Sunrise.

Before you say "Red sky in the morning...," let me assure you that it rained all day.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

3 very different places to live.

These 3 architectural idiosyncrasies charmed me today:

"Given all of this newly discovered information, it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the reflecting pool to vandalism."

Wrote Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney.

Quoted in "Charges Dropped in Reflecting Pool Case as Prosecutors Say Work Was ‘Botched’/A former Olympian will not face trial after federal prosecutors acknowledged that the Trump administration’s claims of vandalism were false" (NYT).

One could read that headline to mean that the work done to the pool was botched OR that the prosecutorial work was botched. But the first sentence of the article makes it clear: "Federal prosecutors on Friday acknowledged that contractors hired by the Trump administration had 'botched' the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool."

"Ms. Prabhakar... said the point of assigning 'Bettering Myself' was to challenge students in her introductory reading and writing course."

"As part of the assignment, students had to read first-person stories told by other unlikable narrators — like 'Cathedral' by Raymond Carver — to contrast narrative voice, perspective, vocabulary and style, according to the lawsuit. In colleges, such materials 'take students out of their comfort zone, expose them to new ideas and provide opportunities for growth and intellectual maturation,' the suit said...."

From "Florida Professor Fired for Assigning a Profane Story, Lawsuit Says/South Florida State College fired an English professor after she assigned a story about a teacher who talks about sex with her students. Now the professor is suing" (NYT gift link).

That article links to a review of the story collection, "In Ottessa Moshfegh’s Stories, Fringe Figures Make Feckless Attempts at Connection" (NYT gift link):

"In the 1800s, a secretary was part aide-de-camp, part executive-in-training — someone who handled the boss’s correspondence and bookkeeping, but also learned the business..."

"... and would eventually ascend to a senior job. With the rise of the modern corporation around the turn of the 20th century, however, the secretary became more like a noncommissioned officer — a worker with real responsibility but little upward mobility. It was at this point that the position became mostly female. Companies then broke up and degraded the job further over the decades, replacing the secretary with pools of typists, receptionists and data entry personnel, almost all of them women, too. The final step, amid pressure from the feminist movement in the 1970s, was to allow a small number of college-educated women to ascend from these clerical jobs to the ranks of middle management. But even this came with a loss of status, as managers would have to do more of their own grunt work. 'They’re now being promoted, but the clerical tasks are promoted with them,' said Jason Resnikoff, a labor historian. 'The middle manager would do more typing, correspondence, more of their own filing.' These days, almost no one has an assistant...."

From "In Trump’s Economy, Job Gains Go to Women. That’s Not an Entirely Good Thing. Despite the administration’s best attempts, the diminishing status of many American jobs is driving a spike in women’s employment" (NYT gift link).

"On a beach next to the border, hundreds of people who had crossed over gathered under the scorching sun."

"But Soufiane ez Znafry, 26, said that many were turning back because they were hungry. 'We have not eaten in two days,' he said, adding that all the supermarkets in the area had closed and that his stomach was 'growling.' He had rushed from Tangier on Thursday after friends told him they were heading to Spain. He said he barely scrapes by in Morocco working as a sous-chef. In the rush, carrying only a bag containing some clothes and a few possessions, he did not tell his parents that he was leaving. 'I did not want to worry them,' he said...."

From "Live Updates: Tens of Thousands Crossed Into Spanish Territory, Officials Say/As many as 60,000 people were estimated to have surged from Morocco into Ceuta, creating a crisis for Spain’s pro-immigration government. At least 34 people died, officials said" (NYT gift link).

"Science is truth."

Please share this with everyone. Let’s never listen to these liars ever again. I guess CNN doesn’t need Sanjay to be a useful idiot anymore pic.twitter.com/XawCqUEWUB

— Adam Carolla (@adamcarolla) July 30, 2026

The invocation of science ought to be a call to calm rationality, but there we see it used like a tagline for a horror movie: Be afraid, be very afraid.

ADDED: Did you know that the line "Be afraid, be very afraid" originally came from Mel Brooks?

"Today, the Board of Peace reached a HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza."

"This is a monumental step toward lasting PEACE and SECURITY. This agreement is a critical step towards Gaza finally being governed by a new Palestinian government that will work closely with the Board of Peace to help the Palestinian people. At the same time, Israel will have the security it deserves, with Gaza no longer used as a base for terror attacks."

Writes Trump on Truth Social.

"This is a major milestone in the implementation of the Trump 20-Point Plan. The agreement will be carried out in carefully structured phases. As disarmament is completed, Israeli forces will withdraw, and the International Stabilization Force will work with a new Palestinian police force to take responsibility for Gaza being safe for its residents and its neighbors. One year ago there was a violent raging war, humanitarian crisis and hostages kept in brutal captivity. We have made historic progress and there is still much work to do.... Under this agreement, Gaza will finally be in the hands of a new Palestinian government that serves its PEOPLE. CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL ON THIS AMAZING DEVELOPMENT, THAT EVERYBODY SAID COULD NEVER BE ACHIEVED!"

Here's the NYT coverage of the story: "Trump Claims Deal Is Reached to Disarm Hamas in Gaza" (gift link).

Sunrise.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

"People who like novelty tend to be better suited for nonmonogamy. People who have what they call a 'faster life history'..."

"— that’s a social science term — meaning they’ve probably moved around a lot, they’ve probably had a whole bunch of different kinds of jobs, they started dating younger and they’ve dated more people. They’re more likely to be interested in polyamory or nonmonogamy than the people who have never left their hometown, who like to have one job and really stick with it. Not that either of those are better than the other, but just what kind of wiring tends to mak [sic] you enjoy polyamory."

From "Is Polyamory Right for You?/Elisabeth Sheff spent 30 years studying polyamory. Here’s what she learned" (NYT gift link).

This is a long interview, so you might want to check it out. Or you might want to bemoan the NYT and its endless fascination with polyamory.

"[Wisconsin] survives and takes Michigan’s Upper Peninsula with it."

When the states are redrawn based on social media friendship:

"My dad was the stage manager at a venue where Tom Waits was performing. The show started with him driving a beautiful restored Chevrolet onto the stage..."

"... and it was kind of a set piece there during the performance, to such a degree that Mr. Waits completely forgot the keys were in his pocket when he left.... [M]y dad got the surreal privilege of spending an evening driving around to every bar in Chicago that he could think of looking for the guy so they could get the car off the stage. This is how my father taught me that that if you hop dive bars long enough into a Saturday night, you will eventually - maybe inevitabley - come upon Tom Waits. He will give you the keys to a '55 Chevy Bel Air, and he will also buy you a drink for your trouble."

Comments by Phobos the Space Potato at on a Metafilter thread titled "New spoken word track by Tom Waits."

Here's that track:

"After kissing my husband and dog good night and putting them to bed in a separate room, I put magnesium lotion on my feet, do my Duolingo lesson, pull up my meditation app and, of course, go to the bathroom one last time."

From "The Little Rituals That Prepare You for Sleep/Origami, cleaning countertops, talking to plants — here are some ways readers wind down for the evening" (NYT gift link).

"[Senator Bernie Moreno] requested those in the audience to stand up if they had paid a professional, legal, or personal price for dissenting from Covid orthodoxies ..."

"... during the pandemic. The senator then asked Fauci to turn around and look at them. Fauci refused. Then Moreno told the story of a family in Ohio who attended a high school football game in the middle of the lockdowns. 'They went to the stadium. They sat alone, far from anyone else. They didn’t feel they needed to wear masks because it was stupid and they were outside. Dr. Fauci, do you know what happened to . . . that family?' Fauci responded with the line he must have repeated more than a hundred times in the hearing. 'On the advice of counsel I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution,' he said. 'They were dragged out of that stadium and arrested,' [Moreno] said. 'Those policies were put in place because you had moronic politicians that listened to the words of a megalomaniac who was more interested in having met a Kardashian than the suffering of the American people.' Fauci just sat there, stone faced, without emotion...."

Writes Eli Lake, in "Pleading the Fifth Won’t Spare Fauci from the Truth/He claims his Senate hearing was a witch hunt designed to entrap him. But his record convicts him on its own" (Free Press).

Full moon, this morning at 5:24, 5:28.

I like the look of a moon as a marshmallow on a stick in photo #1.

"I am QTBIPOC and an immigrant, he is cis-white-straight/ish citizen, a decade older than me and didn’t even know what queer or BIPOC meant before meeting me...."

"The question is: How do I know I am not only doing this 'under the influence' of love?..."

A nutty question to a WaPo advice columnist, in "I planned to always be a queer, single cat-mom aunt. Then I met him. How does she know she’s not changing her life plan 'under the influence of love'?"

If love is the wrong reason, what is the right reason?