Saturday: Hili dialogue

September 3, 2022 • 6:30 am

Welcome to cat shabbos: Saturday, September 3, 2022, and the first day of America’s Labor Day weekend holiday. It’s National Baby Back Ribs Day, a Chicago speciality, though I prefer rib tips.  Below is an order of tips and hot links (complete with slice bread and 5 grams of “vegetable” (cole slaw). This Chicago classis is from Uncle J’s Bar B Que, not too far from where I live. Maybe I’ll get some this weekend. I have tips and links all over Chicago, and this is the best, at least for tips. I’ve since abjured the links and always get a “large tips, mild sauce.”

Note: these are not kosher.

It’s also International Bacon Day, National Welsh Rarebit Day, National Hummingbird Day, International Vulture Awareness Day, and World Beard Day.

In case you were wondering, the longest recorded beard is a full 17 feet and 6 inches long, sported by Hans Langseth (1846-1927), a Norwegian-American.  His beard is now sitting somewhere in the Smithsonian. Two photos and a note:

The problem with growing the longest beard in the world, however, (besides needing incredible patience) is that beard hair can only grow about five feet before it dies. If you mat the dead hair together into coil-like dreadlocks, however, it adds a bit of length and strengthens the beard. This is what Langseth did, and it subsequently created a timeline of sorts for his life thereafter.

Stuff that happened on September 3 includes:

This is a country with two leaders who are coequal and serve simultaneously. It’s only 61 km2 (24 sq mi), and has a population of 33,562. I’ve never been there. Have any readers? Here it is:

The entire nation:

Here’s the first of 15 pages that ended the war:

Here’s the peak. Is there a Capitalism Peak?

A short news report of the record:

It was of course used to gas many Jews later on. Here are two labels of the gas, which comes in the form of hydrogen cyanide mixed with diatomaceous earth, which were used as evidence in the Nuremberg trials. “Giftgas” means “poison gas.” (See tweet below.)

(From Wikipedia): Zyklon labels from Dachau concentration camp used as evidence at the Nuremberg trials; the first and third panels contain manufacturer information and the brand name, the center panel reads “Poison Gas! Cyanide preparation to be opened and used only by trained personnel”

A tweet sent by Matthew:

Here’s what Wikipedia says is a “[f]acsimile of the diary of Anne Frank on display at the Anne Frank Zentrum in Berlin, Germany:

Da Nooz:

*As the Mar-a-Lago documents seized from Trump come into view, the man just gets deeper into trouble. Now I’m thinking the odds are greater than 50/50 that he’ll be indicted. The Washington Post reports that the government documents were all jumbled up with non-government stuff, and that some folders labeled “classified” were empty.  Here’s a list:

Among the items seized from Mar-a-Lago, according to the inventory list:

  • 103 government documents with classified markings
    • 31 with “confidential” classification markings.
    • 54 with “secret” classification markings.
    • 18 with “top secret” classification markings.
  • More than 11,100 documents government documents/photographs without classification markings
  • 48 empty folders with “CLASSIFIED” banners
  • 42 empty folders labeled “Return to Staff Secretary/Mili[t]ary Aide”
  • Around 20 gift items or articles of clothing

The gifts found in the FBI search raise a separate set of issues than the classified documents, which contain information that could compromise national security or sensitive intelligence-gathering methods and sources. Under federal law, presidents and other government officials are prohibited from keeping gifts from a foreign government that are worth more than $415. Typically, a president or a government official would submit any gift to the Office of the Chief of Protocol for a valuation and assessment. Gifts under $415 are traditionally transferred to the National Archives or a Presidential Library when the president leaves office.

That’s not a jail-able offense, but it’s another violation of federal law. Right now U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon is reviewing Trump’s request for a “special master” to adjudicate whether the ex-President had a right to those documents. (BTW, has anybody pointed out that the word “master” used in this way is construed as insensitive?). Within a week, I suspect, she’ll issue a written ruling about whether Trump had any executive privilege, as he claims, to remove the documents from the White House and hold onto them.

