Friday: Hili dialogue

July 26, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Friday, July 26, 2024, and National Bagelfest Day. Still, I will rant once again at the degradation of this Jewish foodstuff, meant to be smaller and chewier than the giant pillows of Wonder Bread that are proffered to the American public as “bagels.”  I’m not even sure if you can get the real ones in America anywhere now, but below is one with a schmear that I got in one of Montreal’s great bagel bakeries, where they boil them with water and honey and then bake them over a wood fire. My legs are to scale. Sesame seeds are permitted, but stuff like blueberries and chocolate chips are verboten.

It’s also National Coffee Milkshake Day, Aunts and Uncles Day, and World Tofu Day, and Esperanto Day, celebrating a language I once tried to learn, but that nobody speaks.

There’s a Google Doodle today. What do you think it’s honoring? Click to see:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the July 26 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*According to the NYT, and in line with a Supreme Court order allowing local removal of homeless camps, the governor of California is going to remove some of them.

Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered California state officials on Thursday to begin dismantling thousands of homeless encampments, the nation’s most sweeping response to a recent Supreme Court ruling that gave governments greater authority to remove homeless people from their streets.

Homeless encampments have vexed California, where housing costs are among the nation’s highest, more than any other state. An estimated 180,000 people were homeless last year in California, and most of them were unsheltered. Unlike New York City, most jurisdictions in California do not guarantee a right to housing.

Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, called on state and local leaders to “humanely remove encampments from public spaces” in an urgent manner, prioritizing those that most threaten health and safety.

His executive order could divide Democratic local leaders in California, some of whom have already begun to clear encampments while others have denounced the decision from conservative justices as opening the door to inhumane measures to solve a complex crisis.

The order also comes as Democrats are uniting around Vice President Kamala Harris, a former senator and prosecutor from California, to replace President Biden on the ballot this fall. Republicans have frequently pointed to homelessness in California as an example of the state’s purported decline under Mr. Newsom and other Democrats, and they are expected to do the same with Ms. Harris in the coming weeks.

The Supreme Court decision on June 28 upheld an Oregon city’s ban on homeless residents sleeping outdoors. The Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit had found in earlier opinions that it was unconstitutional to punish people for sleeping in public spaces when they had no other legal place to spend the night.

The article suggests, in the last bit, that Newsom is doing this now as a political move, to deflect criticism of Kamala Harris. I can’t believe that’s true, but I also feel sorry for the homeless people. I have read that many of them have been offered real housing that is not too shabby, but have refused. But many are also mentally ill, tossed out on the streets, and may not qualify for such housing.

*This is going to be a brutal campaign season. Kamala Harris’s sudden popularity has, as the WSJ editors admit, taken the Republicans by surprise, and the GOP is also using maladaptive criticisms, like going after Harris’s lack of children (WTF?). There will clearly be a substantial Democratic bounce in the next polls. But in its news section, the same paper says that there is going to be a “brutal Trump-Harris battle.”  That’s undoubtedly true, so keep your cool, folks:

Against the backdrop of a sitting president relinquishing his candidacy, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump escalated attacks on each other, setting up a brutal election campaign with either side painting the other as a threat to the country’s future.

Both Harris and the former president held events Wednesday, looking to make their case to the American people as the latest polls show a close contest—something the Trump campaign dismissed as a brief “honeymoon” for Harris.

Harris criticized Trump for handpicking three Supreme Court justices “because he intended for them to overturn Roe v. Wade.” Trump, in his first rally since Biden dropped out of the race, called Harris “a radical left lunatic who will destroy our country.”

Wednesday’s three-way montage of a lame-duck president, a vice president thrust to the top of the ticket overnight, and a recently shot former president seeking a comeback captured this remarkable moment in politics and the Democratic campaign that is suddenly invigorated by recent shake-ups.

Biden told the nation from the Oval Office that he left the race to defend democracy and that “the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation.” In his remaining time in office he said he would focus on several issues, including lowering costs and growing the economy.

