Thursday: Hili dialogue

April 18, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, April 18, 2024, and National Animal Cracker Day. I ate many boxes of these as a child, all the famous “Barnum’s Animals” variety, about which Wikipedia says this:

The number and variety contained in each box has varied over the years. In total, 53 different animals have been represented by animal crackers since 1902. In its current incarnation, each package contains 22 cookies consisting of a variety of animals. The most recent addition, the koala, was added in September 2002 after being chosen by consumer votes, beating out the penguin, walrus and cobra.[4]

In August 2018, Mondelez International (the parent company of Nabisco) released a new design for its Barnum’s Animals Crackers boxes in the United States, showing the animals freed from their traditional circus boxcar cages. This design change was made in consultation with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), one year after the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus ceased operations. The new design shows a zebra, lion, elephant, giraffe and gorilla together in an African landscape.

Here is the new cageless version:

“Nabisco Barnum’s Animal Crackers” by Pest15 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

And here are some of the animals. Is that a bear? Regardless, they tasted good.

From Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Velociraptor Awareness Day (see meme below), National High Five Day, Newspaper Columnists’ Day, National Ask An Atheist Day (the answer is “42”), Coma Patients’ Day in Poland, International Day For Monuments and Sites, and World Amateur Radio Day. 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the April 18 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*There’s not much new in the Trump trial, but the big gossipy news is that NPR editor Uri Berliner resigned from the organization, something nearly inevitable after he blew the lid off it with his seamy tales of biased reporting and endemic wokeness. His punishment for going public was a five-day suspension, but now he’s quit for good.

National Public Radio prohibits staff from publishing work for other media outlets without permission. Senior editor Uri Berliner broke that rule when he published a searing, 3,000-word critique of his own storied news organization in the Free Press, a media upstart.

His actions led to a five-day suspension without pay. Then on Wednesday, he posted his resignation letter on X, in which he accused the public radio network’s new chief executive of having divisive views that “confirm the very problems” he cited in his Free Press piece.

A spokeswoman for NPR declined to comment on personnel matters.

Berliner’s essay, which said NPR had lost its way by letting liberal bias skew its coverage, is the latest sign of a management challenge several major newsrooms are dealing with: how to handle staffers who are willing to go public with concerns about their own employer.

Weeks earlier at MSNBC, a coterie of high-profile anchors used their respective shows to publicly call out a controversial hiring decision by the network’s parent. And the New York Times’s newsroom has been divided over its Gaza war coverage, culminating with a recent investigation into whether staffers leaked confidential information to another outlet.

. . . In his essay in the Free Press, a media company founded by Bari Weiss, a former New York Times opinion editor, Berliner wrote that NPR’s newsroom had lost its culture of open-mindedness and no longer offered a diversity of viewpoints. The piece, titled “I’ve Been at NPR for 25 Years. Here’s How We Lost America’s Trust,” also said the network had erred in its coverage of high-profile events, from the origins of Covid to Hunter Biden’s laptop to the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Here’s his letter of resignation on Twitter, short and sweet:

*A phalanx of Western diplomats has been visiting Israel, pleading with it not to respond to the missile-and-drone attack by Iran last Saturday. As usual, Israel is not allowed to deter attacks by its enemies (if you think that Saturday deterred Iran from taking more action, even though proxies, you’re wrong.  But the country has vowed retaliation, without specifying how or where.

For days, Israel’s closest Western allies have pleaded with the country’s wartime government not to risk igniting a wider war by responding too strongly to Iran’s barrage of missiles and drones last weekend. And on Wednesday, the top diplomats from Germany and Britain delivered that message in person to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

But Mr. Netanyahu emerged from those talks resolute that his country would not bow to any outside pressure when choosing its response. He declared before a cabinet meeting that Israel would “do everything necessary to defend itself” and warned the allies that “we will make our own decisions,” according to his office.

The British foreign secretary, David Cameron, acknowledged just before meeting with the prime minister that Israel was unlikely to heed pleas to turn the other cheek.

“It is clear that the Israelis are making a decision to act,” Mr. Cameron told the BBC. “We hope that they do so in a way that does as little to escalate this as possible.”

