Monday: Hili dialogue

December 2, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the first Monday in December, December 2, 2024 to be exact. And it’s National Fritters Day, celebrating an underappreciated comestible. Battered substances are found worldwide, including pakhora in India, but in the US the best example of the genre are corn fritters, preferably drizzled with a bit of sweet syrup. Here are some corn fritters in Sonoma, California, sans syrup:

Missvain, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Mutt Day, Walt Disney Day (he was born on this day in 1901), Play Basketball Day, International Day for the Abolition of Slavery, and Safety Razor Day. 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 2 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*After saying he would never do so, Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter, who was accused of charges of illegally buying a gun and of tax evastion (article archived here).

President Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon of his son Hunter on Sunday night after repeatedly insisting he would not do so, using the power of his office to wave aside years of legal troubles, including a federal conviction for illegally buying a gun and for tax evasion.

In a statement issued by the White House, Mr. Biden said he had decided to issue the executive grant of clemency for his son “for those offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 1, 2024.”

He said he made the decision because the charges against Hunter were politically motivated and designed to hurt him politically.

“The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election,” Mr. Biden said in the statement. “No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son — and that is wrong.”

He added: “There has been an effort to break Hunter — who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution. In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me — and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”

It was a remarkable turnaround for a man whose presidency and five-decade career was built in part on the idea that he would never interfere with the administration of justice. In 2020, he made the case that former President Donald J. Trump should be ousted from office to restore that kind of independence in America’s democracy, and he argued the same in 2024.

But in his statement, Mr. Biden sought to make the case for interfering after all, accusing his political enemies of going after his son in ways that anyone else would not have been. He said that he still believed in the justice system, but added, “I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice — and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further.”

. . .After the president’s son was convicted on three federal felony counts for illegally buying a gun, Mr. Biden said he would not pardon or commute the sentence of his son.

“I said I’d abide by the jury decision,” Mr. Biden told reporters during the Group of 7 summit in June. “I will do that.”

The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, repeatedly said that Mr. Biden would not issue a pardon for his son, often chiding reporters for asking the question.

In the summer of 2023, she was asked whether there was “any possibility” that the president would end up pardoning his son. She answered simply, “No.” When the reporter tried to ask the question again, she cut the question short and said: “I just said no. I just answered.”

Biden lied, as did his minions, and this will only help erode whatever place in American history he secured.  It also shows that nobody is against the law–unless you’re the son of the President.

Here is part of Biden’s statement (h/t Luana); you can read the full pardon here.

*According to the Wall Street Journal, there’s bipartisan objections to Trump’s choice of the new FBI director (he’s going to dump the old one):

President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement that he wants to replace FBI Director Christopher A. Wray with Kash Patel, a staunch loyalist who has vowed to fire the agency’s leadership and dramatically reshape its mission, was met with bipartisan concern that his appointment could undermine the agency’s independence.

Republicans and Democrats alike argued that replacing Wray — who has held the job since 2017 — with Patel showcases Trump’s efforts to appoint close allies who espouse his views and have expressed support for his plans to take aim at the country’s justice system.

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-South Dakota) said that Trump “has the right” to make appointments and that he was not surprised the president-elect is picking “people that he believes are very loyal to himself.” But he also praised Wray, calling him “a very good man” and saying he’d had no “complaints” or “objections” about his stewardship of the agency. He noted that Trump appointed Wray to a 10-year term.

. . . Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who is in line to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee once Republicans assume control of the Senate next month, criticized Wray in a post on X, saying he had “failed” at fundamental duties as FBI director. He added that Patel must “prove to Congress he will reform & restore public trust in FBI.”

Trump’s selection of Patel comes as the president-elect has rolled out proposed nominations and appointments that appear aimed at putting his political allies in key positions where officials and agencies had contradicted or angered him in the past.

Trump’s announcement Saturday night does not amount to a formal nomination, and Patel can’t take over the FBI unless Trump fires Wray or the FBI director steps down before the end of his 10-year term.