*John McWhorter’s latest column in the NYT has a jawbreaker of a title, but it gives his point right at the top, “I see no Black pride in finding that calling out prejudice is more interesting in countering it with achievement.”  It’s aimed at those wokesters who think their job is done when they sniff out racism and decry it. McWhorter, in contrast, thinks that the job is done only when prejudice is dispelled with facts. He starts with an incident when he was marginalized from an all-white group of men in a trivia contest, and then answered a hard question on musical theater, proving that he wasn’t clueless because he was black.

Last week, I explored the idea that the supposedly progressive approach to a standardized test with a disparate pass rate is to eliminate it. Related are ideas such as that antiracism means not requiring classics majors to learn Latin or Greek, or that the very idea of remedial education or the term “remediation” might be racist.

I will never embrace that perspective. Underestimation must be countered with demonstration, not indignation. If anyone stereotypes me, what I want to do is show them just how wrong they are, not protest that they engaged in stereotyping. An analogy: No one would be swayed by someone who accused of, for example, infidelity, sobs “You’re mean!” and has no further answer.

But what if you’re not as smart as McWhorter? His response:

Now, there are times when history has made it challenging for us to show what we are made of, unlike when I happened to know the answer to that little quiz question. But the ordinary, vital, self-loving response to such a problem is to step up and learn how to show ourselves at our best. Yep, it’s a kind of Black Tax — having to demonstrate your worth before someone considers you their equal. But in response to a slight or a remark, just saying “You shouldn’t have said that” instead? It just leaves us looking weak.

And “show ourselves at our best” doesn’t just include intelligence, but all the qualities comprised by human dignity: empathy, civility, pride in one’s accomplishments, and so on.  Here’s someone who does the work instead of constantly beefing about racism. And the work works (details in the article):

Freeman Hrabowski is a Black mathematician who helped found, at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, the Meyerhoff Scholars Program. The program has been fostering and guiding students of color through the challenges of STEM fields and preparing them for academic research since the late 1980s. Many Black and Latino students face obstacles to high achievement in STEM subjects — and the Meyerhoff program is geared toward solving that problem. ‘

McWhorter contrasts Hrabowski with someone whom a lot of us have encountered, and who makes her living by beefing about racism:

Hrabowski is, to adopt a fashionable expression, doing the work. Others, however, strike me as more interested in the obstacles than in getting past them. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an accomplished Black physicist at the University of New Hampshire who has argued that the exclusion of Black women in her field is linked to her notion of “white empiricism.” Namely, “white empiricism is the phenomenon through which only white people (particularly white men) are read has having a fundamental capacity for objectivity and Black people (particularly Black women) are produced as an ontological other.” Prescod-Weinstein wants us to consider that “white epistemic claims about science — which are not rooted in empirical evidence — receive more credence and attention than Black womens epistemic claims about their own lives.”

Her argument is rather involved, and sincere from what I can see. However, at the end of the day, I doubt we gain more from its approach than Hrabowski’s.

No we don’t. You can see my own thoughts on Prescod-Weinstein’s dubious arguments in a post here from 2019. McWhorter’s peroration:

. . . But the general theme should be that Black people can meet standards that other groups are meeting. The question shouldn’t be whether the standards themselves are appropriate. There will be skepticism, from some quarters, about our capabilities. But I see no Black pride in finding that skepticism — and the prejudice it entails — more interesting than countering it with actual achievement. What we are is what we have done, not what we have said.

*The NYT has an amusing “graphic editorial” by artist Wendy MacNaughton, “How to have fun again.” Many of us, including me, have lost the knack of having fun during the pandemic, and I’m told by a psychologist that this is a widespread phenomenon. Staying home alone for a couple of years without much social contact can do this. MacNaughton, afflicted with this malaise, begins her cure with a roll in the grass and then suggest several ways to have fun (this is all through her art). The goal (Price’s book is here)

:

One way to achieve it:

That’s a good one. (I also recommend communing with ducks.) Here’s one more:

*Nellie Bowles is on pregnancy (or childbirth) leave from Bari Weiss’s column, and I miss her snarky “TGIF” summary of the news each week. Today Meghan Daum takes over with the column, “TGIF: Queen of the court and the princess of Montecito.”. A few of Daum’s takes on the news:

→ Republicans are starting to sweat: And not just because it’s 5,000 degrees across a large swath of the country. The latest tracking shows support for Democrats surging, thanks to factors like the unpopularity of the Dobbs decision and the former president’s absolute refusal to exit stage right.

