Sunrise — 6:17.

Write about anything you like in the comments.

"How many Americans even know what color the ribbon is for prostate-cancer awareness?"

From "What Does It Take to Get Men to See a Doctor? Men in the U.S. live six fewer years than women. One clinic is trying to persuade men that getting checked out could save their life" (NYT).

Toxic masculinity” has become a catchall term.... But when researchers first began using the term, they meant something narrower and more specific: a culturally endorsed yet harmful set of masculine behaviors characterized by rigid, traditional male traits, such as dominance, aggression and sexual promiscuity. Men trapped in this man box, as it is sometimes called, are less likely to seek medical care and are more likely to engage in risky behaviors detrimental to their health, such as binge drinking or drug use.... Even seemingly positive attributes associated with traditional masculinity, such as providing for one’s family... can have negative health consequences. They may put work ahead of addressing medical concerns.... Or they may take on dangerous jobs or work extreme hours. But why do some men hold so tightly to these cultural notions about masculinity that lead them toward worse health? The answer may be traced to how fragile manhood itself can feel.... 

"The fact that they're holding Costa Rica as a carrot and using Uganda as a stick to try to coerce him to plead guilty to a crime..."

"... is such clear evidence that they're weaponizing the immigration system in a matter that is completely unconstitutional, and specifically weaponizing the decision of which country they send him to."

Said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of the lawyers for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, quoted in "Kilmar Abrego Garcia taken into ICE custody at immigration appointment/Abrego, who was just released from federal custody on Friday, now faces deportation to Uganda" (NBC News).

"Maybe it’s no surprise, then, that in a time of hyper-visible conflict... the self-help message of the day tells its readers that it’s perfectly OK to turn inward..."

"... even if that means ignoring the apparent travails of others. It’s a message retrofitted for appeal in a moment when every glance at a phone screen surfaces wrenching images of catastrophe.... 'The Courage to Be Disliked' has sold more than 10 million copies. 'The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck' has been on the New York Times best-seller list for more than 300 weeks since it came out in 2016. In September comes the much-anticipated 'Fawning: Why the Need to Please Makes Us Lose Ourselves — and How to Find Our Way Back.'... 'Sometimes we need to say, 'Is this my problem to solve?' said Dr. Ingrid Clayton, the 'Fawning' author, in an interview. 'Can I sit on my hands?'..."

From "Is Today’s Self-Help Teaching Everyone to Be a Jerk? Draw boundaries. Protect your peace. Worry less about pleasing others. The prevailing (and best-selling) wisdom of the day encourages an inward turn" (NYT).

And by "to Be a Jerk," the NYT might mean to be right wing (where "right wing" means an individual centered in one's own life and trusting that other people can be self-centered too):

"When did uh everyone catch on you were so hot?... Come on... I mean, you must have been like such a smoke show in high school...."

Said Bill Maher, interviewing the 94-year-old Barbara Eden:

Eden is perfectly with it and self-possessed and maintains her dignity as Bill — like probably thousands of men who've had a chance to meet her over the years — seems hell bent on letting her know she was the photograph — or one of the photographs — to which he masturbated when he was a boy. 

"A lot of people have asked me what the exact moment was at the DNC that made me realize I wasn’t on board with the party I’d worked for nearly half of my life."

The truth is, it was everything. The crowd that mindlessly chanted 'joy,' the vasectomy van offering free tacos, the coronation of a candidate with zero policies or platform available, and the final straw: Oprah Winfrey. Her tone deaf lecturing turned me off so much, I left the building, getting an uber straight to my hotel, where I booked a flight home a day early, not even staying for Kamala’s acceptance speech...."

Writes Evan Barker, in "One Year Ago Today I Ruined My Life" (Substack).

"In the past year, nearly all of my old political friends have stopped speaking to me. One of them said: 'fascism doesn’t look good on you'....  I’ve lost friends I’ve known for fifteen years. My toddler stopped getting invited to birthday parties. He was rejected from preschool. We even had to move to a new town."

