Friday: Hili dialogue

November 4, 2022 • 6:30 am

G’day, mate: it’s Friday, November 4, 2022, and again we have a truncated Hili. But it is National Candy Day, and perhaps I’ll get some. It’s also International Stout Day (the beer, and I prefer Murphy’s to Guinness), National Chicken Lady Day (look it up), and National Skeptics Day.

Here’s Dr. Marthenia “Tina” Dupree, the Chicken Lady:

Readers who wish to enlighten us about the signifcant events, births, or deaths on this day are invited to peruse the November 4 Wikipedia page.

 

Da Nooz:

*Our conference at Stanford has become quite controversial; this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education summarizes the brouhaha.  Lots of implicit tarring of participants because a few dicey characters are speaking! As for me, I’m gonna say my piece and listen to everyone else. Click to read (h/t: Wayne):

*A cognitively impaired man with a traumatic brain injury has been fired from his job at the The Madison (Wisconsin) Children’s Museum. Why? Because he wore a Halloween costume making him look like Hitler, even though he thought he was mocking Hitler. (h/t: Divy)

The museum said the man believed he was making a mockery of the Nazi Party’s leader when he wore the costume on a busy street near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus on Saturday. He was fired Tuesday night, after his costume was condemned on social media and by some news outlets, including the Jerusalem Post.

The museum said in a statement that it fired the man after it “determined that his continued employment would create an environment at odds with our values and unwelcoming to visitors and staff.” The statement said the man’s costume was “completely unacceptable” and that the museum stands against antisemitism, bigotry and discrimination.

The museum also said the man has cognitive disabilities due to a traumatic brain injury and that his work over the last decade has been supervised.

“It is our understanding that he believed his costume to be mocking Hitler,” the statement said.

The Madison Police Department called the costume “offensive and reprehensible,” but said wearing it was not a crime. Police said they told the man about the concerns his costume raised.

For crying out loud—the man was cognitively impaired and thought he was mocking Hitler. Only a heartless moron would fire him for that. I have tweeted at them, and you’re welcome to contact them, too:

*News from Ken, who calls this as coming from the Better.A Little Bit Late Than After the Election Department:

The Trump appointed federal district judge, Michael Liburdi, who initially ruled that it was totally cool for armed, masked, tactical-gear-clad vigilantes to monitor Arizona ballot drop boxes, has rethought his position after additional filings in a related case from the League of Women Voters, the Alliance for Retired Americans, and the US Dept. of Justice (and after hearing testimony from intimidated eye witnesses), and has issued an order restraining the vigilantes from, among other things, positioning themselves within 75 feet (250 feet if armed) of the drop boxes.

*The first fossil ichthyosaur, collected by Mary Anning herself, was destroyed by German bombs during WWII. But, as the article below explains, plaster casts of the original have just been discovered and identified. Click to read:

Losing the fossil to the ravages of World War II was a blow to paleontology, depriving future scientists of a specimen that would have aided study of the long extinct animals while also being steeped in the field’s history.

“At the time, they were like the real icons of evolution,” said Dean Lomax, a paleontologist at the University of Manchester in England.

But just as the ichthyosaur fossil allowed modern humans to ponder the aquatic creature, scientists have discovered plaster copies of the specimen that may restore some of that historical connection

. . . In a study published Wednesday in Royal Society Open Science, paleontologists reported that they had located two casts of Anning and Home’s lost ichthyosaur. The copies have been sitting in collections at Yale Peabody Museum and the Natural History Museum, Berlin. Dr. Lomax, a co-author of the study with Judy Massare at the State University of New York, Brockport, matched the casts to an illustration in Home’s 1819 paper. And a tantalizing discovery that emerged during the reporting of the article suggests there may be yet more casts of the fossil gathering dust in archives around the world.

Now for few pictures of Palo Alto. First, its crunchy granola quality, similar to that of Davis (but pricier):

These two plants were identified with the “Seek” app, which you simply MUST get. It’s free!

“Chinese pistache” (Pistachia chinensis):

“Fountain grass” (Pennisetum sp.)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, today’s Hili has a title: “Points of View”:

Hili: I can’t see Kulka in the garden.
Kulka: I wonder where Hili is.
In Polish:
Hili: Nie widać Kulki w ogrodzie.
Kulka: Ciekawe, gdzie jest Hili.
***************

From Beth:

From Shiresh Jadhave on FB, with the caption, “Young Scottish Highland, the cutest cows ever.”

