I was up very very early Tuesday, for a lifeguarding shift. There were caddis flies hatching everywhere, and I didn’t think my camera would catch them, but it did:

They’re fine. Don’t bite. Hatch out of the lake, fly around and die. The fish go crazy for them.

Afterward I swam. The morning was cool, the water heated. It was…heavenly. At least four of the other swimmers had caught the Grosse Pointe stop on the Barbara McQuade book-a-palooza, and were impressed by how great it was, how smart she was. We wondered where we are as a country. Then we swam some more.

I can’t tell you how much I resent having this asshole in my brain for, what? A decade now. And I suspect that even if he bites the big one tomorrow, it’ll be another decade, or longer, flushing him out of the nation’s system.

But that’s no way to start a pleasant Tuesday, is it?

I keep watching the Saga of the Reflecting Pool. As of late afternoon Tuesday, it appeared workers were putting fencing? Around the pool? And cops were rousting anyone who even went near the actual water. Josh Marshall with a few thoughts:

We’ve discussed in the past Donald Trump’s penchant for creating spurious backstories to justify his various building projects. We were told last year that presidents and executive branch officials had been complaining for decades — or centuries! — about the need for a White House ballroom. “For more than 150 years, every President has dreamt about having a Ballroom at the White House to accommodate people for grand parties, State Visits, etc,” he claimed at one point. And it took him to finally create it.

Rinse and repeat: these absurd fairy tales are always part of the Trump sales job. With the Reflecting Pool it’s apparently been in crisis for the last century. Only Trump is going to be able to fix it for good.

Everyone wanted abortion returned to the states too, remember?

Man, these Ukrainians are some tough dudes:

For several months last year, a Ukrainian housewife, 35 and lonely in a marriage that had gone cold, traded WhatsApp messages with a Chechen commander, Achmad, stationed somewhere in Ukraine’s occupied south. They wrote about their days, their disappointments, what they hoped to do when the war ended. She asked about the front. He told her.

“Send me a picture,” she said. “I want to see your life.”

One afternoon, he obliged—a photograph taken inside the barracks, of himself and another soldier grinning for the camera. Behind them, pinned to the wall, was a map of the compound showing the unit’s position.

The housewife did not exist. “She” was a middle-aged officer named Serhiy working for Ukraine’s military-intelligence directorate, part of a concerted effort to draw secrets from the men sent to occupy his country.

“Serhiy was great at flirting,” his commander told me. “Guys in our team started asking him for dating advice.” Shortly after Achmad sent that photograph, the coordinates it revealed were struck by a Ukrainian drone.

Well, when the United States abandons you, sometimes you gotta choose a new path.

Another night of rough sleep last night, so I’m going to hit the hay while the sun still shines. Not hard to do around the solstice. A good summer lies ahead, I hope, for everybody.

I realize I’ve been a little grumpy and nay-saying here of late. It’s understandable, but I want you to know I woke up this morning, swam for an hour and got out of the pool thinking, it ain’t so bad.

The Iran “deal” is a joke. Trump’s G7 performance was a joke. I can’t stop laughing about the Reflecting Pool, which looks like the Chicago River on St. Patrick’s Day — an excellent joke. The Obama Presidential Center is opening with not just the artists who wouldn’t be caught dead at the Great American State Fair, or whoever it’ll end up being called, but by artists 100 times as successful. The World Cup is happening, and it’s delightful to see scenes like this:

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And the Knicks victory parade was capped by Barack Obama Jr. giving a great speech:

Of course, there are distant clouds on the horizon; here’s a good piece about the Democratic effort in Ohio that applies to a lot of other places. But for today, this week, we can all look at our mud-streaked joke of a president, and his entire crowd of toadies and have the proper reaction: Derisive laughter.

Have a great weekend, all.

Last night we moseyed down to the Detroit Public Library to see a book-tour event with Barbara McQuade, a former U.S attorney here and frequent MSNOW talking head. It was one of those onstage interviews by a local learned personality (Stephen Henderson, former op-ed editor at the Freep, winner of the Big P), with an audience of maybe 50-60, mostly older people like us.

