Friday, May 15, 2026

Thursday, May 14, 2026

Last night I went to bed at 10pm, fell asleep quickly, got up once at 2:45, took a while to fall back asleep, finally waking at 5:45 and getting up at 6:15.

According to my Fitbit, I got in 6,793 steps yesterday and last night I slept for 3 hours, 53 minutes.

Just before 8am sitting at the dining room table I experienced a tremblor for 20 seconds or so.

I left the apt at 8:30 and walked to the mall. I went up to the banking area and withdrew 2 million pesos all 100s then went across the hall to the consignacion ATMs. There are four of them and the 4th was being loaded with cash with a security guard holding a shotgun standing in front of the 3rd. I went to the first and in the midst of the process realized it wasn’t going to be able to return the change I need. I looked at the 2nd ATM and the security guard nodded to me to use it. I completed the process and it returned the bills and coins as change and ejected my receipt. By the time I took the bills and coins and put them in my fanny pack I saw the machine pull my receipt back in. I freaked out and went inside and quickly found a bank employee who spoke a little English. We went back to the ATM and I showed him the Innovation Corp information I had entered. He did some magic on his tablet and had me call a number listed on the machine and after entering some numbers in the keypad, he spoke to someone. He hung up and told me to call the same number tomorrow and choose options 1 then 1 and they would email me the receipt.

I thanked him then went down to Exito to pay the utility bill. Last time they had a machine to give me a turn number but today I found this:

SIGN

There were 4 officials working computers and customers hovering nearby and others seated on a couch so I wasn’t sure if there was a waiting line. I told one of them as she got off the phone I wanted to pay my epm bill. She took it, I handed her the cash, she processed it and handed it back with the receipt stapled to it.

I retraced my steps through the garage, stopped in Starbucks and bought a blueberry muffin and took a seat in Urbania. I had the muffin with a latte and went through my phone. I texted Innovation Corp about my payment but losing the receipt and could they see that I paid. I left at 10:45 and purchased a few groceries in Exito before returning to the apt by taxi.

The elevator was under maintenance so I had to walk up four flights to our apt.

I forgot to buy lettuce and Exito didn’t have broccoli so Teresa sent me next door to Ara and the elevator was still out of order.

I won a game vs Chesswiz98 increasing my rating to 1512.

I watched a couple more episodes of The Man in the High Castle.

Innovation Corp answered my text: they can see my payment and will ship my package. Whew, now I don’t have to worry about the call to Bancolombia.

By 7pm the 2026 NFL schedule was released and I entered the Bears games into my Excel database.

At 7:15 we had a downpour but it only lasted 5 minutes.

I watched The Chris Hayes Show then it was time to start my pre-sleep reading. I finished John Grisham’s novel The Associate on my Kindle.

Soon it started drizzling but had stopped by the time I went to bed.

 

RELEASE ALL THE EPSTEIN FILES NOW!

 

FUNNY



 

BOB BURFORD

In 1969, a twenty-five-year-old reporter walked into the marble world of the United States Supreme Court carrying a notebook, a sharp memory, and absolutely none of the reverence the institution expected from the press corps.


Her name was Nina Totenberg.

At the time, Supreme Court reporting barely resembled journalism as most people understood it. The Court existed behind a wall of ritual and distance. Reporters treated the justices almost like priests guarding sacred knowledge. Coverage focused on formal opinions, ceremonial language, and polite summaries written long after decisions had already reshaped the country.

The human machinery behind those rulings remained mostly invisible.

The assumptions of the era were simple. The justices spoke through opinions. Reporters repeated them. The public accepted them.

Totenberg approached the Court differently from the beginning.

She did not see a temple.

She saw a workplace filled with powerful human beings making decisions about abortion, voting rights, criminal law, civil liberties, segregation, executive power, and the daily boundaries of American life. If those decisions affected millions of citizens, then citizens deserved to understand not only the outcomes, but the conflicts, personalities, strategies, and political pressures shaping them.

That perspective changed legal journalism forever.

