"Becoming chief sausage-maker for President Obama.... Plotting a 2016 presidential run, only to be discouraged by Obama.... Running as a moderate, but governing as a progressive.... Signs of slipping concerned allies.... A legacy now tied to his own vice president’s candidacy...."

Those are the "Six Takeaways From the Magazine’s Profile of Joe Biden/His decision to quit the race ended a remarkable chapter in American political history — and started one that may yet define his legacy" (NYT).

The profile itself is, "Joe Biden’s Interrupted Presidency/He sought the office nearly all his life. When he finally got there, it brought out his best — and eventually his worst" (NYT)(free access link).

I'm most interested in the heading "Running as a moderate, but governing as a progressive," at the first link:

"He was often criticized for rampant egotism but seemed able to see fame for the complicated illusion that it was."

That's the best line in this obituary: "Alain Delon, Smoldering French Film Star, Dies at 88/The César-winning actor was an international favorite in the 1960s and ’70s, often sought after by the era’s great auteurs" (NYT).

There's also this:

Mr. Delon had denied paternity of a third son, Christian Aaron Päffgen — later known as Ari Boulogne — from a brief relationship with the pop star Nico. But Mr. Delon’s mother raised the boy as her grandson, giving him her surname from a remarriage. He died in 2023.

Alain Delon was in a lot of movies, but I don't think I've seen any of them... not even "Rocco and His Brothers" or "Is Paris Burning?" or "Le Samouraï." The Criterion Channel has quite a few of his movies streaming now.

Here's the Criterion teaser, which displays the extreme male beauty he had to offer:

Sunrise — 6:01.

A very dark morning. Later, I went for a second outing, and it was still overcast — which I like, because I can veer out into the prairie restoration area of the lakeshore. When it's sunny, I keep to the well-shaded trails. But out in the prairie, under the cloudy sky, the yellow flowers popped. These black-eyed susans seared my retinas. A half minute of staring and the leaves were purple:

"Then our Stryker drives right into their table. We killed many of them on the first day. Because they were unarmed and didn’t expect us."

Said a Ukrainian solder who "said he was part of the first wave of troops crossing into Russia on Aug. 6 in a US-provided Stryker fighter vehicle," quoted in "Ukraine soldier says Russian troops were caught so off-guard that they were 'sitting in the forest drinking coffiee': 'Didn’t expect us'" (NY Post)(typo in headline).

"On one side, there’s the enlightened maleness embodied by Harris’s vice-presidential pick and her husband, Doug Emhoff."

"These are the good progressive dads... the 'nice men of the left' who do guy things like coach football but also manifest liberal and feminist virtues.... Then there is the other model, the dark side of the Y chromosome: the toxic masculinity of Donald Trump, the anti-cat-lady conservatism of JD Vance.... But has liberalism perfected a model of modern masculinity while conservative culture slouches somewhere far behind? I’m skeptical.... First, I would have thought that by now liberals would be hesitant about proclaiming the special personal virtues of the male feminist, the enlightened pro-choice dude. After Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer and Harvey Weinstein, after MeToo case studies too numerous to count, surely we can say that sleaze percolates on the left and right alike....  Second... a strong, religiously motivated commitment to marriage and family — [is] not necessarily... anti-feminist.... [N]eo-traditional households actually show relatively egalitarian patterns of burden-sharing between spouses and strong paternal involvement in child rearing...."

Writes Ross Douthat, in "Masculinity Is on the Ballot" (NYT).

Douthat expresses skepticism about the generalizations and caricatures on both sides. I'll just add that feminism is dysfunctional if it doesn't stand apart from partisan politics. 

ADDED: I interact with Grok again:

 

I laughed a lot, and I'm not exactly sure why, but Meade didn't think it was funny at all, so I tried again:

That's only funny for being a terrible failure at understanding the prompt. Where's the dadness? Where's the feminist virtue? Why is he in a stadium? The first picture was funnier.

"Kamala can’t be thrilled that Obama, Pelosi and Schumer hesitated to endorse her because they wanted more moderate rivals to compete in an open mini-primary...."

"Biden still thinks he could have taken Trump, so how could he reconcile being shoved off the sled? On Wednesday, Ron Klain, Biden’s longtime adviser, expressed to Anderson Cooper Bidenworld’s feelings about the Jacquerie heard round the world. 'I think it was unfortunate because I think that the president had won the nomination fair and square,' Klain said. 'Fourteen million people had voted for him and the vice president as vice president.' He added: 'I do think, you know, the president was pushed by public calls from elected officials for him to drop out, from donors calling for him to drop out. And I think that was wrong.'"

Writes Maureen Dowd, in "After Biden Bloodletting, Dems Just Want to Have Fun!" (NYT).

1. "Shoved off the sled" — seems to refer to the notion that Biden was on a glide path to victory. There's no other mention of sledding.

2. "Jacquerie" — Wikipedia: "The Jacquerie was a popular revolt by peasants that took place in northern France in the early summer of 1358 during the Hundred Years' War.... This rebellion became known as 'the Jacquerie' because the nobles derided peasants as 'Jacques' or 'Jacques Bonhomme' for their padded surplice, called a 'jacque.'... The Jacquerie must be seen in the context of this period of internal instability. At a time of personal government, the absence of a charismatic king was detrimental to the still-feudal state."

