Wednesday: Hili dialogue

June 2, 2021 • 6:30 am

It’s not really a hump day, as Monday was a holiday, but it’s a semi-hump day: Wednesday, June 2, 2021: National Rocky Road Day, celebrating the chocolate ice cream flavor made with  marshmallows and nuts. It’s also National Rotisserie Chicken Day, Global Running Day, American Indian Citizenship Day (see below), and International Sex Workers Day.

Today’s Google Doodle (click on screenshot for animations) celebrates the life of American gay rights activist Frank Kameny (1925-2011), involved in much early activism and who was also the first openly gay person to run for Congress. Nothing particular in his life happened on June 2, but this is part of the celebration of Gay Pride Month.

Kameny at a Gay Pride parade in 2010; note the flower lei as in the photo above:

News of the Day:

At long last, the Vatican, acting under the aegis of Pope Frances, decided to “to explicitly criminalize the sexual abuse of adults by priests who abuse their authority and to say that laypeople who hold church office also can be sanctioned for similar sex crimes.” This adds adults to the list of people who can be victim’s of Catholic power-mongering.  My question is why it took the Vatican 14 years of study to realize that power relationships, like the kind Catholicism is built on, can breed sexual abuse.

More good news from Uncle Joe: President Biden has suspended the leases to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that were issued in the waning days of the Trump administration. These were an affront to all conservationists. The NYT report holds out some slight possibility that the leases might still go forward, but I doubt it:

The decision could ultimately end any plans to drill in one of the largest tracts of untouched wilderness in the United States, delicate tundra in Alaska that is home to migrating waterfowl, caribou and polar bears. Democrats and Republicans have fought over whether to allow oil and gas drilling there for more than four decades, and issuing the leases was a signature achievement of the Trump White House.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Tuesday published a secretarial order formally suspending the leases until the agency has completed an environmental analysis of their impact and a legal review of the Trump administration’s decision to grant them.

Here’s an article by David Harris from the Times of Israel showing how the name of Hamas has been gradually dropped from the Western press’s coverage of the current fighting as a way to obscure the terrorism on the Palestinian side. One bit that struck me:

By the way, just to be clear, months before the Dolphinarium attack, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, joined by US President Bill Clinton, had made a strenuous effort to persuade Arafat to accept a far-reaching, two-state deal.

Arafat did not agree to the proposal on the table, nor did he make a counter offer. In fact, he instead chose to unleash a second intifada, which eventually killed over 1,000 Israelis (in U.S. population terms, about 30,000 people, or ten times the number of victims on 9/11) in pizzerias, buses, Passover Seders, cafés — and, yes, discotheques.

Clinton wrote about Arafat’s rejection in his autobiography, My Life. Here’s an excerpt: “Arafat: ‘You are a great man.’ Clinton: ‘I am not a great man. I am a failure, and you have made me one.’”

This is just one of several “two state solutions” proposed by governments, leaders, and the United Nations themselves. The Palestinians have rejected all of them, some quite generous. Israel has rejected none. People deliberately leave that out of the history of the region.

Reader “smipowell” sent me a clipping from the Dallas Morning News; click on the screenshot to see how ducknappings are destroying our civilization:

People are removing ducks from the canals of a Dallas suburb, ducks that the locals love, feed, and even give names to. The residents are up in arms, as well they should be, offering rewards for the apprehension of the ducknapping miscreants. One miscreant wrote in saying that they’d taken the ducks to a farm because they were “domestically bred and the creek was no place for them.” But if they’re living well on a Dallas canal with good food and care (and no cold winters), there’s no reason to remove them. (And what would  happen to them on a farm?) One of the paper’s three lessons from this incident: “don’t take things that don’t belong to you.” This jibes with one of the mottos of the Bangor, Maine Police Department’s Famous “Duck of Justice”: “Keep your hands to yourself” and “Leave other people’s things alone.”

