Ladies and gentlemen, just one nugget of news this week, and it’s only Tuesday:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio will participate in a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signing ceremony at the U.S. Department of State with Dana White, President and CEO of UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) on Thursday, June 11, at 2:00 p.m. ET.

The MOU signing will mark a new public-private partnership to enhance sports diplomacy initiatives and collaborate on the global growth of mixed martial arts. Additional details will be announced following the ceremony.

Before you wipe the spit-take off your screen, as a seasoned reader, and sometimes writer, of press releases, I draw your attention to the phrase “memorandum of understanding.” What is that? About what it sounds like — nothing much. You reach a memo of understanding before you sign a contract. It’s kinda like going steady, maybe. It’s more formal than blowing kisses across the room, but it’s not binding, either. It’s a memorandum. It’s an understanding. You’re going steady, not engaged.

Also note: “Sports diplomacy.” What the fuck is that? At a time when NFL teams routinely hold exhibition games in Europe, when basketball is an Olympic sport, does this add mixed martial arts, i.e. televised felonious assault, to the mix? I don’t know.

Here’s what I do know: Marco Rubio is trying to end one war and start another, and should not have time for this nonsense, but as usual, something else is probably going on, and it involves filling the president’s pockets.

Dana White is a close friend of the president, this we know. MMA fighters come from all over the world, but notably from places like Chechnya and Belarus, former Soviet republics. We saw Chechen boxers when we went to a Claressa Shields fight in Detroit a few years ago, and about 60 seconds of thought told me why — like American ghettoes, they’re the kind of places anyone with half a brain would risk great bodily harm to escape. And do. Chechens are also big players in the Russian mob.

So my guess is this involves kickbacks from White to Trump, and Vladimir Putin is probably involved too, somehow. The UFC just signed something like an $8 billion-with-a-b contract with some streaming channel, so there’s a LOT of money floating around it, and surely Tubby wants his taste. I’m reminded of something I read online this morning, looking at overhead photos of the White House then and now: It’s like a meth family moved in.

And it’s only Tuesday. What more joys will the week bring? I ask you.

We’re having a thunderstorm at the moment, which is the opening act for temperatures in the 90s for a few days. Nancy Mace has conceded in the GOP gubernatorial primary in South Carolina, and a Republican has won the second spot in the California governor’s race. RIGGED. RIGGED.

Happy Wednesday. May we all survive it.

A few weeks ago, a story sped by in the sluice, something about a company with a substantial valuation that had a workforce of two — the founding partners. Everything else the company did was carried out by AI.

I don’t recall much more about it, AI being a topic that’s simultaneously rage-inducing and terrifying, so I probably read the first three paragraphs and noped out. But it came to mind in recent weeks, in connection with a gas-station credit card of Alan’s.

It’s a negligible card in our credit constellation, kept mainly for emergencies or those back-in-the-day days when you’re driving on fumes but payday is 24 hours away. I always paid it off, never carried a balance. It would give me an updated credit score every so often, which I appreciated: 820. Still excellent.

But earlier this year, we started receiving mail, both e- and snail, informing us that the oil company was closing its proprietary credit-card operation, and migrating it to a branded MasterCard, overseen by an entirely different company, Imprint. Quick! Migrate your account now! Your old card won’t work after May 18! As the payer of the household bills and a person who has most of her shit together, I obeyed these orders. First attempt: No account recognized under this name. Second attempt, a few days later: Same. Third, fourth and fifth attempts, days after that: Same.

Time to call Customer Support then, a call immediately answered by a clanker, er, virtual assistant. The clanker opened by encouraging me to do everything online, where it’s “easier.” Otherwise, tell me in a few words what the problem is. You all know how this goes, because we’ve all been there. The questions aren’t understood, and you end up bellowing REPRESENTATIVE!!! before being shunted to an alleged human being, where “wait times may be longer than normal due to high call volumes.” Reader, I hung on the line for 20 minutes, my personal limit for cycling through hold music.