The United States, Britain and Germany have been urging Israel to avoid making moves that could increase tension with Iran, which launched around 300 missiles and drones on Saturday night in what was believed to be its first direct attack on Israel. Most of the missiles and drones were shot down before they reached their targets — thanks in part to the assistance of the United States, Britain, France and Jordan — and the ones that got through did minimal damage.

I suspect that Israel itself doesn’t to strike Iran directly, but lately their actions have been unpredictable. One thing that Israel knows is that it cannot handle a war with Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah all at once (for one thing, there would be too many drones and missiles coming in. Further, they could expect no help from Western allies.

*Does anybody remember that Hezbollah is committing war crimes daily by firing missiles at Israel, for there is no state of war between Lebanon and Israel? Further, a UN resolution forbids Hezbollah not only to do this kind of fighting, but from even occupying the areas form which it fires. Today Hezbollah fired into a Bedouin village, injuring four civilians and 14 troops.  Does anybody care? Israel has retaliated, but they only go after the Iranian-backed Hezbollah when they’re fired on. Many residents of northern Israel have had to be evacuated because of this firing. A video is below.

Fourteen soldiers and four civilians were wounded as an explosive drone fired from Lebanon struck a community center in the northern border town of Arab al-Aramshe on Wednesday, medics and the military said.

The victims were taken to Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya, which said that one was listed in critical condition and four others were seriously wounded. The remaining victims were moderately and lightly hurt, the hospital added.

According to the Israel Defense Forces, 14 of the victims were soldiers, including the five listed in critical and serious condition. The four civilian victims were all lightly hurt.

Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it targeted a building being used by the Israeli military with guided missiles and explosive-laden drones.

Though the town has been largely evacuated, soldiers are stationed there and may have used the building as a gathering space.

. . . . . Since October 8, Hezbollah has attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a daily basis with rockets, drones, anti-tank missiles and other means, saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there.

Translation of the tweet below:

The attack in Arab El Aramsha: 6 were injured, including one seriously, one moderately and the rest in a minor condition | Documenting the moments of impact (Michal Wasserman)

*Yesterday I put up a live feed of testimony of officials from Columbia University, facing fire from House Republicans over accusations of endemic antisemitism at the institution (the nearly four-hour-long feed is still at the site. The Republicans were out for blood, and at least one of them went off on an unhinged tangent about God and the Bible. The WSJ reports on the proceedings:

Columbia University president Nemat “Minouche” Shafik told a congressional committee Wednesday that the school wasn’t prepared for the firestorm stemming from Hamas’s attack on Israel last fall, which has led to numerous protests, instances of antisemitism, and claims by Jewish students that they feel unsafe on campus.

“When I first started at Columbia, our policies, our systems, and our enforcement mechanisms were not up to the scale of this challenge,” Shafik said. “They were designed for a very different world.”

Shafik, who became Columbia’s president last July, faced scores of pointed questions from committee members critical of the school’s response to instances of antisemitism on campus since the outbreak of war in the Middle East last October.

The questions were part of a 3 ½-hour hearing held by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. The same committee in December elicited responses from two Ivy league presidents that led to their eventual resignations.

. . . Jewish students at Columbia have alleged incidents of assault, antisemitic graffiti such as swastikas, calls for the destruction of Israel at rallies, and speaking invitations from student groups to members of foreign terrorist groups.

. . . At the outset of the hearing, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.), the committee’s chairwoman, called Columbia one of the nation’s hotbeds of antisemitism. “Columbia stands guilty of gross negligence, at best, and at worst has become a platform for those supporting terrorism and violence against the Jewish people,” Foxx said.

Committee members repeatedly probed decades of faculty attacks on Israel which they said had set the stage for the antisemitism that burst forth on campus after Oct. 7. Shafik responded that the school continues to ramp up processes to address antisemitism on campus and that professors who have expressed antisemitic viewpoints wouldn’t be hired under her watch.

All the Columbia officials said that any calls for genocide of the Jews was against the campus speech code, but that just convinced me that Columbia’s speech code doesn’t adhere to the First Amendment, for calls for genocide don’t violate that Amendment under many circumstances.  Shafik and the rest clearly learned from the disastrous testimony of the Presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn a while back, but, truth be told, Shafik was a little to glib, and Columbia needs to adopt a better speech code (the University of Chicago’s would do).

