Sunrise — 5:27.

"Three days earlier, I had booked Hertz’s cheapest option.... What I did not consider was an electric car...."

"With no forewarning, no experience driving an EV, and virtually no guidance, what was supposed to be a restful trip upstate was anything but. Just a few hours of highway driving would sap the battery, leaving me and my friends scrounging for public chargers in desolate parking lots, the top floors of garages, and hotels with plugs marked for guests only. It was a crash course in EVs for four people who had never heard of CCS versus CHAdemo, the 80/20 rule, and Level 3 chargers. After my disastrous weekend, I talked to three rental-car experts: All of them were familiar with the phenomenon of the surprise EV, a result of how much the industry is leaning into electric cars...."

I'm reading "Car-Rental Companies Are Ruining EVs/Surprise electric vehicles are not ambassadors for change" by Saahil Desai (The Atlantic).

"Years before he said he was running for president to 'defeat the cult of gender ideology,' Donald Trump welcomed and praised the inclusion of transgender women in the Miss Universe pageant."

CNN reports.

Is that necessarily a contradiction? What counts as a "cult of gender ideology"? Could you favor letting transwomen into a beauty pageant without joining the "cult"? One way to be un-cultish is to make practical distinctions and accept one thing — such as, transwomen competing against cis women in beauty contests — and reject another — notably, transwomen competing against cis women in sports. That kind of thinking is characteristic of people who are not ideologues. Ideologues get hold of an abstract idea, run with it, and denounce those who won't take it to its logical conclusion, however impractical. 

"In August 1969, he went to a War Resisters League meeting at Haverford College in Pennsylvania and heard a speaker, Randy Kehler, proudly announce..."

"... that he was soon going to join his friends in prison for refusing the draft. Profoundly moved, Mr. Ellsberg had reached his breaking point.... 'I left the auditorium and found a deserted men’s room,' he said. 'I sat on the floor and cried for over an hour, just sobbing. The only time in my life I’ve reacted to something like that.'  Mr. Ellsberg began to oppose the war openly.... He also resigned from RAND, under pressure. With Anthony J. Russo Jr., a RAND colleague he had met in Vietnam, Mr. Ellsberg, who had a top-secret security clearance, photocopied the 47-volume Pentagon study. Still believing he could work within the system, Mr. Ellsberg in 1970 gave partial copies to Senator J. William Fulbright, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and others in Congress. All cautiously refused to act. Frustrated, disillusioned and aware that he might be committing a crime and could be sent to prison, Mr. Ellsberg approached Neil Sheehan, a veteran New York Times correspondent he had met in Vietnam, with the documents....."

From "Daniel Ellsberg, Who Leaked the Pentagon Papers, Is Dead at 92/Deeply disturbed by the accounting of American deceit in Vietnam, he approached The New York Times. The disclosures that followed rocked the nation" (NYT).

"The liberalization left behind a legal oddity: Marijuana use remains prohibited in public spaces...."

"Yet it’s allowed on private property.... Some have proposed social consumption spaces — 'analogous to a bar or a restaurant,' said Morgan Fox, NORML’s political director — though such sites could pose a nuisance to neighbors as well as workers. Another idea is to rescind the prohibition on smoking in public spaces, which would presumably cut consumption in cramped residential settings. It would also import the smellscape of New York City, where sidewalk pot smoking is legal. 'The number one thing I smell right now is pot,' said Mayor Eric Adams in July 2022. 'It seems like everyone is smoking a joint now, you know. Everybody has a joint.'"

Writes the Editorial Board of The Washington Post, in "A dispute over marijuana smoke raises questions for D.C. — and beyond."

Smellscape....

Why did Ted Cruz drag Pat Benatar into this?

Ted Cruz: “I don’t think Senate Democrats, if you had video of Joe Biden murdering children dressed as the devil under a full moon while singing Pat Benatar, they still wouldn’t vote to convict.” pic.twitter.com/ysYei6Rr3E

— The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) June 15, 2023

Let's read "Pat Benatar roasts Sen. Ted Cruz after he suggests she’s demonic" (NY Post). Ah:

Cruz’s comment may have been a reference to the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer’s 1980 hit “Hell Is For Children.”

It's odd that Cruz assumes people know this song, which I see was the B side of "Love Is a Battlefield." This is a recording from 1980. I'm older than  most Americans, and I remember living through the songs of 43 years ago, but I only knew the A side.

Here are the lyrics. To quote a bit: "It's all so confusing, this brutal abusing/They blacken your eyes, and then 'pologize/You're daddy's good girl, and don't tell mommy a thing.... Hell is for children...."

Of course, the Post headline is silly. Cruz didn't "suggest" that Benatar is "demonic." He created an exaggerated image of Joe Biden — something along the lines of Trump's "shoot a man on 5th Avenue" — as a way to say that nothing would be enough to turn Senate Democrats against Biden. Singing "Hell Is For Children" is a stray detail probably intended to add color and coolness, but of course, Benatar doesn't want her song thought of as celebrating the point of view of the child abuser. 

