Sunrise — 7:23, 7:39.

"For more than 40 years, our nation’s military leaders have determined that a diverse Army officer corps is a national-security imperative..."

"... and that achieving that diversity requires limited consideration of race in selecting those who join the Army as cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point.... A lack of diversity in leadership can jeopardize the Army’s ability to win wars.... [D]ecades of unaddressed internal racial tension erupted during the Vietnam War...."

Wrote Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar, quoted in "Supreme Court Won’t Block Use of Race in West Point Admissions for Now/The court rejected an emergency request to temporarily bar the military academy from using race in admissions while a lower-court lawsuit proceeds" (NYT).

The recent Harvard and UNC cases did not determine the outcome. When it comes to the military, there is different potential to articulate a compelling government interest in race-based admissions.

Remember this passage from Grutter v. Bollinger (2003)(overruled in the Harvard and UNC case):

"We are eating predigested food...."

"To manufacture cheap, delicious food that is packaged for convenience, basic food crops such as corn, wheat and potatoes are dissembled into their molecular parts — starchy flours, protein isolates, fats and oils — or what manufacturers call 'slurries.' 'The bulk of what is extracted is starch slurry, a milky mixture of starch and water, but we also have extracted proteins and fibers,' according to a video explanation of the process from Starch Europe, part of the European Starch Industry Association. 'Roughly half of the starch slurry goes to produce starch-based sugars and other derivatives,' the video says. 'Those are created by hydrolysis, a process similar to human digestion.' Next, with the help of artificial colorings, flavorings and glue-like emulsifiers, those slurries are then heated, pounded, shaped or extruded into any food a manufacturer can dream up. Add in just the right ratio of sugar, salt and fat designed to tickle our taste buds, and an ultraprocessed food that’s nearly irresistible is born...."

From "You may be eating predigested food. Here’s why" (CNN).

Donald Trump, the motivational speaker.

Watch the video at Truth Social.

Is that a campaign ad or is he just trying to tell us how to run our life?

Also at Truth Social within the last day, there's this very cutting anti-Biden ad.

Truth Social is working out very well for Trump, I think. You have to intend to go there, but it's a sharp, clean environment, devoid of the clutter of Twitter ("X").

ADDED: Embedded Truth Social video removed, replaced by links. They did not play on my blog. If you click them, you get sent over to the Truth Social website. And they also caused my sidebar to relocate to the bottom of my webpage. So Truth Social is not working out very well for me. I'll link but not embed in the future. Do better.

"The grand perception of psychoanalysis, for the dramatist, is that all actions are performed FOR A REASON..."

"... and that one may reason backward from the action, however absurd or self-destructive, to a cause. The determination may be arbitrary, or indeed wrong, but it may be made. Further, that, for the dramatist, the process may be reversed, the cause postulated first, and its development to a conclusion graphed—at which point (in the tragedy only; and in the drama previously) the cause of the progression is clear." 

Writes David Mamet, in "Everywhere an Oink Oink: An Embittered, Dyspeptic, and Accurate Report of Forty Years in Hollywood" (commission-earned link).

I'm interested in the thought processes of psychoanalysts and dramatists, but that discussion of the study of causation made me think of the testimony of Abraham Wyner at the ongoing Mark Steyn trial. 

"During the visit, she noticed that her grandmother kept sending texts to her ex — that is, Ms. Woodard’s grandfather — and grew angry..."

"... when he didn’t reply. The thing is, her grandfather is dead. 'I’m like, "Mimi, you are going to be left 'on read' till your grave!"' Ms. Woodard told the crowd, using a term for a text not responded to. And yet, she recognized herself in that moment. 'Do you ever see your mom or your grandma doing something and you’re like, "that’s messed up"'— Ms. Woodard used a stronger word — 'but then you’re like, "I know I’ve got that inside of me"?'"

From "She’s Not Celibate — She’s ‘Boysober’/The comedian Hope Woodard is spreading the word about her yearlong break from sex and dating. One fan calls it 'this year’s hottest mental health craze'" (NYT)(free access link).

"A big part of the yearlong break from sex and romance is unlearning the unhealthy relationship patterns that often get passed down from generation to generation. 'Maybe we are one of the first generations of women where we don’t actually have to plug into a man for, like, energy and power and whatever,' Ms. Woodard said."

1. What do you think of the efficacy of 1-year breaks? If generations and generations have programmed a tendency into you, what are the chances you could "unlearn" it in one year?

2. What "generations of women" do you think she is referring to?

I suspect that Trump, on his own, is pleased that he inspires Biden to splutter dirty words.

I thought nothing of it when I saw — in Politico — that Biden, speaking in private, has called Trump a "sick fuck" and said "What a fucking asshole the guy is.” There is nothing the slightest bit surprising about this. I remember half a century ago, when people were surprised and censorious about Nixon's dirty words on the Watergate Tapes. But is there anyone sentient who didn't already know Biden says "fuck" in the White House?

But this morning I'm reading "Trump tells supporters 'Biden just called me a sick F-word!' in fundraising email" (NY Post). So Trump is making something out of it:

"[Dean] Phillips has accused the DNC of working to obstruct the presidential primary process by changing the Democratic primary schedule, refusing to hold debates..."

"... and preventing the engagement of delegates from New Hampshire. 'I don’t know how to better articulate these efforts than, yes, a threat to democracy by undermining it and suppressing it,' Phillips told The Post last month."