Regardless of competence, Trump is filling the executive branch with toadies and loyalists, regardless of their competence. There’s no evidence that Wray was out to damage Trump, but it doesn’t matter. And the same goes for the National Institutes of Health (see next item).,

*Yup, the NIH, which supported me throughout my research career, and underwrote many important scientific advances, including the Human Genome Project, is about to be reshaped by Trump as well (article archived here):

The National Institutes of Health, the world’s leading public funder of biomedical research, has an enviable track record. Research supported by the agency has led to more than 100 Nobel Prizes and has supported more than 99 percent of the drugs approved by federal regulators from 2010 to 2019.

No surprise, then, that the agency has been called “the crown jewel of the federal government.” But come January, when President-elect Donald J. Trump and congressional Republicans take charge, the N.I.H. may face a reckoning.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the new administration’s selection for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the N.I.H., routinely castigates federal scientists and is a staunch critic of conventional pharmaceuticals and vaccines, with a long record of spreading falsehoods about vaccine safety.

He has said that he would steer the agency into a yearslong “break” from infectious disease research, focusing instead on chronic diseases.

And Mr. Trump’s pick for N.I.H. director, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the Stanford professor who gained notoriety during the pandemic for supporting the widely maligned idea that the coronavirus should be left to spread freely among healthy Americans,has called for a dramatic restructuring of the N.I.H., which he has said is led by small-minded bureaucrats.

While even the agency’s defenders acknowledge that the N.I.H. needs modernization, the radical reforms now proposed would be difficult, if not impossible, without years of legal wrangling and significant support from Congress, experts say.

. . . But many fear that the next administration will nonetheless weaken the N.I.H., divesting from critical research with long-lasting consequences for science, innovation and public health.

That is my fear, too. Bhattacharya was a proponent of letting covid run free in groups of people that it didn’t much endanger, creating “herd immunity,” a controversial strategy. While he has his defenders, I am dubious about both him but especially about vaccine denialist RFK Jr. (proposed HHS head, the organization that runs the NIH) to oversee scientific and medical research in the U.S.  Fortunately, these appointments, unlike that of the FBI director, can be reversed in a Democratic administration–if we get one in four years.

*This is not a joke. A town in Ontario was fined $10,000 for refusing to celebrate Pride Month (story archived here; h/t Jez). O Canada!

Emo is a township of about 1,300 people located in the far west of Ontario, along the border with Minnesota.

In a decision handed down last week, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario ruled that Emo, its mayor and two of its councillors had violated the Ontario Human Rights Code by refusing to proclaim June as “Pride Month.”

The town was also cited for failing to fly “an LGBTQ2 rainbow flag,” despite the fact that they don’t have an official flag pole.

The dispute began in 2020 when the township was approached by the group Borderland Pride with a written request to proclaim June as Pride Month.

Attached to the letter was a draft proclamation including clauses such as “pride is necessary to show community support and belonging for LGBTQ2 individuals” and “the diversity of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression represents a positive contribution to society.”

Emo was also asked to fly an “LGBTQ2 rainbow flag for a week of your choosing.”

Borderland Pride then asked Emo to “email us a copy of your proclamation or resolution once adopted and signed.”

Although symbolic proclamations are standard fare in larger municipal governments such as Toronto or Hamilton, this didn’t happen all that often in Emo.

Tribunal hearings would also reveal that Emo doesn’t really have a central flag pole, aside from a Canadian flag angled over the front door of the Emo Municipal Office.

The claim of discrimination ultimately hinged on a single line uttered by Emo Mayor Harold McQuaker. When the proclamation came up for consideration, McQuaker was heard to say in a recording of the meeting, “There’s no flag being flown for the other side of the coin … there’s no flags being flown for the straight people.”

As Human Rights Tribunal vice-chair Karen Dawson wrote in her decision, “I find this remark was demeaning and disparaging of the LGBTQ2 community of which Borderland Pride is a member and therefore constituted discrimination under the Code.”

And so the town was fined $10,000 (Canadian) and “McQuaker and Emo’s chief administrative officer were also ordered to complete an online course known as ‘Human Rights 101’ and “provide proof of completion … to Borderland Pride within 30 days.”  The Canadians take such compliance seriously: there were FIVE DAYS OF HEARINGS. But me this smacks of unwarranted compulsion; it’s fine to celebrate Pride Month, but in Canada you can apparently force communities to do so.

*Finally, remember that piece of “art” consisting of a banana duct-taped to a wall, a work that sold for $6.2 million to a cryptocurrency mogul? Well, according to the AP’s “oddities section,” the owner just ate the banana.

A cryptocurrency entrepreneur who bought a piece of conceptual art consisting of a simple banana, duct-taped to a wall, for $6.2 million last week ate the fruit in Hong Kong on Friday.

Chinese-born Justin Sun peeled off the duct tape and enjoyed the banana in a press conference held in The Peninsula Hong Kong, one of the city’s priciest hotels, in the popular shopping district of Tsim Sha Tsui.

“It tastes much better than other bananas. Indeed, quite good,” he said.

“Comedian,” by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, was a phenomenon when it debuted in 2019 at Art Basel Miami Beach, as festivalgoers tried to make out whether the single yellow piece of fruit affixed to a white wall with silver duct tape was a joke or a cheeky commentary on questionable standards among art collectors. At one point, another artist took the banana off the wall and ate it.

The piece attracted so much attention that it had to be withdrawn from view. But three editions sold for between $120,000 and $150,000, according to the gallery handling sales at the time.

Last week, Sun, founder of cryptocurrency platform TRON, made the winning bid at the Sotheby’s auction in New York. Or, more accurately, Sun purchased a certificate of authenticity that gives him the authority to duct-tape a banana to a wall and call it “Comedian.”

Oy! Anybody can duct-tape a banana to a wall, but you can’t call it “Comedian” and it’s worthless without the artist’s written imprimatur. The sheer insanity of creating and then selling such a work for a huge sum of money is matched by the arrant consumption of the work. That said, apparently Sun can re-create the work with a new banana (they go bad, you know) and new duct tape, so he has the work regardless. Apparently it’s the “certificate of authenticity” that is so valuable! (You can make a similar installation.)

Here’s a video of Sun eating the banana:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is outside on the window ledge:

Hili: Why are you looking at me so intently?
A: Because the reflection in the window overlaps with you in a funny way.
In Polish:
Hili: Czemu się tak przyglądasz?
Ja: Ponieważ odbicie w szybie zabawnie nakłada się na ciebie.

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

From David; it’s easy to see the survival advantage of larger ears, but this is too fast for such evolution, and it’s the same guy:

From Meow. I’m sure I’ve posted it before but I like it!

From Jesus of the Day. None of it is correct.

An extra from Cat Memes: “The most perfect cat tattoo”:

From Masih: an Iranian woman badly flogged simply for showing her hair. How much longer can Iran tolerate this kind of despicable punishment?

As I reported the other day, the Oxford Student Union voted  by an overwhelming majority (278-59) in favor of this resolution “This House Believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide.” Various venues report the atmosphere as one of “chaos,” with considerable heckling and shouting down of anti-motion speakers. Here is one report on what happened, but we’ll have to wait for the videos, hopefully unedited so one can hear the disruptions.

From reader Malcolm; how to draw shadows. Don’t forget!

Two from my feed. Look at this old commercial airplane!

No need for coworkers! And how does he do the popping-off bit?

One who survived (my repost):

One who survived!

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2024-12-02T07:43:01.551Z

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. Neither of us know the answer to this first one:

Monday quiz: match the person with their cat 1) Iris Murdoch a) Cigarette2) Albert Camus b) Sans Lendemain3) Cardinal Richelieu c) Langbourne4) Michel Foucault d) General Butchkin5) Peggy Guggenheim e) Ludovic le Cruel6) Florence Nightingale f) Bismarck7) Jeremy Bentham g) Insanity🗃️

— Briony Neilson (@brionyneilson.bsky.social) 2024-12-02T05:21:58.916Z

Video of a dust storm on Mars!

