Sunrise — 4:44, 5:04.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments. And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

Madison at 5:09 a.m.

"It’s playground stuff," the juror said. There is "shunning" of a juror going on in deliberations, and "The experience I’ve had for the day and a half here I don’t think this is fair and just."

I'm reading "Weinstein Juror Complains to Judge About ‘Playground Stuff’ by Others/A member of the jury at Harvey Weinstein’s Manhattan retrial on sex crime charges said that another had become the subject of a 'bit of a shunning' during deliberations" (NYT).

Arthur L. Aidala, one of the defense lawyers, described the juror, who works in information technology at a bank, as “meek.” Mr. Aidala called the man a “25-year-old kid who lives with his grandmother” and “a computer kid” and he argued that the man’s concerns should be examined further before being brushed aside.... 

Justice Farber appeared unmoved and denied the defense motion, noting that the man had never said any of the jurors were being threatened. The juror’s statements were vague, the judge said, adding that perhaps “his youth makes him uncomfortable to experiencing conflict.”

Maybe these young people today aren't up to debating about different opinions, but is the problem with this one juror who came forward to report his discomfort, or is it with the jurors who are, supposedly, doing the shunning? Maybe they don't want to hear what they don't agree with. What if the new generation is losing the capacity to serve on a jury?!

"Hundreds of intrepid people would organize themselves into themed gangs and set out in homemade crafts of dubious seaworthiness..."

"... through Jamaica Bay to compete, 'American Gladiators'-style, with various props and pseudo-weapons. The 'boats' disintegrated once the shenanigans were over.... Mr. McNeill’s most ambitious project was... a 500-mile trip along the Ganges River... called... 'The Swimming Cities of the Ocean of Blood.' Mr. McNeill and a group of collaborators built five metal pontoon boats in Brooklyn — three of them powered by motorcycles, one by sail and oars, and another by paddle wheel — which he would captain. The boats were designed to lock together for camping on the water.... It was an arduous monthslong trip. Marauding monkeys attacked their camp..... Mr. McNeill’s godfather was the author William S. Burroughs, with whom the elder Mr. McNeill had collaborated on a graphic novel. Mr. Burroughs baptized Orien with a dab of vodka from his afternoon drink...."

From "Orien McNeill, Artist Who Made Mischief on the Water, Dies at 45/He was the pied piper of a loose community of DIY artists homesteading on New York City’s waterways, which he used as his canvas and stage" (NYT)(free-access link, so you can see the photos).

McNeill died on May 15 on his 52-foot-long ferryboat, and we are not told the cause of death.

"I know for some people, a joke can be a cure and awaken good feelings, while for others, it can be a trigger and bring bad feelings."

"But I think it’s very unjust and even arrogant that someone’s optional pain could serve as a justification to impede the smile of others."

Said the Brazilian comedian, Leo Lins, quoted in "Brazilian comedian sentenced to 8 years in prison for ‘bigoted’ jokes/The ruling against comedian Leo Lins for jokes told in 2022 is shaping up as the next front in Brazil’s escalating struggle over freedom of expression" (WaP0).

From the judge who imposed that 8-year sentence: "Freedom of expression is not absolute nor unlimited.... When there is a confrontation between the fundamental precept of liberty of expression and the principles of human dignity and judicial equality, the latter should win out."

"I just think it's a huge mistake for the world's wealthiest man... to be at, at, at this war with the world's most powerful man who I think is doing more to save the country than anybody — I mean, I'm 40 years old — anybody in my lifetime."

"You think about it, it's a guy who not even a year ago, nearly took a bullet in the process of campaigning, went back on the horse the next day. And if you look — obviously I'm biased — but you look at what we've done on the border, you look at what we've done with trade — fighting back against a generation of theft of the American dream, which is what the president's trade policies are starting to do. I just think you've got to have some respect for him and say, look, yeah, we don't have to agree on every issue I'm talking about. If you're Elon Musk, you don't have to agree with this on every issue. But is this war actually in the interest of the country? I don't think so."

Said JD Vance, talking to Theo Von. Audio and transcript here, at Podscribe. YouTube here.

Vance continues:

"Eisenhower said that politics is like the road, the left, the right is the gutter, and the center is drivable."

"And it's exactly the way it is in politics. You have to understand that there's a sweet spot. You know, like the teaching in golf, hit the sweet spot, or in tennis to hit the sweet spot. All this, there's a sweet spot to find exactly so you can get a deal made... It's not exactly your way.... I wanted to wipe out, you know, the deficit. And I was not able to do that with all these Democrats around it. They, they love to spend money. So, so, so I was, I was stuck with it. So, but the fact of them is we could improve the situation and I was able to work together with the Democrats on environmental issues and infrastructure issues... education and all of this stuff. And we, we, we did really fine and had a great time up there being governor of the state of California.... You have to face reality. The trick is just to be, to not hate the other side because they think differently. It's just kind of like figuring out how can we work together and how can we do something that's really good for the people...."