A playful kitten flummoxes a security guard—for a while.  From LADBible on FB:

God (who is not verified), is having no truck with Elon Musk’s latest plan:

From Masih. Notice that her hair is flying free:

From Malcolm (ignore the superfluous apostrophe and watch the whole video):

Simon says, “This does nothing for my fear of heights.”

From Barry, who says, “If there’s a more relaxed squirrel in the world, I haven’t seen it.” I think it’s being cooled by the A/C unit, though what blows outside should be warm air, no?

From the Auschwitz Memorial:

 

Tweets from Matthew. He says “this is a fabulous thread,” and it is. Go have a look, and turn the sound up on the video:

Music doth sooth the savage ruminant:

A while thread of projections onto a Swiss public building:

43 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

  1. I have always been puzzled by the development of bread-making. Who thought, Let’s take this plant and grind it up, add water and other things, and bake it?

    AOC said something intelligent yesterday yesterday on the whole Twitter thing in reference to the proposed fee for Blue Checks:

    Yo @elonmusk while I have your attention, why should people pay $8 just for their app to get bricked when they say something you don’t like?

    I’ve wondered in the past if having user fees would provide greater protection against censorship on social media.

    Reply

    1. Processing foods usually I would guess, relates to removing bitterness, or allowing food from loose materials to be put into a more amenable form for eating, & I would suppose flour was not only made from grains, but perhaps evolved from grains thrown in a pot in a sort of porridge, that might have then dried into a more bready form…?

      Just a guess…

      Reply

  3. “There’s almost nothing I wouldn’t do to get verified.”

    OK…

    “But paying $8 a month is one of them.”

    …. _is_ one of _them_… one of the “almost nothing” that He would _not_ do…

    I don’t think I didn’t get it.

    Reply

  5. I bought an Avocado mattress last year. Indeed it is organic (latex) and sustainably sourced; but it’s also fantastically comfortable, and I would highly recommend.

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  6. “Music doth sooth the savage ruminant:”

    I am assuming that this is a riff on the notion that music soothes a savage beast, but that is not what the original version of this saying intends. What music soothes is the savage breast, i.e., anger. This comes from William Congreve’s 1697 play The Mourning Bride, and it appears in the opening of act I, scene i:

    “Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
    To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.
    I’ve read, that things inanimate have mov’d,
    And, as with living Souls, have been inform’d,
    By Magick Numbers and persuasive Sound.
    What then am I? Am I more senseless grown
    Than Trees, or Flint? O force of constant Woe!”

    The speaker of these lines, Almeria, Princess of Granada, is lamenting an anger so fierce that she can find no relief from it, not even through the solace of music.

    In act III, scene ii, we come upon these lines:

    “Heav’n has no rage, like love to hatred turn’d, nor hell a fury, like a woman scorn’d.”

    Thus we have the same play as the source of two of the most frequently misquoted lines in the English language.

    Reply

  7. The Chronicle of Higher Education piece linked to above says that the academic freedom conference starting today at Stanford is going to be livestreamed. Does anyone know whether that livestream will be available to the general public, and, if so, how to access it?

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    1. Sorry Ken. While not particularly IT-literate, i have poked about quite a bit on google yesterday and this morning, but cannot find a link. I thought i saw a conference registration portal last week, but this morning no longer see that.

      Reply

        1. I signed up last week but will not be able to watch it all today or tomorrow. I was asked not to forward the link.

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          1. So if you sent it to me you’d have to kill me afterward? Would you afforded me the customary blindfold, cigarette, and final request? 🙂

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        2. Btw, this line-up of speakers and relatively small ratio of discussion time to advocacy times will be a real test of the viewers’ belief in free speech. I think the “holder of the chalk” for this assemblage shades to the political right, but the left is well represented also on the dais. My opinion is that there are too many speakers scheduled for any meaningful dialog in any of the subject areas. The q&a with scott atlas will be particularly interesting i think. But kudos to the stanford business folks for putting this broadly representative group together! I think that I will wait for Jerry’s (and maybe Steve Pinker’s) commentary on the overall event before diving into any you tube video that might be posted in the near future.

          Reply

  8. In honor of National Skeptics Day, November 4th, I am pleased to announce that I looked it up and National Skeptics Day does indeed fall on November 4th.

    Reply

    2. I looked up skeptic in the Dictionary and saw a picture of James Randi. May he long be remembered. Unusual among skeptics, he used deeds, not word leaving no doubt that his targets were exposed.

      Reply

      1. Also, which nation???

        Not sure. But here is the site. I could not find a country name.

        But the US is full of devout skeptics, so that might be it.

        The link for National Chicken Lady Day took me to the chicken lady. The link for National Skeptics Day took me to the chicken lady 🙁

        Reply

  9. Thanks for the link.

    … the tight schedule will not permit remote questions.
    Under these conditions, critics say, the speakers are unlikely to be meaningfully challenged.

    This does sound like a reasonable objection, given that one of the most important aspects of academic freedom is the give-and-take of interpersonal debate. However, it sounds like questions from the audience are going to be permitted — and many of the people most interested in and capable of challenging the views refused to attend.

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  12. I don’t get the firing someone for a Hitler Halloween costume. Halloween costumes are of bad, scary monsters, they don’t imply approval of the character one is dressing as, rather the opposite.

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    1. Of course its bc things are different now. You used to be able to dress up as Hitler for Halloween. Now you can’t bc other people would want to hang you out to dry just so they can flaunt their virtue.

      Reply

    2. I think it’s ridiculous too. No reasonable reason for it. But your argument doesn’t work. Plenty of people dress up as things they like. Superheroes, cats, flying spaghetti monsters, etc. . . .

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      1. It would seem that Hallowe’en is done differently where you are (are you American?), on this side of the pond I’ve only ever seen scary-monster-themed Hallowe’en costumes. 🙂

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        1. Yeah, definitely could be cultural variations. I lived in Germany for a few years in the 70s and “Halloween” was definitely different there. Called Hexennacht, celebrated in Spring rather than Fall, and instead of dressing up and knocking on doors for candy kids got together in groups and went around vandalizing things.

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    3. The “Stopantisemitism” folks, who seem to be behind the campaign to search for and punish people who wear the wrong costumes, also went after some college kid in Canada for “dressed in what appears to be a Nazi SS guard uniform adorning a gas mask and performing a Heil Hitler salute” at a Halloween event. The kid was dressed in an East German uniform, and was doing a normal hand to the forehead salute.
      So it looks like activists who do not care about context, or even whether the person is actually portraying a Nazi, which is not illegal in the US.

      Reply

  14. Great presentation by PCC(E) and friends out in California today which I was fortunate enough to watch. Short, well argued and well received, as were the responses to the questions.
    There were/are lots of familiar faces (Pinker, Lukianoff, etc) in the audience. And nice to hear Anna Kyrlov’s (who comments here) interesting talk and put a face to her excellent reputation.

    Thiel’s speech was typically him – not terribly helpful, a bit haphazard but not monstrous.

    I’m still watching and enjoying.
    D.A.
    NYC https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/

    Reply

  15. Too bad I can’t read that article on Mary Anning’s fossils, I’m not wasting money (which is limited on my side) for one story. But it’s great they were found. Her story is one of the reasons I’m into paleontology and her other finds on display in London were a highlight of my time there!

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  16. Great to be able to watch the conference today. Altogether worth it, including even Peter Thiel (whom I had never seen or heard before and found most of his talk better than expected). Hope they’ll upload a recording somewhere.

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  18. Ugh. Of course some of the woke sadists live-streaming the event are taking screenshots of Ceiling Cat and other in-person attendees and posting them to Twitter with derogatory comments about “white supremacy.” I think doing so violates the implicit terms of online attendance: an invite-only event shouldn’t have cyber guests taking photos without permission. The same people doing this are those who use alt accounts to stalk those who have blocked them.

    I’m glad the organizers decided to disable comments from cyber attendees. But I wish someone would set some boundaries about the pics being posted to Twitter without permission.

    OTS, I moderated a session at a conference in CA last week. I was very clear that video and audio recordings were not permitted. It would be acceptable to tell liverstreamers that photos are unacceptable.

    Event is going well. Ceiling Cat’s talk was the most informative thus far. Great points. Clear. Captivating.

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  19. The tentacle projections were absolutely brilliant, the others much less so, just plain projections. Nice, but no mindboggle.

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