"An animated political video featured in The New York Times’ opinion section has sparked outrage among a number of leaders and advocates in the LGBTQ community."

"The short cartoon depicts U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin as gay paramours — a trope used numerous times by comedians and satirists seeking to mock the relationship between the two leaders," NBC newsplains.

“Trump and Putin: A Love Story” is part of a three-video series titled “Trump Bites,” which was animated by Oscar-nominated animator Bill Plympton and produced by Billy Shebar and David Roberts. In The New York Times article accompanying the video, which was posted on the Times website in late June, the creators said the series is a “riff on Mr. Trump’s absurd utterances to illustrate the president’s tumultuous inner life of paranoia, narcissism and xenophobia.”

In this episode of Trump Bites, Donald Trump’s not-so-secret admiration for Vladimir Putin plays out in a teenager’s bedroom, where the fantasies of this forbidden romance come to life. https://t.co/h5gpVJzj69 pic.twitter.com/f4aBEOfRYt

— NYT Opinion (@nytopinion) July 16, 2018

Bill Plympton has been around a long time. He's most famous (to me anyway) for "How to Kiss" (and his Trump + Putin video uses the same humor of making kissing grotesque and ridiculous):

"Nevada’s legal brothels, hailed as safe, benign, and desirable, work as a propaganda machine for the illicit Vegas sex trade."

"From the ads for escorts on hotel key cards, to the young men out on the streets handing out cards with promises of 'A girl to your room faster than a pizza,' as well as women visibly plying the trade both on the streets and in hotel lobbies, illegal prostitution flourishes in Las Vegas—to the extent that many johns have no idea that the business isn’t legal in Vegas. There is big money to be made there from sex tourism, and as with any illegal activity, there are links with police corruption.... In the [HBO reality] show Cathouse, supposedly a fly-on-the-wall depiction of the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, one of Hof’s brothels, the women appear liberated and happy in their work. They tell viewers that this is simply a job like any other; the clients are lovely, and living in a brothel with other women is akin to a permanent pajama party. But my research suggests that life for the women in Nevada brothels bears little resemblance to this rosy picture...."

From "A Ballot on the Brothels of Nevada" (New York Review of Books).

"Was it some rigging of facts? Was it some forgery of facts?... Any false information planted? No. It wasn't."

"They hacked a certain email account and there was information about manipulations conducted within the Democratic Party to incline the process in favor of one candidate. And as far as I know, the entire party leadership resigned. That manipulation is where public opinion should stop, and an apology should be made to the public at large instead of looking for the responsible – the party at fault."

Said Vladimir Putin (in an interview with Chris Wallace).

ADDED: The whole interview:

Nonhuman animals too fall for the "sunk cost" fallacy.

"In a study published on Thursday in the journal Science, investigators at the University of Minnesota reported that mice and rats were just as likely as humans to be influenced by sunk costs" (NYT).

“Whatever is going on in the humans is also going on in the nonhuman animals,” said A. David Redish, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Minnesota and an author of the study....

“Evolution by natural selection would not promote any behavior unless it had some — perhaps obscure — net overall benefit,” said Alex Kacelnik, a professor of behavioral ecology at Oxford, who praised the new study as “rigorous” in its methodology and “well designed.”

“If everybody does it, the reasoning goes, there must be a reason,” Dr. Kacelnik said.

Smart-ass reaction: Scientists have sunk costs in the theory of evolution.

Evolution-centered response: It doesn't matter that individuals suffer and die, only that some reproduced. If individuals realize that it's in their interest to be aware of the "sunk cost" problem as they decide what to do, it might help them live better lives for themselves, individually, but will they have a long line of descendants? The ultimate in a sunk cost is your own progeny.

Ocasio-Cortez disappoints Glenn Greenwald.

This tweet is not a parody https://t.co/csPd2Qs9Ov

— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) July 17, 2018

"When Newt Gingrich, when Gen. Jack Keane, when Matt Schlapp say the president fell short and made our intelligence apparatus look bad, I think it’s time to pay attention..."

"... and it’s easily correctable from the president’s perspective. Nobody’s perfect, especially [after] 10 intensive days of summits, private meetings, and everything on his plate. But that moment is the one that’s going to stand out unless he comes out and corrects it.”

