Monday: Hili dialogue

30 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

1. I retweeted their account of how “X” removes some of their posts because they violate community standards. It’s outrageous! Apparently Musk’s henchmen don’t know what they’re doing.

   The quoted Tweet only mentions Facebook. Not X/Twitter or Musk.

   1. Oops. Better fix.

2. Regarding the juvenile bears scrambling up the tree, my guess is one of them front-end-drive raccoons was rapidly approaching with it’s tail signaling menacingly.

   1. Edit : strike ” it’s tail” and insert “its tail” (I plead guilty to one count of blasphemapostrophy).

   2. +1

3. Good piece in The Federalist today about the charges against Trump.

   Misreporting business expenses is normally, at most, a misdemeanor. Bragg seeks to ratchet it up to a felony here by arguing that the misreporting was done to cover up a crime. That alleged crime is a violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). The theory is that Trump’s payments to Daniels were campaign expenditures and thus needed to be publicly reported as such. By not reporting the expenditure, the theory goes, Trump prevented the public from knowing information that might have influenced their votes.

   There is one big problem with this theory: The payments to Daniels were not campaign payments.

   It then discusses the claim that the payments were used to influence the election, and the problems with that claim. The press is giving all these legal cases the Kyle Rittenhouse treatment; people are going to be outraged if they don’t produce.

   1. What are the general vibes in the US as to whether these Trump legal cases are fair, or politically motivated?

      The one about Trump inflating the value of his properties to get more favourable terms on loans seems obviously politically malicious (people lending mega-bucks always do their own due diligence and their own assessment anyhow; in this case the loans were repaid without problem, there was no “victim” here; the relevant attorney general is an activist who ran on the platform of going after Trump, and who has ignored similar misdemeanours by others; and the penalty applied, of $450 million, is utterly unprecedented in any similar case; again, there is no victim, no-one lost out, all that happened is that an interest rate might have been somewhat lower than otherwise, though the banks lending the money were fine with the deal. In short, this all seems more akin to Putin’s Russia where the authorities just confiscate wealth off people they don’t like; I mean, I don’t like Trump either, but this case seems ridiculous. It seems that neither the left nor the right can be trusted to play fair).

      1. I think this is the wrong forum to get an unbiased answer to that question, Coel. Here you will get a partisan diatribe about Donald Trump’s long-overdue come-uppance for his many crimes, and how he is so dangerous to the Republic (even though half the public supports him over the alternative) that fair means or foul have to be employed to keep him out of the White House.

         One non-partisan argument for putting actively campaigning politicians above the law is that it would discourage politically motivated prosecutions intended merely to kneecap contenders who pose a risk to the regime in power. Even though that of course never really happens, it would be healthier for democracy to show that it can’t. Rather, the politician’s party should determine his fate on the ticket if he is accused of misbehaviour, as it has to answer to the voters. If he’s an electoral liability, he’ll be gone. Instantly in many cases. No fussing with due process. That’s politics.

         This would be a reciprocal courtesy. The party in power is already above the law.

         You probably also have to extend immunity to ex-office holders. The ominous prospect of ritual prosecution would discourage the peaceful transfer of power —purely a social construct— to save one’s own skin. It would deter even decent people from running for office in the first place, and encourage them to amass enough wealth in office to finance a ruinous legal defence. Much as I dislike Justin Trudeau, I just want him out of office and forgotten to live in peaceful obscurity. The Tories and the Mounties should leave him alone.

      2. On the reasonable supposition that banks offset the favorable rates given to Trump to maintain their profits, huge numbers of small borrowers would have suffered worse rates. Doubtless these would have been only marginally worse and spread over many people, and thus individually imperceptible. Nevertheless they could still count themselves defrauded by Trump.

         1. Doing the Trump deal would have increased the banks’ profits. Again, they freely entered into this deal, and would have done their own due diligence, and the loans were not defaulted on. The banks would not have entered into the deal unless it were profitable for them and in their interests. It would also not have deprived anyone else of a loan (banks readily lend to each other so they don’t have a set amount to lend). Overall it is implausible that it led to anyone else paying higher rates or losing out.