And it was fine, if almost insanely depressing. She went through a gloss — just a gloss! — of Trump sins, which took most of an hour and covered maybe a third of his crimes. The premise of her book, “The Fix,” is that the Trump administration represents the triumph of organized crime-style governance. I’ve been to many of these types of events, and the last question is always about solutions.

The bigger the problem, the more depressing the solution. When I saw Sam Quinones flog “Dreamland,” his outstanding book about the opiate crisis in Ohio, the Glimmer of Hope was that Portsmouth, the city at the center of the narrative, decimated by the job losses that allowed the problem to grow in the first place, now has a cooperatively owned shoelace factory.

And last night was no different. The solutions are: Community engagement, codification of key reforms, term limits for the Supreme Court, an end to gerrymandering and hey, maybe some of you folks should run for a school board. It was like recommending we defeat Godzilla by releasing mosquitos nearby, so that maybe one might bite him in a vulnerable spot and give him malaria. Maybe.

I was growing more distressed by the minute, so during the Q&A I popped up to ask when we might see a cataclysmic act of political violence, because that’s where all of this seems to be heading. Not the amateurs who talk shit on Signal about doing a drone attack on the UFC fight, or a guy who tries to charge the correspondents’ dinner, but a real attack by people who know what they’re doing. Iranians, maybe. Palestinians. Or Russians, who knows.

She didn’t really have a clear answer, but it was an unclear question. However, I don’t see the light at the end of this tunnel. The growing wealth disparity, and the utter unwillingness to do anything about it, doesn’t portend anything good. McQuade pointed out more than once that the last Gilded Age was followed by the progressive era, but does anyone see that happening here? At least in our lifetimes? You can call for all the “visionary leaders” you want, but until one steps forward, I see more carnage, more outrages, more UFC fights on the lawn.

When what we need is to invest — heavily — in the nation’s human capital and infrastructure. Jobs, good ones. Schools, good ones. Roads, bridges, sewers, all of it.

I’m reading a book on a friend’s recommendation — “Careless People,” about the oughts and teen years at Facebook. The author, Sarah Wynn-Williams, seems almost impossibly naive, and has an irritating way of putting herself in the center of every narrative, although that’s the nature of memoir, I guess. But the biggest — and again, most depressing — takeaway is the utter lack of any redeeming philosophy in Silicon Valley.

Their philosophy, if one exists, is Make Me Richer. Everything seems to underpin that. When the wind blows one way, say toward preserving fair elections, the money they spew into the world goes there. (Zuckerberg contributed to keeping election machinery running smoothly in 2020.) When the wind changes, hey no problem, we’ll contribute to the Trump inauguration and party with the UFC guys. Yes, our data centers are evil, resource-sucking facilities that virtually no one wants in their back yard, but? They make us richer, so they’re good. You say our content is linked to sectarian and political violence? We’re free speech absolutists, because content moderation is hard, and besides, letting anything go online makes us richer. Whee.

This is very ranty, I know, and I apologize. Lately it seems my head is full of bees. Probably I need a vacation, a long one. In the meantime, we have Wednesday. Let’s take it on.

Here’s something you may not have known: Saturday was National Knit in Public Day. I learned this when we stopped at a restroom on the Detroit Riverwalk and beheld a crowd of about 20 women, chairs pulled into a circle under the shade, needles click-click-clicking away.

“Is this a stitch ‘n’ bitch?” I asked, deploying the entirety of my knit/crochet knowledge in one short sentence.

“We don’t bitch,” one lady said, immediately contradicted by the woman to her right: “Oh yes we do.” But then she added the reason for the gathering: National Knit in Public Day.

The things you learn on a simple bike ride.

It was a lovely day. Hot, but not punishingly so. We pedaled from Belle Isle to the new park on the west riverfront, and back. About a nine-mile loop, nothing fancy, somewhere between a workout and a lark.

