So much for posting three times a week. On the other hand, even I get bored with my own misery over current events. Plus, it’s Wednesday, the worst day of my week. But like a boxer losing in the 11th round, I stagger to my feet and offer…something.
Here’s two things, one a column that I wrote for the Freep. Here’s the official link, which you should click first. Why? Because it’s my understanding that Gannett paywalls are shifty things, determined by AI. If you haven’t hit a particular paper’s site too often, you get in (I guess). If you’ve taken too many free hors d’oeuvres, you hit the paywall. I ask you to at least try that link, because if you get in, it’s good for the paper, which enables them to pay me.
However. If you get walled out, here’s the dodgy free link. Of course, this could be at least somewhat mitigated by a gift-link system, but Gannett doesn’t do that yet. Maybe it never will.
For comic relief, enjoy this short interview with the sculptor who did that ridiculous Trump statue unveiled this week:
Demands to nix the turkey neck and make the model skinnier, missed payments, and calls to install the statue last-minute — no Cottrill commission has been as complicated as the statue dubbed “Don Colossus.”
The tech bros in 2024 paid an initial $300,000 for the initial statue, then paid another $60,000 a year later for the gold-leaf plating, and another $150,000 to use imagery of the statue to promote a crypto token, Cottrill said. But getting the payment was easier said than done.
“‘You were supposed to make these payments nearly a year ago. I can’t trust you to do that,’” Cottrill recalls telling his patrons. “So I held the statue. I put it in an undisclosed location and said it won’t be delivered until the final payments have been made.
You don’t say. Shocked, shocked, etc.
OK, that’ll be it for today. May I sleep well and deeply tonight.
alex said on May 13, 2026 at 7:47 pm
One who got overserved on hors d’oeuvres here.
I don’t remember a whole lot about JFK Jr and Carolyn except that the celebrity rags seemed to fixate on them, and Jr launched his own magazine, George, which was supposed to be a celebrity gossip sheet about politics and politicians. I was a big magazine subscriber back then but never found George all that compelling. Spy, on the other hand, was one of my all-time favorites, and it skewered the hell out of Tubby for his failed attempts at social climbing, failed business dealings and all-around aberrant personality.
So someone was commissioned to sculpt a golden idol sans cankles and nunt. That had to have taken all the fun out of it.
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Jeff Gill said on May 14, 2026 at 6:54 am
Undisclosed location = Zanesville, Ohio.
Which made me laugh.
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Deborah said on May 14, 2026 at 7:09 am
I had to look up nunt, here’s what Urban Dictionary said: When the fat folds of your neck form into the shape of a cunt when in a buttoned up shirt.
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Dorothy said on May 14, 2026 at 8:06 am
I had to use the dodgy free link to read it – but I did try the first link. The article was blocked unless I subscribed.
Anywho, within the last two weeks I finished ‘Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy” and my goodness did it make me feel really sad for what she put up with. When all of that was happening I was raising two teenagers so I didn’t really pay much attention to them. Carolyn essentially had to stop working because the media hounded and stalked her so relentlessly. And she was damn good at what she did. I was surprised to learn she never met Jackie, who died before John and Carolyn’s relationship became more definite. I think Jackie would have approved; but then again, she might’ve been the kind of woman who felt no one was good enough for her son.
The sentence that just gutted me had to do with Carolyn’s mother’s reaction when she learned that she lost two daughters (Lauren was the other Bessette on board) in that plane crash. It’s still haunting me two weeks after I finished it.
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susan said on May 14, 2026 at 11:55 am
Also, the photo of sculptor Alan Cottrill, standing in his shop, next to his pre-bronzed Trump statue, with the caption:
“Perhaps the only photo you’ll ever see of Trump fist-pumping in front of a pride flag. Photo from Alan Cottrill”.
And hanging next to that flag is a tie-dyed tee shirt with the late 19th C photo of Goyathlay (Geronimo/Guyiatle, Chiricahua Apache, ca. 1825-1909) and three of his compatriots holding long guns, titled: “Homeland Security. Fighting Terrorism since 1492.”
When asked by New Times about his political leanings and whether he was excited by the commission request, Cottrill says, “No comment.”
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Sherri said on May 14, 2026 at 2:32 pm
When did people get the idea that the right to free speech meant they had the right to say anything without any consequences?
A racist moron named Dalton Eatherly from my home town of Clarksville, TN is in jail facing attempted murder charges. Eatherly is a contractor who decided that was too much like work, and instead the influencer life was better. He goes around live-streaming himself calling people racist slurs as “Chad the Builder”, trying to provoke people. When someone punched him yesterday outside the courthouse in Clarksville, he pulled out a gun and shot the guy (and managed to shoot himself in the arm in the process.)
No doubt this has given a boost to his GiveSendGo campaign, where he’s raised close to $100k to “protect his free speech”, from people who leave comments with explicitly white supremacist statements. This is the crowdfunding site that promotes itself as a “Christian” crowdfunding site.
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jcburns said on May 14, 2026 at 4:00 pm
Zanesville? Maybe the statue should be um…erected at the center of the Y bridge. Permanently. As a navigation aid.
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Brandon said on May 14, 2026 at 10:03 pm
“Chad the Builder”
Chud
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Hank Stuever said on May 14, 2026 at 10:44 pm
Really good column, Nancy.