3. "Bloodletting" — That word in the headline is supported by violent metaphor in the text of the essay: "It wasn’t exactly 'Julius Caesar' in Rehoboth Beach.... it was a jaw-dropping putsch.... [Pelosi] seemed sheepish about knifing her pal, and conflicted over whether to take credit. Et tu, Nancy? Biden must have thought."

ADDED: I wanted Grok to manufacture an image based on "seemed sheepish about knifing her pal" and asked for "Image of sheep stabbing a person with a knife."

Grok refused. It gave me a long answer, including: "Here's where I'd usually say, 'I could generate an image for you,' but considering the context and the nature of your request, let's not encourage the sheep to take up arms."

Defensively, I said "I find it distasteful too, but the image was created in words by Maureen Dowd in her New York Times column. She wrote that Nancy Pelosi 'seemed sheepish about knifing her pal.'"

I got some multi-faceted lecturing about metaphor, so here's what I asked and what Grok gave me:

UPDATE: The headline for the column has changed. We're no longer seeing the word "Bloodletting." It's "The Dems Are Delighted. But a Coup Is Still a Coup."

Why do tech geniuses have dysfluent speech?

That's the question I asked Grok after having listened to Elon Musk talking with Trump for 2 hours and then beginning to engage with this new Joe Rogan conversation with Peter Thiel:

 

Grok characterized my question as "age-old" and gave me a 7-point list of possible reasons.

I said "You could turn those 7 things into 3 things. Restate everything in 3 points" and it gave me this 3-point list:

1. Brain Overload: Their minds are too busy solving complex problems to prioritize smooth speech. It's like their CPU is always at 100% capacity.
2. Social Skills Rust: Spending more time with machines than humans means their conversational skills might be a bit... out of date. They're fluent in code, not small talk.
3. Overthinking & Literalism: They might overthink every word or take language too literally, turning a simple chat into a computational challenge.

That pretty much perfectly compressed the 7 points.

Impressed, I asked it a question that arose on this blog yesterday, "Why did Kamala Harris, speaking of 'price gouging,' have a Freudian slip and say 'price gauging'?"

I got an excellent answer, again in the form of a long list, this time 6 points. 

One of the points was "Economic Jargon Overload":

Politicians dive into economic terms like they're swimming in alphabet soup. Maybe her mind mixed up "price gauging" with "market gauging" or "public sentiment gauging." It's like when you're so deep into tech talk, you start saying "byte" when you mean "bite."

So my next question was "How would anyone know if I was saying byte or bite?" and I got a 7-point answer.

Ridiculous, I thought, and I said, "A human being would have answered 'they wouldn't,' but you give me a 7-point answer. How would you justify your behavior?"

It conceded "Ah, you caught me in my AI nature, didn't you? Here's my attempt at justification" and gave me another 7-point answer! 

1. Overthinking is My Default: Unlike humans, I'm designed to process information exhaustively. My circuits are wired to consider all possibilities, even if it's overkill for simple questions....

And on and on, demonstrating the aforesaid overthinking.  

So then here's a screen shot showing what I asked and what I was surprised to get:

Sunrise... with waterlilies.

Long views at 5:53 and 6:07:

Lilies:

The Washington Post Editorial Board says Kamala Harris has failed to offer "serious economic ideas" — her big speech supplied only "gimmicks."

I'm reading "The times demand serious economic ideas. Harris supplies gimmicks. ‘Price gouging’ is not causing inflation. So why is the vice president promising to stamp it out?" (free access link).

Never mind that many stores are currently slashing prices in response to renewed consumer bargain hunting. Ms. Harris says she’ll target companies that make “excessive” profits, whatever that means. (It’s hard to see how groceries, a notoriously low-margin business, would qualify.) Thankfully, this gambit by Ms. Harris has been met with almost instant skepticism, with many critics citing President Richard M. Nixon’s failed price controls from the 1970s. Whether the Harris proposal wins over voters remains to be seen, but if sound economic analysis still matters, it won’t....

Even adjusted for the pandering standards of campaign economics... Ms. Harris’s speech Friday ranks as a disappointment.

ADDED: We're listening to the speech. At one point, she called price gouging "price gauging." 

"I think we have set up an expectation or even an entitlement around comfort such that it makes it really difficult to start to ask people, do you really need to turn up your air conditioning today?..."

"And I think we're increasingly going to see architects and builders trying to rediscover these lost ideas that we used to have about how to design buildings with the climate in mind. You know, how to shade them, how to ventilate them in a more natural way. But I also have talked to some people who say that all of that is not going to be enough. One of them is Daniel Barber, who's an architectural historian who has thought a lot about life after air conditioning, or as he puts it after comfort.... We need to sort of think anew about our relationship to comfort. And are we willing to be uncomfortable some of the time?..."

From today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "How Air-Conditioning Conquered America."

"For a few decades after its introduction, the [gas] lighting radically altered the city, not only prolonging the period in which work could be productively carried out in the street..."

