1/. Why does MAGA dress so badly? Amanda Marcotte has a theory......
Left, right, center: Regardless of partisan identity, the common wisdom is that some qualities and aspirations unite us all. We all want to be healthy and prosperous. We all want to be loved. And, in theory, we all prefer beauty over ugliness. That last proposition, however, has been seriously challenged in the era of Donald Trump. The reality TV host has always embraced an aesthetic that is as hideous as it is expensive, from gold-plated everything to his vile haircut to his ill-fitted suits. It's only grown worse in the decade since he first ran for president, as both the leader and followers compete to inject as much unsightliness as possible into the American field of vision. Eye-bleeding internet memes have given way to uncanny AI-generated images of Trump or Elon Musk dressed as ubermensch. It's always with a grotesque shiny overdone quality, the visual equivalent of a burned steak covered in ketchup (a favorite Trump meal).
2/. Nothing significant - just an amazing picture....and watch the washing dry pretty quickly.....
3/. Are you a Democrat? Do you know what the abundance agenda is?
If not, you should read this so you know which side you are on in the coming Democratic Party civil war.
Really interesting.....
4/. There's Trump's in every galaxy!
5/. Bob Lefsetz on politics.....and why America is so paralysed.
You may not agree with everything he says, but it's pretty convincing.....
It’s one thing to hate the libs, quite another to put one’s head in the sand and deny reality.
Just like it’s one thing to hate the elites, but quite another to demonize education.
I stopped writing about politics because everybody got the message, everybody became aware of Trump’s actions. However, I am troubled that his flood the zone strategy is causing people to tune out. Furthermore, the flip-flopping on tariffs makes one step aside and say they’ll wait until the dust settles, allowing Trump to take further actions they are unaware of.
I blame the internet. Not smartphones. Not social media per se. But the internet in general. The internet broadened society. The Republicans seem to know this, but the Democrats do not. The Democrats keep believing in a pyramid, a top-down society that was blown apart decades ago. No one is in charge. No one respects someone further up the totem pole. And no one gets their information from the same sources as you do. Facts may be fungible, but we’ve got more than Trump to blame. Like I said, it’s the internet.
https://lefsetz.com/wordpress/2025/05/22/ostrich-time/
6/. "Nap Time".....it's sick but pretty funny......
7/. Angus Petersen on the fact that religion is coming back in a toxic form - evangelicalism is being used
to change us back to the dark ages...
There was a moment not too long ago when it looked like America might finally shake off the ancient chains of superstition. Church pews sat emptier. “Nones” surged in every poll. Religion in the U.S. was on a slow, steady march toward irrelevance, losing old adherents to mortality and young ones to disinterest. Then, as if hell-bent on a comeback tour, the faithful dug in. Not just quietly clutching their rosaries, but strapping on cultural armor and rallying their numbers. What’s worse? It’s working.
If you’re part of the growing crowd that welcomed the exodus from organized religion (especially the twisted theatrics of American Christianity) you probably felt something close to relief. There was comfort in numbers, a sense that reason might finally get a foothold. We would mutter amongst ourselves, “There’s no hate like Christian love,” while watching zealots weaponize the Bible against gay rights, science, women’s autonomy, and basic empathy. For a while, it seemed like people were catching on.
8/. It's all about the fetus....this is the result of the religious zealots being able to write laws that make no sense.
In Georgia a brain-dead woman is on the machines because she is pregnant, and Georgia law says they have to keep the corpse
functioning because of the fetus.
In this case the baby, if it makes it, will almost certainly have major problems.
Any questions why this abomination is happening? Read the story above #7.
Right now in an Atlanta hospital room lies a 30-year-old nurse and mother, Adriana Smith. Ms. Smith, who is brain-dead, has been connected to life support machines for more than 90 days. Ms. Smith is pregnant.
“We didn’t have a choice or a say about it,” Ms. Smith’s mother told a local news outlet. “We want the baby. That’s a part of my daughter. But the decision should have been left to us — not the state.”
9/. If you are a fan of the director Wes Anderson [like me] you will appreciate this commercial he made for a British company over Christmas.....
His current movie is "The Phoenician Scheme".....
10/. You are unsettled. You are beginning to suspect [even if you don't read DDD] things are crumbling around you.
You aren't crazy - there is a diagnosis for this - hypernormalisation.
In January, the comedian Ashley Bez posted an Instagram video of herself, trying to describe a heavy mood in the air. “How come everything feels all …?” she says, trailing off and grimacing exaggeratedly into the camera.
Digital anthropologist Rahaf Harfoush saw the video, and got it immediately.
“Welcome to the hypernormalization club,” Harfoush said in a response video. “I’m so sorry that you’re here.”
“Hypernormalization” is a heady, $10 word, but it captures the weird, dire atmosphere of the US in 2025.
First articulated in 2005 by scholar Alexei Yurchak to describe the civilian experience in Soviet Russia, hypernormalization describes life in a society where two main things are happening.
The first is people seeing that governing systems and institutions are broken. And the second is that, for reasons including a lack of effective leadership and an inability to imagine how to disrupt the status quo, people carry on with their lives as normal despite systemic dysfunction – give or take a heavy load of fear, dread, denial and dissociation. https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/ng-interactive/2025/may/22/hypernormalization-dysfunction-status-quo?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
11/. You haven't seen any clips on here from the despicable Jesse Watters, ever, but he had an amazing
impressionist - Matt Friend - on his show with some wonderful political jokes......really good....
12/. The Times lists the best movies of 2025 so far......
“Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” and the live-action “Lilo & Stitch” are flooding theaters this Memorial Day weekend. But if you don’t want to follow the crowd, it’s also a good time to catch up on some terrific films you may have missed earlier in the year. I asked our chief film critic, Manohla Dargis, and our movie critic, Alissa Wilkinson, to recommend releases worth your time. All are in theaters or available online.
13/. I think we have mentioned "The Rehearsal" before, but this review in the Guardian is excellent.....
Schopenhauer defined genius as someone who aims at a target the rest of us can’t see. Which raises a philosophical paradox – how do we know they’ve hit it? I was moved to such musings while watching this week’s pick, a singular piece of art that functions unlike anything else on TV, and calls the medium itself into question. No, it’s not Police Interceptors.
In The Rehearsal, comedian Nathan Fielderblends documentary, social experiment, performance art and absurdist satire in a devised method all his own. He has ordinary people tackle emotionally fraught situations from their lives, by role-playing them with hired actors in meticulously recreated sets that mirror significant personal locations. It’s arch, but the stakes are real. The first series opened with a man who wanted to apologise to his pub quiz teammates for cheating about his degree, before pivoting to a woman who wasn’t sure whether she wanted to become a mother. Mamma mia!
14/. Book reviews - 3 really good thrillers.....
Horowitz’s diabolically clever MARBLE HALL MURDERS (Harper, 592 pp., $28) begins as Susan Ryeland, a British book editor, starts reading the newest installment in a crime series featuring a Poirot-like detective named Atticus Pünd.
The book looks promising — the plot is enticing, the writing sharp, the detective as canny as ever. But Susan soon realizes that what she’s reading isn’t “just a cheerful murder mystery bringing back a much-loved character,” as she puts it, but rather a “bubbling cauldron” of hatred, infidelity, greed and murder drawn from the troubled past of the writer, Eliot Crace.
15/. OK - a must see on HBO - "Mountainhead".....
Michelle Goldberg in the Times describes the movie....on HBO May 31.
In November, when the “Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong got the idea for his caustic new movie, “Mountainhead,” he knew he wanted to do it fast. He wrote the script, about grandiose, nihilistic tech oligarchs holed up in a mountain mansion in Utah, in January and February, as a very similar set of oligarchs was coalescing behind Donald Trump’s inauguration. Then he shot the film, his first, over five weeks this spring. It premieres on Saturday on HBO — an astonishingly compressed timeline. With events cascading so quickly that last year often feels like another era, Armstrong wanted to create what he called, when I spoke to him last week, “a feeling of nowness.”
He’s succeeded. Much of the pleasure of “Mountainhead” is in the lens it offers on our preposterous nightmare world. I spend a lot of my time saucer-eyed with horror at the rapid degeneration of this country, agog at the terrifying power amassed by Silicon Valley big shots who sound like stoned Bond villain
Today's Video - of course it's Canadian......get the hankie out...
Today's wedding night joke
On their honeymoon, the new husband told his bride, "I have a confession to make that I should have made before, but I was concerned that it might affect our relationship.
"What is it?" his new bride asked lovingly.
"I'm a golf fanatic," he said. "I think about golf constantly. I'll be out on the golf course every weekend, every holiday, and every chance I get. If it comes to a choice between your wishes and golf, golf will always win."
His new bride pondered this for a moment and said, "I thank you for your honesty. Now in the same spirit of honesty, I should tell you that I've concealed something about my own past that you should know about. The truth is, "I'm a hooker."
"No problem," said her husband, "just widen your stance a little, and overlap your grip, and that should clear it right up."
Today's brunette joke
A brunette who really hated blondes was walking through the desert when she came across a magic lamp.
After rubbing the lamp the genie told her that she got three wishes with one catch: All the blondes in the world would get twice whatever she asked for.
So the brunette thought a while and then wished for a million dollars.
"Every blonde in the world will get two million."
The brunette said that was fine and then she asked for an incredibly handsome man.
Every blonde in the world will get two incredibly handsome men.
The brunette said that was fine too and the genie granted her wishes.
"Now for your third wish." said the genie.
"See that stick over there?", asked the brunette, "I want you to beat me half to death with it."
Today's seniors jokes....
Just sharing some thoughts meandering in a senior mind:
*The location of your mailbox shows you how far away from your house you can be in a robe before you start looking like a mental patient.
*My therapist said that my narcissism causes me to misread social situations. I'm pretty sure she was hitting on me.
*My 60 year kindergarten reunion is coming up soon and I'm worried about the 175 pounds I've gained since then.
*I always wondered what the job application is like at Hooters. Do they just give you a bra and say, "Here, fill this out?"
*Denny's has a slogan, "If it's your birthday, the meal is on us." If you're in Denny's and it's your birthday, your life sucks!
*The pharmacist asked me my birth date again today. I'm pretty sure she's going to get me something.
*On average, an American man will have sex two to three times a week. Whereas, a Japanese man will have sex only one or two times a year. This is very upsetting news to me. I had no idea I was Japanese.
*I can't understand why women are okay that JC Penney has an older women's clothing line named, "Sag Harbor."
*I think it’s pretty cool how Chinese people made a language entirely out of tattoos.
*What is it about a car that makes people think we can't see them pick their noses?
*Money can't buy happiness, but it keeps the kids in touch!
The best for last!
*The reason Mayberry was so peaceful and quiet was because nobody was married. Andy, Aunt Bea, Barney, Floyd, Howard, Goober, Gomer, Sam, Earnest T Bass, Helen, Thelma Lou, Clara and, of course, Opie were all single. The only person married was Otis, and he stayed drunk.
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