Good morning. It is May 13th. It is a bright morning in New York City. No more rain, but still cool out. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. The solar storm that sent the Northern Lights far south over the weekend is winding down, maybe. But there's still a chance it could flare up again.

Congratulations to everyone who saw it, and best of luck to all the farmers who, 404 Media reported, found their GPS -dependent, highly automated John Deere systems unavailable over the weekend, forcing them to either wing it and do suboptimal planting, or just park their mega tractors in the middle of planting season to wait for their communications infrastructure to recover. On the front of this morning's New York Times,

The lead story is that Michael Cohen is going to be testifying in Donald Trump's Manhattan criminal trial. In his role as the person who received the financial transaction that the Trump organization allegedly illegally covered up. A headline is a little bit clunky in a particularly timezian register. Fixer of Trump's problems has become one of them. You could do the exact same thing a little more cleanly.

and with about the same character count. If you made it, Trump's favorite fixer has become his problem. But from the Times's point of view, it seems like to strike the pose of being simultaneously all -knowing and a newborn infant, you can't just call a fixer a fixer. You have to call him a fixer of problems and then belabor it by circling back with a pronoun. Senator Bob Menendez also goes on trial today, but does not rate page one, not even a referral.

The gold bars allegedly stuffed in jacket pockets just couldn't outrate what parrots really want in the Inside Attractions teaser. What do parrots want? The story doesn't really say. It does say that a cockatoo has been willing to tolerate using a soundboard that generates a computerized version of human speech, which is like step one toward figuring out whether the bird might want to communicate with people that way. Next to it on page A17 is a more...

immediate matter of bird -human relations. There's a wild turkey in Manhattan now, roaming around the eastern part of Midtown. People have named her Astoria because they think she came over from Queens. Back on page one, Russians plunge deeper into northern Ukraine. Russian forces have seized the times' rights at least nine villages and settlements, and more square miles per day than at almost any other point in the war, save the very beginning. This feels like the sharpest installment yet in...

an ongoing series of stories over the last few weeks and months in which there's just not very much positive battlefield news for Ukraine. However, when you take the jump, the story above it is Ukraine's grain shipments rebound to near pre -war levels. With the naval blockade on Odessa broken, the Times reports, Ukraine's seaborne grain and oilseed exports and economic lifeline for the war -torn nation are now approaching pre -war levels. The leftmost column on page one,

just above the fold, takes a look at Yahya Sinwar, the accused planner of the October 7th attack on Israel, and a crucial part of Hamas's leadership, who has, the Times writes, been central to Hamas's behind -the -scenes decision to hold out for a permanent ceasefire, American and Israeli officials say. Most of this sourcing is to American and Israeli officials, which leaves some space for wondering how motivated the analysis is, but...

Hamas does contribute to the logistical analysis in the piece. Sinwar is apparently the leading Hamas official left inside Gaza. And the Times writes, waiting for Mr. Sinwar's approval has often slowed the negotiations, according to officials and analysts. Israeli strikes have damaged much of Gaza's communications infrastructure, and it has sometimes taken a day to get a message to Mr. Sinwar and a day to receive a response, according to US officials and Hamas members. Down in the bottom right corner,

below the fold, Musk is wooing global leaders on right wing. They look at the relationship between Elon Musk's edge lord politics and his personal interests anchored in a discussion of how he believes that Javier Melve, the new clownish far right president of Argentina, is going to hook him up with the lithium he needs for batteries. He's also sucking up to Bolsonaro in Brazil and Modi in India.

and of course Xi Jinping, and none of these transactional relationships with foreign leaders seem to have any effect on his status as a security cleared major defense contractor, any more than his widely reported drug abuse has. And to mark the Westminster Kennel Club show, the Times does one of the most useless fakeout leads you can possibly see. The A -listers who traveled to New York this past weekend, gathering for the biggest events of their careers, arrived by car and driver.

or on planes surrounded by entourages. They didn't even carry their own passports, much less pack their kibble or squeaky toys. Each and every one of them, though, is a very good dog. See, they're dogs. That's the twist. Under three photographs of four different dogs and the headline, these Westminster pooches might have more miles than you. Yeah, I'm not touring the country to be exhibited in different shows. I would expect that a show dog travels more than me.

And I would expect that I'd show a dog as a dog. Nevertheless, how are you going to tell everybody the dog show is going on if you don't tell them something obvious? That is the news. Thank you for listening. Please subscribe to Indignity to keep us going. And if all goes well, we'll talk again tomorrow.