"... but also reversing expectations. Poor people, who could not afford to light their rooms, suddenly found the street lighter and brighter than their homes and occupied the streets at night in a manner that the authorities found disconcerting. A device conceived in part as a mechanism for control and crime prevention inadvertently encouraged a night-time economy not always considered desirable. Covent Garden, now a tourist centre, housed hundreds of much-frequented brothels and so-called coffee houses. On the other hand, prints from the 18th and 19th centuries also show people reading beneath the bright lights of the big city, saving their eyes from dim domestic candlelight."

Writes Edwin Heathcote, in "From pillar to lamp post: lighting city streets" (The Architectural Review).

The article is from 3 years ago. I found it this morning because I googled "history of lampposts" after looking through my morning fog pictures....

... and saying out loud, "Remember when lampposts were beautiful?"

"This week, The Onion began distributing a print edition for the first time in more than a decade and will soon deliver it monthly..."

"... to everyone who subscribes to its site. The move is a throwback to the publication’s roots as a campus weekly in the late 1980s. But it is also emblematic of a growing trend in the media industry — trying new ways to attract and retain digital subscribers.... The print edition is part of a variety of perks that the company plans to offer online subscribers, who pay $5 a month, said Ben Collins, the chief executive of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron. The company plans to offer invites to live events, access to The Onion’s archive of physical papers and sponsorship of ambitious editorial projects, such as a video titled 'The Perfect One-Pot, Six-Pan, 10-Wok, 25-Baking-Sheet Dinner,' Mr. Collins said...."

From "No Joke: The Onion Thinks Print Is the Future of Media/The satirical site is hoping a newspaper with fake stories and fake ads will lead to real money" (NYT).

As for "roots as a campus weekly," let it be remembered that the campus was The University of Wisconsin, here in Madison. I remember (and loved) "Jim's Journal."

How much will you give me if I just get a cat?

"Kamala Harris unveils populist policy agenda, with $6,000 credit for newborns" (WaPo).

How tedious to find J.D. Vance in an article titled "The Secret to Tom Wolfe’s Irresistible Snap, Crackle and Pop."

This is a David Brooks essay in the NYT that starts out with some good insight into Wolfe's writing:

Wolfe was known for his style, but it was his worldview that made him. He read Max Weber at Yale and it all clicked: Life is a contest for status. Some people think humans are driven by money, or love, or to heal the wounds they suffered in childhood, but Wolfe put the relentless scramble up the pecking order at the center of his worldview. It gave him his brilliant eye for surfaces, for the care with which people put on their social displays. He had the ability to name the status rules that envelop us in ways we are hardly aware of. He had a knack for capturing what it feels like to be caught up in a certain sort of social dilemma.

There's a great photograph of Wolfe positioned in his living space, but look at the caption: "Wolfe’s goal was to be like Balzac, not JD Vance...." Oh, no. Why is Vance here (even in the negative ("not JD Vance"))? I search the page for "Vance" so I can zero in on it (rather than actually read this essay, as I'd planned):

Wolfe’s goal was to be like Balzac, not JD Vance.

"'I wonder how much this moron will pay,' Dr. Plasencia texted Dr. Chavez, who prosecutors said later supplied [Matthew Perry] with a total of 22 vials of ketamine and ketamine lozenges..."

"... obtained through a fraudulent prescription for the drug. 'Lets find out.' Dr. Chavez agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine. Dr. Plasencia, known as 'Dr. P.,' soon instructed [Perry's assistant, Kenneth] Iwamasa on how and where to inject ketamine into Mr. Perry’s body. 'Found the sweet spot but trying different places led to running out,' Mr. Iwamasa texted Dr. Plasencia on Oct. 4, according to court documents. Over the next several days, Mr. Iwamasa’s requests for ketamine became more urgent. 'I just ran out,' Mr. Iwamasa texted the doctor, who replied he had two vials to sell him if the assistant could meet him in downtown Santa Monica."

From "'Shoot Me Up With a Big One': The Pain of Matthew Perry’s Last Days/Court papers show that Mr. Perry, the 'Friends' star who had long struggled with addiction, was increasingly taking ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, in the days before he died" (NYT)("Mr. Iwamasa was one of five people who the authorities in California said this week had been charged with a conspiracy to distribute ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, to Mr. Perry. The defendants also included two doctors, a woman accused of being a dealer and an acquaintance who pleaded guilty to acting as a middleman").

"The Secret Service plans to surround Trump's podium with bulletproof glass.... While this measure is typically used to protect sitting presidents..."

"... the Secret Service is making an exception after the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally on July 13, when the gunman took several shots at Trump, grazing his ear before a Secret Service sniper killed him.... The Secret Service typically pre-positions personnel around the country in battleground states so they can be within driving distance of campaign rallies, which enables faster transportation of the ballistic glass to events...."

From "Trump to resume outdoor rallies with bulletproof glass" (CBS News).

Trump's rallies are much better when they are outdoors. To have restricted him to indoor rallies would have reined him in, so this undercuts the widely believed notion that "they" will do "anything" to stop Trump.