An Aaron Rupar compilation

Choice moments from the Oval Office today. It’s disinhibition on parade, and not a moment of it will show up on “the news.”

Remove Mac AI

I updated my MacBook Air to Golden Gate 27.0.1 last night. And this morning I downloaded and installed RemoveMacAI, a free app to remove Apple Intelligence. (Apple itself, to its discredit, offers no way to do so.) Any number of venerable Mac observers have taken note of RemoveMacAI (including Daring Fireball). It’s easy to use — just make sure to install the profile the app creates. You can undo all changes at any time.

I had planned to use this app from the getgo, but when I saw the squiggly little AI circle next to the cursor as I was abput to write the story of our mouse, I knew I had to install this app at once. Human intelligence, please.

Tomcat redux

We heard a mouse last night and put out a trap. Half an hour later that mouse met a timely demise in a Tomcat Kill & Contain Mouse Trap. When I checked online to see if our hardware store had more in stock, I saw that six people were looking at the same item. I guess that colder weather has driven many a mouse indoors.

In the thirty-five years we’ve lived in our house we’ve had six mice, one at a time, four killed, two scooped up with a deep dustpan and released. The Tomcat is the least ickiest way I know to remove a mouse.

A post with a mouse in it
“HOME SWEET HOME”

No news (spot the Ardea herodias)

[Yesterday afternoon. Click for a much larger view.]

Do you see the great blue heron?

Walking, on sidewalks, or in the street when there is no sidewalk, or, best of all, on a nearby trail system, is a great respite from the news. As is reading. As is listening to music. What are your respites?

News

Noah Berlatsky reports on the rise and fall of Katie Zachariah. A tad stalker-y.

Lucian Truscott reports on Katie Zachariah’s husband. With a special appearance by North Korea. (Thanks, Kirsten.)

Heather Cox Richardson reports on our now-overt alliance with a Russian dictator.

And the Chicago Tribune reports on one downstate Illinois family torn apart by ICE.

Roy’s Tavern

[4017 Avenue U, Marine Park, Brooklyn, c. 1939–1941. From the NYC Municipal Archives Collections. Click for a much larger view.]

I’ve posted three other tax photographs from Avenue U. I fear that the fourth will not be the last. What drew me to this photograph: it reminds me of David Plowden’s photographs of fading midwestern towns. Was this really Brooklyn? It was.

Roy’s Tavern was still going in 1949, when it found a new owner. To my surprise, the building still stands, still with a vacant lot to its east. Google Maps shows a Chinese-Japanese-Mexican restaurant in 2012. By 2017, a Chinese restaurant took over. By 2022, a Thai restaurant. By 2024, an Asian fusion restaurant.

If you click for a much larger view, you’ll notice some choice details: the flag (why?), the beer mugs on the sign, and “Ladies Served.” Just don’t fall into the open cellar.

Related posts
More photographs from the NYC Municipal Archives (Pinboard)

Who wore it better?

[Jonathan Capehart (MSNOW) and Matthew Continetti (Wall Street Journal columnist) on the PBS NewsHour last night. Click for a larger view.]

I thought this kind of thing only happened in TV shows.

Wait — this is a TV show. But it’s not, say, I Love Lucy or The Honeymooners. The synced apparel went unremarked on the NewsHour. In an I Love Lucy or Honeymooners episode, it would have been a plot point. (Lucy got there first.)

Today’s Saturday Stumper

Today’s Newsday  Saturday Stumper, by Matthew Sewell, is one satisfying puzzle. A handful of gimmes, a few tricks, a reasonable number of opaque clues, and an astonishing (at least to me) fifteen-letter answer. I started with 10-D, 4 letters, “Name on the cover of Breathing Lessons” and 53-A, six letters, “Nicaraguan nana,” two gimmes, and went from there.

Some clue-and-answer pairs of note:

6-D, nine letters, “Undoing of many Bard protagonists.” I just wish they’d call him Shakespeare. Or, in the manner of Lord Buckley, Willie the Shake. Why? Because he shook everybody.

12-D, ten letters, “Trend scout.” I need to get out more. No, wait, I don’t.

13-D, ten letters, “Starting order.” It’s odd how often crosswords have me programmed to think about appetizers.

22-A, three letters, “Party      .” It took me a long time to see it.

26-D, ten letters, “Baker’s butter substitute.” Yes, I remember that.

28-D, three letters, “OED initialism since 2011.” IMO, a lousy way to clue this answer. Does anyone remember the year a given initialism made it into a dictionary?

34-A, fifteen letters, “Reason for diminished returns.” Whoa. Or woah.

37-A, six letters, “Far beyond patched.” I thought RAGGED. This clue though works in a different way.

38-A, four letters, “‘        it pretty to think so?’ (The Sun Also Rises ender).” One of the great last sentences. Another gimme, but maybe it’ll prompt someone to pick up the novel.

44-A, three letters, “What a larva may become.” This clue is wildly arbitrary. My first thought was the crossword favorite EFT. Or is it ANT? BEE? It’s like “Color you might paint a wall.”

52-D, four letters, “Possible cause for a time-out.” A great example of misdirection.

My favorite in this puzzle: 31-D, four letters, “Undo a body modification, perhaps.”

No spoilers; the answers are in the comments.

Recently updated

Katie Zacharia’s first press briefing: She’s out.

Sold a Story returns

“Our team at APM Reports dug up a whole new story about teaching and learning — and what happens when deeply held beliefs clash with evidence”: there’s now a second season of Emily Hanford’s podcast Sold a Story that focuses on teaching itself and investigates Direct Instruction, an approach to teaching created by Siegfried “Zig” Engelmann. (I know: who?)

Natalie Wexler has had access to the first four episodes and suggests that what’s missing from Engelmann’s approach is an emphasis on knowledge, or what E.D. Hirsch calls cultural literacy:

Both Engelmann and Hirsch had keen insights about what has been missing from American education, with Engelmann focusing on how to teach and Hirsch on what to teach. Neither model is complete, but if applied judiciously in tandem, the two approaches could be hugely powerful.

Related reading
Some OCA Sold a Story posts

Tenuously related reading
Fluke life (How I got on the tenure track, with an appearance by E.D. Hirsch)