Monday: Hili dialogue

March 4, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the first Monday in March: Monday, March 4, 2024, and National Poundcake Day (another Breakfast of Champions when dunked in coffee or topped with various stuff, like the one below):

“pretty poundcake machine” by  Emily Cavalier is licensed under CC BY 2.0..

It’s also Casimir Pulaski Day, National Snack Day, and, appropriately, World Obesity Day.  Also note that today is National Dance the Waltz Day, and National Grammar Day. 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this by consulting the March 4 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz

*This morning we’ll hear if the Supreme Court will overturn Colorado’s decision to take Donald Trump off the GOP primary ballot:

The Supreme Court announced on Sunday that it would issue at least one decision on Monday, a strong signal that it would rule then on former President Donald J. Trump’s eligibility for Colorado’s primary ballot.

The announcement said Monday’s opinion or opinions would be posted online starting at 10 a.m. “The court will not take the bench,” it said.

*After the Food Incident in Israel last week, in which Hamas claims that the IDF opened fire on civilians trying to mob a food truck (the IDF denies this), Israel is trying a new and hopefully safer way to get food to civilians: using the IDF itself to guard the food trucks, which would enter Gaza from the north to avoid going through a battle zone.

Following Thursday’s deadly melee in Gaza City surrounding an aid convoy, Israel will try new solutions for delivering humanitarian supplies to northern Gaza this week, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel on Sunday.

One option is for convoys to be secured by IDF forces without handing over to local guards, according to the official.

Entering the Gaza Strip through its northern border with Israel, instead of sending the convoy through Kerem Shalom in the south, is also a possibility. Up to this point, trucks have been checked at southern crossings, from which they then must make their way across an active war zone to reach the northern part of the Strip.

“We expect to see much more humanitarian aid reaching northern Gaza,” said the official.

Dozens of Palestinians died and hundreds more were wounded amid chaos surrounding an aid convoy in norhern Gaza on Thursday, an incident that has drawn condemnations and calls for an international inquiry.

You can’t say the IDF isnt trying!  IDF drivers will of course risk getting shot, but they’ve formulated a plan that will get aid to the South coming from the north. This is not the act of a country that’s committing genocide.

*Here is a very old Israeli tradition now about to be broken by Netanyahu and his government, and I have to say I approve.  Since the founding of Israel, ultra-orthodox Jews, the Haredim, have been exempt from military service. It was felt, I guess, that their religious devotion (they study and dispute religious texts all day), was an essential part of the state, a mitzvah that will help save humanity (and all the less religious Jews). . Yet all other citizens, save Arab Israelis who want to serve, must do their three years in the IDF (Arabs who apply are carefully scrutinized). Further the Haredim get government stipends so they can study instead of work.

I always felt this to be unfair, an unwarranted concession to religion in a secular state. Now it’s about to change, as Netanyahu announced in a speech yesterday. It will change slowly, as the Haredim need long training to even be fit for service, but change it will. No religion should be exempt from civic duty in a secular state. As Netanyahu said three days ago:

Third, regarding enlistment. I deeply appreciate the Torah study of our ultra-orthodox brothers. I also recognize and appreciate their joining the civilian emergency and rescue organizations that are doing sacred work. However, in addition to this, I must say: One cannot ignore the sense among the public over the gap in sharing the security burden. I will tell you something else, the ultra-orthodox public also recognizes this need. It is prepared to change the situation. Therefore, we will set goals for recruiting ultra-orthodox men into the IDF and civilian service. We will also determine the ways to ensure the implementation of these goals. It is possible to achieve this arrangement without dividing the nation and without inciting against anyone.

I am certain that it is possible to secure a Knesset majority for this arrangement but one thing is clear to me: It is impossible to achieve absolute agreement. Do you know where there is absolute agreement? In North Korea. In a democracy, there is the agreement of the majority. Whoever demands absolute agreement will not achieve any agreement.

I believe there is a CO-like arrangement in which Haredim (and yes, some do serve in the IDF) can do civic duty instead of military service. That’s fine with me; all I don’t want is to see some citizens of Israel be freed from civic duty on religious grounds.

But many of the Haredim don’t like this and, as the Jerusalem Post reports, they’re blocking traffic!

The haredim’s protest comes after Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, for the first time, publicly called for a “wide consensus” bill that would end the blanket exemption given to the ultra-Orthodox on Wednesday evening. Gallant said that there was a “real and direct” need to lengthen the service of mandatory and reserve IDF soldiers but that “the war has proven that everyone must enter under the stretcher.”

A day later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he believed he could pass a draft law arrangement that would not tear the nation apart and would be supported by a majority in the Knesset.

*Even though it’s way premature, I can’t stop reading the polls pitting Trump against Biden. The other day the NYT put Biden five points behind Trump, which depressed me. Now a new Wall Street Journal survey shows less of a difference (2%, in fact). However, it also argues that “Voters are upbeat on economy, but Biden gets little benefit, WSJ poll shows.” Bolding is mine:

Voters are shedding some of their pessimism about the economy, a new Wall Street Journal poll finds, but the more upbeat mood is producing only a marginal improvement in views of President Biden.

Some 31% of voters in the survey said the economy had gotten better over the past two years, during the majority of Biden’s tenure, a rise of 10 percentage points from a Journal poll in December. And 43% said their personal finances are headed in the right direction, a 9-point increase from the prior survey.

But the recent spate of rising consumer prices still weighs heavily on the public. More than two-thirds of voters say inflation is headed in the wrong direction, despite ample data showing that it has moderated. Nearly three-quarters say price increases are outstripping gains in household income. Only one-quarter see an improvement in the ability of the average person to get ahead.

The new survey gives clues to one of the most pressing questions in the 2024 presidential campaign: whether an improving economy will lift Biden’s re-election prospects against former President Donald Trump. The answer so far appears to be that it is helping Biden just a bit—but also that more voters are turning their attention instead to immigration, a perilous issue for the president.

Trump holds a narrow lead over Biden in a head-to-head test of the expected 2024 presidential matchup, with 47% backing Trump and 45% picking Biden, a difference within the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. In December, Trump led by four points.

I’ll take that point and a half, even if it’s not significant.

Some 37% now approve of Biden’s handling of inflation, up 7 points from the December survey, and 40% approve of his handling of the economy overall, a 4-point increase that is within the poll’s margin of error.

Those findings, while suggesting improvement for the president, still show that voters hold a dim view of his stewardship of the economy.

I tweeted about my despair over the NYT. See below, and go read the comments. I got RATIOED by a bunch of Trump lovers!

*Reader Enrico sent two links. The first reports that the University of Florida has eliminated all positions related to DEI.

The University of Florida has terminated all positions associated with diversity, equity and inclusion at the school in compliance with new state regulations, according to a university memo released on Friday.

The move comes almost a year after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a bill that largely banned the state’s public universities and colleges from spending federal or state money on D.E.I. initiatives. In accordance with that law, Florida’s Board of Governors, which oversees the State University System of Florida, also voted to prohibit state spending on such programs at public universities.

The University of Florida’s terminations included closing the office of the chief diversity officer and halting all D.E.I. contracts with outside vendors, according to the announcement on Friday. Thirteen full-time positions were eliminated, along with administrative appointments for 15 faculty members, a spokeswoman for the university said in an email.

The university is just the latest school in the state to eliminate D.E.I. programs. Both the University of North Florida and Florida International University have already removed or started to phase out such programs.

Last year, Florida became one of the first states to enact laws restricting or eliminating D.E.I. initiatives. That prompted other Republican-led states to follow suit, including Texas, where a ban on D.E.I. initiatives and offices at publicly funded universities and colleges took effect on Jan. 1. In Utah, the governor last month signed a bill paring back D.E.I. programs at state universities and in state government. And the Alabama Legislature is considering similar legislation.

