Tuesday: Hili dialogue

June 25, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the Cruelest Day, Tuesday, and also June 25, 2024, and National Strawberry Parfait Day.  Here’s a fancy Japanese version:

663highland, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also Bourdain Day, the day Anthony Bourdain was born in 1956 (I was a big fan, and very sad when he killed himself at age 61), and Global Beatles Day, which is explained thus;

 [June 25] marks the day that the first live satellite production was broadcasted globally. It was a British program titled Our World, and it ended with the Beatles’ performance of “All You Need Is Love”. Artists from nineteen countries were included in the program, and it is estimated that at least 400 million people watched it, which was the largest television audience up until that time.

Finally, it’s National Catfish Day, Virginia Statehood Day (Virginia was admitted to the Union on this day in 1788), and  World Vitiligo Day. 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the June 25 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The NYT reports trouble at the famed University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center, trouble connected with divisions created by the war in Gaza.  (Article is archived here.

The Israel-Hamas war has frayed social ties around the world, undermining family gatherings and school classrooms. But rarely has it fractured a medical community the way it has at U.C.S.F., where a staff known for celebrating diversity has fallen into an atmosphere of backbiting and distrust.

. . . . But many say the spirit of camaraderie and inclusion has dissipated since the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack against Israel. Doctors there have feuded over whether it is appropriate to openly express feelings about the war within the healing confines of a hospital. In interviews, several Jewish doctors said they had taken an oath to “do no harm,” and that meant keeping politics separate from the care of their patients.

But some doctors said they interpreted “do no harm” in a different way, feeling a moral obligation to speak out against the killing of doctors and patients in Gaza where Israeli strikes have struck hospitals. And they said that as a medical community, it was important for U.C.S.F. to take a stand against the war and call for a cease-fire.

Over the past several months, doctors, medical students and patients have filed hundreds of complaints with the university administration. Some have alleged instances of antisemitism on campus. Others have said they were inappropriately silenced when they tried to express pro-Palestinian points of view.

Jonathan Terdiman, a Jewish gastroenterologist, said the behavior that might be tolerated on an undergraduate campus — such as the “intifada” chant — hits differently at a hospital.

“People are coming here for chemotherapy. They have dire illnesses,” Dr. Terdiman said. “When that chant goes up and is heard in the patient care rooms, which it clearly was, it’s a violation of our professional obligations as health care providers.”

Some Jewish doctors said they have darted into side rooms when they have seen staunch Israel critics approaching. Others said they have tried to keep their Jewish identity a secret. Matthew Smith, a doctoral student in biophysics who is Jewish and wears a skullcap, said he has been told by a lab technician that Israel deserved what happened on Oct. 7 and by another student that “Jews control the banks.”

“It kind of staggers me honestly,” said Gil Rabinovici, an Israeli neurologist who directs the Alzheimer’s disease research center at U.C.S.F. “There is a lot of intimidation going on trying to silence the Jewish voice and Zionist voices.”

. . . [Jeff Ghannam] has been at U.C.S.F. for 30 years, specializing in chronic illnesses, including post-traumatic stress disorder. His parents are Palestinian, and he joined protests at the encampment and has worn a watermelon pin, a symbol of solidarity with Palestinians.

Patients have thanked him for wearing the pin, he said, because it acknowledged their horror at the destruction in Gaza. But he said that while he has freely worn the pin, some of his colleagues have been instructed by their supervisors to remove their pins and kaffiyeh.

U.C.S.F. has a dress code prohibiting political symbols in patient care settings, but Dr. Ghannam said staff members for years have worn pins supporting abortion rights, Black Lives Matter and the L.G.B.T.Q. community without repercussions.

A tweet from the Elder of Ziyon that expresses his feelings about the NYT article:

*From the Free Press‘s morning news summary:

→ Jake Tapper’s daughter for president: In other D.C. media drama, a special shout-out to Jake Tapper’s kids. A group of anti-Israel protesters showed up at the CNN host’s home last week and rattled off an absurd list of complaints about the network’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war. They brought bullhorns and called Tapper a “war criminal.” Tapper’s teenage daughter was home, and she responded by waving at the protesters and blasting ”The Star Spangled Banner.” Perhaps unsurprising for a girl who wrote this when she was 10.