This happened twice, before I found the company website and started rooting around in the About section, until I found the page for media inquiries. I filled it out with my information, left a terse but not obscenity-filled note about the problem, and went for a bike ride.

An hour later, a call from the company, which went to voicemail, as I was still out touching grass. I tried logging in again when I returned. Mirabile dictu, my account was recognized. Moments later, I was assured that my new MasterCard was on its way. Shipped!

That was May 19. The card has not yet arrived. It hasn’t been activated, whew, but it’s somewhere between there and here, and true to the warnings, the old card no longer works. I tried calling Imprint again. Clanker, clanker, clanker. REPRESENTATIVE!!!! Sorry, no one is here to take your call, try again later.

Sorry for the long windup here, but would someone please tell me how this miracle technology is going to improve our lives? Gov. Gretchen Whitmer lost 99 percent of my personal support last week, when she happily participated in a ceremonial groundbreaking for a gigantic data center in Saline, south of Ann Arbor. It’s safe to say that virtually no one in the area, save the construction tycoon who got the contract, wants this thing. OpenAI had to threaten to sue the pants off the city to get it done. And the governor shrugged and picked up the shiny shovel.

The editorial-page editor at the Freep had a succinct column about this today. Probably paywalled, so here’s the heart of it:

And there was Sam Altman on Monday, smiling alongside Gov. Gretchen Whitmer at the site of a hyperscale data center in Saline Township ― a massive project that will suck down enough electricity to power 1 million households ― bitterly opposed by a lot of residents and forced into the community via lawsuit:

“We know what the current attitude towards data centers in the world is … but I think we can make this a great example … This could turn into the site where hundreds of millions of students around the world learn and get private tutoring. This could turn into the site where millions of small businesses can run their business with AI in the cloud. … Hopefully someday we’ll all read about some incredible thing AI has done for society … and there’ll be a good chance that it happened as this site came online.”

This is a new, rosier Altman, who lately has seemed to discover that telling people you’re working to usher in a “Terminator”/”The Matrix”-esque version of the future where humans are meat batteries for our robot overlords evokes a little pushback. (But hasn’t seemed to hurt the prospects of OpenAI, which is steaming toward a $1 trillion IPO.)

So this is my question, one that it’s absolutely insane I even have to ask: If Altman believes that his work could result in the end of humanity as the planet’s dominant species, why on earth is Michigan doing business with him?

Good question. The governor’s spokesman had no comment.

Meanwhile, back in my little beef with Imprint, I thought it might be fun to punch their name into the Google and ask for reviews. Hoo-boy:

My REMOVED card, which I have had for 32 years in excellent standing has been moved to this company named Imprint Payments. This company is now sending me texts saying I have to agree to having their REMOVED. I already have a Mastercard, so I am not interested.I have been trying to do two things for the past nine days:- Pay any balance on the account – Close the account I have spent 67 hours on hold (literally 8 hours a day) trying to get a representative to assist. I have tried doing it online but the automated system does not recognize my name or birthday or anything else to identify REMOVED now receiving texts saying my account payment is due. I have used the website asking for assistance and am on hold again today as I REMOVED does not matter what option you choose, the system either says I’m not recognized and puts me on hold to speak to an agent. The past three days after being on hold for three hours it just hangs up on you, so I start the process all over. This is definitely feeling like a scam now as I have no way of paying any balance and/or closing the account. PLEASE HELP!!!

If I had this person’s contact information, I’d suggest they leave a note on the media-inquiries page. Not that it’s done me that much good. Poking around that page, I notice most of the content is press releases and one story from Forbes. Which is now a content farm.

Probably a clanker edits it now.

I was trying to think of something non-Trumpy to blog today, and then I saw this, and honestly, I got nothing better, so let’s start the weekend with a smile and have a good weekend, all.