I still haven’t listened to Biden’s speech, which apparently avoided his age issues, but listening right now would make me sad, and I need to keep an even keel before I leave the country. In the meantime, here’s Harris’s first campaign ad, which you can watch and comment on. Is it effective?

*I was trying to ratchet down coverage of politics, but that seems to be all that’s in the news. The WaPo, for instance, has a piece called “Why almost everyone assumes that Kamala Harris has to pick a White man as VP. Okay, I’ll bite, but I’m sick of vetting candidates by their ethnicity or gender.  To me, a woman President and a woman VP would be fine.

As soon as it became clear that Vice President Harris was going to emerge as the likely Democratic presidential nominee, a certain knowing joke emerged almost simultaneously on social media: images of various “whites” — white wines, white paint chips, white crackers — with captions implying that these were Harris’s vice-presidential choices.

“Kamala’s VP options,” posted one user on X, above an array of cream-colored paint samples labeled “Trustworthy Whites: 40 of our best whites.” “Kamala looking for a VP,” wrote another, above a photo of bottles of supermarket white wines labeled with an “Interesting Whites” sign. “Kamala’s menu of potential VPs,” posted a third, above a menu featuring descriptions ranging from “light crisp dry whites” to “rich whites.”

Even “The Daily Show” got in on the gag, repurposing the photo of Harris receiving the 2020 call from then-candidate Joe Biden that he had chosen her as his No. 2, with the caption: “Hello, is this the Midwest White Guy Emporium?”

If the tone was wry, it also reflected the near-instantaneous assessment that hardened among lawmakers in Washington, strategists and operatives throughout the country, as well as ordinary voters: that Harris, who is Black and Indian American and if elected would make history as the first female president, must choose someone White as her running mate — and preferably a White guy.

It remains unclear who Harris will ultimately alight on as her No. 2. Though the list of would-be contenders is heavy with White men — Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, to name a few — a few more diverse options, such as Govs. Wes Moore of Maryland and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, have also appeared.

But the degree and speed with which the conventional wisdom took hold — that if she wants to win, Harris must choose a White man as her vice president — reflects, at its most cynical, that the nation will tolerate only so much deviation from its White male founding, even as the overall political world is more diverse than ever.

“It is not surprising that the conventional wisdom would be we’ll put a woman at the top of the ticket, but there has to be — and I’m putting it in quotes here — ‘balance,’ which is always part of the equation,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
Yes, racial and gender balance by all means. Yet it makes little sense unless you think that there are characteristics ubiquitous in every person of a given ethnicity or gender that would affect how they conduct the executive branch of government. I don’t buy that: it’s patronizing and sterotyping. If I had my druthers, Whitmer would be at the top of the ticket, but she’s a Gone Girl for at least four years.

*The Free Press has a piece called “Gaslighting the public on Kamala Harris as ‘Border Czar‘.” All of us remember when Harris was tasked with dealing with the southern border of the U.S., but now the MSM are pretending that that was all a lie.  This has really got me peeved at the liberal media trying to rewrite history as they did in Nineteen Eighty-Four. At least tell the truth!

On March 24, 2021, Axios published a story with the headline “Biden Puts Harris in Charge of Border Crisis.”

Politics reporter Stef W. Kight informed us that the vice president would be “addressing the migrant surge at the U.S.-Mexico border” and that Harris would “lead efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador) to manage the flow of unaccompanied children and migrant families arriving at the border in numbers not seen since a surge in 2019.”

Lest anyone wonder whether this was a big job with a great deal of responsibility, a White House official told reporters: “President Biden said during the transition, whatever the most urgent need, he would turn to the vice president, and today he is turning to the vice president.”

Today—July 24, 2024—the same reporter at the same outlet has a story headlined “Harris Border Confusion Haunts Her New Campaign.”

Kight now reports: “In early 2021, President Biden enlisted Vice President Kamala Harris to help with a slice of the migration issue.” (Emphasis mine.)