            1. Coel:
               Profits are measured on some proportion of turnover. Trump’s business would have increased absolute profit but reduced proportional profit.
               Leslie:
               “A few basis points” could well be imperceptible in relation to other considerations, unless, of course, you think that interest rate is absolute in people’s borrowing decisions.
               Statistical thinking is good.

         2. Reasonable supposition doesn’t count. Did the State of New York as plaintiff make that claim with evidence? Lots of things could have happened…

            After all, if a bank had to raise its rates for all other borrowers by a few basis points over the competition to cover its risk of loss from colluding with Trump, why would those borrowers not take their business to another bank? Do banks really calibrate their interest rates sufficiently finely to reflect their position on one borrower who’s not all that different in magnitude from the general run of real-estate borrowers?

            I don’t think anyone borrowing a large sum of money would regard any detectable shift in interest rate as “imperceptible.” If I was quoted a rate that was even a few basis points higher than what I could get from the bank down the street, I’d want to know why.

            The people really at risk were the bank’s shareholders. If the bank lent recklessly they stood to lose if the loan defaulted. But if they offered him a good rate based on valuation, they got his business and made money.

   2. You’re saying, then, that they’re charging him with the “wrong” crime, correct? It’s as simple as that? (According to the article you linked to, I mean.)
      This question is to DrBrydon at #3

4. The McDonalds that opened on this day in 1955 was not the first McDonalds, but the ninth. It was the first opened by Ray Kroc, but not the first one opened by the McDonalds brothers.

   1. Nah Nah Nah Nah, I’m not listening! You are messing with my boyhood mythology of the golden arches!

5. I think that behavior (which I’ve seen in cats) is because the Raccoon doesn’t like or trust the feel of the stone it’s on. But it really wants to get across the patio. So it scurries along (on the minimum number of feet it takes to scurry), a little bit panicked, unsure, and uncomfortable, with as minimal contact with the stone as possible.

   Or maybe its friends were off camera and it’d just said the Raccoon equivalent of “hold my beer”. I doubt it, but you never know. Those animals are pretty clever.

6. Oops, a bit late today – a kerfuffle about the birth date of the woman I had chosen for my Woman of the Day.

   On this day:
   1450 – Battle of Formigny: Toward the end of the Hundred Years’ War, the French attack and nearly annihilate English forces, ending English domination in Northern France.

   1738 – Serse, an Italian opera by George Frideric Handel, receives its premiere performance in London, England.

   1755 – Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language is published in London.

   1817 – Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc found the American School for the Deaf (then called the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons), the first American school for deaf students, in Hartford, Connecticut.

   1861 – President Abraham Lincoln calls for 75,000 Volunteers to quell the insurrection that soon became the American Civil War.

   1865 – President Abraham Lincoln dies after being shot the previous evening by actor John Wilkes Booth. Three hours later, Vice President Andrew Johnson is sworn in as President.

   1912 – The British passenger liner RMS Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic at 2:20 a.m., two hours and forty minutes after hitting an iceberg. Only 710 of 2,224 passengers and crew on board survive.

   1922 – U.S. Senator John B. Kendrick of Wyoming introduces a resolution calling for an investigation of a secret land deal, which leads to the discovery of the Teapot Dome scandal.

   1923 – Insulin becomes generally available for use by people with diabetes.

   1936 – First day of the Arab revolt in Mandatory Palestine.

   1941 – In the Belfast Blitz, two hundred bombers of the German Luftwaffe attack Belfast, killing around one thousand people.

   1945 – Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is liberated.

   1947 – Jackie Robinson debuts for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking baseball’s color line.

   1955 – McDonald’s restaurant dates its founding to the opening of a franchised restaurant by Ray Kroc, in Des Plaines, Illinois.

   1960 – At Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, Ella Baker leads a conference that results in the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, one of the principal organizations of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

   1989 – Hillsborough disaster: A human crush occurs at Hillsborough Stadium, home of Sheffield Wednesday, in the FA Cup Semi-final, resulting in the deaths of 97 Liverpool fans.

   1989 – Upon Hu Yaobang’s death, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 begin in China.

   2013 – Two bombs explode near the finish line at the Boston Marathon in Boston, Massachusetts, killing three people and injuring 264 others.

   2014 – In the worst massacre of the South Sudanese Civil War, at least 200 civilians are gunned down after seeking refuge in houses of worship as well as hospitals.

   2019 – The cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris in France is seriously damaged by a large fire.

   Births:
   1452 – Leonardo da Vinci, Italian painter, sculptor, and architect (d. 1519).

   1684 – Catherine I of Russia (d. 1727). [The first woman to rule Imperial Russia, opening the legal path for a century almost entirely dominated by women, including her daughter Elizabeth and granddaughter-in-law Catherine the Great, all of whom continued Peter the Great’s policies in modernizing Russia.]

   1707 – Leonhard Euler, Swiss mathematician and physicist (d. 1783).

   1772 – Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, French biologist and zoologist (d. 1844).

   1793 – Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve, German astronomer and academic (d. 1864).

   1800 – James Clark Ross, English captain and explorer (d. 1862).

   1841 – Mary Grant Roberts, Australian zoo owner (d. 1921).

   1841 – Joseph E. Seagram, Canadian businessman and politician, founded the Seagram Company Ltd (d. 1919).

   1843 – Henry James, American novelist, short story writer, and critic (d. 1916).

   1861 – Bliss Carman, Canadian-British poet and playwright (d. 1929). [Canadian poet who lived most of his life in the United States, where he achieved international fame. He was acclaimed as Canada’s poet laureate during his later years.]

   1863 – Ida Freund, Austrian-born chemist and educator (d. 1914). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]

   1874 – George Harrison Shull, American botanist and geneticist (d. 1954).

   1890 – Percy Shaw, English businessman, invented the cat’s eye (d. 1976).

   1892 – Corrie ten Boom, Dutch-American clocksmith, Nazi resister, and author (d. 1983). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]

   1894 – Nikita Khrushchev, Russian general and politician, 7th Premier of the Soviet Union (d. 1971).

   1894 – Bessie Smith, African-American singer and actress (d. 1937).

   1895 – Abigail Mejia, Dominican feminist activist, nationalist, literary critic and educator (d. 1941).

   1896 – Nikolay Semyonov, Russian physicist and chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1986).

   1912 – Kim Il Sung, North Korean general and politician, 1st Supreme Leader of North Korea (d. 1994). [North Korea’s supposedly “eternal president”.]

   1915 – Elizabeth Catlett, African-American sculptor and illustrator (d. 2012).

   1937 – Robert W. Gore, American engineer and businessman, co-inventor of Gore-Tex (d. 2020).

   1938 – Claudia Cardinale, Italian actress.

   1939 – Marty Wilde, English singer-songwriter and actor.

   1940 – Jeffrey Archer, English author, playwright, and politician. [He was imprisoned (2001–2003) for perjury and perverting the course of justice, ending his active political career.]

   1944 – Dave Edmunds, Welsh singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer.

   1948 – Phil Mogg, English singer-songwriter and musician.

   1951 – Marsha Ivins, American engineer and astronaut.

   1958 – Benjamin Zephaniah, English actor, author, poet, and playwright.

   1959 – Emma Thompson, English actress, comedian, author, activist and screenwriter.

   1961 – Carol W. Greider, American molecular biologist.

   1961 – Dawn Wright, American geographer and oceanographer. [A leading authority in the application of geographic information system (GIS) technology to the field of ocean and coastal science, and played a key role in creating the first GIS data model for the oceans. On July 12, 2022, she became the first and only Black person to dive to Challenger Deep, the deepest point on Earth, and to successfully operate a sidescan sonar at full-ocean depth.]

   1965 – Linda Perry, American singer-songwriter, musician and record producer.

   1975 – Sarah Teichmann, German-American biophysicist and immunologist.

   1990 – Emma Watson, English actress. [And supporter of the dodgy charity Mermaids, which has promoted binders and medical interventions for gender-confused children and young people.]

   1997 – Maisie Williams, English actress.

   After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die. (E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web):
   1757 – Rosalba Carriera, Italian painter (b. 1673).

   1888 – Matthew Arnold, English poet and critic (b. 1822).

   1898 – Te Keepa Te Rangihiwinui, New Zealand commander and politician.

   1912 – Victims of the Titanic disaster. [Too many to list here!]

   1949 – Wallace Beery, American actor, director, and screenwriter (b. 1885).

   1980 – Jean-Paul Sartre, French philosopher and author, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1905).

   1982 – Arthur Lowe, English actor (b. 1915).

   1984 – Tommy Cooper, Welsh comedian and magician (b. 1921). [“I’m on a whisky diet… last week I lost three days!”]

   1986 – Jean Genet, French novelist, poet, and playwright (b. 1910). [In his 2005 book Moonage Daydream, Bowie confirmed that the title of his song “The Jean Genie” “…was a clumsy pun upon Jean Genet”.]

   1988 – Kenneth Williams, English actor and screenwriter (b. 1926).

   1990 – Greta Garbo, Swedish-American actress (b. 1905).

   1998 – Pol Pot, Cambodian general and politician, 29th Prime Minister of Cambodia (b. 1925).

   2001 – Joey Ramone, American singer-songwriter (b. 1951).

   2009 – Clement Freud, German-English journalist, academic, and politician (b. 1924).

   2010 – Michael Pataki, American actor and director (b. 1938).

   2017 – Emma Morano, Italian supercentenarian, last person verified born in the 1800s (b. 1899).

   2022 – Liz Sheridan, American actress (b. 1929). [Best known for her roles as the nosy neighbor, Mrs. Ochmonek, on the sitcom ALF (1986–1990), and Jerry’s mother, Helen, in Seinfeld (1990–1998).]

   1. Woman of the Day:
      [Text from the excellent The Attagirls X/Twitter account]

      Woman of the Day Corrie ten Boom born OTD 1892 in Haarlem, the first woman licensed as a watchmaker in The Netherlands and a member of the Dutch Resistance. She was sent to Ravensbrück for helping Jewish people to escape the Nazis by hiding them behind a false wall in her bedroom.

      Corrie’s father was a watchmaker – the family lived above the shop – and although initially in charge of housekeeping, she found she much preferred working in the business. She reorganised the financial side by developing a system of billings and ledgers and and in 1922, became the first woman licensed as a watchmaker in the Netherlands.

      The Ten Boom family were Calvinists so they believed that all people are created equal and that the Jews are precious to God. It was this tenet of their faith that inspired Corrie, her father Caspar and her sister Betsie when the Germans invaded The Netherlands in May 1940. The Germans immediately implemented a policy of Gleichschalting – “enforced conformity” – and systematically eliminated non-Nazi organisations. This included the youth club Corrie had run for ten years for teenaged girls, offering religious instruction and skills such as sewing and handicrafts.

      In May 1942, a woman carrying a suitcase came to the shop and told the Ten Booms that she was Jewish, her husband had been arrested, her son was in hiding and she had been visited by the Occupation authorities. The Germans were then paying a bounty to Dutch police and administration officials to locate and identify Jews to aid in their capture and she was too frightened to go home.

      Police HQ was a short step away but Caspar told her “In this household, God’s people are always welcome”. It was the beginning of their work with the Dutch Resistance.

      At the top of the Ten Boom house was Corrie’s bedroom. The Dutch Resistance sent an architect and workers to create a false wall so that up to six people could hide for prolonged periods if needed until they were moved on to safety. “The Hiding Place” had ventilation and a buzzer was installed in the house to alert the refugees during security sweeps by the authorities.

      Food was a real problem. It was rationed but in any case, wartime shortages made food scarce. Corrie visited the man in charge of the local ration office – he was known to her – and when he asked how many cards she needed, she said, “I opened my mouth to say, ‘Five’ but the number that unexpectedly and astonishingly came out instead was: ‘One hundred.‘“ He gave them to her.

      On 28 February 1944, the Ten Booms were betrayed by a Dutchman. Over thirty people including the entire family were rounded up and sent to Sheveningen Prison after the extra ration cards and other material was found in their house. The six people concealed in The Hiding Place were escaped detection and police officers who were members of the Resistance moved them to safety. Corrie found out when a letter was sent to her in prison: “All the watches in your cabinet are safe.”

      Corrie was held in solitary confinement for three months before being sent on to Ravensbrück with her sister Betsie, via a political concentration camp. Their father had died soon after their arrest and Betsie died in December 1944. On 31 December 1944, Corrie was released due to a clerical error; she had been destined for the gas chambers along with all of the other women of her age.

      Returning to The Netherlands during the terrible famine known as the Hongerwinter, she began sheltering people with intellectual disabilities who were being systematically murdered by the German occupiers.

      All in all, it is estimated that around 800 Jews were saved by the efforts of Corrie and her family. She was honoured as Righteous Among the Nations.

      After WW2, Corrie ran a rehabilitation centre looking after concentration-camp survivors and even destitute Dutch people who had collaborated. Forgiveness ran in her blood. She died on her 91st birthday in 1983 after suffering a third stroke.

      “Forgiveness is the key that unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hatred. It is a power that breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness.”

      https://twitter.com/TheAttagirls/status/1779759417417674928

      1. She wrote a book about her wartime experiences called “The Hiding Place.”

7. Why is it that the far-left protesters always seem to be wearing masks? This seems to be a badge of recognition now for a certain group of people. Is it because:
   A. They are still genuinely afraid of getting COVID?
   B. It’s a form of “I’m not on the right”, since the first group of people to reject masks and to stop wearing them in public were those on the right?
   C. It’s become part of their group identity?
   D. They want to hide their faces, especially in public protests, so that they cannot be recognized?

   The hatred of Israel and all things Jewish is disgusting. If this (and similar anti-Jew gatherings) were a group of white men, not wearing masks, and speaking with southern accents (and maybe wanting to march in Skokie), the news would all over the story as an example of racist anti-Semitism. But because it’s their own kind, it’s either hand-waved away or outright supported.

   1. I think the masks are supposed to be a symbol of their persecution and victimhood. If they don’t wear them, the people they’re harassing and haranguing peacefully protesting will try to kill them. Masks are worn because otherwise they’re just not safe from an opposition which will clearly stop at nothing, that’s how bad they are.

   2. My money’s on D, for what it’s worth.

   3. Wearing masks might be a way for white people to avoid friendly-fire incidents, since many of their fellow travelers are People of Colour who might otherwise mistake them for white supremacists. In a melee with canes swinging, dresses and wigs flying, and therapy support poodles barking, a neon pink respirator mask might be what saves you from getting whacked in the face with a megaphone.

      The Wiki page on shibboleths notes that during the campaign in the Solomon Islands, U.S. Marine sentries adopted, “Say Lollapalooza!” as a challenge to suspected Japanese infiltrators. If the reply came back, “Rorra…”, that was as far as the voice in the night would get before being shot.

      1. I should have added “E”!

         1. That’s the fun part of “exhausting the hypothesis space.” They get more absurd as the list expands.

   4. D. Not being easily identifiable is a plus, if you actually know what you’re doing is questionable and some people may not like it

8. The raccoon may be disguising itself to confuse a predator. Cats hump their backs to look bigger. Skunks walk on front paws as a threat posture. Or, possibly the raccoon wants to get a following on social media.

   1. It’s certainly done the last of those, Rick! ;o)

9. Thanks for posting the BBC’s inadvertent truth-telling interview with barrister Natasha Hausdorff. Brilliant! Touché.

10. Thanks for posting the Bill Maher monologue.

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