All the days can’t suck, I told myself this morning, having accepted my morning mood (groggy, lousy) as payment for the joy of having last night’s dinner outdoors, on a restaurant patio on a glorious day, with two of my former colleagues from Bridge. Two of us were fired by the same asshole, so we had that to laugh about. There was a lot of laughing. I didn’t get home until close to 10, which meant I didn’t get to sleep until about 11, and Wednesday is my 4:20 a.m. alarm. Which explains the mood. But! It’s the last 4:20 alarm until September! So it’s not so bad.

Then I caught up on the comments and learned 4dbirds’ terrible news. Her name is Barbara. Barbara, I am so, so sorry. I’ll leave it at that, because there’s really nothing you can say after someone loses a child, other than that.

The drive to the restaurant last night sucked. It was in Plymouth, out in the exurbs, which meant I was facing construction and a blazing sun RIGHT IN MY EYES THE WHOLE WAY, aggravated by listening to a podcast recommended by someone in the comments a few days ago, the New Yorker Radio Hour interview with Dana White, president of the UFC. Dana is a good friend of the president, and assures us that he’s not a racist, not even a little. What about that video depicting the Obamas as apes, David Remnick pressed, gently. The Sgt. Schultz defense: “I don’t know about that,” etc. I laid this item on the table as I waited for my cocktail, and my former editor explained how this is exactly how good Germans were during the Holocaust. Yes, this is small talk with journalists, which is one reason I love my colleagues so.

Another reason I love them: Staff meetings like the one at CBS News about “60 Minutes” earlier this week, the one that led to Scott Pelley’s firing. I had to take Wendy to the vet yesterday, and briefly heard Mitch Albom kinda-sorta defending it, although it was hard to tell because as usual, he was playing the part of the Sensible Moderate, and also the Upholder of Decency and Good Manners. I gather Mitch found Pelley’s comments during the meeting very rude, as well as the secret recording of said meeting, and I rolled my eyes so hard I had to pull over until they rolled back and I could see through them again. How does the meme go? Tell me you’ve never been in a newsroom meeting without telling me you’ve never been in a newsroom meeting. They often go the way it did at CBS, or used to, before everyone was taught to keep their heads down, their tails tucked, and their mouths shut. People yell(ed) at their bosses in newsrooms, and that is a very good thing. A wise former editor explained it pithily: You can’t expect journalists to ask tough questions of public officials and other sources, without expecting them to ask a few of you, too.

OK, then. Just a few notes I’ve been collecting this week:

The new name for the fiasco formerly known as the Great American State Fair: Notapalooza. Har.

Zohran Mamdani continues to demonstrate fearsome political skills. Recall that the last time the president of the United States was surrounded by children, he tried to explain why Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon:

Today, I signed an Executive Order temporarily repealing bedtimes in the City of New York so that kids of all ages can watch our team in the NBA Finals.

As Mayor, you’re forced to make many difficult decisions. This was not one of them.

Go Knicks.

[image or embed]

— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@mayor.nyc.gov) June 1, 2026 at 3:39 PM

In case you were wondering whether Bill Pulte is qualified to be Director of National Intelligence, let me assure you from his native state: No. He is not.

Finally, dunno if this is paywalled or not, but Roy Edroso, who’s been covering conservative “culture” for years, did a really nice piece on that topic, earlier this week. If it is paywalled, let me assure you that Roy’s Substack is one that is absolutely worth your money:

But when the conversation turns to the arts, something to which the word “culture” more properly applies, conservatives get extra weird. Because, while their target audience may be unfamiliar with the people and trends conservatives like to slander, and thus may be easily convinced to suspect them, everybody likes to see a show or hear some tunes.

And conservatives don’t know what to do about that, especially now that casual sexism, racism, and other retrograde attitudes are less prevalent in pop culture than once they were. That’s why they’re always yelling that fun stuff is woke — Star Wars, Andor, that Odyssey movie where for some perverse reason they let a black lady play the most beautiful woman in the world. Occasionally they try to grab a toehold on entertainment things that seem “conservative” to them — like that weird delusion they recently developed that only the Right had the capacity to appreciate Sydney Sweeney’s tits.

