Thursday: Hili dialogue

November 25, 2021 • 6:30 am

Happy Thanksgiving! Welcome to Thanksgiving Day in America, Thursday November 25, 2021. All good Americans (save me) will be stuffing themselves on dry turkey and pumpkin pie and then, sated, fall asleep in front of the television watching football.  Here’s Norman Rockwell’s painting of Thanksgiving dinner; it’s part of his “Four Freedoms” series, and this one is “Freedom from Want“:

It’s also National Parfait Day, National Day of Mourning (but for what?), Blasé Day, Turkey-Free Thanksgiving, and International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

There’s an animated Google Doodle for Thanksgiving today (click on screenshot), but note that a traditional Thanksgiving item is missing from the dancing foodstuffs. Can you guess why? (There is gravy, though.)

For your meatless Thanksgiving pleasure, you can haz this: Tofurkey, made from tofu and grain. I have heard it given other names. See the first cartoon below.

News of the Day:

*According to Georgia state law, the minimum sentence for each of the three men involved in the Ahmaud Arberty is life in prison. The judge, who will sentence them within a few weeks, does have the option of allow them to be considered for parole, but only after 30 years in prison, when two of the men will probably be dead. If the judge denies parole, the three men will die in prison.

*Two big guns in the infectious disease world, Eric Topol and Michael T. Osterholm, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post called “The CDC got it wrong. It should have urged all adults to get covid-19 booster shots.” Instead, the CDC urged only adults over the age of 50 to get the shots. Why is that a mistake? Because the booster really does boost—a lot.:

Public health officials have always expected that mRNA coronavirus vaccines (Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech) to be a three-shot regimen. The only question was when the third shot would be necessary. Originally, the hope was that it would be after one or two years. It turns out, it is necessary at about six months.

More than 10 large reports have shown that the reduced protection from infections, including symptomatic infections, across all age groups, wanes from 90 to 95 percent at two months down to about 60 percent for Pfizer and 70 percent for Moderna after five to six months. There is further substantial waning after six months.

The good news is that a booster dose can restore that initial efficacy, as data makes abundantly clear. One randomized trial of Pfizer’s vaccine involving more than 10,000 participants — half receiving a third shot and the other half receiving a placebo booster — showed a remarkably high 95-percent efficacy. In that trial, people aged 18 to 55 benefited just as much as those older than 55. There were no safety issues raised, such as myocarditis.

I’m not a doctor—I only play one in the lab—but I urge all readers over 18 who don’t have contraindications to get that booster now. (I’m pretty sure we’ll need boosters at least yearly for a while, but that’s a guess.)

*YouTube announced that it would no longer show the “dislikes” on any video, although the button will still be there. That means that the person who posted the video has the option to see how many “dislikes” there were, but nobody else does. Why?

At YouTube, we strive to be a place where creators of all sizes and backgrounds can find and share their voice. To ensure that YouTube promotes respectful interactions between viewers and creators, we introduced several features and policies to improve their experience. And earlier this year, we experimented with the dislike button to see whether or not changes could help better protect our creators from harassment, and reduce dislike attacks — where people work to drive up the number of dislikes on a creator’s videos.

As part of this experiment, viewers could still see and use the dislike button. But because the count was not visible to them, we found that they were less likely to target a video’s dislike button to drive up the count. In short, our experiment data showed a reduction in dislike attacking behavior. We also heard directly from smaller creators and those just getting started that they are unfairly targeted by this behavior — and our experiment confirmed that this does occur at a higher proportion on smaller channels.

If they get rid of the “dislike” button, they should also get rid of the “like” button. How else can you judge the public’s reaction to a video? If you can’t weather a “dislike” attack, you shouldn’t be posting there. The vast majority of “dislikes” are not “harassment”. In fact, even a concerted attack isn’t really harassment. Now everybody just sees the likes, so all will have prizes.

*An article in the NYT Magazine calls Hayao Miyazaki “the greatest animated filmmaker since the advent of the form in the early 20th century and one of the greatest filmmakers of any genre.” I have seen three of his anime-ted films from the Studio Ghibli and was mesmerized by all of them: “My Neighbor Totoro” (1988), “Princess Mononoke” (1997), and “Spirited Away” (2002). I didn’t think I’d like them, but was immediately sucked into a world of fantasy and imagination of the highest order. As the NYT says:

Miyazaki does not like to frame his work in explicitly ideological or moral terms. The mission of his films, he says, is to “comfort you — to fill in the gap that might be in your heart or your everyday life.” But his movies are haunted by his grief over the damage humans have done to the natural world.

