"Billionaire Elon Musk stunned the White House press corps Friday by sporting a black eye to an Oval Office event to mark the end of his 130 days in the Trump administration."

The NY Post reports.

Oh.. ha ha... I see he made the joke I was about to make: He "wasn’t anywhere near France."

"Prince Robert also shared that his son asked him a final question: 'Papa, are you proud of me?'"

"Prince Frederik had struggled to speak for 'several days' before he died, according to Robert, 'so the clarity of these words was as surprising as the weight of the moment was profound. The answer was very easy, and he had heard it oh so many times, but at this time, he needed reassurance that he had contributed all that he possibly could in his short and beautiful existence and that he could now finally move on,' Robert explained. 'Frederik knows that he is my Superhero....'"

From "Luxembourg’s Prince Frederik dead at 22 from rare genetic disease: 'He is my superhero'" (NY Post). The disease is POLG Mitochondrial disease.

"Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan revealed Friday that a Facebook user claiming to be a 'cousin' of a juror in former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial..."

"... suggested he had advanced knowledge of last week’s guilty verdict. 'Today, the Court became aware of a comment that was posted on the Unified Court System’s public Facebook page and which I now bring to your attention,' Merchan wrote in a letter to Trump attorney Todd Blanche and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office. 'In the comment, the user, "Michael Anderson," states: "My cousin is a juror and says Trump is getting convicted … Thank you folks for all your hard work!!! …."' the judge explained. .... In his Facebook profile, Anderson describes himself as a 'Transabled & a professional sh** poster.'"

I'm reading "Hush money judge alerts Trump lawyer, prosecutors to Facebook post claiming prior knowledge of jury’s verdict" (NY Post).

It's hard to imagine how this can amount to anything... even if it turns out that the person who posted actually is the cousin of one of the jurors.

I've chosen to link to this story at the NY Post, because other news outlets did not include the detail that "Michael Anderson" called himself "transabled." According to Wikipedia, "transabled" is a term used by some persons with body integrity dysphoria, which is "a rare mental disorder characterized by a desire to have a sensory or physical disability or feeling discomfort with being able-bodied, beginning in early adolescence and resulting in harmful consequences."

Why would someone who presented himself as a "shit poster" — I'd write "shitposter" — also want to identify as "transabled"? Actually, it's hard to understand why a shitposter would want to call himself a shitposter. Wouldn't the usual game of shitposting be undercut by telling people that's what you're doing?

"The new Trump movie has his campaign in an uproar...."

 

Apparently, the Cannes audience gasped at the brutality of the rape scene. The victim: Ivana.

Here's the Guardian article, "'This garbage is pure fiction': when subjects hit back at their biopics Trump has spoken out against The Apprentice, but he’s not the first celebrity to attack an unflattering big-screen portrait":

"The court heard how the defendant's 'Eunuchmaker' pay-per-view website advertised services including castration, penis removal and the freezing of limbs."

I'm reading "'Eunuch-maker' mutilator jailed for 22 years" (BBC).

I first read about this case in The Daily Record, and it was so ludicrously, shockingly lurid that I didn't think I could write about it. But then I saw the BBC was covering it, so it became bloggable.

But for the sake of decency, I will put the rest after the jump:

"One day I opened my eyes from a deep sleep and looked around for something, anything, familiar. Everywhere I looked was all very strange."

"Little did I know that each new day my life was unavoidably set on a path that would become unimaginably strange and more challenging."

Wrote Paul Alexander, with a pencil (or pen) in his mouth, quoted in his obituary, "Lawyer, Author and TikTok Star Spent 72 Years in an Iron Lung/Paul Alexander, who died at 78, was paralyzed with polio at age 6 and relied on the machine to breathe. Still, he was able to earn a law degree, write a book and, late in life, build a following on TikTok" (NYT).

"Nobody will ever hear me say I’m glad she’s dead or I’m proud of what I did. I regret it every single day."

"She didn’t deserve that. She was a sick woman and unfortunately I wasn’t educated enough to see that. She deserved to be where I am, sitting in prison doing time for criminal behavior."

Said Gypsy Rose Blanchard, quoted in "Gypsy Rose Blanchard released from prison early after serving time for the murder of her abusive mother/Blanchard, 32, was released from the Chillicothe Correctional Center at 3:30 a.m. Thursday. She had been serving a 10-year sentence for the June 2015 slaying of her mother" (NBC News).

"Do you believe that people are understanding better or are they dolts like me who think you're acting?"

Chris Cuomo loses composure and tries to hold back laughter while interviewing a TikTok influencer who suffers from Tourette’s.

Might be the most entertaining interview I’ve seen this year 😂 pic.twitter.com/2KbRzCXZux

— Te𝕏asLindsay™ (@TexasLindsay_) December 13, 2023

"You have my kids repeating your lines, so that it's almost become cool — and not because it's raunchy — but because you're being real, and you're living your truth, and they love it. They love the bravery of it."

"I have that disorder where when people make noises it hurts me. Like at the movies? That loud popcorn chewing..."

"... or the rustling of the wrappers. I don’t go to the movies for that reason.... Not interested [in men]. I don’t want to sleep with anybody any more. I don’t want to hear somebody breathing."

Said Linda Evangelista, quoted in "Linda Evangelista: ‘I don’t blame myself any more’/She was one of the world’s most famous supermodels, but a botched cosmetic procedure left her a recluse. Now, at 58, she’s back — and taking each day as it comes" (London Times).

There are plenty of reasons to avoid relationships. One is that they make noise, even if it's only the breathing.

ADDED: The condition, I've read elsewhere, is called "misophonia," and I blogged about it here, in 2011, and here, in 2015. There's an excellent Reddit group, r/misophonia, here.

What would it take to get us to notice this once much-talked-about topic that had fallen entirely out of the news?

The topic is NFTs.

I'm reading "More Than 20 Report Burning Eyes After NFT Festival in Hong Kong/Bored Ape Yacht Club, the collective that hosted the three-day event, said it was investigating possible causes, including UV lights used at a party on Saturday night" (NYT)

"The ways you can get infected with this bacteria are, one, you can eat something that’s contaminated with it [and] the other way is by having a cut or tattoo exposed to water in which this bug lives."

From "California mom had all of her limbs amputated after consuming bad tilapia: 'She almost lost her life'" (NY Post).

The bacteria is Vibrio Vulnificus, and here's a link to an article from last month, "New York State Department releases guidance after 3 dead from flesh-eating bacteria in New York, Connecticut." 

I think the problem with swimming and tattoos refers only to recent tattoos, in their healing phase. It would be quite something if getting tattooed represented a decision never to go swimming again. 

Meanwhile, the woman who lost all her limbs merely encountered fish, and it's not enough to avoid eating raw or undercooked fish. You have to worry about handling raw fish. Wear gloves.

"One agency, which the officials did not name, determined that it was 'unlikely' that a foreign actor was at fault, a slightly less emphatic finding..."

"... that did not appreciably change the consensus. One agency abstained in its conclusion regarding a foreign actor. But when asked, no agency dissented from the conclusion that a foreign actor did not cause the symptoms, one of the intelligence officials said.... 'There was nothing,' the official said. This person added that there was no intelligence that foreign leaders, including in Russia, had any knowledge of or had authorized an attack on U.S. personnel that could explain the symptoms."

I'm reading "'Havana syndrome' not caused by energy weapon or foreign adversary, intelligence review finds/After a years-long assessment, five U.S. intelligence agencies conclude it is 'very unlikely' an enemy wielding a secret weapon was behind the mysterious ailment" (WaPo).

Some attempts to allay suspicion stimulate suspicion. I wonder what else does "not appreciably change the consensus." I remember when "consensus" used to feel reassuring.

The intelligence assessment also examined whether an adversary possessed a device capable of using energy to cause the reported symptoms. Of the seven agencies, five determined that it was “very unlikely,” while the other two said it was “unlikely.”

But what did cause the symptoms? Is every possible cause is unlikely? If so, the unlikely causes remain in play, because something caused them.

"Even though medical experts expect their baby to survive only 20 minutes to a couple of hours, the Dorberts say their doctors told them that because of the new legislation...

"... they could not terminate the pregnancy.... 'The doctors already told me, no matter what, at 24 weeks or full term, the outcome for the baby is going to be the same.' Florida’s H.B. 5 — Reducing Fetal and Infant Mortality... bans abortion after 15 weeks with a couple of exceptions, including one that permits a later termination if 'two physicians certify in writing that, in reasonable medical judgment, the fetus has a fatal fetal abnormality' and has not reached viability. It is not clear how the Dorberts’ doctors applied the law in this situation. Their baby has a condition long considered lethal that is now the subject of clinical trials to assess a potential treatment. Neither Dorbert’s obstetrician nor the maternal fetal medicine specialist she consulted responded to multiple requests for comment...."

I'm reading "Her baby has a deadly diagnosis. Her Florida doctors refused an abortion. Florida abortion ban includes exception for fatal fetal abnormalities. But her doctors told her they could not act" (WaPo).

I wonder... are the doctors interested in getting the chance to figure out how to treat the condition, which is Potter syndrome?

"Mysterious symptoms can spread rapidly in a close-knit community, especially one that has endured a shared stress."

"The TikTok tics are one of the largest modern examples of this phenomenon. They arrived at a unique moment in history, when a once-in-a-century pandemic spurred pervasive anxiety and isolation, and social media was at times the only way to connect and commiserate. Now, experts are trying to tease apart the many possible factors — internal and external — that made these teenagers so sensitive to what they watched online. Four out of five of the adolescents were diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder, and one-third reported past traumatic experiences.... In new research that has not yet been published, the Canadian team has also found a link to gender: The adolescents were overwhelmingly girls, or were transgender or nonbinary — though no one knows why."

From "How Teens Recovered From the 'TikTok Tics'/A wave of teenagers who developed tics during the pandemic has receded, illustrating the powerful influence of stress on the body and the resilience of adolescents" (NYT).

"[T]he gap between Covid-19 mortality and overall excess mortality has proved remarkably, and mystifyingly, persistent...."

Writes David Wallace-Wells, in "Why Are So Many Americans Dying Right Now?" (NYT).

[A]lmost every week for more than six months, the agency has calculated that total excess mortality was 50 percent larger than and often almost twice as large as the number of official Covid-19 deaths.... What are the hypotheses? 

"They’re unable to see properly, they’re confused, they’re having hallucinations. And we’re talking about scary hallucinations; it’s nothing that’s fun."

Said Darren Roberts, quoted in "How Can Tainted Spinach Cause Hallucinations? A food recall from Australia sheds light on an unusual aspect of brain chemistry" (NYT).

The belief is that there's some other plant in there with the spinach and that it's "'anticholinergic syndrome,' a type of poisoning mainly caused by plants in the Solanaceae family, which includes nightshade, jimson weed and mandrake root."

I've got 9 TikToks for you tonight — all things I liked. I invite you to appreciate them too.

1. The crochet genius.

2. A Kardashian Christmas.

3. The joy of Neptune.

4. The importance of routine during the long polar night.

5. The importance of layers when dressing for winter.

6. Let a girl show you how to approach a girl.

7. Celine Dion explains her rare disease — stiff person syndrome.

8. He gets AI to write a folk song about his dog dying.

9. AI envisions the cast of "The Office" as babies.

"So I woke up with something that’s literally Black Hairy Tongue. People, including my doctor, seem to think it’s no big deal, and will go away soon, but it certainly is gross."

That was Julie Powell's last tweet, quoted in "Julie Powell's Last Tweet Before Her Death at 49 Causes Confusion Among Fans/The popular author of Julie and Julia tweeted she had 'black hairy tongue' the day before she died" (Gizmodo).

The Mayo Clinic’s website describes black hairy tongue as a “buildup of dead skin cells” that accumulate on the tongue, explaining that while it can look alarming, “typically it doesn’t cause any health problems, and it’s usually painless.”

Photograph of the horrid condition at that Mayo Clinic link.

Going back further into Powell's tweets, you see that she had Covid in September:

“Decided to take a nap and woke up sick like a dog. This is how the covid hits, I guess. All of a sudden like,” Powell tweeted on September 10. A few days later she shared another tweet about how painful it was living with covid-19. “Weirdly, my Covid is getting worse. Terrible headache, cough, probable fever, fatigue,” Powell tweeted on September 13.

Lest readers speculate, Gizmodo tells us the speculation is "right-wing" and goes on to minimize the significance of some deceased person's last social media posting. After all, Chris Cornell's last tweet — "#Detroit finally back to Rock City!!!!" — gave no clue that he was about to commit suicide.

What does the NYT know about me?

I was scanning the front page of the NYT, looking for headlines to click, and I noticed that the Times had picked out a set of things recommended for me. I was pleased for an instant and genuinely ready to to share Penn Jillett's love for hot baths and cold watermelon, but...

 

... I don't like the implications of the rest of it. The kiosk and the toilet are okay — lowly and functional — but don't push Jeffrey Dahmer at me, and don't juxtapose him with a person with a mysteriously drooping face.

I go to read the Penn Jillette article and the word editing slows me way down:

"Brad Pitt believes he suffers from prosopagnosia, a rare 'face blindness' disorder — but 'nobody believes' him...."

"Pitt, who has not been formally diagnosed, worries about appearing 'remote … aloof, inaccessible [and] self-absorbed' while struggling to recognize faces, according to the article.... 'So many people hate me because they think I’m disrespecting them.... Every now and then, someone will give me context, and I’ll say, "Thank you for helping me"'...."

From "Brad Pitt defends ‘face blindness’ condition prosopagnosia: ‘Nobody believes me’" (NY Post).

I've blogged about prosopagnosia twice before. The first time, in 2006, was the first time I'd heard of the condition. It was funny to read that just now, because it's almost identical to what I thought a moment ago, when I read about Brad: