Sunrise — 6:33, 6:40.

"There’s something poignant about watching a guy who used to delight in his Irish gift of gab be muzzled."

"In interviews when he was a senator and then vice president, Biden could easily give a 45-minute answer to the first question. Heaven help anyone who tried to nix the prolix pol back then. But now, when I watch him cut himself short, or get cut short by his staff, I get an image of a yellow Lab gamboling smack into an electric fence. When the president stops himself and says, 'Am I giving too long an answer?' or 'Maybe I’ll stop there,' or 'I’m going to get in real trouble,' he seems nervous that his handlers might yank his choke collar if he rattles on.... [H]is staff reinforces the impression of a fragile chief executive by overmanaging him and white-knuckling all his appearances. By publicly treating him as though he’s not in control of his faculties, by cutting him off mid-thought as though he’s faltering and needs caretaking, they play into the hands of Trumpsters....  But Biden needs to start looking like he’s in command. His staff is going to have to roll with him and take some risks and stop jerking the reins...."

 
Writes Maureen Dowd, in "Go With the Flow, Joe!" (NYT).

This is similar to something I said 5 days ago, here, after listening a speech that had been called "mumbling" and "rambling": "I don't see a problem. Biden ought to do more news conferences and show this level of engagement and competence. It's fine."

By the way, do you think Dowd is part of an effort to get Biden to bow out of the race? With his staff holding him back, he's neither here nor there. He's not impressing people enough to build the support he needs to defeat Trump, and he's also not risking making gigantic gaffes that will take him out. If he's let go, and he talks freely, he'll do one or the other. Dowd probably knows which, and maybe she's luring him out to set him up. 

"As her taxi approached Russell Brand’s home, Alice remembers the driver begging her not to go inside."

"Recognising the destination, he had started to ask questions. Alice admitted she was 16 and still in school. She says the driver replied that his daughter was the same age and entreated Alice: 'Please, I’m asking you not to go in there, you could be my little girl, and I would want someone to do this for her.' He offered to take her home without charge, but Alice insisted she was fine.... During a relationship that lasted for about three months when Brand was a BBC radio presenter, she says that he referred to her as 'the child'..."

From "Russell Brand accused of rape, sexual assaults and abuse new/Four women, including one who was just 16, make allegations after an investigation by The Sunday Times, The Times and Channel 4 Dispatches" (London Times). 

"[T]he people who really believe that the Biden family is corrupt are Republicans. Unsurprisingly, Democrats are much less convinced..."

"... that the president did something wrong, and independents are also pretty divided. Of course, it’s possible that more coverage of the allegations motivating the impeachment inquiry — and any concrete evidence that might get turned up along the way — could change people’s minds, or at least persuade some of the ones who are undecided."

 
From "What Americans Think Of The Biden Impeachment Inquiry/Most aren't convinced President Biden is implicated in his son's wrongdoing" (FiveThirtyEight).

Why would anyone be "convinced" at this point? 

The question whether you're convinced insures that the answers will reflect one's political position. I'd be interested in knowing whether people admit they don't know and maintain an openness to persuasion.

I think Biden supporters should be deeply troubled that 10% of Democrats are already convinced Hunter Biden "[f]unneled millions of dollars to his father in a long-running scheme to help Joe Biden profit off of his position."

But here's FiveThirtyEight stressing that "Most aren't convinced." 

"It is clear this is not about a handful of badly trained dogs - it is a pattern of behaviour and it cannot go on."

Said UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, quoted in "American bully XLs to be banned as dog attack victim named" (BBC).

And Tory peer secretary Lord Baker... [said t]he American bully XL was "born to be aggressive and bred to be aggressive," he said, adding they had "no place in the large dog-loving public of the country".

Here's a Guardian article from last month, "Perfect pets or dangerous dogs? The sudden, surprising rise of American bully XLs/Of the 10 fatal dog attacks in the UK last year, more than half involved a bully XL. But plenty of British owners love the breed. Should it be better regulated – or outright banned?":

"What utter nonsense. If this many men were thinking about the Roman Empire every day, they would not be voting for Republicans..."

"... who are working hard to cause the collapse of the American Empire. They're thinking about Rome as depicted in Marvel movies and other pop culture fluff. They think the NLF [sic] are gladiators and so are they as they watch from their couches or tailgates. They don't know beans about the Roman Empire because that would require reading and studying and learning to look at the world with a contextual perspective. The internet makes smart people smarter and dumb people dumber. And dumber. And dumber."

That's the top-rated comment — from someone named Paula — on the NYT article, "Are Men Obsessed With the Roman Empire? Yes, Say Men. Women are asking the men in their lives how often they think about ancient Rome. Their responses, posted online, can be startling in their frequency."

This post continues a discussion begun yesterday, about a trend on TikTok of women asking men how often they think about the Roman Empire and expressing amazement at the answer.

"That’s up to them if they want to do impeachment or impeachment inquiry. I have no idea whether they will or not, we do have a lot of other things. But it’s quite important, and they did it to me."

