Picturing

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (1850).

I love how David’s development into a novelist is something that he says so little about. “I pictured to myself” is an early sign of an imagination at play. By chapter forty-six, David is, in the words of another character, “beginning to be famous,” yet he’s said hardly anything about his writing. In chapter forty-eight, he tells us that “It is not my purpose, in this record, though in all other essentials it is my written memory, to pursue the history of my own fictions.”

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Self-Erasure

From Geo-B: Self-Erasure.

That’s gotta hurt.

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T and X

A sentence from The Guardian :

The US defense secretary unveiled plans for a new screening program for testosterone deficiency among troops that will work to ensure service members have the “right testosterone levels” to perform at their optimal conditions in a video posted to X.

I shudder to think what kind of performance will be required of these, uh, service members. Moving the words “in a video posted to X” to the front of the sentence makes for a less startling though still loony-tunes statement. Perhaps someone at The Guardian slipped in a deliberate touch of the loony.

As The Guardian notes, “[Pete} Hegseth’s announcement did not address the more than 231,000 women who serve as active duty service members in the US military.”

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[This post is no. 135 in a series dedicated to improving stray bits of professional public prose. The New York Times reports that women in the military will also be tested.]

Tin Can calling

It’s a telephone for kids: the Tin Can, a wi-fi-enabled landline (whatever that means) with all appropriate protections.

We have been talking daily with granddaughters, the two of us on one or another iPhone, the two of them on a Tin Can. The device helps foster the skills of person-to-person conversation: listening, responding, asking questions, taking turns, all the stuff that vexes so many young adults both on and off their phones.

And how is your day going?

A joke in the traditional manner

Where do bakers sleep?

No spoilers; the punchline and a bonus punchline are in the comments.

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Raising the bar

UC Berkeley Law School: no AI. UT Austin School of Law: engage students so that they’re not distracted by their devices. U Chicago Law School: no phones, laptops, or tablets in the classroom for first-year students. Read more: “To AI-Proof Lawyers, Some Law Schools Restrict Technology” (Inside Higher Ed ).

Note to UT Austin: the simplest way to keep students from being distracted by their devices is to remove the devices: Occam’s Razor with things.

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Deborah Vance’s notebook

[Jean Smart as Deborah Vance. From “Hacks,” the final episode of Hacks (2026). Click for a larger notebook.]

The white print on the back of that notebook means that it’s not a Moleskine. Notebook Stories guesses that it’s a Mont Blanc. All I can say is that it must be one of the most consequential notebooks in the history of notebook sightings.

I soured on Hacks somewhere in the fourth season — too much meanness. The fifth season brings the series to a more kindhearted close. Still not really my cup of tea, but it is a cup of tea, and it’s good tea. And Jean Smart is terrific.

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Grammar and soccer

From The New Yorker , “British Grammar Invades the American World Cup.” These sentences sum up what’s at issue:

In this cultural exchange, America is a winner.

Or are they?

I’m having difficulty deciding if are/is is a matter of grammar or a matter of usage. Usage, I think.

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Dear Lara

The documentary film Dear Lara (2026) is the work of Lara St. John, a world-class Canadian violinist and first-time filmmaker, who has set out to chronicle a long history of sexual abuse in the world of classical music. The title is inspired by the many letters and e-mails that St. John received after making public the story of her time studying at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she was sexually abused and raped by her (so-called) master teacher, Jascha Brodsky. She was fourteen. He was seventy-eight. Administrators at Curtis — no surprise — did nothing.

It’s a harrowing documentary, with account after account from survivors and their loved ones of powerful men acting, sometimes over many decades, without fear of consequences, in institutions that proved to be appallingly complicit. We see screens full of messages of support and celebration as abusers move on to new positions, and screens full of messages of misogynistic hatred directed at those who have brought charges against their abusers. And it all hits close to home: Elaine went to school (Juilliard) with one victim (whom she didn’t know) who later took her own life. And we both attended a concert not knowing that one of the musicians, whom Elaine knew in elementary school, had been that victim’s fiancé.

I want to say that it’s beyond me how men purportedly devoted to the beauty and joy of music can prey upon those who are supposed to carry that beauty and joy into the future. But it’s not really beyond me: there is no reason that a devotion to art cannot exist alongside predatory brutality.

After a month’s streaming in Canada and several screenings in the United States, Dear Lara is, for now, unavailable. I hope that will soon change. The film tells a compelling and disturbing story and deserves to be widely seen, via a distributor, or PBS’s Independent Lens, or some other means.

Thanks to Lara St. John, who trusted Elaine with a link (sorry, not to be shared) that let us watch the film. Elaine has also written about the film.

Dear Lara (The film’s website)

Joey’s

Elaine and I hit on a marketing scheme: coffee for babies, sold under the brand name Joey’s. The logo: a baby roo in a pouch, holding a cup and winking.

Making a satisfactory drawing of this logo is beyond my art skills. (And I won’t do AI.) Instead, please enjoy this image of children enjoying their piping hot cups.

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[A necessary disclaimer: you should never ever give coffee to a baby.]