Sunrise — 6:43, 7:08.

"Anyone else get a little bugged when people say Dylan has a bad voice?"

"I love what Leonard Cohen said about his voice: 'Most music criticism is in the nineteenth century. It’s so far behind, say, the criticism of painting. It’s still based on nineteenth century art–cows beside a stream and trees and ‘I know what I like.’ There’s no concession to the fact that Dylan might be a more sophisticated singer than Whitney Houston, that he’s probably the most sophisticated singer we’ve had in a generation. Nobody is identifying out popular singers like a Matisse or Picasso. Dylan’s a Picasso — that exuberance, range, and assimilation of the whole history of music.'..."

A discussion at the subreddit r/bobdylan.

The top-rated comment is so Reddit: "I find it the opposite of annoying. You’re telling me what your depth is as a music listener and what level of convo I should be expecting and how to respond accordingly. It gets rid of the guess work."

"Trump is triangulating. He sees, correctly, that the Republican Party is now on the wrong side of the public on abortion."

"By rejecting a blanket ban and making a call for compromise with Democrats, Trump is trying to fashion himself as an abortion moderate, a strategy that also rests on his pre-political persona as a liberal New Yorker with a live-and-let-live attitude toward personal behavior. There is a real chance this could work...." 

From "Donald Trump Is Not of Two Minds About Abortion" (NYT), from Jamelle Bouie, who proceeds to speculate about why it shouldn't work. Democrats and the anti-Trump media will continue to critique Trump for making the 3 Supreme Court appointments that led to the overruling of Roe v. Wade. And Republicans will continue to push for legislation restricting abortion as much as possible. 

But Trump is offering to mediate, to bring both sides together to come up with a number — a number of weeks within which women can freely obtain abortions — probably not 6, something like 10 or 12.*

"Try a week of 'age belief journaling,' in which you write down every portrayal of an older person — whether in a movie, on social media or in a conversation."

"Then question if that portrayal was negative or positive, and whether the person could have been presented differently. Simply identifying the sources of your conceptions about aging can help you gain some distance from negative ideas.... [T]ry to look at the honest reality with optimism. If you’re feeling deflated that your tennis game isn’t as strong in your 70s as it once was... remind yourself: 'No, I can’t play tennis like I did when I was 50, and I can only play for 10 minutes. But I can still play.'"

From "How to Change Your Mind-Set About Aging/People who think positively about getting older often live longer, healthier lives. Here is how to reconsider your perspective" (NYT).

"It is not lost on me how quickly some are rushing to judge a Latino and push him out of his seat. I am not going anywhere."

Said Senator Robert Menendez, quoted in "Gold Bullion and Halal Meat: Inside the Menendez Investigation/Federal prosecutors have accused Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey and his wife, Nadine, of accepting bribes in exchange for official actions by Mr. Menendez" (NYT).

I love the way this article begins. Unlike the other news reports I've seen, it doesn't forefront all the cash and gold found in Menendez's house. It sets up a woman-made-him-do-it narrative. We begin in January 2018, when Menendez had avoided conviction on federal bribery charges. There was a hung jury, and the government declined to pursue a new trial. "He was free...." He could return to his Senatorial career. But then:

"Tuesday, I’ll go to Michigan to join the picket line and stand in solidarity with the men and women of UAW as they fight for a fair share of the value they helped create."

 X'd President Biden, quoted in "Biden to join the picket line in UAW strike/His decision to stand alongside the striking workers represents perhaps the most significant display of union solidarity ever by a sitting president" (Politico).

The announcement of his trip was seen as a seismic moment within certain segments of the labor community. “Pretty hard-core,” said one union adviser, who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak publicly....

The president’s plans come as some Democrats have begun to question his response to the strike, recognizing that he needs the full backing of union workers in his presidential reelection bid....

The link on "question his response" goes to a Politico article from last Tuesday, "'Trump scooped us': Dems sound alarm on Biden’s handling of the auto worker strike/Donald Trump’s decision to head to Detroit for a speech next week is setting off alarms among some Joe Biden allies." That article says:

"Liberals can and should criticize the mistakes of conservative decisions. That is a necessary step toward reversing them..."

"... when liberals have a majority on the Court again. But they should not indulge in hyperbolic criticism that undermines the very institution over which they should be trying to regain control."

Writes Noah Feldman, in "The Court’s Conservative Constitutional Revolution/The bloc of conservative justices on the Supreme Court have dismantled many of the legal precedents on their hit list. What’s in store for the new term?" (NYRB).

"It’s a really hard argument in normal circumstances to say the government, who is prosecuting someone, can shut them up from defending themselves in public."

"What makes this backward from everything else is that normally, in every criminal prosecution I can think of, the power imbalance is that the state has all the power and the defendant has none. But in this case, you have a defendant who has very significant power."

Says lawprof Margaret C. Tarkington, quoted in "Push to Gag Trump Pits Free Speech Against Risk of Violence/By putting threats to the judge and prosecutors at the heart of its argument to limit the former president’s statements about the election case, the Justice Department raised issues with little precedent" (NYT)

In a 1991 case, the Supreme Court upheld barring defense lawyers from making comments outside court that are likely to prejudice a jury, citing “the state’s interest in fair trials.”

But the Supreme Court also suggested that greater speech restrictions might be permissible on lawyers because they are officers of the court. It has never addressed what standard a gag order on a defendant must meet. A handful of appeals courts have addressed gag orders imposed on defendants and set different standards....

The article quotes lawprof Paul F. Rothstein: "Everything about these cases is making new law because there are so many gaps in the law. The system is held together by people doing the right thing according to tradition, and Trump doesn’t — he jumps into every gap."

