At the Monday Night Cafe...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

"Turkey’s Leaks Are Undermining the Khashoggi Investigation/Only Erdogan can stop the confusing drip of information and misinformation."

Bloomberg reports.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, after initially announcing his personal interest in the case (“I am chasing”) has been more circumspect. This suggests that the Turkish leader is more carefully evaluating the leverage he now has over Saudi Arabia. It may be in his power to direct the finger of blame toward Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman or to help deflect the spotlight from him.

But while the Turkish president is being uncharacteristically careful with his words, there seems to have been little or no effort to stanch the leaks. The leaks, and the motivation behind them, have become subject of much speculation....

But the leaks serve nobody’s constructive purpose. They undermine the credibility of the investigation, and of Turkey’s impartiality....

How can it be asserted flatly that "the leaks serve nobody’s constructive purpose"? It's impossible to detect an interest that could be served? I find that highly implausible. Apparently, there is "much speculation" about the motivation behind the links, so what are the speculators talking about if "the leaks serve nobody’s constructive purpose"?

Or is "constructive" like the "true" in "no true Scotsman"? In other words, all that speculation is about who may be pursuing a destructive purpose.

"As a queer, trans, disabled person who goes by they/them, I'm this SJW snowflake. I don’t want to sit down with cops. The Christian right is making strange bedfellows right now."

Said Dakota Bracciale, the owner of Catland, quoted in "Inside the Brooklyn Witches’ Antifa Hex on Kavanaugh/Despite protests, the Brooklyn antifa witches’ hex on Brett Kavanaugh went on. Both vengeful hate and intense love filled the event" (The Daily Beast).

Bracciale — "who goes by they/them" but calls themself "I" — made "strange bedfellows" with the police to arrange for security during Catland's planned event purporting to call violence down upon Brett Kavanaugh.

Catland is a Brooklyn shop that sells "spiritual literature, healing crystals, tarot cards, burnable incense, and other occult accoutrements."

Occult — from "classical Latin occultus secret, hidden from the understanding, hidden, concealed, past participle of occulere to cover up, hide, conceal" (OED) — means "Of or relating to magic, alchemy, astrology, theosophy, or other practical arts held to involve agencies of a secret or mysterious nature; of the nature of such an art; dealing with or versed in such matters; magical." Historical example:

1711 Ld. Shaftesbury Characteristicks III. Misc. ii. i. 53 From this Parent-Country of occult Sciences..he was presum'd..to have learnt..judicial Astrology.

Judicial Astrology!

Anyway, this Catland shop has done a fine job of getting publicity. And the Christians who protested did the hard work of making this stupid story viral.

But I want to talk about Judicial Astrology. Is it anything that our cursèd Supreme Court might do? Wikipedia — I love Wikipedia!! — has an article, "Judicial Astrology"!

"Clearly, filtering isn’t [Alec] Baldwin’s strong suit... [H]e asked about Caitlyn Jenner—specifically her transition."

"At one point, he went off on a long tangent about how Jenner used to coach his daughter Ireland’s school track team. 'He would shake my hand, and I say this not with any judgment,' Baldwin began, all but promising an ill-advised comment. 'There wasn’t a drop of Caitlyn in him when I knew him.' After doing an impression of Jenner at the time, seemingly playing up his 'masculine' interests and demeanor, he concluded, 'I didn’t see any of that coming.' At Baldwin’s urging, [Kim] Kardashian discussed walking in on Jenner dressed in women’s clothing when she was 25, after which she immediately packed a bag and ran out of the house. Jenner told Kardashian not to tell her mother, saying, 'She’ll kill me.' Without getting into any of the reported drama between Caitlyn and the Kardashians, Kim said that she just wants Jenner to be happy...."

From "The Hell That Was Watching Kim Kardashian and Alec Baldwin Chat for an Hour/The second episode of ‘The Alec Baldwin Show’ featured a grueling sit-down talk between the reality-TV superstar and SNL’s Trump" (The Daily Beast).

As noted in the previous post, Alec Baldwin is in trouble.

Did a memo go out to get Alec Baldwin?

