Tuesday: Hili dialogue

May 28, 2024 • 6:45 am

The three-day weekend for Americans is over; welcome to an especially cruel day: Tuesday, May 28, 2024, and it’s National Hamburger Day (I had one Saturday). Although I’ve never had a burger at Hodad’s, reputed to be America’s best (and therefore the world’s best), I can say with some confidence that it’ll be the best I’ve ever had, and my bucket list includes one of these monsters when I’m next in San Diego.

Upside-down burgers are the way to go. When I have a big monster like this, I begin by turning it upside down on the plate.

It’s also National Brisket Day, and so here’s a very fine brisket from the City Market in Luling, Texas, photographed (can you believe it) 20 years ago. Go there, and don’t forget the sauce! Note the absence of utensils, the side of saltines and pickles, and the red “edging” that denotes a well-cooked brisket.

Finally, it’s also Menstrual Hygiene Day

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the May 28 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Obituaries first: Basketball great Bill Walton, a Hall of Famer and one of the great centers of all time, died of cancer at only 71.

“Bill Walton was truly one of a kind,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. “As a Hall of Fame player, he redefined the center position. His unique all-around skills made him a dominant force at UCLA and led to an NBA regular-season and Finals MVP, two NBA championships and a spot on the NBA’s 50th and 75th Anniversary Teams.

“Bill then translated his infectious enthusiasm and love for the game to broadcasting, where he delivered insightful and colorful commentary which entertained generations of basketball fans.

“But what I will remember most about him was his zest for life. He was a regular presence at league events – always upbeat, smiling ear to ear and looking to share his wisdom and warmth. I treasured our close friendship, envied his boundless energy and admired the time he took with every person he encountered.”

Walton at his best (he was often injured):

*The world is outraged at Israel for killing 45 Gazan civilians and injuring 249, all supposedly harbored in a “safe zone” near Rafah (see the NYT article here). The IDF’s head lawyer promised a thorough and immediate investigation (see if Hamas does anything like that!), and, sure enough, the facts, at least as revealed in the Times of Israel, aren’t what the Western MSM avers.  Apparently the IDF strike was aimed at senior Hamas members, precautions were taken to prevent civilian deaths, and, most important, the strike took place in an area that wasn’t a “safe zone”. (see bit that I’ve bolded below).  (Remember, you don’t have to believe this, but wait until time makes the facts clear.) Anyway, the report from the ToI:

Israel’s military says it took steps to reduce harm to civilians before carrying out a strike targeting two senior Hamas officials that reportedly killed dozens of Palestinian civilians in southern Gaza’s Rafah last night, and did not think it would affect innocent Gazans.

The airstrike in the Tel Sultan area of western Rafah targeted and killed the commander of Hamas’s so-called West Bank headquarters — charged with advancing attacks against Israel in and from the West Bank — as well as another top member of the unit, according to the army. But Gazans say the strike set off a major conflagration in an area packed with displaced Gazans sheltering in tents and makeshift housing, killing 45.

The strike was carried out based on “intelligence information on the presence of the terrorists in the area,” the Israel Defense Forces says in a statement. Before launching the action, the army carried out “many steps to reduce the chance of harming uninvolved [civilians], including aerial surveillance, the use of precision munitions, and additional intelligence information.”

It says that “based on [these steps] it was estimated that no harm was expected to uninvolved civilians.”

The military’s top-tier General Staff Fact-Finding Assessment Mechanism will probe the Israeli airstrike, the IDF announces.

The mechanism is an independent military body responsible for investigating unusual incidents amid the war. The probe was ordered by Military Advocate General Maj. Gen. Yifat Yomer, the IDF says.

A military source says two missiles with a “reduced in size” warhead, which were adapted for such targets, were used in the strike.

The IDF notes that the strike did not take place in the designated “humanitarian zone” in the al-Mawasi region on the coast, where the military has called Palestinians to evacuate to.