Dust Storm Conditions over Mars ' North Polar CapFull size video: flic.kr/p/2qtp1Vt 🔭Full size 5k image: flic.kr/p/2qto3UyCredits:Processing: AndreaLuck CC BYRaw Data: ESA/DLR/FUBerlinESA Mars Express 2006-11-16All timestamps & additional info are available on Flickr in the links above.

— Andrea Luck (@andrealuck.bsky.social) 2024-11-11T00:12:15.030Z

64 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Is the Biden father-son relationship in Presidential pardons unique?

    I read some arguments that due to that relationship, Biden was pardoning Hunter motivated by a religious imperative – that God will be the final judge. The idea being that he knows it is the wrong thing to do here on Earth, but it is what matters spiritually that compels him.

    Of course, make of that what one will.

    1. I am not aware of any other President who has pardoned his son.

      Of this one Politico says:

      Experts on pardons said they could think of only one other person who has received a presidential pardon so sweeping in generations: Nixon, who was given a blanket pardon by Gerald Ford in 1974.

      The suggestion on the right is that the pardon for acts since January 1, 2014 is to shield Hunter Biden from any shenanigans when we was involved with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

      1. One can argue that a presidential pardon is fair enough (though most similar countries don’t have anything such), but the price should be transparency.

        That is, instead of a blanket pardon for any and all unspecified crimes over a whole decade, there should be an itemised list of everything he’s being given a pardon for.

      2. The suggestion on the right is that the pardon for acts since January 1, 2014 is to shield Hunter Biden from any shenanigans when we was involved with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

        Of course. But nobody on the right has any evidence at all for such “shenanigans”. Perhaps a more parsimonious (not to say charitable) reason is to cut off the opportunity for endless and pointless performative ‘investigations’ by publicity-seeking lib-owners on the right.

        1. Let’s see. A good-for-nothing drug addict was in the board of a bit Ukrainian company at a time when his dad was US Vice President and Ukraine was hoping (in vain) that the USA would help it as promised with the Budapest Memorandum.
          To me, this simple fact, for which nobody has given a decent explanation, is the definition of “shenanigans”.

          1. Sure, it’s easy to figure out the self-interested motivations of both Burisma and Hunter Biden in that situation. But the context here is the pardon. Pardons are for crimes. I didn’t see where you mentioned a crime.
            Maybe there were some, but it’s evidence of such that I’m asking for.

    2. “He said he made the decision because the charges against Hunter were politically motivated and designed to hurt him politically.”

      So he’s saying that some charges are politically motivated? Isn’t that what Trump argues?

      1. Yes. And he’s right.
        Of course, some charges are more serious and/or better evidenced than others.
        See Abramson’s thread, linked below.

    1. I don’t agree with the pardon, but the attacks were political and I don’t know what I’d do if it were my son. Still, a main argument in the link is that now Trump has an excuse to pardon the Jan 6 insurrectionists.
      As if he wouldn’t.

      1. Yup, everything that Trump was already going to do in this regard he now has cover for. If Biden was going to play Trump’s “It’s a witch hunt!” card he should have been honest and upfront about it. This makes an absolute mockery of claims that no-one is above the law in the US.

      1. Wicked burn bro. Libs owned.
        Assuming you’re not being intentionally disingenuous, I suggest checking out Seth Abramson’s thread linked by Barry Lyons below.

  3. For those of you who have a Bluesky account, Seth Abramson explains here why it was good for the president to pardon his son. Hint: There was a deal with the DOJ, but then the Republicans scuttled it so they could continue to after Hunter (a proxy, of course, to humiliate his father):

    https://bsky.app/profile/sethabramson.bsky.social/post/3lcc5xywym22t

    Mote from Abramson: “If you were to take every Trump pardon and every Biden pardon and make a single list of them ranked from most corrupt to least corrupt, the pardon of Hunter Biden would not rank in the Top 25. And of the 25+ ahead of it, all major media and MAGA said at the time was, ‘The pardon power is absolute.'”

