Wednesday: Hili dialogue

June 5, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to a Hump Day (“কুঁজ দিন ” in Bengali): June 5, 2024, and National Ketchup Day, a condiment declared by the Reagan Administration to be a vegetable.  My father taught me that Heinz Ketchup is the best, and it still is—by far. In its honor I submit this great ode written by Richard Armour:

 Shake and shake the ketchup bottle
 None'll come, and then a lot'll

It’s also Jerusalem Day, National Tailors’ Day, National Veggie Burger Day (I’ve never had one), National Gingerbread Day, Sausage Roll Day, World Day Against Speciesism and World Environment Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 5 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Biden finally issued his executive order on immigration, for he’s running scared about the election and knows this is a Big Issue for Voters of both parties:

President Biden issued an executive order on Tuesday that prevents migrants from seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border when crossings surge, a dramatic election-year move to ease pressure on the immigration system and address a major concern among voters.

The order is the most restrictive border policy instituted by Mr. Biden, or any other modern Democrat, and echoes an effort in 2018 by President Donald J. Trump to cut off migration that was blocked in federal court.

The restrictions kick in once the seven-day average for illegal entries hits 2,500 per day. Daily totals already exceed that number, which means that Mr. Biden’s executive order could go into effect right away — allowing border officers to return migrants across the border into Mexico or to their home countries within hours or days.

Typically, migrants who cross illegally and claim asylum are released into the United States to wait for court appearances, where they can plead their cases. But a huge backlog means those cases can take years to come up.

The new system is designed to deter those illegal crossings.

The border would reopen to asylum seekers only when the number of crossings falls significantly. The figure would have to stay below a daily average of 1,500 for seven days in a row. The border would reopen to migrants two weeks after that.

The American Civil Liberties Union said it planned to challenge the executive action in court.

I’m pretty sure that most immigrants are seeking a better life rather than seeking asylum because they fear for their lives, and those won’t be accepted under the new plan. But there is also something else that might facilitate things: an immigration judge who can resolve these cases more quickly. That, however, is taken care of because of this provision:

There would be limited exceptions, including for minors who cross the border alone, victims of human trafficking and those who use a Customs and Border Protection app to schedule an appointment with a border officer to request asylum.

However, I’m not sure what “an appointment with a border officer” can do to resolve the “better life vs. asylum” issue. Can officers decide to let people in who use the app, people who then must still wait years for resolution of their case by a judge?

*While the war in Gaza rages on, don’t forget that Hezbollah has been firing numerous rockets at northern Israel, clearing out many civilians who have become refugees. Now the rockets are setting towns and forests on fire from shrapnel. Hezbollah is increasing its attacks, and this has led the IDF to broach the possibility that there will be a real war against Hezbollah in Lebanon before too long.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi says Israel is close to making a decision regarding Hezbollah’s daily attacks on northern Israel amid the Gaza war.

“We are approaching the point where a decision will have to be made, and the IDF is prepared and very ready for this decision,” Halevi says during an assessment with military officials and Fire Commissioner Eyal Caspi, at an army base in Kiryat Shmona.

“We have been attacking for eight months, and Hezbollah is paying a very, very high price. It has increased its strengths in recent days and we are prepared after a very good process of training… to move to an attack in the north,” he says.

“[We have] strong defense, readiness to attack, [and] we are approaching a decision point,” he adds.

Halevi and Caspi later met with firefighters who worked to extinguish large blazes in northern Israel over the past two days, some of which were sparked by Hezbollah rocket and drone attacks.

I would have thought that the IDF is already stretched too thin with going after Hamas to begin yet another battle to the north with Hezbollah’s terrorists (and remember, those terrorists have many more and much better rockets than does Hamas, as well as a highly sophisticated system of tunnels. But Israel probably can’t survive if Hezbollah continues its rocket attacks from the north (they have over 100,000 rockets supplied by Iran), and so, like in the last century, Israel may have to engage in more than one war at a time.

*This is a big surprise: Indian Prime Minister and Hindu-phile Narendra Modi, supposedly beloved by most Indians, lost his majority in Parliament though he’ll still stay in power. Bu7t to keep his legislative power, he’ll have to deal. The WSJ reports:

Indian voters dealt Prime Minister Narendra Modi a stunning setback, denying the Hindu nationalist leader an outright majority as they expressed discontent over struggles with high unemployment and inflation, and ignored his polarizing religious appeals.

Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is still poised to return for a third term, but will have to rely on allies in his coalition to cross the 272-seat threshold for a majority in the lower house of parliament to form a government. It is the first election since 2014, when Modi won his first term as prime minister, that the BJP hasn’t scored an absolute majority on its own.

