Monday: Hili dialogue

June 12, 2023 • 6:45 am

It’s the top of the work week: Monday, June 12, 2023, and National Peanut-Butter Cookie Day. Perhaps, if you’re in Alabama, you can have a yellowhammer cookie, the new Official State Cookie made with peanuts, walnuts, and peanut butter:

It’s also Magic Day, Red Rose Day, National Jerky Day, Women Veterans Day, World Day Against Child Labour, and Loving Day, the anniversary of the 1967 Supreme Court decision (Loving v. Virginia) that legalized mixed-race marriages throughout America. (I can’t believe that mixed-race marriages were still illegal in some places the year I graduated from high school.)

Here they are in life. Mildred and Richard Loving:

And they rest together in death:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the June 12 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The NYT reports that Ukraine expelling all Russians from their territory is an “unlikely” outcome of their spring offensive.

Much rides on the outcome. There is little doubt the new military drive will influence discussions of future support for Ukraine as well as debates about how to guarantee its future. What remains unclear, though, is exactly what the United States, Europe and Ukraine view as a “successful” counteroffensive.

Publicly, American and European officials are leaving any definition of success to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. For now, Mr. Zelensky has not laid out any public goals, beyond his oft-stated demand that Russian troops must leave the whole of Ukraine. He is known as a master communicator; any perception that he is backing off that broad ambition would risk undermining his support at a critical moment.

Privately, U.S. and European officials concede that pushing all of Russia’s forces out of occupied Ukrainian land is highly unlikely. Still, two themes emerge as clear ideas of “success”: that the Ukrainian army retake and hold on to key swaths of territory previously occupied by the Russians, and that Kyiv deal the Russian military a debilitating blow that forces the Kremlin to question the future of its military options in Ukraine.

Does that qualify as winning? Not if you’re left with less than you had before.

Some battlefield success, whether by decimating Russia’s army, claiming some territory or both, could help Kyiv secure additional military aid from Europe and the United States. It would also build confidence in allied capitals that their strategy of remaking Ukraine’s forces into a Western-style military is working. And most importantly, such an outcome would build more support in Europe for some sort of long-term security guarantee for Kyiv and strengthen Ukraine’s hand at a bargaining table.

Success is not guaranteed. Throughout the war, the Ukrainian army, with deeply motivated troops, creative military operations and advanced Western weaponry, has outperformed Russia’s military. But the Ukrainians have also found it difficult to dislodge the Russians from their entrenched defensive positions in the last few months, with the front lines barely moving.

The report adds that American analysts think that victories would be smaller: retaking parts of the Dobas, retaking the nuclear plant at Zaporizhzhia, and, importantly, retaking the land bridge between Ukraine and Russian-controlled Crimea, cutting off Russia’s access to resupplying that once-Ukrainian land that’s now a fortress.

*The WaPo explains why Trump has been charged with possessing secret government documents, and Pence and Hillary Clinton were not (and why Biden surely won’t be as well). We went over that a bit yesterday but here’s some additional news:

Notably, however,the indictment does not charge Trump with the illegal retention of any of the 197 documents he returned to the archives.

That shows that if Trump had simply returned all the classified documents he had, he probably never would have been charged with any crimes, said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor.

“This is not a case about what documents were taken, it’s about what former president Trump did after the government sought to retrieve those documents,” said Mintz, who noted that willful-retention cases often hinge on how much evidence prosecutors can find that a person deliberately hid material or refused to give it back.

The indictment offers anecdote after alleged anecdote charging that the former president sought to hide and keep some of the classified papers, so much so that Trump and Nauta are accused of conspiring to obstruct the investigation and scheming to conceal the truth not just from the government, but even from Trump’s own lawyer.

“This is not a case about what documents were taken, it’s about what former president Trump did after the government sought to retrieve those documents,” said Mintz, who noted that willful-retention cases often hinge on how much evidence prosecutors can find that a person deliberately hid material or refused to give it back.

The indictment offers anecdote after alleged anecdote charging that the former president sought to hide and keep some of the classified papers, so much so that Trump and Nauta are accused of conspiring to obstruct the investigation and scheming to conceal the truth not just from the government, but even from Trump’s own lawyer.

To my great dismay, the NBC News reported last night that even if convicted, Trump is unlikely to spend any time in jail. That’s because, they said, there’s no way the Secret Service could protect an ex-President, which they’re required to do, if he’s in jail.  I suggest solitary confinement with rotating Secret Service agents sitting outside the Donald’s cell.

Let’s have a poll! (Please vote.)

Will Donald Trump ever be put in jail?

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*Affirmative action (race-based admissions) will soon be declared illegal by the Supreme Court, but they’re already illegal in California. How did a Democratic Party core issue get overturned in that state?

Mr. Romero was one of millions of California voters, including about half who are Hispanic and a majority who are Asian American, who voted against Proposition 16, which would have restored race-conscious admissions at public universities, and in government hiring and contracting.

The breadth of that rejection shook supporters. California is a liberal bastion and one of the most diverse states in the country. That year, President Biden swamped Donald Trump by 29 percentage points in California, but Proposition 16 went down, with 57 percent of voters opposing it.

. . .But Proposition 16 suggests the politics of affirmative action are different. The results exposed a gulf between the party establishment and its voters.

To make sense of its failure, The New York Times analyzed the 2020 vote, focusing on Los Angeles County, the nation’s most populous county, and spoke to dozens of voters across demographic groups.

Los Angeles voters, an ethnically diverse and liberal lot, passed the proposition by a mere whisker, 51 percent to 49 percent. And the Times analysis of electoral precincts found across all races, support for the referendum fell well short of support for Joe Biden on the same ballot.

This was true across majority Black, Asian, Hispanic and white precincts.

. . . the Times analysis and interviews showed support for Proposition 16 is often divided along racial lines, with Black voters supporting it, while Asian voters rejected it. In fact, nearly all majority Asian precincts in Los Angeles voted against the proposition. And across racial and ethnic groups, support for the referendum fell short of support for Mr. Biden.

This was true even of majority Black precincts in Los Angeles, which supported Proposition 16 by wide margins. Mr. Biden outpaced that support by an average of about 15 percentage points

. . .Valerie Contreras, a crane operator, is a proud union member and civic leader in Wilmington, where half the voters were against the referendum. She had little use for the affirmative action campaign.

“It was ridiculous all the racially loaded terms Democrats used,” she said. “It was a distraction from the issues that affect our lives.”

Asian voters spoke of visceral unease. South and East Asians make up just 15 percent of the state population, and 35 percent of the undergraduates in the University of California system.

Affirmative action, to their view, upends traditional measures of merit — grades, test scores and extracurricular activities — and threatens to reduce their numbers.

. . . He was not surprised, however, that many Asian Americans balked. “The notion that you would look at anything other than pure academic performance is seen by immigrants as antithetical to American values,” he said.

Overall, blacks favor affirmative action, but make up such a small proportion of the population (less than 6%), and there are a lot of Hispanics and Asians, who aren’t so keen on race-based admission.

*It’s been reported that Ted Kaczynski, the “Unabomber”, who was found dead in his cell on Saturday, actually committed suicide. I figured he was terminally ill when I heard that was transferred from Florence ADX, America’s toughest prison, to a prison hospital in North Carolina. And, to be sure, his illness is likely the factor that caused him to kill himself:

Ted Kaczynski, known as the “Unabomber,” who carried out a 17-year bombing campaign that killed three people and injured 23 others, died by suicide, four people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

Kaczynski, who was 81 and suffering from late-stage cancer, was found unresponsive in his cell at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, around 12:30 a.m. on Saturday. Emergency responders performed CPR and revived him before he was transported to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead later Saturday morning, the people told the AP. They were not authorized to publicly discuss Kaczynski’s death and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

Kaczynski had been held in the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado, since May 1998, when he was sentenced to four life sentences plus 30 years for a campaign of terror that set universities nationwide on edge. He admitted committing 16 bombings from 1978 and 1995, permanently maiming several of his victims.

In 2021, he was transferred to the federal medical center in North Carolina, a facility that treats prisoners suffering from serious health problems. Bernie Madoff, the infamous mastermind of the largest-ever Ponzi scheme, died at the facility of natural causes the same year.

*Two giant inflatable ducks were released in Hong Kong’s harbor on Friday. By Saturday, one of them had deflated.

 Two giant inflatable ducks made a splash in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor on Friday, marking the return of a pop-art project that sparked a frenzy in the city a decade ago.

The two 18-meter-tall yellow ducks by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman resemble the bath toys many played with in their childhood. Shortly after their launch, dozens of residents and tourists flocked to the promenade near the government headquarters in Admiralty to snap photos of the ducks.

Hofman said he hopes the art exhibition brings joy to the city and connects people as they make memories together.

“Double duck, double luck,” he said. “In a world where we suffered from a pandemic, wars and political situations, I think it is the right moment to bring back the double luck.”

Double duck, double luck! After the launch

(from AP): Members of the public photograph an art installation called “Double Ducks” by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman at Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong, Friday, June 9, 2023. Two giant inflatable ducks made a splash in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor on Friday, marking the return of a pop-art project that sparked a frenzy in the city a decade ago. (AP Photo/Louise Delmotte)

One of the two giant inflatable ducks floating in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor deflated on Saturday, just a day after they were unveiled to revelers.

Crowds of residents and tourists flocked in the scorching heat to the promenade near the government headquarters in Admiralty to snap photos of the ducks by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman. But many who arrived in the afternoon only found one duck intact, with the other reduced to a puddle of yellow plastic.

Organizers said their staff found one of the ducks was overstretched due to the hot weather and rising air pressure.

Duck and tourists both deflated!:

(From AP): An art installation called “Double Ducks” by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman as one of the duck is deflated at Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong, Saturday, June 10, 2023. (AP Photo/Louise Delmotte)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is spouting bromides:

Hili: Nature is like a book.
A: In what sense?
Hili: Sometimes fascinating, sometimes boring.
In Polish:
Hili: Natura jest jak książka.
Ja: W jakim sensie?
Hili: Czasem fascynująca, a czasem nudna.

And a photo of a cute but sleepy Baby Kulka:

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From Doc Bill:

From Pet Jokes & Puns:

From Mark:

A tweet from Masih, showing another protestor who was killed. The Google translation:

IRGC officers shot and killed Kian’s mother’s cousin#Poya_MolayiRad today on his birthday. Khamenei and his agents are responsible for all the crimes and destruction of this land. Let’s not let them fill our innocent children one by one. It is the duty of all of us to stand by the Kian family and against the murderers and demand their innocent blood. #Woman_Life_Freedom.

From reader Jez and his wife:

From Barry: a firefly taking off. “Lights on?” “Check.”

 

The British Library apparently removed this tweet. Do you suppose it realized that sequential hermaphroditism in fish has nothing to do with either human transsexuality or homosexuality? Or did the tweet get “ratioed”

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a woman who escaped, was eventually recaptured and sent to another camp, but survived and was liberated!

Tweets from Dr. Cobb, still in Norway, I believe. If you EVER get to Boston or Cambridge, go see the glass flowers at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. They are the most stunning glass objects I’ve ever seen, so realistic that you have trouble distinguishing them from real plants. They are a fantastic and underappreciated wonder.

This is really scary!

We’re seeing this fantastic conjunction as it looked 160 million years ago!

21 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

    2. There have been other children that survived long periods in the jungle after a plane crash. The most famous was Juliane Koepcke, daughter of famous ornithologist Maria Koepcke. They were both passengers in a plane that broke up in mid-air over the Amazon and crashed. Maria was killed but Juliane was thrown from the plane (still in her seat) and fell ten thousand feet to hit the jungle below. Incredibly she survived the fall. She was hurt and without food and it took her eleven days to walk out to civilization.

  2. Maybe the secret service requirement to protect ex-presidents can be changed for/in such situations, where the ex-president is convicted of federal crimes.

    That temperature chart for North Atlantic Surface Temperatures is so crazy, it begs looking for a source of error. I wish they would label the lines for 2022, and 2021, and prior years, to see if there’s a trend year over year. I notice that the darker lines huddle at the bottom of the chart, and the lighter lines near the top – are the lighter lines the more recent years?

    1. The ocean temperature tweet contains a testable time-limited prediction without any weasel-word qualifiers (unlike, “if present trends continue the West Side Highway will be under water in 25 years.”) So I’m printing it out for my bulletin board to see how things go “into 2024”. I presume the concerning events predicted are Atlantic hurricanes for the 2023 season and the following winter either colder or warmer tthan normal. Anything else we should keep an eye on?

  3. It’s not that often that a meme makes me laugh out loud but the one about Biden visiting Trump in prison certainly did!

  4. On this day:
    1240 – At the instigation of Louis IX of France, an inter-faith debate, known as the Disputation of Paris, starts between a Christian monk and four rabbis.

    1381 – Peasants’ Revolt: In England, rebels assemble at Blackheath, just outside London.

    1550 – The city of Helsinki, Finland (belonging to Sweden at the time) is founded by King Gustav I of Sweden.

    1817 – The earliest form of bicycle, the dandy horse, is driven by Karl von Drais.

    1914 – Massacre of Phocaea: Turkish irregulars slaughter 50 to 100 Greeks and expel thousands of others in an ethnic cleansing operation in the Ottoman Empire.

    1939 – Shooting begins on Paramount Pictures’ Dr. Cyclops, the first horror film photographed in three-strip Technicolor.

    1939 – The Baseball Hall of Fame opens in Cooperstown, New York.

    1942 – Anne Frank receives a diary for her thirteenth birthday.

    1943 – The Holocaust: Germany liquidates the Jewish Ghetto in Brzeżany, Poland (now Berezhany, Ukraine). Around 1,180 Jews are led to the city’s old Jewish graveyard and shot.

    1963 – The film Cleopatra, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, is released in US theaters. It was the most expensive film made at the time.

    1964 – Anti-apartheid activist and ANC leader Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life in prison for sabotage in South Africa.

    1967 – The United States Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia declares all U.S. state laws which prohibit interracial marriage to be unconstitutional.

    1979 – Bryan Allen wins the second Kremer prize for a man-powered flight across the English Channel in the Gossamer Albatross.

    1981 – The first of the Indiana Jones film franchise, Raiders of the Lost Ark, is released in theaters.

    1987 – Cold War: At the Brandenburg Gate, U.S. President Ronald Reagan publicly challenges Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.

    1990 – Russia Day: The parliament of the Russian Federation formally declares its sovereignty.

    1997 – Queen Elizabeth II reopens the Globe Theatre in London.

    2016 – Forty-nine civilians are killed and 58 others injured in an attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida; the gunman, Omar Mateen, is killed in a gunfight with police.

    2017 – American student Otto Warmbier returns home in a coma after spending 17 months in a North Korean prison and dies a week later.

    2018 – United States President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un of North Korea held the first meeting between leaders of their two countries in Singapore.

    Births:
    1802 – Harriet Martineau, English sociologist and author (d. 1876).

    1819 – Charles Kingsley, English priest, historian, and author (d. 1875).

    1827 – Johanna Spyri, Swiss author, best known for Heidi (d. 1901).

    1858 – Harry Johnston, English botanist and explorer (d. 1927). [Published 40 books on African subjects and was one of the key players in the Scramble for Africa that occurred at the end of the 19th century.]

    1897 – Anthony Eden, English soldier and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1977).

    1899 – Fritz Albert Lipmann, German-American biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1986).

    1899 – Weegee, Ukrainian-American photographer and journalist (d. 1968).

    1916 – Irwin Allen, American director and producer (d. 1991).

    1920 – Peter Jones, English actor and screenwriter (d. 2000). [He was the voice of The Book in the original radio series of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The creators had wanted someone with a “Peter Jonesy sort of voice” and after several rejections asked Jones himself.]

    1922 – Margherita Hack, Italian astrophysicist and author (d. 2013).

    1924 – George H. W. Bush, American lieutenant and politician, 41st President of the United States (d. 2018).

    1928 – Richard M. Sherman, American composer and director.

    1929 – Anne Frank, German-Dutch diarist; victim of the Holocaust (d. 1945).

    1941 – Chick Corea, American pianist and composer (d. 2021).

    1941 – Roy Harper, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor.

    1941 – Reg Presley, English singer-songwriter (d. 2013).

    1950 – Bun E. Carlos, American drummer.

    1962 – Jordan Peterson, Canadian psychologist, professor and cultural critic.

    “He’s dead. However, credit where it’s due, he hasn’t let that stop him.”
    1567 – Richard Rich, 1st Baron Rich, English politician, Lord Chancellor of England (b. 1490).

    1917 – Teresa Carreño, Venezuelan-American singer-songwriter, pianist, and conductor (b. 1853).

    1972 – Dinanath Gopal Tendulkar, Indian writer and documentary filmmaker (b. 1909).

    1980 – Billy Butlin, South African-English businessman, founded the Butlins Company (b. 1899).

    1994 – Nicole Brown Simpson, ex-wife of O. J. Simpson (b. 1959) and Ron Goldman, restaurant employee (b. 1968).

    2003 – Gregory Peck, American actor and political activist (b. 1916).

    2011 – Carl Gardner, American singer (The Coasters) (b. 1928). [Best known as the foremost member and founder of The Coasters and for the 1958 song “Yakety Yak”.]

  5. The British Library apparently removed this tweet. Do you suppose it realized that sequential hermaphroditism in fish has nothing to do with either human transsexuality or homosexuality? Or did the tweet get “ratioed”?
    I think it was both. Bloody idiots!

  6. California, except for Los Angeles County apparently, is “diverse” and “liberal”. Why is anyone then surprised that a measure would be repudiated that was intended to give special preference to one particularly and chronically feckless racial group out of the many who live there? Has the New York Times forgotten what “diverse” and “liberal” even mean? Hint to the Times: they don’t mean “majority black”.

    This is a great day: to see an attempt to end-run around the Supreme Court get tripped as it crosses the line of scrimmage.

  7. There is Blaschka glass in the UCL Grant museum Jack used to run, in Gower St – free to visit if near Tottenham Ct Rd area…

  8. Found the poll on Trump. Only 118 votes so far. Where is everyone? Prison for an ex-prez? Yes! It is unprecedented, but what is progress for if not to see justice done? GROG

  9. I saw the British Library tweet before they pulled it. At that time, it was massively ratioed and they had limited who could reply, but a lot of replies had been posted before they got around to that. I don’t recall seeing any truly positive replies though I didn’t look all that hard. The most positive I saw were variations on “That was really interesting information about those fish but what do fish have to do with pride month?” Elsewhere, I saw a tweet suggesting sending complaints about it to a British Library email address so they presumably were still getting fallout until they pulled it.

    Regarding Trump and prison: I can’t imagine them putting him in a regular prison because of the security issue but I wouldn’t rule out some kind of house arrest. If convicted there needs to be some punishment.

  10. I was wondering the same thing about possible prison, put the Donald in solitary and have rotating shifts of Secret Service sit outside his cell. Maybe send him to Guantanamo?

    1. Gosh, you people are vindictive. He hasn’t even been convicted yet. Then if the punishment is to be at all proportionate to the crime, the sentence should be one day in The Hole, with Secret Service dutifully outside, then freedom. (Of course if he’s been re-elected in the meantime he can’t go to prison at all, if the will of the people means anything. The White House is almost a form of house arrest with an ankle bracelet anyway.)

      The purpose of solitary confinement is to protect disliked inmates from revenge rapes and killings, and for “short-term” management of severely disturbed and violent offenders who are too dangerous to be allowed onto the range, or who are too likely to escape. To readily reach for solitary confinement to solve an administrative problem is barbaric. At least that’s what the prison reformers say.

  11. House arrest for Trump is the best we can hope for, unfortunately. Hopefully with no golfing allowed.

  12. Historical analogies are never exact and always subject to criticism. Yet, they can offer broad lessons that help us to understand current situations. In article posted on the Foreign Affairs site, historian Margaret Macmillan does just that. She compares the war in Ukraine to World War I. In both cases, the world did not think large land wars would take place, and if they did, they wouldn’t last long. She makes the telling point that prior to the Ukraine war, most strategists dismissed the possibility of a European war in which the combatants would send large armies against each other only to be slaughtered and mired down in trenches facing entrenched defenses. Instead, they thought wars would be fought primarily by high tech, such as drones and cyberwarfare. How wrong they were! She goes on to note that in both wars great slaughters took place over symbolic targets of little or no strategic value. She describes how once a war starts it often escalates becoming more vicious as time goes by. Finally, she relates that although all wars eventually end, the conclusion is not necessarily satisfactory to either party, planting the seeds of later conflict.

    All this adds up to is that the war in Ukraine will have profound and unintended consequences and likely not good ones. The article is well worth reading.

    https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/how-wars-dont-end

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