More recent news suggests that the Israeli strike, legal, limited, and outside the humanitarian zone, exploded weapons in the Hamas-carrying jeep, and shrapnel from the exploded weapons ignited a fuel tank, causing the deadly fire. The one thing I can’t find out is whether the fuel tank itself (100 m from the strike) was in the humanitarian zone. The whole thing is a “tragedy,” as Netanyahu said, but Israel did not target civilians, and the strike that is so demonized by the world was actually a permitted targeting of Hamas officials.

A tweet showing how Hamas has created fake news (read the whole thing):

Driving home from work, the first thing I heard on the NPR news is how outraged the world is that Israel bombed civilians. There was no correction along the lines of the above, or even a note. The mainstream media, it appears, prefers to believe Hamas rather than the IDF, despite the fact that the former has a record of lying and the latter doesn’t. As I always say, you’ll get a more accurate take on the war (including genuine Israeli screwups) from the Times of Israel than from the New York Times or the Washington Post.

*From reader Paul:  “Greetings from Aberdeen, Scotland, where it was recently announced that the latest census figures show that the majority of Scots (51%) have “no religion”. The BBC report is here. Our ‘national church’ has lost 50% of its followers since 2001 – 2.2 million to 1.1.”

For the first time, a majority of people in Scotland say they are not religious, according to new census data.

In the 2022 census, 51.1% of respondents said they had “no religion,” up from 36.7% in 2011.

The change was driven by a collapse in Christianity, particularly among Protestants.

While the Church of Scotland remains the largest religious group, its numbers have halved in a decade.

And a graph from the article:

But the Muslim population is growing like crazy, as is the case in much of Europe:

Just a fifth of people in Scotland (20.4%) now say they identify with the Church of Scotland, which has lost a million followers since the dawn of the 21st century.

The number of Roman Catholics has also fallen, down by more than 117,000 in the past decade to stand at 13.3% of the population.

The number of Muslims increased by 43,100 to 119,872 over the same period, from 1.4% to 2.2% of the population.

. . .Younger people were more likely than older people to say they had no religion but the figure was up across all age groups.

Among over-65s, “no religion” more than doubled between 2011 and 2022, an increase of 186,700 people.

The humanists applauded while believers made excuses:

The Humanist Society Scotland, which promotes empirical observation as opposed to religious belief, said Scotland had made “significant progress” towards becoming a more tolerant society in terms of its attitudes in areas such as sexuality, abortion and assisted dying.

The Reverend David Cameron, from the Church of Scotland, said the decline in membership numbers had been identified as an area of considerable concern by the church.

He said: “It is sobering, and we know that when the church is measured in this way it can feel hurtful for our members and be a source of anxiety for many.

“But our faith and our relevancy cannot be expressed simply as a set of numbers in a table.”

Paul adds, “Luckily, this hasn’t resulted in an increase in lawlessness: ‘over the past ten years, total recorded crime in Scotland has decreased by 13%’ (Scottish Government).” ‘Tis true, which of course means that less religion doesn’t mean more crime.  Except for Muslims, this reflects a decline in religiosity over much of the West: a trend to be applauded.

*James Kirchick, an author who writes for Tablet, has a disturbing NYT op-ed called “A chill has fallen over Jews in publishing.” This is all ye need to know:

This month, an account on X with the handle @moyurireads and 360 followers published a link to a color-coded spreadsheet classifying nearly 200 writers according to their views on the “genocide” in Gaza. Titled “Is Your Fav Author a Zionist?,” it reads like a cross between Tiger Beat and “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

The novelist Emily St. John Mandel, the author of “Station Eleven” and “Sea of Tranquility,” earned a red “pro-Israel/Zionist” classification because, according to the list’s creator, she “travels to Israel frequently talks favorably about it.” Simply for posting a link to the Israeli chapter of the Red Cross, the novelist Kristin Hannah was deemed a “Zionist,” as was the author Gabrielle Zevin for delivering a book talk to Hadassah, a Jewish women’s organization. Needless to say, the creator of the list — whose post on X announcing it garnered over a million views within a few days — encourages readers to boycott any works produced by “Zionists.”