Partial results show the BJP is projected to win 240 seats. It won 303 seats in 2019.

Modi, speaking in the evening local time, didn’t acknowledge the upset and claimed a historic victory.

“In our third term, the country will write a new chapter of big decisions,” he said. “This is Modi’s guarantee.”

Modi would be only the second leader after Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first prime minister, to return to power for a third straight term.

. . . .Political analysts said the election results punctured Modi’s aura of invincibility. The 73-year-old leader has long relied on his personal charisma to woo voters, and he campaigned extensively up and down the country in the months leading up to the election season.

“The results show that Brand Modi has diluted,” said Rasheed Kidwai, a political analyst affiliated with the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi think tank. “It’s a big setback.”

Modi’s rule has been divisive, as he owes much of his popularity to demonizing India’s many Muslims, fostering religious hatred. It would be nice if someone like Nehru would take over to cool this division that’s grown in the last decade.

* Over at Michael Oren’s “Clarity” Substack, there’s an article by philosophy professor and Algemeiner editor Andrew Pessin called “The one simple question that determines everything: Part 1“. (Part 2 is here; h/t Robert). The question is below, and leads Pessin into various hypothestical questions:

It’s a simple yes or no question. Much follows from how one answers the question, but we’ll start with just the question.

(Q) “Is it acceptable to slit babies’ throats, rape little girls, chop off of the hands and feet of teenagers, gouge out eyes, murder children in front of their parents, murder parents in front of their children then kidnap the children, bind entire families together then burn them alive, and livestream all the above—and worse—on a mass scale—in the pursuit of some political aim?”

I’ve been asking question (Q) of various faculty members at my institution and elsewhere, people whom I previously thought to be quite decent with serious commitments to diversity, inclusion, toleration, and anti-racism, in the form of asking them to publicly name the perpetrators of the October 7 massacre and condemn the atrocities, full stop.

They have overwhelmingly refused to respond.

Based on what I have seen, out of some 200+ faculty members at my institution only a handful were willing to publicly condemn the sadistic barbaric slaughter by Hamas of some 1200 mostly Jewish civilians, including many babies, children, teenagers, disabled people, and grandmothers, full stop.

Two hypothetical questions:

If any other identity group had experienced a mass slaughter like this, or even a far smaller one, does anyone doubt these faculty members would erupt, loudly and for days? Not a hypothetical: there was plenty of outraged faculty chatter when nine Black people were gunned down in South Carolina in 2015, when 49 people were massacred at a gay nightclub in 2016, and when the 2019 mosque shootings in New Zealand murdered 51 Muslims.

But hundreds of Jewish babies, children, women raped, tortured, dismembered, decapitated?

Silence.

And these are the decent people.

Many others across many campuses clearly think the answer to (Q) is “yes.”

And this one:

Speaking of land acknowledgements: In the lobby of a central building on my campus there stood for weeks an enormous poster board proclaiming that “You are on Pequot and Mohegan homeland,” noting that the college “celebrates Indigenous People’s Day.”

By the decolonization rationale above, our local Native Americans would be within their rights to invade our campus and mercilessly slaughter every single one of us. Indeed those who support indigenous rights and decolonization ought to be the first to offer their throats to avoid that vapid virtue signaling that Lamont Hill derides and actually live (and die) by what they believe.

Do our professors really support the Mohegans’ right to come in and gouge our eyes out, cut off our hands and feet, tie us up and burn us alive, and rape us while they are at it?

Pessin goes on to analyze Hamas and Hezbollah, but you can read that for yourself (access is free).

*And some astronomy news via the AP:

A massive cradle of baby stars has been observed in new detail by a European space telescope, adding to its celestial collection of images.

The European Space Agency released the photos from the Euclid observatory on Thursday. They were taken following the telescope’s Florida launch last year as a warm-up act to its main job currently underway: surveying the so-called dark universe.

From its perch 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth, Euclid will spend the next several years observing billions of galaxies covering more than one-third of the sky. The shape and size of all these galaxies can help scientists understand the mysterious dark energy and dark matter that make up most of the universe.

“Euclid is at the very beginning of its exciting journey to map the structure of the universe,” the space agency’s director general, Josef Aschbacher, said in a statement.

Among the newly released pictures is one of an enormous cradle of baby stars some 1,300 light-years away known as Messier 78. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles. Euclid’s infrared camera peered through the dust enveloping the stellar nursery, revealing new regions of star formation, according to ESA.

And here is one of those pictures from the AP (caption from the article):

(From AP): This image privided by European Space Agency on Thursday, May 23, 2024, shows Euclid’s new image of star-forming region Meissier 78. The European Space Agency released the photos from the Euclid Observatory on Thursday. They were taken following the telescope’s launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, last year, as a warm-up act to the real job now under way: surveying the so-called dark universe. Photo from European Space Agency via AP.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is being extra tidy again (fortunately, she doesn’t wear shoes):

Hili: A mess again.
A: What’s the problem?
Hili: Your shoes are not lined up.
In Polish:
Hili: Znowu nieporządek.
Ja: O co ci chodzi?
Hili: Twoje buty krzywo stoją.

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

From Strange, Silly, or Stupid Signs:

From The Dodo Pet:

FromAmerica’s Cultural Decline into Idiocy:

Masih with some survivors of violence inflicted on protesters by Iranian authorities:

Gad Saad beefs about “DEI” requirements in Canada and dilates on evolutionary psychology:

From my feed; a very nice woman:

Some snark from Simon:

From Roz; a nomming Kitler who loves his corn (the mustache isn’t quite right):

From Luana: Chickens for KFC (for real)

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one I reposted:

 

Two tweets from Doctor Cobb. Matthew says of the first one, “No surprise, but. . .”, yet it’s still a useful reference:

A man does something really stupid.

 

32 thoughts on “Wednesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Returning the heads-up from a reader last week: the Boeing/NASA Crewed Test Flight that was postponed then is scheduled for this morning at 10:52 EDT from Cape Kennedy. Because they are to rendezvous with station, I think that the launch window is what they call instantaneous. If postponed there is another window at 10:30 EDT tomorrow morning. Coverage is at the NASA Live site, https://www.nasa.gov/ The astronauts, Bruce Wilmore and Sunni Williams, are both Naval aviators and graduates of the Navy’s Pax River test pilot school: he (61 yo) flew fighters off carriers: she (58 yo) is an Annapolis grad, flew and instructed rotary wing craft at the test pilot school. Both have been to ISS before on NASA missions.

    1. Live coverage of pre-launch activity started at 0645 EDT so is up now at the NASA Live website.

    2. And SpaceX’s Starship 4 is scheduled for tomorrow, with the plan being to get as far as a “soft” splashdown.

      1. Thanks, Coel. I Missed that. It seems (and I DO try) that I can never “sync” with the ever-changing SpaceX scheduling….but I guess that is their secret sauce to be a bit more seat of the pants and go as they can as fast as they can. Which may be why they have been carting astronauts to station for several years now while Boeing/UAL/NASA is still going after first crewed flight test this morning.

        Looks like they have a two-hour launch window opening at 0700 CDT with their live coverage starting just 30-45 minutes prior.

  2. The final piece about the zoom call into court has an epilogue. The man actually had had his license reinstated, but the court paperwork was wrong. Unfortunately, the man spent at least a day in jail before the mistake was rectified.

    (I saw the follow-up yesterday on CBS Morning, and the hosts apologized for making fun of the man when they ran the original story.)

    1. Wrong court paperwork is extremely common in the justice system, I know from my clients years ago: s/t doesn’t get processed or credited causing lots of downstream problems for defendants and headaches for their attorneys.

      Jurisdictions differ in competence also: in my experience Manhattan made slightly fewer mistakes than Bronx.

      D.A., J.D.
      NYC

    1. There is one other group facing even worse slaughter (I’m not diminishing in any way whatsoever the atrocities that occurred in Israel):
      Per Genocidewatch.com:
      Since 2000, 62,000 Christians in Nigeria have been murdered in genocide perpetrated by Islamist jihadist groups including Boko Haram, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), and Fulani militias. The International Committee for Nigeria refers to this genocide as the “Silent Slaughter.” Common theme: murder and rape of innocents by Islamists with the world turning a blind eye.

        1. I wrote an article about Sudan last year (b/c I do follow it) and nearly nobody read it.
          And try (explaining or) “selling” an article about the spectacularly bloody recent Ethiopian civil war. Which has killed more people than Ukraine.

          Everybody reads my Israel/Palestine articles though* – even the Pal sympathizing unpleasant students. (Dateless co-eds not doing well in life).

          Mysterious to me though is the pretty concerted persecution of Christians in the Islamosphere over the past half century which goes almost ignored (like Nigeria, but also Lebanon and Iraq).

          D.A.
          NYC
          *HA! They’re mainly here – pardon the blatant plug!
          https://themoderatevoice.com/author/david-anderson/

    2. “Do our professors really support the Mohegans’ right to come in and gouge our eyes out, cut off our hands and feet, tie us up and burn us alive, and rape us while they are at it?”

      Yes! Najma Sharif said it best. Vibes, papers, essays. Losers.

      https://www.thefp.com/p/this-is-what-decolonization-looks

      I don’t think this is all thoughtless sloganeering on the part of university-based Hamas supporters like those interrogated by Dr. Pessin. If indigenous people stormed my campus and murdered settler colonizers in the name of decolonization there might be some clucking about the means but there would be support for the ends.

      The reason this won’t happen here or at Dr. Pessin’s university is not because progressive activists are hypocrites, but because local indigenous people living near our universities are thoughtful and kind neighbours and colleagues, and they are not savages whose minds have been corrupted by an evil religious doctrine.

  4. Interesting blockchain web3 project — DeSci, Decentralized Science, based on the open science movement.

    Maybe the entire experiment of evolution of life is a contest between which is better: a few large, giant predatory organisms (great lizards at one time) – or a sea of individual bacteria? Thinking of how some of the most successful, for a time, economies are fairly insular, monoculture and exclusive to near xenophobia, with little truck for ‘universal’ principles – Israel, Japan, GB (at one time I said), US even, Asian tiger economies — vs — a sea of equality in poverty, owning nothing, eating crickets. To build a thing, a monster, you need to be free to pick members who are talented, qualified and willing to work for the benefit of the individual collective, as opposed to a cosmic universal collective (Think AAPL vs “all humanity”).

    1. I haven’t fully decoded your statements, but the first sentence reminded me of the famous paper that modelled the probable density and sizes of monsters in Loch Ness. Take a look at Fig 1. (Citation: R. W. Sheldon, S. R. Kerr (1972) The Population Density Of Monsters In Loch Ness. Limnology and Oceanograpy 17:5)

  5. The “Pilot Lounge” sign with the Braille is not stupid. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires every public way-finding sign to also be in Braille. We can use the present case as an instructive example why the law has this requirement. The Braille is obviously not for the pilots. It’s for the visually impaired who may be feeling their way along the wall for a particular room.

    1. It looks to me like the Braille symbols spell out “palot lünge”. But that’s just me looking at Wikipedia and maybe Braille is more complex than I thought.

    2. I was in an airport with a friend of mine who is blind. I remarked on the Braille version of the men’s room sign. “Who is this for?” I asked. “Are you going to feel your way along this whole long wall?”
      “I’ll tell you why it’s there, McClain,” he replied. “It’s in case assholes like you try to send me into the ladies’ room as a joke.”

  6. Alas, the story about the zoom call has turned out to be fake news. The driver’s license had actually be restored, but the system didn’t show that. Story on Reason.

  7. That border order is nonsense. Allowing 2,499 people a day in would still be over 900,000 annually. And it isn’t at all clear why, if the border is closed, they would re-open it once the average goes below 1,500. Why, if the border were closed, would there by anyone crossing? This just seems a way to keep the taps open.

    1. No need to print your own— there are probably nine or so existing nice designs. (Google image search.)

    2. I had to look up the meaning of that one. I think it’s the sort of line that can become viral.
      The border thing is factor #1 about how Biden will be defined as being remarkably inept. Slow-footed to realize what really matters to voters.

  9. The “Pilot Lounge” sign reminded me of what happened yesterday. I had jury duty. Out of a panel of 60, guess who was potential juror #1? I was certain that I would be picked. My experience serving on juries is that the lower your number, the more likely you are to be picked. And potential juror #3 out of sixty was blind. He had a woman leading him around. My question is, is it possible for a blind person to serve on a jury? Would the woman with him be permitted to sit in the jury box? How could he view evidence ?

    I guess I’ll never know. Around noon, a court official told all sixty of us to go home. Seems that the judge never showed up to work that day!

    1. Yeah. That 1973 letter was about the time that a “consider a spherical elephant” meme was in vogue around our physics dept. Though I did use such memes when teaching high school physics to help students see the difference between simplifications taken to have doable theory calculations and ever more challenging elements in real world calculations.

  11. The cat eating corn reminded my of my indoor/outdoor cat when I was growing up. She loved her veggies, especially with a little butter, but even without. Peas, green beans, Yum. But especially corn. And more so yet corn on the cob. Too dignified and ladylike for that approach, though. She gently nibbled the kernels off one by one.

  12. Unfortunately, Israel will have little choice but to deal with Hezbollah. Attacking Israel on multiple fronts is Iran’s plan. This is how they intend to destroy the “Little Satan.”

    And, no, those people who answer Question Q with no answer are not “decent people.” Let’s not deny what’s staring us in the face.

    1. Agree. Sadly the Biden administration seems to think it can tame Iran by concessions. Of course the Ayatollahs are religious fanatics not politicians.

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