Sunrise — 7:08.

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

Bonus video by Meade: This is today's sunset with the full moon rising:

"A jury on Jan. 30 found a psychologist and surgeon liable for malpractice after they supported and performed breast removal surgery..."

"... on a 16-year-old girl who at the time identified as transgender. Fox Varian, now 22 and no longer identifying as transgender, was awarded $2 million in damages.... The jury found that in many respects the surgeon and psychologist had skipped important steps when evaluating whether she should go forward with the surgery and had not adequately communicated with each other. These missteps were a 'departure from the standard of care,' they decided."

National Review reports.

ADDED: Benjamin Ryan writes, at X: "I was the only reporter to attend the entire 3-week, historic trial.... The entire case file was put under seal when the trial started (although I obtained all those documents before they was sealed), and all the transcripts from the trial are also under seal. The riveting trial was sparsely attended and there was only one other reporter at the trial; and he only attended for part of it and, as I observed, took few notes. So my own hundreds of pages of notes from the trial will likely remain the only way for the public to learn about the all finer details of what transpired, possibly ever (or until an appeal, should that happen)...."

"Antinatalism Explained."

I'm not endorsing this idea, and I can even see why one would want not merely to resist but to actively suppress it, but I would recommend courageously hearing out the argument. It's quite challenging, but why is it wrong?

Related: there's a big new movie out about the Shakers:

"The [Epstein] files appeared to contain at least 4,500 documents that mentioned Mr. Trump."

"One was a summary that officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation assembled last summer of more than a dozen tips from the public involving Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein, according to emails released by the Department of Justice on Friday. It is unclear why the investigators put together the summary, which includes accusations of sexual abuse by Mr. Epstein and Mr. Trump. The emails did not include any corroborating evidence, and The New York Times is not describing the details of the unverified claims. Mr. Trump has denied any wrongdoing in connection with Mr. Epstein. In response to a request for comment, the White House referred to a public statement from the Justice Department, which said that Friday’s documents 'may include fake or falsely submitted images, documents or videos.' Many of the other documents were news articles or emails that referenced Mr. Trump."

From "Powerful Men Who Turn Up in the New Batch of Epstein Files/Elon Musk, Richard Branson and Sergey Brin were among those who exchanged messages or visited with Jeffrey Epstein, according to the newly released documents" (NYT)(gift link).

Oh, no!

It's just cruel. Please. This hurts my heart:

Gift link.

Waxing gibbous.

The full moon rises this afternoon, at 3:42 p.m. here in Madison, and it won't set until 7:17 a.m., but we think tomorrow will be very cloudy, so we wanted to see the near full moon today, and the setting time was 6:40 a.m.

Do you understand why the setting times are 37 minutes different on 2 consecutive days? The sunrise times on those 2 days are only 2 minutes apart, 7:14 and 7:12.

The video above is from Meade, and that's me in the corner at the beginning, capturing this:

"Can I ask a question I have been dying to ask? You all might think it is a weird question but I've always been curious. What is your favorite time of day?"

That's the utterly inane question Dana Perino asked Melania Trump on "The Five":

That is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard on television. I don't intentionally watch news on TV — sometimes it overflows onto me — so I'm not the best judge of how close to the bottom that is. 

For the record of things no one needs to know, Melania's favorite time of day is "very early morning." Why? Because it's quiet, you have your coffee, and you check your email.

ADDED: Of course, the film is getting terrible reviews — for example, "Melania review – First Lady is a preening, scowling void of pure nothingness in this ghastly bit of propaganda," by Nick Hilton in The Independent: 

"Thank you. I needed a moment of levity today."

Thanks to Catherine O'Hara for all the many for the moments of levity.

Sunrise — 7:43, 7:40, 7:21, 7:21.

Today's photos are in reverse chronological order, which shouldn't seem odd at all considering that the blog's posts are in reverse chronological order. And yet, never until today had I even thought of putting the photos in reverse chronological order. Today, the photos themselves cried out for reverse chronological order and I was utterly compelled.

***

Talk about whatever you like in the comments.

"To think, 190 miles an hour down Pennsylvania Avenue — this is going to be wild."

Said Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, quoted in "Trump announces August auto race in downtown Washington" (Politico).

The Trump administration plans to usher a massive auto race into downtown Washington in August as part of a broader celebration of the United States’ 250th birthday, President Donald Trump announced Friday.

