Saturday: Hili dialogue

August 20, 2022 • 6:30 am

Welcome to the full day of Cat Sabbath: August 20, 2022. It’s National Bacon Lover’s Day, with the apostrophe unfortunately placed to suggest that only a single person loves bacon. Who is that person?

It’s also National Pecan Pie Day, National Lemonade Day, World Honey Bee Day, International Homeless Animals’ Day, and World Mosquito Day.

The latter derives from Sir Ronald Ross, who discovered that Anopheles mosquitoes transmitted malaria on this day in 1897 (for this he was the first Brit awarded the Nobel Prize). From WIkipedia:

After two years of research failure, in July 1897, Ross managed to culture 20 adult “brown” mosquitoes from collected larvae. He successfully infected the mosquitoes from a patient named Husein Khan for a price of 8 annas (one anna per blood-fed mosquito). After blood-feeding, he dissected the mosquitoes. On 20 August he confirmed the presence of the malarial parasite inside the gut of mosquito, which he originally identified as “dappled-wings” (which turned out to be species of the genus Anopheles). The next day, on 21 August, he confirmed the growth of the parasite in the mosquito. This discovery was published on 27 August 1897 in the Indian Medical Gazette and subsequently in the December 1897 issue of British Medical Journal. In the evening he composed the following poem for his discovery (originally unfinished, sent to his wife on 22 August, and completed a few days later:

This day relenting God
Hath placed within my hand
A wondrous thing; and God
Be praised. At His command,
Seeking His secret deeds
With tears and toiling breath,
I find thy cunning seeds,
O million-murdering Death.
I know this little thing
A myriad men will save.
O Death, where is thy sting?
Thy victory, O Grave?

It SHOULD be “Evolution Day”: see first entry below:

Stuff that happened on August 20 include:

Here’s the title of the joint submission, which you can see in its entirety here.

A-Rod hit a total of 25; here’s the last one (note that Rodriguez was suspended for an entire season for using steroids).

Here are those immortal words about some very brave RAF members who flew in the Battle of Britain. The famous phrase comes at 3:05:

Here’s the 15-minute speech so you can see what he envisioned.

Da Nooz:

*The Washington Post has several stories about Ukraine, and I’ll just give a brief excerpt of each. First, Ukrainians are fleeing from the area around the contested Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in SE Ukraine, currently controlled by the Russians. The reason: premonitions of an attack on the plant by Ukrainians. Given a Chernobyl-like outcome, such an attack seems a bit unwise, no?

Families are beginning to flee the area in anticipation of a nuclear catastrophe, while plant employees have been ordered to stay home Friday. Russia could be preparing to disconnect the plant from Ukraine’s electricity grid.

“The scariest scenario is something like Chernobyl but worse,” one former resident of Energoatom told The Washington Post. People have waited in lines for over 4 days in their cars in the hot summer heat amid artillery fire zipping overheard. “It is not easy to find a car and driver either,” she said. The United Nations warned that any damage to the plant would be “suicide.”

The Post has obtained a cache of secret Russian intelligence indicating that the Russian spy operation in Ukraine was not only inept, but misled the Russian government:

In the final days before the invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s security service began sending cryptic instructions to informants in Kyiv. Pack up and get out of the capital, the Kremlin collaborators were told, but leave behind the keys to your homes.

The directions came from senior officers in a unit of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) with a prosaic name — the Department of Operational Information — but an ominous assignment: ensure the decapitation of the Ukrainian government and oversee the installation of a pro-Russian regime.

The messages were a measure of the confidence in that audacious plan. So certain were FSB operatives that they would soon control the levers of power in Kyiv, according to Ukrainian and Western security officials, that they spent the waning days before the war arrangingsafe houses or accommodations in informants’ apartments and other locations for the planned influx of personnel.

. . .No aspect of the FSB’s intelligence mission outside Russia was more important than burrowing into all levels of Ukrainian society.

And yet, the agency failed to incapacitate Ukraine’s government, foment any semblance of a pro-Russian groundswell or interrupt President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hold on power. Its analysts either did not fathom how forcefully Ukraine would respond, Ukrainian and Western officials said, or did understand but couldn’t or wouldn’t convey such sober assessments to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Finally, President Zelensky of Ukraine is starting to face criticism that he failed to inform his people of the imminence of war with Russia.

Until this week, Ukrainians seemed to see President Volodymyr Zelensky as beyond reproach, a national hero who stayed in Kyiv despite the risk to his personal safety to lead his country against invading Russian troops.