Sunrise — 6:40.

"She laid down and used one of the dogs as a pillow, and the other dog laid right next to her and kept her safe."

Said Lt Mark Giannunzio, quoted in "Lost Michigan toddler found asleep in woods using family dog as furry pillow/One dog provided support and another kept watch as two-year-old girl was found three miles from Upper Peninsula home in slumber."

ADDED: Photos at The Daily Mail.

"Ron DeSantis sat at her table talking in an outdoor voice indoors, failing to observe any basics of conversational ritual or propriety, reeling off an unself-conscious list of his programs and initiatives and political accomplishments."

"Impersonal, cold, uninterested in anything outside of himself. The Carlsons are dog people with four spaniels, the progeny of other spaniels they have had before, who sleep in their bed. DeSantis pushed the dog under the table. Had he kicked the dog? Susie Carlson’s judgment was clear: She did not ever want to be anywhere near anybody like that ever again. Her husband agreed. DeSantis, in Carlson’s view, was a 'fascist.'"

Wrote Michael Wolff, in "The Fall: The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty," quoted in "Tucker Carlson Refutes New Book’s Claim That Ron DeSantis Accosted His Dog" (The Jewish Voice).

Carlson's response: “This is absurd.... He never touched my dog, obviously.... It’s totally made up. Ridiculous actually."

"Murdoch’s unhappiness and befuddlement is the throughline of... 'The Fall: The End of Fox News,' which is to hit shelves next week..."

"... days after Murdoch, 92, announced his retirement from the Fox Corporation and News Corporation boards. [The book] paints Fox’s owner as embarrassed by the channel’s vulgarity and horrified by its ultimate political creation, Donald Trump. Murdoch apparently very much wants to thwart the ex-president.... Though 'The Fall' is peppered with references to HBO’s 'Succession,' Murdoch comes off as the anti-Logan Roy, desperate for the approval of his mostly liberal children, with the hateful Fox News standing between them. 'He just wants his kids to love him,' Roger Ailes is quoted saying. 'And they don’t.'... ... Murdoch has... handed Fox to his son Lachlan... widely seen as the only true conservative among the Murdoch heirs.... The network may keep boosting Trump’s Republican primary opponents, but once the primaries are over, we can expect it to once again be the lucrative propaganda arm of Trump’s presidential campaign.... The electorate that Fox helped shape, and the politicians it indulges, have made this country ungovernable. An unbound Trump may well become president again, bringing liberal democracy in America to a grotesque end. If so, it will be in large part Murdoch’s fault...."

Writes Michelle Goldberg, in "The Ludicrous Agony of Rupert Murdoch" (NYT).

"I am very self-conscious about the way that I look, in part because I am a woman who happens to be conscious."

"Since birth, every piece of media I have encountered has socialized me to hate all of my body parts.... I thought that I was ugly for a very long time and then, suddenly, I found myself on wikiFeet [a photo-sharing foot-fetish site dedicated to celebrities’ feet], against my will, in the form of a photo of me from college, on a Lake Michigan beach.... [A]mong five voters, one voted 'beautiful,' one voted 'nice,' two voted 'okay,' and one hater voted 'ugly.' I am not sure the wikiFeet community realizes that, by reducing women to just their foot scores, they are dehumanizing us.... I am more than ten toes and eerily flat arches. I also have a beautiful heart beneath two medium-sized breasts.... Please go to wikifeet.com, create a user account on this collaborative, celebrity-foot database, and vote for me like my self-confidence depends on it..... I care what people think about me. But the best lesson I ever internalized is that no one will love me, or my feet, like I love myself (and my feet).... Loving myself is a tough task, and requires constantly reminding myself that I deserve patience and generosity and warmth...."

Writes Ziwe, in "Best Foot Forward/How to feel about an 'okay' rating of your feet by strangers on the Internet" (The New Yorker).

"The original premise behind the right to shelter was, for starters, for homeless men on the streets..."

"... people experiencing [AIDS] that was [then] extended to families. But never was it envisioned being an unlimited universal right, or obligation on the city, to house literally the entire world."

Said New York governor Gov. Kathy Hochul, quoted in "Hochul wants to end NYC ‘right to shelter’ law as migrant crisis surges" (NY Post).

"We have to let people know that if you’re thinking of coming to New York, we are truly out of space...."

Sunrise — 6:37.

"For decades, educators have seen speed as a marker of aptitude or mastery.... But a race against the clock doesn’t measure knowledge or intelligence."

"It assesses the much narrower skill of how well students reason under stress. As a result, timed tests underestimate the capabilities of countless students. New evidence shows that although smarter people are faster at solving easy problems, they’re actually slower to finish difficult ones. They’re well aware that haste makes waste, and they don’t want to sacrifice accuracy for speed.... Although it pays to be quick, it also pays to be determined, disciplined and dependable. Strangely, though, the tests that define students’ grades and help determine their educational and professional fates... evaluate students as if they’re applying to join a bomb squad or appear on 'Jeopardy.' Time pressure rewards students who think fast and shallow — and punishes those who think slow and deep...."

From "The SATs Will Be Different Next Year, and That Could Be a Game-Changer" (NYT).

A time-pressure test isn't really detecting how quickly you can answer questions. Time-pressure can interfere with your concentration and create static that makes you slower than you'd be if you took the test without a time limit. Some people worry about the time and some people don't. Some people hate to be rushed and others find a deadline motivating. Why systematically disadvantage those who are inclined to be careful and systematic and favor those who take risks and shortcuts?