"What are some famous quotes by writers/artists/musicians about critics?"

That's I question I had, a couple hours ago, as I was gathering my thoughts in preparation, I thought, for blogging this article by the New Yorker's movie critic, Richard Brody, "In Defense of the Traditional Review/Far from being a journalistic relic, as suggested by recent developments at the New York Times, arts criticism is inherently progressive, keeping art honest and pointing toward its future."

I got a bunch of great quotes out of Grok with my question, including the one that deserves to stand in for them all: "Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read" (Frank Zappa).

Then there was this, from Pablo Picasso: "The critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." And that got me tumbling down a side path with an issue I'd encountered yesterday, the idea that there are individuals who identify as eunuchs and the notion that castration is, for them, medically necessary. I was told: "The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care (Version 8) includes a chapter on 'eunuch' as a gender identity, suggesting that castration may be considered 'medically necessary gender-affirming care' for some who identify as eunuchs and experience distress from their genitals."

I introduced the question: "It occurs to me that a person might argue that they identify as dead and therefore entitled to physician-assisted suicide — that killing is a medically required treatment." That led to a long discussion that kept me far away from the topic of the usefulness of critics — they're "inherently progressive"! — and I'm not going to go into the details. I'm just going to list a few phrases that came up in the Grok discussion that's displaced blogging for me this morning:

"Conditions like Cotard’s syndrome, where individuals genuinely believe they are dead or non-existent, are rare and classified as a psychiatric delusion, treated through therapy or medication, not affirmation," "So you're saying that if only doctors had been killing people who 'identify as dead' for a longer period of time and managed to fight off those who think it's wrong, it would be analogous to transgender surgeries," "You’re correct that genital transgender surgeries, like vaginoplasty or phalloplasty, are... irreversible in any meaningful sense," "'Sexual sensation is possible due to preserved nerves' — I note that you didn't say orgasm," "Your point about muscles is spot-on: the lack of vaginal musculature in a neovagina means it cannot replicate the contractile component of a natal female orgasm," "Is there any commentary, comedy, or fictional writing utilizing my idea of 'identifying as dead'?," "Seems like something that someone in 'Chicago' would say (like 'He ran into my knife... 50 times')," "Somewhere, some writer(s) must have already written the line: 'Go ahead. Try to kill me. You can't. I'm already dead.'"

That went on and on, with the discussion of many movies, and it wasn't the only A.I. conversations that kept me away from the blog this morning. There was also, among many others, "Summarize this article... and explain why Brody thinks arts criticism is 'progressive.'" Which led to: "What is 'progressive' supposed to mean? It strikes me as utter bullshit." And: "Weave into this discussion what Tom Wolfe wrote in 'The Painted Word.'" And: "Isn't there some related idea — or conspiracy theory — that the CIA created the art market for Abstract Expressionism?"

All of that was more interesting to me than what I would have produced reading Brody's article and blogging it in my usual way. And my "usual way" is to follow whatever interests me, not to feel obligated, but to do what is intrinsically rewarding for me. You see the problem!

"Whether you are touching up the 'Mona Lisa,' 'reviewing' novels or doing logic puzzles" — using A.I. — "you are engaging in the very human drive to play."

"As I’ve watched people adopt these systems, what I’ve seen is mostly people playing with art and language. If you go through the history of these bots, you see poetry, fiction and all kinds of little genre experiments like this as a constantly recurring theme.... OpenAI also advertised one of its early models with an image produced by the prompt 'astronaut riding a horse.' The natural response to this image is to think, 'Cool!'...  We ought to think about A.I. as an entertainment-first system, before anything else. Would you replace all of primary education with 'Sesame Street'? Or decide government policy with SimCity? It’s not an insult to the beloved children’s program or computer game to say no. The lesson is simple: We might be taking A.I. too seriously."

Writes Leif Weatherby, director of the NYU Digital Theory Lab, in "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Have Fun With A.I" (NYT).

I like the name Leif Weatherby, and he probably didn't write his own headline, but its reference point — "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" — is a movie that ends with the destruction of all of humanity. So are we taking A.I. too seriously or not seriously enough?

One might interpret the movie title to mean the bomb is going to destroy us all before long so there's no use worrying. It's the world we're stuck in, so love the reality that exists. It's the old: Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die.

Is that Dr. Weatherby's point?

***

Grok, what's the origin and history of the adage Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die?

The phrase draws heavily from two passages in the Bible: 

Ecclesiastes 8:15 (Old Testament, c. 3rd–2nd century BCE): In the King James Version, it reads, "Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry." This verse, attributed to King Solomon, reflects on the futility of life and the value of enjoying simple pleasures amidst its uncertainties. 

Isaiah 22:13 (Old Testament, c. 8th century BCE): This passage states, "Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die." It appears in a context of rebuke, where the people of Jerusalem are criticized for indulging in revelry instead of repenting during a time of crisis.

"Plenty of Jews Love Zohran Mamdani."

The headline for a Michelle Goldberg column. Excerpt:

“His campaign has attracted Jewish New Yorkers of all types,” wrote Jay Michaelson, a columnist at the Jewish newspaper The Forward. The rabbi who runs my son’s Hebrew school put Mamdani on his ballot, though he didn’t rank him first. And while Mamdani undoubtedly did best among left-leaning and largely secular Jews, he made a point of reaching out to others....

So it has been maddening to see people claim that Mamdani’s win was a victory for antisemitism.... Ultimately.... New York’s Democratic primary wasn’t about Israel.... 

The attacks on Mamdani during the primary were brutal, but now that he’s a national figure, those coming his way will be worse. His foes will try to leverage Jewish anxieties to smash the Democratic coalition.... But don’t forget that the vision of this city at the heart of Mamdani’s campaign — a city that embraces immigrants and hates autocrats, that’s at once earthy and cosmopolitan — is one that many Jews, myself included, find inspiring....

Earthy.  

I was moved to unearth every "earthy" in the 21-year archive of this blog. They're all quotes of other people. I've never once used the word (except for one instance, now corrected, where I clearly meant to type "earthly" ("I didn't think you would be terribly sad to see that Robert Blake has left the earthy scene")).

Found poetry. Place of finding: spam file.

If we take "obliterate" literally, it means to cause to disappear.

The media seem to be overeager to undercut Trump's accomplishment by saying that he said the word "obliteration" but there's actually — possibly — something left. 

From this morning's news: "Trump reveals Israel sent agents to Iran’s bombed nuclear sites to confirm their 'total obliteration.'"

He seems determined not to abandon his word of choice, "obliteration."

How literally do we take "obliteration"? Really hardcore literalism would require that the thing be wiped from human memory. "Ob-" means against and "littera" means letter. Strike out the text. It's what Orwell's "memory hole" did. 

So how have we been using the word "obliterate" in recent years? Here's what I've noticed in the past 2 decades, just 11 examples taken from this blog's archive.

1. Quoting Hillary Clinton: "If [Obama] does not have the gumption to put me in my place, when superdelegates are deserting me, money is drying up, he’s outspending me 2-to-1 on TV ads, my husband’s going crackers and party leaders are sick of me, how can he be trusted to totally obliterate Iran and stop Osama?"

2. Quoting Camille Paglia: "Democrats are doing this in collusion with the media obviously, because they just want to create chaos... They want to completely obliterate any sense that the Trump administration is making any progress on anything... I am appalled at the behavior of the media...."

3. Quoting Trump: "As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!)."

"In a rambling, conspiratorial letter addressed to the FBI, alleged assassin Vance Boelter claimed Gov. Tim Walz instructed him to kill U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar so that Walz could run for the U.S. Senate..."

"... according to two people familiar with the contents of the letter. The letter... is incoherent, one and a half pages long, confusing and hard to read, according to two people familiar with the letter’s contents.... Federal prosecutors allege the letter was left behind in a Buick that Boelter deserted near his home in Green Isle, Minn. It also allegedly contained Boelter’s confession that he carried out the shootings that killed state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and injured Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette...."

From "Letter to FBI from shooting suspect made wild claims about Klobuchar and Walz, sources say/People with direct knowledge of a letter Vance Boelter addressed to the FBI say it is rambling and conspiratorial" (Minnesota Star Tribune).

Show us the letter. I'd like to form my own opinion and not just hear an assertion that it's "incoherent." The other day, I wasted time reading a prominent column with the headline stating that a new Supreme Court opinion was "incoherent." I almost blogged about it just to critique the deceptive use of the concept of incoherence.

"Slowly, he attracted followers, like-minded individuals interested in living sustainably, outside traditional supports, who were captivated by his thrifty ways and homesteading solution..."

"... and by the lovely short videos he posted: of desert cottontails eating off his mother’s Limoges plates; of dung beetles rolling a cow patty like a stone; of bees drinking from a pan of water. Within a few years, nearly a million people had visited his blog — more recently, the number was well over four million — and he had a core group of 1,000 or so regulars who followed his daily struggles and small triumphs...."

I'm reading "John Wells, 64, Who Fled New York for the Solitude of the Desert, Dies/A fashion photographer, he built a do-it-yourself life on 40 lonely acres in West Texas, living like a modern-day Thoreau and telling millions of his experience on a blog" (NYT).

Is it good to see the word "blog" in an obituary? Yes. 

It's also good to see someone memorialized for his frugality: "[H]e sold his house for $600,000 to a family of five, winnowed his possessions down to what he could fit in a rented truck and set off to build a new life. He paid $8,000 in cash for his 40-acre parcel. His property taxes that first year were $86.... He started with a tiny shack, where he could live, and equipped it with a bunk bed, a galley kitchen and a desk...."

"I've written 1274 blog posts so far this year, and I will write 1 more today."

"Starting tomorrow, how many posts must I write per day in order to have 3,000 when the year ends?"

Answer: 8.4559 posts per day.

"For a long time, I've done at least 3,000 a year, but the last 2 years, I've cut it close. That's not because I'm writing less. I'm probably writing more, just writing longer posts. But there's something motivating about the 3,000 goal, which I've hit ever year beginning in 2008. Give me a structured framework for analyzing whether I should go for the goal or break it on purpose or just go without calculating and let what happens happen."

Things I asked Grok.

"Your post titled 'Is the news of Biden's advanced cancer news of a terrible scandal?' was flagged to us for review."

"We have determined that it violates our guidelines and deleted the post, previously at https://althouse.blogspot.com/2025/05/is-news-of-bidens-advance-cancer-news.html. Why was your blog post deleted? Your content has been evaluated according to our Hate Speech policy. Please visit our Community Guidelines page... to learn more.... We encourage you to review the full content of your blog posts to make sure they are in line with our standards as additional violations could result in termination of your blog."

So I got that email from Blogger this morning.

I'm following the review procedure, and I fully expect the post to be restored, but what jackassery! Was I "inciting hatred against" Joe Biden "on the basis of" his "disability"?!

I'd linked to something titled "This is the Most Dangerous Cover-up in the History of the Presidency...."

Is "the most dangerous cover-up" something that must be... covered up?

A post that belongs at this time stamp was taken down by Blogger.

 Go here to read about what happened.

The continuity of my 20+ year archive is important to me. I know I'm vulnerable to this outside intrusion, and it hurts. The post you are reading — put up on the morning of June 4, 2025 — is a monument to my dismay. I want to be clear that this post is going up at a time that is different from the time stamp you see below, because it is central to blogging, as I understand it, that the posts go up when the time stamp says they go up. 

Even more important to my concept of blogging: I don't delete posts. 

I remember a blog post from December 6, 2021 titled "I remember...."

I remember it began: "I remember something made me read this old blog post of mine, from 2013, when I had a little project going where I'd take one sentence from 'The Great Gatsby' and present it for discussion.... The sentence of the day was 'I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This-or-That’s and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances, and the matchings of invitations: 'Are you going to the Ordways'? the Herseys'? the Schultzes'?' and the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands.'"

I'm looking back at that post because I just did a search of my archive for "Brainard," because I'm reading a new article in The New Yorker, by Joshua Rothman, "What Do You Remember? The more you explore your own past, the more you find there" and it begins: "Last year, for my birthday, my wife gave me a copy of 'I Remember,' an unusual memoir by the artist Joe Brainard. It’s a tidy little book, less than two hundred pages long, made entirely from short, often single-sentence paragraphs beginning with the words 'I remember.'"

Writing about that "Gatsby" sentence, I'd said: "Things remembered: fur coats, chatter, hands waving, matchings of invitations, and long green tickets. These remembered things give the reader a sense of the incompletely delineated human beings.... This is a mass of faceless humanity, cluttered with hands, waving and clasping.... " And a commenter, gadfly, said: "Althouse is doing her Joe Brainard, 'I Remember' schtick - but she can't top the master." He quoted Brainard's book, and it was obviously my kind of thing — very sentence-y. I immediately read it. I'll read it again, now that I'm reminded of it.

But what is Joshua Rothman saying about it?

"Is there footage of this thing gasping for breath for two minutes before expiring? I need some light comedy before bed."

Says one commenter on "SC cop killer Mikal Mahdi chose upscale final meal before he was executed by firing squad" (NY Post).

And there is this, from Mahdi's lawyer: "Faced with barbaric and inhumane choices, Mikal Mahdi had chosen the lesser of the three evils.... Mikal chose the firing squad instead of being burned and mutilated in the electric chair, or suffering the lingering death on the lethal injection gurney."

Having given you 2 sides of the death penalty issue, I will take the liberty to turn the topic to grammar — the lawyer's grammar. You shouldn't say "the lesser of three evils." It's correct to say "the lesser of 2 evils," but "lesser" is used when there are only 2 things. If there are more than 2, you've got to use "least" — "the least of 3 evils."

That "the lesser of 2 evils" is a very common phrase and "the least/lesser of 3 evils" feels new is evidence of our tendency to see our choices as binary.

For the annals of Things I Asked Grok:

"There’s a book that my therapist recommended. I didn’t read it, but I did read the first chapter on this practice called morning pages."

"It’s meant to get you connected with your creativity. I’ll sit down and free associate, either with writing or with doodles. I might sketch shapes that relate to an interior or a table. It was pushed on me by my therapist, to wake up, make tea and create a soft, uninterrupted moment for myself."

From "How the Owner of a Nightclub and a Roller Rink Spends His Sundays/Varun Kataria owns various nightlife venues in Bushwick, Brooklyn. His Sundays usually begin with creative projects and end with his dog, Mushroom" (NYT)(I made that a free-access link because the photographs draw you into a particular world).

1. "Morning pages" — similar to but different from what I'm doing here on this blog. Before this blog, I'd use a sketchbook and a fountain pen. There were more doodles, fewer quotes. 

2. "I didn’t read it... pushed on me by my therapist" — he's getting "connected with [his] creativity" and disconnected from that therapist. 

3. "Mushroom" — name your dog Mushroom, and those people who just have to ask "What's his name?" — or "What's his name or her name (I don't want to misgender him... or her)?" — will forever be inquiring whether it refers to psychedelic mushrooms. Good conversation starter actually... probably.

Grogging.

It's a portmanteau word.

Discovered as I listened to myself stumbling over pronunciation while blabbing — in real life — about the challenges of blogging while also using Grok.

The order of orders: chronological order.

I found — with kind help — a way to get rid of the reply function in the comments. I hope you, like me, enjoy the return to chronological order. I never liked comments jumping the line, displaying above comments that had gone up earlier. It was especially bad because my browser still displayed the comments in chronological order and therefore had many comments that were replying to who knows what.

Anyway, I've said it before and I like to repeat it: the greatest order of all time is chronological order:

In the previous post, I wrote: "[Chronological order is] the most obvious order, used by lovers of order all over the world and through the grand course of time. There are other orders — alphabetical order, order of importance...."

This made me want to put order... in order.

"Karoline Leavitt, the new White House press secretary — at 27, the youngest person ever to hold the job — kicked off her first briefing on Tuesday afternoon..."

"... by reminding all the veteran reporters in assembly that they had become more irrelevant than ever. 'Americans’ trust in mass media has fallen to a record low,' she said right off the top. Twisting the knife, she added: 'Millions of Americans — especially young people — have turned from traditional television outlets and newspapers.' The place was packed with network television anchors and rumpled newspaper reporters who had been slinging questions around that cramped room since before Ms. Leavitt learned to walk or talk.... Smiling, ever-so-sweetly, she told the old-timers they’d have to make room for all the flashy new bloggers, influencers, 'content creators' and podcasters she planned to invite to her briefings on a regular basis. It was, she said, high time that the White House 'adapt' to the 'new media landscape.'... Mr. Trump’s top flack wasted no time throwing down the gauntlet in her first performance behind the lectern. She was steely.... She betrayed no fear and little ambivalence and she seemed quite confident speaking on her boss’s behalf...."

NYT White House correspondent Shawn McCreesh gives credit where credit is due, in "White House Press Secretary Makes Steely and Unflinching Debut/Karoline Leavitt used her first briefing in the role to warn veteran reporters that they were increasingly irrelevant" (NYT).

I like the phrase "all the flashy new bloggers."

I'm able to watch TikTok on my desktop computers using Safari (and Chrome).

And the embedded Rand Paul video from yesterday is displayed in the blog post, even on my phone, and it plays. Screenshot from the phone, made just now:

Is something changing or were browsers never shut off? I don't know.

AND: Here's an embed to watch:

Taking down TikTok punched a hundred holes in my blog.

Where I had embedded video yesterday, it now looks like this:

Every post that had an embedded TikTok video now looks empty like that and is missing its point. Every post where I linked to anything on TikTok has been turned — forcibly, by our government — into something that would not be posted.

I watched a lot of TikTok yesterday, so I saw how many many TikTok creators were saying goodbye to the audience they had drawn in over the years, and now, this morning, I'm seeing mainstream media articles about how these last goodbyes sounded. The NYT has the headline "In TikTok’s Final Hours, a Mix of Silliness and Sadness." And that headline made me angry, because I didn't see "silliness." I saw sadness, but the other thing I saw was outright anger — anger at the American government for shutting down a medium of free individual speech that was an important part of life for tens of millions of Americans. Even if much of TikTok could be labeled "silly," even silly speech matters — seriously — when the government comes and takes it away.

Speaking of social media, today is the 21st anniversary of the first day of this blog.

And yes, it continues to be true that I have blogged on every single day of those 21 years.

And not just to keep up the record! I've loved it continuously from Day 1. It's been a pleasure. Thanks to everyone who's been reading, even if it hasn't been for the entire 21 years. You're here today, and that's the most bloggy thing.

Goal achieved... on the last day of the year beginning on the first Sunday in January...

... as displayed in the Blogger sidebar...

... I hit 3,000 posts for the 17th year in a row. 

There were also more than 3,000 if you count the year from January 1, 2024 to December 31, 2024, but those numbers in the sidebar are what I've been looking at all these years. It's only this year that — after 20+ years — I noticed the numbers are aggregated by week, weeks that begin on Sunday, and years are simply 52 weeks. 

And, in that light, the last day of "2024" is today, Saturday January 4th.