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 594,722, an increase of 356 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 3,576,847, an increase of about 11,000 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on June 2 includes:

Barnum with one of his diminutive attractions, Commodore Nutt:

  • 1896 – Guglielmo Marconi applies for a patent for his wireless telegraph.
  • 1910 – Charles Rolls, a co-founder of Rolls-Royce Limited, becomes the first man to make a non-stop double crossing of the English Channel by plane.

Here’s one of the first Rolls-Royce cars, even then extolled as the finest car available. This is labeled as “A 1905 model Rolls Royce, as featured in the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. This car, registration AX148, was built in the original Manchester factory, and is the oldest such vehicle on public display.”

Here’s the elaborate coronation ceremony, with the fabled crown appearing at 2:20:

Here’s a short video of that fracas:

  • 1967 – Luis Monge is executed in Colorado’s gas chamber, in the last pre-Furman execution in the United States.
  • 1997 – In Denver, Timothy McVeigh is convicted on 15 counts of murder and conspiracy for his role in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, in which 168 people died. He was executed four years later.
  • 2012 – Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the killing of demonstrators during the 2011 Egyptian revolution.

Mubarak died in a military hospital in 2020:

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1740 – Marquis de Sade, French philosopher and politician (d. 1814)
  • 1840 – Thomas Hardy, English novelist and poet (d. 1928)
  • 1937 – Sally Kellerman, American actress
  • 1944 – Marvin Hamlisch, American composer and conductor (d. 2012)
  • 1953 – Cornel West, American philosopher, author, and academic

Those who resigned from life on June 2 include:

  • 1941 – Lou Gehrig, American baseball player (b. 1903)

Here’s Gehrig with other major league players in 1928. Surely you recognize both him and the guy on the right, but do you recognize the others? Gehrig, of course, die of ALS; he was only 37.

  • 1942 – Bunny Berigan, American singer and trumpet player (b. 1908)

Here’s Berigan’s most famous song, “I Can’t Get Started” (1937; written by Ira Gershwin and Vernon Duke).  I love the references to contemporary people and events, and his trumpet solos were superb. He died at only 33 from too much booze.

  • 1961 – George S. Kaufman, American director, producer, and playwright (b. 1889)
  • 1962 – Vita Sackville-West, English author and poet (b. 1892)

Vita Sackville-West at 32. I’ve always thought she looked quite striking, and very British:

  • 1961 – George S. Kaufman, American director, producer, and playwright (b. 1889)
  • 2008 – Bo Diddley, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (b. 1928)

Meanwhle in Dobrzyn, Kulka is dogging (catting?) Hili:

Hili: Somebody is following me.
Kulka: Don’t pay attention to me
In Polish:
Hili: Ktoś za mną idzie.
Kulka: Nie zwracaj na mnie uwagi.
And Paulina took four photos of Kulka and Szaron romping about together:

From Bruce, a truly diabolical idea:

From Nicole:

From Karl:

From Simon, who asserts that the video is funny even without the academic comment:

From Barry: a woman saves her dogs from a bear by pushing it off a fence:

From Ginger K.:

Tweets from Matthew. Wally the Lost Walrus has now made his way down to Cornwall!

Shapeshifting bunneh!

A very soothing and meditative video (sound up, like it says):

But what is Quibi?

Sadly, I’ve never seen one of these Honorary Cats® in the wild:

29 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. The new rules for the church also include new punishments for ordinating women. So child sex abuse is as bad as women priests!

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    2. Outrageous! Outrageous! (h/t Lawrence of Arabia). And not that it really matters these days, and the outfits are confusing, but I believe it’s Francis, not Frances.

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  2. … the elaborate coronation ceremony, with the fabled crown appearing …

    Uneasy lies the head …

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    1. Indeed: “For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
      And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
      How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
      Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
      Some poison’d by their wives: some sleeping kill’d;
      All murder’d: for within the hollow crown
      That rounds the mortal temples of a king
      Keeps Death his court “

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    2. As descendent of generations of “robber barons”, I’m pretty sure that Her Brendaness is very easy about lieing. Orally, or in writing.

      I wonder if the secession of Scotland from the UK would be a sufficient blow, along with the accession of Prince Plant-Converser, to finally implode the whole show. In which case, to what would the “Loyalists” in Ulster re-anchor their detached allegiance?

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  4. “At long last, the Vatican, acting under the aegis of Pope Frances, decided to ‘to explicitly criminalize the sexual abuse of adults by priests who abuse their authority and to say that laypeople who hold church office also can be sanctioned for similar sex crimes.’”

    You know, I want to say that I’m surprised this wasn’t already a rule, but I’m not…

    “President Biden has suspended the leases to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that were issued in the waning days of the Trump administration. These were an affront to all conservationists.”

    The whole point of a “wildlife refuge” is that you can’t f**king do things there that are harmful to its environment. It’s a refuge. A refuge is a place in which living things can take refuge. “…issuing the leases was a signature achievement of the Trump White House.” F**k me. Of course it was. Sorry, I get in a surly mood about these things. New Rule: if Republicans want to continue claiming Teddy Roosevelt as part of their Party’s history, they can’t propose drilling for oil in wildlife refuges.

    “…the name of Hamas has been gradually dropped from the Western press’s coverage of the current fighting as a way to obscure the terrorism on the Palestinian side.”

    Well, at least somebody has written an article about this, though we certainly won’t ever see it in mainstream sources. I’ve noted multiple times here that the mainstream media now refers to Hamas as “Palestinian authorities,” as if they’re just another normal government going about normal government business, rather than a terrorist organization explicitly working toward the goal of killing Jews and destroying the entire state of Israel and keeping its population as poor as possible. The worst is when, reporting on casualties (which we all know Hamas has lied about and even inflated by intentionally getting their own people killed throughout their past), the media tells us that “Palestinian health authorities” have provided the numbers, and then present the numbers as indisputable fact. I guess it seems like it might not be quite as reliable when you tell people that certain information for The Narrative is from Hamas.

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    1. Although I never watched any of their content, Quibi was an interesting experiment. Although similar to TikTok in that they’re both about short videos, I believe Quibi’s main added value was in professionally produced video content. In other words, they were betting that people wanted to view TV shows with a much shorter episode length than the usual 30 minutes. What seemed strange to me is that the company didn’t seem to do anything to convince people to watch their shows or even experiment to see if people would be interested in such short shows. Why didn’t they offer their shows for free to get people hooked? (Perhaps they did and I just didn’t know about it.) They thought that just hiring stars was enough? In short, they spent a lot of money creating content and no one cared.

      It should be mentioned that Roku, the maker of video streaming boxes and built into many TV sets, has purchased the Quibi shows, so there’s still a chance to watch them. I still probably won’t though.

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    1. It’s like when I buy the ‘gluten free’ bacon. The anti-GMO thing is just so silly. Remember that time that Hershey decided to try to throw one to the anti-GMO folks by stopping purchasing the North Dakota sugar beet sugar (which is GMO) to instead purchase non-GMO Amazon slash and burn cane sugar? Surely that counts as a win, right??

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    2. Such sillinesses have been around for a while. Also yazukus’ “gluten free ironing board covers” and such-like.
      Either there are copywriters who actually believe this excrement (plausible, but a sad denigration of a … is “noble” the right word … profession), or their are copywriters who cynically think the idiots they sell to are even more idiotic than normal (SOP for a “noble” profession).
      A few months ago I was looking at a lump of “Tibetan Rock Salt” with a tealight holder in the top, advertised for a ludicrous sum in a local “Woo Fleecing Emporium”. There being a window (to keep the rain off the salt – the Woo Shop staff probably not being utter idiots), I couldn’t actually check that it was halite (or polyhalite, cerrusite, or one of the other “usual suspects”). But I could not think of a way to verify at all that it was of “Tibetan” origin. So … the odds of being proved a liar (and liable to refund the purchaser) were faint on the shop-owner’s side. The wholesalers were also pretty safe from challenge.
      My bet is that the closest such lumps have been to Tibet is a Polish (or possibly Spanish) salt mine. But I can’t think of a way to prove it, and indulge in several months of very enjoyable torture of Woo-peddlars. I suspect I’d have to wade through acres of purchase orders and shipping dockets – which is outside my skill set. But I’m still looking for a geological/ mineralogical “tell” to catch the lying toe-rags out.

      Every time I pass that shop, the same lump is in the window. So. Not selling well. Probably on “sale or return”, or as a window display to tempt people inside for lower-priced woo – chakra-realigning selenite wands for use under the full Moon, and the like. Hopefully they’re doing really badly at separating fools from their money. Sadly, I suspect they’re doing OK.

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      1. It is generally mined in an area about halfway between Lahore and Islamabad. And, if you desire to supplement your diet with lead and cadmium, it is the salt for you.

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    3. Yeah, especially when people claim a preference for salt with unknown contaminants in it. It’s natural, right? Must be good for you!

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        1. Personally I love the use by dates on 40 000 year old Himalayan salt. I believe it is no good after 5 or so years. Tee hee

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  8. My question is why it took the Vatican 14 years of study to realize that power relationships, like the kind Catholicism is built on, can breed sexual abuse.

    Because they’ve somehow got to square the modern world with their (at least) 480 years of knowing about it from their sponsorship of the Jesuits. But no doubt they had centuries of previous evidence from other sources. After all, they’d been importing pre-adolescent “lay brothers” into the workforces at monasteries and churches for centuries before that. It’s implausible that there weren’t myriads of cases before the Jesuits came along.

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  9. From Barry: a woman saves her dogs from a bear by pushing it off a fence:

    Darwin Award material.
    Poor bear.

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      1. So, one swipe of the bear’s paw could really remove her selection of genes from the gene pool.
        And to be honest, I didn’t see any aggressive moves by the bear against the canine “my babies!”

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    2. She did get the drop on the bear. It was engaged by the dogs and busy maintaining its balance on the fence. It was a golden opportunity to push the bear off the fence. Saw this on the news and the lady did suffer a sprained finger. It happened in a community in the foothills above Los Angeles. Presumably the bears there are somewhat used to people though all bets are off when a momma bear has cubs with her.

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  10. Regarding the photo of the Himalayan salt:

    When I started working in the pharmaceutical industry 20 years ago, I repeatedly received requests from customers who wanted written confirmation that inorganic excipients in our products were GMO-free.

    A further escalation of these inquiries was that the customers often asked whether these excipients were also BSE/TSE-free. Of course, they needed a written confirmation, too.

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  11. GMO free salt. For the love of Pete! Will the woo never cease? What, exactly, do they teach in science class in schools these days? Certainly ain’t birth control, sex, biology, or anything useful.
    Maybe they only teach woke anti-colonialism and fat studies?

    I get the feeling (no evidence, just …the force) that woo is becoming more influential and common in recent years. Maybe I’m just more irritated/noticing it more? We miss you, late, great Randi!

    I do know in Europe they’re bonkers about “GMO” moral panic – worse than our woo-mongers here.

    D.A.
    NYC
    https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/

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  12. I recently had the need to research the “84 essential minerals” in Himalayan pink salt, because I thought it was an unusual number (especially given that there are only ~90 stable elements known!). The list is, shall we say, ‘unusual,’ as are the methods used to determine their concentrations, many of which are listed as <0.001 ppm. Many of them are also radioactive! It only demonstrates once again that claims like this are pure, 8400% bullcrap. (P.S. These lists are not hard to find, so I'm not posting a link. Also, several of them look like verbatim copies of one another, so using Himalayan pink salt to excess probably has impact on cognitive function…)

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