President Trump fires back at his critics over his meeting with Russian President Putin | @foxandfriends pic.twitter.com/cijS3BfUi4

— Brian Kilmeade (@kilmeade) July 17, 2018

At the No-Photo Cafe...

... you create your own pictures.

"In the entire history of our country, Americans have never seen a president of the United States support an American adversary the way President Trump has supported President Putin."

"A single, ominous question now hangs over the White House: What could possibly cause President Trump to put the interests of Russia over those of the United States? Millions of Americans will continue to wonder if the only possible explanation for this dangerous behavior is the possibility that President Putin holds damaging information over President Trump."

Said Chuck Schumer.

"This is a disgraceful moment... The president’s party knows better. I know they do. I served with many of them. America needs them to speak out with clarity and conviction not just in this news cycle, but until there’s common sense governing America’s foreign policy."

Said John Kerry.

"It is tempting to describe the news conference as a pathetic rout — as an illustration of the perils of under-preparation and inexperience. But these were not the errant tweets of a novice politician. These were the deliberate choices of a president who seems determined to realize his delusions of a warm relationship with Putin’s regime without any regard for the true nature of his rule, his violent disregard for the sovereignty of his neighbors, his complicity in the slaughter of the Syrian people, his violation of international treaties, and his assault on democratic institutions throughout the world."

Said John McCain.

All quoted in The New York Times, here. Full video and transcript, here, in case you want to search there for the reason for these strong condemnations.

"See ya later, suckas! - The Great Garrett Underpants."

Death notice for a 5-year-old — in his own words.

When I die: I am going to be a gorilla and throw poo at Daddy!

Burned or Buried: I want to be burned (like when Thor’s Mommy died) and made into a tree so I can live in it when I’m a gorilla

Big or Small Funeral: Funerals are sad: I want 5 bouncy houses (because I’m 5), Batman, and snow cones

Via "‘See Ya Later, Suckas!’ The Obituary of a 5-Year-Old Boy in His Own Words" (NYT).

"The perfect house will probably make me sad, and terrified... because… a house is a commitment, you know? You have to take care of it."

"It’s like any beautiful thing you have to maintain and protect. And then you also have to consider who gets it after you’re gone. And so even books and records, which I… books in particular, I have a lot of books that I really love. When I acquire one that I really love it’s difficult for me, because I think about… who does one pass this on to?... As much as I look at houses sometimes and think wow, that would be really nice, if that were my house, I know that I would be miserable. It would be… cleaning out the… the gutters, and you know, what about the pipes freezing, and if you own a home it means you have to vacation in the same place every year. I’m a renter by nature. I like the freedom to change my mind about where I want to be in six months, or a year. Because I’ve also found you might have to make that decision… you can’t always make that decision for yourself, you know… shit happens."

Said Anthony Bourdain, last February, in a long interview conducted by Maria Bustillos, which I was mostly interested in reading because she set it up with a question she wanted to ask:

I decided to ask him about the matter of luxury. Because through his television work—“Parts Unknown” especially—Bourdain showed Americans a different way of thinking not only about food, but about travel and tourism. About looking at ourselves as one part of a larger human story, in stark contrast to the conventional notion of travel: Americans casting themselves as “exceptionalist” democratic superstars in a drama, with the rest of planet Earth as their Tour Guide co-stars, and plenty of violins in the soundtrack.

I'm interested — as you may know — in the critique of travel. I couldn't find much in that interview on that subject, though, and I settled into his contemplation of the opposite of travel: home.

Travel is the negative space that defines home, even as death defines life.

"Elon Musk, insisting he helped in Thai cave rescue, calls actual rescuer a ‘pedo.'"

WaPo reports.

The Silicon Valley engineer and billionaire was briefly seen in Thailand last week, hauling a miniature submarine to the mouth of the cave just before an international dive team rescued the boys without it... ... Musk insisted that his submarine (designed in consultation with “cave experts on the Internet,” he wrote) would have worked. He bragged that he would one day pilot it through the now child-free cave system as proof.

And midway through his rant, for some inexplicable reason, he accused [Vernon] Unsworth of sex crimes. “Sorry pedo guy, you really did ask for it,” Musk wrote, clarifying in a follow-up tweet that he meant “the Brit expat diver” was a pedophile....

“Bet ya a signed dollar it's true,” Musk wrote late Sunday morning, a few hours before he deleted his tweets — too late to avoid yet another deluge of public criticism.

