The Attention-Whore Index

A supreme effort by Clarence Thomas won him top A.W.I. honors for the first time. The ethically fluid justice earned 41.2 percent of your votes, with Marjorie Taylor Greene, the defending champion, placing second, with 20.1 percent. Donald Trump, who squandered an entire week without a single criminal indictment, dropped to third, with 16.1 percent. They were followed by Emmanuel Macron, the Dalai Lama, the collective royals, and Jill Biden.

The nominees in this week’s edition of the Attention-Whore Index Poll are …

1.

EMMA WATSON

The “self-partnered” actor celebrated turning 33 with a long Instagram post in which she thanked her brother, “the witches in my coven who were so pivotal in helping me arrive at where and who I am now,” and the planet Saturn. She also revealed that she’s learned “more about love,” to eat green things, and to play pickleball. Truly, with age comes wisdom.

2.

KRISTI NOEM

Another week, another couple of mass shootings (Dadeville, Alabama; Louisville, Kentucky). But at an N.R.A. conference in Indiana, the South Dakota governor proudly told the assembled that her two-year-old granddaughter “already has a shotgun and she already has a rifle, and she’s got a little pony named Sparkles, too. So the girl is set up.”

3.

GEORGE SANTOS

Announced he would run for re-election: “Good isn’t good enough, and I’m not shy about doing what it takes to get the job done.” Well, he’s certainly not shy.

4.

A.I.

Was used by a German photographer to create a prize-winning image at the Sony World Photography Awards. (He refused the prize, saying he had only “applied as a cheeky monkey” to start a debate about A.I.-generated images.) Also: could lead to “civilization destruction,” according to Elon Musk. But fortunately …

5.

ELON MUSK

Told Tucker Carlson he wants to start something called “TruthGPT … a maximum truth-seeking A.I. that tries to understand the nature of the universe” and “that would be unlikely to annihilate humans.” Phew! However, his SpaceX Starship rocket was annihilated, exploding a few minutes after liftoff.

6.

RON D_ESANTIS

Bravely signed a six-week-abortion-ban bill at 10:45 p.m. in a private ceremony in his office. Continued to engage with vital global issues by sticking it to Disney yet again—proposing a new bill that would require additional monorail inspections (ouch!) and musing about building a state prison next to Disney World.

7.

MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE

Defended the accused Pentagon leaker, National Guardsman Jack Teixeira—which her colleague Lindsey Graham called “one of the most irresponsible statements you could make.” Silenced by still other fellow Republicans at a hearing after calling the Homeland Security secretary “a liar.”

8.

King Juan Carlos

The disgraced royal interrupted his exile in Abu Dhabi to visit London and have dinner at the private club Oswald’s, though a rumored lunch with King Charles didn’t happen. And then … Spain. For a regatta. It’s only Juan Carlos’s second (uninvited) visit there since he abdicated, three years ago, following allegations of shady business deals. ¡Bienvenidos!

And now for this week’s Diary …

At the 400-competitor Kenya Open Chess Championship, a 25-year-old male player, Stanley Omondi, put on a burka and registered as “Millicent Awour” in the women’s division, where he thought he might have better odds at winning a $3,000 prize. “I had financial needs,” he later explained to the organizers. One of the things that eventually gave him away: “masculine shoes.”

P. G. Wodehouse, who never published an imperfect sentence, is being re-written in new editions of some of his Jeeves and Wooster novels. Gone is any prose deemed “unacceptable,” while trigger warnings have been added alerting skittish readers to “outdated” themes and characters. (“Outdated” themes and characters having nothing whatsoever to do with the pleasure of reading Wodehouse.) This news caused us to break Bertie’s record for the sitting high jump.

Seeking “psychological comfort,” a 24-year-old art designer, surnamed Wu, “resurrected” his late grandmother with A.I. technology. “He used image software and old photos to create a dynamic image of her,” reported the South China Morning Post. “Wu then trained the A.I. to mimic her voice tone using recordings of his phone conversations with his grandmother before she died,” and posted new, post-death “conversations” with her online. And they say grandchildren never call.

A physician in southwest Scotland was prevented from donating blood because he skipped a question about whether he was pregnant. “I can’t believe they would refuse a donation from a man based on the fact I refused to say if I was pregnant,” he told The Times of London. “To say it is bonkers is an understatement. I have a nagging feeling that it is political correctness gone too far.” The Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service says it will be amending the question with the phrase, “If not applicable, please tick no.”

The isolated Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, known for its beauty, its agriculture-based economy, and its Gross National Happiness Index—basically a real-world Shangri-la—is apparently thoroughly modern in one respect: it’s into crypto-currency. According to Forbes, “over the past year, ‘the world’s happiest country’ has quietly dumped millions of dollars into Bitcoin, ether and other digital assets.” Keep an eye on that Happiness Index.

Mayor Eric Adams’s recent appointment of a “rat czar” to try to control the city’s accelerating rodent problem is mere “demoniz[ing]” in a “cartoonish manner,” according to PETA’s communications director: the real problem is the garbage left in the streets by New Yorkers. “We have a disgusting human behavior problem, not a rat problem,” she said. Or, just possibly, both? —George Kalogerakis

George Kalogerakis, one of the original editor-writers at Spy, later worked for Vanity Fair, New York, and The New York Times, where he was deputy op-ed editor. A co-author of Spy: The Funny Years and co-editor of Disunion: A History of the Civil War, he is a Writer at Large for AIR MAIL