But it always comes off creepy and sad. You might convince some people at least that trans kids on sports teams or bike lanes or vaccination drives or no-fault divorce are attacks on their way of life; but when you tell them the same is true of the movies they watch and the songs they dance to and the stories they read, voluntarily and with pleasure, your chances of success are exceedingly low. It’s like telling them it’s un-American to eat ice cream or take a bath.

OK, that’s it for me today. Gonna try to improve my mood, maybe with a bike ride to the library.

I was reading something about the president’s weird fixation on Jaxson Dart, and couldn’t help but notice how the New York Giants quarterback spells his first name, which I assume was his parents’ choice.

We already have a perfectly fine spelling of that name: Jackson. That’s how it’s been spelled for years. But sometime in 2003, this little baby’s mother said, nope. My boy will spell his name Jaxson.

I’m so old — how old are you? — I’m so old I remember when racists would complain about black parents giving their kids offbeat names and creative spellings, and what’s wrong with Jennifer and Jason, anyway? Now, here we are, years later, and we have Jaxsons and Kynnedis.

Which goes to show you that everything cool starts with black people.

But as a mostly done with the game journalist, I hate “unique” name spellings. You used to have to check all last names and some first names. Now it’s all of them.

Been scarce around this place lately, I know. I sit down to write and think, “does anyone want to hear me complain about the president and his enablers and everything associated with it” and answer hell no. But it’s a large part of what I think about. Yes, the president lives rent-free in my head; no getting around that. I’m starting to think about the calculus of what stress does to the body vs. the civic duty of being an engaged citizen and paying attention as a part of that. If anyone else is struggling with that, do let me know.

How about some pictures? Kate holding a kitty at a party we both attended last weekend:

Here’s someone’s goldfish, released to the wild and grown to be an orange carp, in Lake St. Clair.

And now to gather thoughts for the rest of the week. Hang in there, and the tide will come back in.

There’s a saying that, if you’re online more than just the bare minimum, you’ve probably heard: “I never thought the leopards would eat my face,” sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces party.

In a similar vein, this New Yorker cartoon:

Today, a ProPublica story about a woman miscarrying a 17-week fetus, unable to get the D&C she needs to avoid the possibility of a life-threatening infection:

Raised Baptist in a Republican family, Waldorf struggled to understand what the doctors were saying as waves of grief hit her. How could an abortion ban aimed at women who wanted to end their pregnancies keep doctors from helping a woman who didn’t?

Waldorf didn’t oppose abortion, but she had never considered that the law could apply to her. Her father was a doctor. This was the hospital where she had worked for the past six years. The OB-GYN team treating her had delivered her daughter, and some of them lived blocks from her parents. She was a highly educated 38-year-old woman with connections to the governor. As she lay in a hospital bed, worried that infection could enter her uterus at any moment, she finally understood the ban now applied to anyone losing a baby.

I’m being too hard on this woman, comparing her to the sheep. Her only mistake was assuming she would somehow be different, because she actually needed an abortion, unlike all the women who abort pregnancies…I dunno, recreationally, maybe. Honestly, she is fully aware of the madness of the situation she was in, sitting in a hospital waiting to pass a nearly dead fetus, the infection risk growing by the hour. She becomes feverish, but her temperature has to be past 100.4 before doctors can take action to save her. She has a 17-week fetus, a broken amniotic sac, zero chance of anything other than miscarriage weeks before the outer edge of viability, because the fetus still has a whisper of a heartbeat.

It’s an enraging story. Bottom line: Don’t get pregnant in Arkansas. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders will shine you on.

In other, happier news, it is finally summer, more or less. The weekend was chilly and rainy and then, on Monday, the sun broke through and we had a fine Memorial Day. Let’s hope the rest of the summer is pleasant; we certainly had a shitty enough spring.

Out for a bike ride.