. Now Miyazaki, 80, has come out of retirement to make one last film, about which we’re told almost nothing except that it’s based on a children’s book:

It is time. Miyazaki rubs the top of his head and lights a cigarette, one of his signature king-size, charcoal-filtered Seven Stars. I am allowed one last question. “The title of your next film is ‘How Do You Live?,’” I say. “Will you give us the answer?”

The smile comes only after he speaks: “I am making this movie because I do not have the answer.”

The profile is wonderful; if you like Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli films, do read it.

*Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 776,197, an increase of 1,117 deaths over yesterday’s figure. The reported world death toll is now 5,195,428, an increase of about 6,700 over yesterday’s total.

Stuff that happened on November 25 includes:

  • 1491 – The siege of Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, ends with the Treaty of Granada.
  • 1759 – An earthquake hits the Mediterranean destroying Beirut and Damascus and killing 30,000–40,000.
  • 1915 – Albert Einstein presents the field equations of general relativity to the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

Here’s the first page of Einstein’s manuscript on general relativity, a theory which eventually predicted both black holes and gravity waves.

These were ten people who refused to answer Congress’s questions about whether they were affiliated with the Communist Party and had also spent time in jail: Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner, Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo.

It’s still running at the theater below, after more than 28,000 performances.  It closed for a while during the pandemic but reopened on May 17 of this year.  Do you know what the second longest-running play is (a distant second with only 13,000 performances)? Go here for the answer.

Here’s a 43-minute film of the funeral, which is very moving:

  • 1970 – In Japan, author Yukio Mishima and one compatriot commit ritualistic seppuku after an unsuccessful coup attempt.

Mishima committed seppuku at age 45, but before he did (and botched it), he gave a speech asking for the restoration of the Emperor. That failed as well; here he is speaking from the balcony on the day he died:

And here’s a video about the song’s making. How many people do you recognize?

  • 1986 – Iran–Contra affair: U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese announces that profits from covert weapons sales to Iran were illegally diverted to the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
  • 1999 – A five-year-old Cuban boy, Elian Gonzalez, is rescued by fishermen while floating in an inner tube off the Florida coast.

Gonzalez’s mother drowned during the escape, and he stayed with relatives in Miami while his father, still in Cuba, demanded his return. After a long transit through the courts, Attorney General Janet Reno ordered that Elian be returned to his father in Cuba. Here’s the famous photo of Border Patrol agents breaking into the Miami house to retrieve the boy. Guns, really? Elian, now 27, works “as a technology specialist at a state-run company that makes large plastic water tanks.” The photo, by Alan Diaz, won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News:

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1562 – Lope de Vega, Spanish playwright and poet (d. 1635)
  • 1846 – Carrie Nation, American activist (d. 1911)

Nation, who described herself as “a bulldog running along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what He doesn’t like”, and decided that Jesus didn’t like booze. She was famous for entering bars and, with a hatchet, destroying the bar and the stock of booze. Here she is with her hatchet and her Bible. She must be looking at a verse declaring the wickedness of alcohol.

Vavilov, below, was a martyr to genetics. Adhering to the principles of “real” genetics, instead of Lysenko’s phony theories that were supported by Stalin, Vavilov was arrested for counterrevolutionary activities and sentenced to 20 years in prison, where he died.  Here’s his prison mugshot:

Höss was commandant of Auschwitz and promoted the use of Zyklon B for mass murder of Jews and other prisoners. Here he is being escorted to the gallows in 1947:

  • 1913 – Lewis Thomas, American physician, etymologist, and educator (d. 1993)
  • 1914 – Joe DiMaggio, American baseball player and coach (d. 1999)

The Yankee Clipper hit safely in 56 straight games in 1941, a record that still stands. Here he is smooching his bat that year:

  • 1940 – Percy Sledge, American singer (d. 2015)
  • 1960 – John F. Kennedy Jr., American lawyer, journalist, and publisher (d. 1999)

Those who went the way of the Butterball on November 25 include:

  • 1944 – Kenesaw Mountain Landis, American lawyer and judge (b. 1866)
  • 1968 – Upton Sinclair, American novelist, critic, and essayist (b. 1878)

A signed first edition of Sinclair’s most famous work (1906), which exposed the horrors of Chicago’s meatpacking industry, and led to reforms in that industry, will cost you around $4,500.