It was a good weekend, if you don’t count a brief lie-in on Sunday morning, as I recovered from a stomach issue that became a bowel issue as whatever was bothering me worked its way through the system. A very mild complaint, and the only thing it kept me from was some light housekeeping, so: Win-win.

I’m sick so infrequently I should spent more time being grateful for it. We went to a birthday party/cookout Sunday afternoon, and got to talking about Michigan’s tick problem, which becomes more serious by the year, thanks to climate change, which isn’t happening, of course. We have the common, non-serious ticks, but also the one that gives you Lyme disease, and the alpha-gal tick has been spotted in Berrien County, so look for a big spike in vegans hereabouts. (Alpha-gal syndrome is a comer, the tick-carried affliction that leaves one unable to digest mammalian meat or dairy. For life, as far as we know.)

Alan likes to go fishing up north at this time of year, and any county in northern Michigan is Tick Central; he’s always brushing them off his clothing or sometimes detaching them from his body. Last year he found one that had already grown to the size of a raisin, but it was a common dog tick, whew. He remarked it’s hard to do the taxonomy once they’ve had their fill from one’s bloodstream, but there you go. Michigan problems.

Speaking of things that suck the lifeblood from a person and leave filth behind, after the UFC circus at the White House left me nearly incandescent with loathing for every single person connected with the current administration, I can only say: I hope RFK Jr. gets alpha-gal. I’m surprised he doesn’t have it already.

Anything bad that happens to any of these people is not enough:

"And lastly, Michelle Obama is a man, am I right America?"

Said on a UFC ring on the White House lawn while Joe Rogan holds the mic as it's broadcast on the Ellison controlled Paramount+.

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— Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer.net) June 14, 2026 at 11:33 PM

Some bloggage:

It’s not just the UFC bullshit that makes them so, either. I won’t even quote a snippet. Gift link; just read.

And now to get to that light housekeeping. Happy Monday, all.

Ladies and gentlemen, just one nugget of news this week, and it’s only Tuesday:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio will participate in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signing ceremony at the U.S. Department of State with Dana White, President and CEO of UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) on Thursday, June 11, at 2:00 p.m. ET.

The MOU signing will mark a new public-private partnership to enhance sports diplomacy initiatives and collaborate on the global growth of mixed martial arts. Additional details will be announced following the ceremony.

Before you wipe the spit-take off your screen, as a seasoned reader, and sometimes writer, of press releases, I draw your attention to the phrase “memorandum of understanding.” What is that? About what it sounds like — nothing much. You reach a memo of understanding before you sign a contract. It’s kinda like going steady, maybe. It’s more formal than blowing kisses across the room, but it’s not binding, either. It’s a memorandum. It’s an understanding. You’re going steady, not engaged.

Also note: “Sports diplomacy.” What the fuck is that? At a time when NFL teams routinely hold exhibition games in Europe, when basketball is an Olympic sport, does this add mixed martial arts, i.e. televised felonious assault, to the mix? I don’t know.

Here’s what I do know: Marco Rubio is trying to end one war and start another, and should not have time for this nonsense, but as usual, something else is probably going on, and it involves filling the president’s pockets.

Dana White is a close friend of the president, this we know. MMA fighters come from all over the world, but notably from places like Chechnya and Belarus, former Soviet republics. We saw Chechen boxers when we went to a Claressa Shields fight in Detroit a few years ago, and about 60 seconds of thought told me why — like American ghettos, they’re the kind of places anyone with half a brain would risk great bodily harm to escape. And do. Chechens are also big players in the Russian mob.

So my guess is this involves kickbacks from White to Trump, and Vladimir Putin is probably involved too, somehow. The UFC just signed something like an $8 billion-with-a-b contract with some streaming channel, so there’s a LOT of money floating around it, and surely Tubby wants his taste. I’m reminded of something I read online this morning, looking at overhead photos of the White House then and now: It’s like a meth family moved in.

And it’s only Tuesday. What more joys will the week bring? I ask you.

We’re having a thunderstorm at the moment, which is the opening act for temperatures in the 90s for a few days. Nancy Mace has conceded in the GOP gubernatorial primary in South Carolina, and a Republican has won the second spot in the California governor’s race. RIGGED. RIGGED.