Said Arnold Schwarzenegger, on Theo Von's podcast the other day.

Understated sunrise without the sun.

We were there for this at 5:16:

Later, I continued my practice of sitting in the front-yard and reading an entire book. Sample page:

I showed that photo of the page to my son John, who said, "When I was a kid I loved that kind of understated humor" and sent me Salvador Dali's "Fried Egg on the Plate without the Plate":

Understated humor... and yet when the sun does something like that sunny-side-up egg, I consider it one of the most extravagant sunrises of the year. Like this, from last May:

Feel free to understate or overstate whatever you like in the comments.

And consider supporting this blog by purchasing a readable-in-one-sitting book by Edward Gorey using my Amazon Associates link. The book containing the threatened deviled egg is "The Betrayed Confidence."

"I divorced him 10 times the first year of our marriage, getting a lawyer and everything and 13 times the second year."

"He’d plead literally on his hands knees, 'Please forgive me, I don’t know why I did it, give me another chance.'"

Said Mara Corday, about Richard Long, quoted in "Mara Corday, Starlet of Monster Movies and Magazines, Dies at 95/She appeared in Playboy and sci-fi films in the 1950s. Later, in Clint Eastwood’s 'Sudden Impact,' she was a hostage until he uttered five famous words" (NYT).

Wow! I love this poster:

And go ahead, make my day:

"Copulative sounds more exciting! (Don't say 'copulative sounds more excitingly.')"

Said I, in a discussion of copulative verbs inspired by the NYT headline "People Around President Trump Are Acting Very Strangely."

Read the full discussion, at Grok.

"Errol Musk, the father of Elon, has described the feud between his son and Donald Trump as 'over the top,' likening it to a clash between 'gorillas' fighting for dominance."

"Musk, 79, advised his 'alpha' son, 59, to accept that the president was the more dominant of the two and would 'win this round.' 'In any successful group of animals, whether gorillas, elephants or human beings, the dominant males will always fight for dominance,' Musk said, predicting that an eruption of bitter exchanges between two of the world’s most powerful men 'would now fizzle out.' Musk added: 'The problem you get with really good quality people is that the men all think they should be the general. They will have to sort it out and because Trump is the one who was elected, Elon is going to have to accept he is not going to be the general.... Trump isn’t vengeful. He will win this round with Elon and not hold it against him. A big person can forgive easily, only small people can’t. Things have gone over the top, but this is the situation when alphas fight it out. I’ve told Elon he has said his part, but now he must allow things to calm down — and I hope he will.'"

The London Times reports.

ADDED: Remember this:

"What craft is in playwriting is where in the end someone stands and says, Oh my God, it was in front of me the whole time!'"

"Everything that I thought — this doesn't make sense, this doesn't make sense — ah, now it makes sense!... That's what Aristotle said. He wrote the book called The Poetics a little while ago. He said, the ending has gotta be surprising and inevitable.... So if we know that, as dramatists, it's no different than a joke. The ending's gotta be surprising — oh, aha! — and inevitable.... That's why we laugh.... Because it re-convinces us, happily, that we really aren't that fucking smart.... The joke and the good play frees us from our self-absorption. I'm so smart or why am I not doing better? Or someone's trying to fuck me.... I'm too lazy. I'm too this and that.... And da, da da da da. That's what we do on our stupid minds all day long. So a joke frees us from that. Yeah."

Said David Mamet, when he was talking with Bill Maher the other day.

I thought about that discussion when I clicked on The New York Times and got a glimpse of the play written by Donald Trump and Elon Musk:

 

We're in the audience, and it's the this doesn't make sense phase of the play, but I trust that the end will come and we'll be all "Now it makes sense!" We'll get it later and laugh and be re-convinced, happily, that we really aren't that smart.

Of course, I'm thinking I'm smart and can predict the end, but if the geniuses are geniuses, I'll be surprised, even as I recognize that where we ended up was inevitable.

"[H]e was returning home from school when he realized that a car was following him. He recalled that a well-dressed man... emerged from the vehicle..."

"... and asked him for his name. Having been instructed by his mother not to speak to strangers, Mr. Staiola did not respond. Mr. Staiola said [the man, Vittorio De Sica,] then followed him home, where his parents immediately recognized the film eminence but refused to allow their son to appear in his movie. Later, Mr. Staiola recounted, an uncle took him back to audition before De Sica. Still determined to cast Mr. Staiola as Bruno, De Sica returned to his parents, Mr. Staiola said, and offered the extravagant sum of 300,000 lire for two months’ work. At that point, Mr. Staiola said, his father turned to him with a smile and declared: 'If you don’t go to work tomorrow, I’ll kill you.'"

From "Enzo Staiola, child actor at heart of ‘Bicycle Thieves,’ dies at 85/He was 8 years old, with no acting experience, when director Vittorio De Sica cast him in the 1948 film that epitomized Italian neorealism" (WaPo)(free-access link).

ADDED: My son John wrote about "The Bicycle Thieves," with an update about Staiola's death, at his "101 Years of Movies" blog, here. It was his second favorite movie of the year 1948. (First was "Unfaithfully Yours," a movie I quoted a few years ago, here.)

Sunrise — 5:19, 5:23, 5:24, 5:26.

The color is unusual. I hope you like it, you, out there, not needing to breathe it. The air quality was officially rated unhealthy. Canadian smoke. We've got their geese and we've got their smoke. Have mercy on us, Canada. 

Talk about whatever you like in the comments. And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

"Elon was 'wearing thin,' I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!"

Writes Trump, at Truth Social.

Meanwhile, at X, Elon is posting about Trump more than I'm keeping up with.

Everyone was talking about how close they were — too close! — and now they're big enemies.

Are you watching these 2 drama queens? If so, carry on in the comments. I'm averting my eyes.

"The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously ruled in favor of a straight woman who twice lost positions to gay workers..."

"... saying an appeals court had been wrong to require her to meet a heightened burden in seeking to prove workplace discrimination because she was a member of a majority group."

The NYT reports.

The standards for proving workplace discrimination under a federal civil rights law, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote for the court, “does not vary based on whether or not the plaintiff is a member of a majority group.”...

The text of the law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, does not draw distinctions based on whether the person claiming discrimination is a member of a majority group. But some courts have required plaintiffs from majority groups to prove an additional element if they lack direct evidence of discrimination: “background circumstances that support the suspicion that the defendant is that unusual employer who discriminates against the majority.”

It's not that unusual!

I've been terrible about checking the spam filter lately.

I just released a lot of comments that had gotten caught there in the last few weeks. My apologies! I need to remember to check that place.

"Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation and proclamations."

Said Joe Biden, quoted in "Trump Orders Investigation of Biden and His Aides/The executive order is the latest effort by President Trump to stoke outlandish conspiracy theories about his predecessor and question the legality of his actions in office" (NYT).

Is there video of Joe Biden saying that on his own, perhaps sitting with a serious journalist who is permitted to probe with questions about specific actions taken under his name?

Oh, no! I see we're told it was "a statement"! His denial that things were done by others using his name is another thing that might have been done by others using his name!

Does that make me a conspiracy theorist — an outlandish conspiracy theorist — in the eyes of the New York Times?

I'm suspicious of Biden's denial, but that doesn't mean I support the new President investigating the previous President. But that's what Biden did to Trump. Or was that really Biden? I understand Trump's motive of revenge, but I wish he'd concentrate on achieving great things, not raking over the wrongs of the past. And yet I rankle at the accusation that one is a conspiracy theorist — an outlandish conspiracy theorist! — to believe that there were these wrongs in the past. 

In an executive order, Mr. Trump put the power and resources of the federal government to work examining whether some of Mr. Biden’s presidential actions were legally invalid because his aides had enacted those policies without his knowledge. The executive order came after Mr. Trump shared a social media post over the weekend that claimed Mr. Biden had been “executed in 2020” and replaced by a robotic clone, following a pattern of suggestions by the president and his allies that Mr. Biden was a mentally incapacitated puppet of his aides....

Some outlandish things are not outlandish, and some outlandish things are humor. Should a President use humor? Not to confuse people, but he doesn't need to eschew humor for the sake of those who are willfully blind to humor. In this case, the "robotic clone" expresses a justified doubt that the entity called Joe Biden was making his own decisions and exercising the power entrusted to him by the people.

By the way, even if we assume Biden said those words quoted in the post title and let's even add the assumption that he said them in all sincerity, the question remains: How could he know what decisions were made during his presidency? He says he "made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation and proclamations." Which ones? All of them? Sit him down for a serious interview with someone who will ask him about particular decisions and see if he recognizes them! This is the man who asserted that he "beat Medicare." 

"Florian Willet, a euthanasia advocate who was detained by Swiss authorities last year after being present when an American woman ended her life using a chamber-like device, has died."

"Mr. Willet’s death was reported in an obituary posted on the website of The Last Resort, his assisted dying group, written by Philip Nitschke, the inventor of the device, known as a Sarco capsule. Mr. Nitschke said in an email that Mr. Willet had died by assisted suicide, but further details about his death remained unclear.... Mr. Willet, who was 47, according to the obituary, was the only person with the American woman when she died using the Sarco device in a remote forest in Switzerland in September... Mr. Willet was released from pretrial detention in December, after which 'he was a changed man,' Mr. Nitschke wrote. 'Gone was his warm smile and self-confidence. In its place was a man who was deeply traumatized by the experience of incarceration and the wrongful accusation of strangulation.'..."

From "Euthanasia Advocate Who Assisted in Woman’s Suicide Dies in Germany/Dr. Florian Willet had been under investigation in Switzerland after being present when an American woman died using a so-called suicide pod" (NYT).

"Central to the questions around the woman’s death is the use of the Sarco capsule. The device, which can be transported to a location of a user’s choosing, is an airtight pod with a window. Inside is a button that initiates the process of replacing life-giving oxygen with nitrogen, killing the person inside within minutes.... 'In the final months of his life, Dr. Florian Willet shouldered more than any man should,' Mr. Nitschke wrote. 'He knew that he did nothing illegal or wrong, but his belief in the rule of law in Switzerland was in tatters.'"

Stay and fight, if you believe in your cause. And yet, what if the cause is the power to push the button on the escape pod when troubles abound? 

Redstarts and that Wobbling Rock.

Rain nixed the sunrise run today, but the weather was lovely when the time came for what I call The Second Walk, and I encountered 2 very tiny, very active birds along the woodland path. 

The "Visual Intelligence" button on my phone informed me that they were redstarts. Redstarts! Never heard of them. And I say "them" because they're both there, male and female. The female is hard to see, but as The Beatles observed long ago, that means she's good looking.

I got a second outing, to the front yard, which is heavily shaded now. I sat on the bench and read a book — read it 3 times. Almost understood it.

Write about anything you want in the comments. Did you get outside 2 or 3 times? Did you read any books cover to cover, multiple times? 

"I’m watching your show, and I’m watching your butt sticking out there.... What is going on here? This is crazy."

Arnold Schwarzenegger jokes about seeing his son Patrick naked on screen in ‘THE WHITE LOTUS’:

“I’m watching your show, and I’m watching your butt sticking out there. And all of a sudden, I see the weenie. What is going on here? This is crazy.”

pic.twitter.com/okdNsYx5PE

— Film Updates (@FilmUpdates) June 3, 2025

"I think most men are gay in DC — either out or closeted depending on whether they’re Democrats or Republicans."

"I want to marry someone who allows me to protect feminine energy in a world that is forcing me to be a girl boss because they keep sending Steve to prison. Perhaps I have…"

Said Natalie Winters, quoted by Katy Balls in The London Times, "My night out with Trump’s young Maga crowd in Washington."

"Steve" = Steve Bannon. Winters works as a White House correspondent for Steve Bannon’s "War Room."

"What is the social scene like in Maga term two? '‘I think there is more of a diversity of ways that groups enter this movement, so you get a broader… For instance, Maha — it’s more the trad wife, pro-natalist people who are really into that. It all mixes. It’s a bigger tent,' says Winters. There is also a bunch of tech bros in town, but to the disappointment of some in the Maga coalition and some of the young Republicans looking for husbands, they rarely come out...."

Are women today thinking about themselves in terms of "feminine energy"?

If you're trying to understand the mindset of young women as they fail to step up and solve the problem of worldwide population collapse.

Here's Miley Cyrus, from an interview in the NYT:

I was talking to my stepdad, and he said, “Why are you the only celebrity without a makeup line?” And I said, “’Cause I’m not passionate about it.” And he said, “That’s the right answer.” I feel that way about motherhood. It’s just never been something that I’ve been overly passionate about. It’s a lot of responsibility and devotion and energy, and if you’re not passionate about that, I don’t know how you do sleepless nights and 18 years of what my mom dealt with. And when I say 18 years, I mean 33, ’cause I’m still a baby. So I’ve never felt the burn, you know? And I think for me, the burn is everything.

For any given individual, it's an individual decision... unless you take individuality away.

"Winter’s short days and long nights aided my first attempts at becoming nocturnal. My husband bundled up and came with me on night walks."

"Friends gathered for an evening snowshoe. As the globe turned toward spring, though, the sun’s rays became stronger and the days stretched on. I stayed in.... But I grew restless and started heading out for night hikes.... A few weeks in, I was running along Lake Ontario when I stopped to watch the sun dip below the horizon. I became obsessed with that transition, stopping to watch it whenever I could. It slowed me down enough that I began noticing how a day ends in stages... 'civil twilight'... 'nautical twilight'... '[a]stronomical twilight'.... The sun wasn’t setting.... I was the one rotating away, a fleck on the back of an enormous spinning globe. Once I sorted out my relationship with the universe, my perspective changed. The fading light made me feel small and out of control — which was exactly why I loved it...."

Writes Claire Cameron, in "Skin Cancer Made Me Nocturnal. It Was Illuminating. How the earth’s rotation taught me to find peace in the face of death" (NYT).

I like the way this essay never mentions sunblock, as if slathering enough lotion all over — and over and over — could give a sun-vulnerable person the power to cavort in blazing full sun like a model in a beach vacation ad. 

The writer — whose father died of melanoma when he was 42  — is doing what I do and avoiding the sun. She's doing sunsets. I do sunrises. It's the same idea. I also do a second walk most days. I simply find heavy shade. That doesn't work when the leaves are down, but that's when it's cold and there are layers of clothing.

The spiritual dimension of dusk and darkness is there for anyone to dip into, but it is different when you feel driven into it by a very real threat of death from skin cancer. 

"[Geert] Wilders’s party — which has advocated banning the Quran, closing Islamic schools and entirely halting the acceptance of asylum seekers..."

"... won the largest number of seats in November 2023 elections, sending shock waves through the Dutch political system. Mr. Wilders was able to form a government with three other right-wing parties... after more than six months of wrangling.... Mr. Wilders had aimed to bring the 'strictest migration policy ever' to the Netherlands, something his governing partners had said they agreed with. In May 2024, the four parties reached a deal that included 'the strictest asylum admission policy and the most comprehensive migration control package ever.' But Mr. Wilders said that implementation was not going quickly enough. Last week he said he wanted to add 10 more proposals... includ[ing] calls for a complete halt to asylum, a temporary stop to family reunions for asylum seekers who had been granted refugee status and the return of all Syrians who had applied for asylum or were in the Netherlands on temporary visas. The leaders of the other coalition parties said that while they did not oppose Mr. Wilders’s plans, they wanted him to propose them in the House of Representatives. That would have taken longer and would not have guaranteed implementation...."

From "Dutch Government Collapses Over Migration Dispute/The populist Geert Wilders withdrew his right-wing party from the ruling coalition, saying partners were stalling plans for the Netherlands’ 'strictest migration policy ever'" (NYT).

About that proposal to ban the Quran — as reported in January 2024, after the election and before the formation of the coalition — "Dutch anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders has withdrawn a 2018 proposal to ban mosques and the Quran" (Independent). The proposal denounced Islam as a "violent, totalitarian ideology."

"I love this style of clue, where even if you don't know the exact trivia (I've never heard of the band or the song) you can puzzle it out based on the context."

Writes Malika, at Rex Parker Does the NY Times Crossword Puzzle.

Here's the clue: "Girl in Jefferson Airplane's 'White Rabbit.'"

One day everything new will be old, and one day everything will be forgotten. 

Sunrise — 5:23, 5:48.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments. And please support the Althouse blog by doing your Amazon shopping going in through the Althouse Amazon link.

"The Justice Department... signaled that it was reviewing claims of discrimination against white men at The Harvard Law Review..."

"... and accused the renowned publication of destroying evidence in an open investigation. The administration demanded that Harvard 'cease and desist' from interfering. In a series of letters that have not been previously reported, the government also disclosed that it had a 'cooperating witness' inside the student-run journal. That witness now works in the White House under Stephen Miller, the architect of the administration’s domestic policy agenda, Trump officials confirmed.... Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, praised Mr. Wasserman as a whistle-blower and encouraged more students to speak out. 'Harvard is violating federal law with its discrimination, and a student was brave enough to call them out on this,' Mr. Fields said....."

From "A Stephen Miller Staffer and Tough Talk: Inside Trump’s Latest Attack on Harvard/The Justice Department opened an investigation into the student-run Harvard Law Review. The startling accusations show how the Trump administration is wielding power in pursuit of its political agenda" (NYT)(free-access link).

The Times article links to this Free Beacon article, "Exclusive: Internal Documents Reveal Pervasive Pattern of Racial Discrimination at Harvard Law Review." Excerpt:

"... Yarvin proposes that nations should eventually be broken up into a 'patchwork' of statelets, like Singapore or Dubai, each with its own sovereign ruler."

"The eternal political problems of legitimacy, accountability, and succession would be solved by a secret board with the power to select and recall the otherwise all-powerful C.E.O. of each sovereign corporation, or SovCorp. (How the board itself would be selected is unclear, but Yarvin has suggested that airline pilots—'a fraternity of intelligent, practical, and careful people who are already trusted on a regular basis with the lives of others. What’s not to like?'—could manage the transition between regimes.) To prevent a C.E.O. from staging a military coup, the board members would have access to cryptographic keys that would allow them to disarm all government weapons, from nuclear missiles down to small arms, with the push of a button.

I'm reading this crazy article in The New Yorker, "Curtis Yarvin’s Plot Against America/The reactionary blogger’s call for a monarch to rule the country once seemed like a joke. Now the right is ready to bend the knee" by Ava Kofman.

I can't believe I need to take this guy seriously enough to worry about him, but The New Yorker wants me to feel that I do. The part about the pilots cracked me up. It's a joke, right?!

Adding tags to this post, I see I've written about Yarvin before. Did I take him seriously or was he even funnier last time? I'll publish this post, click on the tag, then update.

ADDED: The one old post — here, last January — is about a NYT interview with him. So his visibility to me has solely been a consequence of elite liberal media telling me to worry about him. The NYT interview is "Curtis Yarvin Says Democracy Is Done. Powerful Conservatives Are Listening." But it wasn't the conservatives who elevated him to the point where I noticed him. It was liberal media asserting that he's important to conservatives. Is he?! 

"[P]robably the most alarming single state in the country for Democrats is looking at the Republican gains all along the border in south Texas."

"And the county that jumps out to me, there is Starr County. Starr County is the county that has moved the most in the entire country from 2012 to 2024. Hmm. This is a county that Barack Obama won overwhelmingly in 2012, and that Donald Trump won comfortably in 2024..... It's moved continuously in the Republican direction, and the sum of that movement is 89 percentage points. And what's interesting is Starr County isn't just this county that has moved the most, it also is the most predominantly Latino county in America. And it's not just shifting away from the Democratic party, it's stampeding away from the Democratic party. And while Starr County is this one small county in the Texas border, what you see is that same type of movement in counties with broad Latino populations, whether you're talking about the Bronx in New York City, Queens, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, places with diverse populations have moved steadily to the right, even in a lot of them, where Democrats are still winning, they're winning by less and by a lot less. I mean, to use like a fancy political science term, we're talking about racial depolarization.... For, for a long time, one of the most important markers of how a person was going to vote in America was what race are you?"

From today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast. Audio and transcript here (at Podscribe).

The guest is Shane Goldmacher, who wrote the NYT article "Six Months Later, Democrats Are Still Searching for the Path Forward" that we were talking about on May 27th, here.

"Exotic" mushrooms “just taste more interesting" — "They tasted good and I didn’t get sick."

Said Erin Patterson, the Australian woman accused of murdering three relatives by serving them lunch laced with deadly mushrooms, quoted in "Australia mushroom trial: Erin Patterson ‘drawn to exotic varieties’/Woman accused of murdering three relatives by serving them death cap mushrooms, says she is adept at foraging and can identify different species" (London Times).

I know not to eat them, and I don't have a decent sense of taste, so it's not for me to say... but just supposing you ate one, unwisely — don't do it! — answer this: Do death cap mushrooms taste good?

Nibbling around the edges of research, I think the answer is they taste like fairly ordinary mushrooms, which is why a fool might think they're edible.

Can tourists run?

The scene on Mount Etna yesterday:

Tourists and guides run for their lives when Mount Etna suddenly erupts pic.twitter.com/HKhTiUCuUe

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) June 3, 2025

What am I looking at? Are these people running for their life? Are they running fast enough?

Here's "An Eruption at Mount Etna Sends Hikers Scrambling for Cover/Videos circulating on social media showed visitors rushing to descend the mountain as volcanic plumes rose overhead" (NYT).

In recent years, authorities have struggled to control imprudent visitors who failed to appreciate the risks of getting a close look at the island’s most prominent landmark. Mount Etna, a stratovolcano, or a conical volcano with relatively steep sides, shows almost continuous activity from its main craters and relatively frequent lava flows from craters and fissures along its sides..... Hannah and Charlie Camper, a couple from England, were... aware of previous eruptions but thought they would be “completely fine,” since “it’s active all the time”.... 

Apparently, all the tourists were completely fine yesterday. 

Where hate seems to be going.

As perceived by Marianne Williamson, writing on X:

We seem to have gone from calling for justice for Palestinians - a call with which I wholeheartedly agree - to an absurd romanticization of a gigantic death cult. That cult is not just coming for the Jews. Those who continue yelling 'We’re not antisemites!!!' while at least passively joining Hamas in their call for our destruction are naively aligning with a movement that hates them too.

Sunrise — 4:26, 5:23.

The official sunrise time today was 5:20, so that first picture was quite early. Arriving at the vantage point 20 or 30 minutes before the sunrise time can be important in catching the most colorful parts of the very best sunrises, but you can see from the second photo that it was not one of those days. The reason for heading out early today was the hope of catching the Northern Lights. I don't think the light circle you see there has to do with the Northern Lights, though. I think it's the beginning of nautical twilight, and the circle is where the sun will rise. 

That early photo is by Meade, who took a headstart. I caught up with him at our usual vantage point and caught that stunningly bland sunrise image.

***

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"The Colorado Terrorist attack suspect, Mohamed Soliman, is illegally in our country."

Said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, quoted in The NYT reports.

She added that he had filed for asylum in September 2022, but gave no additional details....

Witnesses said a man threw an incendiary device into a group of people who were taking part in a peaceful weekly demonstration to draw attention to hostages taken in the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The man yelled “Free Palestine” during the attack, which left patches of grass burning in front of the county courthouse as people tried to put out flames with pieces of clothing....

Trump used the moment to once again criticize his predecessor’s immigration agenda. He has a long history of using crimes like this to build support for his restrictionist immigration policies....

Using crimes.... 

A terrorist also uses crime to build support for policies he favors.

"But yeah, all of a sudden, you know, you're old and you realize you've been doing something a long time."

"And this started, you know, the old garage, the, you know, just no one knew what a podcast was. I was coming out of a horrendous divorce. I was wanting to figure out how to continue living my life. Things were not looking good for me. Brendan McDonald, my producer... and I started this thing.... And it, it slowly evolved into the show. That became what you listened to twice a week, 16 years we've been doing this, and we've decided that we, we had a, a great run. And, and now basically it's, it's time, folks. It's time. WTF is is coming to an end, and it's our decision. We will have our final episode sometime in the fall. It was not some kind of difficult decision necessarily.... And, you know, God forbid we just keep plowing along and, and something diminishes. And we wouldn't wanna just keep plugging along because we can, at the risk of our burnout or our our sort of like, you know, passion, you know, starts to, to drift or it starts to get sloppy. We're just, we're just not those kind of people...."

Said Marc Maron, at the beginning of the new episode of his "WTF" podcast.

"Yeah. I mean, man, each book, you get more right wing. I have to say, you get, like, the last one. I remember you were on my show, and it was, like..."

"... one line in it that was — and I said to you on the air — like, are you implying that that, Trump, that election was stolen by Biden... you were kinda like hedging it. And now you're like, you, you...."

Bill Maher lapses into near-babbling in the presence of David Mamet, who remained calm and quietly eloquent. The quoted part begins around 5 minutes in. 

It gets quite awkward, and Mamet finally — close to the 16-minute mark — frames a question: "How would you like this part of the conversation to end so that we can move on to something else? What would end it to your satisfaction?"

It's such a writerly — multi-level — phrasing. An ordinary person would continue the decline, carping in the usual lefty-against-righty fashion. Someone with a little more distance and self-possession might say, Can't we talk about something else? But Mamet creates the scene in which he's the character who's doing something cagey with the Maher character. He's insulting him in a devious way with this sarcastic notion that he might be there to please him: What would Maher like, what would give him satisfaction? And the key word is end: "How would you like this part of the conversation to end... What would end it...?" Is he threatening to walk out? The dramatic tension is sublime. Maher, you idiot! You have the great dramatist beside you. He's giving you so many points of entry into a beautiful dialogue. Take one! 

So frustrating! Worth listening to though, for Mamet. Here's his new book: "The Disenlightenment: Politics, Horror, and Entertainment" (commission earned).

"These kids never learned the proper way to be a barfly."

Said an L.A. bartender, quoted in "Gen Z Doesn’t Want to Start a Bar Tab/To the chagrin of bartenders, many 20-something bargoers prefer to close out and pay after every single drink, no matter how many they might order during an outing" (NYT).

[B]artenders have tried gently nudging them to consider opening tabs.... Others opt for something more overt.... If a group of friends closes out separate tabs multiple times at Seattle’s Central Saloon, Tiarra Horn will call them out from behind the bar: "'You guys all know each other? You guys not friends? You can’t get this round?' They haven’t even thought about it.... Someone has to bully these people. Respectfully."

"I was irked 30 years ago when our neighbor said she intended to install a free-standing fence between our driveways...."

Writes Margaret Renkl, in "What if Robert Frost’s Neighbor Was Right?" (NYT)(free-access link, the first of the 10 allotted to me in June).

By the time she died two years ago, the unbeloved fence had become the scaffolding for pokeweed and native vines.... The fence had been built in a shadowbox style, and the gaps between the boards gave reaching vines room for twisting.... After our neighbor passed, a developer bought her modest, meticulously maintained house and reduced it to rubble.... The new fence sits on top of a concrete wall.... Unlike the old shadowbox fence, this new fence has a front side and a back side, and it’s the back side that faces us. Worse, its unbroken expanse gives climbing vines no purchase. It took 30 years for the realization to dawn, but once the new flat-board fence went up, I finally understood that my late neighbor had gone to some expense to make the fence she built as attractive on our side as on hers. This choice was her version of neighborliness. I was just too caught up in my own contrary definition of neighborliness to see it....

You can listen to Frost reading his poem, "Mending Wall," here. And here's the text of the poem, which is not entirely about the literal wall. The NYT essay is about a fence. It's quite literal. Renkl has a lot of feelings about fences and neighbors — different kinds of fences and different kinds of neighbors. Do you have neighbors who bring up Trump when you thought you were just talking about your gardens? Well, let me assure you, the NYT essayist does not bring up Trump. It's lovely, all that wall wall wall and never a peep about Trump's wall. Yes, I know, I'm bad to bring it up. But how can you talk about not bringing something up without bringing it up.

"Your post titled 'Is the news of Biden's advanced cancer news of a terrible scandal?' was flagged to us for review."

"We have determined that it violates our guidelines and deleted the post, previously at https://althouse.blogspot.com/2025/05/is-news-of-bidens-advance-cancer-news.html. Why was your blog post deleted? Your content has been evaluated according to our Hate Speech policy. Please visit our Community Guidelines page... to learn more.... We encourage you to review the full content of your blog posts to make sure they are in line with our standards as additional violations could result in termination of your blog."

So I got that email from Blogger this morning.

I'm following the review procedure, and I fully expect the post to be restored, but what jackassery! Was I "inciting hatred against" Joe Biden "on the basis of" his "disability"?!