Said Trump, quoted in "Trump keeps distance from impeachment inquiry while assailing Biden/The former president has shown more interest in lobbying to expunge his own impeachments" (WaPo).

I like the elegance of his distancing: "But it’s quite important, and they did it to me."

They did it to me.... 

Without choosing one or the other, Trump invokes 2 of the greatest concepts in the history of human ethics: The Golden Rule and Tit For Tat.

Sunrise — 6:38, 6:39.

"Kim Davis is ordered to pay $100,000 to same-sex couple she denied marriage license."

NPR reports.

I'm blogging this because I blogged so much about Kim Davis back in 2015. Click on the Kim Davis tag to see what I said back then. I'll flag this one as the most helpful.

Yesterday's TikTok trend: Women have no idea how often men think about the Roman Empire.

I was inundated — as I scrolled through what TikTok selected for me — with clips of women asking their men how often they think about the Roman Empire. It was as if TikTok had built an aqueduct to deliver these things. 

And now this morning I'm seeing mainstream news covering the trend.

WaPo has "How often do men think about ancient Rome? Quite frequently, it seems":

"Your blatant efforts achieved your goal as the U.S. Attorney in Delaware today filed gun charges against our client..."

"... charges that are unprecedented when not part of some other criminal conduct and have been found unconstitutional by a federal court of appeals — and who reversed his earlier decision that such charges were not warranted. Your improper interference now affecting a federal prosecutor is a much greater threat to society than the 11 days that Mr. Biden possessed an unloaded gun."

Wrote Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden's lawyer, quoted in "Hunter Biden’s lawyer accuses House Republicans of ‘congressional manipulation’/The first son’s lawyer said House Republicans’ 'improper interference' is more dangerous than Hunter Biden’s prior possession of a gun" (Politico).

"I can’t describe the feeling it gives you. It reminded me of when other cultures say, 'Don’t take my picture because it is taking away your soul.'"

Said Tim Burton, quoted in "Tim Burton hits out at ‘disturbing’ AI, likens it to a robot ‘taking’ your soul" (CNN). 

He was referring to a Buzzfeed article that used AI to rework Disney movies — “Frozen,” “The Lion King,” “Sleeping Beauty,” and “The Little Mermaid” — into Tim Burton movies.

"It takes something from your soul or psyche; that is very disturbing, especially if it has to do with you. It’s like a robot taking your humanity, your soul."

Presumably, if a human being worked up the same idea — in Mad Magazine, for example — it wouldn't be disturbing. It would be the grand old tradition of satire and parody. But it's just too easy for AI to run with ideas like this and produce a fully realized image.

Here's the Buzzfeed article. Actually, the images are not very good. They get boring very fast. Maybe it hurts Burton's feelings that his style is banal. Why does he feel AI is stealing his "soul"? If he's an artist, he should have way more soul than anything that's reflected in these pictures, which seems to be an idiotic attachment to big-eyed girls.

"I think it’s very unlikely. What, what did I do wrong? I didn’t do anything wrong. You mean because I challenge an election, they want to put me in jail."

Said Donald Trump, quoted in "Trump says it's 'very unlikely' he'd pardon himself if elected/In an interview with NBC's 'Meet the Press' former President Donald Trump said that in his final days in office, he told people, 'The last thing I’d ever do is give myself a pardon'" (NBC News).

"People said, 'Would you like to pardon yourself?' I had a couple of attorneys that said, 'You can do it if you want.'... I had some people that said, 'It would look bad if you do it, because I think it would look terrible.'... Let me just tell you. I said, 'The last thing I’d ever do is give myself a pardon.'... I could have had a pardon done that would have saved me all of these lawyers and all of this — these fake charges, these Biden indictments."

Very unlikely ≠ impossible.

The last thing ≠ a thing that will never happen.

Of course, Trump is reserving the option of pardoning himself. But for now, running for office — for the position that will be necessary if he is ever to pardon himself — he asserts his innocence. 

"At first glance, the book is just 26 pages of beautiful women with impressive bone structure, surrounded by or covered in flowers. But look closer..."

"... and you’ll see that some don’t have the right number of fingers, or the fingers are elongated to create spooky alien hands. The $7.95 paperback... available on Amazon, has all the hallmarks of being generated by artificial intelligence. It’s self-published by an unknown author with no internet history.... The images all have some kind of distortion or oddity that is typically associated with AI, such as incorrect body proportions and at least one mix-up between a flower and a breast."

 
From "Bizarre AI-generated products are in stores. Here’s how to avoid them. AI-generated coloring books, plant guides and home goods are filling online stores as sellers try to make a quick buck" (WaPo).

So this article will be useful until AI stops making stupid mistakes like wrong number of fingers or spookily elongated hands. What's "typically associated with AI" is transitory, and AI is getting better all the time.

It's funny to worry about protecting people who buy adult coloring books. You can see at the Amazon page what the pictures look like. If you want to color something like that, why would you care how the images were generated? 

But maybe WaPo will help us with more complicated consumer decisions — like genre novels and inspiring memoirs and self-help books. Let's see...

Sunrise — 6:40.

Monarch.

Photo by Meade: