"The surge of tiny clapping has led to an endless debate on TikTok about the proper way to do it."

"Some insist finger claps should be silent and bristle at people who say 'clock it' or 'tea' while clapping. Others take issue with influencers who clap with their index finger, when the middle finger is more commonly used in ballroom. (If this seems pedantic, imagine the reaction if you used your middle finger to give a thumbs-up.) And a notion has spread that the finger clap is supposed to resemble the American Sign Language sign for the number 8, because it means someone 'ate,' or performed extremely well. (Ballroom folks say that’s a reach.) As one commenter noted, 'Man the finger police is strict strict.'"

From "'Clock it.' We’re all finger-clapping wrong. As more people embrace finger claps, the queer ballroom scene is clapping back at those unaware of its origin and meaning" (WaPo).

Who cares? Yeah, I get it if that's your reaction, but this post earns some of my favorite tags. I like that.

Too good to check? Were the "Terry and Julie" of "Waterloo Sunset" Terence Stamp and Julie Christie?

I'm reading "Terence Stamp’s Swinging, Smoldering Style/He helped redefine male beauty, ushering in the era of the cinematic bad boy" by the NYT style reporter Guy Trebay. (Stamp died last Sunday at the age of 87.) 

Trebay writes: "In his 20s, when he sought a life beyond the straitened circumstances of his upbringing, he became a favorite of the London tabloids that relentlessly chronicled his relationships with the model Jean Shrimpton and the actress Julie Christie. His romantic life was at one point so well known that he and Ms. Christie inspired the 'Terry and Julie' in the Kinks song 'Waterloo Sunset,' released at the height of the mid-1960s music and fashion scene known as Swinging London."

If we go over to Genius.com to find the lyrics, we see: 

I really thought Ashley Biden was married to a man named Shady Post.

Link to absurd Daily Beast headline: here.

I asked Grok whether it's really that off to think a man could have such a name these days and was amused to hear that there really was a person — a woman — named Shady Marilla Post, who lived 1909-1972, in West Virginia. I'm told, "'Shady' shows up as a real first name in old records (maybe a nickname turned official, like from 'Shadrach' or just folksy Appalachian naming), and 'Post' is a legit surname. Combine that with modern trends—think Post Malone (real last name Post) or folks embracing 'Shady' as a vibe (hello, Eminem's alter ego)—and yeah, someone could absolutely rock that name today without raising too many eyebrows." Exactly!

By the way, Ashley's "shady post" was just the single word "FREEDOM" posted on social media.

"You convince him to come marry you, move here and have babies. This is where your future should be, if you like him enough for that."

Said Leslie Aberlin, owner of a development called Aberlin Springs, to a "prospective resident, the girlfriend of a local banker."

Aberlin is quoted in "This Ohio Farm Community Is a Mecca for the ‘MAHA Mom’/In a neighborhood that appeals to people from both the right and the left, residents strive for a finely tuned state of political harmony" (NYT)(gift link).

Ms. Aberlin loves that so many “traditional wives,” as she calls stay-at-home moms, are raising their children in her community. While she brought up her two kids as a single mother, divorcing her ex-husband soon after her second baby was born, she calls herself a “boss woman by accident.” She believes women have been “sold a bag of goods” about the importance of a career, and are usually more fulfilled when they focus on their kids full time.

1. What's wrong with buying a bag of goods?  She means sold a bill of goods. With a bag of goods, you've got the goods. They're in the bag. A bill of goods is a document that merely lists the goods. You just bought the piece of paper. 

2. The real estate is real, but what about the mystique of the MAHA Mom? Buying a personal residence always comes with something intangible, the life you imagine for yourself in that house."

3. It's not a house, it's a home — Bob Dylan quote.

4. The home is never in the bag.

Ad I mistook for part of a Trump post for one delightful moment.

 

Here's the link to his post. I'm pretty sure you'll get a different ad, so you will just need to imagine my puzzlement and quasi-delight in fathoming the look of Bryan Bedford. Made me think of the Incredible String Band or some such thing. Donovan. 

Here's the website for Gudrun Sjödén, in case you — male, female, or whatever — would like to pursue a retro hippie vibe for traipsing about in the garden or village. 

Mamdani didn't lie. He is an African American.

I see that among the many attacks on Zohran Mamdani is the charge that he filled out a college application form deceptively. But the fault was in Columbia's form — and, some will say, in its policy of race consciousness:

[A]s a high school senior in 2009 ... [a]sked to identify his race, he checked a box that he was “Asian” but also “Black or African American,” according to internal data derived from a hack of Columbia University that was shared with The New York Times.

I'm reading "Mamdani Identified as Asian and African American on College Application/Zohran Mamdani, the Democrat running for mayor of New York City, was born in Uganda. He doesn’t consider himself Black but said the application didn’t allow for the complexity of his background" (NYT). 

So it depends on what the meaning of "or" is. It could mean "African American" is another way to say "Black," but it could mean check this box if you are either black or African Amercan or both. Mamdani didn't write the form. He filled it out. Now, of course, he knew there was a special advantage to be gained and that "Asian" wasn't much help if any, but he didn't lie. He perceived the potential for selfish advantage and he took it, and now he is offering to bring his advantage-taking skill to the people of New York. Where there is an edge to be gained, Mamdani will grab it for you, the citizens of New York City.

By the way, it is almost surely the case that Columbia wanted applicants to err on the side of claiming to belong to one of the minority groups Columbia gave an advantage to. It may have cared how the class looked when assembled in the auditoriums, and it may have even cared about the much touted educational benefits of a diverse student body. But it's safe to assume that Columbia wanted the racial percentages to look good on paper. If self-advantagers like Mamdani allowed Columbia, back in 2010, to say it had 14.5% "Black or African American" students instead of, say, 10%, Columbia would benefit. What's the problem? Fairness to applicants without the guts to interpret the form in their favor

ADDED: The Times of India explains to its readers:

[I]n America, Blackness is recognised as a political identity born of struggle and oppression. Indian-American identity, by contrast, is often invisible—treated as an immigrant economic niche rather than a racial group needing justice. This is why even Kamala Harris, with a Tamil mother, emphasised her Black identity throughout her rise.

"I was struck by conservative Instagrammer Arynne Wexler’s description of liberal women as 'androgynous pixie haircut unbathed Marxist freaks in polycules.'"

"Bravo on the clever turn of phrase, Miss Wexler. Impressive use of your Ivy League education to bash polycules.... Would Wexler prefer cheating as an alternative to polyamory? Wexler, per The Post, would delete her Instagram slurs about polyamorists, the WNBA ('welfare for tall lesbians') and other targets if only she could find a husband and kids.... Let’s stop othering and demonizing relationships that are based on consent, communication and affection. Fear, loathing and misinformation aren’t a route to happiness for anyone."

Natalie Davis, who runs the online publication Polyamory Today, writes in a letter to the Washington Post. 

Davis is responding to the article "MAGA and the single girl/What do the young women of the modern right want? It’s complicated." 

Wexler is just one person who's described in the article, which tells us: "She runs a popular Instagram account where she mocks Gen Z college degrees as 'pescatarian arts with a concentration on hating white people' and calls the WNBA 'welfare for tall lesbians' — but she’d delete her account tomorrow if she could trade it in for a husband and kids."

Don't get me started on my musings about what "pescatarian arts" is supposed to mean. Both Grok and Meade resisted the nonliteral interpretation.... 

"Kilmar Abrego Garcia will likely be placed in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody due to an immigration detainer the government has on him, despite a Tennessee judge on Sunday ordering his release in his criminal case..."

"While U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes' on Sunday denied the government's motion to detain Abrego Garcia, she acknowledged that if released, 'there is no suggestion that the action taken by the government will be anything other than detaining him in ICE custody pending further removal proceedings.' In her 51-page order, Judge Holmes said the government failed to prove there is a 'serious risk' that Abrego Garcia will flee or that he will obstruct justice in the case. Holmes also said the government's evidence that Abrego Garcia is a member of MS-13 'consists of general statements, all double hearsay' from cooperating witnesses. Holmes said Abrego Garcia 'has no criminal history' of any kind and said that his 'reputed gang membership' is contradicted by the government's own evidence that was presented during a hearing two weeks ago.... 'Even without discounting the weight of the testimony of the first and second male cooperators for the multiple layers of hearsay, their testimony and statements defy common sense,' Holmes said...."

ABC News reports.

The ABC headline seems designed to cause a hasty reader to think ICE would be violating the judge's order: "ICE will likely detain Kilmar Abrego Garcia despite judge's motion to have him released."

The judge didn't make a motion. The judge denied the government's motion but, as you see above, said "there is no suggestion that the action taken by the government will be anything other than detaining him in ICE custody pending further removal proceedings."

And weren't there also earlier versions of this story that made people think the judge was requiring the government to set Abrego Garcia free? Yes, here.

Did this "longtime Democratic researcher" really ask "around 250 focus groups of swing voters" to name the animal each political party reminds them of?

I'm reading this free-linked NYT article — "Six Months Later, Democrats Are Still Searching for the Path Forward" — because my son John posted about it on Facebook.

I just couldn't believe this:

One longtime Democratic researcher has a technique she leans on when nudging voters to share their deepest, darkest feelings about politics. She asks them to compare America’s two major parties to animals. After around 250 focus groups of swing voters, a few patterns have emerged, said the researcher, Anat Shenker-Osorio. Republicans are seen as “apex predators,” like lions, tigers and sharks — beasts that take what they want when they want it. Democrats are typically tagged as tortoises, slugs or sloths: slow, plodding, passive. So Ms. Shenker-Osorio perked up earlier this year when a Democratic man in Georgia suggested that a very different kind of animal symbolized her party. “A deer,” he said, “in headlights.”...

Somehow Republicans do way too much, so aggressively, but Democrats don't get anything done? And these were swing voters? Sorry. Not believed. Sounds too much like the opinion of someone with left-wing policy preferences. You want more from the Democrats and you want it faster. And those terrible Republicans!

Anyway, asking people what animal Democrats and Republicans reminded them of reminded me of the old Barbara Walters question "If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?" Yeah, be skeptical about that too because she didn't ask that question... other than that one time, after Katharine Hepburn started it by likening herself to a tree. Barbara Walters followed up with "What kind of tree are you, if you think you’re a tree?" Of course, Hepburn gave the answer nearly everyone would give if they were asked what kind of tree they are: Oak. And poor Barbara was forever after treated as if she asked everyone what kind of tree they were.

"On May 14, the chatbot began responding to all kinds of unrelated queries by holding forth on the topic of 'white genocide' in South Africa, to users’ bafflement."

"It’s a theory that holds that the country’s formerly ascendant White minority is being targeted for elimination by its Black majority — a claim the South African-born Musk has helped to popularize via his influential X account. The theory has been rejected as false by courts, government ministers and fact-checkers. Grok’s sudden obsession with it coincided with a push by the Trump administration to justify its controversial move to welcome White South African refugees at a time when the United States is turning away refugees of color from countries around the world.

I'm reading "How Elon Musk’s ‘truth-seeking’ chatbot lost its way/Grok has proved popular with X users. But a string of bizarre blunders threatened to turn it into a punchline" (WaPo)(free-access link).

The privilege of white — le privilège du blanc.

The Queen of Spain was the opposite of "disruptive":

Why did Queen Letizia of Spain wear all white in the presence of Pope Leo XIV, while all the other women wore the traditional black? Many media outlets praised the Queen's 'disruptive' all-white style.

They are, unfortunately, ignorant of the tradition of Le privilège du blanc.… pic.twitter.com/5czbpkq3k8

— Dr Taylor Marshall™️ (@TaylorRMarshall) May 18, 2025

Who are the dummies Marshall is pushing back? Is he simply imagining other people getting it wrong to add spark to his assurance that the Queen got it perfectly right? 

Alternative meaning.

"Meghan Markle Wears Ginormous, Cozy Button-Down While Flower Arranging With Dog Guy."

That's the headline of the morning for me — over at InStyle.

Don't get me started on the present-day inanity of calling a shirt a "button-down" — in my day, a "button-down" was a shirt with a button-down collar, not a shirt that you button up (up, not down) — because I've already spent an hour down a rathole with Grok, exploring the origins of that usage — is it a retronym necessitated by the prevalence of T-shirts? — and wondering the how kids these days could understand the meaning of the album title "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart." And that veered off into a discussion of the comic genius of Lucille Ball in this 1965 episode of "Password," and how, in Episode 4 of Season 1 of "Joe Pera Talks With You," Joe, dancing, says "Do you think AI will dance like this?," and Sarah says "No, because they don’t have genitals." How does that make Grok feel? 

But back to Meghan Markle. I'm not going to ask why it's a story that she wore a shirt while doing something and why the headline doesn't prioritize what she did, which was to arrange flowers, which would only make us wonder why it's a story that she arranged flowers. What I want is to clarify is what was meant by "Flower Arranging With Dog Guy." I assumed, the entire time I was down the rathole with Grok, that Markle had a guy who helped her with her dogs, that a "Dog Guy" was like a "Pool Guy," and for some reason, the Dog Guy got involved in the effort to arrange flowers. But no. Here's the Instagram InStyle wrote the headline about:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (@meghan)

So Guy was the name of her dog. And the dog was not participating in the flower arranging. He was just running around the general area. I don't know much about flower arranging, but I do have some confidence in my word arranging, and that headline needs work. But I'm not doing the work. I'm writing this post to say that I find my misreading delightful and enjoy thinking about this phantom character, the dog guy. I kind of am married to a dog guy. If we ever get a dog, I want to name him Whisperer so I can go around referring to my "Dog Whisperer." Or do you prefer Whiskerer? I can tell you Grok thought both names were brilliant. 

"A conservative commentator took offense at the statement conservatives 'are really gratified to see a conservative person on television.'"

"The person who made the statement wondered if 'gratified' is now a 'trigger' word. This made me think the commentator might think 'gratified' implies sex."

For the annals of Things I Asked Grok.

I was reading "Meghan McCain Gets Triggered By Carrie Coon After 'White Lotus' Star Said Former 'View' Co-Host Was 'Gratified' For Conservative Character" (Deadline). 

So, McCain is the "conservative commentator."

"In 2023, California saw a net loss of 268,000 residents in New York, 179,000....they're going to... Texas, Florida, Arizona...."

"You cannot be the party of working families when the places you govern are places working families cannot afford to live. You are not the party of working families when the places you govern are places working families cannot afford to live. In the American political system, to lose people is to lose power. If these trends hold, the 2030 census will shift the Electoral College sharply to the right. The states that Kamala Harris won in 2024 — they'll lose about 11 House seats and Electoral College votes. The states of Trump won would gain them. So in that Electoral College, a Democrat could win every single state Harris won in 2024 and also win Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and still lose the presidency."

Says Ezra Klein, in "There Is a Liberal Answer to Elon Musk," the new episode of his NYT podcast, audio and transcript at Podscribe.

The quoted part is from the beginning, where Klein effectively stirs up fears of future disaster for Democrats. The answer to the question asked in the episode title is: "If liberals don't make government work, zealots like Elon Musk are going to come in and burn it down." And: "If liberals do not want Americans to turn to the false promises of strong men, they need to offer them the fruits of effective government in the long run."

Yeah, just do that.

CORRECTION: I misread the headline as a question — Is There a Liberal Answer to Elon Musk? I hallucinated the humility that plainly belongs there!

"Apple has acknowledged an issue with the iPhone's voice-to-text feature where it briefly displays 'Trump' when the user says 'racist.'"

"This glitch has sparked discussions across social media platforms, with some users interpreting it as intentional bias. Apple is reportedly addressing the issue to ensure accurate dictation."

X reports.

Major Scandal Breaking! Apple iPhones now replace the word racist with Trump! pic.twitter.com/buaqR3AxY1

— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) February 25, 2025

Misreading.

It was never about pulling him up....it was about you joining him down there🤣 pic.twitter.com/P9kq1yjJJV

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) February 21, 2025

10 things I've asked Grok in the last 2 or 3 days.

1. Is it honest for me to say: I have no idea whether Trump has any idea whether Mitch McConnell had polio?

2. What poet had a beard, round glasses and wore a "poet’s hat"?

3. What is the origin of the phrase "take up the mantle"?

4. What have smart people had to say about the tendency to see images in words, including things that are not really relevant to the etymology of the word? For example, one might imagine that "ostracize" is connected to "ostrich" or "marginalize" relates to "margarine."

5. What is the argument that the crows in "Dumbo" are not a racist stereotype?

6. Does RFK Jr. speak of himself in terms of "Camelot"?

7. What is that famous saying about remaining silent because I was not X, Y, etc.?

8. Why do some people say you shouldn't use "impact" as a verb?

9. What is the episode of "Leave it to Beaver" where June and Ward Cleaver are turning over a mattress and Ward asks if it's mattress-turning day?

10. What if you had to argue that "The fog comes /on little cat feet" is actually very depressing and pessimistic?

I saw Musk's "Nazi salute" in real time, but failed to jump up and blog it.

Now, it's so old, I'd have to add something of value. I've been thinking of saying about what I'd have said if I'd jumped up right away: He's doing something like blowing a kiss. He's slapping his heart, then throwing it toward the audience, to say my heart goes out to you.

Or what I felt like saying earlier this morning: This is such a social-media meme — so easy to see and comment on that it's working incredibly well as a distraction. Therefore, the Musk/Trump haters are getting conned. And: I wonder if Musk did all this on purpose — to divert critics from the main highway of policy substance into a cultural cul de sac.

But I worked on other things, as you can see below, and even more time passed. I was about to let it go entirely, but then 2 things I saw on X made me laugh, so I'll give you this:

"This is unacceptable and disturbing. The DMV is taking swift action to recall these shocking plates..."

"We sincerely apologize that these personalized plates were not properly rejected during our review process. The use of hateful language is not only a clear violation of our policies but also a violation of our core values to proudly serve the public."

Wrote the California Department of Motor Vehicles, quoted in "Family that owns Tesla Cybertruck with ‘LOLOCT7’ plate says its meaning was misconstrued" (Washington Times).