  • 1970 – Yukio Mishima, Japanese author, actor, and director (b. 1925)
  • 1987 – Harold Washington, American lawyer and politician, 51st Mayor of Chicago (b. 1922)

Washington was the first African-American elected as Chicago’s mayor. He lived very close to me in an apartment building, and loved the immigrant monk parrots who had a huge social nest in the tree outside his building. (They’re gone now as the damn city tore all the nests down a few years ago.)

  • 2005 – George Best, Northern Irish footballer (b. 1946)
  • 2016 – Fidel Castro, Communist leader of Cuba, and revolutionary (b. 1926)
  • 2020 – Diego Maradona, Argentinian football player (b. 1960)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn: Andrzej’s book with Paulina’s photos has arrived, and Hili is furious and super jealous! You can see the book below (Kulka’s on the cover) with Andrzej and Hili.

A: Hili: The books with Kulka’s pictures arrived!
Hili: That’s unethical.
You can read about the book (in Polish, but Google will translate) here.
In Polish:
Ja: Hili, przyszły książki ze zdjęciami Kulki!
Hili: To nie jest etyczne.

From Don, a modern Thanksgiving Dinner by Roz Chast:

From Facebook:

From On the Prowl Cat Cartoons:

This is not a joke, as it really comes from the Women’s March website.  Apparently they’re ashamed that they didn’t mention colonization and genocide when bringing up the average contribution of $14.92 (the year that Columbus “discovered” America).

Reader Jeremy, who sent me the link, says “I’m not sure if it was intended as satire or was serious, but the replies rip into it mercilessly and many are very funny.”  It wasn’t satire.Jeremy adds, “Of course, 1492 was not a year of colonisation and genocide in North America, at least not by Europeans. It was, however, a year in which all the Jews in Spain and Portugal were made to convert to Christianity or be expelled.”

Nope not satire, for that would be in bad taste for this woke organization. The Woke lack humor, anyway.

More conjuring with numbers, this time from Titania, who makes fun of the tweet above:

From Paul, who says that Kyle Rittenhouse is on a “hero tour”. Here he is with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Nobody ever said that Rittenhouse was a fricking saint! He was a jerk who was found not guilty of murder.

More mockery, this time unearthed by Luana:

From Barry. But don’t fill up a wine glass that much!

From Ginger K.:

Tweets from Matthew. An appropriately Japanese Christmas tree:

Stand back!!

53 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Here’s Norman Rockwell’s painting of Thanksgiving dinner; it’s part of his “Four Freedoms” series, and this one is “Freedom from Want“ …

    The paintings are Rockwell’s, of course, but the “four freedoms” themselves come from FDR’s 1941 State of the Union Address (then known as the “Annual Message to Congress”), given shortly before his third inauguration.

    Reply

    1. Freedom of religion and speech are the easy ones. But harder to recall, freedom from fear and freedom from want. These can only be accomplished when they put an end to arming nations against each other. World War One had proven useless. This is why Roosevelt came up with the policy of unconditional surrender in WWII. Brings up another old saying – those who choose to ignore history and condemned to repeat it.

      Reply

      1. Freedom of religion and speech are easy ones.
        So said the westerner to ex Muslim fleeing Islamist theocracy.
        Spoken truly like the privileged woke he is.

        Reply

  3. And happy100th birthday to George’Johnnie’ Johnson who was in the RAF 617 squadron & part of the Dambuster raid in 1943 -https://mobile.twitter.com/jonnycrackers82/status/1463762006385831937

    Reply

  4. I offer today’s annual True Meaning of Thanksgiving entry – and I quote :

    “[Virginia Thanksgiving Festival at Berkeley Plantation ]
    This annual tradition dates back to December 4, 1619 when Captain John Woodlief and his crew of 35 men landed on the shores of the James River at what was to become Berkeley Plantation. Upon landing, in accordance with orders from London, the Englishmen proclaimed: “We ordain that the day of our ship’s arrival, at the place assigned for plantation, in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God”. Thus began the American tradition of Thanksgiving!
    […]
    Buses – $30.00
    Cars – $20.00
    Bikes – $5.00
    [ end quote] ”
    Source :

    https://virginiathanksgivingfestival.com/

    … only five bucks! I can use the other $15 to buy a coat so I don’t freeze!

    So there you go : when in doubt, you can just claim what you want to be true and CHARGE THE CYCLISTS for it. Truthsgiving!

    Reply

  6. There are some who argue that Youtube chose to hide ‘dislikes’ because of the relentless criticism of Biden and Harris. If this is true then Youtube are partisan… imagine what the response would have been to removing ‘dislikes’ for Trump and Pence.

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    2. Now how interesting would an “average donation” of nine dollars and eleven cents be, right before a major Islamic celebration.

      Reply

  7. 1947 – Red Scare: The “Hollywood Ten” are blacklisted by Hollywood movie studios.

    One of those blacklisted writers, Dalton Trumbo, is something of a personal hero of mine. He had brains, balls, a great sense of humor, and exceptional writing talent (in addition to his numerous screenplays — some written under his own name and some, including a pair of Oscar-winners, written under the name of so-called “fronts” during the blacklist era — he wrote the great post-WWI antiwar novel Johnny Got His Gun and was a prolific and wonderful letter writer). He was also a loyal and generous (if sometimes cantankerous) friend as well as a great family man.

    Dalton Trumbo was the subject of an excellent 2007 documentary (which you can watch for free on YouTube here) and a 2015 feature film (with Bryan Cranston in the lead role), both entitled simply Trumbo.

    Reply

  8. 1986 – Iran–Contra affair: U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese announces that profits from covert weapons sales to Iran were illegally diverted to the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

    Not long afterward, Meese himself was forced to resign as AG, and barely escaped indictment, for his role in the Wedtech scandal.

    Reply

    1. And just to finish off the story of Meese – guess who gives him the Presidential Medal of Freedom? Freedom to be the best crook you can be.

      Reply

  9. The photo [of Elian Gonzales and the armed Border Patrol Agent} , by Alan Diaz, won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News …

    That photo also likely cost Al Gore the 2000 presidential election (along with the butterfly ballots in Palm Beach County, those goddam chads, Ralph Nader, an unprincipled SCOTUS decision, and Gore’s own lackluster campaign).

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  10. I love the Norman Rockwell painting. As usual, there are lots of details to absorb. My favorite in this one is the guy in the bottom-right corner who appears to be looking back at the “camera”. Of course, there might have been an actual camera. I don’t know if NR stars with a photograph but I suspect not. I have the Complete Norman Rockwell coffee-table book which probably has a section on his technique so I need to check. If there’s supposed to be a person standing at that end of the table, why are they there and why are they standing?

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    1. According to Wikipedia:

      In 1942, Rockwell decided to use neighbors as models for the series. In Freedom from Want, he used his living room for the setting and relied on neighbors for advice, critical commentary, and their service as his models. For Freedom from Want, Rockwell photographed his cook as she presented the turkey on Thanksgiving Day 1942. He said that he painted the turkey on that day and that, unlike Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Worship, this painting was not difficult to execute. Rockwell’s wife Mary is in this painting, and the family cook, Mrs. Thaddeus Wheaton, is serving the turkey, which the Rockwell family ate that day. The nine adults and two children depicted were photographed in Rockwell’s studio and painted into the scene later. The models are (clockwise from Wheaton) Lester Brush, Florence Lindsey, Rockwell’s mother Nancy, Jim Martin, Mr. Wheaton, Mary Rockwell, Charles Lindsey, and the Hoisington children. Jim Martin appears in all four paintings in the series. Shirley Hoisington, the girl at the end of the table, was six at the time.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_from_Want#Production

      Reply

    2. Good question

      The capture of light in all the glass and water is entrancing like any famous painting can do

      I can say that Rockwell had people pose individually for elements of his paint— ILLUSTRATIONS (says the art critic…)… a cool trick to mimic walking is have the subject prop their feet up on a book…,

      And that gaze up at the viewer – details like that usually mean something in his paintings, like the *ears* in the _ither_ of the Four Freedoms …

      Anybody know what painting that is with the EARS?

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  11. Here’s the thing about the booster. We’ve sat here for months and watched as the touted efficacy of the vaccine decreased to the point where, after two shots, we now need a booster. (I have had Covid and my shots, and so has my wife.) I don’t know who those doctors are, but, given they are in the Washington Post, I accept that they are being printed in line with a maximalist stance on Covid containment, prevention, or scape-goating, whichever is the Administration’s goal. But that gives me no reason to trust their opinions, if anything, the opposite. We hear that the booster is super-effective. (I saw a story yesterday claiming it was 100% effective!) At what? Preventing the disease, preventing transmission, preventing hospitalization? And for how long? If my company mandates a booster, I will get one for one simple reason: I have a disabled wife and cannot afford to be without an income or health insurance. Mark my words, though, the end-goal here is vaccine passports, and once there is an electronic way to validate that status, the path and mechanism is open to permanent travel passports. Protest at a school-board meeting? Sorry, you can’t fly. Fail to genuflect to George Floyd? Sorry, citizen, you can’t leave the state. Fail to up-vote the President’s latest speech on YouTube…? There’s a reason these people like China. It’s a model. (And no, electronic boarding passes are not the same, because you can still use a paper one. And your ID isn’t electronic, yet.)

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    3. I don’t know who these doctors are but their end-goal is vaccine passports, because that opens the door to permanent travel passports and these people (still the doctors?) want to restrict travel for people they disagree with JUST LIKE CHINA THEY LOVE IT!!!!11!!

      do I have that right?

      Reply

    4. Bravo! Alex Jones couldn’t’ve put it any better.

      But why would we need electronic vaccine passports when, as every right-thinking person knows, Bill Gates has laced the COVID vaccines with microchips?

      Reply

    5. I’m sorry to hear of your wife’s disability, DrBrydon. It must have come as a great relief to you when Donald Trump and the Republicans failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (which not a single Republican in either house of congress voted for when it became law in 2010), given that the ACA provides the sole guarantee of continuing health-insurance coverage for those with pre-existing conditions.

      Reply

    6. Dr. Brydon, I hope you have had a pleasant and happy Thanksgiving. Being perhaps the sole conservative who comments on this site, you frequently receive the lion’s share of pushback and rebuttal. It must be frustrating at times. And while I do not share your opinion or fears about the vaccine passports (a poorly chosen appellation, to be sure) or the presumptive reasons for their requirements, or perhaps many of your views, I certainly do worry about the expansion of government monitoring of of its citizenry. It was not so long ago that the left were worried about the Bush administration listening in on phone calls, especially those going outside the US. The left was called paranoid but it was, sadly, true. Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and other whistleblowers have exposed other government misdeeds that at first seemed crazy. I hope your fears DO turn out to be extreme, far-fetched, and paranoid. I certainly do not wish this nation to become the hyper-vigilant spy tech nation like China. I also hope our citizens stop being so laissez-faire with a virus that still kills over 1,000 Americans a day. I hope our health officials at the CDC and others in positions of power and scientific authority stop making such fools of themselves and stumbling over their messages that leads so many on the right to mistrust them more than they already do. So, again, happy Thanksgiving, and as a nod to your position, a quote:

      “Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.”
      – Mark Twain

      Reply

  13. Well, you have the freedom to pronounce all the views you want and believing that left wing Washington Post is run by the administration is one. Personally I liked the idea of freedom to vote but soon that will just be a memory thanks to the party of cult. Hey, that Washington Post is in Washington so you have made the connection.

    Reply

  14. One of my favourite Miyazaki films is “Porco Rosso” (Original title: Kurenai no buta), In 1930s Italy, a veteran World War I pilot is cursed to look like an anthropomorphic pig.

    As one reviewer put it:

    Let’s see what we’ve got: an Italian Pig speaking Japanese, “Knock your socks off” aerial vistas, not one but two beautiful heroines, an Adriatic hotel that’s actually a small island, better dialog than many “live” movies, sky pirates, even good music. How many films can claim all that?

    Reply

    1. One of the finest pair of lines purely for diction in all of pop music is James Taylor’s about a early post-Thanksgiving snowfall in Massachusetts:

      “Now the first of December was covered in snow
      So was the Turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston”

      (Unfortunate rhyme of Boston with frosting in the next line we shall forgive.)

      Hope the weather cooperates with all your journeys home.

      Reply

      1. Another Norman Rockwell connection – he moved to Stockbridge so that his wife could be cared for at the Austen Riggs Center, where James Taylor also received treatment.