*Some savvy amateurs discovered the bones of what may be the largest known ichthyosaur (and hence the largest known marine reptile) off the west coast of England, and just published the results in PLoS ONE. It could be as much as 80 feet long.

On a nice spring day at the end of May 2020, 11-year-old Ruby Reynolds and her dad, Justin, were fossil-hunting on Blue Anchor Beach in Somerset, England, when they discovered a fragment of a titanic sea beast.

As Justin studied the four-inch-long, oval-shaped fossil, Ruby started to scout the slope above them. She found a second piece of fossilized bone, this one about twice as big.

Joining forces with a team of paleontologists, Justin and Ruby have now identified their find as a new species of giant ichthyosaur, a marine reptile from the Late Triassic thought to have been shaped like a modern-day dolphin. The father-daughter duo help describe the prehistoric predator in a paper published Wednesday in the journal PLOS One.

The team recovered only pieces of the animal’s lower jawbone, but they estimate that the entire creature could have stretched 80 feet — making it perhaps the biggest marine reptile yet discovered.

Justin, a postal worker who lives in the village of Braunton in Devon, didn’t know at first what he and Ruby had discovered, but after studying the fossils and doing research at home, they reached the conclusion that it was an ichthyosaur. They emailed Dean Lomax, a paleontologist and expert on the marine reptiles at the University of Manchester, for a consult.

. . . .Together, Lomax and his colleagues worked with Justin and Ruby to recover more parts of the intriguing fossil from Blue Anchor. They pieced together sections of the massive lower jawbone — enough to estimate that if complete, the lower jawbone, called the surangular, would measure more than six feet long.

What was most thrilling about the find was that it added to a very similar discovery made by Lomax and colleagues in nearby Lilstock, Somerset, that they reported in 2018. They found fragments of the lower jawbone of a different giant ichthyosaur, also from a period called the Rhaetian — the end of the Triassic, about 202 million years ago.

That’s a critical time period, when ichthyosaur evolution remains something of a mystery because of a dearth of specimens, according to Neil Kelley, a paleontologist at Vanderbilt University who was not involved in the study.

Although it is only part of the jawbone, the find at Blue Anchor was more complete and better-preserved than the one from Lilstock, and finding two specimens from a similar geography and time period gave the researchers the confidence to say it is a newly identified species, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis.

You can see reconstructed drawings at the Daily Fail, which describes the animal as “twice the size of a London bus”. Below is a smaller one from Wikipedia, labeled “A Holzmaden ichthyosaur in which the preparator found organic remains in the position of the dorsal fin, but failed to locate any for the flippers.” Note too that the backbone of this ichthyosaur (and others) extends down into the ventral fluke of the tail, while in sharks it’s the opposite. The convergence between these reptiles, which entered the water from the land, on sharks and fish, with both having dorsal fins and similar tails, is a remarkable example of convergent evolution. 

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Ichthyosaur_-_Naturmuseum_Senckenberg_-_DSC02173.JPG

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and the cats are reveling in springtime, when they can roam outside and lie in the sun:

Hili: I passed a unanimous resolution.
A: What resolution?
Hili: Spring is to last the whole year.
In Polish:
Hili: Podjęłam jednogłośną rezolucję.
Ja: Jaką?
Hili: Wiosna ma trwać przez cały rok.

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

From reddit (see above):

From Divy:

Passover is almost here! (It begins on sundown Monday and lasts a week.) From Barry:

From Masih; a rare look at the inside of an Iranian “morality police” van.  The Islamic Republic is definitely intensifying its war against women after it went after Israel:

Have a listen to the new CEO or NPR denigrating “the truth”:

A tweet from my feed. Look at that lava go!

Congress votes against the First Amendment. Dylan Williams is right:

From Malcolm; a wonderful rescue of a young elephant (I couldn’t put up that second tweet without the first. . .)