We are told that there is “confusion around the VP’s exact role” and that “early media misfires and the rapidly changing regional migration crisis has made the issue a top target for the GOP trying to define their new opponent. And it has become even more critical for Harris to find a clear border message, fast.” The story also quotes former Department of Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson: “She is not the border czar.”

. . . Nor was Axios alone in correcting the record when it came to Harris.

Time weighed in with its own dispatch (“Kamala Harris Was Never Biden’s ‘Border Czar’ ”), as did USA Today (“Harris’ Border Work Was on ‘Root Causes’ of Migration; She Wasn’t in Charge”), and CBS (“The Facts about Kamala Harris’ Role on Immigration in the Biden Administration”), and The New York Times (“Why Republicans Keep Calling Kamala Harris the ‘Border Czar’” ).

And on and on.

. . . It should be noted that all this is more than a little ridiculous, since no one in the United States government is technically a czar of anything. How does one “fact-check” that which is only an informal title?

Nevertheless, it was an informal title widely used. Here’s The New York Times in 2021: “Ms. Harris will also soon be taking over work from a departing official with years of experience. Last week, Roberta S. Jacobson, the former ambassador to Mexico chosen as Mr. Biden’s ‘border czar,’ said that she would retire from government. She said she was happy to see Ms. Harris assume the work of stemming migration from Central America.” And here’s The Washington Post that same year, describing the vice president as taking on “the lead role on the overall border and regional issue.”

Also worth noting is that all of this “reporting” has taken place without Harris having uttered a single word about her border-related responsibilities. In other words, nothing has actually happened other than Republicans calling Harris what Axios and other media outlets once called Harris. This is, as always, not about providing readers with much-needed news or analysis—but just making sure, in case anyone is worried—that journalists are still doing their all for Team Blue.

Below is my favorite newsman, Lester Holt, interviewing Harris about the border, and it’s clear that she was indeed tasked with tackling that issue (not necessarily solving it).

*Who says that AI is useless? Here we have a Representative, Jennifer Wexton (a Virginia Democrat), giving a speech on the House floor. Why this is remarkable is that she was robbed of her voice by a neurological disorder.  But AI has enabled her to give speeches in her former voice.

When Jennifer Wexton rose Thursday to speak on the House floor, something she has done countless times before, the congresswoman used a voice she thought was gone forever.

After a rare neurological disorder robbed her of her ability to speak clearly, Wexton has been given her voice back with the help of a powerful artificial intelligence program, allowing the Virginia Democrat to make a clone of her speaking voice using old recordings of speeches and appearances she made as a congresswoman. She used that program to deliver what is believed to be the first speech on the House floor ever given via a voice cloned by artificial intelligence.

“It was a special moment that I never imagined could happen. I cried happy tears when I first heard it,” Wexton told The Associated Press in the first interview she’s participated in since attaining her new voice.

Standing at a lectern on the floor, Wexton rose to commemorate Disability Pride Month, a time each July that aims to commemorate the Americans with Disabilities Act, the landmark 1990s civil rights law aimed at protecting Americans with disabilities. But her speech was also a symbol of her strength in the face of a debilitating disease.

“I used to be one of those people who hated the sound of my voice,” she remarked from the floor. “When my ads came on TV, I would cringe and change the channel. But you truly don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone, because hearing the new AI of my old voice for the first time was music to my ears. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard.”

Wexton’s voice now plays out of her iPad, propped up using a rainbow-colored floral case. During the interview at her dining room table in Leesburg, Virginia, the congresswoman typed out her thoughts, used a stylus to move the text around, hit play and then the AI program put that text into Wexton’s voice. It’s a lengthy process, so the AP provided Wexton with a few questions ahead of the interview to give the congresswoman time to type her answers.

Her disease is progressive supranuclear palsy, a progressive brain disease that usually kills its sufferers between 6 and 9 years from diagnosis. Poor woman! But she’s also a brave woman, keeping on keeping on. Politicans, of course, have to have a voice; I don’t think there’s ever been a mute person in Congress.  Here below is her AI-generated speech, using words taken from speeches given when she could talk:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Szaron is getting more intellectual!

Szaron: Let’s talk about social stratification.
Hili: Maybe another time.
In Polish:
Szaron: Porozmawiajmy o społecznej stratyfikacji.
Hili: Może innym razem.

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

From Cat Memes:

From Science Humor via Dominka Harmat. I have no idea if this is true:

From Strange, Silly, or Stupid Signs via Saf Stern:

From Masih, more protestors facing execution in Iran, you can find their stories here, here, and here.

From Malcolm, a real-life Tom and Jerry. I hope they stayed friends.

From my feed: these deer are famous and have had years of practice:

From Luana. I can’t believe this is happening in the U.S., and, what’s worse, the cops stand by and do nothing during this vandalism. Who’s running the reailroad?

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

Two tweets from the famous Dr. Cobb.  First, the problems of English (but “row” could be pronounced with the “ow” of “owl” if “row” means “squabble”):

Amazingly, Carter is still alive, but I don’t think in any condition to understand the dearth of guinea worms:

36 thoughts on “Friday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Yes, the use of AI for interpolating speech from a huge database of a person’s voice samples is a very appropriate and rewarding use. Problems arise when AI is used improperly such as for prediction outside of the training database. Jennifer Wexton has been a wonderful Congresswoman representing Virginia and I was so sad when she announced her illness: both for her, her family and friends, but also for the entire Commonwealth. Thank you for providing this video of her speech.

    2. I forwarded that video to a friend of mine who was a talented visual artist and musician. He is now severely limited by ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), and can communicate only by email using a device that tracks his eye movements.

      He’s researching “Speechify” for prices on A.I.-assisted voice transcriptions. I suggested that he do a fund-raiser so that he could get back his voice, or at least something close to it.

      (He’s already had two successful fund-raisers to get the kind of food he likes but that is not otherwise provided by his care facility.)

      Fortunately, he has recordings of his voice from an interview and probably some other sources. I told him I hoped he had recordings of his laugh, which would be great, as they would highlight his amazing resilience and good nature despite a very debilitating disease.

      1. “These are the days of miracle and wonder.” Paul Simon
        That was in the mid 1980s!

        Like Pinker, if you actually look at the world and remember yesterday, it is hard not to be extremely optimistic.
        Hope your friend gets his voice back. He’s sure to have a LOT to say. 🙂
        best,

        D.A.
        NYC

        1. Thanks, David. And, yes, I share Pinker’s perspective.

          For as long as I can remember I’ve been a science-oriented, optimistic “futurist” … while doing in the present what I think would encourage a bright future.

          A quote I submitted to my recently rebuilt local library was one of five chosen from about a hundred:
          https://x.com/Jon_Alexandr/status/1811303712612360484

          Only in the past few years have I gotten less optimistic. I’m now pretty firmly in the “it could go either way” state of mind (while still actively encouraging that bright future).

          But I will soon be having my 75th birthday (as will my wife — we’re only 10 days apart by birth), so I actually do remember some things from not long after the Neolithic era.

          (We’re not bowling aficionados, but my wife and I are now thinking we might celebrate our birthdays with family at a new upscale bowling alley.)

          My younger friend’s continuing good nature despite his ALS — and his interest in A.I. voice transcription — is a poignant reminder for me to keep looking up. (He was also an avid amateur astronomer who built his own 12″ Dobsonian telescope.)

          (Nice quote from Paul Simon, by the way.)

  2. LOL I am glad PCC(E) pointed out the subversion of bagels – now I see it everywhere and yes, it’s toroidal bread!

    Good thing is I can tell what a bagel is now.

    …

    BTW did anyone see the video where union support is read off at the latest Pro Palestine Provocation?… might find the video…

    … and here it is, from Florida Representative Brian Mast :

    x.com/repbrianmast/status/1816592928808271923?s=46

    Supplement : UAW supports ceasefire: for instance :

    x.com/uaw/status/1730670874099945971?s=46

    … recall, many graduate students are connected to UAW (and others..)… as PCC(E) has shown…

  3. With respect to the “Border Czar”—I had thought Biden cleverly placed his VP in an awful position at which she would fail, so as to allow him to run for a second term rather than handing the reins over to her as many assumed would happen when he was elected. Curious that they now have to pretend he never did anything of the sort. The best laid plans….
    And bagels? They are a pain to make at home (like croissants) but worth the effort for a special treat. Both those bakery items are entirely different when freshly made compared to buying them in a supermarket. You don’t know what you are missing until you have a fresh one.

    2. According to Politifact:

      “In March 2021, President Joe Biden tasked Vice President Kamala Harris with working alongside officials in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to address the issues driving people to leave those countries and come to the United States.

      “The Biden-Harris administration said it would focus on five key issues: economic insecurity, corruption, human rights, criminal gang violence and gender-based violence.

      “Border security and management is [sic] the Homeland Security secretary’s responsibility.”

    3. Yes… Harris was tasked with getting at the “root cause” of people leaving their countries. Since most of Central America is steeped in a misogynistic culture, her efforts were always doomed.

    1. I bet a lot of those “national” days have a commercial angle.

      I didn’t realize the list was a moneymaker itself.

  5. We have a great new bagel shop in Hilliard, Ohio called “Bears Bagels” https://www.bearsbagels614.com/ and they advertise “The Real Way, Boiled Then Baked” and it does seem to make a difference. However, they do mix in all kinds of different things like berries. There’s a big difference between these and store bought bagels.

  6. By all appearances Lester Holt is very personable and congenial, no doubt a prince of a fellow, as evidenced by the several seconds of video at the end of his broadcast showcasing his interacting with several Americans, concluding with “America’s Anchor.” I wonder if he finds that a bit embarrassing but bites his tongue as he can’t do anything about it because of his contract with the network. (Am reminded of Shmuley Boteach advertising himself as “America’s Rabbi.”)

    1. Shmuley is a hideous narcissist – an embarrassment to Judaism in my opinion.
      D.A.
      NYC

  7. Those DC terrorist sympathizers should all be rounded up and deported to Gaza.

    1. It is just a warm-up for what will probably happen during the Democratic convention in Chicago. I think a pre-emptive deployment of the national guard would be a good idea.

      1. If the Mayor requests them. He doesn’t have to take a strong hint from the Governor that it might be a good idea.

  9. The cops didn’t just stand around, Jerry. At least one was assaulted. No enemies to the left!

    1. Well, what I mean is that the cops didn’t go after the protestors, not the other way around. From what I saw, the protestors were pressing against the cops. I still want to know if anyone was arrested for painting graffiti on buildings and statues.

  10. On the most consequential topic of the day: bagels. There’s a bagel shop in rural Clearview, Washington (pop. 3324) that imports authentic bagels from New York City twice a week. They have plain, egg, poppy, sesame, marbled rye, and pumpernickel. They also have bl**berry, Fr*ench t*ast, and a couple others—bagels with training wheels. The bagels are the real deal—boiled, chewy inside, crispy outside, size-appropriate—and they are quite expensive. (One has to pay a high price to experience reality these days.)

    You can get them by visiting Kelly Cannoli. The one in Clearview (there’s another in Lake City) is a drive-up window—no indoor seating—in a nondescript building along the side of the Route 9. I wish they could ship them over the internet, but I’m told that this service is not yet available.

    Get ‘em here: https://www.kellycannoli.com/

    So, there is still some goodness in this world! Incidentally, they make amazing cannolis as well—for those with a sweet tooth.

    I have no affiliation with Kelly Cannoli other than being a customer.

