Sunrise at Lake Mendota, 6:48, and later, around 1:30, warm sun near Lake Wingra.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"At 3:00 a.m. on the morning of November 3, with the nation still anxiously waiting to learn who its next president would be, Garfield went to bed."

"When he woke up a few hours later and was told in no uncertain terms that he had won the election and was to be the twentieth president of the United States, he was, one reporter noted with astonishment, the 'coolest man in the room.' Later that day, Garfield gave his election to the presidency little more mention in his diary than he had the progress of his oat crop a few weeks earlier. 'The news of 3 a.m.,' he wrote, 'is fully justified by the morning papers.'  In the days that followed, surrounded by celebrations and frantic plans for his administration, Garfield could not shake the feeling that the presidency would bring him only loneliness and sorrow. As he watched everything he treasured—his time with his children, his books, and his farm—abruptly disappear, he understood that the life he had known was gone. The presidency seemed to him not a great accomplishment but a 'bleak mountain' that he was obliged to ascend. Sitting down at his desk in a rare moment to himself, he tried to explain in a letter to a friend the strange sense of loss he had felt since the election. 'There is a tone of sadness running through this triumph,' he wrote, 'which I can hardly explain.'"

I'm rereading "Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President" (commission earned) to go along with the Netflix series — "Death by Lightning" — that's based on the book.

Why change the title to something factually inaccurate? Garfield once said "Assassination can no more be guarded against than death by lightning; it is best not to worry about either."

The series is very visual, conveying information only impressionistically. Great sets, costumes, actorly finesse in the delivery of short emotional lines, but there is so much more going on in the book. That's just a typical book-is-better-than-the-film observation, not a rejection of the adaptation, which is excellent.

I'm interested in the Presidents who have not wanted to be President, who have felt bad about winning. I asked Grok to list them in the order of how much they did not want to have to do it and got this:

"Painting a historic building’s uncoated masonry can trap moisture, accelerate deterioration and cause it to crack or crumble...."

"That risk of permanent damage has led to preservation standards, including the Interior Department’s, to advise keeping a property’s historic appearance as unchanged as possible and caution against new paint schemes on historic masonry unless they replicate or closely match documented historic finishes, the complaint alleges. Paint could not be removed from the EEOB’s stone facade without risking its destruction...."

From "Preservationists sue Trump over plans to paint Eisenhower building/The complaint alleges Trump’s plan would ‘permanently alter one of the most architecturally significant and historic structures in the Nation’s Capital'" (WaPo).

He's the real estate guy. He should be able to explain why adding a layer of paint to an unpainted surface is good. Whether this lawsuit can or should succeed is a different matter. I just want to know why he thinks painting is good. I understand he wants the building to be white and not the gray that it is. I don't care one way or the other. I'm just troubled by the painting of surfaces that were designed to be unpainted.

ADDED: Trump shows his pictures to Laura Ingraham who seems quite disgusted. He's really into the intense whiteness of the imagined paint and condemns gray as a color "for funerals":

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Raymond Arroyo (@realraymondarroyo)

There are 3 groups where the majority approve of Trump — 2 are age groups and 1 is a racial group.

Rassmussen Reports this morning. I'll put it after the jump so you can enjoy puzzling and the surprise of being wrong about 2 of them... or maybe you won't be wrong now that I've nudged you to think twice:

"You are not ready for a woman!"

Michelle Obama says she's not making a run at the White House until the country grows up a bit. https://t.co/2f63yPvVFR

🎥: YouTube/michelleobama pic.twitter.com/RPQjmdh0bM

— TMZ (@TMZ) November 14, 2025

"Get out, drink more, and make a series of bad decisions that might pay off."

Earlier in that "Real Time" interview, not on that clip, Scott Galloway said, "We've unwittingly built an economy dependent on our ability to evolve a new species of asocial, asexual men. And what you have is Big Tech is trying to sequester people — especially young people, especially young men — from the most important thing in their life and that is relationships."

AND: Here's the "Overtime" part. Galloway brings out beers for the boys:

This topic reminds me of some thing I've quoted before — from Paul Johnson's "Intellectuals" — about the playwright Henrik Ibsen:

"The newly released documents from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate show that the convicted sex offender texted with a Democratic member of Congress..."

"... during a congressional hearing with Michael Cohen, and that those text messages may have influenced the congresswoman’s questions of Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer. In the texts, Epstein appeared to be watching the February 2019 hearing in real time...."

From "Epstein texted with House Democrat during Cohen hearing, documents show/Newly released documents from the convicted sex offender’s estate include text messages from him that appear to influence the lawmaker’s questions to Trump’s personal attorney at a 2019 congressional hearing" (WaPo)(gift link).

The Democratic member of Congress is Delegate Stacey Plaskett of the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Virgin Islands figure importantly in the Epstein story. Epstein had owned 2 of the islands there, Great Saint James and Little Saint James. And, "according to a settlement in a lawsuit brought against Epstein’s estate by the U.S. Virgin Islands, 'many of his crimes occurred'" on Little Saint James. And: "A 2023 Business Insider investigation showed that Epstein donated large sums of money to U.S. Virgin Islands politicians, including to Plaskett."

Sunrise — 6:55 — and midday — 12:10.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"It’s fine for her to work, but she should not be getting other people involved. Everyone is in bed at that time of day. It’s a very sad attitude for the top leader of the country to show."

Said Yoshihiko Noda, a former prime minister, quoted in "Japan’s Leader Started a Meeting at 3 A.M. Then Came the Backlash. Sanae Takaichi drew criticism for requiring staff to work in the wee hours in a country scarred by 'death from overwork'" (NYT).