I think DEI offices are in general inimical to the functioning of a university, but before I could pass judgment on this act, I’d have to know if DEI offices do anything besides ensuring equity or fostering race-based admissions, which are now illegal.  Barring that, all I can do is pass on this news.

*And the NYT also deals with a subject that has attracted a lot of attention on this site, “Shrinkflation,” in which groceries sneakily reduce the sizes of their products while keeping prices the same—or even raising them.

Grocery store shoppers are noticing something amiss. Air-filled bags of chips. Shrunken soup cans. Diminished detergent packages.

Companies are downsizing products without downsizing prices, and consumer posts from Reddit to TikTok to the New York Times comments section drip with indignation at the trend, widely known as “shrinkflation.”

The practice isn’t new. Sellers have been quietly shrinking products to avoid raising prices for centuries, and experts think it has been an obvious corporate strategy since at least 1988, when Chock Full o’Nuts cut its one-pound coffee canister to 13 ounces and its competitors followed suit.

But outrage today is acute. President Biden tapped into the angst in a recent video. (“What makes me the most angry is that ice cream cartons have actually shrunk in size, but not in price,” he lamented.) Companies themselves are blasting the practice in marketing gimmicks. One Canadian chain unveiled a growflation pizza. (“In pizza terms,” the company’s news release quipped, “a larger slice of the pie.”)

In fact, my own post about this issue from 2022, which got nearly 100 comments, used ice cream cartons as an example of shrinkflation.

From 2019 to 2023, shrinkage added about 3.6 percentage points to inflation for products like paper towels and toilet paper, up from 1.2 percentage points from 2015 to 2019. Shrinkflation has also contributed more heavily to price increases in both candy and cleaning products in recent years.

Here’s the NYT’s diagram of those products that have shrinkflated the most:

Look at paper products. I bet it’s mostly toilet paper. Time to get a bidet or, if you want to use the old Roman practice, a sponge on a stick. . .

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is feeling peckish—as usual:

Hili: I have an idea.
A: What idea?
Hili: Let’s go home and eat something.
In Polish:
Hili: Mam pomysł.
Ja: Jaki?
Hili: Chodźmy do domu coś zjeść.

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

Winnie found this Instagram post of a coffee topped with whipped cream that’s been molded into the shape of a duck. You can buy the molds!

From I Love Meow:

From Schachar Levy, an Instagram and TikTok star profiled in this piece from the Times of Israel.  They describe the video below (her TikTok site ie here, and Instagram site here):

The viral short video “Queers for Palestine” has garnered millions of views on Instagram and TikTok since it was uploaded on October 22 as a three-way chat between “You,” “Israel,” and “Hamas” — all played by the striking redheaded social media star known as DawnLev.

The You character — described as “any liberal who supports Hamas” — introduces herself to Hamas and says she wants to help the Palestinian people.

“Oh, our human shields?” asks Hamas. “We used the Palestinian people in Gaza to protect ourselves while we try to kill as many Jews as possible.”

Hamas then explains to You all of the awful things it does as a terrorist organization and how its values directly contradict everything the Left stands for.

It is snarky and fresh — and hugely impactful on platforms that are the main news sources for millions of teens and young adults.

From Masih: In remembrance of women executed by the Iranian regime.

Google translation:

The call of the global campaign “No to execution in Iran” on the occasion of March 2, the day of global protest against the execution of women and women sentenced to death in Iran.

From Luana, who’s a Latina and pins this one on DEI:

From Laurie Ann; cat imitates racecar:

From Malcolm. Poor kitty!

Another ginger cat from Jez, who says, “In a bleak world, I find this amusing.”

Darned if I know!:

From the Auschwitz Memorial: one I reposted, and a life cut short at 17.

Two tweets from Doctor Cobb. In the first one, he mourns the death of American railroads, in this case light rail:

I have a feeling I’ve posted this before, but if you haven’t seen it, well, here it is:

21 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

  1. On “Shrinkflation”: You may recall that in the 1980s, Stephen J. Gould tracked the size and cost of Hershey’s chocolate bars over time, and predicted that by 1998 consumers would pay 47 cents (I think) for a bar that weighed nothing.

  3. On this day:
    1493 – Explorer Christopher Columbus arrives back in Lisbon, Portugal, aboard his ship Niña from his voyage to what are now The Bahamas and other islands in the Caribbean.

    1519 – Hernán Cortés arrives in Mexico in search of the Aztec civilization and its wealth.

    1675 – John Flamsteed is appointed the first Astronomer Royal of England.

    1681 – Charles II grants a land charter to William Penn for the area that will later become Pennsylvania.

    1789 – In New York City, the first Congress of the United States meets, putting the United States Constitution into effect.

    1790 – France is divided into 83 départements, cutting across the former provinces in an attempt to dislodge regional loyalties based on ownership of land by the nobility.

    1837 – The city of Chicago is incorporated.

    1861 – The first national flag of the Confederate States of America (the “Stars and Bars”) is adopted. [The third and final national flag of the Confederate States of America was adopted by the Confederate Congress on this day four years later.]

    1865 – U.S. politician Andrew Johnson made his drunk vice-presidential inaugural address in Washington, D.C.

    1882 – Britain’s first electric trams run in east London.

    1890 – The longest bridge in Great Britain, the Forth Bridge in Scotland, measuring 8,094 feet (2,467 m) long, is opened by the Duke of Rothesay, later King Edward VII.

    1899 – Cyclone Mahina sweeps in north of Cooktown, Queensland, with a 12 metres (39 ft) wave that reaches up to 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) inland, killing over 300.

    1909 – U.S. President William Taft used what became known as a Saxbe fix, a mechanism to avoid the restriction of the U.S. Constitution’s Ineligibility Clause, to appoint Philander C. Knox as U.S. Secretary of State.

    1917 – Jeannette Rankin of Montana becomes the first female member of the United States House of Representatives.

    1933 – Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes the 32nd President of the United States. He was the last president to be inaugurated on March 4.

    1933 – Frances Perkins becomes United States Secretary of Labor, the first female member of the United States Cabinet.

    1966 – In an interview in the London Evening Standard, The Beatles’ John Lennon declares that the band is “more popular than Jesus now”.

    1980 – Nationalist leader Robert Mugabe wins a sweeping election victory to become Zimbabwe’s first black prime minister.

    1985 – The Food and Drug Administration approves a blood test for HIV infection, used since then for screening all blood donations in the United States. [Too late for many haemophiliacs in the UK, who received contaminated batches of plasma. The independent inquiry is currently underway.]

    1986 – The Soviet Vega 1 begins returning images of Halley’s Comet and the first images of its nucleus.

    1998 – Gay rights: Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, Inc.: The Supreme Court of the United States rules that federal laws banning on-the-job sexual harassment also apply when both parties are the same sex.

    2001 – BBC bombing: A massive car bomb explodes in front of the BBC Television Centre in London, seriously injuring one person; the attack was attributed to the Real IRA.

    2009 – The International Criminal Court (ICC) issues an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. Al-Bashir is the first sitting head of state to be indicted by the ICC since its establishment in 2002.

    2018 – Former MI6 spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter are poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury, England, causing a diplomatic uproar that results in mass-expulsions of diplomats from all countries involved.

    Births:
    1394 – Henry the Navigator, Portuguese explorer (d. 1460).

    1678 – Antonio Vivaldi, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1741).

    1702 – Jack Sheppard, English criminal (d. 1724). [Renowned for his attempts to escape from prison as he was for his crimes. An autobiographical “Narrative”, thought to have been ghostwritten by Daniel Defoe, was sold at his execution, quickly followed by popular plays. The character of Macheath in John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728) was based on Sheppard, keeping him well-known for more than 100 years. He returned to the public consciousness around 1840, when William Harrison Ainsworth wrote a novel entitled Jack Sheppard, with illustrations by George Cruikshank. The popularity of his tale, and the fear that others would be drawn to emulate his behaviour, caused the authorities to refuse to license any plays in London with “Jack Sheppard” in the title for forty years.]

    1760 – Hugh Ronalds, British nurseryman who cultivated and documented 300 varieties of apples (d. 1833).

    1781 – Rebecca Gratz, American educator and philanthropist (d. 1869).

    1815 – Mykhailo Verbytsky, Ukrainian composer of religious hymns and the national anthem of Ukraine (d. 1870).

    1847 – Carl Josef Bayer, Austrian chemist and academic (d. 1904).

    1883 – Maude Fealy, American actress and screenwriter (d. 1971).

    1888 – Emma Richter, German paleontologist (d. 1956). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]

    1901 – Wilbur R. Franks, Canadian scientist, invented the g-suit (d. 1986).

    1903 – William C. Boyd, American immunologist and chemist (d. 1983).

    1907 – Maria Branyas, American-Spanish supercentenarian, oldest living person. [Happy birthday, Maria – 117 years old today!]

    1913 – John Garfield, American actor and singer (d. 1952).

    1916 – Hans Eysenck, German-English psychologist and theorist (d. 1997).

    1921 – Joan Greenwood, English actress (d. 1987).

    1923 – Patrick Moore, English astronomer and television host (d. 2012).

    1928 – Alan Sillitoe, English novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet (d. 2010).

    1932 – Miriam Makeba, South African singer-songwriter and actress (d. 2008).

    1936 – Jim Clark, Scottish racing driver (d. 1968). [He was the brother of a family friend and as a kid I had his autograph in an old Giles annual.]

    1938 – Paula Prentiss, American actress.

    1944 – Bobby Womack, American singer-songwriter (d. 2014).

    1946 – Patricia Kennealy-Morrison, American journalist and author.

    1948 – Shakin’ Stevens, British singer-songwriter.

    1951 – Chris Rea, English singer-songwriter and guitarist.

    1965 – Khaled Hosseini, Afghan-American novelist.

    1967 – Evan Dando, American singer-songwriter and guitarist.

    1967 – Tim Vine, English comedian, actor, and author.

    1986 – Mike Krieger, Brazilian-American computer programmer and businessman, co-founded Instagram.

    Death not merely ends life, it also bestows upon it a silent completeness, snatched from the hazardous flux to which all things human are subject. (Hannah Arendt):
    1193 – Saladin, founder of the Ayyubid Sultanate (b. 1137).

    1851 – James Richardson, English explorer (b. 1809). [Known for his expeditions into the Sahel region of the Saharan desert.]

    1852 – Nikolai Gogol, Ukrainian-Russian short story writer, novelist, and playwright (b. 1809).

    1915 – William Willett, English inventor, founded British Summer Time (b. 1856).

    1927 – Ira Remsen, American chemist and academic (b. 1846). [Discovered the artificial sweetener saccharin along with Constantin Fahlberg. He was the second president of Johns Hopkins University.]

    1941 – Ludwig Quidde, German activist and politician, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1858).

    1944 – Fannie Barrier Williams, American educator and activist (b. 1855).

    1952 – Charles Scott Sherrington, English neurophysiologist and pathologist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1857).

    1977 – Nancy Tyson Burbidge, Australian botanist and curator (b. 1912).

    1986 – Elizabeth Smart, Canadian poet and author (b. 1913).

    1988 – Beatriz Guido, Argentine author and screenwriter (b. 1924).

    1994 – John Candy, Canadian comedian and actor (b. 1950).

    1996 – Minnie Pearl, American entertainer (b. 1912).

    2008 – Gary Gygax, American game designer, co-created Dungeons & Dragons (b. 1938).

    2011 – Vivienne Harris, English journalist and publisher, co-founded the Jewish Telegraph (b. 1921).

    2019 – Keith Flint, English singer (The Prodigy) (b. 1969).

    2022 – Shane Warne, Australian cricketer, coach, and sportscaster (b. 1969).

    1. Woman of the Day:
      [Text from Wikipedia]

      Emma Richter (born on this day in 1888, died 15 November 1956) was a German paleontologist. She is best known for her work concerning Trilobites.

      Born in Steinheim on 4 May 1888, Richter spent around 45 years volunteering at the Senckenberg Museum alongside her husband Rudolf Richter, a fellow paleontologist whom she married in 1913.

      She developed a new way to assess trilobites through paloecological-biofacial assessment while representing her husband at the museum during the First World War. Richter also worked on several projects with her husband including studying 500 halftone images of trilobites for their book Die Trilobiten des Oberdevons Beiträge zur Kenntnis devonischer Trilobiten and creating a comparative database with over 44,000 images.

      Richter was made an honorary member of the Paleontological Society of America in 1934 and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Tübingen in 1949.

      Richter died on 15 November 1956, two months before her husband also died. They had one daughter.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Richter

      1. 45 years volunteering as a Museum volunteer should bring you some acclaim and recognition.

  4. On the Auschwitz Memorial – we went to see a local art house film “Zone of Interest” about the ordinary everyday life of a military commandant running the place next door to the ideal life his wife is creating (“I’m the queen of Auschwitz!”) — anyway, very disturbing film, to see the cold scientific industrially designed crematoria being built to handle the influx of load expected soon from Hungary. You’re going to have to handle trainloads of 3000 a week, with about 20% culled for slave labor.

  5. The Supreme Court just announced it’s decision. They unanimously agree Trump can be on the Colorado ballot.

      1. Post-edit :

        Specifically, to improve the chances that the next attempt to give States “[…] power under the
        Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency” will succeed.

      2. The claim that Trump is an insurrectionist wasn’t in scope, and is not addressed at all in the decision you posted.

        There is fortunately federal law, passed by Congress, that sets out the crime of insurrection. I would welcome a free and fair trial under that law to prove or disprove the accusation of insurrection.

        1. “The court otherwise affirmed, holding […] (5) that the
          District Court did not err in concluding that those events
          constituted an “insurrection” and that former President
          Trump “engaged in” that insurrection; and (6) that former
          President Trump’s speech to the crowd that breached the
          Capitol on January 6 was not protected by the First Amend-
          ment. See id., at 1a–114a.”

          I am not a lawyer but “insurrectionist” and “insurrection” appear in the document 3 and 13 times and are critical to bar a name from a ballot using the 14th amendment. The court “did not err” in that. So – “insurrectionist”.

          1. That paragraph that you cite is not saying that the US Supreme Court affirms “that the District Court did not err in concluding that those events constituted an ‘insurrection’ and that former President Trump ‘engaged in’ that insurrection . . .”

            It is addressing the history of the case during which the COLORADO Supreme Court affirmed the District Court conclusions.

    1. I’m going to guess that it’s not possible to bring a genocide suit against Palestine / Hamas at the Hague because it isn’t a country. If so, how convenient.

  8. 1890 – The longest bridge in Great Britain, the Forth Bridge in Scotland, measuring 8,094 feet (2,467 m) long, is opened by the Duke of Rothesay, later King Edward VII.

    My great grandfather was a professional engineer involved in the construction of the Forth Bridge. Family legend has it that his son, my grandfather, then aged around ten, was smuggled aboard the locomotive tender of the first train to cross the bridge following the ceremony, thus being possibly the third person ever to cross the bridge by rail.

    Jim Clark was my teenage hero. As with JFK, I can remember exactly where I was when his death was announced.

  9. About Trump vs Biden, I happen to know many people who so despise the DEI stuff that you, interestingly, discuss public funding ending for in Florida, that THAT is what is motivating them most in their thoughts about the upcoming election. DEI, lax sentencing of lawbreakers, closely followed by immigration and the economy. From where I sit, the economy has not improved much at all. My income is the same. Gas has gone down but groceries and rent (yes, I rent) are sick!

Comments are closed.