I'd linked to something titled "This is the Most Dangerous Cover-up in the History of the Presidency...."

Is "the most dangerous cover-up" something that must be... covered up?

"For years now, progressives have been engaged in a competition of sorts, which is like, 'In the hierarchy of intersectionality, who has the most right to be upset?'"

"And that has put conservative white men in particular on the defensive at a time when they’re already freaked out about shifting social and economic hierarchies. So a lot of people are tired of feeling guilty, and they have been very open to the idea that empathy or compassion is a weakness...."

Said Michelle Cottle, in "Why Politics Feels So Cruel Right Now/Three Opinion writers on the death of empathy in America" (NYT).

So there's the "hierarchy of intersectionality," the "social... hierarch[y]," and the "economic hierarch[y]." These "progressive" minds, obsessed with "hierarchy," love their own capacity for "empathy," but it's nothing like compassion for all human beings. It's something to give only to the ones you decide are most oppressed — those with what Cottle snarks have "the most right to be upset" — and something to withhold from everyone else.

Sunrise — 5:25.

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Democrats attempt to teach themselves how to speak with American men.

Joni Ernst serves up death, apology, sarcasm, and Jesus.

Against all odds, Joni Ernst has made it worse pic.twitter.com/aElIudNmZG

— Keith Edwards (@keithedwards) May 31, 2025

I had to go back to this after reading about it because I had clicked it off in disgust thinking it was an genuine effort to make a "sincere" apology.

For background: "Joni Ernst posts sarcastic apology video following comments that 'we all are going to die'" (Des Moines Register): "The Iowa Republican's original comments came at a town hall in Parkersburg on Friday, May 30, while she was answering a question about cuts to Medicaid in President Donald Trump's tax package that the Senate is poised to consider. During Ernst's answer, someone in the audience interrupted her to shout, 'people will die!' Ernst replied by saying, 'People are not — well, we all are going to die. For heaven’s sakes, folks.'"

Sandhill cranes take a long lunch.

From the driver-side window, Meade takes a 24-second video:

 

After our hike, riding home, 2 hours later, I take a 24-second video from the passenger-side window at exactly the same spot:

One might casually and shallowly dream of needing to eat constantly, just to maintain a healthy weight. Perhaps you'd love to take a pill that would put you in this predicament. But imagine living like this!

"The F.B.I.’s increasingly pervasive use of the polygraph, or a lie-detector test, has only intensified a culture of intimidation."

"Mr. Patel has wielded the polygraph to keep agents or other employees from discussing a number of topics, including his decision-making or internal moves. Former agents say he is doing so in ways not typically seen in the F.B.I.... Jim Stern, who conducted hundreds of polygraphs while an F.B.I. agent, said... that if someone violated policy, the F.B.I. could polygraph them. But if an agent who legitimately talked to the news media in a previous role had to take one, he said, 'that’s going to be an issue.' 'I never used them to suss out gossip,' he said. At a recent meeting, senior executives were told that the news leaks were increasing in priority — even though they do not involve open cases or the disclosure of classified information. Former officials say senior executives, among others, were being polygraphed at a 'rapid rate.' In May, one senior official was forced out, at least in part because he had not disclosed to Mr. Patel that his wife had taken a knee during demonstrations protesting police violence...."

From "Unease at F.B.I. Intensifies as Patel Ousts Top Officials/Senior executives are being pushed out and the director, Kash Patel, is more freely using polygraph tests to tamp down on news leaks about leadership decisions and behavior" (NYT).

I've made a new tag — "lie detector" — and gone back and applied it to old posts. Interesting to see how many times the topic has come up:

April 2004: "[E]ven if the lie detector was not to be used on [Omarosa], and, indeed, even if lie detector tests are not reliable, if she believed it was to be used on her and believed it was reliable, her running off at the sight of it is some evidence that she had lied in her accusation about the other contestant....."

April 2005:  "Everyone on TV was into analyzing why [the groom-to-be of the Runaway Bride] would take a private lie detector test, but wanted special conditions before he'd take the police test. He wanted it videotaped, and the police refused...."

July 2005: "Some researchers attached sensors to 101 penises and then showed the possessors of these penises either all-male or all-female porn movies. It was kind of a lie detector test, because the men had all professed to being heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual...."

October 2008: Ashley Todd, the woman who claimed a black man had carved the letter "B" on her face.

June 2012: "'$1.1 million-plus Gates grants: "Galvanic" bracelets that measure student engagement.'... [I]sn't this basically a lie detector? And if so, won't students train themselves to fool the authorities?"

April 2013:

"This dude’s the last guy I want to tell us about 'we lost our way.' You’re the guy who lost.'"

Said Tim Walz, talking about himself, in "'I Didn’t Get It Done': A Reflective Tim Walz Wants to Make Good/Last year’s Democratic vice-presidential nominee has thrown himself into a robust atonement-and-explanation tour, though aides insist there is no grand strategy" (NYT).