Happy Wednesday. May we all survive it.

All the days can’t suck, I told myself this morning, having accepted my morning mood (groggy, lousy) as payment for the joy of having last night’s dinner outdoors, on a restaurant patio on a glorious day, with two of my former colleagues from Bridge. Two of us were fired by the same asshole, so we had that to laugh about. There was a lot of laughing. I didn’t get home until close to 10, which meant I didn’t get to sleep until about 11, and Wednesday is my 4:20 a.m. alarm. Which explains the mood. But! It’s the last 4:20 alarm until September! So it’s not so bad.

Then I caught up on the comments and learned 4dbirds’ terrible news. Her name is Barbara. Barbara, I am so, so sorry. I’ll leave it at that, because there’s really nothing you can say after someone loses a child, other than that.

The drive to the restaurant last night sucked. It was in Plymouth, out in the exurbs, which meant I was facing construction and a blazing sun RIGHT IN MY EYES THE WHOLE WAY, aggravated by listening to a podcast recommended by someone in the comments a few days ago, the New Yorker Radio Hour interview with Dana White, president of the UFC. Dana is a good friend of the president, and assures us that he’s not a racist, not even a little. What about that video depicting the Obamas as apes, David Remnick pressed, gently. The Sgt. Schultz defense: “I don’t know about that,” etc. I laid this item on the table as I waited for my cocktail, and my former editor explained how this is exactly how good Germans were during the Holocaust. Yes, this is small talk with journalists, which is one reason I love my colleagues so.

Another reason I love them: Staff meetings like the one at CBS News about “60 Minutes” earlier this week, the one that led to Scott Pelley’s firing. I had to take Wendy to the vet yesterday, and briefly heard Mitch Albom kinda-sorta defending it, although it was hard to tell because as usual, he was playing the part of the Sensible Moderate, and also the Upholder of Decency and Good Manners. I gather Mitch found Pelley’s comments during the meeting very rude, as well as the secret recording of said meeting, and I rolled my eyes so hard I had to pull over until they rolled back and I could see through them again. How does the meme go? Tell me you’ve never been in a newsroom meeting without telling me you’ve never been in a newsroom meeting. They often go the way it did at CBS, or used to, before everyone was taught to keep their heads down, their tails tucked, and their mouths shut. People yell(ed) at their bosses in newsrooms, and that is a very good thing. A wise former editor explained it pithily: You can’t expect journalists to ask tough questions of public officials and other sources, without expecting them to ask a few of you, too.

OK, then. Just a few notes I’ve been collecting this week:

The new name for the fiasco formerly known as the Great American State Fair: Notapalooza. Har.

Zohran Mamdani continues to demonstrate fearsome political skills. Recall that the last time the president of the United States was surrounded by children, he tried to explain why Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon:

Today, I signed an Executive Order temporarily repealing bedtimes in the City of New York so that kids of all ages can watch our team in the NBA Finals.

As Mayor, you’re forced to make many difficult decisions. This was not one of them.

Go Knicks.

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— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@mayor.nyc.gov) June 1, 2026 at 3:39 PM

In case you were wondering whether Bill Pulte is qualified to be Director of National Intelligence, let me assure you from his native state: No. He is not.

Finally, dunno if this is paywalled or not, but Roy Edroso, who’s been covering conservative “culture” for years, did a really nice piece on that topic, earlier this week. If it is paywalled, let me assure you that Roy’s Substack is one that is absolutely worth your money:

But when the conversation turns to the arts, something to which the word “culture” more properly applies, conservatives get extra weird. Because, while their target audience may be unfamiliar with the people and trends conservatives like to slander, and thus may be easily convinced to suspect them, everybody likes to see a show or hear some tunes.

And conservatives don’t know what to do about that, especially now that casual sexism, racism, and other retrograde attitudes are less prevalent in pop culture than once they were. That’s why they’re always yelling that fun stuff is woke — Star Wars, Andor, that Odyssey movie where for some perverse reason they let a black lady play the most beautiful woman in the world. Occasionally they try to grab a toehold on entertainment things that seem “conservative” to them — like that weird delusion they recently developed that only the Right had the capacity to appreciate Sydney Sweeney’s tits.