From the Auschwitz Memorial, a link to Auschwitz art that I retweeted:

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, a puffin checking things out:

One of Leonardo’s rare studies of a cat:

31 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  1. “…columbia needs to adopt a better speech code (the University of Chicago’s would do)”. After watching the WHOLE hearing yesterday, I was really pleased to see the two trustees as witnesses, and in particular, thought that trustee Claire Shipman brought some sensible, forward looking answers to the questioning and berating by the Representatives. It was clear to me that the Board, which creates policy and hires the president to carry out those policies, has some sensible voices on it. I was not convinced of a similar situation for the Harvard Corp that hired and supported Prof Gay as president. From my limited experiences both on boards and as a staff pawn in large organizations, having strong, sensible, patient, and clear voices in the boardroom while policy is being created, is essential. President Shafik has walked into a mess, as will whoever is appointed to be the next Harvard president, but I feel that she, in partnership with her board bosses, can make huge improvements. Perhaps adopting much or all of UChicago Principles and appropriate education of the entire Columbia community in those principles will be a result.

    1. Minouche Shafik was pretty sound at the London School of Economics, which seems to have adopted the principles of the Kalven Report under her watch although the LSE doesn’t explicitly reference it.

      1. Good to hear that Jez. My main point is that she works for the board and really cannot move forward without board support. Glad to hear of her previous work at the LSE. I am even more hopeful!

    1. Yep, but as with the college presidents, I look just north of the CEO on the org chart for the real problem: the board that hired her.

    1. Well, that’s your truth!

      This idea that “everyone has their own truth” and that it’s judgmental and unfair to say that anyone is wrong started becoming gospel among young people in the 90’s, I think. Teachers trying to draw moral lessons during a class on ethics found it increasingly hard to find any examples of moral wrongs the students would assent to — even the Nazis couldn’t be judged, it wasn’t their place to say..

      This attitude may still be entrenched, but definitely no longer extends to charges of racism, homophobia, transphobia, or other assumed prejudices which fall under the Oppressor/Oppressed rubric. Live and Let Live has run up against Call Out Culture.

    2. You took the words right out of my keyboard. I listened to that and wondered, what the hell is that supposed to mean?

      1. Yeah, that was embarrassing. As Jim said, who hired HER? Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, lady.

  4. I disliked the sentence in the WJC article that there are “claims by Jewish students that they feel unsafe on campus.”

    It makes it sound as if the Jewish students are just taking a page from the woke handbook and objecting to speech they don’t like – i.e., speech that criticizes Israel or, god help me, praises Hamas – in order to shut up free speech. But as we know, it’s much more than that. They’re being subjected to vile antisemitic tropes, threats, and actual violence.

    On a lighter note, I and my siblings also loved animal crackers when we were growing up. What I remember best is cackling gleefully as we bit off their heads. We were a savage bunch.

  6. My mother’s parents brought Animal Crackers to the grandchildren whenever they came to see us—every Wednesday. I loved the little boxes with their built-in string handles.

    There are reports that the U.S. has OK’d an operation in Rafah in exchange for Israel not attacking Iran: https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-797675. We’ll see.

    And, I do care about what is happening in northern Israel. I have family in the town of Nahariya, the location of the Galilee Medical Center where victims of the Hezbollah attack were taken for treatment.

    The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is charged with maintaining a buffer area between Lebanon and Israel and keeping Hezbollah operatives away from the border. The UNIFIL peacekeeping force has obviously been unsuccessful,* and I don’t expect the U.N. to rectify the situation any time soon. Sadly, Israel will have no choice but to do the job.

    *https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/12/26/the-united-nations-completely-failed-in-lebanon/

    1. UNIFIL in Sidon, Lebanon, is useless. They just avoid Hezb as much as they can and do nothing. They’re not ACTIVELY on their side like UNWRA is in the pocket of Hamas. But they’re useless.

      Hezb shells Israel nearly every day and we hear little or nothing. Part of their motivation is they do it often from “borrowed” Christian houses so when they’re wrecked by the Israeli “reply” that land defaults to Hezb.
      But mainly they just hate Jews.

      I’d say a long deserved re-invasion of Sth Lebanon is warranted and predictable but unfortunately Hezb’s 50,000+ (better than Hamas’) rockets are better guided and there’s not much you have to hit in Israel – and it is small – to wreck it.
      THis is the only reason Sth Lebanon isn’t yet invaded.
      This might change if Israel feels it can defang the rocket forces though much of it is underground.
      Consider Sth Leb is a honeycomb of tunnels possibly larger than the Gaza underground.
      D.A.
      NYC

  7. Is that lava flow from the new eruption in Indonesia? Either way, is a new Krakatoa nigh upon us?

  8. I think the most amazing thing about that lava video is the way those morons with the parked car have just casually strolled up to look at the raging, rushing, stream of fiery death under the assumption that hey, it’s really far away and under control. Then they take their time getting back to their vehicle. Wtsf.