      1. We have lots of excellent bagels in Manhattan. If you come to NYC they’re on me. My faves are sold by Yemenis who (I think) buy them from Jews.
        Gotta love NY.

        D.A.
        NYC

  11. The media 6seem to be in full cover mode now for Harris. Scrolling through my Apple News feed, lots of fact checks in her favor even when they’re obviously incorrect, with lots of dirt-digging on Vance. It was nice to see some fairly honest reporting about the administration for a short time after the debate, but in hindsight it looks more like the fix was in to find a way to get Biden out and Kamala in.
    Re the protestors: I love free speech, including burning the flag if it’s done in a manner that is not vandalizing or violent – for instance, if you want to buy a flag and bring it to a rally to burn to make your point, go for it. I’ll form my own opinion of you based on that, but you’re free to do it. But don’t touch other people’s stuff, including government property (after all, we the people paid for it). Prosecute people for crimes done while protesting.

  12. I just want to point out that some people do speak Esperanto. The annual international convention of Esperanto will take place the first week of August in Tanzania this year. Nearly 800 people from 66 countries have signed up to spend a week speaking only Esperanto. None of them has any illusion that Esperanto will replace English as the international language. It’s just a fun thing to do.

    1. Even though it was a fad of a generation above me (like the boss), in the 1970s/80s I thought of learning Esperanto, even bought a book with my pocket money. I liked the idea and it seemed easy. And there are indeed people older than me, 54, who do speak some: and they’re routinely cool guys. Always guys. hehehe

      I did eventually study Japanese (well), Russian (pretty good) and Arabic (badly) so my thirst for languages was slaked.

      D.A.
      NYC

  13. The prediction markets do not seem to be overly impressed with any increase in Harris’s popularity. Polymarket is giving her only a 39% chance of winning (compared with 60% for Trump), although that is up a few points from a couple days ago. Interestingly, they are giving Harris a 61% chance of winning the popular vote.

  14. I’m probably too late with this (it’s been a busy day), but …

    Did anyone else notice some bizarre weirdnesses in the “Women speak” image? I’m pretty sure it’s AI-generated. AI has no idea how people’s bodies work.

    In the spirit of the old count-the-things-wrong-in-this-picture puzzles, how many physically-improbable things in this image can you find. I count 8 (maybe 9).

    βPer

      1. The notion that women talk more than men has been debunked many times. Apparently it originally came from a book called The Female Brain, published in 2006. I first heard it wasn’t true by reading Deborah Cameron, a linguist from Oxford, who specializes in gender and language. Here’s a bit from an article she wrote for the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/oct/01/gender.books):

        “One person who found it impossible to believe was Mark Liberman, a professor of phonetics who has worked extensively with recorded speech. His scepticism prompted him to delve into the footnotes of The Female Brain to find out where the author had got her figures. What he found was not an academic citation but a reference to a self-help book. Following the trail into the thickets of popular literature, Liberman came across several competing statistical claims. The figures varied wildly: different authors (and sometimes even the same author in different books) gave average female daily word-counts ranging from 4,000 to 25,000 words. As far as Liberman could tell, all these numbers were plucked from thin air: in no case did anyone cite any actual research to back them up. He concluded that no one had ever done a study counting the words produced by a sample of men and women in the course of a single day. The claims were so variable because they were pure guesswork.”

    2. I did notice that, and came down here to the comments to see if anyone else mentioned it!

  15. Much as I can’t stand Kamala, her “border czar” role was for publicity only. The VP has pretty much zero ability to fix any aspect of our immigration law or frontiers.
    Goodness – she has so much to criticize, there’s no shortage of things. No need to make stuff up like “She flubbed the border.”

    Yesterday Leslie ticked somebody off who, still against Maori MM “science”, alleged something unprovable and possibly incorrect. I totally agree: We need to stick to the truth and not repeat or believe stuff just b/c it comports with our side/ideas.

    D.A.
    NYC

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