"Texas becomes the first state to allege that taking [Tylenol] while pregnant can cause autism, despite unsettled scientific evidence."

I'm reading "Texas AG Paxton files Tylenol lawsuit, taking cues from Trump, Kennedy" (WaPo)(free-access link).

Excerpt: "For decades, scientists have been studying whether acetaminophen is linked to autism and ADHD. But sorting out a connection has proved elusive, researchers say. For example, many pregnant individuals take acetaminophen to reduce a fever, which itself could affect a baby’s development, according to the FDA."

How mystifying is that? The rule should at least be against use when pregnant unless it is necessary to reduce fever that is high enough to affect the development of the unborn child — a rule to be applied by doctors.

By the way: "pregnant individuals."

Sunrise — 6:53, 7:12, 7:43.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments.

"I think the people wouldn't like that. It's too cute. It wouldn't be right."

Said Trump, accepting the theory that he could run for a 3rd term by winning as the vice presidential candidate under a presidential candidate who would resign after winning. "Yeah, I'd be allowed to do that."

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ADDED: I love the poker face on Marco Rubio. He must assume he'd be the winning presidential candidate in the "cute" scenario. Would I do it, if asked? Would I resign, if elected cutely?

"On a recent evening in the north of Iran’s capital of Tehran, a young woman with long hair fashioned into a high ponytail hopped onto a motorcycle behind a male companion."

Not far away, two other young women smoked cigarettes together on a sidewalk, one with her hair cascading down her back, the other wearing a loose T-shirt with elbow-length sleeves... . These urban scenes... illustrate how common it has recently become for Iranian women to flout the law, in place for over four decades, requiring they cover their hair and dress modestly in public."

From "Iranian women flout law on mandatory veiling as police curtail arrests/Defiance of hijab requirements has grown widespread across Iran. The government seems wary of cracking down, fearing unrest. But conservatives haven’t given up" (WaPo).

"Donald Trump Has Broken the Progressive Ratchet."

Writes Rich Lowrey at The National Review.

How does the ratchet work? It begins with small, unobjectionable, or perhaps even salutary steps, coupled with assurances that potential downsides or extreme outcomes will never come about. Then, over time, incremental moves are made in the same direction until the unreasonable policy that we’d been assured would never happen is entrenched reality.... Trump has yanked the other way so far on these ratchet issues that it’s not clear when or how the left can get them back to the status quo ante.

Don't his antagonists like to think everything he could do on his own with presidential power the next Democratic President can just undo? But not so long ago, they thought that what their Presidents had done could not be undone? That was the ratchet theory. 

"[President John Quincy] Adams had very little to do save work. He had decided to follow Monroe’s example of accepting no social invitations..."

"... lest he give offense to whomever he refused. Nor did he attend political events or even harmless functions. Declining an invitation by the Maryland Department of Agriculture to attend a cattle show, Adams reflected that he ought not 'set a precedent for being claimed as an article of exhibit for all the cattle-shows throughout the nation.' Occasionally he attended lectures, such as one on 'the organ of amativeness' —the penis—which he found 'more indelicate than philosophical.' But Adams’ life was confined almost entirely to the White House; his daily round was much more dull and routine than it had been when he was secretary of state."

I'm reading "John Quincy Adams: Militant Spirit" by James Traub (page 320)(commission earned).

I see (with the help of Grok) that John Quincy Adams wrote this in his diary for June 8, 1825:

"Senate Democrats have now voted 12 times to not fund the food stamp program, also known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)."

"Bottom line, the well has run dry. At this time, there will be no benefits issued November 01. We are approaching an inflection point for Senate Democrats. They can continue to hold out for healthcare for illegal aliens and gender mutilation procedures or reopen the government so mothers, babies, and the most vulnerable among us can receive critical nutrition assistance."

So it says at the official USDA website, quoted in "USDA blames Democrats for potential SNAP benefits lapse in new message: 'The well has run dry'/The federal agency's website features a banner that says no benefits will be issued on Nov. 1" (NBC News).

Gender mutilation procedures! The Democrats say that what they are fighting for is to keep health insurance premiums from doubling. It's a shame the issues are so confusing. We're talking about millions of ordinary people — 43 million — facing loss of food stamps. That's so much raw anxiety. So elemental. How are they supposed to begin to think about complicated politics? By getting upset about transgender people and immigrants taking their money?!

Washington itself "dwarfs" the original White House — I think the solution is symmetry.

Link.

My symmetry solution: Build up the West Wing into the size of the new East Wing. 

The presidential complex really should be that large. Once there is symmetry in the wings, the iconic building in the center will be the focus of attention and the 2 hulks on either side will blend into the background that is all of Washington D.C. — a city full of hulkingly large buildings.

The West and East Wings will provide a transition from the brutal city. They will loom in our peripheral vision as we gaze at the Executive Residence —  the building that has always been the only building we see in our mind when we think of the White House.

I'll bet you think the Oval Office is in that building. It's not! It's in the West Wing. So take care with the demolition work when you undertake Project Symmetry. And by "you," I mean Mr. Donald Trump! Because the way to clinch the argument that the East Wing project is good is to use your building prowess in pursuit of proportionality. 