The Supreme Court in the late 1960s was still overwhelmingly male, elite, and formal to the point of intimidation. Young female reporters were often underestimated immediately. Many editors expected women to cover society events or lighter assignments, not constitutional law.

Totenberg ignored those expectations completely.

She buried herself in legal briefs, transcripts, and opinions. She learned constitutional law deeply enough to challenge attorneys and question judges without hesitation. She mastered the details because she understood something critical about institutions: access means nothing if you cannot recognize the importance of what you are hearing.

So she became impossible to bluff.

Sources inside the legal world quickly learned that Nina Totenberg read everything.

Not skimmed.

Read.

She understood the arguments before oral hearings began. She noticed inconsistencies in testimony. She remembered offhand remarks made months earlier. While some reporters waited outside the courtroom hoping for quotes, Totenberg built relationships inside the ecosystem surrounding the Court: clerks, lawyers, aides, Senate staffers, professors, former officials.

And then the leaks started coming to her.

In 1971, during the presidency of Richard Nixon, she broke a story that stunned Washington. Nixon had quietly assembled a shortlist of possible Supreme Court nominees. Several of the candidates were considered so unqualified that the American Bar Association privately rejected them.

The report embarrassed the White House and exposed how politically fragile the judicial nomination process could become behind closed doors.

Years later, she uncovered details about internal Supreme Court deliberations during the Watergate era, revealing tensions and debates the public had never been meant to see. That kind of reporting was nearly unheard of at the time. The Court depended heavily on secrecy, tradition, and discretion. Justices did not give television interviews explaining their strategic disagreements.

But Totenberg understood that secrecy itself could shape power.

So she kept digging.

Over time, her reporting style developed a reputation that made both politicians and judges uneasy. She was meticulous. She verified aggressively. And once she had confidence in a story, she did not soften it to preserve relationships.

That mattered enormously in Washington, where access journalism often rewarded politeness over confrontation.

Then came 1991.

And the story that would define her career.

President George H. W. Bush had nominated Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court seat previously held by Thurgood Marshall.

The nomination was already politically explosive. Marshall had been a towering figure in civil rights history, and Thomas’s confirmation battle carried enormous ideological weight. Senate hearings moved forward under intense national attention.

Then an affidavit surfaced.

A law professor named Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas of sexually harassing her when she worked for him years earlier.

At first, the allegation seemed likely to disappear quietly.

The Senate Judiciary Committee showed little interest in investigating aggressively. The confirmation process was nearing completion. Powerful figures in Washington appeared prepared to let the accusation fade without public scrutiny.

But Nina Totenberg obtained the affidavit.

Then she verified it.

Then she went on the air.

The broadcast detonated across Washington.

Suddenly the nomination battle transformed from a procedural confirmation into a national reckoning over sexual harassment, workplace power, gender, credibility, and institutional protection. The Senate reopened hearings. Millions of Americans watched live testimony as Anita Hill described explicit conversations and humiliating behavior before a panel composed entirely of men.

The country had rarely discussed workplace sexual harassment openly before that moment.

Now it dominated television screens nationwide.

Women recognized experiences they had long been expected to tolerate silently. Employers scrambled to revisit policies that had barely existed before. Complaints about sexual harassment surged in the following years as people gained language for behavior that previously went unnamed or ignored.

The hearings became one of the defining public conversations of modern American workplace culture.

And it happened because one reporter refused to let the story die quietly inside a file drawer.

The backlash against Totenberg was immediate and vicious.

Critics accused her of sensationalism, political bias, ambition, recklessness, and betrayal of institutional norms. Some questioned whether reporters should publish information capable of derailing a Supreme Court confirmation days before a vote. Others attacked her personally with a level of hostility male reporters often escaped.

She was threatened with jail after refusing to identify confidential sources. Senators publicly denounced her reporting. Commentators questioned her professionalism, her motives, and her relationships inside Washington’s legal world.

Totenberg herself later acknowledged that some criticisms about press access and proximity to powerful figures deserved serious discussion. Washington journalism has always existed in uncomfortable tension between access and accountability.

But much of the outrage carried another layer familiar to many women in public life.

