Heather Cox Richardson, writing on her Substack newsletter Letters from an American, describes Trump at his most recent campaign stop.

In Oaks, Pennsylvania, tonight, Trump was supposed to take questions from preselected attendees at a town hall with South Dakota governor Kristi Noem. He did, at first, although his answers were all over the place and he urged people to vote on January 5. But then, in the hot and crowded space, two people needed medical attention. Slurring, Trump then said: “Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music. Let’s make it into a music. Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?” And then he stood on stage and swayed for 39 minutes of songs from his personal playlist before seeming to recall that he was supposed to be talking about the election, which he suddenly told the confused crowd was “the most important election in the history of our country” before turning back to the music.

Rob Crilly of the U.K.’s The Daily Mail wrote: “I was at Trump’s golden escalator launch, flew out of Washington with him in 2020 and have probably been to 100 rallies, give or take. Have never seen anything like tonight.” The headline over Marianne LeVine’s Washington Post story about the event read: “Trump sways and bops to music for 39 minutes in bizarre town-hall episode.

“The scene comes as Vice President Kamala Harris has called Trump, 78, unstable and called into question his mental acuity.”

Here’s the Washington Post’s clip:

The Washington Post story is damning, and the video will be made into a thousand memes.

Nicholas Bate —

Move from your chair, your desk, your screen.

Move in all three dimensions.

Move on your own two feet.

Move in the outside for as long as your lock-down ‘freedom pass’ allows.

Move on rough terrain, through wilderness and where there is no wi-fi if you can, when you can and as often as you can.

Move faster, longer, harder.

Move as you are designed to do for health, longevity and peace of mind.

Warren Ellis on Megalopolis –

My first thought on leaving the cinema was: this was the cinema that made Coppola. The bones of the film come from the 1930s-1950s, to my untrained eye. But there are parts of Sixties filmmaking in there, Fellini, flashes of Seventies experimental filmmaking, some Eighties excess and a touch of No Wave, Nineties sleaze and 2000s lighting. I saw a few moments of underwater Guy Maddin, some Saul Bass, bursts of early Hollywood, a screwball comedy meet-cute, flashes of various experimental directors. Theatre. Shakespeare. Performance styles from various different eras rubbing up against each other. Dustin Hoffman doing a noir heavy next to Shia LaBeouf doing his neo-Nicolas Cage shamanic thing as Clodius. There’s newspapers and old-timey press packs with old cameras, and Nathalie Emmanuel whispering into a digital recording ring.

It’s most of a century of film mixed together and named a fable.

That does not sound like a film I want to see. It sounds like a complete and utter mess. I love the idea of combining various filmmaking techniques into a new and glorious thing, but this description is bonkers.

It is full of ideas. Over-full, sure, but who cares. The politics are sloppy, the symbolism is all over the place, the actors are performing in five different movies, everything stops dead early on while Adam Driver does five minutes of Hamlet, and who cares. It reaches for something. Something monumental. Its abiding message is not in the film, it’s about the film: it says “this is what I have learned about my artform, this is its history and this is where it could go. This is all I know and all I dream.”

I want to watch it two or three more times, at least. I will have to wait for a Blu-Ray.

I’m not going to tell you it’s a great film. On some simple shallow levels it may not even be a good film. But it’s all I’ve been able to think about all week and I want to watch it many more times. That, for me, makes it a compelling and valuable and, yes, entertaining film.

If you don’t like your art awash with human ambition and a deep pool of excessive madness, then there’ll be a new Captain America film along soon. MEGALOPOLIS, flawed though it may be, is the shit I live for.

I’m not super interested in that Captain America film either…

Evan Osnos, writing in The New Yorker, on what has been, win or lose, one of the more remarkable rises in American politics.

By gaining the nomination so late, Harris spared herself the obligation of courting the orthodox wing of her party in primaries. But a short run has risks; it left her little time to explain what she believes and what she would do in office. Temperamentally, she preferred to disgorge policy points than to explore her thinking with reporters. Early focus groups showed that voters had only vague impressions of her, and Republicans were racing to shape them, calling her a “D.E.I. hire” and “Comrade Kamala.”

In fact, Harris has never been a favorite of the left, and progressives in Congress, such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, had fought to keep Biden in the race, assuming that a Harris Administration would not give their priorities as much attention. For as long as Harris has been in politics, she has been motivated less by ideology than by a practical ambition to widen the perimeter of power, to make insiders out of outsiders—including, not incidentally, herself. Rather than try to upend the system, she has vied to run it.

As the campaign enters its final weeks, neither Harris nor Trump has a decisive advantage. She is ahead by roughly 2.5 per cent nationally, but it’s not clear that the margin is wide enough to win the Electoral College. (Democrats have secured the popular vote in seven of the past eight Presidential elections, but lost the electoral vote, and the White House, in two of them.) Harris is desperately trying to hold together an anti-Trump movement that sprawls from “Cheney to Chomsky,” as Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families Party, told me. “Her challenge is to make sure that none of the factions flee,” he said, “and, at the same time, to win over new people.”

