Sunrise — 6:18, 6:23, 6:26.

"Many children were left with grandparents and great aunts and uncles while parents... worked, making escape even more challenging. In many cases... the very young and the very old died together."

From "A couple prayed for their 14-year-old son, last seen at their Lahaina home. Then they found him [dead]. There was no pattern to who died and no single path to safety amid the nation’s deadliest wildfire in more than a century" (WaPo).

Jordan Peterson and Vivek Ramaswami talk about attention span.

This is extraordinarily insightful:

Peterson observes that the idea that attention spans are shrinking fails to account for the widespread consumption of audiobooks and very long podcasts. Ramaswamy first responds by speculating that there's a kind of "low-level dyslexia," and most people are a little slower reading than listening, and that means they are really capable of absorbing more complex material than they're willing or able to read.

Ramaswamy immediately posits a second theory: There's a hunger for "human connectivity," and people want a "disintermediated relationship" that they get from hearing the voice of the person who is generating ideas. Peterson jumps on that: It's why unscripted podcasts work so well. Peterson says books can go deeper, but it's easier to deceive people with a book. You can "craft your lies." But with a podcast, you get spontaneity, tone, and demeanor. People experience Joe Rogan as "genuine." "It's the antithesis of the crafted Hillary-Clinton political-class message." It's why Donald Trump was so successful. 

I'm just summarizing (as the presence of Abraham Lincoln in my tags hints), and the conversation continues. I haven't set an end point. You'll see how long your attention span reaches.

"As recently as 2015 Nigel Short, then vice-president of the world chess federation Fide, claimed that 'men are hardwired to be better chess players than women'..."

"... adding: 'You have to gracefully accept that.' The English grandmaster went on to explain it was clear men and women’s brains are different because he helps his wife get the car out of the garage and she has more emotional intelligence than him.... Debbie Hayton, a trans woman who writes frequently for conservative outlets, wrote in UnHerd: 'It’s possible that evolution has left men with an innate advantage in chess.' Hayton backed that up with a quote from a (female) Harvard biologist about males having a large advantage over females in spatial ability. But... [a] 2020 study in Nature Scientific Reports... found no difference between male and female spatial abilities. Any differences previously found, a lot of research suggests, may be down to testing methodologies...."

Writes Arwa Mahdawi in "Excluding trans women in women’s chess makes you a pawn of the patriarchy/The world’s top chess federation is banning trans women from competing until a review is made – and the defenses are sexist assumptions and shaky science" (The Guardian).

ADDED: In the comments, after posting about sexual dimorphism, I wrote "I'd hypothesize that chess, a game invented and developed by men, reflects male strengths and predilections. Why wouldn't it?" I took that question to ChatGPT and didn't get a straight answer, but when I demanded a straight answer,  I got one. 

"Gantulga’s family are nomadic reindeer herders in Mongolia, near Lake Khuvsgul. They have more than 200 animals..."

"... and belong to the Dukha community, who take great care of their reindeer. Gantulga goes to school from 9am to 2pm, and has extra lessons in Mongolian, English and maths. In the summer, he accompanies the men and older boys to the taiga forest, to find greener pasture for the reindeer. They live in a tipi, which can be draughty, but at night the floor is covered with sheepskins to sleep on. There is a solar panel that powers his smartphone. When he grows up he would like to be a reindeer herder, but his father fears he may want to move to the city."

From "Spider-Man posters, wood fires, food rations and car-shaped beds – what children’s bedrooms look like around the world/From a trailer in Kentucky to a tipi in Mongolia to an off-grid farmhouse in Wales, the places where children sleep offer a fascinating glimpse into their wildly divergent lives" (The Guardian)(vivid photos at the link).

About that trailer in Kentucky:

Sunrise — 6:11, 6:12.

Excessive Trumpism.

I just noticed — writing the previous post — that I had the tag "Trumpless Trumpism" and "Trumpism without Trump." Neither had been used much, so it wasn't hard to go from 2 to 1.

"Trumpless Trumpism" won in the showdown of duplicative taggification. That tag started here, on March 18, 2021:

"I am mindful of the critics — and I’m one of them — that we can be doing more and better in myriad areas."

"I’m mindful that as governor, I can’t do it all. But I’m also mindful that the buck stops here. And I’m ultimately going to be held to account."

 Said Gavin Newsom, quoted in "Why San Francisco is make or break for Gavin Newsom/Newsom has increasingly been moonlighting as a quasi-city executive of his hometown and approaching its woes as a litmus test for his success in Sacramento." (Politico).

Gaze upon the mindfulness:

That's a screenshot from the photo at Politico. I reduced the color saturation (a lot) and reversed the cast from garishly hot to cool:

"I see it cropping up everywhere. In addition to 'HGTV-ification,' The Atlantic has covered the 'flu-ification of covid policy'...."

"Vox has lately published articles on the 'old man-ification' of television, the 'Easter egg-ification' of celebrity beefs, and the '"You’re doing it wrong"-ification'of TikTok influencers.... (The New Yorker has proved reticent on this particular kind of neologism, although, as far back as 2002, the magazine did refer to fears of 'le Big Mac-ification' of French life.) Pundits and politicos... [have] been indexing the 'Trump-ification' of just about everything since his candidacy in 2015. (Meanwhile, the rap dignitary Chuck D, of Public Enemy, attributed the groundswell of support for Trump to 'dumbass-ification.') During the past few years, the Washington Post has diagnosed the 'NRA-ification,' '"alternative facts’-ification,' 'hoax-ification,' and 'Hitler-ification' of the Trumpian right....Trump’s embattled rival Ron DeSantis likes to decry the 'woke-ification' of various institutions...."

Writes Lauren Michele Jackson in "The '-ification' of Everything/Novelty coinages are good at grabbing attention in the digital economy. What do they really have to say?" (The New Yorker).