Adding tags to this post, I had to stop a while to remember what was my tag for the inane nonissue of Kamala's joy. It was "how does Kamala feel." Let me publish this post with that tag so I can click on it and see what that looked like in real time. In retrospect, it looks awful.

"Buying a cemetery plot where I can have a green burial, on the other hand, proved to be surprisingly affordable and will allow my body, once no longer in use..."

"... to decompose as quickly and as naturally as possible, with minimal environmental damage. Bonus: If my descendants ever care to visit, my grave will be in a beloved place, where my daughter has come nearly every summer of her life. 'Do you see a lot of interest in green burials?' I asked the friendly town cemetery commissioner who was showing me around. 'I don’t think we’ve had a traditional burial in two years,' he said. 'It’s all green.'"

From "When I Go, I’m Going Green More Americans are choosing burials in which everything is biodegradable" (NYT).

The current state of taunting on X.

pic.twitter.com/dBMncejFBI

— Trish A (@NtvSocialBtrfly) August 25, 2025

Sunrise — 5:52, 6:10, 6:11, 6:14, 6:16, 6:17.

Use the comments section to talk about anything you want... including this TOP 1% sunrise that happened this morning.

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"I’m cracking up just picturing the laughter around the Sunday dinner table if I had declared myself the family’s 'changemaker'!"

Texted Meade after I sent him a quote from the Psychology Today article "The Real Reason We Can Be So Different From Our Siblings":

Rather than compete directly with an identity another sibling is already known for, siblings proactively claim a unique perceptual psychological space in the minds of parents... In other words, if your brother was already seen as the “smart one,” you may have claimed the territory of the “funny one.” If your sister established her role as the “athlete,” you may have fashioned yourself the “artist.” And if your sister or brother was always praised for being the “good girl/boy,” you may have reveled in your role as the “rebel,” “free spirit,” or “changemaker.”

"In the mid-1980s, Mr. Wheeler helped oversee the construction of 40 luxury condominiums overlooking Charlotte’s 1.5-mile oval track — a first for a NASCAR track."

"While the idea was widely mocked, these aeries for gearheads sold out in seven months, according to a 1995 article in The New York Times, despite the fact that 'cars with 700-horsepower engines running at nearly 200 miles per hour produce a sound somewhere between a roar and a howl, sometimes until 11 o’clock at night.'"

From "Humpy Wheeler, NASCAR’s Greatest Showman, Dies at 86/With fire-breathing robots and death-defying school-bus stunts, he brought spectacle to stock-car racing as the sport boomed in the 1970s and beyond" (NYT).

"It might sound like snake oil to you, but remember, Bobby Kennedy actually cooks with snake oil."

"The surge of tiny clapping has led to an endless debate on TikTok about the proper way to do it."

"Some insist finger claps should be silent and bristle at people who say 'clock it' or 'tea' while clapping. Others take issue with influencers who clap with their index finger, when the middle finger is more commonly used in ballroom. (If this seems pedantic, imagine the reaction if you used your middle finger to give a thumbs-up.) And a notion has spread that the finger clap is supposed to resemble the American Sign Language sign for the number 8, because it means someone 'ate,' or performed extremely well. (Ballroom folks say that’s a reach.) As one commenter noted, 'Man the finger police is strict strict.'"

From "'Clock it.' We’re all finger-clapping wrong. As more people embrace finger claps, the queer ballroom scene is clapping back at those unaware of its origin and meaning" (WaPo).

Who cares? Yeah, I get it if that's your reaction, but this post earns some of my favorite tags. I like that.

"Juvenal said that being a gladiator turned an ugly man into an Adonis in women’s eyes. 'It’s the steel they love,' the poet wrote."

"Men were obsessed too. Maecenas, a patron of the arts under the emperor Augustus, discussed the warriors’ form on a carriage ride with the poet Horace; the playwright Terence complained that one of his performances had been ruined by a crowd rushing in thinking that gladiators were fighting. The Romans felt it was good luck to part a bride’s hair with a spear that had been thrust into a gladiator’s body and drank tinctures of their blood to cure epilepsy...."

From "Sex, sesterces and status — the perks of being a gladiator/Those Who Are About Die is a myth-slaying history of the world of Roman fighters by the classicist and novelist Harry Sidebottom" (London Times).

"Once they are in, there is a considerable amount of pressure to uphold the sorority’s culture. Darnell talks about the 'rules,' mainly around conduct..."

"... though she is sworn to secrecy on the specifics. 'My sorority will text me all the time saying, you need to take this down [from social media], if something might be shining the wrong light,' she said. 'They really do protect my image and I’m very grateful for that. They’re like a PR agency. They keep a close eye.' Though she loves the group enormously, she has taught herself to resist its monolithic culture. 'When I was a freshman [first year], I lost my individuality and everything I talked about was sorority-sorority-sorority,' she said. 'I talked the way I thought people wanted me to and felt the pressure to be perfect and to always say the perfect thing. I didn’t voice my opinion, didn’t want to seem like I was "too much." I’ve got an outgoing, outspoken, goofy personality and I felt like I lost that.' She has since 'found myself,' wanting to be a sports reporter when she graduates next year...."

From "Inside sorority rush, the blood sport making college girls millionaires/Competition for sisterhoods is big business for Kylan Darnell, the Alabama student who chronicles it all like a reality show. Shame her sister wants no part" (London Times).

Here's Darnell's TikTok feed if you want to see what's so popular in this sorority-girl category. 

I went to college in 1969 and everyone I knew believed sororities were about to go extinct. As if hippiedom would reign forever. Anyway... what's interesting here? Lots of things. The intersection of college and TikTok. The endless fascination with makeup and fashion.

But I'll just cherry-pick one thing: "They keep a close eye." Is that the expression? Did she conflate 2 expressions — "close watch" and "keep an eye on" — possibly influenced by the opening lines of "I Walk the Line" — "I keep a close watch on this heart of mine / I keep my eyes wide open all the time"? I think "close eye" is idiomatic. More important, is that what young women want — a close eye?

CORRECTION: I had originally named the wrong Johnny Cash song. I mix up "I Walk the Line" with "Ring of Fire." Honestly, I've disliked both songs for a long time. They both have a line drawn, and he's either inside the line or outside of it. He's fixated on that line. It's all about control and loss of control.

"For 10 years, I’ve been hearing that we needed to fight fire with fire, to oppose Trump by becoming him, to protect our supposedly sacred liberal institutions by taking some shortcut..."

"... that carved a destructive path straight through them: cracking down on speech, abandoning the norms of journalistic objectivity, making unprecedented use of prosecutorial power. These were bad ideas in their own right, and they did absolutely nothing to stop Trump."

Writes Megan McArdle, in "When the rule of law becomes rule of lawfare/Friday’s Bolton raid and the rebuke of Trump’s $500M fine show what happens when justice is not impartial" (WaPo).

Bad ideas... and they did absolutely nothing to stop Trump. But what if they had stopped Trump? That was the biggest of the ideas, and it might have worked. McArdle asserts that now — now that Trump is back with a vengeance — now we should see that neutral principles are best. If only the lawfare hadn't backfired, it would have been delightful to go on ignoring them.

Delightful for whom? Who are we talking about? Not McArdle herself. She's reporting on what she'd "been hearing" for 10 years. She also says "it was depressing watching so many people on the left thrill to this abusive lawfare." Well, "so many people on the left" think a lot of awful things, including that the so-called "rule of law" is a con.

Did the ordinary liberals of America buy into the fight-fire-with-fire approach? Let them take responsibility, not merely gesture at the "many people on the left." But it's not as though admitting you were wrong now will carry any weight. You played a game of tit for tat and now you're sad that the game continues.

ADDED: Trump plays openly, on Truth Social, just yesterday: