Monday: Hili dialogue

June 17, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Monday, June 17, 2024, and National Eat Your Vegetables Day (it’s National Fresh Fruit and Vegetables Month).  In the honor of veggies, I put below Steve Goodman’s recording of “The Vegetable Song”.  I saw him live once, at the small Club Passim at Harvard Square in the early 1980s, and he was great.

My favorite song of his, though, is one he didn’t write: “The Dutchman.” I don’t understand why few others know about this song, which is beautiful and heartbreaking, especially in Goodman’s original recording.  In 1984, Goodman died of leukemia at 36.

Eat your vegetables:

It’s also Global Garbage Man Day (what about Garbage Women?), National Apple Strudel Day (cultural appropriation), Take Your Cat to Work Day (easy if you work from home), World Croc Day (the reptile, not the shoe),  Icelandic National Day, which “celebrates the independence of Iceland from Kingdom of Denmark in 1944.” and World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought. 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 17 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*There was a Hollywood fundraiser for Biden’s campaign on Saturday, and it raised a huge amount of dosh.

President Biden and former president Barack Obama, along with first lady Jill Biden and a host of A-list Hollywood celebrities, gravely warned about the threat and unprecedented nature of a potential second Donald Trump term in a star-studded fundraiser on Saturday that the Biden campaign said raised more than $30 million.

In a discussion moderated by late-night host Jimmy Kimmel between Biden and Obama, Biden spoke in stark terms about the political violence Trump has signaled could erupt if he does not win the election.

“Institutions matter. What he did on January 6th, and now he’s literally saying if he doesn’t win there’ll be a bloodbath. It’s outrageous — what he’s talking about is outrageous,” Biden said.

Biden later added: “The idea that he’s actually threatened retribution. This is the United States of America. Did you ever think you’d ever, ever, ever hear anything like this?”

The fundraiser was hosted by Kimmel and Obama, as well as actors George Clooney and Julia Roberts. Actress and singer Barbra Streisand introduced Jill Biden, who issued some of her most direct attacks to date on Trump.

She described her husband as a man who “honors the rule of law instead of trying to bend it to his own will.”

“Or,” she continued, referring to Trump, “we can choose someone who wakes up every morning caring about one person and one person only — himself.”

Well, that’s a passel of stars, including two of my great Hollywood loves, Julia and Barbra.  If only Sandra Bullock were there, it would be a trifecta.  Another Post article says that this is the biggest Democratic fundraiser in history and, unlike the funds raised for Tr*mp, we can be assured that the money is not going to go for legal expenses.

*Yesterday morning I saw, in both the NYT and Times of Israel, an announcement that Israel was going to pause its fighting around Rafah from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid. (It’s still in the ToI.)  I was puzzled, as my sources in Israel tell me that IDF commanders said they were prepared to finish off Hamas in Rafah, and were angry at this announcement. Given that aid is copiously flowing into Gaza now, this didn’t make sense to me.  It appears that fighting around Rafah will not stop, but there will be a pause in one area, and that Netanyahu did approve of the announcement, as well as saying that fighting will continue, so it’s all confusing. From the NYT:

The announcement came seemingly out of the blue on Sunday when it was first publicized via the Israeli military’s English and Arabic-language channels: The military would “pause” its fighting during daytime hours along an important humanitarian aid corridor in southern Gaza until further notice.

Amid some immediate confusion over the scope of the pause, a clarification swiftly followed, this time in Hebrew and seemingly for domestic consumption. The change did not mean a cessation of fighting in the southern Gaza Strip, that statement said, adding that the campaign in the southernmost city of Rafah was continuing. Military officials said the daily pauses were meant only to facilitate the increased distribution of food aid in Gaza, where international organizations have issued dire warnings about hunger.

The strange choreography of the messaging became stranger still when the government suggested that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu only learned of the military’s plan from news reports and signaled his disapproval.

But analysts said it was likely that the prime minister was not only aware of the plan but aware too of the messaging rollout, with each announcement tailored to different audiences. The whipsaw statements appeared to reflect the competing pressures facing Mr. Netanyahu, as he juggles demands from the Biden administration and elsewhere around the globe with those of his own hawkish government. His far-right coalition partners oppose any concessions in Gaza, and he relies on their support to stay in power.

The new policy surrounding the humanitarian corridor — where the military said it would pause fighting from 8 a.m. until 7 p.m. daily — went into effect on Saturday, according to military officials. But Mr. Netanyahu insinuated that he did not learn of the plans until Sunday morning.

So now I’m totally confused. It looks as if Bibi is speaking out of both sides of his mouth. But of one thing I am sure: the IDF is determined to finish off Hamas in Rafah, which of course may not mean finishing off Hamas. Now if they managed to get Sinwar, that would finish off Hamas. But, like everyone, I wonder whether Hamas will be replaced by another regime of terrorists, and what Israel plans to do about Gaza if Hamas is destroyed.

*The BBC recounts the stories of three women who took on the Taliban but publicly protesting after the group took over Afghanistan. Their stories are horrific, and two of them no longer live in the country. I still remember the Taliban saying that their Afghani regime would go easier on women, allowing them an education, and I still remember saying on this site that it was a lie.

It was.   Here is an excerpt:

Mariam, Parwana and Zakia were fully aware of the potential consequences of public protest.

Parwana says she never expected the Taliban to “treat her like a human being”. But she says she was still stunned by her degrading treatment.

Her first meal in jail left her in shock.

“I felt a sharp thing scratching the roof of my mouth,” she says. “When I looked at it, it was a nail – I threw up.”

In subsequent meals, she found hair and stones.

Parwana says she was told she would be stoned to death, leaving her crying herself to sleep at night and having dreams about being stoned while wearing a helmet.

The 23-year-old was accused of promoting immorality, prostitution and spreading western culture and was in jail for about a month.

Mariam was kept in a security unit for several days, where she was interrogated with a black bag covering her head.

“I could hear several people, one would kick me and ask who paid me to organise [the] protest,” she recalls. “The other would punch me and say ‘Who do you work for?'”

Mariam says she told her interrogators she was a widow who needed work to feed her children – but says her answers were met with more violence.

These two women, whose names are pseudnyms, were released after signing confessions and after human-rights organizations intervened.  One of them, Zakia, remains in Afghanistan, but I can’t see why:

Around the time of their takeover, the Taliban said women could continue to work and go to school, with the caveat that this could only happen in line with Afghan culture and Sharia law.

They continue to insist the ban on girls’ schooling beyond year six is temporary but have given no firm commitment to reopening girls’ secondary schools.

Back in Afghanistan, Zakia took one more chance and launched a home tuition centre to educate young girls. This also failed.

“They feel threatened by a group of young women getting together in a place on regular basis,” she says, her voice filled with sadness. “The Taliban managed to do what they wanted. I am a prisoner in my own house.”

She still meets her fellow activists but they are not planning any protests. They publish occasional statements on social media using a pseudonym.

Afghanistan was not at all like this 40 years ago. Look at this Google Image search of “Afghanistan women 1980” vs “Afghanistan women 2023“. The difference is stunning.  It’s militant Islam, Jake!

*The AP reports on a new Nature article that tells us where horses came from. You may recall that horses evolved in what is now North America, but then went extinct around 10,000 years ago.  But by then they’d spread to Eurasia, and returned to the New World thanks to Spanish explorers in the sixteenth century.  This of course means that horses were domesticated in Eurasia, the topic of the articles. It turns out their domestication into riding animals began about 4,200 years ago:

The horse transformed human history – and now scientists have a clearer idea of when humans began to transform the horse.

Around 4,200 years ago, one particular lineage of horse quickly became dominant across Eurasia, suggesting that’s when humans started to spread domesticated horses around the world, according to research published Thursday in the journal Nature.

There was something special about this horse: It had a genetic mutation that changed the shape of its back, likely making it easier to ride.

“In the past, you had many different lineages of horses,” said Pablo Librado, an evolutionary biologist at the Spanish National Research Council in Barcelona and co-author of the new study. That genetic diversity was evident in ancient DNA samples the researchers analyzed from archaeological sites across Eurasia dating back to 50,000 years ago.

But their analysis of 475 ancient horse genomes showed a notable change around 4,200 years ago.

That’s when a specific lineage that first arose in what’s known as the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, a plains region that stretches from what is now northeastern Bulgaria across Ukraine and through southern Russia, began to pop up all across Eurasia and quickly replaced other lineages. Within three hundred years, the horses in Spain were similar to those in Russia.

How did they know that? DNA, of course, from both ancient bones and modern horses. But we’ll see about this “genetic mutation”. Here’s a bit more:

“We saw this genetic type spreading almost everywhere in Eurasia — clearly this horse type that was local became global very fast,” said co-author Ludovic Orlando, a molecular archaeologist at the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse in France.

The researchers believe that this change was because a Bronze Age people called the Sintashta had domesticated their local horse and begun to use these animals to help them dramatically expand their territory.

If you want a pdf of the paper a judicious inquiry might yield one. By the way, this paper has more co-authors than just about any evolutionary biology paper I’ve ever seen. Here’s a screenshot. (The authors aren’t alphabetical, so how did they determine the order?)

*I’m not sure what the price of a new Bugatti Chiron is, and I can’t show photos of the one in the WSJ, but look at the archived version of the article to see the 3-mil-plus car. (I’ve put a Wikpedia photo below.) It’s a narration by “Bilal Hydrie, the president and CEO of an energy company and an investor in oil-and-gas companies, who lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. . . . . as told to A.J. Baime.”  Hydric put down $1.5 million as a deposit on this car! And he starts unconvincingly:

Luxury, to me, is not about material possessions. My philosophy is, you have to work really hard in life for your dreams, but you have to enjoy your life, too. Having dreams can be an important motivator to do the best you can. I have been passionate about cars going back to when I was young, growing up in Pakistan. I have owned Ferraris and Lamborghinis, but, for me, Bugatti was always the ultimate dream. I never thought I would achieve this dream, but the journey has been amazing.

Does that make sense? Anyway, getting one of these handbuilt cars takes not only wealth, but also tenacity:

You cannot just walk into a dealership and buy a Bugatti because so few exist. I had bought several cars through a dealership in Toronto called Grand Touring Automobiles and, nearly three years ago, I asked if they could get me an allocation for a Bugatti. They said they would try.

The first thing I had to do was fill out an application. A couple representatives from Bugatti interviewed me. They asked about my passion and why I wanted to become an owner. Then I was asked to visit the factory, so I flew to France. It was a totally different experience than what I expected.

. . .They showed me a presentation of the history of Bugatti and how every model tells a story of innovation. They took me to where the cars were built. There were just five or six technicians hand-building the next Bugatti.

To buy a car, I had to put down a deposit of $1.5 million. Every car is personalized. I had high expectations and specific things I wanted. But the company is so into the craftsmanship, they cannot do just anything you ask. They will not do anything that doesn’t meet their standards.

Two-and-a-half years after I filled out an application, I took ownership of my Chiron [pronounced Shee-RON]. Bugatti made 500 Chirons, and mine was the very last standard 1500-horsepower Chiron that will ever be built. Every executive and every technician who worked on this car signed the underside of the hood.

I have driven all kinds of hypercars, but the experience of driving this one is unique. The craftsmanship, the engineering, the attention to detail. It is incredibly comfortable. You turn on the car and it feels more like a jet airplane than something with four wheels. I would get in trouble if I admitted what I have done with this car. The car was built to go very fast, very comfortably.

The car comes with a special speed key. This is a key you can use when you have the car on a racetrack. The car lowers itself. Now you have access to the 8.0-liter W-16 engine’s full capabilities. A test driver named Andy Wallace once took a Chiron to 304.77 mph [a record top speed for a production car at the time].

300+ mph for a production car!  Well, how much does it cost in toto?  Car and Driver says this of the 2022 model:

The price of the 2022 Bugatti Chiron starts at $3,300,000 and goes up to $3,900,000 depending on the trim and options.

Here’s a photo of a Chiron from Wikipedia:

Calreyn88, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Oy!

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili continues her investigations of nature:

A: Leave the spider alone.
Hili: I’m just greeting it.
In Polish:
Ja: Zostaw tego pająka.
Hili: Ja się z nim tylko witam.

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

From Cat Memes:

From Strange, Stupid, or Silly Signs. This is a real sign on the road near Death Valley in California. I’ve seen it! It’s a dirt road that runs to the town of Zzyx.

From Linkiest. Look carefully:

From Masih; Sweden extradites Hamid Nouri to Iran. The miscreant, according to Wikipedia, “was found guilty of being a key figure in the 1988 executions of Iranian political prisoners, where according to different estimates between 2,800 to 30,000 Iranians were massacred.”  He had been detained in Sweden, tried, and then given a life sentence in 2019.  He was freed as part of a prisoner swap two days ago.

From Luana, the snarky but heroic J. K. Rowling:

Live and learn!

From Barry, who says, “Yes, I suspect all cats would like this.”

From Simon:

A Facebook video from Malcolm.  Good block!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one I retweeted:

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. First, a fun-loving raccoon. How did he discover this trick?

. . . and some adorable babies:

19 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Interesting to read that one of the greatest minds of the 20th c, John Von Neumann – at six years old could divide two eight-digit numbers in his head – contributed to quantum theory, Manhattan project and computer architecture – went to the Dark Side on his deathbed from Pascal’s Wager. Died way too early from cancer suspected to be from radiation exposure. You’ll be happy to learn that “von Neumann did not receive much peace or comfort from it, as he remained terrified of death and unable to accept his circumstances.”

    Now why would such an obviously exceptionally rational mind be terrified of dying?

    1. Why would the prior assumption be that an exceptionally rational mind would preclude being terrified of dying? We know that humans are, at best, only rational part of the time. We are all notoriously capable of harboring dozens of eminently rational views right along side evidence free, emotionally driven views, even at the same time. Granting that what you’ve stated about von Neumann is accurate, it seems well within the range of normal human behavior to me.

      Even the greatest minds among us are wrong much more often than they are right. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a correlation between lower ratios of accurate/inaccurate ideas and higher success at all sorts of things from inventing to scientific output.

    2. It’s irrational to fear being dead, but I don’t think it’s irrational to fear dying; not if you want to go on existing.

  2. My favorite Steve Goodman song will remain “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request” (although checking when he died, I learned he wrote the Guthrie song “City of New Orleans”):

    Do they still play the blues in Chicago
    When baseball season rolls around?
    When the snow melts away, do the Cubbies still play
    In their ivy-covered burial ground?

    When I was a boy, they were my pride and joy
    But now they only bring fatigue
    To the home of the brave, the land of the free
    And the doormat of the National League.

  4. Thanks for highlighting the horse paper – I recall good discussion of horse evolution right here on WEIT – fundamentally important science!

    Jared Diamond might rewrite his famous book title to Guns, Germs, Steel, and Horses…?

  6. Nice car that Chiron! The exhaust note must be a joy to hear.

    And yes, the announcement that the IDF will pause operations daily for purposes of enabling transport of aid is strange. As soon as it was announced, Prime Minister Netanyahu rejected it. I suppose that the military doesn’t have to get authorization for every action it takes, but pausing operations daily, all day, would seem to be one of them. Hmmm. We’ll see what happens.

  7. “The authors aren’t alphabetical, so how did they determine the order?”

    By height?

  8. Bugatti Chiron: $3,900,000.

    The look on a local mechanic’s face when you bring it in for “a little maintenance” : priceless.

  10. Yes Zzyzx is a real place and California State University has a nice desert research station there at Soda Springs. It has palm trees and nice buildings left behind when an illegally built health spa had to be given to the gov’t. who in turn gave it to CSU to manage for Mohave research.

    Thank you for the reminder of “The Dutchman”. I hadn’t heard it in decades and I do love that song as well as “City of New Orleans”, made famous by Arlo. Goodman was an impressive guitarist.

    1. Been by the Zzyzx exit many times, I think that Zzyzx is quite a ways south of Death Valley, in the Mojave.

      1. You’re right.
        Everybody who has ever driven from LA to Vegas has seen that sign on I-15.
        Zzyzx is a cool place, but “town” is exceedingly generous.

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