    And this by Jeff Tiedrich is great (watch out for the f-bombs):

    https://bsky.app/profile/jefftiedrich.bsky.social/post/3lcbv2soipc2p

  4. Well, can anyone doubt that Trump would do his best to get the legal system to harass Hunter Biden to punish President Biden?

    1. We will never know. But in a parallel universe, now irrevocably lost, imagine that Biden does not pardon Hunter but Trump does! This of course to provide a kind of moral cover for also pardoning the Jan 6 insurrectionists.

  6. It is my understanding that the pandemic policies recommended by Bhattacharya had been the official CDC policies until the world went crazy and decided that lockdowns and school closings were the way to go.

      1. I’ve posted about this before. I’ll leave this link here and let you ponder why D. A. Henderson—leader of the global smallpox vaccination campaign, longtime dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and one of the leading public health practitioners of the 20th century—supported the pandemic measures that he did. Measures that had long been standard public health practice and recommendations, measures that would have been assailed as anti-something-or-other during our panicked and politicized COVID response.

        I’ll also let you ponder why he chose to publish this statement at the time that he did and in the journal “Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense Strategy, Practice, and Science.” Who was the audience? What policy debates were being shaped at the time out of the view of the American public?

        A taste from Henderson’s conclusion: “An overriding principle. Experience has shown that communities faced with epidemics or other adverse events respond best and with the least anxiety when the normal social functioning of the community is least disrupted. Strong political and public health leadership to provide reassurance and to ensure that needed medical care services are provided are critical elements. If either is seen to be less than optimal, a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.”

        In short, pre-2020 there was virtually nothing “controversial” about Jay Bhattacharya’s pandemic recommendations. Then again, it wasn’t the public health community that won the policy debate after the 9/11 anthrax attacks. They simply jumped on board in 2020 because of fear and politics.

        https://aier.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/10.1.1.552.1109.pdf

    2. Natural infections have never created herd immunity, and we have no reason to think that they ever will. So far, herd immunity has been achieved only with vaccination.
      I am glad that the schools were closed. During that time, my son’s teacher died. The kids were devastated but at least they knew that none of them had passed the virus to her. I have read reports of other teachers who died of COVID while teaching in person, and their students were burdened by guilt.

      1. But wait a sec, Maya. If the schools were closed and the teacher died anyway, that is not an argument for or against closing schools. Unless you can know — you can’t —that more teachers would have died had schools stayed open, your son’s teacher’s death is completely beside the point. For all you can know the teacher got Covid from some exposure that she might have been spared had she been at work in the classroom.

        Had the schools been open, the feelings of the children could have been spared by just telling them that they didn’t give their teacher her fatal infection. Sometimes you have to be economical with the truth when children are of an age where they will equate causation with guilt.

  7. Assessing the wisdom of Bhattacharya is more complex than a lot of his proponents are acknowledging. In March of 2020 he was arguing that COVID may be much less dangerous than people think. That’s great, but based on the information at the time he couldn’t have known that. As it turned out, it did kill a lot of ppl between 3/2020 and say 5/2022. As far as herd immunity being achieved with his approach, I really don’t know if it would have worked or not. The vaccine did not stop transmission to an extent even close to what a lot of scientists presumed. Again though, that can be an argument that some of our assumptions about the virus were wrong. And really, a lot of the people cheering for his appointment are the same imbeciles that think the vaccine caused more damage than the virus. IMO, by around 4/2021 there was significant evidence that the vaccines were remarkably effective and by at least around that time consideration for opening everything completely should have been pursued. I’m open to arguments that it should have been open earlier as well. Our institutions definitely made mistakes trying to censor dissenting views, but a lot of people’s reasons for liking this guy are because of poor critical thinking and/or populist nihilism. It’s just another signal that Trump is taking down the establishment so his MAGA cult can cheer like idiots.

    1. There is a long (70 min) zdoggmd video interview with paul offit just posted last week which discusses a number of the early views on public health and covid including Bhattacharya’s and the view of the literati at nhs. There is also an extensive discussion of rfkjr from their first hand experience over the years. A warning that there are a lot of little pop-up ads during the 70 minutes, but for almost all of them a quick forefinger to the “skip” button which appears after 3-5 seconds each time, stops the offending screed and returns you live to the video of interest. I thought this annoyance to be a small price to pay for the information from these two experts. Also, as an aside, from looking at the titles of some of his other recent videos and a comment he made on this one, it seems that zdogmd has been dabbling in some of the same experiences that susan harrison brought us in “wildlife photos’ last week.

      Url for the ZDoggmd/Paul Offit interview is

      2. Thank you for that. It was excellent while still being fun and I did not get any pop-ups.

        1. Thanks Frau Katze. I still suggest the video for those who do have the time as it ranges beyond the rfkjr conversation of the “beyond the noise” substack piece.

          1. It’s become so obvious where people stand on issues these days that it’s simply too time consuming to listen through all the star power, personality-driven podcasts. I crave information that isn’t filtered through yet another shiney bald headed guy with perfect teeth. I guess this points to why the last thing our world needs is another amateur with an opinion. I have a close friend who is degreed up the yin yang with degrees — academic, clinical, medical — whose judgement, knowledge, opinion I’ve long valued and she has told me things about the CDC, NIH, COVID-19, etc that blow my mind. I am one of the amateurs the world doesn’t need and I’ll leave the decision making up to those of you whose knowledge far surpasses my own, but I will not get another covid vaccine.

          1. From one of your earlier postings: “I crave information that isn’t filtered through yet another shiney [sic] bald headed guy with perfect teeth.”

            I gather that you could still tolerate such information from someone who has won the genetic tonsorial lottery and has a head full of shiny follicles (with perfect teeth to boot).

            Or else wear sunglasses.

    2. “As far as herd immunity being achieved with his approach, I really don’t know if it would have worked or not.”
      Herd immunity has never before been achieved with this approach, i.e. by natural infection (only with efficient vaccines), and I don’t see any reason to suppose that COVID would have been the first case.

    3. What do they say “stop transmission”? I’ve never heard about any other vaccine. The measles vaccine (usually) stops the child from catching measles. If the child doesn’t catch measles he’s not going to transmit it either.

  8. I think Biden sat down, carefully considered the upcoming mess of pardons Trump was about to commence throwing around as soon as he was President, and just said “Oh, fuck it.”

      1. No, not more complicated at all. Although Hunter is/was a particularly reckless human, I think presidents get a pass for immediate family members in most cases.

        I’d have pardoned him were he my son (I have no kids, but I routinely pardon my dog!), esp since the MAGAs are so bonkers with such a hard on for him.

        D.A.
        NYC

    2. Yep. And if nothing else it prevents performative GOP clowns from wasting a lot of people’s time on show ‘investigations’.

      1. Thanks for drawing attention to my spelling error. No. I still wouldn’t listen to the guy’s podcast even if he had shiny hair. Forgive me if you can. That was me behaving badly (trying to be sarcastic). I should have kept my sour mood to myself.

  9. I’m looking forward to TGIF this week and reading what Nellie Bowles has to say about Biden pardoning his son.

  10. About Bhattacharya: He has an MD but as far as I can tell has never practiced or taught medicine; his professorship is in Economics (in which he holds a PhD).
    One subject in which he is demonstrably ignorant is epidemiology.
    Epidemiology is a complex and math-heavy science that is not well covered in medical schools. COVID really spotlighted the incredible Dunning-Krugerness of physicians generally.
    (Disclaimer: I am not an epidemiologost, but my ex-wife earned an MS and PhD in the subject from UCLA while we were married.)

    1. You might ask your wife, the epidemiologist, if there is enough trust/validation in the pandemic math model for the U.S. to run simulations of various levels of country (U.S.) closed to get impact of various (nuanced as Fauci calls it) levels of focussed prevention.

