Positive anymore on the screen
“Well, anymore you’re always busy.”
Orange Crate Art
“Donald Trump Is Unfit to Lead”
A lengthy piece from the New York Times editorial board.
Names in school (Project 2025)
The deeply sinister message here is that individual identity is not one’s own to decide.
You and *I, you and me
I was driving when I said it: “people like you and I.” And I couldn’t believe that I had said it.
Project 2025 on marriage and parental roles
The broad outlines of Project 2025 are frightening enough. Reading the details makes it all look much worse. Log Cabin Republicans, you’re kidding yourselves.
Windows Notepad advances
“Better late than never, but it’s kind of wild that Notepad is 41 years old and only getting these features now.”
On Proust’s birthday
“Certain parts take place in the country, some in one kind of society, others in another kind; some have to do with family life and much of it is terribly indecent.”
Eleven suggestions from Robert Reich
Robert Reich offers eleven suggestions “to prevent America and the world from falling into fascism.”
Relative frequency (Project 2025)
In Chapter Fourteen of the Project 2025 Policy Agenda, covering the Department of Health and Human Services, the words addiction, birth control, and hunger do not appear; the word fentanyl appears once; the acronyms HIV and AIDS appear once each; and the word nutrition appears four times. But the word gender appears twenty-two times, and the word abortion appears 143 times.
Project 2025
Did you know that there’s a Project 2025 website? And a thirty-chapter agenda?
Fran Lebowitz at the Morgan Library
“When you look at manuscripts or letters and they’re written in the hand of the writer, you are closer to that writer, you’re closer to the person”
”Huh?“
At least I know I’m not alone in thinking it a problem: Why are the right- and left-quotation marks on iOS’s keyboard reversed?
“Swims clings or crawls”
“If it swims clings or crawls we have it”: Brooklyn signage.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Nonclassified letters.”
Notebook and pencil sighting
Maybe a Scripto. Maybe a Skilcraft.
Ship, plane, or call center
“Please wait while I connect you with a crew member.”
It’s raining
Nancy sees rain.
Jim’s question
Any kings in the United States?
Eleven movies, one series
Inside Out 2 and others.
Ruth Martin, stickler
“Fine grammar for a college graduate – ‘not me.’”
HCR on Donald J. Trump v. United States
She cites Roberts, Alito, and Kavanaugh as having said that no one is above the law.
Geoffrey Pullum explains it all
“Pullum constantly insists that all modern lexicographers, as well as all grammarians not called Pullum, are wrong about everything, which lends his book a slightly crazed tone of ‘Who are you gonna believe, me or your lying dictionaries?’”
Music, worsening
Rick Beato explains “The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse.”
Drawing cloth and clothing
Today’s Zippy is all about cloth and clothing and the work of the “fine artist.” Bill Griffith is of course an artist and cartoonist both.
Of presidents and kings
Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissent.
Crazy weather
“Grab them shades on the way out the door. Precip cast? Fuggedaboudit! I mean, we still need a tall drink of water. I just ain’t happening tonight nor tomorrow.”
Generative AI, trust, and distrust
At Inside Higher Ed, Jacob Riyeff writes about generative AI and its effect on teacher-student relationships. What breaks his heart, he says, are the ways in which AI makes it difficult for him to trust his students.
Apples?
A fruit stand on a Manhattan street.
Today’s Saturday Stumper
“Trouble spots on radar.”
Martin Mull (1943–2024)
The Fernwood 2 Night episode with Tom Waits is not to be missed.