The race has been steady for weeks on end. It will either be a nail biter or a blowout.

Barry Petchesky, writing for Defector, has a small story on the aftermath of Hurricane Milton.

The image of the destruction of Tropicana Field’s roof is something to see. Winds were so powerful they temporarily blew the water out of the Bay.

This morning, there hasn’t been much to see of the aftermath. I’m sure it will be catastrophic.

Just recently, Trump was laughed at straight in the face by comedian Andrew Schulz after appearing on his podcast this week. He wasn’t laughing WITH him; he was laughing AT him. Howard Stern would eviscerate Trump.

Peter Baker and Dylan Freedman, reporting for The New York Times, have finally noticed Donald Trump is a rambling, incoherent mess.

Former President Donald J. Trump vividly recounted how the audience at his climactic debate with Vice President Kamala Harris was on his side. Except that there was no audience. The debate was held in an empty hall. No one “went crazy,” as Mr. Trump put it, because no one was there.

Anyone can misremember, of course. But the debate had been just a week earlier and a fairly memorable moment. And it was hardly the only time Mr. Trump has seemed confused, forgetful, incoherent or disconnected from reality lately. In fact, it happens so often these days that it no longer even generates much attention.

He rambles, he repeats himself, he roams from thought to thought — some of them hard to understand, some of them unfinished, some of them factually fantastical. He voices outlandish claims that seem to be made up out of whole cloth. He digresses into bizarre tangents about golf, about sharks, about his own “beautiful” body. He relishes “a great day in Louisiana” after spending the day in Georgia. He expresses fear that North Korea is “trying to kill me” when he presumably means Iran. As late as last month, Mr. Trump was still speaking as if he were running against President Biden, five weeks after his withdrawal from the race.

It’s nice that the “paper of record” would finally acknowledge what everyone who pays attention to this stuff has been seeing for years. They jumped on Biden for getting “gish galloped” in the debate and ignored the raging lunatic lying constantly. Finally, because the Times has an article, now other mainstream outlets will unleash their similar treatise on the subject.

In case you didn’t know, Fred Trump Sr. had dementia. Frankly, I don’t think Donald Trump has dementia, but he’s obviously slowed down considerably and is not as sharp as even a few years ago. He can’t hold a thought in his brain for more than a few seconds, and worst of all, he has no curiosity.

Sad.

Zoë Schlanger, writing in The Atlantic, explains how incredibly powerful and potentially dangerous Hurricane Milton is going to be on Florida’s Gulf Coast. She also outlines how Milton has been supercharged through climate change.

As Hurricane Milton exploded from a Category 1 storm into a Category 5 storm over the course of 12 hours yesterday, climate scientists and meteorologists were stunned. NBC6’s John Morales, a veteran TV meteorologist in South Florida, choked up on air while describing how quickly and dramatically the storm had intensified. To most people, a drop in pressure of 50 millibars means nothing; a weatherman understands, as Morales said mid-broadcast, that “this is just horrific.” Florida is still cleaning up from Helene; this storm is spinning much faster, and it’s more compact and organized.

In a way, Milton is exactly the type of storm that scientists have been warning could happen; Michael Wehner, a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in California, called it shocking but not surprising. “One of the things we know is that, in a warmer world, the most intense storms are more intense,” he told me. Milton might have been a significant hurricane regardless, but every aspect of the storm that could have been dialed up has been.

It’s going to be bad. I hope everyone in the path has gotten out and those still picking up the pieces from Hurricane Helene are able to take cover.

Stay safe.

Netflix has released a trailer for the next season of The Diplomat, and I’m reasonably excited.

It’s definitely one of the finer original shows Netflix has put out lately, with excellent writing.

The Allison Janney appearance made me smile.

Nicholas Bate –

1. Zero soda; maximum water.
2. Zero in-box; maximum filed to category OR action list.
3. Zero lifts/escalator; maximum stairs.
4. Zero processed food; maximum fresh, local and cooked by self.
5. Zero technology-at-table; maximum great uninterrupted conversation.
6. Zero mall; maximum small, local & inspiring shop-keepers.
7. Zero can’t; maximum all things are possible.

After learning about the organizational system of Forever ✱ Notes, I implemented it with my Apple Notes on my phone and iMac. I have the initial setup complete, but now I’m slowly applying it to my existing notes.

Forever ✱ Notes is not an app, but a simple framework and scalable digital note-taking method for Apple Notes. It’s free and created to last—forever.

I don’t think it will replace Notion, but it will considerably streamline my use of Apple Notes. I’m a huge fan of using the existing Apple ecosystem, and this does that in spades.

