1. I for one welcome our new Chinese overlords.
2. No service to the NIH/Medical Center metro station for two whole months? Yikes! Those poor summer school students.
3. Micro.blog’s AI description correctly read the idiograms — see ALT text.

The last Wizards home game our family attended back in April was a disaster. We forgot to bring noise canceling earmuffs for the baby and spent most of the night in the dreary concession stand hallway. Guest Services were only able to provide foam plugs; not good for a five-month-old. This would not have been devastating if what was to be the highlight of the night — and at a Wizards game the highlight is not the game of basketball you can see on the court but rather the overpriced chicken tenders they sell to people who should know better, as the Capital One Arena is the only venue where our kids are permitted to eat junk — if that highlight was any good on our last night at the Arena. Alas, they came out 15 minutes late and still half-frozen, a breaded chicken sashimi. Oh, and after an embarrassing loss to the Miami Heat the Wizards sealed their status as the worst team of the worst conference of a league that has seen better days.

I am not saying that the Washington Wizards were the main reason we are leaving D.C. [Note: A fellow Serbian expat immigrant in DC told me that people back home thought that saying ‘DC’ is taken as being too high-falutin’ since everyone over there calls it Washington. Of course, over here Washington means the Hill and the Swamp and whatever you would call that thing on Pennsylvania Ave and 16th St, so I’ll stick to D.C. ] for Denver, but you know, it is also not not one of the reasons.

So I am happy to report that my last contact with the team was not that ill-fated last home game, but rather their draft party — free popcorn, cash bar — to celebrate the number one pick and choose the next season’s roster of Wizards Dancers.

Watching and voting for the dancers was delightful, particularly a few days after throwing out my back and not being able to even dream of doing one hundredth of the things they did on stage. The Wizards’ audience engagement is so much better than the actual game of basketball that it’s really not fair to these professionals that they earn a few orders of magnitude less money per year than the likes of Alex Sarr, the 2024 number 2 pick who gets north of $12M to get bullied under his own basket.

And then there was the pick. It was fine, I think, not being particularly invested in the outcome any more. I thought the front office made a very good move by trading for two injured low A-tier players (Trae Young, Anthony Davis) for next to nothing and expected the said office to trade them away once they recovered. Alas, no, they in fact intend to keep Trae Young and in that light the number 1 pick does not seem like the right choice as another suffering Wizards fan noted earlier today.

But you know what? It doesn’t matter. There will always be a built-in audience for NBA games in DC, fair weather or no, making the Arena stands green when Celtics are in town and purple-gold when the Lakers are in. The dancers will be consistently good as the city seems to attract an unlimited supply of talent. Heck, the senior dancers — delightfully named Wizdom — go above and beyond and are wonderful to watch. Them I will miss. Those overpaid court clowns, not so much.

Scenes from America’s State Fair. Here we see a beautiful example of a Trump-l’œil. Many such artefacts. Sadly, too transient to be saved for posterity.

After ten… eventful years in DC, our family — which doubled in size since 2016 (and more than doubled if you include the cat, and why wouldn’t you) — is moving to Denver, Colorado! Next month. Less than three weeks from now. Gulp.

So anyway, here is a recent storm over Washington to set the mood.

A new pop up just opened in DC on 7th Street NW, between G and H. You love to see it.

The 109-year-old (National) Sylvan Theater sits directly across from the Washington Monument on the National Mall. Derelict and seemingly abandoned — the last event was in October 2025 — it may be an even better symbol of America’s semiquincentennial than that monstrosity behind the White House.

📚Still reading Inventing the Renaissance, and Lorenzo de Medici’s brother Giuliano of course had a mention. Still, I wasn’t prepared for his bust being quite so metal.

This is at the (not Smithsonian!) National Art Gallery in DC, which has a rich collection of renaissance works.

📚 Some 18th century childhood doodles in a 17th century William Shakespeare first folio, as seen in the Folger collection. Kids will be kids!

Both the ghost and the mermaid museums we visited this weekend were in Berlin, MD, est. 1868. Was it per chance founded by German immigrants, I hear you ask, or a Teutonic-leaning group huddling after the Civil War? Why no: it is a contraction of Burley Inn, so the town is in fact “Burl’in”. TIL.

Yesterday’s ghosts are today’s mermaids. Here is a Fiji mermaid as advertised (above) and in reality (below). Not the PT Barnum specimen, but apparently made around the same time.

On a semi-related note, here is some good life advice from ol’ PTB.