But it always comes off creepy and sad. You might convince some people at least that trans kids on sports teams or bike lanes or vaccination drives or no-fault divorce are attacks on their way of life; but when you tell them the same is true of the movies they watch and the songs they dance to and the stories they read, voluntarily and with pleasure, your chances of success are exceedingly low. It’s like telling them it’s un-American to eat ice cream or take a bath.

OK, that’s it for me today. Gonna try to improve my mood, maybe with a bike ride to the library.

I was reading something about the president’s weird fixation on Jaxson Dart, and couldn’t help but notice how the New York Giants quarterback spells his first name, which I assume was his parents’ choice.

We already have a perfectly fine spelling of that name: Jackson. That’s how it’s been spelled for years. But sometime in 2003, this little baby’s mother said, nope. My boy will spell his name Jaxson.

I’m so old — how old are you? — I’m so old I remember when racists would complain about black parents giving their kids offbeat names and creative spellings, and what’s wrong with Jennifer and Jason, anyway? Now, here we are, years later, and we have Jaxsons and Kynnedis.

Which goes to show you that everything cool starts with black people.

But as a mostly done with the game journalist, I hate “unique” name spellings. You used to have to check all last names and some first names. Now it’s all of them.

Been scarce around this place lately, I know. I sit down to write and think, “does anyone want to hear me complain about the president and his enablers and everything associated with it” and answer hell no. But it’s a large part of what I think about. Yes, the president lives rent-free in my head; no getting around that. I’m starting to think about the calculus of what stress does to the body vs. the civic duty of being an engaged citizen and paying attention as a part of that. If anyone else is struggling with that, do let me know.

How about some pictures? Kate holding a kitty at a party we both attended last weekend:

Here’s someone’s goldfish, released to the wild and grown to be an orange carp, in Lake St. Clair.

And now to gather thoughts for the rest of the week. Hang in there, and the tide will come back in.

There’s a saying that, if you’re online more than just the bare minimum, you’ve probably heard: “I never thought the leopards would eat my face,” sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces party.

In a similar vein, this New Yorker cartoon:

Today, a ProPublica story about a woman miscarrying a 17-week fetus, unable to get the D&C she needs to avoid the possibility of a life-threatening infection:

Raised Baptist in a Republican family, Waldorf struggled to understand what the doctors were saying as waves of grief hit her. How could an abortion ban aimed at women who wanted to end their pregnancies keep doctors from helping a woman who didn’t?

Waldorf didn’t oppose abortion, but she had never considered that the law could apply to her. Her father was a doctor. This was the hospital where she had worked for the past six years. The OB-GYN team treating her had delivered her daughter, and some of them lived blocks from her parents. She was a highly educated 38-year-old woman with connections to the governor. As she lay in a hospital bed, worried that infection could enter her uterus at any moment, she finally understood the ban now applied to anyone losing a baby.

I’m being too hard on this woman, comparing her to the sheep. Her only mistake was assuming she would somehow be different, because she actually needed an abortion, unlike all the women who abort pregnancies…I dunno, recreationally, maybe. Honestly, she is fully aware of the madness of the situation she was in, sitting in a hospital waiting to pass a nearly dead fetus, the infection risk growing by the hour. She becomes feverish, but her temperature has to be past 100.4 before doctors can take action to save her. She has a 17-week fetus, a broken amniotic sac, zero chance of anything other than miscarriage weeks before the outer edge of viability, because the fetus still has a whisper of a heartbeat.

It’s an enraging story. Bottom line: Don’t get pregnant in Arkansas. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders will shine you on.

In other, happier news, it is finally summer, more or less. The weekend was chilly and rainy and then, on Monday, the sun broke through and we had a fine Memorial Day. Let’s hope the rest of the summer is pleasant; we certainly had a shitty enough spring.

Out for a bike ride.