I slept poorly last night, and what else is new. Woke five minutes before the alarm, picked up the iPad to see if Trump kicked the bucket overnight (alas, he didn’t), and texted my boxing-workout group chat that I was going back to sleep.

I did not go back to sleep. Laid there for five minutes, got up and got dressed, hit Starbucks for a giant cappuccino and was the first to arrive. Hit the bag for 47 minutes, did the core set, came home for eggs and more coffee and at the moment? I. Feel. Great. The message is either to push through discomfort or get the extra sleep, because I promise you it will not last.

Might as well get this done first, then.

Big news here yesterday: Former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan dropped out of the governor’s race. His stated reason: The world has become even more divided since he announced he was leaving the Democratic Party to run as an independent, and there’s no longer a path for a uniter who seeks to bridge the divide, join hands across the aisle, and all that stuff. Big cities being cynical places, there’s a large cohort who believe this is a flimsy explanation, and speculate on two alternatives: One, that he’ll be the next president of the University of Michigan, or two, that he’s working a scheme with Jocelyn Benson, the presumptive Democratic nominee (primaries aren’t until August), where he’ll join her on the ticket as her lieutenant governor.

I can be shockingly naive at times, but I think I believe his initial explanation. He left the party in 2024, after the disaster of the presidential race, and regard for the Democrats was at a low ebb. It’s still not exactly high tide, but even haters are going to vote against the ongoing Republican disaster, and a few lefties are doing very well, especially in Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed, a Bernie bro, is leading the polls for the U.S. Senate nomination. I have doubts about his ability to win the general, so I’m still on the fence. It is incredibly difficult to run an independent campaign in the best of times, the higher you go on the ladder. Which is to say, most successful indie campaigns are at the municipal level, a few more at the state-legislative tier, and not many above that. In times like these, it’s almost impossible. I’m not interested in joining hands across the aisle at the moment. I’m interested in taking a flamethrower to the other side of the aisle, in fact. So I get it.

But like I said, I’m often wrong and I could be very wrong here. I don’t see someone like Duggan willing to settle for second banana to Benson. The presidency at U-M would be a cushy perch, but honestly, not that influential. So we’ll see. I need to talk to smarter people before I lay money on anything.

And now, here we are: Movement weekend! The big techno fest, where you don’t even have to set foot in Hart Plaza, where the festival actually is, to participate, because bars and clubs all over the city will be bumping house music through Memorial Day. I’ve got my eye on a couple of opportunities to drink a cold beverage and nod along with the beat. So that’s where I am this Friday.

I hope your weekend goes swimmingly.

This should not have been a surprise, but as I am Old, it kinda was. At one point in the late-lunch colloquy over the table Sunday, someone mentioned a photo most of us had seen but a couple hadn’t — our friend Dustin as a little boy, sitting on Alice Cooper’s lap. In a golf cart — Alice was playing golf at a course managed by Dustin’s father. (Dustin often says he taught himself to read by examining the liner notes on his parents’ albums.)

Anyway, I wanted to show the pic to the uninitiated, but I couldn’t remember when it made its way into my camera roll. Google Photos is my automatic backup, so just for the hell of it I typed “man in golf cart” into the search engine. Immediately, there it was:

But there were other choices, too. A pic from an early-morning swim in the Shores, with a maintenance guy zipping across the sunrise.

A pedal pub downtown. Two, actually:

Weirdest of all, this detail from the Diego Rivera murals at the DIA:

I guess I’ve known you can do something like this — type “steps” or “waterfall” and be served the photos that match. I did not know it could be this specific. AI, which I try to avoid using whenever I can, is kind of scary sometimes.

I wish I had more to offer this morning, but I read about the president’s most recent, peak-blatant act of corruption — this, of course — and was nearly struck dumb with fury. You want to know why Democrats are so angry? Because I expect my elected representatives, all Democrats, to be SHUTTING DOWN THE GODDAMN COUNTRY right now. And it doesn’t appear to be happening. They’re worthless, every last one.

