And in current psychopathy...

Yesterday, here in Trumplandia, the Emperor got his feelings wounded in a telephone conversation with a person in space, one of the two astronauts who just performed the first all-female spacewalk operation in history, which he referred to in his initial remarks as "the first time for a woman outside of the Space Station... the first-ever female spacewalk". When they finally got a chance to speak one of them, one of them, Dr. Jessica Meir, noted that it wasn't actually the first spacewalk a woman has ever performed, in justice to the great women who have done it in the past, and a shadow crossed his face, and he gave that brave astronaut the finger, disguised as an innocent scratch, in a cowardly fifth-grader's attempt to slip it past the teacher's attention or maintain plausible deniability

(my screenshot). Because nobody's allowed to tell the Emperor he's wrong in public, ever.

Meanwhile in Westminster, the House of Commons dealt Prime Minister Johnson a blow today by passing the Letwin Amendment, requiring him to send Brussels a letter requesting a three-month extension on the Brexit deadline before they'd vote on the deal he brought home from Brussels this week, and he swore he'd never do it, as he's been swearing for weeks he'll never ask for an extension and the nation will leave Europe as scheduled on Halloween no matter what, though in fact he had to do it before midnight tonight.

So

Boris Johnson has sent a request to the EU for a delay to Brexit – but without his signature.

The request was accompanied by a second letter, signed by Mr Johnson, which says he believes that a delay would be a mistake.

The PM was required by law to ask the EU for an extension to the 31 October deadline after losing a Commons vote.

(BBC via Lemieux) he sent it anonymously. With a cover letter denouncing it. Presumably so his fans will believe he kept his promise.

I just was struck by the immensity of the petulance of these two psychopaths, one of then in the pettiest possible position of doing a photo op at an occasion that means nothing to him, the other in a matter of extraordinary moment, both so drowning in their own amour-propre that they can't even see what's going on around them.