I slept poorly last night, and what else is new. Woke five minutes before the alarm, picked up the iPad to see if Trump kicked the bucket overnight (alas, he didn’t), and texted my boxing-workout group chat that I was going back to sleep.

I did not go back to sleep. Laid there for five minutes, got up and got dressed, hit Starbucks for a giant cappuccino and was the first to arrive. Hit the bag for 47 minutes, did the core set, came home for eggs and more coffee and at the moment? I. Feel. Great. The message is either to push through discomfort or get the extra sleep, because I promise you it will not last.

Might as well get this done first, then.

Big news here yesterday: Former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan dropped out of the governor’s race. His stated reason: The world has become even more divided since he announced he was leaving the Democratic Party to run as an independent, and there’s no longer a path for a uniter who seeks to bridge the divide, join hands across the aisle, and all that stuff. Big cities being cynical places, there’s a large cohort who believe this is a flimsy explanation, and speculate on two alternatives: One, that he’ll be the next president of the University of Michigan, or two, that he’s working a scheme with Jocelyn Benson, the presumptive Democratic nominee (primaries aren’t until August), where he’ll join her on the ticket as her lieutenant governor.

I can be shockingly naive at times, but I think I believe his initial explanation. He left the party in 2024, after the disaster of the presidential race, and regard for the Democrats was at a low ebb. It’s still not exactly high tide, but even haters are going to vote against the ongoing Republican disaster, and a few lefties are doing very well, especially in Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed, a Bernie bro, is leading the polls for the U.S. Senate nomination. I have doubts about his ability to win the general, so I’m still on the fence. It is incredibly difficult to run an independent campaign in the best of times, the higher you go on the ladder. Which is to say, most successful indie campaigns are at the municipal level, a few more at the state-legislative tier, and not many above that. In times like these, it’s almost impossible. I’m not interested in joining hands across the aisle at the moment. I’m interested in taking a flamethrower to the other side of the aisle, in fact. So I get it.

But like I said, I’m often wrong and I could be very wrong here. I don’t see someone like Duggan willing to settle for second banana to Benson. The presidency at U-M would be a cushy perch, but honestly, not that influential. So we’ll see. I need to talk to smarter people before I lay money on anything.

And now, here we are: Movement weekend! The big techno fest, where you don’t even have to set foot in Hart Plaza, where the festival actually is, to participate, because bars and clubs all over the city will be bumping house music through Memorial Day. I’ve got my eye on a couple of opportunities to drink a cold beverage and nod along with the beat. So that’s where I am this Friday.

I hope your weekend goes swimmingly.

This should not have been a surprise, but as I am Old, it kinda was. At one point in the late-lunch colloquy over the table Sunday, someone mentioned a photo most of us had seen but a couple hadn’t — our friend Dustin as a little boy, sitting on Alice Cooper’s lap. In a golf cart — Alice was playing golf at a course managed by Dustin’s father. (Dustin often says he taught himself to read by examining the liner notes on his parents’ albums.)

Anyway, I wanted to show the pic to the uninitiated, but I couldn’t remember when it made its way into my camera roll. Google Photos is my automatic backup, so just for the hell of it I typed “man in golf cart” into the search engine. Immediately, there it was:

But there were other choices, too. A pic from an early-morning swim in the Shores, with a maintenance guy zipping across the sunrise.

A pedal pub downtown. Two, actually:

Weirdest of all, this detail from the Diego Rivera murals at the DIA:

I guess I’ve known you can do something like this — type “steps” or “waterfall” and be served the photos that match. I did not know it could be this specific. AI, which I try to avoid using whenever I can, is kind of scary sometimes.

I wish I had more to offer this morning, but I read about the president’s most recent, peak-blatant act of corruption — this, of course — and was nearly struck dumb with fury. You want to know why Democrats are so angry? Because I expect my elected representatives, all Democrats, to be SHUTTING DOWN THE GODDAMN COUNTRY right now. And it doesn’t appear to be happening. They’re worthless, every last one.

Also, I have to get a haircut. Let’s get though this week, eh?