She was accused not merely of being wrong, but of being too sharp, too confident, too unwilling to shrink herself for the comfort of powerful men.

And still she kept reporting.

Decade after decade, she remained one of the most respected and feared legal journalists in America. Clerks learned to guard conversations carefully around her. Senators wondered what she already knew before hearings even began. Supreme Court insiders understood that if information leaked, there was a good chance Nina Totenberg would hear about it first.

What made her dangerous was not theatricality.

It was precision.

She built authority slowly, story by story, verification by verification, until even the institutions she investigated had no choice but to treat her seriously. She developed the kind of credibility that only emerges after years of being right under pressure.

Not perfect.

But rigorous.

And relentless.

More than half a century after she first began covering the Supreme Court, Nina Totenberg was still reporting on the institution while generations of justices, senators, presidents, and reporters came and went around her.

The marble building remained the same from the outside.

But the way Americans understood it had changed.

Because a young reporter once walked into a place built on secrecy and decided the public deserved to know how power actually worked behind closed doors.

Then she spent the next fifty years proving it.

Thursday, May 14, 2026

Wednesday, May 13, 2026

Last night I went to bed at 10pm, fell asleep quickly, got up once at 4:15, took a while to fall back asleep, finally waking/getting up at 6:15.

According to my Fitbit, I got in 5,899 steps yesterday and last night I slept for 4 hours, 30 minutes. I don’t know how I could have possibly walked that many steps yesterday.

After breakfast I returned to bed and slept for a few minutes. I left the apt at 8:45 and found Smartfit not very busy. I think 9am is the golden hour for me. I completed my workout including 18 minutes on the treadmill at 5 ½ kph.

I had a latte in Ganso y Castor and at the next table were 3 missionaries – lots of God this and God that.

I left at 10:45 and returned to the apt where I dropped off my gym stuff and took a grocery bag with some cash. I went next door to Ara and bought lettuce, broccoli, pasta, and a fresh baguette. (The later was only 2,500 pesos, about 66 cents.)

I tried the garlic butter spray on a couple slice of bread and Teresa put it in the oven but I don’t know if she had it on the broiler seating.

I finished season 2 of The Man in the High Castle and at 8pm started my pre-sleep reading.

Teresa left at 2pm for her crafts class maybe followed by a rumba gym class.

I left at 3pm and stopped at the Bancolombia kiosk and had my games with Jose printed.  I passed the Toro statue and took these photos




then stopped at Los Porteños and had my usual latte with a glass of water. I went over my chess games and started looking at rental car companies at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. I received a text from Innovation Corp that my package now in Bogota will cost $35.25 or 153,600 pesos.

I left at 5:30 and went to Eduardo Madrid to wait for Teresa but there weren’t any tables available. I leaned against the railing just outside their door to wait. Someone finally left and I took a seat at an interior table. Teresa arrived at 6:30 and we shared a chicken pastry.

We stopped at Tienda D1 so she could buy something then we returned to the apt.

I watched The Chris Hayes show then started my pre-sleep reading routine.

At one point there was a knock on the door. I let Teresa answer it because if it isn’t a portero with an epm bill then Teresa can carry on the conversation with whomever. It was a portero with the epm bill. Our conversation continued like this:

Teresa: Why is the bill so high? (It was 748,620 pesos.)

Me: I have no idea.

T: Did you pay the bill last month?

M: If I got a bill, I paid it. (I checked my files and didn’t find a bill for April. (I also checked this month’s “Lectura anterior” charge and it didn’t match the bill I paid in March which means I never got a bill for April which means I didn’t pay it so that’s why it’s so high this month.)

M: No, I didn’t pay the bill last month because I never received one.

T: If you don’t receive a bill, you need to ask the portero for it.

M: Sigh! (What, they’re hiding them from us? I’m guessing either epm didn’t print it last month or they didn’t get delivered. Which explains why the bill sometimes is much higher than other months. Typical Colombian efficiency.)

 

RELEASE ALL THE EPSTEIN FILES NOW!

 

FUNNY