Comments he made to The Washington Post justifying his failure to share with Ukrainians details of repeated U.S. warnings that Russia planned to invade have punctured the bubble, triggering a cascade of public criticism unprecedented since the war began.

Ordinary people tweeted their experiences of chaos and dislocation after an invasion for which they were unprepared, and described how they might have made different choices had they known what was coming. Public figures and academics wrote harsh critiques on Facebook of his decision to downplay the risk of an invasion, saying he bears at least some responsibility for the atrocities that followed.

*Over at FiveThirtyEight, there’s a chat between five of its journalists: “Can we expect anything other than Biden vs. Trump in 2024.” The upshot of the conversation is that if Biden wants the nomination, it’s his for the taking: he says he wants to run again, and no Democrat would take him on (after all, he defeated Trump). If Biden chooses not to run, which seems to me unlikely, then all bets or off. Kamala Harris is certainly in no position to step into his shoes.

As for the Republicans, well, DeSantis is a credible challenger, but the consensus still seems to be this:

sarah: Fair. OK, where do folks stand on this question of whether there’s room for someone other than Trump in the GOP? I think there might be more disagreement?

nrakich: It’s pretty clear that there is some room for a Trump challenger. The question is just whether there’s enough, and if so, whether the opposition will be too divided to take advantage of it.

kaleigh: I think there is space for a challenger in the GOP, but that challenger will still have a real hard time overcoming Trump’s popularity, and if there’s more than one challenger splitting the few non-Trump votes, it will be a snowball’s-chance-in-hell scenario.

In other words, the answer to the title question seems to be “no.” Wouldn’t it be too much if we had a matchup against Trump and Biden again. Biden’s popularity is still low, but Trump has the odor of mendacity about him. I’m not hazard any guesses except to suggest that Biden will run again and, given half a chance, so will Trump.

*Andrew Sullivan is going on vacation for a few weeks, but couldn’t resist pondering the question of whether Trump will be indicted. He thinks that Trump should be, but there’s a downside, and in the end it sounds like Sully wants Trump defeated politically, not legally:

The danger is deploying the full armory of the legal system against a former and possible future president with the knee-jerk political opposition of a good 35 – 40 percent of the country — because that could actually add one more spiral to the delegitimization of democracy. Trump will never concede fault or responsibility on anything because he is mentally ill. We have also learned how the GOP will defend and champion him under any circumstances — even when he orchestrated a violent attack on the peaceful transfer of power. And so we have to weigh the consequences of a showdown to the truly bitter end.

Is it worth it? In a healthy republic, it would be. In our deeply sick polity, I worry that it could empower Trump, bring him back to center-stage, consume all of us in his loopy mendacity again, and allow him to escape one more time — perhaps into the presidency itself. His entire campaign is one of victimization and revenge. Why give him the perfect platform to wage it?

If we run the risk of prosecution, then it seems to me it must be because of an alleged crime far worse than being a criminal corporate con-artist, a giant tax fraud, or holding onto official documents because “they’re mine!” Is there proof of ill-intent? How vital are these documents to national security? You need a truly overwhelming case of negligence and criminality to proceed — and I’m not sure Garland has one. Remember Mueller.

And look: I do not discount the risk of doing nothing about the crimes of an ex-president. His continued iron grip on one political party, the depth of the broader national polarization, and Trump’s clear threat to use the White House for a series of future, vengeful prosecutions of his enemies are all signs of grave Constitutional danger. But this is where we are already. It may not make things better to press them to a conclusion that may not even be a conclusion.

This makes a certain amount of sense. If Trump even gets indicted, all hell would break loose, and imagine if he’s convicted. On the other hand, if nothing is done, he could run for President again and win. Both alternatives are unthinkable vis-a-vis what would happen to our Republic

*Nellie Bowles, about to give birth, produced her last weekly news summary on Bari Weiss’s site before having her child: “TGIF: Last hurrah before the baby!”  (Do subscribe if you read often.) A few nuggets of her snarky take on the news:

→ Strong women cannot possibly have been women: In the new gender belief system, female-ness and male-ness are feelings, removed from the physical body. So what is femaleness, then? It is a sense of weakness, receptivity, softness, and submission. Duh.