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alex said on May 15, 2026 at 11:03 am
Sherri, I think civics education has been lacking for even longer than we realize and a good many people don’t understand what free speech is. Fox and the like aren’t helping any. I remember after J6 when a couple in their 60s, whom I’d never considered stupid, asked me my opinion about Tubby getting banished from Twitter and Facebook.
They were all “but what about his First Amendment rights?” And I was like, what the fuck does that have to do with it? I tried to explain it to them but they still didn’t get it. But we shouldn’t be surprised. The right-wing braying about “viewpoint discrimination” in academia and the media is all about assholes being denied a platform for their hate speech, conspiracy theories and lies.
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basset said on May 15, 2026 at 11:32 am
Spy was hilarious, they used to call Trump “short-fingered vulgarian”
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Brandon said on May 15, 2026 at 2:10 pm
I was curious if George magazine had an online archive, the way Spy itself is on Google Books. There isn’t a comprehensive one, but at least one issue is on the Internet Archive.
But I found this. Apparently, it was revived in 2022 to little mainstream notice. It still retains the original magazine’s nameplate, but the new George has a strong right-wing populist bent.
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Deborah said on May 15, 2026 at 4:22 pm
Spy was fabulous. Wish it was still around. I follow Kurt Anderson online wherever I can find him. It’s hilarious that Ginny Thomas, Clarence Thomas’s wife was his neighbor growing up in Nebraska.
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Sherri said on May 15, 2026 at 10:28 pm
The question is whether this country holds or comes apart, and coming apart doesn’t mean a stern editorial in The Atlantic. It means what it has always meant, every time a society told a critical mass of its members that their participation was decoration. It means blood. It means whole regions of this country deciding that the social contract is a piece of paper the other side already burned, and they’re under no obligation to honor a corpse.
https://betterdonkey.substack.com/p/the-vra-was-the-nice-version
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Brandon said on May 16, 2026 at 2:58 am
Nancy’s “favorite” person is in the news:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/celebrity/gwyneth-paltrow-faces-boycott-calls-after-replacing-workforce-with-ai-in-layoffs/
Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness brand Goop was reportedly slammed with layoffs as the company turns to A.I. to replace workers.
A source familiar with the matter told Puck that the layoffs stem from “profitability and A.I.” The spokesperson told Puck, “Goop, like many companies, is adapting to a shifting landscape and finding new ways to operate more efficiently.”
Emily Sundberg’s Feed Me Substack also reported that the layoffs stemmed from the company’s pivot to A.I., adding that Paltrow, 53, herself led the meeting announcing the cuts.
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David C said on May 16, 2026 at 5:55 am
Good luck with that Gwyneth. I am working on a project at work comparing European and US auto seat regulations. I am using AI because the company is pushing it, so it looks good on my goals for the year. I do the compare this with that and it gives me an answer. Then I look at the regulation and I don’t see what AI told me is there. So I ask the same AI where it is. It then tells me, oh it’s right that I can’t find it, it isn’t there. Thanks a lot guys and oh yeah, you’re doctor is using it.
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alex said on May 16, 2026 at 10:48 am
So AI is carving her jade eggs nowadays instead of children in China?
If you’re feeling Dowdy today, here’s a rumination on AI and what it can’t do (a gift article):
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/16/opinion/ai-liberal-arts.html?unlocked_article_code=1.i1A.rXFy.UBGWt_MKDoNy&smid=url-share
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Deborah said on May 16, 2026 at 5:49 pm
We’re back from a Hungarian party out near Pecos, about 30 miles away from Santa Fe. I’m glad we went for the sake of the friend of LB’s who’s on the autism spectrum, we may have been the only people there that were friends of hers, there were a lot of people attending, mostly friends and relatives of her parents, it was a birthday party for her, she’s 30. She goes by Z, because her name is unpronounceable Hungarian, she is much more noticeably on the autism spectrum than LB, she seems to have a sort of Tourettes too, you could tell she was under her mother’s watchful eye and somewhat unsocial which is not uncommon, but she did well under the circumstances. LB met Z at a knitting circle she participates in and LB kind of took Z under her wing. A bunch of women meet at the local mall every Wednesday. Most of the women are around my age except for Z and LB.
They did not serve Hungarian food at the party which was disappointing to me, they had greasy Tacos. After reading Alex’s descriptions of Hungarian dishes, I was really looking forward to that. But they had Hungarian music, a live group played interesting instruments, and people were dancing. We were only there about an hour and a half. It was nice to be out in forested land, the drive is beautiful. All in all it was kind of painful, not long lasting, and I think it meant a lot to Z that LB was there, so it was definitely worth it.
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alex said on May 16, 2026 at 7:32 pm
Sorry to hear they didn’t serve Hungarian food. The mere mention of it is making me ravenous, although it’s too late now to make dinner. Maybe I’ll whip up an old favorite for Sunday family dinner tomorrow.
Hubs now tells me we’re meeting up with someone for Italian in about 45 minutes.
We’ve been busy preparing the veg garden for planting and today I also broadcast clover seed over the front lawn, in addition to planting more creeping thyme, in my ongoing quest to minimize lawn grass. Grass doesn’t really grow well here anyway with so much clay soil and shade, and the clover greens things up without growing excessively tall.
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