Wednesday: Hili dialogue

December 12, 2018 • 6:45 am

Good morning on Wednesday, December 12, 2018; there are only 13 days left until the beginning of Coynezaa. It’s both National Ambrosia Day (if you don’t know that dessert, go here), and National Cocoa Day (I like the thick Mexican stuff, served with churros for dipping, or the superb hot chocolate at Angelina in Paris). Finally, it’s the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is being celebrated today in the Mexican community of Chicago.

On this day in 1098, the great Siege of Ma’arrat al-Numan: took place in what is now Syria. As Wikipedia reports, there was cannibalism!

Crusaders breach the town’s walls and massacre about 20,000 inhabitants. After finding themselves with insufficient food, they reportedly resort to cannibalism.

These events were also chronicled by Fulcher of Chartres, who wrote:

I shudder to tell that many of our people, harassed by the madness of excessive hunger, cut pieces from the buttocks of the Saracens already dead there, which they cooked, but when it was not yet roasted enough by the fire, they devoured it with savage mouth.

On this day in 1787, Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the Constitution; you should already know that Delaware was the first.  On December 12, 1901, Marconi received the very first transatlantic radio signal, which was the letter “s” in Morse code (three clicks), received via a 500 foot antenna in Newfoundland attached to a kite. But Wikipedia suggests elsewhere that this might have been bogus!:

It is now known (although Marconi did not know then) that this was the worst possible choice. At this medium wavelength, long-distance transmission in the daytime is not possible because of heavy absorption of the skywave in the ionosphere. It was not a blind test; Marconi knew in advance to listen for a repetitive signal of three clicks, signifying the Morse code letter S. The clicks were reported to have been heard faintly and sporadically.

Transmission in the daytime IS NOT POSSIBLE!

On December 12, 1911, Delhi replaced Calcutta as the capital of India. In 1935, Heinrich Himmler founded the Nazi Lebensborn program, designed to raise Aryan children. It largely involved putting pregnant but unwed Aryan-looking mothers in homes as well as kidnapping children from other countries who were thought sufficiently “pure” to contribute to Aryan blood. Here’s the christening of a Lebensborn child, photographed around 1935:

On December 12, 1941, Hitler and Nazi officials met in Berlin to hear Hitler rant about the Jews and then declare the imminent extermination of European Jews. This preceded the famous Wannsee Conference of 1942, often touted as representing the first clear declaration of the Endlösing. More Jewish news: on this day in 1950, the first woman allowed to perform rabbinical functions in the U.S., Paula Ackerman, led a congregation in worship. Although she performed as a rabbi from 1950-1953, she was never appointed as one.

On this day in 1963, Kenya became independent of the United Kingdom, and in 1991 the Russian Federation became independent of the USSR. Finally, it’s a day that will live in infamy, for on December 12, 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court released its decision in Bush v. Gore. This let stand Florida’s certification of Bush as the winner of that state, and thus eventually gave the Electoral College victory to W. instead of Gore. I remember those strained times well, when nobody knew for 36 days after the election who would become President in January. The Supreme Court decision was, of course, declared along the Justices’ ideological lines.

Remember the frantic real-time reporters’ announcements in front of the Court right after the decision came down? Here’s one from CNN:

And here’s Scalia (who voted in favor of Bush) justifying the decision:

Notables born on this day include Erasmus Darwin (1731), Gustave Flaubert (1821), Edvard Munch (1863), Frank Sinatra (1915), Buford Pusser (1937), Connie Francis (1938), Dionne Warwick (1940), Jennifer Connelly (1970) Mayim Bialik (1975), and Otto Warmbier (1994; died after mistreatment by North Koreans for stealing a poster, June 19, 2017).

The Grim Reaper took a holiday on this day; notables who died on December 12 include only Robert Browning (1889) and Joseph Heller (1999).

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Cyrus is being an enabler of Hili’s narcissism:

Hili: I’m afraid I’m in the background.
Cyrus: Your fans will see you anyhow.
In Polish:
Hili: Obawiam się, że jestem na drugim planie.
Cyrus: Twoi fani i tak cię zobaczą.

A BBC story from reader Kevin (click on screenshot):

From Claire Lehmann, editor of Quillette. I like Claire and the magazine, but this is NOT the way to talk to feminists, and Quillette is supposed to be conciliatory. I don’t think porn should be banned, but I don’t think intersectional feminists should be dissed in this way:

Extreme and mesmerizing slow motion: a bullet fired through a block of gelatin:

https://twitter.com/ZonePhysics/status/1049804327190171648

A tweet from Heather Hastie. “Nevertheless, the hamster persisted.”

https://twitter.com/AMAZlNGNATURE/status/1049344728641101826

Tweets from Matthew:

Now this is a very strange but sequential series of titles (I’m not a fan of Coleman’s music):

I would have soiled my wetsuit!

I like #1 and #12:

88 of the 93 penises are on horses, but the rest are on men, and all are erect. Read about the mystery at the link:

Now that is a giant fish!

Tweets from Grania. Meet Salty, the seagoing cat (be sure to watch the video). He has a d*g friend named Pippa, who also sails the sea:

My guess is that the woman below is squeezing her cat at the right parts of the song:

42 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

    1. I have a few of my own:

      – ‘onesie’: what the queen calls a ‘selfie’.

      – ‘kilogram’: like a kissogram, only you send them around Piers Morgan’s house.

      – ‘shellfish’: Sean Connery not paying his share of the bill.

    2. For the record, my favourite is Stephen Fry’s deathless definition of ‘countryside’: “murdering Piers Morgan”. It needs to be said aloud to work.

      (You see that Piers Morgan is the go-to figure for us Brits when we need someone who is the definition of awfulness.)

      1. Yes, one wonders where is the talent with that bloke, puzzling. Kind of similar to a Kardashian.

        1. His talent is just to be as water-cooler obnoxious as possible. We were all baffled when he got a show in America, and was apparently taken seriously for a while.

          Private Eye, our famous investigative/satirical new magazine has been calling him Piers Moron for the last thirty years. It’s a simple joy seeing such a childish joke in print week after week.

      2. Seeing as you mentioned that waste of space ,he is supposed to have quit his so called job and wants to be the snatch snatchers new chief of staff .

      1. Yes, that’s where Stephen Fry’s ‘countryside’ definition comes from. It’s one of my favourite parts of the show.

      2. Yup, pure UED.

        Some more:

        Agog: a half-finished Jewish temple.
        Catastrophe: my moggie has won a prize.
        Claptrap: a condom.
        Eyesore: a tool made by Apple.
        Gentile: where supermarkets store their male products.
        Icelander: to tell lies about Apple.
        Missile: where supermarkets store their female products.
        Perversion: the cat’s side of the story.
        Yodelling: trainee Jedi knight.

        Awful, aren’t they?!

      3. And ISIHAC followed on from, and partly took its name from, the 60s radio sketch show “I’m sorry, I’ll read that again”, featuring among others Tim Brooke-Taylor and Graeme Garden, both of whom are still regulars on ISAHAC.

  2. Ah – the certain monk & Aelfgifu…

    Thinking that the bullet demonstration is not beautiful as much as terrifying – what a bullet does if it hits a person is just like that…

      2. I see them, well, the results, occasionally in real flesh, gelatin is but a poor substitute.
        And this was not even a high velocity bullet, the latter are about ten times more damaging.

    2. @Mark Unburnt gunpowder would not follow the bullet into the gel – the same effect occurs if the gel is far from the gun muzzle.

      It’s called the “diesel effect” – the clear block is an oil-based ballistic gel [water based are brown] & the bullet dumps its energy into the gel as it slows & a cavity expands rapidly. Some of the oil based gel is vaporised in the cavity & when the cavity collapses the rising pressure ignites the oil vapour.

      Here’s the YouTube version – it can be slowed down further in “settings” [bottom right cog wheel] if you wish.
      https://youtu.be/dFVtNqBNmC0

      1. P.S. the reason the exhaust exits to the left is due to the thickness [front to back] of the gel. Gases expand equally backward & forward of the collapse bubble, but that collapse bubble is nearer the back of the gel & thus nearly all the exhaust exits from the back. Thinner gel [front to back] would result in equal exhaust or exhaust in direction of bullet travel or no exhaust at all.

      2. That flash impressed me too. I’m not sure though, if it’s actual combustion (burning) of flammable gelatin (which would require the bullet to have pulled in some air behind it), or simply the heat generated by the collapsing cavitation bubble raising some of the vapour to high enough temperatures to give off light.

        Either way, it’s impressive.

        cr

    3. One of the first photos that made me go wow was the one of the bullet slicing through a playing card ,from those clever bods at MIT .

  3. With regards to the fish picture, how is one supposed to judge the size?

    Oh. From the tweet:

    “w/ iPhone for scale”

    Guess I’ll just continue not having a clue of the size, then.

          1. I don’t have a clue, but I’d suggest using the cheapest. There’s bound to be loss to water damage.

      1. It’s along the bottom fringe of the tapestry. Due to the way Tw*tter cuts off the bottom of pictures, the ladies and gentlemen have been degenitalised in the Tw**t.

        Follow the link.

        cr

  6. Cannibalism? Doesn’t surprise me. I’d believe anything of that Crusader rabble.

    A bunch of rampaging thugs with religious justification.

    For a throughly jaundiced (but entertaining) view of the Crusades, see Terry Jones’ television series of that name. (Yes, that’s Terry Jones, Pythion and historian).

    What I’d forgotten was that he led off with that incident.

    http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3x2m2k

    cr

    2. I suppose Europe at that time was becoming overpopulated, and organizing a Crusade was a nice way to get rid of surplus men. I wonder where was any equivalent with women.

  7. But what if you have a friend who is both an Intersectional Feminist Anarcho Communist AND a porno film actress ???

    And yes, several of her videos are on PornHub.

    And on an unrelated note , three and one half years ago, she tagged me on a social media post, and told 7300 of her friends, fans, and followers that she was moving into my house. But it never came to be

  8. “Pornography is prostitution through the lens of a camera, but more abusive.”

    More abusive of whom, exactly? (Presuming of course that the porn actors are adequately remunerated). I suppose it might be claimed to threaten the incomes of working prostitutes, but I don’t think it actually works that way.
    I just can’t think of any genre in which porn as such is more ‘abusive’ than employing a prostitute to do the same things.

    ‘Jim Martinson, the lead student writer of the initial letter, said that religion motivated his own concern but understood that focusing on the objectification argument would appeal to more people. “It’s really important to frame things from a secular perspective because you just appeal to more people,” he said.’

    And there you have it… the usual religious obsession with people sinning.

    cr

  9. I’ve to say, the comments on Porn Hub are generally less misogynistic than the comments on YouTube. For instance, YT comments about the vid of one of my favorite bands quickly devolved into whether or not the band members (who are women) are “hot” or whether they’re fighting the hot. PH commenters just make jokes about actresses’ performances and the like.

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