macintyre:

Thrifty genotypes among the hunter-gatherers, who could store fat efficiently, were favoured by evolution.... The traditional desirability of excess flesh was reflected in social habits, politics, literature and arts, from Rubens to Shakespeare to Dickens. Scrooge is thin, in contrast to Joe in The Pickwick Papers, “a wonderfully fat boy”.

“Let me have men about me that are fat,” Shakespeare’s Caesar declares, while the dangerous Cassius “has a lean and hungry look”. Falstaff, the most famous fat man in literature, is loveable and trustworthy because he is stout....

There were exceptions: the Spartans ostracised fat men; Socrates danced every morning to keep himself trim; Hippocrates correctly warned that “Corpulence is not only a disease itself, but the harbinger of others”...

So! Socrates danced every morning?

But what dance did he do? 

50 years ago today: "ROME, MAY 21—Michelangelo's Pieta, one of the world's most celebrated sculptures, was severely damaged today when a man attacked it with a hammer in St. Peter's Basilica."

"Hundreds of Whitsunday worshipers, pilgrims and tourists watched in horror as a young man with long reddish hair and a beard pushed into the side chapel to the right of the main entrance to St. Peter's, where the Pieta is on display over, an altar. He climbed over a marble balustrade, went up the stairs to the platform on which the sculpture rests, pulled out a hammer from under a raincoat he had over his arm and started battering the marble, shouting, 'I'm Jesus Christ.' The blows shattered the left arm of the figure of the Virgin Mary in the marble group and also chipped the nose, the left eye and the veil covering the hair... The assailant, who was identified as Laszlo Toth, 33 years old, of Sydney, Australia, was able to strike four or five hammer blows amid the gasps and shouts of the crowd before an Italian fireman ran up to him and pulled him down by his hair.... A Vatican spokesman said later that Mr. Toth had told Archbishop Benelli in English: 'If you kill me, so much the better, because I'll go straight to heaven.' The Hungarian‐born Mr. Toth had been living in Rome for some time and had acquired some notoriety for bizarre conduct. In an interview last November, II Messaggero of Rome presented him as a 'local character of sorts,' quoting Mr. Toth as saying that he was a geologist and had left Australia two years ago to return to Europe because 'I have seven mysteries to reveal.'"

The NYT reported, 50 years ago.

We're told that Pope Paul inspected the damage, knelt and prayed in front of it, and was overheard saying "Also most serious moral damage."

cc Stanislav Traykov.

ADDED: "Lazlo Toth" was used as a pen name by the comedian Don Novello (who played Father Guido Sarducci on "Saturday Night Live").

In the 1970s, Novello started to write letters to famous people under the pen name of Lazlo Toth (after Laszlo Toth, a deranged man who vandalized Michelangelo's Pietà in Rome). The letters, written to suggest a serious but misinformed and obtuse correspondent, were designed to tweak the noses of politicians and corporations. Many of them received serious responses; Novello sometimes continued the charade correspondence at length, with humorous results. The letters and responses were published in the books The Lazlo Letters, Citizen Lazlo!, and From Bush to Bush: The Lazlo Toth Letters.

Here's the Wikipedia article for Lazlo Toth, the vandal: 

He was not charged with a criminal offence after the incident, but was hospitalized in Italy for two years. On his release, he was immediately deported to Australia.... In June 1971 he moved to Rome, Italy, knowing no Italian, intending to become recognized as Christ.

The correct spelling of the name is Laszlo Toth.

Toth is on Wikipedia's "List of people claimed to be Jesus."

Pelican sunrise.

Just now, at 5:28, 3 pelicans!

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

I've picked out 6 TikTok selections for you this evening. Let me know what you like best.

1. Speed dating.

2. He feels like he's the yellow moon emoji.

3. A list of "cool things you can say."

4. Hey, what are you eating?

5. Watch this one if you want to be persuaded to do 60 squats a day.

6. Watch this one if you care about Harry Nilsson.

"In July 2020, as social justice protests roiled the nation, Joshua Katz, a Princeton classics professor, wrote... that some faculty proposals to combat racism at Princeton would foment 'civil war on campus'..."