Here’s Alice Tapper’s daughter: an embryonic feminist with a NYT op-ed written when she was just 10 (she’s now 16)! Click to read an archived version:

She’s going to be like her dad: outspoken and passionate. (Note: Tapper is Jewish, but it’s beyond reason to say he’s a “war criminal”. An excerpt from the NYT piece.

People say girls have to be 90 percent confident before we raise our hands, but boys just raise their hands. I tell girls that we should take the risk and try anyway, just like the boys do. If the answer is wrong, it’s not the end of the world. It’s not like answering a trivia question to win a million dollars on live TV.

I found a tweet of the incident:

*FromThe Daily Fail:  “University of Oxford museum is accused of ‘absurd virtue signalling after withholding images of African mask because of tribe’s beliefs.” If you think this is crazy, you need to read Elizabeth Weiss’s new book.  Excerpts:

An Oxford University museum has been criticised for withholding images of an African mask to stop women seeing it due to a tribe’s beliefs.

The Pitt Rivers Museum has labelled many of its exhibits with warnings about ‘cultural safety’ as well as removing images from its website.

Among those now missing from the online archive is a mask made by Nigeria‘s Igbo people and which was originally used in male-only rituals.

Various items on the museum’s website now carry notes such as: ‘Users are warned that there may be images, words and descriptions that may be culturally sensitive and which might not normally be used in certain public or community contexts.’

The wooden Igbo mask has no photographs which can be seen online and its listing is captioned with the words ‘must not be seen by women’.

A note on the museum website explains that, while photographs exist, curators “are unable to show the media publicly’.

It is said to be part of a policy to ensure women do not view the mask in relation to taboos about secret ceremonies, human remains, nudity as well as gender roles.

Among other possessions marked as ‘extremely cultural sensitive objects’ is an ‘isikira’ head ornament worn by Maasai girls in Kenya after undergoing female genital mutilation.

Art critic and author Ruth Millington said: ‘To deny all women, of all cultures, sight of something because that is a taboo in one particular culture seems an extreme stance, particularly given that this country is a modern, liberal and enlightened society.

‘Surely women should be given the right to decide, after reading about any cultural sensitivities, if they wish to look upon the artefact or not.

‘When it comes to art, we should all have equal rights, regardless of sex, to view what we would like to.’

Art critic and author Ruth Millington said: ‘To deny all women, of all cultures, sight of something because that is a taboo in one particular culture seems an extreme stance, particularly given that this country is a modern, liberal and enlightened society.

‘Surely women should be given the right to decide, after reading about any cultural sensitivities, if they wish to look upon the artefact or not.

‘When it comes to art, we should all have equal rights, regardless of sex, to view what we would like to.’

Yep, the Pitt Rivers Museum, which is quite famous (I’ve been there) is being DECOLONIZED!

*Netanyahu has declared that he’s open to a pause in the war in Gaza, and a deal for the hostages (this would involve releasing convicted Palestinian terrorists from jail), but he’s not going to stop the war until he feels that Hamas has been taken down.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said that Israel was prepared to pause fighting in Gaza for a partial deal in exchange for the return of a number of hostages held by Hamas, but insisted the war will not end until the terror group is destroyed.

Netanyahu also said the intense fighting phase in the Gaza Strip was winding down as Israel increasingly readies for a potential outright conflict with Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has been intensifying its cross-border attacks on Israel.

Netanyahu was speaking on the right-wing Channel 14 in his first interview with a Hebrew-language outlet since Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught.

Asked whether he was prepared to reach an agreement with Hamas after the high-intensity phase of the conflict is over that would constitute a commitment to end the war, Netanyahu said: “No. I’m not prepared to end the war and leave Hamas standing. I am prepared to do a partial deal, that’s no secret, that would return some of the people to us.”

“But we are obligated to continue the fighting after a pause in order to complete our goal of destroying Hamas,” he told the TV channel’s “The Patriots” program. “I’m not prepared to give up on that.”

Netanyahu’s comments appeared to contradict the terms of Israel’s latest ceasefire and hostage deal proposal, some of whose details were presented by US President Joe Biden last month, which reportedly provides for a temporary ceasefire in the first phase of the deal, to be extended into “a sustainable calm (cessation of military operations and hostilities permanently)” in the second phase. However, Netanyahu has repeatedly denied that the Israeli proposal provides for ending the war before Israel achieves its two declared goals of destroying Hamas and bringing home all the hostages.

. . .Sources involved in the latest round of hostage talks slammed the premier’s remarks, telling the Haaretz daily, “Netanyahu clarified today that he is not interested in the release of all the hostages — the demand he himself is making of Hamas — and is not prepared to provide the goods that Hamas is demanding.”

“In such a situation, [Hamas chief in Gaza Yahya] Sinwar has no motivation to advance a deal,” one of the sources was quoted as saying.

One reason Sinwar has to advance a deal is so that he doesn’t lose his life, nor any more Palestinians theirs. If Sinwar really cared about the people he’s supposed to take care of, he should unconditionally surrender, disband Hamas, and release all the hostages. But he operates in the interest of advancing terrorism and getting rid of Israel, not protecting Palestinians. (Remember that devout Muslims see death for the cause as glorious.)  And I don’t have a lot of sympathy for those who beef that we should have a cease-fire and “leave Hamas standing.” That’s simply idiotic, as Hamas has promised to repeat the events of October 7 over and over again, and you know they mean it. Keeping Hamas in power is an absolute guarantee that terrorism against Israel will persist; and why should Israel put up with that? (I’m not even mentioning here the release from prison of Palestinian terrorists, many of whom will go back into the Jew-killing business.)

*This is something I wasn’t expecting: the Supreme Court has decided to rule on whether a state can regulate the treatment given to minors with gender dysphoria.

The Supreme Court agreed to decide whether states can restrict medical treatments for transgender minors, a case that puts the justices in the middle of a national debate over gender identity ahead of the November elections.

In a brief order on Monday, the court said it would hear the Biden administration’s challenge to a Tennessee law that bans gender-transition care, such as medications that can delay the onset of puberty and hormones that can cause physical changes such as the development of facial hair or breasts.

The Justice Department argues that the measure violates the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, contending that the law bans medical treatments only if they are used to treat gender dysphoria while permitting their use for other conditions, such as precocious puberty.

A federal appeals court in Cincinnati rejected that argument. “The unsettled, developing, in truth still experimental, nature of treatments in this area surely permits more than one policy approach, and the Constitution does not favor one over the other,” Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote for the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Roughly two dozen states have now banned or restricted such treatments.

The case will be argued during the court’s next term, which begins in October. The litigation comes during a period in which transgender issues have become a central concern in statehouses around the country. In addition to restricting medical treatments, Republican-controlled legislatures have limited discussions of gender identity in public schools, required people to play on sports teams matching their sex at birth and passed laws that critics say would restrict drag performances.

I do agree that the use of puberty blockers on children or adolescents must be regarded as experimental, and it is seen as such and legally regulated in several European countries.  As for how the Supreme Court might rule in this case, I simply have no idea.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej are playing around with the word “principle”:

Hili: In principle…
A: What principle?
Hili: In principle it doesn’t matter.
In Polish:
Hili: W zasadzie…
Ja: Co w zasadzie?
Hili: W zasadzie wszystko jedno.

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

From Things With Faces:

From Science Humor:

From Cat Memes (it sounds like a chat with a d*g, particularly #6):

From Masih. Jimmy Lai is a free-speech hero of mine, and you can read about him here:

From Malgorzata. As far as I know, this guy (note that he used to be a spokesman for the IDF) is telling the truth; the “famine” in Gaza was ascertained not from people starving, as they aren’t, but from miscounting the amount of aid that was coming in:

I’ve forgotten about Titania! She’s not posting much these days, but here’s an older one that I hope I haven’t posted before:

From Malcolm: find the hidden cat!

From Barry, who says “these are decent suggestions.” Well, I’m not sure about the last one!

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one I reposted:

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb, who’s in Dublin.  I think this cat has a vole in its mouth, but I’m not at all sure about the “adaptive” function of tail-wiggling:

And why you shouldn’t cook with a cow (or have one in your house):

22 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

    1. Thx Coel – I like to follow him as much as possible. He’s a real gem.
      D.A.
      NYC

  3. Just a hasty literature review for the ostensibly random one-off drag queen video clip.

    The video illustrates how an enormous volume of literature behind it comes together:

    • The “drag queen” – or, obvious male in woman clown costume – is being used as a generative theme (Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed / The Politics of Education. The generative theme is any sort of teaching material that arouses interest of any sort, like ice cream, rainbows, brachistochrone curves, etc.

    • The video shows queer world making, and living queerly. What is Queer? It is an oppositional political stance (here) and more. See Curriculum Inquiry 50:5, 440-461, 2020.

    •“The child has become both a limit and a hope for queer theory”
– Hannah Dyer, Queer futurity and childhood innocence: Beyond the injury of development.

    • Social-Emotional Learning model : students naturally react emotionally to the generative theme as a bizarre way to dress – they experience social awareness. This shows the students their own lack of empathy, and self-awareness of how they contribute to “LGBTQ+” hate. The students must summon resilience and grit for self management to experience a rebirth on the side of the oppressed (Freire). This lesson in societal emotions is intended to be taken into the “community” by the WSCC model, thus is a totalizing collectivist doctrine. See casel.org or The Fetzer Institute for starting points for that endless literature. I tried to put key concepts in italics, accessory in bold, and how they can be used in any lesson in an unexpected way, i.e. subverted.

  4. From yesterday: Weinstein is a total crank. All serious intellectuals recoil in horror at even the mention of his name. This is all years before he teamed up with Tucker Carlson lately: the end of the line for the brain damaged.

    I watched his Dark Horse podcast for about 20 editions in early covid – at that time his Evergreen experiences were interesting though I felt things weren’t quite right with him. And Heather isn’t completely a waste product.
    Then he started on vaccines and I flushed him.
    Whhhhhooooosh went Bret.

    D.A.
    NYC
    https://democracychronicles.org/author/david-anderson/

  5. I watched the video of the protestors at Jake Tapper’s house. Is there no way to get rid of them? It looked like they might have been on his property at some points, but it’s hard to tell for certain. His children should not have to endure this, nor should he or his wife.

    1. What assholes these self-important and not very well spoken girls are. Are time, place, and manner restrictions legal for local councils to put in place in residential neighborhoods? It seems to me there is a difference between marching through a neighborhood which I see as ok versus a stationary demonstration with continuous amplified sound aimed at one or a few homes. Anyone?

  8. I’ve never understood why pre-puberty surgical procedures to treat gender dysphoria isn’t considered mutilation. As I understand it, gender dysphoria is a mental, not physical condition.

    I also don’t understand the medical reasoning for blocking puberty for a mental condition. Doesn’t puberty impact one’s sexual psychology?

    What am I missing here?

    1. “As I understand it, gender dysphoria is a mental, not physical condition.”

      I think that the problem is not with the brain or the body but the fact that the two are out of sync. Either one could be considered the problem but we identify much more strongly with our mind than our body even though they are both parts of a single logical process. If we had two magical switches, one that changes our brain to be in sync with our body and one that changes our body to be in sync with our brain I think most sexually dysphoric people would choose the latter even though either might ultimately provide an equally satisfactory result.

      But there are no magical switches and our medical and psychological abilities fall far short of being able to create a reasonable outcome. I think that Dr Coyne is dead right that many, maybe most, of these problems sort themselves out as dysphoric youths brains and bodies develop and find their own balance.