      Also, why is paxlovid not otc? Since taking it is time-sensitive, I would think that the government would make covid testing kits freely and easily available to all citizens as they did during pandemic and paxlovid available on demand at the corner pharmacy. Is it simply a lack of trust or is there a medical danger that over rides timely availability?

      1. Kidney function has to be assessed for Paxlovid. Plus it interacts strongly with the metabolism of a number of drugs. Also, the price is obscene.

  11. Good for Joe Biden! If Hunter Biden was Joe Citizen his cases would have not have been so fully prosecuted or likely not prosecuted at all. The MAGA crowd tried to tear down Joe Biden by attacking Hunter. Trump pardoned Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon, Dinesh D’Souza, the notorious Joe Arpaio, and other cronies. Biden’s pardon should barely register a blip in the media.

  12. Firstly, it’s the Oxford Union, not the Oxford Students’ Union. These are different organisations. The Oxford Union is a debating society that often comes up with ludicrous resolutions. The Oxford Students’ Union is supposed to be about looking after the rights of students, although, if it is anything like the York Students Union when I was at University in the 1980’s, it’s probably fairly bonkers.

    Secondly, the banana has been eaten twice before. This latest act of conspicuous consumption almost seems like a piece of performance art. I think the guy wasted his money, but given he has, I find the whole episode weirdly satisfying and in keeping with the spirit of the thing.

    Finally, I think it is very strange that a decision not to put up a flag and not to celebrate some festival, constitutes a violation of human rights. Some people do not understand what human rights are. That said, I wonder if there is more to the story than we are being told.

    1. Human Rights Tribunals in Canada and its provinces — we have them at both levels — can find anything to be a violation of human rights that they choose to. They are lay appointed commissars, not judges, and their decisions cannot be appealed to the Courts as long as their process was “reasonable”, according to their own rules of administrative procedure. No appeal is allowed on substance or finding of fact. (This is general policy for quasi-judicial administrative tribunals in Canada, to keep these issues out of the Courts.)

      This is how we weaponize niceness in Canada. If you are any kind of organization, firm, or government agency providing service to the public, you live in daily fear of being shaken down by someone with a chip on “their” shoulder, and being unable to have the decision against you — they are always against you — reviewed by proper judges.

      The federal Liberal Government wants to go one further. It has introduced legislation that will allow aggrieved people to launch complaints against private individuals at beefed-up federal Human Rights Tribunals for hurtful “harmful” things said to them or about them, such as on-line. We have the voters of the United States to thank for electing Donald Trump as President because dealing with his various threats to Canada will likely fully occupy this tottering (minority) Government and prevent it from getting this odious legislation through Parliament before it collapses.

      Human Rights Tribunal decisions are public and can be viewed on-line to get the full story. Many schools and municipal governments listened to public pressure and declined to fly Pride flags last year, taking a policy that only the flags of Canada, the province, and the municipality can be flown from municipal flagpoles, other national flags for special occasions, but no activist banners. Bet they won’t try that again.

  14. Regarding bananas, it hasn’t been mentioned that “banana” is a derogatory term used by Chinese people (outside of China) to suggest that another Chinese person is “yellow on the outside but white on the inside”. It’s possible that Justin Sun had that in mind.

    1. Are Chinese the only ones who employ that term vis-a-vis “Whiteness”?

      (It strikes me that blind people are at a certain disadvantage in this matter.)

      1. I would think that others might use it too, but I live in a place with a large ethnic-Chinese population so that’s how I’ve heard the expression.

  15. I sincerely hope that this is the lase we hear of the rotten Biden family before they sink into well-deserved oblivion. They have already damaged the world enough. I wish US voters had never elected Biden Sr.

    1. Oh, I know! And now we have a family ten times worse. What a shame that people fall for such a rotten man.

  16. If I understand it correctly, that banana was taped to the wall in 2019 and eaten in 2024. If that’s true, how was it kept in edible condition that long? Bananas kept on my kitchen counter continue to ripen and are usually black and inedible less than a week after I buy them.

    1. As I understand it, there have been several ‘editions’ of the ‘installation’, each sold separately.

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