There may be a genuine apology somewhere in this 3-minute video, which is maddeningly verbose.

I gave up halfway through. Too much excess material. 

See for yourself, at "White House flasher Rose Montoya apologizes for whipping out breasts, defends ‘disrespectful’ stunt a moment of ‘trans joy'" (NY Post).

If you're going to apologize, be direct and clear. Don't use the occasion to make various other points that offset what you're supposedly apologizing for. 

Sunrise — 5:16.

And — at 5:30 a.m. — 2 cranes:

"The very fact that the age of consent was set at 13 created the societal mood that teenagers starting at 13 can be exploited sexually and be viewed sexually."

"It has created a culture and mood where everyone assumes that teenagers have the ability to make decisions around sexual consent, and therefore people don’t question their sexual exploitation.... In Japan, there is a saying, 'Don’t wake someone sleeping,' which is often used around sex education — meaning that if someone isn’t sexually active, there is no need to teach them about sex and awaken them to it."

Said lawprof Hiroko Goto, of Chiba University, quoted in "Japan (finally) changes a century-old law: The age of consent is now 16" (WaPo).

At 13, Japan had the lowest age of consent among the Group of Seven advanced economies and among the lowest in the developed world. The age of consent is 16 in Canada and most states in the United States; 15 in France; and 14 in Germany and Italy.... 

"6 Reasons DOJ’s 'Get Trump' Documents Case Is Seriously Flawed."

This is a concise article at The Federalist, written by Will Scharf who is a former federal prosecutor and currently a Republican candidate for Missouri Attorney General.

I'll give you the 6 headings and some excerpts:

Is the soul analog?

I'm trying to read "6 analog trends that are good for the soul" (WaPo).

Choosing the less-efficient way of doing something, especially things we do for pleasure, can help us reassess our relationship with time and forgo the constant need for productivity....

Do you have a relationship with time? Would something analog help you restructure it? That's the idea here. Do your high-tech devices cause anxiety about how your life is slipping away as if it's nothing of any substance, and would holding a real book — smelling it, turning the pages and all that — help you reestablish yourself in reality?

Other analog things that might help:

"[A] 60-year-old born in 1936 would feel more like 53 years old, or only about 12 percent younger. But a 60-year-old born in 1956..."

"... would feel like they were 50 years old, or about 17 percent younger.... Researchers are not sure what is causing the trend of feeling younger. One reason could be that a younger subjective age reflects having more resources than stress.... There could also be a less positive possible explanation for this recent shift toward a more youthful state of mind: Ageism. People could be feeling younger because 'they don’t want to belong to the group of older adults... a kind of psychological distancing oneself from the older adults.'... Women reported feeling younger than men of the same age.... People with more education had younger subjective ages.... A study found that if you make adults feel sad, by giving them sad readings or music, they feel older afterward.... Participants who felt older and held more ageist attitudes were more likely to have depressive symptoms on a day-to-day basis...."

From "Feeling younger than your age may be good for your health/Older adults who feel young at heart may not just live longer, but may also have more life satisfaction, lower dementia risk and reduced depression symptoms" (WaPo).

I'll just quote Bob Dylan: "She's 68, but she says she's 54."

I was 14 when I first heard that, but I feel like I'm 54 now. I'm 72.

Anyway... I'd just like to say that you know what age you are. And you know how you feel. Rationally, you ought to think the age that you are feels like the age that you are. What better evidence do I have of how 72 feels than how I myself feel? Whence this notion of the inner life of other 72-year-olds — this faceless crowd, averaged out? How absurd and unseemly to imagine their sad decline — compared to me, the ever-young, full of life me! Actually, I myself don't have such absurd and unseemly imaginings. I was just imagining some other 72-year-old who is embarrassingly un-self-aware and vain.

For the truly graceful, a baby's burp is a sumptuous opportunity.

It’s not every day that the Princess of Wales is interrupted by a massive burp 👶
She’s in Nuneaton chatting to parents and health visitors about her new NHS trial that monitors the emotional well-being of newborns pic.twitter.com/M1FONyHbCf

— Victoria Ward (@victoria_ward) June 15, 2023

RFK Jr. tells Joe Rogan he's "gotta be careful" — he's "aware of" the danger of assassination, he's "not stupid," but he does not "live in fear, at all."

mmm

At the Butterfly Weed Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

"President Biden is almost certain to be Democrats' pick for president in 2024, but he might not win the first two contests of the primary season..."

"... if they're in the traditional first-to-vote states of Iowa and New Hampshire — a scenario that seems increasingly likely... Biden's team is indicating he won't be on the ballots in those states if they vote before South Carolina, his choice to have the first primary.... That sets up a scenario in which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or another long-shot Democrat could win those states — and embarrass the president.... In touting South Carolina to kick off the primary season, Biden’s team has said it wanted voting to start in a racially diverse state to give minorities more of a say in early presidential contests. New Hampshire was about 87% white in the 2020 Census, while Iowa was about 83% white. South Carolina was about 62% white."

 
Axios reports.