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  16. **Intended reply to Paul Topping at #10.

    Mr. Rockwell broke the “fourth wall” from time to time, often subtly. So the person standing at the end of the table is the painter, standing in for us. He is standing in order to get a good perspective in his mind for the painting he will shortly execute for us. In paintings the eyes of people like Jim Martin looking at us follow us around the room to let us know they are in on the joke. Surely it is apt that he appears in all 4 of the Four Freedoms paintings.

    My theory. Would love to know the art critic take.

    I love the detail in the hands of people of different ages.

    Reply

      1. Oh, I’m not sure it’s virtue signaling by Greene – she’s loony enough that she probably would actually like it to happen. Fortunately, it stands the proverbial snowball’s chance.

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  18. I have to say the Myiopsitta monachus or Monk parakeet, is invasive, so I think they were right to remove them. They are potentially damaging with their colonial nests I understand. I wish we could remove the even more invasive Psittacula krameri, ring necked parakeets, in London. They compete with native species & could eventually become very common. Also they are agricultural pests in many countries. But humans are reshaping the distribution of species. So maybe we should just not bother…

    ‘Nativism’ also risks making one appear racist!

    Reply

      1. They even made a pilgrimage to where I worked, at Chicago State University, 95th and King Driver. Stayed for a few days and moved on. We all thought they were wonderful.

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  19. “The Mousetrap”
    Agatha Christie gave the rights to the play to a grandson as a birthday present.
    As a young man, I met Ngaio Marsh, another of the female crime novelists of that era, and a friend of Christie’s, who said that Christie had told her that it was the largest birthday present she had ever given, and far larger than she expected it to be.

    Reply

  21. Mishima:
    Actually, Mishima didn’t botch his ritual suicide, it was his chosen second (the kaishakunin, who beheads the person committing suicide once the person has stabbed himself) who botched it, and someone else had to take over the task.
    Wikipedia reports, and I remember it from local reporting in Japan at the time, that the affair was a complete fiasco – the soldiers Mishima was addressing booed and jeered him, completely rejecting his appeal to overthrow the constitution.

    Reply

  22. “Tofurkey, made from tofu and grain. I have heard it given other names.”

    Most of them obscene I hope.

    I agree Miyazaki is a great filmmaker, though his comments after the Charlie Hebdo shooptings were disappointing (IIRC he said religions shouldn’t be made fun of). I also note that some of the non-Miyazaki films from Studio Ghibli—including Grave of the Fireflies, Only Yesterday, Whisper of the Heart—are just as good as his. Nevertheless, he is probably the greatest animator of the second half of the 20th century.

    Reply

  23. This Carrie Nation woman strikes me as highly un-Christian.
    Although the daughters of Lot story can be construed as illustrating the wickedness of alcohol, did the Jesus Christ character not transform water into wine?
    Stronger, did he not declare his blood to actually be wine?

    Reply

    1. Water into wine, yes. But it was at a wedding, so he gets a pass.

      Other way round on the blood thing, I think: This [wine] is my blood you drink is the (not quoted accurately) account from several versions of the Last Supper and is the basis for trans-substantiation or something like that. I always want to call it transmogrification but that was another Calvin. We Protestants were never told that it was literally the blood of Christ we were drinking. Especially because as little kids in Sunday School we watched on Communion Days the stewards pouring out the Welch’s grape juice from the fridge in the kitchen of the church basement. And the body was definitely squares of Wonder Bread cut up by the ladies’ auxiliary. Same as the PB&J sandwiches we got for lunch.

      Reply

  25. “That means that the person who posted the video has the option to see how many “dislikes” there were, but nobody else does. Why?”

    Because YouTube is protecting their source of income. The get advertising money on every video shown and negative reviews of any videos has a tendency to reduce the number of viewers of that video. They are *very* protective of their bottom line, just remember that Google owns YouTube.

    Anyone making a sufficient number of complaints about YouTube videos will find themselves permanently banned from making comments. YouTube will even remove every comment that the complaining person has made and drop a cookie that prevents them viewing comments. While many YouTube videos are quite educational, many are just counterfactual nonsense and YouTube wants to be “inclusive” and not discourage the bad videos because that costs them income. That is why you see “free energy” peddling (including perpetual motion), phony religious pablum (science confirms the bible), and many totally incorrect descriptions of how some things work on YouTube.

    Reply

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