"Who cares, in other words, whether or not Threads succeeds, when the existence of a new Twitter will do little to serve most peoples’ hunger for authentic communication?"

"Fortunately, the original small community ethos of the early Internet seems to be mounting a comeback in forms like podcasting, e-mail newsletters, Discord groups, and TalkNats.com-style discussion sites—all of which can offer a more homegrown and personal variety of online interaction. These efforts deserve our attention more than the spectacle of billion-dollar companies falling over themselves to force together as many people as possible. To make the online experience less hostile, we don’t need ever-more complicated algorithms deployed by ever-larger platforms. It’s enough to instead return to a conception of digital interaction that occurs on a much more human scale."

Writes Cal Newport in "We Don’t Need a New Twitter/It’s time to move beyond the flawed idea of a global conversation platform" (The New Yorker).

I don't know why he didn't put blogs in that set of things that have "the original small community ethos of the early Internet."

You want "human scale"? I'll give you human scale!

By the way, I strongly suspect that the real reason for saying "Who cares... whether or not Threads succeeds...?" is that it's apparent that Threads is not succeeding. 

"Of all the ways in which Trump broke the political model, a basic one was in the biography of a Presidential contender."

"Could anyone—at least anyone able to fund his own campaign—be President now? That idea, prevalent during the populist spring of 2016, has faded since. Fewer progressive outsiders have won national office than many on the left might have hoped, and the Republican Party has largely absorbed the MAGA movement, avoiding being displaced by it. The novice-candidate model hasn’t really been tested since 2016.... Watching Ramaswamy on the stump reminded me that Biden, who campaigned against Trump’s extremism in 2020 as a pragmatist and a steady hand, has not yet had to defend his investments in climate transformation and the Ukraine war, and made me wonder how effectively he would do so. For now, Ramaswamy’s rise is demonstrating that conservative populist energy hasn’t fully been tapped...."

 
Writes Benjamin Wallace-Wells in "In Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republicans Have Something New/The thirty-eight-year-old 'anti-woke' polemicist and political novice has become one of Trump’s main rivals" (The New Yorker).

"The document’s first paragraph, addressing Mr. Ramaswamy’s past support for inheritance taxes, draws a link between that policy position and his Hindu upbringing..."

"... as the son of Indian immigrants. 'Ramaswamy — a Hindu who grew up visiting relatives in India and was very much ingrained in India’s caste system — supports this as a mechanism to preserve a meritocracy in America and ensure everyone starts on a level playing field,' the document states...."

From "Ramaswamy’s Faith Singled Out in DeSantis Super PAC Memo/An opposition research memo suggests that Vivek Ramaswamy, who has been gaining on Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in some polls, 'was very much ingrained in India’s caste system'" (NYT).

Asked to comment on the reason for highlighting Mr. Ramaswamy’s religion and background, the super PAC’S chief executive, Chris Jankowski, said in a statement: “We are highlighting that his philosophy of government is a direct reflection of his life experience. When his parents moved here from India, they had an 85 percent inheritance tax. In fact, his support of the inheritance tax is connected to the argument he makes in his book against meritocracy.”

"I recall finding it a little jarring, back in 2016, to walk the corridors of the Republican convention in Cleveland and not see more than handful of Republicans I recognized from years past."

"That’s because, when you win that many primaries as a hostile outsider, you physically replace the long-serving delegates who made up the base of the party with the alienated neophytes who supported you. In other words, Trump was not suddenly in charge of the party as it existed the year before; he actually created an entirely different party, beholden only to him. So, for Trump, pledging loyalty to the party is indistinguishable from pledging loyalty to himself...."

Writes Matt Bai, in "Trump won’t profess loyalty to his party. Neither will most Americans" (WaPo).

Bai ends with this prediction: "The age of pop-up movements and celebrity takeovers in our politics is likely just beginning, I’m afraid. And the time for loyalty oaths — to any party — is rapidly coming to an end."

"The head of Maui’s emergency management agency... defended the decision not to activate the sirens, saying the outdoor alarms are used primarily for tsunamis..."

"... and would not have helped because people are trained to seek higher ground when they hear the siren.... None of the 80 warning sirens placed around Maui were activated in last week’s fires.... A county-run website on the siren describes it as an 'all-hazard siren system' to alert residents to natural disasters and other emergency situations, 'including tsunamis, hurricanes, dam breaches, flooding, wildfires, volcanic eruptions, terrorist threats, hazardous material incidents, and more.'"

From "Maui’s Emergency Management Chief Resigns After Questions About Fire Response/The chief, Herman Andaya, cited his health in stepping down. His agency’s decision not to sound emergency sirens as wildfires neared Lahaina had drawn scrutiny" (NYT).

This morning, it rained, so there are no photos of today's sunrise, but I have sunrise pictures from Sunday, the 13th...

... when we camped on the shore of Lake Superior. This is Horseshoe Harbor, at 6:38 EDT:

6:39:

6:44:

6:45:

About those rocks:

"If I had to guess, I would say that all this stuff that’s coming out slowly but surely about Biden is on purpose, and they want to get rid of him."

"I think he wants to run again, and I don’t think the Democrats think that he can win. I think they’re right, and I think they’re going to slowly but surely expose more of these very clear pieces of evidence of corruption."

Said Joe Rogan, quoted in "Joe Rogan claims Biden scandals being exposed ‘on purpose,’ Dems ‘want to get rid of him'" (NY Post).

Rogan noted that the “20 million dollars” of foreign money paid to the Bidens is “f—king bananas,” as is “the fact that this isn’t all over the New York Times and The Washington Post and mainstream news — that they’re not blaring it from the rooftops, because you know they would be if it was Trump.”