The spreadsheet is but the crudest example of the virulently anti-Israel — and increasingly antisemitic — sentiment that has been coursing through the literary world since the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7. Much of it revolves around the charge of genocide and seeks to punish Zionists and anyone else who refuses to explicitly denounce the Jewish state for allegedly committing said crime. Since a large majority of American Jews (80 percent of whom, according to a 2020 poll, said that caring about Israel is an important or essential part of their Judaism) are Zionists, to accuse all Zionists of complicity in genocide is to anathematize a core component of Jewish identity.

Over the past several months, a litmus test has emerged across wide swaths of the literary world effectively excluding Jews from full participation unless they denounce Israel. This phenomenon has been unfolding in progressive spaces (academia, politics, cultural organizations) for quite some time. That it has now hit the rarefied, highbrow realm of publishing — where Jewish Americans have made enormous contributions and the vitality of which depends on intellectual pluralism and free expression — is particularly alarming.

As is always and everywhere the case, this burgeoning antisemitism is concomitant with a rising illiberalism. Rarely, if ever, do writers express unanimity on a contentious political issue. We’re a naturally argumentative bunch who — at least in theory — answer only to our own consciences.

. . .Nine days after the Oct. 7 attack, the popular website Literary Hub began publishing what has since become a near-daily torrent of agitprop invective against what it describes as the “rogue ethnostate” of Israel, which it routinely accuses of committing genocide. In March, after a mass resignation of its staff members, the literary magazine Guernica retracted a personal essay by a left-wing Israeli woman about her experience volunteering to drive Palestinian children to Israel for medical treatment. In her resignation letter, one of the magazine’s co-publishers denounced the piece as “a hand-wringing apologia for Zionism and the ongoing genocide in Palestine.”

Whereas antisemitism in the literary world used to lurk in the shadows, according to the Jewish Book Council’s chief executive, Naomi Firestone-Teeter, since Oct. 7, it has become increasingly overt. “The fact that people have felt so proud and open about it is a different beast entirely,” she said. One of the most disturbing developments in this regard has been the frequency and contempt with which the word “Zionist” is now spit from people’s mouths in the United States.

Finally, the article describes the decline and fall of PEN America, an organization that exists to foster free expression in literature but is increasingly adopting “anti-Zionist” stands:

PEN’s detractors aren’t helping the Palestinian people with their whitewashing of Hamas. They’re engaged in a hostile takeover of a noble organization committed to the defense of free expression in order to advance a sectarian and bigoted political agenda.

It is the worst of times; it is the worst of times.

*The Lowering the Bar site recounts the recent case with this title, “Priest who bit woman during Mass said she had it coming.” (h/t Ginger K.)

You won’t be surprised to hear that the parties to this altercation, which took place in Florida on May 19, are disputing some important facts. But not the bite itself.

According to this report, based on an affidavit that police submitted to the prosecutor’s office, the incident happened at a church in St. Cloud, about 25 miles south of Orlando. The priest told police the woman he bit had been turned away from the 10 a.m. Mass that day, on the grounds that she “had not fulfilled all the requirements for receiving communion.” She came back for the noon service, but was apparently denied again. All this appears to be undisputed, but the stories diverge after that.

The affidavit says that according to the woman, “[s]he informed the priest she did in fact do the steps necessary and is now accepted by God, thus granting her the ability to participate.” The priest then “became upset and tried to ram the ‘cookie’ in her mouth,” she claimed. “In response … she attempted to grab another communion bread which [the priest] was holding. However, [he] grabbed her and bit her arm.”

But according to the priest, the woman “attacked” him first and grabbed the bowl of communion wafers out of his hands. The affidavit notes that this “is considered sacrilege, as the Catholic faith consider[s] the communion bread the body of Christ, and [the priest said] he was trying to protect it.” In the heat of the moment, he said, “[t]he only way he thought to extract her from [the situation] was to bite her arm.” The woman refused medical attention, but insisted on pressing charges.

. . .But the video does appear to show the woman acting aggressively first by grabbing for the bowl or its contents, and witnesses supported this as well.

Partly for those reasons, the local diocese issued a statement defending the priest, though not the biting itself. “While the Diocese of Orlando does not condone physical altercations,” it said, “Father Rodriguez was simply attempting to prevent an act of desecration of the Holy Communion” when he bit his parishoner. A communion wafer “is not something a person can arbitrarily demand and is certainly not a mere ‘cookie’ as the complainant called it,” the statement continued. The woman had grabbed and crushed some of the wafers, it claimed. Which, again, supports the view that she was unfamiliar with the procedure to begin with.

The priest should have kept his choppers to himself, as biting is illegal, but believe me, wafers are not “cookies”. I’ve tasted an unconsecrated wafer, and those things aren’t “cookies” in any sense. They’re the Catholic equivalent of matzohs (unleavened bread), but matzos can be made tasty with butter and other toppings.

*Note that Amazon has the world’s best jam back in stock (see photo below and click for the link). This British wonder isn’t cheap at $9.69 for 12 ounces, but it really is the best jam (or preserves) I’ve ever had, and was even consumed by James Bond in From Russia With Love.  It’s made with tiny wild strawberries grown on the grounds of Wilkin and Sons, picked by hand, and made in small batches. It’s a world-class jam, and if you have a spare ten bucks, buy yourself a jar as a treat. Be careful, though, as it’s addictive (I just got a new jar after finishing my last one.)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is bored:

A: What’s new?
Hili: Nothing, a boring idyll.
In Polish:
Ja: Co nowego?
Hili: Nic, nudna idylla.
And the roses are blooming in Dobrzyn. Here’s the entrance to Andrzej and Malgorzata’s house, where I stay when in Poland:

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

From Now That’s Wild:

From America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy. And it’s a good example; it took me a second to figure out what it was saying:

From Science Humor:  And it’s true: the book is Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot.

From Masih: The UN pays tribute to a BAD MAN:

From Luana: plaudits for the recently fired Harvard President, now “the forever President”:

From Bryan, a thread of different scientists saying that there are only two sexes in humans. It’s true, but of course you can’t prove that by picking out a bunch of figures that assert it.  Here are two, but go to this link to see the rest:

From Barry, who says, “Nice escape!” Indeed.

From Malcolm: a cat comes back from the vet’s and it’s SO happy! Sound up.

From the Auschwitz Memorial: my repost

Two tweets from Doctor Cobb. The first stamp honors Thomas Hunt Morgan, my academic great grandfather:

Live and learn! The painter brother is Jack Butler Yeats (1871-1957).

44 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Good thing she did not swear an oath on Sagan’s “Dragons of Eden” – Pulitzer prize winning, now a largely discredited theory, still popularly quoted from as an appeal to authority bias from a high priest of Science.

    Interesting discussion in the CSR book “Minds and gods” about Voltaire and Pascal. Voltaire was a widely popular writer with a big following (think Judith Butler) while Pascal had a religious experience. Now, you may claim that that was a mental derangement in thinking and proves nothing – but to me it’s like someone who visited a 3rd dimension trying to explain it to a 2d dweller, or the subjectivists argument about “Mary’s Room” – people who know everything there possibly is to rationally KNOW logically about the science of color, but have never actually SEEN or experienced the sensation of the color red. The only way to describe it is something tautological like experiencing the “consciousness of consciousness itself”.

    1. Please don’t insult Voltaire by comparing him to Judith Butler. He was not an obscurantist and most of what he stood for remains worth standing for. Unlike Butler, he was an Enlightenment proponent of rationality; unlike Pascal, his thought was not warped by religiosity. And yes, having a religious experience IS mental derangement and proves nothing. It’s no more worthwhile than the testimony of those who claim to have been kidnapped by aliens.

      1. … With the caveat that alien abductees are trying, to some degree, to describe their experience, whatever it’s origin, in reasonably rational terms. Unlike, for example, Ezekiel’s wheels-within-wheels description of his mushroom-collecting fail. Well, arguable fail – depends on what he was hoping to get.

        1. To be fair, some ancient mystics were probably doing their best to describe their experiences as best they could in pre-scientific times.

          I’ve seen it suggested that ol’ Zeke had temporal lobe epilepsy. That may be a stretch, but some of the drawings and written descriptions by Christian mystics definintely look like they experienced migraines. See Hildegard von Bingen for one famous example (Oliver Sacks wrote about her.)

          1. ISTR Hildegard (though not from Sacks – somewhere else ; whatever), but I don’t see my experience of migraine in her description. But then, my migraines decreased a lot after I got both eyes focussing to approximately the same depth. Now they only come back if, for some reason, I’m operating without spectacles for several hours. Such as, having one lens fall out 200 miles into a 500 mile drive, and not having a jewellers screwdriver in the car, and the wife having “helpfully” “tidied” my spare specs from the glove compartment into the bedside cabinet at home.

            But I do accept that some “mystical experiences” may have been descriptions of physiological, psychological, or pharmaceutical distress. Perfectly happy to recategorise such experiences into the “descriptions” drawer, and out of the grab-bag of “apologetics examples”.
            “pharmaceutical distress” – that’s a nice term. Remembering one night on the ‘shrooms, I wonder if Neil has recovered from his experience. Last I heard, he was trying to do the Eiger Nordwand in winter, in “alpine” style.

  2. Quote: ‘Scotland had made “significant progress” towards becoming a more tolerant society in terms of its attitudes in areas such as sexuality, abortion and assisted dying’ or ‘Scotland has become more intolerant of such ideas as that there are only two sexes and that human life is sacred.’

    1. As the reader who alerted Jerry to these census results, I would stand by the interpretation of Scotland becoming more tolerant in demonstrably good ways. Perhaps surprisingly, I think this is also true of the Church of Scotland itself. In 2022 the CoS allowed its clergy to conduct same-sex marriages having previously been totally opposed to it; also in 2022, the General Assembly acknowledged the practice of conversion therapy is harmful and urged the Scottish Government to ban it; and the CoS supported the Gender Recognition Reform bill, reversing the opinion that diverse gender identity is a mental disorder. One interpretation is that the CoS changes its position depending on what wider society thinks, just a bit behind the curve.
      Also, I don’t think “sexuality” in this context – or any other – means “sex” (which better people than me on this web site have shown is binary) but rather a person’s expression of one aspect of their character

      1. Unfortunately Scotland thinks that “one aspect of” some men’s “characters” means they should be “legally women,” and allowed in women’s sports, prison housing, rape shelters, etc.

        Edinburgh’s Rape Crisis Center is run by a trans-identified man who subjected one worker to “Kafkaesque” disciplinary hearings for suggesting that victims using the center might have a right to know the sex of their councilors.
        https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1ee39wn30xo

        As for “conversion therapy,” isn’t Scotland still insisting that anything other than “affirmation” of a child’s stated “gender identity” amounts to “conversion therapy”?

        https://x.com/ForWomenScot

        You should also be aware that dissenting from Gender Orthodoxy can lead to excommunication from the more liberal Scottish parties.

        1. I agree 100% with what you’re saying, the application of gender identity is truly bizarre (and sometimes potentially injurious).
          My point was not that the Church of Scotland had acceptable attitudes, just that they had changed, even though their foundation texts clearly haven’t.

          1. Thanks for the clarification. I failed in reading comprehension; I missed the fact that you were referring to the CoS. D’oh!

    2. With a side serving, quite large, deep fried, of what was expressed by a TV character last night as “We got rid of they bampots awa’ ower the watter 400 years ago and we dinna want ’em back!”
      A sentiment I’ve also heard from Cloggies, of South Afrikans.

  3. Just opened a fresh jar of Little Scarlet this morning. I order them two at a time (so that I always have a preserve in reserve on the shelf) from Amazon with 48-hr delivery to our front porch. (He says with tongue firmly planted in cheek: surely Amazon two-day home delivery of Little Scarlet is a wonder of the modern world)

    You were driving home yesterday? Must have felt really bad if driving ro work rather than walking. Hope you got some good rest and are better today…even in the worst of times.

    1. The best off-the-shelf price I can find for Little Scarlet in the UK is at Morrison’s, at £4.25 ($5.32). I reckon $9.69 is quite a mark-up, even though it’s got to be shipped all the way across the pond.

      1. Remember the good old days when buying something (normally technology) at the 1 £1 -= $1 exchange rate was actually a rip-off?
        I’ll keep an eye open for it next time I’m in Morrisons.

    2. I’m now lamenting the sheer number of wild strawberries that passed under my mowing blades this past month!

  4. Jayzus, that Hodad guy is a frikkn’ genius –

    Notice this detail : he has to eat there too, so the food has to be good.

    Until I get out to SD again, … goin’ down the grocery store today, I’ll say that.

    … and this is for Hotdogjudge :

    [ middle finger right back ]

    … did everyone read PCC(E)’s one-liner on male/female? The only one that mentions evolution! It’s like saying sqrt(4)=+/-2 instead of 2+2=4,.. or -2-2=-4, or…

    1. On the latter point, I think people will tend to state their views starting from their own base. So an anatomist might bring up anatomy first. A geneticist would start on that. With a longer description permitted, they might then expand to those other areas, but the Tweets don’t give that space.

  5. The key to decoding the Burger King sign about being out of water lies in remembering that every illiterate spells “f*cking” as “f*cken” when using the present participle in its usual sense as an adjective, or as an adverb intensifying an adjective.

    1. The key to decoding the Burger King sign about being out of water lies in noticing that it is Kurger Bing and not Burger King. 🙂

      1. Thank you, came here to say this. The America’s Cultural Decline website is often blind to parody and irony.

  6. Another obituary for today. Few people can claim to have made a discovery that changed the way humanity looks at the universe, but Arno Penzias was one such person. In 1965, he and Robert Wilson discovered the cosmic microwave background, which provided concrete evidence that the universe originated in a cataclysmic event a finite time in the past, which we now call the Big Bang. Penzias and Wilson were awarded the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery.

    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/may/01/arno-penzias-obituary

    1. But they were not looking for it and might even have been unaware of the idea of a CMBR. Dicke was looking for it but just didn’t get there in time 🙂

  7. Good thing the MSM can be trusted on controversial topics other than Israel.

  8. About the sex binary thing. I am concerned that evidence and reasoning is losing this contest, as the evidence and reasoning side continues to post their views on blogs, substacks and Twitter (to their own audience, btw), while the motivated reasoning side gets big op eds in science journals and now symposia at NIH. And the latter will lead to multiple publications in a bound volume that they can then cite as “authority”.
    I take it that the evidence and reasoning side still holds a solid majority, but most are either complacent or perhaps afraid.

    1. I think this is why lawsuits being brought by patients who allege harm from gender-bending medical malpractice —sometimes called detransitioners, sometimes called traitors to the cause — will get nowhere. The doctors who will be retained as expert witnesses for the defence populate these publications, symposia, and medical practice associations and, more important for Court, have personal experience from treating hundreds of gender-confused patients. The experts for the plaintiffs have only systemic reviews to quote. They avoid getting involved in this whole racket because they know it’s harmful quackery, so they have no personal clinical experience of harm to cite in testimony. What silences doctors in acrimonious medical disagreements is the question, “And how many patients with this condition have you treated, Doctor?”

      When a patient alleges that the failure of a practitioner, a drug, or a medical device caused her harm, there is at least agreement that the medical condition that the patient suffered from actually exists and the tort came from misdiagnosis, applying what most can agree there are standards for deciding was the wrong treatment, or that the manufacturer made a defective product. Imagine how difficult it would be to win a med. mal. case involving cancer treatment if your argument, supported by only a tiny contrarian minority of crank doctors who don’t even treat cancer—because they don’t believe it’s a thing—was that whatever it was you got chemotherapy and surgery for, it couldn’t have been cancer even though all the mainstream oncologists agreed it was, AND the treatment was correct for that diagnosis.

      Symposia like the NIH (the NIH! Behold how the mighty have fallen!) are intended to cement together the wall that will protect those sheltering behind it from legal assault. The Courts must defer to experts. If the experts all side with the defence and survive cross-examination, the suits will fail.

    2. I share your pessimism. At a recent meeting with a large group of graduate students and professors, one female student expressed concern that the conference presentation we were discussing (on a topic in evolutionary medicine) used the words “woman” or “female” too often, and should perhaps use “people who menstruate”. Some students agreed that this would be a good change (but some pushback from the professors). Emphasize this was a group of evolutionary biologists at a reasonably good research university. Weaponized empathy plus threat of public shaming seems to have won the academy. I don’t know how it will be reversed.

    3. Remember this thing we learned from the general atheism v. religion battles :

      You cannot reason a person out of something they did not reason themselves into in the first place.

      IMHO – it’s all due to the spellbinding capture of Queer Theory – the doctrine of a gnostic theosophical religious cult – and its the gnosis part that has the discourse in an general oil-and-water scenario.

    4. When the leader defines gender as (from what I’ve read, trying to find a copy of Judith’s latest to sample) : “a felt sense of the body, in its surfaces and depths, a lived sense of being a body in the world in this way”

      How do you rationally debate a subjective position ?

      Whether that’s an annoyance that’ll go away, or take hold like Bushido in Japan or something else in Germany that got their exceptionalism bombed out of them – dunno :/

    5. The Freedom From Religion Foundation seems to side a little too much with gender-affirming care. I just happened comment in reply to one of the organization’s posts:

      “I’m a longtime supporter of, and monthly donor to, FFRF. But I think science is being neglected in gender-affirming practices affecting kids, particularly with the application of hormones for which the long-term consequences are poorly understood, if they are understood at all.”
      https://x.com/Jon_Alexandr/status/1795631821042180577

  9. Yes. Read the Times of Israel, Israel Hayom, the Jerusalem Post, Ynet News, and Israel National News, all of which are English-language Israeli news sites. Some lean left, some right. World Jewish Daily is another interesting site; it consolidates news from various sources, and has links to the above-mentioned outlets. Most of these sources are pro-Israel, but they often disagree on what that means. Israeli journalism is not a monoculture.

    Jerry mentions NPR. NPR is still a setting on my car radio, but I have given up on it. One finds only propaganda there, not news (the last I checked).

    When I saw the spreadsheet of Zionist authors, I was at first afraid to open it, fearing that it might be a Trojan Horse virus put out there to destroy the computers of Jews who deign to look. Alas, I opened it and was disgusted. Identifying and “outing” Jews and supporters of Jews has a long history. This spreadsheet reminds me of the notorious map of Jewish and Zionist targets in the Boston area that appeared last year (https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/349365/with-map-of-jews-in-boston-bds-antisemitic-threat-now-clear-and-present/). The mapping project was released before October 7.

    2. They’re casting a wide net: “ Included in their targeting of “institutions responsible for the colonization of Palestine or other harms” are Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Boston office, the Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard University, and even Harpoon Brewery.”

  10. RIP Bill Walton, not only a premier baller but also Celebrity Deadhead Number One.
    I met him at a music festival in Ventura last year and he was gracious and earth-down.

    1. Hey Chas. Thanks for setting me straight on the diet of horned toads. I replied under “reader’s wildlife” but it pinged back to me.

  11. “….but matzoh can be made tasty with butter and other toppings.” Yes, like butter and Little Scarlet Strawberry Preserves! Year round. It’s not just for Pesach.

  13. the soda problem was at Kurger Bing(*)

    TBH, most of the idiocy at America’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy seems to reside in the posters who misrepresent or misunderstand things.

    * thekurgerbing
    2,912 posts
    173K followers
    4,765 following
    Kurger Bing Corporatiom
    Digital creator
    Official parody of BK. Founder and COO of @theillunimatico

  14. Regarding “New NASA director spotted swearing oath on Carl Sagan’s book instead of bible”…

    This was Dr Makenzie Lystrup being sworn in as the Director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (the first female director for the center). Sagan’s book title was inspired by a 1990 photo of Earth taken from 3.7 billion miles away by Voyager 1. (3.7 billion miles = 40.5 AU, or over 40 times the distance between Earth and Sun.)

    Separately, last year Charity Weeden was sworn in as Associate Administrator for NASA’s Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy … using a copy of Carl Sagan’s novel Contact:
    https://x.com/Jon_Alexandr/status/1715822937192943976

Comments are closed.