And so it makes sense that a powerful, dominant uterus-haver in, say, 15th-century France, could not possibly have identified as a woman, not if she (they?) knew what we know now. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre is putting on a play about the life of Joan of Arc, and in it she is not a she at all. How could she be? Joan is strong and independent! So Joan is recast as a nonbinary hero and goes by they/them. From the Globe’s website announcing the show:  “Joan finds their power and their belief spreads like fire.” (Spreads like fire . . . you see Joan was burned at the stake, so they’re doing a metaphor with that.)

You know who else was nonbinary, according to the new academic experts? Elizabeth I! Yes, all through history powerful people who thought they were women were, in fact, total dudes or at least dude-adjacent. All of them, from Cleopatra to Sojourner Truth—they were never women. That was just us imposing the gender-binary on all these super awesome people of indeterminate identity.

The way to know that this is sexism is to imagine something similar being done to a historical man. Like: this historical man was really submissive and quiet, so our play now re-imagines him as a woman, which we think he was.

→ Segregation is back, back again: UC Berkeley’s Person of Color Theme House has reportedly banned white guests from common spaces “to be able to avoid white violence and presence.”

“When students do bring a guest, the rules direct them to announce it in the house guest chat and note ‘if they are white,’” reports campus news site The College Fix, which broke this story.

What about other races? Do you have to announce if your guest is Asian, Latino? What about biracial? These nuances are unclear, and dare I say it, problematic.

I would gently suggest that bringing back segregation is a risky move.

*The latest scam: putting water in cans that look like beer cans, which allows nondrinkers to avoid embarrassing themselves in social situations. One is called “Liquid Death” and costs $2 for a nine-ounce can!

Bob Lugowe, 37, bought a Liquid Death tallboy at a recent Megadeth concert and said toting around the can, adorned with gothic heavy-metal style lettering, made him feel as much a part of the crowd as carrying a beer.

“I didn’t want to get made fun of for drinking Poland Spring at a punk show,” said Mr. Lugowe, who runs an indie record label out of Philadelphia.

One welcome feature, he said, was being able to crush the big can on his skull alongside all the other happy hell-raisers.

True, the water is from the Swiss Alps, but that doesn’t make it any better (New York City tap water regularly wins water-tasting contests). At least there are some sane people among the grifters:

There are plenty of industry skeptics. Nick Hamon, 43, who owns a bar in Fayetteville, Ark., stopped by the cocktail conference’s big opening night party sponsored by Liquid Death. He joked that maybe he should make his fortune filling cans with Arkansas tap water and calling it Liquid Life.

The only trouble, Mr. Hamon said, was that he doubted his customers would be happy paying for something they were accustomed to getting free.

But that’s what they’re doing anyway!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has new noms:

A: Do you like this new cat food?
Hili: Yes, please, increase supply.
In Polish:
A: Smakuje ci ta nowa karma?
Hili: Tak, poproszę o zwiększone dostawy.
 . . . and Szaron having a rest:

***********************

From Callie:

From Facebook:

A post on Grace Slick’s FB page:

The Tweet of God:

From Malcolm (sound up). This woman should be a LOT happier than she is!

From Ken, who calls this “our post-Roe hell”:

A tweet I found. Look at that expression on the yellow cat’s face!

From the Auschwitz Memorial: gassed at three:

Tweets from Matthew. He explains this one:

This picture is doing the rounds as a meme with all caps text inserted about some fact or ranting opinion, so I added the opening of Franklin and Gosling 1953. It is not very funny but it probably is clever.

When life gives you Potatoes, make french fries! (Sound up.)

This house isn’t really abandoned, as the tweet explains:

Yay for antibiotics (as I recall, penicillin prevents the synthesis of cell walls in bacteria):

21 thoughts on “Saturday: Hili dialogue”

  1. And so it makes sense that a powerful, dominant uterus-haver in, say, 15th-century France, could not possibly have identified as a woman, not if she (they?) knew what we know now

    You posted Titania’s tweet last week. I didn’t realize it was based on an existing movement!

    I’ve seen the philosophy for 2+ decades, and it has consistently bothered me for reinforcing gender stereotypes just when we were about to shuck them off for good! Anyone can choose to mow the lawn or do the dishes, anyone can feel weak or strong.

    1. What got into these Globe Theatre people?
      Do we need further proof that the ‘trans movement’ is profoundly misogynist?