BBC writes that Unsworth is considering suing. I think this is a situation where Unsworth must sue, because the defamation is so severe and so specific that failure to sue leaves a cloud.

It's strange to see this other Elon Musk story in the news at the same time: "Elon Musk draws fire for donating $38,900 to a Republican fundraising committee" (Business Insider).

Watching the Trump + Putin press conference.

Standing by.

"We found that the students who were in the non-air-conditioned buildings actually had slower reaction times: 13 percent lower performance on basic arithmetic tests..."

"... and nearly a 10 percent reduction in the number of correct responses per minute... I think it's a little bit akin to the frog in the boiling water... slow, steady — largely imperceptible — rise in temperature, and you don't realize it's having an impact on you."

Says Joe Allen, co-director of the Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment at Harvard University, quoted at NPR, in "Heat Making You Lethargic? Research Shows It Can Slow Your Brain, Too."

My personal intuition is that this study gets it right. Heat does slow the brain.

But I can't believe I have to push back a Harvard scientist about that damned frog-boiling myth. Here's an old post that (eventually) deals with the subject. It's just plain wrong that a frog will allow itself to be boiled to death if the water is heated slowly! The frog notices and jumps out. And maybe that's why heat slows the brain. You notice that you are uncomfortable, and it's distracting.

Secondly, I'm amazed that a climate scientist is producing pro-air-conditioning research and that NPR is passing it along.

"What is the point of arguing with Peter Strzok for ten hours about whether he was biased against Donald Trump?"

"The texts speak for themselves, illustrating beyond cavil that he was biased. In fact, his absurd caviling to the contrary suggests he’d be an easy witness to demolish if a competent examiner had the documentary ammunition. Bias is a dumb thing for Strzok to get uppity about. In 20 years of investigating people, I can’t tell you how many of them I developed a healthy bias against. Bias is a natural human condition. It is something we tend to feel about people who do bad things. There is, and there could be, no requirement that an investigator be impartial about the people he reasonably suspects of crimes. Am I supposed to be impartial about a terrorist? An anti-American spy? A corrupt politician? Seriously? The question is not whether the investigator is biased, but whether bias leads the investigator to do illegal or abusive things. In the case of Strzok and his colleagues, the questions are whether they applied different standards of justice to the two candidates they were investigating; whether, with respect to Trump in particular, they pursued a counterintelligence probe in the stretch-run of an election, premised on the belief that he was a traitor, based on information that was flimsy and unverified. These questions cannot be answered without the documents that explain the origin of the investigation. If the committees are not willing or able to hold government officials in contempt for stonewalling, and President Trump is not willing to order that his subordinates cooperate, it would be better to shut the investigations down than to further abide a farce."

Writes Andrew McCarthy (National Review).

"The irony of being opposed by her own party must weigh on Feinstein...."

"But Feinstein didn’t keep up with the changes in California. Her opponent [Kevin] de León apparently has: He’s running on abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, promoting national health insurance, and impeaching President Trump. Feinstein seemed a little stunned as she watched her party turn on her this past weekend. Feinstein knew that she was vulnerable and shifted left by abandoning her support of the death penalty along with her opposition to the legalization of recreational marijuana. But it wasn’t enough. Left-wing activists are demanding that she confront President Trump head-on and help shut down the Senate rather than allow Brett Kavanaugh to be confirmed for the Supreme Court.... Asked why her liberal stances over the course of 50 years in California politics weren’t appreciated, she shrugged: 'Well, that thought occurred to me — but I wiped it out of my mind completely.'"

From "Democrats Are Dumping Moderates" by John Fund (National Review).

Sign of the decline of Twitter?

With exception of breaking news and my own stories, taking a break from this platform. No reason or prompt other than that it’s not really helping the discourse.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) July 15, 2018

Or is Maggie Haberman just tired?

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton is noways tired...

Great World Cup. Question for President Trump as he meets Putin: Do you know which team you play for?

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) July 16, 2018

And, of course, Trump himself is still holding strong...

President Obama thought that Crooked Hillary was going to win the election, so when he was informed by the FBI about Russian Meddling, he said it couldn’t happen, was no big deal, & did NOTHING about it. When I won it became a big deal and the Rigged Witch Hunt headed by Strzok!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 16, 2018