Kenji Koshio, chief executive of Shindenki, a small electronics company in the city of Kobe, wrote on his blog that troops, police officers, firefighters and medical workers were expected to work around the clock. Why not Japan’s prime minister?

Responding to the uproar over the meeting, he wrote: “Why don’t you just stop being so lame and be grateful to the people who are working hard for the people of Japan?”

Any other leaders calling meetings this early? Not just starting work themselves but imposing it on others. I found a few historical figures who did: Napoleon, Frederick the Great, Oliver Cromwell, and — in the summer when first light came early — Genghis Khan.

"It’s really hard to say that you would have a child if given X amount of money from the government, because I think that’s just not the calculus. It is a very intimate, personal decision that people make."

Said Christina Gibson-Davis, a sociology and public policy professor at Duke University, quoted in "Raising kids is too expensive, most Americans say in new survey/Seven in 10 respondents said raising children is too expensive, a notable jump from 2024, according to an annual public opinion survey on U.S. family life" (WaPo).

"WTF is going on here with Michael Wolff giving PR strategy to Jeffrey Epstein?"

Said the podcaster Brian Reed, quoted by The Guardian in "Blurred lines: how Michael Wolff aspired to be part of elite circles he wrote about/The writer who features prominently in newly released Jeffrey Epstein emails has achieved extraordinary access but faced questions about his journalistic ethics."

Wolff's attempt at an explanation: "I was engaged then in an in-depth conversation with Epstein about his relationship with Trump and this seems to be part of that conversation."

The Guardian also quotes what NYT reporter Maggie Haberman said about Wolff back in 2018 (when his Trump-bashing book "Fire and Fury" came out: "He believes in larger truths and narratives.... So he creates a narrative that is notionally true, that’s conceptually true; the details are often wrong."

Reminds me of the old Ratherism "fake but accurate."

Back to The Guardian:

"The president’s deals with Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly... would appear to run counter to Mr. Kennedy’s longstanding hostility toward the weight loss drugs...."

"But neither he nor high-profile followers of the 'Make America Healthy Again' movement would be likely to risk seeming disloyal to Mr. Trump.... Mr. Kennedy was careful in the Oval Office to emphasize that obesity drugs were not a 'panacea' or a 'silver bullet.' He repeated his beliefs in ways of tackling the root causes of Americans’ ill health that include new dietary guidelines expected next month and a presidential council on physical fitness.... [In October 2024, Kennedy said] 'If we just gave good food, three meals a day, to every man, woman and child in our country, we could solve the obesity and diabetes epidemic overnight'.... The medications do carry side effects, most commonly gastrointestinal complaints that are rarely severe, as well as the hazards that come with losing a lot of weight through any means, like shedding muscle. And because these medications are relatively new, there is not yet data on what happens if people take them for decades. Speaking of Novo Nordisk’s product in February 2024, Mr. Kennedy said, 'The impacts of this drug are just terrible.... The moment you stop using it, you regain all the weight, and meanwhile your stomach’s been paralyzed.'"

From "Kennedy Walks a Tightrope on Trump Deal for Obesity Drugs/The weight loss medicines are proving to be a test case for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, in straddling divisions between his supporters and the president" (NYT).

In Trump's America, everyone will be thin and also constipated. What form will the greatness of Making America Great Again take if it is accomplished by thin, constipated people? I don't think it will be Trumpian — all the gold and the lavish decoration, the dancing and the good times. No, the America of the thin constipated people is pinched and bleak. I would rather see the culture that arises out of people who flourish through "good food, three meals a day."

Sunrise — 6:28, 6:42, 6:45, 6:48.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"Looks terrible — until you learn that [VICTIM] is the late Virginia Giuffre, who had worked for Trump before she fell into Epstein’s clutches, and had publicly said time and again that the future president never misbehaved in the least toward her."

Writes the Editorial Board of the New York Post, in "Epstein emails: The Dems and their lapdogs with laptops cry Wolff again."

What an incredibly sleazy move, redacting the name Virginia Giuffre, as if it were to protect her, when her name has already been public, she wrote a book to get her story out, she's told us she believed Trump did nothing wrong, and she's no longer alive. It's plainly and deliberately deceptive, and it's stupid too, because the name was going to come out, as it did in less than one day.

Such an idiotic distraction. I'm happy to look at any new evidence about the Epstein story, but I don't want to waste my time on manipulations like this. I refuse to read the NYT article, "Michael Wolff, Chronicler of Elites, Provided Epstein With Advice on Trump/Mr. Wolff was enough of an insider to provide advice to Jeffrey Epstein on how to handle his dealings with Donald J. Trump." What does "enough of an insider" even mean?? Enough of a Trump hater? I made that a gift link, in case you want to figure out how straight the NYT is playing it.

"Nolan Williams, an innovative neuroscientist who developed a noninvasive brain-stimulation technique that has delivered unusually fast relief to people with treatment-resistant depression..."

"... died on Oct. 8 at his home in Northern California. He was 43. His wife, Kristin Raj, said he died by suicide. Dr. Williams himself had struggled with depression, according to two of his colleagues...."

From "Nolan Williams, Who Stimulated the Brain to Treat Depression, Dies at 43. A neuroscientist, he employed a battery of high-tech tools in devising a fast-acting therapy that targets the area of the brain where depression originates" (NYT).

"It's like a dog marking his territory. It makes me very uncomfortable."

I said out loud, watching this:

🚨 JUST IN: President Trump shows ONCE AGAIN he is the funniest president after video was released of him giving Syria's president TRUMP COLOGNE...

"The other one is for your wife. How many wives? One? With YOU guys, you never know!"

Omg, how can't you love him🤣😭 pic.twitter.com/iFrTw9AyPO

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 12, 2025