Flanked by senior officials in the Oval Office, Trump signed an executive order to launch what the White House has dubbed “the Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington, D.C. — the first ever INDYCAR street race in the Nation’s capital.”

"DOJ concludes Epstein files review with release of 3.5 million records."

Axios reports.

Bring on the voracious readers.

"My 11-year-old nephew is a vivacious reader...."

So begins the first comment I see when I open up the comments section at "Why Boys Are Behind in Reading at Every Age/Boys’ reading struggles are not inevitable, research suggests, and addressing the deficit could improve outcomes in school and beyond" (NYT).

The commenter is female or so I surmise from the name Hannah. The malapropism — "vivacious" for "voracious" — amused me. I guess she got overly enthused that her boy — despite the burden of being a boy — was reading, really reading, reading a lot. It's hard to picture reading being done vivaciously, but I enjoyed trying. And "voracious reading" is trite. We ought to stop saying it. I'm tired of the eating metaphor for reading, and it's not as though I can picture people eating books. Vivacious reading is at least something new. 

And please don't try to tell me that "vivacious reader" isn't wrong because Ken Follett is quoted (somewhere) saying "Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer." Follett originally used the old trite expression "voracious reader" and somebody else screwed up copying the quote. 

But let's read the article! Excerpt:

"There’s pasta in the pantry and jarred sauce in the refrigerator. So what compels Kiely Reedy to keep having spaghetti with marinara delivered..."

"... from the restaurant down the street, for several times the cost of cooking the dish herself? It’s not that the restaurant dish is particularly good, she said. 'It’s the instant gratification.' From her roughly $50,000 annual salary as a data processor in San Diego, Ms. Reedy, 34, spends at least $200 to $300 a week on food delivery.... Between raising two young boys and putting in long hours at a marketing job in Atlanta, Kevin Caldwell can almost never find the time to make dinner. So he and his husband spend about $700 a week to order in. 'I am so burned out and tired, I would rather just throw my credit card at the problem and delay that unhappiness until the bill comes,' he said. His 4-year-old son doesn’t read yet, 'but he can put together an order' on the Chick-fil-A app, said Mr. Caldwell, 39. 'I am impressed, but I am also terrified.'"

From "Freedom With a Side of Guilt: How Food Delivery Is Reshaping Mealtime/Almost three of every four restaurant orders in the U.S. weren’t eaten in a restaurant, according to recent data. We spoke to readers who are devoted to delivery but question the costs" (NYT)(gift link).

I've never ordered in prepared food. I mean, back in the 1900s, I would order pizza sometimes, but not since then. I know about these services — Door Dash, Uber Eats, etc. — but I simply don't want them. We don't go to restaurants either, but I wonder if delivery is preferable to restaurants. Restaurants involve going out, which could be either a positive or a negative. Do you have time to burn? Even if you do, do you want to spend it sitting at a table waiting and under social pressure make conversation (and not to look at your phone)? Maybe that's just not what people do anymore. 

"Federal agents arrested the former CNN anchor Don Lemon late Thursday..."

"... on charges that he violated federal law during a Jan. 18 protest in St. Paul, Minn., against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, his lawyer said. The case had been rejected last week by a magistrate judge. Attorney General Pam Bondi said that she had ordered the arrests of Mr. Lemon and three others in connection with the demonstration at a church.... Mr. Lemon, who was scheduled to appear in federal court in Los Angeles on Friday morning to contest the charges, has said he was reporting as a journalist when he entered Cities Church in St. Paul to observe a demonstration against the immigration crackdown...."

The NYT reports.

Sunrise on Lake Mendota felt like an outtake from "Help!"

The Fab Bad(ger) Four run back into the sunrise:

What did make the cut in "Help!":

"Free yourself of old-fashioned ideas."

That's not the L&M commercial I'm searching for. And neither is this, though it does have an amazing performance by Teri Garr:

That first video shows what it meant to "live modern" in the 1950s. The couple reminds me of my parents. The Teri Garr commercial shows the ordeal of living in the 1970s and the pathetic hope that cigarettes could bring 2 decent struggling humans together for a tiny moment.

But the one I was looking for is a 1960s commercial with a jingle singing "They said it couldn't be done." The thing that supposedly couldn't be done was to put a filter on a cigarette and have it still taste good. The ad began by showing a few things that "they" said couldn't be done that really were done. The only example I remember is showing Florida as a big swamp followed by images of glorious Florida real estate. The logic of the commercial was that if other supposedly impossible things happened, then this other one probably happened too. See how 1960s that was?