Sunday: Hili dialogue

December 31, 2023 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the last day of the year: Sunday, December 31, 2023, and, for crying out loud, National Vinegar Day.  It has been an acidic year, hasn’t it?  It’s still Coynezaa, though. I was born at 11:15 p.m. on December 30, so I claim that it’s my birthday not only on Dec. 30, but also today until 11:15.  Here’s the card I got from my sister:

It’s also National Champagne Day, World Peace Meditation Day, and, of course, New Year’s Eve and its related observances, including: First Night in the US, Last Day of the Year or Bisperás ng Bagong Taón, special holiday between Rizal Day and New Year’s Day in the Philippines, Novy God Eve in Russia, Ōmisoka in Japan, and the first day of Hogmanay or “Auld Year’s Night” in Scotland. Finally, it’s the seventh of the Twelve Days of Christmas and  thesixth and penultimate day of Kwanzaa.  Coynezaa ended yesterday.

Posting will be light today as it’s a holiday and I also have a tummy ache.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the December 31 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The Associated Press has a dire message: more House Democrats than Republicans are retiring next year, and you know what that means.

A chaotic year for the House is coming to a close with more Democrats than Republicans deciding to leave the chamber, a disparity that could have major ramifications in next year’s elections.

About two dozen Democrats have indicated they won’t seek reelection, with half running for another elected office. Meanwhile, only 14 Republicans have said they are not seeking another term, with three seeking elected office elsewhere.

More retirements can be expected after the holidays, when lawmakers have had a chance to spend time with families and make decisions ahead of reelection deadlines. But so far, the numbers don’t indicate the dysfunction in the House is causing a mass exodus for either party.

. . .But it’s the departure of a handful of Democrats in competitive districts that has Republicans thinking the overall retirement picture gives them an advantage in determining who will control the House after the 2024 elections.

Reps. Katie Porter of California, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Abigail Spanberger of Virginia proved they could win toss-up congressional districts in good election cycles for Democrats and not-so-good cycles. They are all seeking higher office within their home states. Porter and Slotkin are running for the U.S. Senate. Spanberger is running for governor in 2025.

. . .On the other side of the aisle, the Republicans leaving office generally represent districts that Democrats have little chance of flipping. They’ll be replaced by Republicans, predicted Rep. Richard Hudson, the chairman of the House Republican campaign arm.

“Retirements are a huge problem for the Democrats. They’re not a problem for us,” Hudson said.

With a Republic President more than likely, and the Senate composition a toss-up (Dems now hold it), it could be a rough four years starting a year from February. Is there any good news out there?

*Here’s yesterday’s NYT online headline, as usual putting Israel in a bad light. It’s a good question to ask, of course, and Israel will surely be looking for an answer, but the NYT loves to put up headlines casting aspersions on Israel. Click to read:

The summary answer:

The full reasons behind the military’s slow response may take months to understand. The government has promised an inquiry. But a New York Times investigation found that Israel’s military was undermanned, out of position and so poorly organized that soldiers communicated in impromptu WhatsApp groups and relied on social media posts for targeting information. Commandos rushed into battle armed only for brief combat. Helicopter pilots were ordered to look to news reports and Telegram channels to choose targets.

And perhaps most damning: The Israel Defense Forces did not even have a plan to respond to a large-scale Hamas attack on Israeli soil, according to current and former soldiers and officers. If such a plan existed on a shelf somewhere, the soldiers said, no one had trained on it and nobody followed it. The soldiers that day made it up as they went along.

“In practice, there wasn’t the right defensive preparation, no practice, and no equipping and building strength for such an operation,” said Yom Tov Samia, a major general in the Israeli reserves and former head of the military’s Southern Command.

“There was no defense plan for a surprise attack such as the kind we have seen on Oct. 7,” said Amir Avivi, a brigadier general in the reserves and a former deputy commander of the Gaza Division, which is responsible for protecting the region.

That lack of preparation is at odds with a founding principle of Israeli military doctrine. From the days of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and defense minister, the goal was to always be on the offensive — to anticipate attacks and fight battles in enemy territory.

It’s baffling. No contigency plan for a big Hamas attack? When I was in Israel two weeks before the attack, a Man Who Knows told me that there would be a war in September or October, a war between Gaza and Israel launched by a Hamas-caused “incident.” He runs an organization with its pulse on the Arab world, so how could he be so sure and the Israeli government so oblivious? The NYT doesn’t help with an answer, except to say it’s “hubris.” Those arrogant Jews!

Israeli security and military agencies produced repeated assessments that Hamas was neither interested in nor capable of launching a massive invasion. The authorities clung to that optimistic view even when Israel obtained Hamas battle plans that revealed an invasion was precisely what Hamas was planning.

The decisions, in retrospect, are tinged with hubris. The notion that Hamas could execute an ambitious attack was seen as so unlikely that Israeli intelligence officials even reduced eavesdropping on Hamas radio traffic, concluding that it was a waste of time.

None of the officers interviewed, including those stationed along the border, could recall discussions or training based on a plan to repel such an assault.

Well, you can be sure these lapses are going to be remedied pronto, especially because even if Hamas is taken out, there’s still Hezbollah to the north.

*Another headline I couldn’t resist, this time the WSJ’s article, “How abortion-rights backers changed their message—and started winning“. What did they change? The way they framed the question, and it makes sense:

Shortly after November’s state-level elections affirmed voters’ support for abortion rights in Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio, a Democratic pollster named Angela Kuefler got on a webinar to deliver an analysis—and a warning—to her fellow progressives. Yes, it was clear abortion was a winning issue, she said, but it mattered a lot how advocates talked about it.

“Talking about this in the context of values really widens our support,” said Kuefler, an adviser to the Nov. 7 ballot initiative in Ohio that added a right to abortion to the state’s constitution, winning by nearly 14 points in a state President Biden lost by eight. By values, she explained, she was principally talking about the idea of freedom. In polling by Kuefler’s firm, Global Strategy Group, majorities answered “yes” to both “Should we restore the rights we had under Roe v. Wade?” and “Should personal decisions like abortion be up to women rather than the government?” But the latter statement outperformed the former by a whopping 19-point margin, she noted, adding, “It’s the values language that allows us to win by such big margins.”

It’s a shame that so many people are pro-choice but abortion is still restricted:

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe 18 months ago in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, voters have taken the abortion-rights side in seven straight statewide ballots from Kansas to Montana to Michigan. Support for what was long seen as a divisive issue has turned lopsided: In the latest Wall Street Journal poll, 62% said the procedure should be mostly or completely legal, a seven-point increase from before the court’saction. Such shifts on long-debated issues are rare and potentially seismic in an electorate closely divided along partisan lines.

It was the Dobbs decision itself that most powerfully changed the discussion, spurring widespread anger by revoking a right many had taken for granted and giving rise to tragic stories in states where the procedure has been outlawed, from the 10-year-old Ohio rape victim who had to leave her state to get an abortion to the Texas mother who was blocked by her state’s supreme court from aborting a fetus with a fatal genetic condition. But many advocates believe the shift has also been driven by a subtle but powerful change in messaging that has reshaped the way liberals talk about abortion, fundamentally changing the terms of the highly charged debate and leaving conservatives scrambling to respond.

Going forward, many Democrats see the issue’s success—at a time when their party’s stances on many other issues are unpopular—as a crucial political asset: not only as a way to drive turnout in the 2024 presidential election but also a road map for appealing to voters’ fundamental values on issues from the economy to education.

So the Democrats have abortion on their side, while the Republicans have immigration and wokeness, as well as a Presidential candidate, who, Ceiling Cat help me, seems likely to win. It’s really a shame that the Supremes left the choice of abortion to the states, but again, the Constitution says very little that could make the issue a federal one.

*I don’t often look at the Guardian, but it did have one article that interested me, “The risk of a broader Middle East war is rising,” And indeed, there’s little doubt that this is true. But who will it involve? Iran? Lebanon? Syria? All of the above? Read a few excerpts:

 the war could still get much worse.

Iran’s proxy in Yemen, the Houthis, have been firing missiles and drones at commercial shipping and naval vessels and at southern Israel for weeks now. Global markets are spooked as the danger to shipping through the Bab al-Mandebstrait rises.

Pressure is mounting on the Biden administration to strike back against Iran and its Houthi partner to stop these attacks. Advocates of striking back hard think this will deter a larger war. But if the US goes too far, it could end up entering a war it badly needs to avoid. The horror of the conflict between Israel and Gaza is already bad enough, but a larger conflagration would be a catastrophe for the US, Israel and people throughout the region.

. . .The Houthi attacks have forced a very difficult choice on the Biden administration. The American right, which has long had Iran in its gunsights, has been calling for the US to strike back hard at Iran. These experts and former officials argue that a show of force would deter further provocations from Iran and its proxies and help stabilize the region. John Bolton, the former Trump national security adviser, recently charged that Biden was “failing to establish even minimal deterrence” and called for more far-reaching US strikes, including direct attacks on Iran.

This would be a big gamble. Rather than deterring Iran, more far-reaching strikes might well incite Tehran to lash out in an effort to protect its interests and prestige or to warn the US to go no further. If an Iranian counterattack resulted in significant US casualties, Washington would immediately come under pressure to retaliate. This is the path to a broader regional war that would be enormously damaging to US national interests.

And the puerile conclusion, something even I could have written:

In a situation where emotions are running high thanks to the appalling violence in Gaza, with hawks in Washington eager to dole out hellfire and brimstone on Tehran, and the global economy at stake, it will be even harder to exercise restraint and avoid a broader regional war – the worst-case outcome for American interests.

Of course the Guardian, like all MSM, is against Israel, but the analysis in this article adds nothing to what I really knew. Will the war widen? Maybe, but we don’t know. Right not I think it depends on what Hezbolah does—they’re increasing their rocket attacks on Israel—and how Israel chooses to respond. I’m not optimistic, But neither do I fill up the columns of the Guardian with useless speculation, or get paid for it.

*The Washington Post has named its ten best movies of 2023, and I’m ashamed to say that I haven’t seen a one of them. (I have, however, read many books this year.)  I’ll list them above in numerical order, and if you’ve seen them (hasn’t everyone seen “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer”?) weigh in below. I’m serious: it’s time for me to watch some flicks.

I’ve linked each movie to the ratings on Rotten Tomatoes (all get high critics’ ratings, but some, like “You Hurt My Feelings” and “Reality”, aren’t much liked by the public ):

  1. American Fiction
  2. The Holdovers
  3. You Hurt My Feelings
  4. Anatomy of a Fall
  5. “Barbenheimer” (their cutsie mashup of Barbie and Oppeneimer)
  6. Joan Baez I am a Noise
  7. Past Lives
  8. Reality
  9. Air
  10. Origin

Not only have I not seen any of them save the two in #5, but I haven’t even heard of any of the rest. This situation must be rectified—if those other movies are worth seeing

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has a resolution:

A: Do you have any New Year’s resolutions?
Hili: Yes, next year I will not hunt elephants.
In Polish:
Ja: Masz jakieś zobowiązania noworoczne?
Hili: Tak, nie będę w przyszłym roku polowała na słonie.
And here is Baby Kulka eating yogurt from a spoon:

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

I’ve had this conversation!

From Not Another Science Cat Page:

From Jesus of the Day:

 

From Masih: a hijab-less Iranian woman fights for her right to show her hair:

From Jez, highlighting a problem I always had:

Well this is unexpected. You can find the collection (they were op-eds in The Crimson) here.

Have an “aww” moment:

From Barry: Speaking of seals, here’s a sea lion shoplifting (or “boatlifting”):

From the Auschwitz Memorial, two Dutch brothers gassed upon arrival:

Two tweets from Doctor Cobb:

His remark about this one: “And I thought cats were annoying when they drink from your glass of water.” But this isn’t annoying at all!

This is bad. All but two of the species were Hawaiian.

23 thoughts on “Sunday: Hili dialogue”

  1. On this day:
    406 – Vandals, Alans and Suebians cross the Rhine, beginning an invasion of Gaul.

    1600 – The British East India Company is chartered.

    1759 – Arthur Guinness signs a 9,000-year lease at £45 per annum and starts brewing Guinness.

    1790 – Efimeris, the oldest Greek newspaper of which issues have survived till today, is published for the first time.

    1844 – The Philippines skipped this date in order to align the country with the rest of Asia, as the trading interest switched to China, Dutch East Indies and neighboring territories after Mexico gained independence from Spain on 27 September 1821. In the islands, Monday, 30 December 1844 was immediately followed by Wednesday, 1 January 1845.

    1853 – A dinner party is held inside a life-size model of an iguanodon created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and Sir Richard Owen in south London, England.

    1857 – Queen Victoria chooses Ottawa, then a small logging town, as the capital of the Province of Canada.

    1862 – American Civil War: Abraham Lincoln signs an act that admits West Virginia to the Union, thus dividing Virginia in two.

    1878 – Karl Benz, working in Mannheim, Germany, files for a patent on his first reliable two-stroke gas engine. He was granted the patent in 1879.

    1879 – Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent lighting to the public for the first time, in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

    1907 – The first ever ball drop in Times Square.

    1946 – President Harry S. Truman officially proclaims the end of hostilities in World War II.

    1951 – Cold War: The Marshall Plan expires after distributing more than US$13.3 billion in foreign aid to rebuild Western Europe.

    1955 – General Motors becomes the first U.S. corporation to make over US$1 billion in a year.

    1961 – RTÉ, Ireland’s state broadcaster, launches its first national television service.

    1968 – The first flight of the Tupolev Tu-144, the first civilian supersonic transport in the world.

    1983 – The AT&T Bell System is broken up by the United States Government.

    1983 – Benjamin Ward is appointed New York City Police Department’s first ever African American police commissioner.

    1991 – All official Soviet Union institutions have ceased operations by this date, five days after the Soviet Union is officially dissolved.

    1992 – Czechoslovakia is peacefully dissolved in what is dubbed by media as the Velvet Divorce, resulting in the creation of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic.

    1998 – The European Exchange Rate Mechanism freezes the values of the legacy currencies in the Eurozone, and establishes the value of the euro currency.

    1999 – The first President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, resigns from office, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President and successor.

    1999 – The U.S. government hands control of the Panama Canal (as well all the adjacent land to the canal known as the Panama Canal Zone) to Panama. This act complied with the signing of the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties.

    2000 – The last day of the 20th Century and 2nd Millennium.

    2004 – The official opening of Taipei 101, the tallest skyscraper at that time in the world, standing at a height of 509 metres (1,670 ft).

    2009 – Both a blue moon and a lunar eclipse occur.

    2011 – NASA succeeds in putting the first of two Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory satellites in orbit around the Moon.

    2019 – The World Health Organization is informed of cases of pneumonia with an unknown cause, detected in Wuhan. This later turned out to be COVID-19, the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    2020 – The World Health Organization issues its first emergency use validation for a COVID-19 vaccine.

    Births:
    1720 – Charles Edward Stuart, Scottish claimant to the throne of England (d. 1788). [AKA Bonnie Prince Charlie.]

    1860 – Joseph S. Cullinan, American businessman, co-founded Texaco (d. 1937).

    1869 – Henri Matisse, French painter and sculptor (d. 1954).

    1878 – Elizabeth Arden, Canadian businesswoman, founded Elizabeth Arden, Inc. (d. 1966).

    1905 – Helen Dodson Prince, American astronomer and academic (d. 2002).

    1908 – Simon Wiesenthal, Ukrainian-Austrian Nazi hunter and author (d. 2005).

    1914 – Mary Logan Reddick, American neuroembryologist (d. 1966).

    1917 – Evelyn Knight, American singer (d. 2007). [Damon Runyon, in one of his newspaper columns, described Knight as “a lissome blonde lassie with a gentle little voice and a face mother would not mind having brought home to her”.]

    1925 – Daphne Oram, British composer and electronic musician (d. 2003).

    1937 – Anthony Hopkins, Welsh actor, director, and composer.

    1942 – Andy Summers, English guitarist, songwriter, and producer.

    1943 – John Denver, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (d. 1997).

    1943 – Ben Kingsley, English actor.

    1948 – Donna Summer, American singer-songwriter (d. 2012).

    1954 – Alex Salmond, Scottish economist and politician, First Minister of Scotland.

    1959 – Val Kilmer, American actor.

    1977 – Psy, South Korean musician.

    1977 – Donald Trump Jr., American businessman. [The next-but -one Trump to run for president?]

    Between our birth and death we may touch understanding, As a moth brushes a window with its wing:
    1384 – John Wycliffe, English philosopher, theologian, and translator (b. 1331). [Posthumously declared a heretic, his corpse (or possibly a neighbour’s) was exhumed; on the orders of the bishop the remains were burned and the ashes drowned in the River Swift.]

    1691 – Robert Boyle, Anglo-Irish chemist and physicist (b. 1627).

    1719 – John Flamsteed, English astronomer and academic (b. 1646). [The first Astronomer Royal. His main achievements were the preparation of a 3,000-star catalogue, Catalogus Britannicus, and a star atlas called Atlas Coelestis, both published posthumously. He also made the first recorded observations of Uranus, although he mistakenly catalogued it as a star, and he laid the foundation stone for the Royal Greenwich Observatory.]

    1877 – Gustave Courbet, French-Swiss painter and sculptor (b. 1819).

    1934 – Cornelia Clapp, American marine biologist (b. 1849). [Earned the first Ph.D. in biology awarded to a woman in the United States from Syracuse University in 1889, and she would earn a second doctoral degree from the University of Chicago in 1896.]

    1948 – Malcolm Campbell, English racing driver and journalist (b. 1885).

    1972 – Henry Gerber, German-American activist, founded the Society for Human Rights (b. 1892).

    1980 – Raoul Walsh, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter (b. 1887).

    1985 – Ricky Nelson, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (b. 1940).

    1993 – Brandon Teena, American murder victim (b. 1972).

    1993 – Big Bertha, Irish cattle and twice Guinness World Record holder (oldest cow, cow with most offspring) (b. 1945).

    1997 – Floyd Cramer, American singer-songwriter and pianist (b. 1933). [Cramer’s “slip-note” or “bent-note” style, in which a passing note slides almost instantly into or away from a chordal note, influenced a generation of pianists.]

    2015 – Natalie Cole, American singer-songwriter and actress (b. 1950).

    2021 – Betty White, American actress, comedian and producer (b. 1922). [Produced and starred in the series Life with Elizabeth (1953–1955), thus becoming the first woman to produce a sitcom.]

  3. The extinct bird poster is extremely sad, and those are just the US birds that went extinct. Birds in other parts of the world must also have been declared extinct in 2023.
    One thing to remember, though, is that extinction is hard to detect and gradual. Some of the species in that poster have probably been extinct for many years. The Bachman’s Warbler is a good example. None have been confirmed since the 1960s; the last report (unconfirmed) was in the late 1980s. Habitat destruction in the US and in its Cuban wintering ground was probably the cause.

  6. Happy birthday!

    I come from a long line of wonderful republicans and they, being opposed to governmental interference in our private lives, we’re always pro-choice.

  7. > for crying out loud, National Vinegar Day.

    I beg to differ. Red wine, apple cider, Balsamic – they’re all the chef’s kiss. I love vinegar so much that I’ll sometimes have a spoonful of straight-up vinegar with a chaser of olive oil to cut the pucker. Delish.

    Also, if you’ve never tried poulet au vinegre on one of your forays to France, you should. One of the tastiest dishes I’ve ever had.

    On edit: Happy Coynezaa and a belated happy birthday!!

    1. Yes, I often drink vinegar straight- no chaser. I usually have 15-20 types in the pantry, including pineapple, coconut, sugar cane (Sarap-Asim), Chinese red and black, brown rice, champagne/sherry/barolo/chianti/chardonnay…and they range from sweet to mild to very astringent. Vinegar is one of the finest ingredients ever created.

  8. Belated happy birthday. As a new year kid, I identify with the Christmas/Birthday gift theme – although I’m sort of surprised that, as a jewish kid, you do too! Santa is an

    Re movies, of the ones on that list I saw, IMO, the best was Oppenheimer, then Air then the Holdovers. I slept through all but the first 20 mins of Barbie streaming on TV last week. The others in the room, who stayed awake, seemed to think I’d done better than they had! But, having not really seen it, I don’t feel I can comment.

    Other movies. I enjoyed Ferrari (one of the better things I’ve seen recently) and was OK with Napoleon (not the best, but not terrible). Going to see Poor Things this afternoon, since it looked amusing. Origin and American Fiction are also on my list as and when they hit a streaming service. (Or theatre – American Fiction only released on Dec 15 and is not available locally – per a google search, although it is on in Chicago. Apparently the burbs don’t get it yet)

    Happy New Year

  9. Another belated Happy Birthday. The 2 Ducks walk into a bar cartoon can be taken as a University of Oregon joke. That cat drinking water bit, just so.

      1. I admit – I picked this nugget up here and there over the year – on WEIT too, pretty sure – Kermit the Frog was involved – and it bumped on eXtwitter, just now so I HASTENED here – cheers!… 123123 of them!… unless it’s

        311223 of them[day month year], which is …

        […]

        188100 more!

        BTW that is divisible by 11.

  11. The B-day card from your sister quacked me up! It’s also a good cautionary tale about smartphones.

    I saw one more movie on the list than you: “Air.” It was a good movie and another successful team-up of friends Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. I have “Anatomy of a Fall” on my need-to-watch list. I recently watched the apocalyptic thriller “Leave the World Behind” which I enjoyed (76% tomato, 34% audience). I’m a sucker for the main actors: Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali, Ethan Hawke.

    The extinct birds are disturbing. We’re all living through a major anthropogenic extinction event and it will only get worse.

  12. ”American Fiction
    The Holdovers
    You Hurt My Feelings
    Anatomy of a Fall*
    “Barbenheimer” (their cutsie mashup of Barbie and Oppeneimer*)
    Joan Baez I am a Noise*
    Past Lives
    Reality
    Air
    Origin”

    I’ve seen the three I’ve marked with asterisks. The first is a drama. Not really my type of film, but a great performance by Sandra Hüller. Oppenheimer is not a perfect motion picture but worth watching. Even minor characters who just have one or two lines are instantly recognizable even if they are not named. The film about Baez is neither a biopic nor a concert film nor a documentary but basically about her own inner demons, concluding with some surprising accusations I’m not sure I believe (and I’m not even sure that she believes them—not even sure that she is sure that she believes them). Also seen recently (and recommended): Living Bach and Journey into Light

    Even if you’re not into professional wrestling (I’m not), The Iron Claw about the Von Erich family is a very good film. Also Girl You Know It’s True, a tragicomedy about Milli Vanilli.

  13. As an educator, I think you would enjoy The Holdovers. Paul Giamatti puts in an Oscar winning performance, IMHO.

  14. Intelligence failures of Oct 7 are not unique. Before the 1973 war the head of military intelligence, Zeira, was convinced that Egypt would not attack — the conception was that Egypt would never attack without air superiority. So he dismissed warnings from an Israeli source in the Egyptian Government! And he turned off listening devices Israel had placed on the West Bank of the Canal. Given that Israel almost lost the war in the early days of the conflict, this is the worst intelligence failure in Israeli history.

  16. Re movies: Not on the list, but I strongly recommend Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron.

    I enjoyed both Oppenheimer and Barbie. Oppenheimer is particularly worth seeing on the big screen for the Trinity sequence, and Barbie for the Barbie Land set decorations.

    I’m looking forward to American Fiction, which is about an intellectual black writer who is ignored until he writes a parody of the sort of “black” memoir popular with Wokeish whites (his title: “My Pafology”) and it gets published (and taken unironically.)

  17. From the movies list: Past Lives is worth seeing. It’s an anatomy of a long-term friendship that avoids sentimental clichés.

  18. Loved the California sea lion video but wondered how he learned to do that. I think I have discovered more of the backstory on the sea lion(s), ‘Pancho’. I found a longer version on YouTube, as well as a few other videos of at least a couple sea lions who do this in the mouth of Cabo San Lucas harbor, Mx. In the longer version of this video, the fisherman starts out feeding a fish to a flying pelican off the stern. The sea lion then jumps on the swim deck and the fisherman feeds him two fish. He sees where the fish are coming from and hops up on the back rail and plunges into the bait bucket himself.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTefwgSPRr0

    In a similar video, the gate to the swim deck is left open and the operator lures the sea lion aboard with a fish. He gets fed the fish and the operator introduces him as Pancho. It seems pretty clear he knows this sea lion and has done this before. It’s a tourist attraction at the end of the day. I don’t know how it first started but a few sea lions have definitely now been trained by the tour operator(s) to do this.

    https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nMeNtEF-dqs

    In the third video the sea lion sits patiently on the swim deck while a very brave (or foolish) girl gets him fish from the bait well with his mouth inches from her arm. He even lets her ‘pet’ him.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8BLbfB2Oas

    Two more videos of the same sea lions, at least one from a different boat.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFk8XmYhcKo

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jgtBNIZHEw

    While these videos are hysterically funny, I worry it may not be so funny in the long run. Just one idiot who teases them and gets bit or the sea lions go and approach the wrong people who either don’t like them or are afraid of them and …

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