      This is not easy with the religious right telling them they are evil and must not be what they are and the woke left telling them they are victims and must be more of whatever they feel they are. It seems to me that much of the current youth sexual dysphoria is being driven by the interplay of these two ignorant extremes. We need to provide a healthy and supportive environment that ALLOWS kids to find out for themselves what they are.

      1. Thank you. Based on your first paragraph, am I to understand there is a male brain and a female brain?

        1. The very short answer is Yes. The brain of a male fetus is bathed in dihydrotestosterone produced by the fetal testes as it (and they) develop. (This is the same fetal hormone that causes the genitalia to develop male characteristics, and is the active metabolite of the familiar testosterone secreted from puberty.)

          As best as can be determined from brain MRI studies of necessarily small sample sizes, the brains of trans-identified adults resemble the brains of non-trans individuals of the same sex more than they do the brains of adults of the opposite sex. (Critics of this research say the subjects recruited weren’t “really” trans and should have been vetted by activist umpires, undermining their own claims that a trans person is whoever he “knows” he is.) The notion that trans is a mismatch between a female brain somehow inserted into a male-sexed body is, at this stage of knowledge, pseudoscientific gnosticism. The brain is part of the body and is shaped by it just as much as the sex organs are. Personality is another matter.

          1. Thank you. Very helpful. To make sure I interpret paragraph 2 correctly,
            a trans identified male’s (male gender, female biology) brain resembles a male brain. Did I get that right?

          2. Yes, Thank you! I was just about to reply to Rick to say that there was an implied assumption in my post that I realized I have no idea whether it is actually true or not. Then your reply made that very clear. As much as I hate it it’s great to be corrected by people who actually know what they’re talking about.

          3. To Rick Martinez,
            No. It’s the other way round. MRI, which is pretty crude for this sort of thing, does show statistically detectable differences in white matter structures (which can be thought of as grossly visible connections) between men and women. It does not show that biological women who fancy themselves to be men have brains with male connection patterns. They have female brains like other women, on average. (Sex of sexual attraction can be a confounder which should be controlled for.)

            Part of this is confusion about definitions. The individual you are referring in your question to would be called, in the trans community, a “transman”, (or “a man”) not a “trans-identified male.” Gender-critical authors use that latter term to describe the reverse person: a biological male who has adopted a female gender identity. Such men have male brains as far as we can tell.

            As I said, MRI is pretty crude. It doesn’t exclude the possibility that at some cellular neuronal level far below the resolution of MRI, there is some male-female switch in the brain that is set the “wrong” way in people who feel their bodies don’t match their internal sense of gender and is refractory to being reset by the brain’s constant contemplation of the normal healthy sex organs of its revealed body, and by the phenomenon of sexual attraction during puberty. This is not at the present time a testable hypothesis.

  9. UCSF Medical Center: Why do some people feel the need to express their politics at work? Is it really about concern for the objects of their political passions? Is it more about self and its expression? About tribal longings? Emotional immaturity? What is it? I have a very difficult time seeing it in a positive light.

    My rule of thumb seems increasingly archaic, but if the people who can hear you speak are not entirely onboard with your discussion, then leave matters of politics, religion, and sex out of the workplace. Unless, of course, your business is politics, religion, or sex!

  10. There is so much in this post today, I hardly know how to unpack it all…
    When I started training in health care, one of the first things I learned was to never discuss politics with a patient, even if they brought it up. Political discussions amongst staff we worked with every day happened, but we knew how to keep it respectful.

    Thanks for sharing the link to Alice Tapper’s article.

    I think “gender affirming care” needs to be severely curtailed, but I am not sure I like politicians involved with medical decisions through legislation.

    1. Who will do the curtailing if the doctors, through self-regulation, won’t? The State extends the privilege of self-regulation to the guilds of the learned professions because they have the specialized knowledge to adjudicate specific cases involving their members’ conduct that elected laypeople lack. But the State can always rescind this privilege if, in its judgment, self-regulation has become self-dealing and is no longer operating in the public interest. The question for the U.S. Supreme Court is to define State authority over the practice of medicine. Medicine cannot be not a law unto itself.

      1. You are right. But I still would rather see the change come from the medical professionals.

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