Nicholas Bate –

Momentum is certainly your assistant. Write daily to train the mind and body, write daily for quantity, write daily for pleasure.

But do not be guilty about a break. A break can provide the creative breakthrough, the fresh angle, the rejuvenated spirit.

Like much in life, it’s a balance.

Rick Beato spends some time with Rick Rubin, and it’s well worth watching.

In this interview, legendary producer Rick Rubin shares insights from his incredible career, spanning decades of groundbreaking music. From his early work with Run DMC, LL Cool J, and the Beastie Boys, to producing iconic albums for Tom Petty, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, System of a Down and Johnny Cash, Rubin reflects on his creative process, collaborating with some of the most influential artists in music history, and the stories behind classic albums.

Daily Kos examines the state of the presidential race with 30 days to go. It’s remarkably steady.

The polling won’t perfectly predict this year’s election results, but if Democratic nominee Kamala Harris were to take every state where she currently leads, she would win the election with a narrow 276-262 electoral votes.

However, swing the election 1.5 percentage points to Donald Trump, and he wins 287-251. Then again, swing things 1.5 points toward Harris, and she wins every swing state, netting 319-219 electoral votes. It’s a wild one. And as I’ve noted time and again, much will depend on turnout.

Remember, pollsters are pretty good at determining how a demographic will vote, but they can only make educated guesses at how much of those demographics will turn out. For example, I can tell you that over 90% of Black women will no doubt vote for Harris, while around 60% of white men will likely vote for Trump. (That basically mirrors 2020 exit polls.) But there’s a big difference if Black women are 8% of the electorate or 12%, and an even bigger difference if white men are 35% of the electorate or 30%.

Trump will never rise above 47%, and he’ll have to hit another inside straight to win. It could happen, but I think not.

October 5 is “James Bond Day,” because it celebrates the release of Dr. No in 1962.

If this date inspires you to want to have a movie marathon of Bond, here’s my list of the best six Bond flicks to stream. My list isn’t weird or unique, but it might help you.

Here you go:

Goldfinger (1964): I immensely like From Russia with Love, but Goldfinger sets the franchise’s style. It is the quintessential Sean Connery Bond film. Funny, exciting, and original all at the same time. Also, the best Bond girl name.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969): George Lazenby’s only outing as James Bond is the best Bond flick Connery never did. Aside from Casino Royale, it has the best end. “We Have All the Time in the World” is the franchise’s best song.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977): The best Roger Moore Bond film by most accounts, although For Your Eyes Only is pretty good. The Lotus Esprit turning into a submarine takes the honor of the best Bond car. Barbara Bach is a top Bond girl.

GoldenEye (1995): The first and best Pierce Brosnan film. Also of note, this is Judi Dench’s first appearance as Bond’s boss M. I’m a big fan of the plot of the former friend who betrays Bond.

Casino Royale (2006): Daniel Craig reboots the franchise for the 21^st century. In the best opening scene of the franchise, he kills a guy in a bathroom with his bare hands. It goes on a tad too long but sets up Craig to deliver the best “Bond, James Bond” line since Connery.

Skyfall (2012): Arguably the best James Bond movie in the franchise. It features great action, especially the end attack, and unique globe-trotting. It’s also a grounded story about Bond and his sense of place in the world. Judi Dench gives her best performance as M.

Former Colorado county clerk, conspiracy monger, and election denier Tina Peters has been sentenced to 9 years incarceration for providing pillow and conspiracy peddler Mike Lindell access to Dominion voting machines in the wake of the 2020 election along with using her position to push baseless claims.

Of particular note is the utter dressing down Judge Matthew Barrett gave Peters in his sentencing remarks, noting her defiance, lack of contrition, and pursuit of fame on the right wing grievance circuit along with the damage she did to trust in democratic systems as why he was choosing incarceration for her.

H/T: Metafiter

Since the St. Louis Cardinals did not make the baseball postseason (again), I have not been making any effort to watch any games.

Yesterday, I happened to stop on a game when flipping channels on my YouTube TV, and I finally saw the gaudy “Strauss” on both sides of every player’s batting helmet. Keith Olbermann had been complaining about this development on his podcast, so I knew they were going to be on the helmets. I just had no idea how incredibly shitty they’d look.

Helmets as billboards comes across as a cash grab. I’m sure minor league teams are looking at this marketing strategy and thinking there’s some money to be had, but to see it in Major League Baseball is a turn-off.

Just like the complaint regarding All-Star and regular jerseys during the regular season, I’m sure the complaints will be sky high about the ads.

I don’t mind the Nike swoosh on the jerseys. They are, after all, Nike products, and Nike is a partner with MLB. The press release regarding the Strauss partnership is just dumb. I don’t understand the need for MLB to be a vehicle to introduce a European brand to Americans.

Do better Manfred.

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