Also, I have to get a haircut. Let’s get though this week, eh?

Last fall I mentioned that I’d purchased a birthday gift for all three of us, the November babies — a two-hour cruise on the J.W. Westcott, the mail boat the services the freighters on the Detroit River. We thought we might be able to schedule it right around Christmas, but the cold weather and ice came in early, and they said we’d be better off waiting until spring.

We set it for Sunday. The day couldn’t have been more perfect — the smash-cut to full summer I’d been predicting for a while. It was clear blue skies, 80 degrees, not a hint of rain and not even that much wind to make the water choppy. The party limit was six, so it was the three Derringers plus friends Dustin, Will and Cam, Kate’s boyfriend.

Upriver or down, we were asked. Down, we decided. None of this see-our-lovely-riverwalk-and-Belle-Isle for us; that’s easy to see. But to go down to look at the dirty ass crack of the industrial Midwest? Yeah, that’s more our speed.

We set out from the Westcott dock in the shadow of the Ambassador Bridge and passed under the nearly complete Gordie Howe Bridge — which our idiot president has threatened not to “allow” to open…

…and got up close and personal with a bulk loader that looks surprisingly good, maybe because it’s only eight years old. Dig that cute little lifeboat. Best wear your seatbelt when it makes its getaway.

Past the zombie-apocalypse hellscape of Zug Island…

…and into the Rouge River aka the other American river to catch fire, back in the day. (Ohioans know the other one — the Cuyahoga, in Cleveland.) It’s much improved, but I wouldn’t go swimming in it for all the tea in China. But it’s where the stuff that makes other stuff gets delivered and taken away and made into more stuff. Aggregate, coke, all that stuff. Even the tugboats look like they’ve seen some shit.

The bridges got out of our way.

Except for on the way back, when we had to stop to let a train go past. Then it was back up the river to the dock and, later, a table for six at a nearby Mexicantown spot. We all agreed it was a fine day out.

This is a trip to take when you’re convinced the city has no more to show you, that you’ve seen it all. You haven’t. I hope it’s a nice day for your cruise, too. And you get to do a mail delivery to a big ship. Although the crew said it’s mostly Amazon boxes these days. And pizzas and Door Dash.

Now I’m dehydrated and sun-dazzled and ready for an early bed. Two more days of summer heat before it moderates again. Eighty-seven tomorrow.

So much for posting three times a week. On the other hand, even I get bored with my own misery over current events. Plus, it’s Wednesday, the worst day of my week. But like a boxer losing in the 11th round, I stagger to my feet and offer…something.

Here’s two things, one a column that I wrote for the Freep. Here’s the official link, which you should click first. Why? Because it’s my understanding that Gannett paywalls are shifty things, determined by AI. If you haven’t hit a particular paper’s site too often, you get in (I guess). If you’ve taken too many free hors d’oeuvres, you hit the paywall. I ask you to at least try that link, because if you get in, it’s good for the paper, which enables them to pay me.

However. If you get walled out, here’s the dodgy free link. Of course, this could be at least somewhat mitigated by a gift-link system, but Gannett doesn’t do that yet. Maybe it never will.

For comic relief, enjoy this short interview with the sculptor who did that ridiculous Trump statue unveiled this week:

Demands to nix the turkey neck and make the model skinnier, missed payments, and calls to install the statue last-minute — no Cottrill commission has been as complicated as the statue dubbed “Don Colossus.”

The tech bros in 2024 paid an initial $300,000 for the initial statue, then paid another $60,000 a year later for the gold-leaf plating, and another $150,000 to use imagery of the statue to promote a crypto token, Cottrill said. But getting the payment was easier said than done.

“‘You were supposed to make these payments nearly a year ago. I can’t trust you to do that,’” Cottrill recalls telling his patrons. “So I held the statue. I put it in an undisclosed location and said it won’t be delivered until the final payments have been made.

You don’t say. Shocked, shocked, etc.

OK, that’ll be it for today. May I sleep well and deeply tonight.