From "Wisconsin Supreme Court orders longshot Dem candidate Dean Phillips be added to primary ballot" (NY Post).

Here's the court's unanimous opinion. Excerpt:

At the Friday Night Café…

 … you can talk about whatever you want.

"Judge Tanya S. Chutkan said that she would set a new date for the proceeding in Federal District Court in Washington 'if and when' former President Donald J. Trump’s immunity claims are resolved."

Photo caption in "Judge Scraps Trial Date for Trump Election Subversion Case/Judge Tanya Chutkan removed the planned March 4 start for the trial from her calendar, formalizing a delay that had become increasingly unlikely in recent weeks. It remains unclear when the trial might start" (NYT).

ADDED: "The 'runt' of Trump cases now likely to be his first criminal trial/A trial about 2016 hush money will be the first criminal charges to test Trump in 2024" (WaPo).

"A teacher should never do your thinking for you. She should give you texts to read and guide you..."

"... along the path of making sense of them for yourself. She should introduce you to the books and essays of writers who disagree with one another and ask you to determine whose case is better. Many college professors don’t want to do that today. They don’t want to 'platform' a writer they think is wrong; they don’t want to participate in 'both sides-ism.' The same thing is true for the students who pound on the doors of lecture halls and pull fire alarms and throw garbage cans down hallways to protest the 45-minute speech of a visitor. They believe in sympathetic magic. They believe that words—even those spoken within a lecture hall—will damage them and their classmates. The truth is that they’re scared. They don’t think their ideas can outmatch those of the hated speaker...."

Writes Caitlin Flanagan, in "Colleges Are Lying to Their Students/They aren’t teaching them 'how to think'" (The Atlantic).

Here's the Wikipedia article "Sympathetic magic." Excerpt:

"Trans activists often cite low regret rates for gender transition, along with low figures for detransition. But those studies..."

"... which often rely on self-reported cases to gender clinics, likely understate the actual numbers. None of the seven detransitioners I interviewed, for instance, even considered reporting back to the gender clinics that prescribed them medication they now consider to have been a mistake.... Garcia-Ryan is gay, but as a boy, he said, 'it was much less threatening to my psyche to think that I was a straight girl born into the wrong body — that I had a medical condition that could be tended to.' When he visited a clinic at 15, the clinician immediately affirmed he was female.... 'You’re made to believe these slogans,' he said. 'Evidence-based, lifesaving care, safe and effective, medically necessary, the science is settled — and none of that is evidence based.'... Garcia-Ryan, 32, is now the board president of Therapy First.... 'When a professional affirms a gender identity for a younger person, what they are doing is implementing a psychological intervention that narrows a person’s sense of self and closes off their options for considering what’s possible for them,' Garcia-Ryan told me...."

Writes Pamela Paul, in "As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do" (NYT).

"While the allegations raised in the various motions are salacious and garnered the media attention they were designed to obtain, none provide this Court with any basis upon which to order the relief they seek."

Said Fani Willis in a new court filing, quoted in "Prosecutor in Trump Georgia Case Admits Relationship With Colleague/But the prosecutor, Fani T. Willis, said there wasn’t a relationship with Nathan Wade before she hired him and argued that it should not disqualify her" (NYT).

"Holy Week constitutes precisely the expression of a Christ away from the codes of male power."

"The Christ we love, before whom we prostrate ourselves and who is our example, does not look like an All Blacks rugby forward."

Said the columnist Chapu Apaolaza, quoted in "'Homoerotic Christ' on posters for Holy Week divides Spain/Artist defends painting used for Easter celebrations in Seville" (London Times).

From the artist, Salustiano García: "Those who see something dirty in the painting are only projecting their own internal dirt on to the image.... [They display] a lack of culture, of not knowing anything, of never having been in a museum or a church, because I haven’t invented any element that appears in the painting."

"To block the necessary amount of solar radiation, the shade would have to be about a million square miles, roughly the size of Argentina...."

"A shade that big would weigh at least 2.5 million tons — too heavy to launch into space, he said. So, the project would have to involve a series of smaller shades. They would not completely block the sun’s light but rather cast slightly diffused shade onto Earth.... Dr. Rozen said his team was ready to design a prototype shade of 100 square feet and is seeking between $10 million and $20 million to fund the demonstration. 'We can show the world, ‘Look, there is a working solution, take it, increase it to the necessary size,' he said.... 'I’m not saying this will be the solution, but I think everybody has to work toward every possible solution,' said Dr. Szapudi, the astronomer who proposed tethering a sunshade to an asteroid."

From "Could a Giant Parasol in Outer Space Help Solve the Climate Crisis? Interest in sun shields, once a fringe idea, has grown. Now, a team of scientists says it could launch a prototype within a few years" (NYT).

"Grocery prices have jumped by 25 percent over the past four years, outpacing overall inflation of 19 percent during the same period...."

WaPo reports... with predictable efforts to support Biden. 

Americans are finally getting a break from inflation, with prices for gasoline, used cars and health insurance all falling over the past year, relieving families and buoying President Biden’s 2024 reelection bid....

Stubbornly high grocery prices represent a critical drain on the finances of tens of millions of people and remain, along with housing, perhaps the most persistent economic challenge for the Biden administration as it tries to convince Americans the economy is back on solid footing....