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.

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.

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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A post shared by Fraser Reynolds (@fraser__reynolds)

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.

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.

I was trying to think of something non-Trumpy to blog today, and then I saw this, and honestly, I got nothing better, so let’s start the weekend with a smile and have a good weekend, all.

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.