  9. On this day:
    1506 – The cornerstone of the current St. Peter’s Basilica is laid.

    1521 – Trial of Martin Luther begins its second day during the assembly of the Diet of Worms. He refuses to recant his teachings despite the risk of excommunication.

    1738 – Real Academia de la Historia (“Royal Academy of History”) is founded in Madrid.

    1775 – American Revolution: The British advancement by sea begins; Paul Revere and other riders warn the countryside of the troop movements.

    1783 – Three-Fifths Compromise: The first instance of black slaves in the United States of America being counted as three fifths of persons (for the purpose of taxation), in a resolution of the Congress of the Confederation. This was later adopted in the 1787 Constitution.

    1906 – The 7.9 Mw earthquake and fire destroy much of San Francisco, California, killing more than 3,000 people, making it one of the worst natural disasters in American history.

    1912 – The Cunard liner RMS Carpathia brings 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic to New York City.

    1930 – The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) announced that “there is no news” in their evening report.

    1945 – Italian resistance movement: In Turin, despite the harsh repressive measures adopted by Nazi-fascists, a great pre-insurrectional strike begins.

    1946 – The International Court of Justice holds its inaugural meeting in The Hague, Netherlands.

    1946 – Jackie Robinson makes his regular season debut for the Montreal Royals of the International League, to make them the first integrated modern professional baseball team.

    1947 – The Operation Big Bang, the largest non-nuclear man-made explosion to that time, destroys bunkers and military installations on the North Sea island of Heligoland, Germany.

    1954 – Gamal Abdel Nasser seizes power in Egypt.

    1980 – The Republic of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) comes into being, with Canaan Banana as the country’s first President. The Zimbabwean dollar replaces the Rhodesian dollar as the official currency.

    1988 – The United States launches Operation Praying Mantis against Iranian naval forces in the largest naval battle since World War II.

    2019 – A redacted version of the Mueller report is released to the United States Congress and the public.

    Births:
    1480 – Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI (d. 1519).

    1580 – Thomas Middleton, English Jacobean playwright and poet (d. 1627).

    1740 – Sir Francis Baring, 1st Baronet, English banker and politician (d. 1810).

    1772 – David Ricardo, British economist and politician (d. 1823).

    1794 – William Debenham, English founder of Debenhams (d. 1863).

    1813 – James McCune Smith, African-American physician, apothecary, abolitionist, and author (d. 1865).

    1857 – Clarence Darrow, American lawyer (d. 1938).

    1882 – Leopold Stokowski, English conductor (d. 1977).

    1889 – Jessie Street, Australian activist (d. 1970). [As Australia’s only female delegate to the founding of the United Nations in 1945, Jessie was Australia’s first female delegate to the United Nations, where she ensured the inclusion of sex as a non-discrimination clause in the United Nations Charter.]

    1900 – Bertha Isaacs, Bahamian teacher, tennis player, politician and women’s rights activist (d. 1997). [Today’s Woman of the Day, see next post below.]

    1901 – Al Lewis, American songwriter (d. 1967). [Co-wrote “Blueberry Hill” and “Tears on My Pillow”.]

    1918 – Clifton Hillegass, American publisher, founded CliffsNotes (d. 2001).

    1918 – Tony Mottola, American guitarist and composer (d. 2004).

    1919 – Esther Afua Ocloo, Ghanaian entrepreneur and pioneer of microlending (d. 2002).

    1924 – Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2005). [“It may sound funny, but it’s true. I’m better off with the Blues”.]

    1937 – Jan Kaplický, Czech architect, designed the Selfridges Building (d. 2009).

    1940 – Joseph L. Goldstein, American biochemist and geneticist, Nobel Prize laureate.

    1942 – Robert Christgau, American journalist and critic.

    1944 – Kathy Acker, American author and poet (d. 1997).

    1946 – Hayley Mills, English actress.

