Alan is a pretty fair birdwatcher, not the tromp-the-woods-with-binocs type, but the keep-backyard-feeders-and-notice-who-comes by sort. A couple years ago, after not seeing any nearby, we started spotting the occasional oriole.

Orioles, with their bright plumage, are worth welcoming back. But it was only a glimpse; Alan rushed out to buy a oriole feeder, but subsequent sightings were rare. Our little microclimate has been invaded by red-winged blackbirds, which is like having a meth family move in, and we figured they were keeping the orioles away.

This year, huzzah, the orioles returned, so we got the feeder out of the garage, loaded it up — with oranges and grape jelly, if you’re unfamiliar — and soon they were stopping by on the regular, along with other species that apparently enjoy high fructose corn syrup and fruit that grows nowhere near their native habitat, primarily sparrows and robins. Along with another freeloader:

GODDAMN FUCKING SQUIRRELS is something I hear often these days. The ubiquitous critters are very good at finding free food, and figured out how to access the orioles’ chow in about 15 minutes. This necessitated, first, the purchase of a ridiculous squirt gun, sort of a large syringe, that can shoot a few dozen feet. The problem is the squirrels are faster than the gun, and the best Alan’s been able to do is dampen a few. I think for an animal that lives outdoors, a juicy orange quarter is worth a wet coat.

So now he’s experimenting with relocating the feeder. It’s sharing space with the hummingbird feeder now, another desirable species we want to keep happy. It’s an ongoing process. I’ll keep you posted.

Another pleasant weekend. The weather’s been in the 70s, with at least some sunshine every day, and this is, to me, the very best summer. So I’m getting out when I can, which is often. Nothing like a spritz in the back yard at the end of the day.

Of course I followed the saga of the Reflecting Pool over the weekend, too. Don’t worry, Judge Janine is on the case!

Also, farewell to Alan Greenspan and Clive Davis. Happy Monday to all the rest of you.

A few weeks ago, a story sped by in the sluice, something about a company with a substantial valuation that had a workforce of two — the founding partners. Everything else the company did was carried out by AI.

I don’t recall much more about it, AI being a topic that’s simultaneously rage-inducing and terrifying, so I probably read the first three paragraphs and noped out. But it came to mind in recent weeks, in connection with a gas-station credit card of Alan’s.

It’s a negligible card in our credit constellation, kept mainly for emergencies or those back-in-the-day days when you’re driving on fumes but payday is 24 hours away. I always paid it off, never carried a balance. It would give me an updated credit score every so often, which I appreciated: 820. Still excellent.

But earlier this year, we started receiving mail, both e- and snail, informing us that the oil company was closing its proprietary credit-card operation, and migrating it to a branded MasterCard, overseen by an entirely different company, Imprint. Quick! Migrate your account now! Your old card won’t work after May 18! As the payer of the household bills and a person who has most of her shit together, I obeyed these orders. First attempt: No account recognized under this name. Second attempt, a few days later: Same. Third, fourth and fifth attempts, days after that: Same.

Time to call Customer Support then, a call immediately answered by a clanker, er, virtual assistant. The clanker opened by encouraging me to do everything online, where it’s “easier.” Otherwise, tell me in a few words what the problem is. You all know how this goes, because we’ve all been there. The questions aren’t understood, and you end up bellowing REPRESENTATIVE!!! before being shunted to an alleged human being, where “wait times may be longer than normal due to high call volumes.” Reader, I hung on the line for 20 minutes, my personal limit for cycling through hold music.

This happened twice, before I found the company website and started rooting around in the About section, until I found the page for media inquiries. I filled it out with my information, left a terse but not obscenity-filled note about the problem, and went for a bike ride.

An hour later, a call from the company, which went to voicemail, as I was still out touching grass. I tried logging in again when I returned. Mirabile dictu, my account was recognized. Moments later, I was assured that my new MasterCard was on its way. Shipped!

That was May 19. The card has not yet arrived. It hasn’t been activated, whew, but it’s somewhere between there and here, and true to the warnings, the old card no longer works. I tried calling Imprint again. Clanker, clanker, clanker. REPRESENTATIVE!!!! Sorry, no one is here to take your call, try again later.

Sorry for the long windup here, but would someone please tell me how this miracle technology is going to improve our lives? Gov. Gretchen Whitmer lost 99 percent of my personal support last week, when she happily participated in a ceremonial groundbreaking for a gigantic data center in Saline, south of Ann Arbor. It’s safe to say that virtually no one in the area, save the construction tycoon who got the contract, wants this thing. OpenAI had to threaten to sue the pants off the city to get it done. And the governor shrugged and picked up the shiny shovel.

The editorial-page editor at the Freep had a succinct column about this today. Probably paywalled, so here’s the heart of it:

And there was Sam Altman on Monday, smiling alongside Gov. Gretchen Whitmer at the site of a hyperscale data center in Saline Township ― a massive project that will suck down enough electricity to power 1 million households ― bitterly opposed by a lot of residents and forced into the community via lawsuit:

“We know what the current attitude towards data centers in the world is … but I think we can make this a great example … This could turn into the site where hundreds of millions of students around the world learn and get private tutoring. This could turn into the site where millions of small businesses can run their business with AI in the cloud. … Hopefully someday we’ll all read about some incredible thing AI has done for society … and there’ll be a good chance that it happened as this site came online.”

This is a new, rosier Altman, who lately has seemed to discover that telling people you’re working to usher in a “Terminator”/”The Matrix”-esque version of the future where humans are meat batteries for our robot overlords evokes a little pushback. (But hasn’t seemed to hurt the prospects of OpenAI, which is steaming toward a $1 trillion IPO.)

So this is my question, one that it’s absolutely insane I even have to ask: If Altman believes that his work could result in the end of humanity as the planet’s dominant species, why on earth is Michigan doing business with him?

Good question. The governor’s spokesman had no comment.

Meanwhile, back in my little beef with Imprint, I thought it might be fun to punch their name into the Google and ask for reviews. Hoo-boy:

My REMOVED card, which I have had for 32 years in excellent standing has been moved to this company named Imprint Payments. This company is now sending me texts saying I have to agree to having their REMOVED. I already have a Mastercard, so I am not interested.I have been trying to do two things for the past nine days:- Pay any balance on the account – Close the account I have spent 67 hours on hold (literally 8 hours a day) trying to get a representative to assist. I have tried doing it online but the automated system does not recognize my name or birthday or anything else to identify REMOVED now receiving texts saying my account payment is due. I have used the website asking for assistance and am on hold again today as I REMOVED does not matter what option you choose, the system either says I’m not recognized and puts me on hold to speak to an agent. The past three days after being on hold for three hours it just hangs up on you, so I start the process all over. This is definitely feeling like a scam now as I have no way of paying any balance and/or closing the account. PLEASE HELP!!!

If I had this person’s contact information, I’d suggest they leave a note on the media-inquiries page. Not that it’s done me that much good. Poking around that page, I notice most of the content is press releases and one story from Forbes. Which is now a content farm.

Probably a clanker edits it now.

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?

I’m a city person. Nothing against the country, but I’m happiest in a densely populated crush of humanity. I don’t care if no one is speaking a language I recognize, or if the subway station is dirty. I’m an extrovert. I like people.

So even though we kinda over scheduled our three-day getaway in New York, and my feet/knees were killing me by the end, I can’t say we wasted our time. The outline:

Thursday arrival, 3 p.m. Thursday night: “Oh, Mary!,” with John Cameron Mitchell in the title role. I really wanted to like it, but it left me meh. Food: Eataly. I know it’s touristy, but it was close to our hotel and honestly, the food was great. Italian is the easiest cuisine, IMO. Buy the freshest ingredients, don’t abuse them, enjoy.

Friday: Considered the Whitney Biennial, read a review, opted for the Met’s Raphael exhibit instead. I find his skin tones enchanting. The NYT did an exegesis on this painting in their review…

…but to cover the high points: This was probably an engagement or marriage portrait. The legend said only a virgin could tame a unicorn. The jewel around her neck bespeaks wealth, as does the richness of her garment. The blush on her cheeks — that’s just Raphael.

A word about modern museum behavior, something I first noticed in Italy, i.e. the visitor who scuttles directly in front of a painting, whips out a phone, takes one pic of the art, another of the title card, then scuttles off to the next one. Maybe they want to contemplate it at length later; maybe they’re on a scavenger hunt. Whatever the reason, they spend little time actually looking at the art. It’s all about bagging photographic evidence they were there.

These are 500-year-old paintings, and they look like they were painted last week. Truly amazing.

Then it was home to recharge before a two-banger of an evening — an early set of jazz at Zinc Bar, with Mingus Dynasty, then over a few blocks to a restaurant to catch Salty Brine, a cabaret artist we’ve seen three times now. He’s remaking one of his Living Record Collection shows, the one with Laura Nyro’s “Eli and the Thirteenth Confession,” wrapped with personal storytelling and a satire of the Nativity. This was advertised as an unplugged show, meaning it was just him and one pianist, and it was a work in progress.

Then back to the hotel. Watched Mayor Mamdani’s video on the new pied a terre tax.

On Saturday, a little light shopping, then to Death & Co. for cocktails. A slice of NY pizza before the subway, then an early night. Sunday, home.

I was texting with a friend, a Staten Island native, and he offered the advice his dad gave him whenever he ventured outside the borough: Keep your wallet in your front pocket. Ha ha. Doesn’t really apply anymore. We rode the subway and buses all weekend with little more than our phones, tapped quickly on the touch screen. No more MetroCards, a glimpse of our cashless future (or present). I still carry some for tips, but I arrived with about $80 in my wallet, and spent $70. That ain’t much.

Didn’t take one taxi. Even the airport transit was a breeze. One bus, one train, walk one block. It was great.

Random observations: The city looks great. Young women waiting in nightclub lines were wearing outfits that would embarrass a streetwalker. Too many tourists don’t know how to behave on a sidewalk, which is as simple as “keep moving.” Finally, I regret not moving here after college graduation, just to have my NYC era. But I did all right.

Other news at this hour: The Michigan Democratic Party had its state convention Sunday, and I gather it was wild. Lots of division over the Gaza/Israel wounds, with a strong showing by the progressive wing, who are arguing we’re tired of holding our nose and voting for moderates, let’s try it our way for a while. Haley Stevens, who was considered the frontrunner for the U.S. Senate primary, was booed and is now polling third, after a surging Abdul El-Sayed and Mallory McMorrow, who are in a dead heat. It’s going to be an interesting summer.

One last photo of an amusing subway billboard.

Oh, and a whole-ass baby grand piano for sale, on the sidewalk. I guess they dare you to steal it.

Hi there. I — we — are back. Where did we go? This place:

It was a whirlwind three days. We ventured uptown and down, saw a play, saw cabaret, saw jazz, saw art. This art, in fact, the Raphael exhibit at the Met:

Dog walkers on the upper east side:

Cocktails on the lower east side:

(Actually, I think it’s more properly the east Village. Whatever, I’m a tourist.)

It was exhilarating but exhausting, and I’m still recovering. More later, but we need a new thread.

P.S. To the dismay of perhaps some of you, NYC is not imploding under its COMMUNIST MAYOR. In fact, it seems to be thriving. Of course, he’s only been in office a few months. Give it time. :::Mitch Albom shakes his fist angrily.:::

I’ll be back when I’m more rested.

A belated happy Easter. It didn’t quite sneak up on me, but it also kinda did. Kate, her boyfriend two other friends came over for brunch. One of us was a vegan, so that was a challenge, but extra-firm tofu can be dressed up a million ways. I made frittatas for the five non-vegans, a bunch of sweet potato hash with the tofu, fried potatoes, a nice Meyer lemon cake. It was fine. Food is never the most important part of a party; the company is. It was good company, and we had a nice time.

I did, anyway.

But I did fall asleep on the couch after everyone left, or at least dozed while watching “Michael Clayton” for the twelve thousandth time.

God, I remember holidays when they were the occasion for a genuine unplug, especially one that falls on a weekend, but we can’t do that anymore, can we? Not if you want to be a conscientious citizen:

That guy could ruin… anything. I don’t even have a metaphor. And yet, here we are, surrounded by cowards and toadies and hand-wringers, and somewhere out there is a monster who will assume the weight of that straw and, back broken, start planning — or stop planning and start implementing — a plan to damage as many Americans as possible. But the shithead will be cosseted behind layers of security. Someone else will suffer, and he won’t care. It’s just how he is.

So I don’t have much for you today. Let’s wait for Real Spring to arrive and hope for the best.

Early in our relationship, which is to say a long time ago, Alan gave me a very nice fountain pen. A Montblanc Meisterstuck, to be exact. I think he paid $140 for it, at a pen store on Calhoun Street in Fort Wayne. I’ve used it off and on over the years, because a fountain pen isn’t just something to write with. You gotta maintain it, too, clean it and keep the correct ink source nearby. At one point it spent several years in retirement, in the pencil cup on my desk, until I decided it was a shame to have such a beautiful pen and not use it, so I took it to the fancy-pen spot at the luxury mall in the suburbs, and they cleaned it up and returned it to service.

The thing about this pen are the details. The six-pointed white star on the tip of the cap, for example. It’s supposed to suggest a snow-capped mountain, as the company is named for the highest peak in the Alps. The pen-store clerks will tell you that in the Arab states, where luxury goods are in great demand, the company sells pens with just a round white tip on the cap, for obvious reasons. The nib has 4810 etched on it, the height of Mont Blanc in meters. Google will tell you the correct number is 4805.59, but the higher number is based on the height including the ice cap. Climate change probably has it closer to the Google number, so it’s fitting that this century-old company sticks with the bigger one.

I’ve been using it ever since. I find handwriting a to-do list is more satisfying than making one on my laptop. I also do a little journal-writing, the occasional check, this and that. When I travel, it goes along, in the elastic pen loop on my planner. I like it. The other day, I idly looked up what it would cost to replace, should what often happens with pens come to pass.

Reader, I nearly died: $810.

A friend of mine is in the Use the Good China camp. Open the special bottle, use the crystal, use the good china. What are you saving it for? Why leave it in the cabinet? And I agree, mostly. At the same time, I went to the pen place where I buy my Montblanc cartridges and bought a $35 Pilot fountain pen, plus a box of ink cartridges. I now use the two pens on alternating days, but only the Pilot will leave the house. At least I don’t have to worry about someone stealing it, although it is a cute purple. The Pilot blue ink is a little brighter, a little bluer. Here’s Fancy Pants and Purple Pop side-by-side.

If you’re wondering, I also use luxury pencils. I have a box of Blackwing 602s in my desk drawer, a sharpened one on my desk. I hardly ever write with pencils, but when I do I appreciate every little thing about the Blackwing. I gave Kate a box for Christmas, to go with the NYT crossword-puzzles book in the same package. (And a pencil sharpener, the small appliance people forget until they need one.)

It’s the little things. The things you touch. The things that are connected to the work you do in a primal way. I do nearly all my writing on a keyboard, but if you’re a writer you should have a decent pen. Now I have two.

Did anyone watch the president Wednesday night? I tried, or rather, I heard it coming from Alan’s iPad. But I noped out after five minutes, figured I’d read the NYT story the next day. Didn’t miss anything.

Happy weekend, all.

The severe cold front headed this way has been heralded and warned about for days now, but it still hasn’t arrived. Overnight, we’re told. Definitely Friday. I got out my flannel-lined pants and longjanes, put them on, and feel right toasty, but it’s still a mere 21 degrees, and I’m indoors. Wore the Parka of Tribulation out for errands today, and it’s stiffly occupying a dining-room chair, so I guess, all in all, I’m Ready.

This is normal, despite what the weather terrorists are telling us. But that’t the thing about weather in general — three mild winters erases all memory of bad ones forever. The AM radio idiots report wind chills, which are pretty sketchy to begin with, as though they are the actual temperatures. It’ll be 20 below tomorrow, the dumbest one reported when I was out and about. Well, yeah. If you’re walking around naked.

Alan will set the faucets to drip overnight. Unless the power or furnace goes out, we’ll be fine.

The other thing the AM radio idiots were talking about today was the 4D chess their brilliant leader played to get a deal on Greenland, when it seems to me he got what we could have had all along if we’d just acted like a normal country and not a speeding truck driven by a drunk. But that’s why they’re idiots.

Now we await the next insane twist in the news. My decluttering project continues. Found this in a case of cassette tapes, which I no longer have the means to play:

Yes, it’s one of Jeff Borden’s hand-crafted mixtapes from the legendary series of Halloween parties he and two other guys hosted in the ’80s. It’s labeled “Hostbusters #2.” I don’t know if that means it’s the second tape of the evening, or the second party in the series. I just punched “Earl Klugh” in the search engine here and got no hits, so I will tell this story that I suspect I’ve shared before, but oh well:

Borden paid a near-scientific level of attention to his mixtapes. (Note the two colors of ink in the track listing.) Like Rob in “High Fidelity,” he gave great thought to how each one should kick off, rise in excitement, offer occasional breaks, etc. Given that these parties went for hours, it required multiple tapes, and each one needed to be considered as part of the arc. One year, a guy who came as someone’s plus-one approached him with a tape of his own, an album by the jazz guitarist Earl Klugh.

“Can you play this?” the guy asked.

Borden put him off, explaining the energy of the party was driven by the music, etc., and he didn’t think it would really work with the vibe. The guy persisted, and Borden finally said, “Let me think of a spot to fit it in,” and they both wandered off. Midnight came and went, and suddenly it was 3 a.m. and the place was still rockin’. Shit, thought Borden. I’m going to be here past sunrise if I can’t get this wrapped soon. He wasn’t the type to turn the lights on and start kicking people out — too rude. But then he spotted the guy with the Earl Klugh tape. “Let’s put on Earl,” he suggested.

The party emptied out in 15 minutes.

I should make a Spotify playlist of these tracks. Something to do when I’m confined to quarters this weekend. Stay warm, everybody.

Today — Sunday — feels like it’s going to be a good one. I started it with a bowl of whole-grain, steel-cut oatmeal, just to, y’know, piss off Croaky.

Also, I’m going to swim in 90 minutes and need the carbs.

One of my Facebook group check-ins is with Belle Isle Photography, a group for guess-what. It’s overfull of the bald eagles that have been nesting there for a while, but every so often you get a banger like this, by Terry McNamara:

Notice where the predators started the feast: In the back, where the flava lives.

In keeping with Det. Dale Cooper’s advice in “Twin Peaks,” one way I’m trying to cope with winter this year is giving myself a little treat once in a while, and on Saturday we took a drive up to the Anchor Bay region of the Lake St. Clair flats, and crossed the water on the car ferry to Harsen’s Island, a popular spot for summer cottages less than an hour’s drive away. Even allowing for it being midwinter here, I wasn’t impressed. As I’ve said before, Lake St. Clair makes more sense as a river delta than a lake, and the area around it is naturally quite swampy. (One street in Grosse Pointe is called Grand Marais, i.e. large swamp.) So the areas that don’t have cottages on them are mainly taken over by phragmites, a.k.a. the common reed. Acres and acres of them, so driving around and through the island mainly looks like this:

Every spring, a column of smoke visible for miles rises in the northeast, as the annual Burning of the Phragmites takes place on Harsen’s and adjacent Walpole Island.

Then we jaunted up to Marine City, and had a nice fishy lunch at a seafood place on the river. Perch for me, walleye for Alan. Then it started to snow, so home we headed.

I know, I know — I should have been at a demonstration opposing ICE, but I just couldn’t. Tubby is coming to town on Tuesday, to address the Economic Club, and I’ll go to that one. I should make a sign: EVERYBODY IS LAUGHING AT YOU. Maybe. There’s time.

I can’t even offer any bloggage today, because I feel like I’ve reached my limit of bad news for a while, and I have to turn away from the despair, if only for a while. I’m cleaning closets today. I last went through the one I’m neck-deep in now maybe…four years ago. And I’m finding all the stuff I couldn’t part with then, and am equally loathe to part with now. The English Struwwelpeter? Can’t let that go, even if it is preserved in Project Gutenberg. The subtitle is “merry stories and funny pictures,” and everything you need to know about Germans is contained in the fact they consider a virtual horror movie of terrible things happening to children merry and funny. Here’s a short one, to give you an idea:

One day Mamma said “Conrad dear,
I must go out and leave you here.
But mind now, Conrad, what I say,
Don’t suck your thumb while I’m away.
The great tall tailor always comes
To little boys who suck their thumbs;
And ere they dream what he’s about,
He takes his great sharp scissors out,
And cuts their thumbs clean off—and then,
You know, they never grow again.”

Mamma had scarcely turned her back,
The thumb was in, Alack! Alack!

The door flew open, in he ran,
The great, long, red-legged scissor-man.
Oh! children, see! the tailor’s come
And caught out little Suck-a-Thumb.
Snip! Snap! Snip! the scissors go;
And Conrad cries out “Oh! Oh! Oh!”
Snip! Snap! Snip! They go so fast,
That both his thumbs are off at last.

Mamma comes home: there Conrad stands,
And looks quite sad, and shows his hands;
“Ah!” said Mamma, “I knew he’d come
To naughty little Suck-a-Thumb.”

Imagine what they did for masturbators.

There’s also a volume of my late great-aunt’s teaching material, poems she would read to her students. The ink is so faded it’s barely readable, but it’s part of our family’s history and I will lug it through the next few years.

Back to it. Happy week ahead, all.

An interesting topic came up in a group chat this weekend. Here was the precipitating statement:

Are old-fashioned manners outlawed these days? As a childless uncle and aunt, we’ve always been very generous to our nephews and niece. Now that they’re adults — my niece is studying law but the boys are working — we send them sizable checks. As of today, still no thanks. Hell, we’d settle for a text. All three are good people, yet they seem unaware of basic common courtesies.

It so happens this is something I’ve noticed myself. Wedding gifts in particular don’t seem to be acknowledged. (Not by Deb’s boys, I hasten to reassure her. They wrote lovely thank-you notes.) I bought one a few years back, working from the online registry, and as soon as I hit Purchase a robo-email landed in my inbox: Bob and Sue thank you for your generosity! The hell they do. They checked a box, maybe, on their registry, to enable the robo-reply.

I know I didn’t get a proper thank-you afterward.

And having had a wedding of my own, and knowing how insane they tend to get, I don’t think this is always a hanging offense. Couples get overwhelmed, cards fall off of boxes, shit happens. But with wedding gifts in particular, so often they’re sent directly to the bride’s or couple’s house before the wedding. You want to know they arrived, at least. Porch piracy is a real thing. But it seems weird to ask, although Alan did, once. He got a mumbled yeah I think so and only learned later the marriage didn’t survive very long, and maybe that’s why the thank-you was never sent.

I blame parents for not teaching their children better manners, although given the way Gen Z reacts when asked to do anything involving setting a pen to paper, maybe they did and they were just ignored. As my friend says, just send a text. It’ll probably be enough.

So, the great interregnum of the year is upon us. I hope you all had a lovely Christmas; I know we did. Gifts and food and more food and cocktails at 3 p.m., all of it. I got some wonderful gifts, large and small. I’m currently waiting for what is supposed to be more apocalyptic weather on Sunday, torrents of rain followed by plunging temperatures that may or may not lead to snow, but will surely freeze the puddles left behind. Good thing this is my vacation from my early lifeguarding shifts.

And I’m doing Dry January, again. In fact, I’m looking forward to it, after all the rich food and 3 p.m. cocktails of the past few days. I want to eat vegetables and drink sparkling water, or just plain old water. Settle in for the long haul until spring not feeling like the Goodyear blimp.

Couple quick things: For four days now, I have been unable to load this site — my own site! — on my phone, but it works fine everywhere else. Anyone else having the same problem? I get this error:

J.C. says he blames “the DNS services your phone’s provider is serving your phone with.” I have no idea.

Another housekeeping note: I reloaded the WordPress app on my phone, thinking it would be easier to post more often, with photos and such. Alas, these posts (like yesterday’s) seem to default to closed comments, even though I thought I changed that setting. I’ll keep tinkering, but be advised I’m aware of the problem.

Finally, let’s all take note of the example of Chuck Redd, the jazz musician who cancelled his Christmas Eve jam at the Kennedy Center after the toadies running it added you-know-who’s name to the building. Harvard is buckling. Big Law buckled. Big Media buckled. But this guy didn’t. Let a million Davids bloom. Keep your slingshot handy. We are on our own, we all know that now.

I was at the Eastern Market on Saturday when a Waymo taxi passed me. Someone was behind the wheel, which I take to mean it’s still undergoing testing, but we’ll likely have the driverless vehicles in Detroit before long. I texted a friend that I look forward to setting one on fire during the bloody riots of summer ’26. I was joking, but only kinda. We all know the year ahead will be grim, as the midterms approach and the Trumpers get more desperate. Be like Chuck Redd. Maybe we’ll get through this.