Sunrise — 7:00, 7:18, 7:27, 7:29.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

And thanks to everyone who supports this blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse link.

I only have 3 months left before I fall off a cliff.

Here's this character Dr. Peter Attia, "an innovator in longevity medicine," platformed on "60 Minutes," declaring:

"At 75, both men and women fall off a cliff.... At the population level, it's unmistakable what happens at the age of 75."

"If spun correctly, a dog’s difficult past can be a selling point. 'People want a dog that has an incredible story, that’s really been saved from something terrible'..."

"... [Heather Hall, the director of One Tail at a Time-West Texas] told me. 'Who wants an eighty-pound black pit bull? Well, we can make you want them, because that’s a really incredible dog that was tied up on an oil rig for four weeks and then fed by two different crews and then got bit by a rattlesnake and abandoned at the vet. Now he can be your heroic save story.' (She later told me that this example was not hypothetical and that the dog is now living happily in Portland.)"

From "The Airlift Operation That Has Transformed Pet Adoption/Euthanasia in an under-equipped shelter used to be the fate of many dogs in Texas. Then chartered planes started bringing them North" (The New Yorker).

"Trump joins a long list of presidents who have left their imprint on the White House. Theodore Roosevelt replaced greenhouses to construct the West Wing."

"William Howard Taft constructed the first Oval Office in 1909. Richard M. Nixon converted a swimming pool into the press briefing room in 1970. The modern East Wing wasn’t even built until World War II to cover up an underground bunker. Harry S. Truman gutted the White House interior and added the balcony that bears his name. Purists decried it. Now it’s a hallmark. The White House cannot simply be a museum to the past. Like America, it must evolve with the times to maintain its greatness. Strong leaders reject calcification. In that way, Trump’s undertaking is a shot across the bow at NIMBYs everywhere."

Writes The Editorial Board of The Washington Post, in "In defense of the White House ballroom Donald Trump vs. the NIMBYs."

And let me just put this here. Some members of the press would like a bigger White House briefing room:

Trump dances — Malaysian style.

🚨 EPIC! The moment President Trump notices the Malaysian dancers and JOINS IN!

It’s impossible NOT to love this.
pic.twitter.com/Rlbp4EqVCR

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) October 26, 2025

AND: Did Obama ever do anything comparable? There was this moment in Argentina in 2016. A very different mood:

"Reckless and intense: we are headed straight to the point of the matter, and there is no time."

"This urgency, this wildness, the seeming unruliness of his style, which is echoed in the many abrupt twists and turns in the action toward the end of the chapters—the reader must be kept in a state of suspense until the next installment—runs against something else, something heavier and slower, a patiently insistent question that is related to everything that is happening: What are we living for?"

Writes the great novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard, in "The Light of 'The Brothers Karamazov'/Although Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote with wildness and urgency, he patiently insisted on asking an essential question: What are we living for?" (The New Yorker).

Dostoyevsky was rushing because he was writing installments and needed the money. His wife observed

I'm surprised at the NYT headline "U.S. and Chinese Officials Reach Framework of a Trade Deal."

The front page teaser under the headline on the home page is "Negotiators announced they had preliminarily agreed on several issues ahead of an expected meeting between President Trump and Xi Jinping this week."

So they say they've done something. Have they? And it's only "preliminary" and "on several issues." Is the headline supported? It got me excited, but then I felt a little conned. 

Anyway... I hope things go well.

"If the White House must be remade, let there be a plan; let it be debated; let the financing be transparent and free of kickbacks and corruption."

"It isn’t complicated, and it’s the very principle at the heart of the American Revolution: following rules is not weakness.... Architecture embodies values; it is not merely a receptacle of them. Simple proportions and human-scale spaces don’t just suggest the spirit of a democratic nation. They are that spirit in three dimensions, with doors and windows. Reverence for the past, and reluctance to destroy until the risks of destruction are fully known, is not timidity but wisdom, in architecture as in life. To conserve, after all, is the essence of conservatism. The shock that images of the destruction provoke—the grief so many have felt—is not an overreaction to the loss of a beloved building. It is a recognition of something deeper: the central values of democracy being demolished before our eyes. Now we do not only sense it. We see it."

Writes Adam Gopnik, at the end of his New Yorker essay, "Why Trump Tore Down the East Wing/The act of destruction is precisely the point: a kind of performance piece meant to display Trump’s arbitrary power over the Presidency, including its physical seat."

Reverence for the past and reluctance to destroy until the risks of destruction are fully known — but is that your general principle? If it is, you are a committed conservative. 

***

As long as we're talking about rules... the traditional rules of punctuation would reject those those commas after "the past" and "fully known." It's easy to see if you put it this way: Reverence and reluctance is not timidity. Not: Reverence, and reluctance, is not timidity. And, obviously, "is" is wrong! I suspect that at one point the sentence was "Reverence for the past — along with reluctance to destroy until the risks of destruction are fully known — is not timidity but wisdom, in architecture as in life." 

Punctuation and grammar embody values; they are not merely a receptacle of them. I remember when the great tradition of The New Yorker was scrupulously tending to these matters. Is my grief an overreaction to the loss of a beloved publishing tradition?