Sunrise — 5:49, 5:51, 5:53.

"Smith has a herculean task before him. He must present a persuasive narrative that Trump and his henchmen and women (yes, you, Ginni Thomas) were determined to pull off a coup."

The prose of Maureen Dowd, in "The Moment of Truth for Our Liar in Chief" (NYT). 

I saw the headline first and thought "Our Liar in Chief" might be a reference to the current President, but what are the chances?

I wondered whether convincing a jury that Trump attempted a coup is what we ought to call "a herculean task." Why did Hercules perform his tasks? Was he some sort of prosecutor, accusing somebody else? No, he stood guilty of murdering his wife and children and needed to atone.

Also, his tasks were much harder than persuading some human beings to view a set of facts as falling within a particular formulation of words.

If a prosecutor's task really looked as difficult as any of the 10 Hercules had to perform, the prosecutor shouldn't be charging, since prosecutorial ethics demand a belief that it's more likely than not that an unbiased jury will find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

We shouldn't look to prosecutors for tricky superhuman feats, and if you catch yourself doing that, you may atone by reading Robert H. Jackson's 1940 address "The Federal Prosecutor."

"The hammerhead worm... slithers like a snake and resembles a piece of whole-wheat spaghetti, led by its mushroom-shaped head."

"And it also secretes tetrodotoxin, the same debilitating neurotoxin found in puffer fish...."

 

From "Toxin-secreting hammerhead worms are invading the D.C. area. How to stop them. The snake-like worms contain a potent neurotoxin and can grow more than 22 inches long" (WaPo).

"Once, her daughter’s drama teacher assigned her the monkey role in a school play. 'I think it was The Wizard of Oz'...."

"'My daughter at the time was young enough not to know what the message was, but I did, so I went right down to the school and I said, "Any time you’ve got Black kids in your class none of them are going to be the monkeys."' Mendez said that she learned later that another Black parent had the same conversation with the teacher two years earlier. 'We all have those stories in Amherst,' she said. 'And so, for me, this reparations program is about changing it for the next generation, chipping away at the systemic racism we have here and creating a place where there’s affinity and facility as well as prosperity for people of color.'"

 

From "Activists split over whether reparations should go to Black immigrants" (WaPo).

Mendez = Yvonne Mendez, who, as a second-generation immigrant, would be left out if slavery reparations are limited to the descendants of American slaves.  

RFK Jr. is — by far — the most approved-of political figure in the United States right now.

 According to a new Harvard Harris poll:

 

By "approved-of," I mean the gap between "favorable and unfavorable." He's up 21 points, and the next highest is Musk, with 9 Tim Scott with 10 Ramaswamy with 16. 

Lots more insights to be gained from that list. For example, Trump has — by far — the highest "very favorable" number (though his "very unfavorable" is much higher (and yet one point lower that of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris).

Sunrise — 5:42.

"During World War I, eating less was considered patriotic, a way of freeing up precious caloric resources for American troops fighting abroad."

"Later, doctors and psychologists came to the (wrong) conclusion that overweight people were lazy, and society adjudicated heaviness a 'disgrace,' in the words of Lulu Hunt Peters, an early diet-book author. Dieting organizations ruthlessly shamed people into losing weight. In the early ’50s, one such 'support' group held public weigh-ins and forced members who’d gained weight to stand in a 'pig line,' where they would sing a song that included the lyric 'We are plump little pigs who ate too much, fat, fat, fat.'"

Writes Olga Khazan in "People Just Want to Lose Weight/Americans go on yo-yo diets, but we also have a yo-yo relationship to dieting" (The Atlantic).

Hey, I wonder how Threads is doing?

Everyone was talking about it, and then, it seemed, nobody was talking about it.

Ah, I see USA Today is keeping up: "A flash in the pan? Just [2] weeks after launch, Instagram Threads app is already faltering."

Daily traffic was 49 million in Week 1 and 23.6 million at the beginning of Week 2. And the time spent on the app has fallen by an even greater percentage, from 21 minutes July 7th to 6 minutes on July 14th.

The author of that article, Jennifer Jolly, offers Threads some advice: "For Threads to wipe out Twitter, it must tackle news with the best content moderation the world’s ever seen, ban polarizing public figures who peddle dangerous misinformation, and make everyone who uses the app agree to some basic rules of engagement."

He may not be 100% right, but he's right in the sense that you ought to consider which of these 5 seemingly essential elements of life you really want in your own life.

This guy is revealing some big secrets about life quite succinctly and memorably. A TikTok video, so I'll put it after the jump. 

"The federal judge overseeing former President Donald J. Trump’s prosecution on charges of illegally retaining dozens of classified documents set a trial date on Friday for May 2024..."

"... taking a middle position between the government’s request to go to trial in December and Mr. Trump’s desire to push the proceeding until after the 2024 election.... [T]he date Judge Cannon chose to start the trial — May 20, 2024 — is one day before the primary in the key swing state of Georgia. But it falls after the bulk of the primary race contests will have already taken place."

The NYT reports.

From the comments over there: "She is sneaky, you have to give her that. By setting the date far beyond what the Justice Department wanted, but not so far to make it obvious, she is allowing Trump to run out the clock all the same."

"In rare move, Grassley releases unverified FBI source report alleging Biden involvement in bribe..."

ABC News reports.

Details of the unclassified document, known as an FD-1023, have emerged in recent months as Republicans search for any evidence that President Joe Biden engaged in the controversial overseas business dealings of his son Hunter Biden, which the president and his aides have repeatedly said he didn't do.... 

Democrats pounced on Grassley for publishing the FD-1023, accusing him of selectively highlighting uncorroborated information to hurt a political opponent.... 

Goodbye to Tony Bennett.

Link to WaPo obituary.

"When clicking on the 'comments' link, I braced myself for the onslaught of prohibitionists and finger-waggers..."

"... but was delighted to find that - so far - folks are just saying 'Yeah, day drinking is its own unique form of fun!' I agree, especially with the comparison to playing hooky...Cheers!"

A highly approved-of comment on the NYT article "Why Does Day Drinking Feel Different? A buzz in the sun can hit harder than dinnertime drinks. Experts shed light on the science."

I'm not quoting this because I approve. I thought "day drinking" seems different because in the daytime, you're supposed to be productive and so you shouldn't be undermining your mental and physical capacities. And also, someone who drinks in the day is presumably someone who drinks in the evening too. You're getting an early start — or you just never really stop — so it looks like you have a problem. But here's the NYT coming to help you feel good about it and not stigmatized. Why? I'm thinking the NYT has a lot of alcohol advertisers, and I'll bet it can see that articles on the happier side of alcohol consumption attract readers. Still, it's almost evil to prompt us to go ahead and begin our drinking earlier in the day. 

ADDED: The article isn't promoting day drinking. It goes through the science, showing why it can be more of a problem and how you can manage the various problems (like dehydration). And it begins with a sunny tone — "A poolside margarita, a frosty beer at a Memorial Day barbecue — summer, you could argue, is made for a cold drink on a hot day" — and it's the comments section that's grabbing onto the the positive elements. 

"A reëlected Trump would be a President subject to no constraints at all..."

"... having twice dodged congressional impeachment, and either beaten back the Justice Department and the courts or delayed so long that he could seek to use his regained executive powers to nullify the cases against him. Trump, in his ever-more-apocalyptic rhetoric surrounding his effort to retake the White House, has taken to calling his 2024 race 'the final battle.' I have increasingly come to believe that he is correct."

Writes Susan B. Glasser in "Finally, the Trump Case We’ve Been Waiting For/But, with 2024 looming, is it already too late?" (I don't need to tell you this is in The New Yorker. You can tell from the diaeresis in "reëlected.")

ADDED: I'd avoid the phrase "ever-more-apocalyptic." It's like "very unique." Is it the end of the world or isn't it? And isn't Glasser's rhetoric as "apocalyptic" as Trump's? "Trump would be a President subject to no constraints at all" — she can't literally believe that. Trump's use of "the final battle" isn't more extreme. 

Sunrise — 6:01, 6:03.

 

The times in the post title look late, I know, but you see where the sun is in those photos, quite far above the horizon. It's not that I was late for the sunrise, which happened at 5:36 today. I was out there and had run all the way to my vantage point. But here's how it looked at 5:33.

"[D]ogs walking on the main streets must have their DNA on file with the local government. People must carry dog 'passports'..."

"... to prove they complied. If dog poop is found, the city will be authorized to test it to uncover which dog did it. And the owner will be forced to pay for the cleanup.... While [the mayor's] dog poop crackdown is a temporary test, set to last until July 2025, it is sure to raise some eyebrows in France, where individual liberty is cherished above all else — it’s the first of three values listed in the country’s national motto. While the country is known for its bureaucracy, or 'paperasserie,' and for the number of rules and regulations on its books, those rules are not always respected...."

From "This mayor, tired of poop on his streets, is making dogs get passports" (WaPo). The city is Béziers, in southern France, and it's been around since 575 BCE.