    1953 – Rick Moranis, Canadian-American actor, comedian, singer and screenwriter.

    1964 – Niall Ferguson, Scottish historian and academic.

    1971 – David Tennant, Scottish actor.

    1972 – Eli Roth, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter.

    1973 – Haile Gebrselassie, Ethiopian runner.

    Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you. (Shannon Alder:
    1732 – Louis Feuillée, French astronomer, geographer, and botanist (b. 1660).

    1763 – Marie-Josephte Corriveau, Canadian murderer (b. 1733).

    1802 – Erasmus Darwin, English physician and botanist (b. 1731).

    1832 – Jeanne-Elisabeth Chaudet, French painter (b. 1761).

    1912 – Martha Ripley, American physician (b. 1843).

    1945 – John Ambrose Fleming, English physicist and engineer, invented the vacuum tube (b. 1849).

    1955 – Albert Einstein, German-American physicist, engineer, and academic (b. 1879).

    2002 – Thor Heyerdahl, Norwegian ethnographer and explorer (b. 1914).

    2008 – Germaine Tillion, French ethnologist and anthropologist (b. 1907).

    2013 – Anne Williams, English activist (b. 1951). [Campaigner for the victims of the Hillsborough disaster of 1989, in which 97 Liverpool football fans, including her son Kevin Williams, died at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield. Monday was the 35th anniversary of the disaster.]

    2019 – Lyra McKee, Irish journalist (b. 1990).

    2022 – Harrison Birtwistle, British composer (b. 1934).

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

      Dame Albertha Magdelina Isaacs DBE (née Hanna; born on this day in 1900, died 1 August 1997) was a Bahamian teacher, tennis player, women’s rights activist and politician. After a career as an elementary school teacher, she played on the international tennis circuit, winning both singles and doubles titles in the 1930s.

      Returning to the Bahamas, she became involved in the women’s suffrage movement in the country, helping gain the vote in 1962. She was the second woman to be appointed as a Senator in the Bahamas and the first woman to be awarded the honorary title of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. An annual trophy awarded at the Commonwealth Caribbean Lawn Tennis Championship bears her name.

      Isaacs died in August 1997 in Nassau, Bahamas. In 2012, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of women gaining the vote in the Bahamas, a series of stamps was issued featuring prominent women’s rights activists. Isaacs’s likeness appears on the 70 cent stamp.

      Her great-grandson is former Bahamian Major League Baseball player and current San Francisco Giants First Base Coach Antoan Richardson who wears the number 00, representing her birth year to honor her legacy.

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

    2. 1783: The Constitution does not mention black slaves, or black people in any context. The relevant article refers to free persons (including those bound only by short-term indenture), Indians not taxed, and “other persons.” The rationale for the compromise was not racism at all. It was a ploy by the free States to stymie the attempts by slave states to have Congressional seats allocated according to their total population but to have their taxes assessed only according to their free population: full representation without full taxation if you like.

      The idea of counting a slave (no mention of race) as 3/5 of a free person was a northern gambit, not a southern.

      1. Interesting, thanks Leslie. I’ll try to remember to post something on the April 18 Wikipedia talk page to get it corrected.

    3. 1775 – American Revolution: The British advancement by sea begins;
      What is this word “advancement”? I have come across it increasingly recently. What is wrong with “advance”?

    1. What a lovely place for an afternoon outing with the entire family. “The Abyss” would be the perfect place for lunch.

  11. “…the truth might be a distraction that’s getting in the way of finding common ground…”

    FFS – the truth IS the common ground. Conflating the truth with ones view of the truth is nonsense. If I believe the moon is made of green cheese it doesn’t mean I have a different truth about the moon. It just means I’m an idiot.

    1. And yet Maher would probably be the first to decry Kellyanne Conway / Trump’s appeal to “alternative facts”, I suspect!

  12. So according to the WSJ, the NYT ‘shelved an episode of its “Daily” podcast after internal debate. The episode focused on a controversial Times story by Jeffrey Gettleman and freelancers that found Hamas had weaponized sexual violence in its attacks on Israel on Oct. 7’ and the NYT’s only concern is that they couldn’t find out who let the outside world know the fact?
    https://archive.ph/5hfOT

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