"... and denounced a student group, the Black Justice League, as 'a small local terrorist organization' because of its tactics in pushing for institutional changes. The remarks [were]... reviled by some... and lionized by others.... And they sent up a flare that led to scrutiny of other aspects of his life, including his conduct with female students. In the latest fallout from that debate, Princeton’s president has recommended dismissing Dr. Katz... for what a university report says was his failure to be totally forthcoming about a sexual relationship with a student 15 years ago.... Princeton already knew about her. The university had started an investigation after it learned of the relationship in late 2017, about ten years after it happened, and Dr. Katz confessed to a consensual affair. He was quietly suspended without pay for a year.... The woman in the sexual relationship did not cooperate with the original Princeton investigation. But after [a student newspaper report on Dr. Katz], she filed a formal complaint that led the administration to open a new investigation, which it said was looking at new issues rather than revisiting old violations.... Dr. Katz’s wife, Solveig Gold, said he had lost many friends over the controversy.... Ms. Gold, 27, who is finishing her Ph.D. in classics at the University of Cambridge, graduated from Princeton in 2017. She said that she had been his student, but that there was no romantic relationship between them at the time. They married in July 2021."

From "After Campus Uproar, Princeton Proposes to Fire Tenured Professor/Joshua Katz says he was targeted because of his criticism of a campus protest group. A university report says the concerns are related to his inappropriate conduct with a female student" (NYT).

Obviously, it is terribly wrong to fire him for his writings, and it seems that the sexual material is being used as a cover. Sexual harassment is an important matter, but that's all the more reason not to use it dishonestly. There may be some new information about the 15-year-old case, but the matter was dealt with at the time. Would the University going back to other old cases and fire tenured professors? The answer can't be — only when it hates what they are writing.

"Whatever you think of Ms. Heard’s actions, or whether you choose to believe her, this is a good old-fashioned public pillorying — only memes have replaced the stones...."

"[T]his trial could function as a case study in contrived stereotypes used to discredit women, even if you believe there is some truth behind Mr. Depp’s claims. Ms. Heard has been portrayed as mentally unstable, hysterical, a gold digger, a temptress who brought home other paramours at all hours of the night, a freeloader who moved her friends into Mr. Depp’s many houses, an attention-seeker with an unquenchable need for drama and of course an untrustworthy liar — textbook undermining strategies, each with its own sexist implications.... Whether you believe Ms. Heard or not, watching a woman excoriated in public has been popular entertainment since the Middle Ages. Somehow, Ms. Heard seems to have become a stand-in for every evil, lying woman getting her comeuppance — alpha queen bees in high school, the girl who slept with your boyfriend or girlfriend, every manipulative ex. She is Eve, she is Medusa, she is Lady Macbeth. She evokes vamps and vampires, wicked stepmothers, witches.... This trial seems to have exposed some of the rhetorical weaknesses of #MeToo. 'Believe women'... had somehow morphed into 'believe all women'... The intent of that early slogan was, in part, to encourage the public to treat women who speak up with basic dignity and respect, however messy and imperfect they or their stories may be...."

Writes Jessica Bennett, in "The Humiliation of Amber Heard Is Both Modern and Medieval" (NYT).

"The Biden administration is probably breathing a sigh of relief because they weren’t ready for the rule to be lifted."

Said Wayne Cornelius, "director emeritus of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California," San Diego, quoted in "Judge Orders Government to Continue Migrant Expulsions on Border" (NYT). 

A federal judge on Friday blocked the Biden administration from lifting a pandemic-related health order whose scheduled expiration on Monday would have reopened the doors of the United States to asylum seekers at the border for the first time in more than two years.... The sweeping public health measure, known as Title 42, was put into place in March 2020 to control the transmission of the coronavirus across the border. Under its authority, thousands of migrants arriving at land borders have been swiftly expelled, without an opportunity for those fleeing danger and persecution to request humanitarian protection in the United States.