Even in Alaska, the GOP may be on melting ice. On Wednesday, Sarah Palin’s attempt at a political comeback fell apart. She took a surprise loss in a special election to fill a House seat for the remainder of the year. The winner is Democrat Mary Peltola, who flips the seat and becomes the first Democrat to hold it in nearly 50 years. She’s also the first Alaska Native elected to Congress. (The race was Alaska’s first state-wide ranked-choice voting—a system that eliminates the lowest-ranked candidate if no one gets more than 50 percent of the vote. It’s a policy that political independents like Andrew Yang have been pushing for a while.)

Things change quite quickly, don’t they. Here’s another:

→ GOP donors are bigly pissed at Trump. It looks increasingly likely that Trump will face a DOJ indictment. The Mar-a-Lago nothingburger—“closer to a bookkeeping issue than a national security threat,” according to Ohio Rep. Mike Turner, the lead Republican on the House Intelligence Committee—may turn into red meat for the Democrats. It seemed at first that the FBI search would redound to Trump’s benefit. Now, not so much. Even Trump ally Newt Gingrich has urged GOP candidates to focus on bashing Biden rather than defending Trump, and someone described as a “top Republican fundraiser” was quoted in multiple outlets conveying donors’ “enormous frustration” over Trump’s behavior.

→ Chaos in Portland, OR: This city cannot catch a break. Last weekend, there were nine shootings. Eight of them happened on Sunday during illegal street racing takeovers, in which crowds blocked intersections and people were seen carrying flamethrowers. Elsewhere in the city, six people were shot in the last week, including one man who was killed while dumpster diving. There were 788 shootings in Portland as of July 31 of this year. That’s 67 more than last year. And it’s 415 more than in 2020 during the same time frame. (Read more here.)

And they wanted to defund the police in Portlandia. It’s getting more like Chicago, where we’ve had a terribly violent two years; and now street-racing is burgeoning here, too.

*The conservative National Review has a piece on the increasing use of DEI statements for med-school applicants. Would you see this survey in the NYT or Washington Post? (h/t: Jon)

The best medical schools in the country are weeding out applicants who are insufficiently devoted to the leftist creed of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), according to a new report released by the non-profit Do No Harm.

Do No Harm, a nonprofit dedicated to “protect[ing] healthcare from a radical, divisive, and discriminatory ideology,” conducted an analysis of medical school application processes which found that these selective institutions are raising an additional barrier to entry on top of the strenuous testing and grade requirements.

“A review of the admissions process at 50 of the top-ranked medical schools found that 36 asked applicants their views on, or experience in, DEI efforts,” reads the Do No Harm report, which was obtained by National Review. “Many were overt in asking applicants if they agreed with certain statements about racial politics and the causes of disparate health outcomes.”

According to the report, medical schools are asking these questions in order to “turn ideological support for health equity and social justice initiatives into a credential that increases an applicant’s chance of acceptance,” “screen out dissenters,” and “signal to all applicants that they are expected to support this new cause.”

36 out of 50 is 72%, soon to be about 100%. DEI statement are a statement of fealty to an ideology, which should not be required for medical schools, especially because among all training institutions, this should be the ones most dedicated to acceptance based on merit.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is inquisitive:

Hili: Are there questions nobody has asked?
A: Yes, there are.
Hili: Where?
A: They are hovering in the air.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy są pytania, których nikt nie zadał?
Ja: Są.
Hili: Gdzie ?
Ja: Wiszą w powietrzu.
. . . and Andrzej’s photo of Baby Kulka:

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

From Divy: a Gary Larson Far Side cartoon:

And I’m going to add today’s cartoon. Shouldn’t one fly have a dummy swatter?

From Beth:

The Tweet of God. Actually, I wouldn’t miss all the people who make me mad. Apparently someone deleted God’s tweet, but the words are below?

I found this one:

I wish I could be as chill as a capybara:

From Simon, who says “This is not a ghost in the machine” (Sadly, this video has also been removed.)

From the Auschwitz Memorial: an event as well as many executed on this day:

Tweets from Mattew. Here are all his bosses at once. Ollie is the one who lay open my nose with his claws:

Progress:

This one isn’t too hard:

Watch this because the plane lands at the end. I think it’s flying right by Rockefeller University (where I started grad school), heading south on the East Side. You can see the UN buildings, too:

51 thoughts on “Saturday: Hili dialogue”

    1. That reminds me, I have a theory that the term alternative fact was popularized by the Ancestry genealogy website, where one can save alternative or conflicting date of birth fir example or birthplace.

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        1. Made a saint of Thomas Becket — both Catholic and Anglican — and garnered Oscar nominations for Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole, too. 🙂

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      2. Mine too. Have you read Ariana Franklin’s historical novels about Adelia, Mistress of the Art of Death,* an Italian forensic pathologist, in which Henry Plantagenet figures prominently? Unfortunately Ms. Franklin has died and so the cliffhanger on which the last novel ends will never be resolved. 🙁
        ———-
        * Yes, there really was a medical school in Italy that admitted women as students, until it was closed down by the Inquisition.

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  2. I want a John McWhorter and Glenn Loury T-shirt.

    It wouldn’t work – but somehow, I think I’d love wearing their visages around.

    It’d probably end up in the bottom of my pile next to my other novelty shirts that won’t work either but I love anyway.

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  3. “Many of us, including me, have lost the knack of having fun during the pandemic, and I’m told by a psychologist that this is a widespread phenomenon. Staying home alone for a couple of years without much social contact can do this.”

    Staying home for a couple of years for me was an absolute joy.

    L

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  4. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein is an accomplished Black physicist at the University of New Hampshire who has argued that the exclusion of Black women in her field is linked to her notion of “white empiricism.”

    It’s rather ironic that someone who is (given her modest track record) fairly obviously a diversity hire, should complain about “the exclusion of Black women in her field” when the truth is that, for the last twenty years at least**, being black and female has been a massive help in getting academic jobs.

    [**I’ll readily grant that prior to 50 years or so ago it was a big negative.]

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    1. We went there too, in 2013. We climbed to the highest point in the country, had lunch (including the local beer), and then got caught in the San Marino Rally as we were driving out. Scared the bejeesus out of my wife when she was suddenly passed by small Italian sportscars going 50mph through town.

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  6. … whether Trump had any executive privilege, as he claims, to remove the documents from the White House and hold onto them.

    Trump has no colorable claim of a right to have removed documents subject to executive privilege and taken them to his resort in Mar-a-Lago. The proper repository for documents subject to executive privilege, once a president’s term has come to an end, is the National Archives.

    Moreover, executive privilege belongs not to an individual president, but to the office of the presidency, to be determined, in the ordinary course of business, by the current occupant of that office. There is substantial doubt whether a former president can ever assert executive privilege when the sitting president has waived a privilege claim over the documents at issue. See Trump v. Thompson (Jan. 19, 2022), in which SCOTUS ruled against Trump, 8-1, with only Justice Clarence Thomas (husband of Ginni) dissenting without opinion, regarding Trump’s attempt to have the National Archives withhold documents sought by the Jan. 6th special committee on the basis of executive privilege.

    In any event, even if a former president can, under some as-yet indeterminate set of circumstances, assert executive privilege on his own, that privilege is assertable only as against a coequal branch of the federal government, or as against a state government, not against a division within the executive branch itself, such as the Department of Justice.

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    1. Yes, but he has taken it in front of a judge who is one of his plants, so she can change the law from the bench.

      Just ask her.

      L

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      1. Trump’s lawyers engaged in some blatant judge-shopping to get the case in front of the Hon. Aileen Cannon.

        The Southern District of Florida is divided into five divisions. The West Palm Beach division — where Magistrate Bruce Reinhart sits and was the duty magistrate when the Mar-a-Lago search warrant application was presented for consideration — is just across the causeway from Mar-a-Lago, whence the documents at issue were seized.

        Rather than filing their motion to appoint a special master in that convenient courthouse, Trump’s lawyers filed it 70 miles up I-95 in the Ft. Piece division, where Cannon is the only sitting district court judge — and they labeled their motion an original “complaint,” assuring that it would be assigned to a district judge, rather than to a magistrate.

        Were Judge Cannon to rule in Trump’s favor on an executive-privilege claim, the government will undoubtably take an immediate appeal to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.

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    2. All of which is to say, the only potentially legitimate claim of privilege Trump has to assert as to any of the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago pertains to the attorney-client privilege.

      This is why, upon learning that Trump was keeping classified documents comingled with other materials in the former Mar-a-Lago bridal suite that serves as the “45 office” and seat of Trump’s presidency-in-exile, the Justice Department officials overseeing the search brought along a “filter team” to search that office, to assure that the team investigating potential criminal violations would not be exposed to any attorney-client privileged materials.

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    3. The goal of Trump and right-wing media is not to present a lucid legal argument but to spread disinformation to his supporters and those whose loyalty may be shaky. As usual, Trump is portraying himself as a victim, this time of a tyrannical government. Keeping the base riled up is never a bad move for him.

      On a related note, yesterday Trump said that if he is re-elected, he may very well pardon all the insurrectionists that have been convicted. This may not be a very smart move. While his fascist, cultist base is applauding, those who have expressed some sympathy for Trump without being members of the cult may very well be turned off by an attempt to exonerate the insurrectionists and, therefore, condoning sedition.

      https://news.yahoo.com/trump-dangles-full-pardons-jan-183105623.html

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      1. I also wonder if Trump is playing to the base who love him because he’s “not a politician” and therefore supposed to be more relatable to the average voter. Remember last time you moved and the sauté pan, crayons, and your most recent bills got mixed up together in a box marked “closet?” Yeah, same thing here. Everyone does it, the Demon-crat government is just getting picky.

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        1. In which case Trump has his work cut out for him explaining how he transubstantiated classified documents into unclassified documents if he didn’t even know they were in his possession.

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          2. I think it is crucial to discover what happened to the ‘top secret’ documents that were supposed to be in those empty files marked as such.
            Were they sold? Just discarded and thrown away? Just a mess? Or what? I suspect , knowing about Trump, the first is a definite possibility. But, if so, sold to whom? I have my suspicions there.

          3. Indeed. Weren’t the “love letters” from Kim Jong-un some of the documents that Trump took with him after leaving office and had to hand back before the Mar-el-Lago raid?

          4. I don’t think they were sold to Kim (if they were sold at all, we don’t know), If sold, I’d rather think to Putin or one of his cronies.
            Whether sold or not it is extremely worrying these top secret documents are missing.

    4. Why is this so hard for people to understand, Ken? Motivated reasoning? As someone (Hitchens?) put it, “It is very difficult to convince someone of a lie when his livelihood [or liberty, I’d add], requires that he continue to believe it.”

      Regarding the empty file folders marked “Secret”. That’s exactly what I would do if I had stolen the blueprints for plutonium implosion and sold them to Stalin. I would for sure keep the empty folders in my house to help the FBI figure out Whodunnit. Even highly skilled operatives slip up. Poor hapless Harry Gold was done in when the FBI found a tourist brochure from the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce in his bedroom in New York, after he told them he’d never been to Santa Fe (where he picked up documents from Klaus Fuchs.)

      I wonder if it’s like juvenile delinquents who steal Stop signs from highways. They can’t resist showing off their ballsiness even though the possession incriminates them.

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      1. The quote you cite, Leslie, predates Hitch and belongs to novelist (and one-time California gubernatorial candidate) Upton Sinclair.

        Trump never dreamt that the FBI would show up with a search warrant at his Mar-a-Lago home. Even after being president, he’s unable to comprehend that the attorney general and the Justice Department represent the government. He thinks of them merely as political foes, or allies (as was the case with his AG, Bill Barr — although even Barr has now turned against him, saying on Fox News yesterday that he believes Trump likely committed indictable offenses with regard to the purloined records discovered at Mar-a-Lago).

        Imagine the wild conspiracy rumors right-wing media would be mongering if empty folders marked “classified” were found in the basement of Bill & Hillary’s home in Chappaqua.

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  7. When people are put into an environment where they cannot compete, they become resentful. Don’t expect gratitude for trying to include them.

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  9. Re the term “special master”, I’m not sure “special mistress” is any better, and Stormy probably doesn’t have the appropriate security clearance!

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    1. Neither did Christina Bobb, the Trump lawyer who served as the putative “custodian of records” (including the highly classified records), who signed the June 3rd certification falsely asseverating that all documents responsive to the federal grand jury subpoena had been furnished to the government.

      That, in itself, is a huge problem for Trumpworld.

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    2. I like ‘special mistress’ and I’m sure Trumpy assesses his chances of grabbing, well, her neither parts.

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  10. — “Many of us, including me, have lost the knack of having fun during the pandemic, and I’m told by a psychologist that this is a widespread phenomenon. Staying home alone for a couple of years without much social contact can do this.” —

    Oh yeah, I’m in the camp of not having fun too. I’m sorry to hear you are still afflicted Jerry!

    During the early doldrums of the 2020 pandemic, where we were all isolating, I’d go for walks down my street to a view of our city I’ve always loved. I’m a “city person” and the buzz of a city is my personal battery. Pre-pandemic I’d gaze out on our rapidly growing city with a sense of joie de vivre. It represented all the possibilities of a thriving city life – going out to music, movies, restaurants, exploring new stores, being in the buzz. But during the pandemic it seemed dead. And I couldn’t think in terms of it’s vibrant pre-pandemic past, because that simply brought on deep meloncoly for what seemed now lost. And I couldn’t think of some positive future…because the acute phase of the pandemic left the future totally uncertain. You couldn’t really depend on some future as you might hope for it. So my mind put blinders on: stuck in the present. Day to day. The past too melancholy; the future too uncertain.

    This apparently was a very wide-spread psychological reaction during the pandemic.

    And it’s interesting because one of the purported insights often put forth is that you should “live in the present” not the past or future, in order to truly enjoy or appreciate life. (Many people who survive severe illness come away with this view). And yet, having been forced to do just that, it sure didn’t feel psychologically healthy in the long run!

    When Omicron came and everyone (since) became infected most have taken it as their get-out-of-pandemic card. “At this point everyone has been or is going to be infected, I’ve been infected and got over it fine, time to just move on with life!” Hence…most people I know are essentially back to a normal life.

    I ended up with Long Covid (since December) which, unfortunately and like most with LC, means I’m still in a mini-pandemic of my own. So while watching most get on with life plans – for my son and wife for instance the pandemic is over ‘been there, done that’ – I’m still trapped in the pandemic frame of mind – can’t do what I did in the past, no idea if and when it will be possible in the future. Still day-to-day….

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      1. Agreed. I’ve seen plenty of covers and nothing compares to the original.
        Dolly not only has a beautiful, unique voice, but she sings the story perfectly – plaintively, believably, not overwrought.

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  13. I think the chaos in Portland is grist to the Trumpist mill. What are these people thinking? Do they actually want an oppressive dictatorship? Or what? Don’t they care? Do they actually think? I’m kinda mystified.

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    1. Portland is a sad showcase of an awful ideology. 85% of its population are Whites or Asians, and only 5% are Blacks. Its people are wealthy, unusually educated and the city is attractive to newcomers.

      A place like this should not have a crime problem.

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      1. But it obviously has a ‘crime problem’. What’s going on there?
        I’m still mystified, even more after your response.

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        1. Just visited some Portland family and we talked about this. Drugs are a problem. The police have given up a lot policing as retaliation for attempts at police reform. Most of the police are not portlanders and not being part of the community they are supposed to be protecting has consequences. The mental health system is under funded and over burdened. And the negative media tries to make the city sound worse than it is. It’s complicated, they say, but they love Portland and are committed to working to see it improve. PNW journalist and Portlander Leah Sottile write a really lovely essay about the city and people’s ideas about it. Worth a Google.

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          1. Couldn’t find it, Yazikus, so I hope you won’t keep us in suspense. Are you saying that even with only 5% Blacks (as per Mdap), many of whom are of course upstanding, that is still ample to keep a city in the grip of mayhem? Or is Portland, uniquely, a place where most of the crime is committed by someone else? During the George Floyd riots I recall a lot of Black faces (and one stark-naked white woman) but they could have been bussed in from CHAZ, I suppose.

            Motor-vehicle lawlessness is traditionally associated with white rural rednecks coming into town on Saturday nights but in the Toronto area, illegal organized street racing is much a South Asian thing. Very expensive highly modified cars boosted with nitrous oxide typically involved. But usually out in nocturnally deserted (especially during Covid lockdowns) industrial warehouse districts in the suburbs, not in the form of taking over downtown intersections with guns and flamethrowers. (Flamethrowers!)

            What on earth is going on?

          2. Hi Leslie,

            Here is the link: https://leahsottile.substack.com/p/24-mythology

            I’m not sure what your racial stat is meant to demonstrate here – I didn’t refer to race in my comment.

            Were you in Portland for the protests? Or relying on media coverage? I suspect the latter based on your ‘chaz’ mention. What you are describing having seen does not match what I saw.

            I don’t know who makes up the street racing crowd so cannot comment on that, nor the alleged flamethrowers. I do know I was driving around Portland late at night after a concert a couple of weekends ago and did not see anything of the sort.

          3. Thanks. Leah Sottile clearly sees something positive in what is happening in Portland, as do you. You are there, I’m not. Good luck.

  14. The extension of DEI loyalty oaths to medical school applications illustrates the totalitarian reach of our current academic DEIshchina. Something to think about when: (a) anyone mentions the terrors of “McCarthyism” in the reputedly conformist USA of the 1950s; (b) one imagines that ostensibly noble goals are sufficient reason to grant large powers to an unaccountable bureaucracy; and (c) one wonders how things developed as they did in the country where the common language often uses the suffix” shchina” .

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    1. Yes, it is ridiculous. Medics are supposed to use their skills on anybody, regardless of sex, race, sexual orientation, political affiliation or criminal record (or whatever one can come up with). I may have been treating despicable murderers, it is not up to me to judge, or even know. I would treat Kendi or di Angelo the same way I’d treat Trump or Putin. Stronger, I take some pride in not wanting to know my patients’ inclinations or deeds.
      The only time I slightly deviate (well not really) is when I advise diabetics to go on a Banting/Keto diet (and the same for HLA B27 positive patients with AAU and AS (Ankylosing Spondilitis), ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s).

      *For those interested: Klebsiella pneumoniae shares three sequences that are identical to HLA B27. It lives in the lower ileum and proximate colon. It lives on sugars. Hence: no starches: no food (refined sugars are absorbed higher in the GI tract). No food: less Klebsiella, therefore less attacks.

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  15. I have visited “The Most Serene Republic of” San Marino, as they style themselves.
    I was there for a day, but long enough to get into a small car crash, handled with pleasantness all around. It is an attractive little microstate, rich, with lots of duty free and gun stores. Naturalization there takes 30 years but they have almost no taxes and, strangely, no national debt. On google.earth you can “drive” around it, which I recommend. It doesn’t take long. 🙂
    D.A.
    NYC https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/

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