Overcast this late-afternoon Monday here in California’s Central Valley — rain expected tomorrow, but not much. Drought still has the dry, high road, and will most-likely keep it for a while.

In the gush of news this particular day, and there’s plenty of it, from Ukraine to T-Rump and pikes of shit in between, in the midst of all this heavy, death and sad bullshit comes another round of an idiot in public — he is one, and plays one on TV
Once again a duel today between Joe Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, and Fox News moronic reporter Peter Doocy, and once again, too, the kid-who-learned-at-daddy Steve’s knee gets played:

For the second time in recent weeks, Jen Psaki explains CDC guidance to Peter Doocy like he's a child pic.twitter.com/W8okaDIqgJ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 18, 2022

Play-by-play of asshole being played — per Raw Story this afternoon:

On Monday, Doocy asked about the mask mandates on planes and the recent ruling by a conservative judge to eliminate the mask mandate while traveling.

Doocy asked why the White House doesn’t need to have masks on while masks are necessary on a plane.

“Well, Peter, I’m not a doctor and you’re not a doctor, that I’m aware of,” Psaki said. “If you’re a doctor I wasn’t aware of that until today.”

“I’m not,” Doocy conceded.

“Ok, well, not a doctor. Just making sure,” Psaki said. “I don’t know.”

“Or do you play one on TV?” the reporter to Doocy’s right asked.

“Nor does he pay one on TV,” said Psaki. “There you go. Most days.”

She went on to explain to him how the masking guidance works with the color-coded system “green, yellow and red.”
Washington, D.C. is in a green zone.

Last week, Psakin supplied the background to that exchange:

During a Thursday night interview on “Pod Save America,” host Dan Pfeiffer asked guest Psaki if Doocy is a “stupid son of a bitch or does he play a stupid son of a bitch on TV?”

“He works for a network that provides people with questions that, nothing personal to any individual, including Peter Doocy, but might make anyone sound like a stupid son of a bitch,” Psaki replied.

Psaki is a prize. Rare a White House press secretary that controls the journalistic narrative at these press conferences, and has fun with the asshole-combative sonofabitches the wingnut media belches onto the public scene.along with it. I’m going to miss her — she’s supposedly leaving Biden’s employ this summer to host a new show on MSNBC’s streaming service (according to Axios) and is just another in a long list of White House comms persons to go commercial TV.
Ryan Thomas, an associate professor in the Missouri School of Journalism, noted the fame: ‘“These press conferences are a performance of scrutiny rather than actual scrutiny. They become an audition process for a cable news gig,”‘

Despite the pious handwringing, she’ll add some weight to bringing rightwing nutcases into the light of day.
Psaki reminds me of another awesome White House press secretary:

Anyway, time continues on and there’s a shitload of other stuff containing apparently forever, or at least for the immediate future.
Meanwhile, to change the subject yet keep the public figure scenario — today a small, crawly-clawed creature a Taylor Swift appreciation arthropod:

Q: What do you do when you like an artist and want to show your appreciation?

A: I don't know, name a new #millipede species after them?

Thanks to some great work by @derekhennen et al., @taylorswift13 is now a millipede.https://t.co/ilWdsVZYoE

— ZooKeys (@ZooKeys_Journal) April 18, 2022

Some explanation for this decent-different news — via open-access journal ZooKeys today:

Taylor Swift, U.S. singer-songwriter known for hits such as “Shake It Off” and “You Belong With Me”, has earned a new accolade — she now has a new species of millipede named in her honor.

The twisted-claw millipede Nannaria swiftae joins 16 other new species described from the Appalachian Mountains of the United States. These little-known invertebrates have a valuable role as decomposers: breaking down leaf litter, they release their nutrients into the ecosystem.
They live on the forest floor, where they feed on decaying leaves and other plant matter, and in fact, they are somewhat tricky to catch, because they tend to remain buried in the soil, sometimes staying completely beneath the surface.

Scientists Derek Hennen, Jackson Means, and Paul Marek, at Virginia Tech, U.S., describe the new species in a research paper published in the open access journal ZooKeys.
The research was funded by a National Science Foundation Advancing Revisionary Taxonomy and Systematics grant (DEB# 1655635).
…
The lead author of the study, Derek Hennen, is a fan of Taylor Swift.

“Her music helped me get through the highs and lows of graduate school, so naming a new millipede species after her is my way of saying thanks,” he says.

That’s nice. Taylor Swift is just that way:

Once again, here we are…

(Illustration out front found here).