After writing the last post, which contained the quoted line...

It’s that extra level of satirical depth that consistently elevates [Atamanuik's] portrayal of Trump above everything Alec Baldwin has done to date on Saturday Night Live.

... the next thing I saw (at The Daily Beast) was, "The Hell That Was Watching Kim Kardashian and Alec Baldwin Chat for an Hour/The second episode of ‘The Alec Baldwin Show’ featured a grueling sit-down talk between the reality-TV superstar and SNL’s Trump."

To recap, Alec Baldwin’s #Resistance consists of softly parodying the president on SNL while the world burns around him. But Baldwin has consistently displayed Trumpian tendencies himself....

All of this makes him perfect for Kardashian, who has experience dealing with Donald Trump—and with Trump supporters, like her husband. As Kim recently admitted, she’s come to accept Kanye West’s newfound Republicanism as a means to an end, saying, “I am aware that Kanye speaking out in favor of Trump got me through the door—got him to pick up my call.” But while Kardashian has inarguably used her influence to do some good, this is hardly the time to just stand in the back and watch as your life partner co-signs a racist president, spreads false information and amplifies far-right voices....

When the conversation inevitably turned to Kanye West and Donald Trump, Baldwin predictably failed to ask the tough questions, letting Kardashian skate by on beauty-pageant platitudes about “having an open mind.”....

And what's going on with "Saturday Night Live" in the run-up to the election? Have they somehow determined that they're not helping the side they want to help?

As The Wrap reports, the new season of the show began with 3 weeks of new shows, but the past 2 weeks have had reruns and next week there's just going to be some collection of old Halloween-themed sketches. There is supposed to be a new episode on November 3rd, which is before the election, but it's odd — isn't it? — that the show is backing off right before the election. (You can compare the 2016 schedule here, 2014 here)

Anyway, keep an eye out for attacks on Alec Baldwin and flop sweat over the failure of pop culture to help the Democratic Party.

The only side I'm taking is I'm for the separation of art and politics. I don't like them cross-bred. You get "a sort of mule-animal, capable only of destroying, and not of breeding up." (I'm quoting Thomas Paine, of all people, who was writing in a slightly different context.)

"'President Show' Mockumentary Finds Comedy in Trump’s Downfall and Death/The hilarious new Comedy Central special... takes a page from true-crime docs to give viewers a cathartic peek into a Trump-free future."

Hilariousness identified at The Daily Beast.

Inspired by the recent rise of true crime documentaries like The Jinx and Making a Murderer among others, the special projects 12 years into the future to ask—and ultimately answer—the question: What happened to Donald Trump?...

Among those returning to the show are Kathy Griffin’s Kellyanne Conway, her clothes a little flashier, her hair a little messier....

Oh, Kathy's back:

Sexual harassment by a female is presented as cute by The Daily News.

The photo credit — for this picture of panties with images of snowflakes and polar bears — goes to a Daily News photographer. But it doesn't look like the panties described in the article, which begins with the cutesy line, "She was indelicate with her delicates — and now she’s under investigation."

When Detective Victor Falcon complained to Sgt. Ann Marie Guerra about how she regularly left her underwear — including a lacy thong — lying around the unisex locker room at the 72nd Precinct Detective Squad offices on Oct. 7, the 38-year-old cop allegedly snapped.

She ran over and rubbed a dirty panties on his face in an apparent attempt to force them into his mouth, sources with knowledge of the case said.

“They are f---ing clean!” she screamed at the time, the sources said.

The fabric went into the detective’s open mouth...

Sources said Guerra has a salty reputation among her colleagues and has been known to joke about the size of her subordinates’ manhoods.

Salty? Imagine using that word to describe a male in the workplace who used verbal and physical harassment?

“She is a piece of work,” one source said. “She is always emasculating men and commenting on the size of their anatomy. She’s a bullying man-hater.”...

Guerra wasn’t trying to gag the detective — just rub his nose in it a little, the source said.
“She just put it up to his nose,” the source said, chalking up the incident to “exaggerated squad room banter.”

Again, imagine if the sexes were reversed.

Guerra is the squad room’s second-in-command and is responsible for approving overtime and changing detectives’ shifts....

He's a subordinate employee.

In addition to the alleged panty raid on his face, Falcon claimed Guerra had repeatedly denied his shift-change requests so he could make court custody hearings about his autistic son, sources who have seen the document said...

"Panty raid on his face" — like he can't take a joke.  Where's The Era of That's Not Funny when we need it? Court custody hearings about his autistic son is so completely not funny.

I'm only complaining about tone and sexism of The Daily News here. I don't know what really happened in this case, and I don't know how I would have reacted if it had been presented in a neutral way. Falcon may have been out of line, taunting Guerra about her underwear, and her reaction might have been typical locker room horseplay. A unisex locker room? With cops? This is an environment I've never even thought about before, and I'm not really able to visualize the scene The Daily News is purporting to describe.

Somehow there was a vending machine in Brooklyn from which it was possible to steal $13,000 of jewelry.

Unsurprisingly, there was a theft, but let's try to understand why there was such a vending machine in the first place:

Manhattan jewelry designer Marla Aaron planted the vending machine in the park outside the William Vale Hotel on N. 12th St. in Williamsburg. She called the machine a “crazy amazing” experiment — an “unexpected place” where her customers could buy her pieces....

In a pair of videos on her website, she says she got the idea while traveling in Japan, where high-tech vending machines dispense an eclectic variety of items.

Brooklyn is not Japan in many ways, one of which is the prevalence of crime.

“Putting it in a store would have been a cop-out. And I wanted it in an unexpected place. The coolest place I could think of would be outdoors. That’s amazing. In Brooklyn. And guess what, we found a park,” she said. “You’re in a park! That’s crazy amazing, and the vending machine is in front of you, and you can buy something.”

Okay, that's called advertising. And she's getting several thousand dollars worth of advertising from the existence of the machine and even from this theft. I say "several thousand dollars" because I assume $13,000 is the list price of jewelry that was stolen.

Cops describe the crook as a black man in his 20s or 30s, 5-foot-10 and about 220 pounds, wearing a black T-shirt and gray pants....

I think "crook" is an inappropriate word. I'd suggest "dupe."

View this post on Instagram

Our vending machine is spending the summer in the garden of @thewilliamvale hotel in Brooklyn. This is the video that plays when someone decides to “learn more” before they shop the machine. Or simply play with the machine. You can too. Tip of the hat to @andrewleeimaging for the video, @makeupbymichele for looking glowy versus glowering and the amazing team at The William Vale who said yes when it would have been much easier for them to say no. And the MAJ team. You guys make it look so easy! And I ❤️ you all. #marlaaaronvendingmachine I know this probably belongs on IGTV and I may do that too. Humor me.

A post shared by Marla Aaron (@marlaaaron) on Jul 3, 2018 at 10:50am PDT

"✨🎀💉🏥✨🌈💕."

after almost a decade of fighting - thru prison, the courts, a hunger strike, and thru the insurance company - I finally got surgery this week ✨🎀💉🏥✨🌈💕 pic.twitter.com/I7WeIrR8jP

— Chelsea E. Manning (@xychelsea) October 20, 2018

Men in shorts.

"She apparently dominated him for the whole time they were together. That in itself is almost unheard of. I’ve never heard of a female that was that dominating of a male, ever."

Said an investigator quoted in "'She seems to have crushed his throat': Lioness at [Indianapolis Zoo] kills father of her cubs in ‘unprovoked’ attack" (WaPo).

“They called me because they were puzzled, and I agree it’s puzzling,” [said Craig Packer, principal investigator with the University of Minnesota’s Lion Center] said. He added of the attack: “It was completely unprovoked and it was certainly not typical."

Zuri killing Nyack is bizarre for two reasons, Packer said: He was the father of her cubs, and she engaged him one-on-one.... The incident, Packer said, may stem from the “unusual combination” of a “meek male” and an “all-powerful female.”

“I don’t usually associate this kind of personality with a female lion,” he said. “The fact that it developed at all is fascinating.”

Nyack was described by the zoo as “laid back.” Zuri, however, was “large and very dominating,” Packer said. According to the zoo, Zuri weighed only 25 pounds less than Nyack. Male lions are usually much larger than females and more aggressive, and “being next to a large male is like living next to a keg of dynamite,” Packer said. “The females will be annoyed with the males sometimes and will kind of swat at them, but they’re pretty careful not to provoke them too much,” he said....

“Apparently, the male was always very subordinate to her, which is totally strange,” Packer said.... “The female just seemed to be having a bad day,” he said.

At the Sunday Night Cafe...

... talk about anything you want.

A very elaborate ad from Japan. (It hardly matters what the product is.)

I found that via Adweek.

"The Brewers may have fallen one game short of the World Series, but they're set up for big things."

"The rebuild orchestrated by general manager David Stearns and manager Craig Counsell not only turned them into contenders a few years before anyone suspected, it left them in a position to sustain that success. Outfielder Lorenzo Cain played for the Royals when they lost Game 7 of the World Series in 2014, then went back and won the World Series the following year. He sees some parallels between those Royals and these Brewers. 'We made it to the World Series and lost in game seven, but everybody showed up ready to go that next year and we ended up going back to the World Series and we won,' Cain said. 'We can definitely go out there and do the same thing with this team. We have a great group of guys that can really play.'...  [T]he core of this team will be together next season and for several more after that. This isn't like the 2011 Brewers team that lost to St. Louis in the NLCS. Back then, everyone knew slugger Prince Fielder was leaving in free agency.... 'So there's a lot of reasons for hope and optimism[,' said Ryan Braun. ']But at the same time we were one game away from the World Series and we had an opportunity to play that game at home. We all know that no matter how good you are, those opportunities don't come around every year...'"

From "Despite difficult end to dream season, Brewers prove they're built for success" by Tom Oates (Wisconsin State Journal).

"Many people report a particular scent appearing around this time of year; some describe it as melancholy, while others associate it with more pleasant harvest-type smells."

"The scent of autumn can be as much an emotional shift as it is a herald of the waning daylight.... But where does this smell come from?... When the leaves fall, they die. As they take their last breath, they “exhale” all sorts of gases through tiny holes known as stomata. Among these compounds released are terpene and isoprenoids, common ingredients in the oils that coat plants. Terpenes are hydrocarbons, meaning their main ingredients are hydrogen and carbon. Pinene, a species of terpene, smells like — you guessed it — pine. It’s a main ingredient to the saplike resin that repairs the bark of conifers and pine trees. Occasionally, these gas molecules excreted by plants — known as volatile organic compounds — interact with variants of nitrous oxide. This can lead to ozone production, which can smell a bit like chlorine or the exhaust of a dryer vent. In addition to the release of gases contained within dying vegetation, two other effects contribute to the emotion-evoking scent that accompanies a northwest autumn breeze: decomposing plant matter, and pollutants trapped at the ground levels during the fall months. The soil in most parts of the world is rich in Geotrichum candidum, a fungus that causes rotting and decomposition of fruits and vegetables and dense plant matter. In fact, Geotrichum candidum has been sampled on all seven continents. This is just one of many species that erodes away as deceased organisms, the chemical reactions of which contribute to the smell of 'fall.'"

From "The scent of a season: Explaining the aromas of fall" (WaPo).

With my greatly diminished sense of smell, I wonder what emotions I miss. Melancholy? There's a deep dimension to autumn, and I have forgotten it.

"Purdue’s upset of Ohio State was an unbelievable, emotional blowout."

"This was a destruction, carried out by a team that hasn’t appeared in the AP Top 25 since 2007 against one of the greatest blue-blood powers in the sport," SBNation reports, calling attention to a Purdue fan who is dying of cancer — "that Purdue beat the hell out of Ohio State in this moment, with this fan rooting on the Boilers, is jaw-droppingly great."

Preparing for the game tonight! #BoilerUp #OnlyTheStrong pic.twitter.com/8GFTHKVO3f

— Tyler Trent (@theTylerTrent) October 20, 2018