      1. Not misogynist, just a movement that reinforces outdated stereotypes. There is no need to label strength, weakness, emotionalism, stoicism, rationality, manual labor, or domestic labor as inherently good or bad, masculine or feminine. It is the act of identifying certain attributes with masculinity/femininity AND THEN labeling them as good or bad that is inherently misogynist/misandrist (it could be either; look at the movement against ‘toxic masculinity’). Someone who identifies as trans for embracing stereotypical but not necessarily or universally true attributes of a different sex is simply misguided; someone who applies value judgements on the basis of stereotypes is misogynist/misandrist.

        I enjoyed the show Big Mouth until I saw it becoming more and more PC/New Left (misandrist, etc.) S02E07 “Guy Town” exemplifies the trend.

        1. “Not misogynist, just a movement that reinforces outdated stereotypes.” Aren’t/weren’t these stereotypes misogynist? Weren’t these labels attached?
          Maybe “the ‘trans movement’ is profoundly anti-feminist”?

  4. “And so we have to weigh the consequences of a showdown to the truly bitter end.

    Is it worth it? In a healthy republic, it would be. In our deeply sick polity, I worry that it could empower Trump …”

    I understand Sully’s point, but what shall it profit a nation to purchase the avoidance of civil unrest at the cost of losing its soul by forfeiting fealty to the rule of law? The only way to get back to being a “healthy republic” is to enforce the first principle of the rule of law — that no man is above it.

    1. @ Ken. Yes. It would only marginally increase Trump’s power, and then mostly among his already die-hard followers. I now see but one question for the prosecutors: Is the probability of getting a conviction high enough to risk an acquittal?

      1. I interpret AG Merrick Garland’s somewhat Delphic statements on the topic so far to suggest that he’s in general agreement, Harry.

        We shall see.

  5. “All of them, from Cleopatra to Sojourner Truth—they were never women.”

    That would especially come as a shock to Sojourner Truth (born “Isabella Baumfree”), who famously asked the 1851 Women’s Convention in Akron, “Ain’t I a Woman?”

  7. The news in the paper this morning about Ukraine is encouraging.
    The Russians are having severe supply issues due to the fact that
    Ukraine has destroyed most of the bridges leading to the west.
    The Russians are also suffering from many thousands of casualties
    and the war seems to be heading to a stalemate.
    Keep the faith !

  8. I’m not really a fan of Churchill: deferent and pliant when out of power, but arrogant and overbearing when in power. During the ‘Boer war’, he promised his captors he would cease his participation in the war if released. They released him, and he broke his word within days. Not honourable in my books.
    On the other hand, this reporter had a great way with words, as the speech shown testifies. I even think he got a Nobel Prize for literature in the early fifties. I also think the “Iron Curtain” was coined by him. Despite his numerous warts and flaws, still a great man.

  9. There’s always hope:

    “As per BBC, the law says anyone with custody of government documents who “willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates or destroys… any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited … in any public office” can be fined or imprisoned for up to three years.

    More importantly, it says anyone convicted under that law shall “be disqualified from holding” federal office.”

  10. I think it unlikely that Biden will be the Democratic Party’s Presidential nominee in 2024. I think there are three things, one or all of which might happen, and keep him from the nomination: 1) his health fails him completely; 2) investigations by a Republican House could expose enough Administration shenanigans (Afghanistan, Covid response, politicization of law information and the intelligence community, etc.) that he’s seen as no longer viable; 3) the left of the party manages to assert itself to the extent of doing him in. That said, I have no idea what candidate the party might unite behind should any of these happen.

  11. “ Until this week, Ukrainians seemed to see President Volodymyr Zelensky as beyond reproach”, seriously? Many in Ukraine have been blaming Zelensky for the invasion from the beginning, and even before Feb 24, because he cut key military programs, cleared the mines in the border with Crimea, and repaired roads “for the Russian tanks”.

  12. Wonderful old house squeezed between taller modern buildings. I hope it will survive.

    The bacteria exploding to penicillin reminds me somehow of Russian tanks being blown out in Ukraine. (Yes, in line with Carl von Clausewitz, I suspect Russia has already lost this war).

    Not sufficiently mature for an abortion, but mature enough to give birth and be a mother for decades? Are these judges right in their minds? (rhetorical question).

  13. Over at FiveThirtyEight, there’s a chat between five of its journalists: “Can we expect anything other than Biden vs. Trump in 2024.”

    There is probably a site tabulating these things, but does anyone know when, if ever, a contender for the presidency died during the campaigning phase? Let alone both candidates.
    Considering the age of both likely contenders, that’s a bet that has got to be on the bookie’s list of outcomes.

    Presumably the “vice-candidates” would then step into the still-warm shoes.

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