Thursday: Hili dialogue

December 12, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, December 12, 2024, and we’re back. The Hili dialogue may be truncated today as I’m catching up, but, as always, I do my best.  It’s National Gingerbread House Day. I love all forms of gingerbread (though I’m less keen on the gingersnap cookies, as they’re hard), but here’s a fancy gingerbread house. How’d you like to nom the full-sized gingerbread house shown below? As Wikipedia says, it’s:

A full-scale gingerbread house as a Christmas decoration in Stockholm, 2009 (It was made of 294 kg (648 lb) flour, 92 kg (203 lb) margarine, 100.4 kg (221 lb) sugar, 66.3 L (14.6 imp gal; 17.5 US gal) Golden syrup, 2.2 kg (4.9 lb) each of cinnamon, cloves, ginger and 3.7 kg (8.2 lb) baking powder.)

I hope they let people eat it after the exhibit was over!

LA2, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Ambrosia Day (the Fifties “salad”, often made by my mom, containing miniature marshmallows, mandarin oranges, grapes, pineapple, coconut, and whipped cream). and National Poinsettia Day, which shows that we’re approaching the holiday season. 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 12 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*The NYT reports on the largest immigration surge in American history: the one that took place from 2021-2023 (article archived here).

The immigration surge of the past few years has been the largest in U.S. history, surpassing the great immigration boom of the late 1800s and early 1900s, according to a New York Times analysis of government data.

Annual net migration — the number of people coming to the country minus the number leaving — averaged 2.4 million people from 2021 to 2023, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Total net migration during the Biden administration is likely to exceed eight million people.

That’s a faster pace of arrivals than during any other period on record, including the peak years of Ellis Island traffic, when millions of Europeans came to the United States. Even after taking into account today’s larger U.S. population, the recent surge is the most rapid since at least 1850:

The numbers in the Times analysis include both legal and illegal immigration. About 60 percent of immigrants who have entered the country since 2021 have done so without legal authorization, according to a Goldman Sachs report based on government data.

The combined increases of legal and illegal immigration have caused the share of the U.S. population born in another country to reach a new high, 15.2 percent in 2023, up from 13.6 percent in 2020. The previous high was 14.8 percent, in 1890.

I had no idea that this recent surge was greater than the one that brought my grandparents—and many other immigrants from Europe—to Ellis Island, but it’s true. The article gives reasons for it, including the Biden Administration’s open-door policy and lax enforcement, as well as turmoil in other countries.  Here are two plots from the article showing the boom:

and the proportion of the U.S. population born outside the country, again at an all-time high. Although this is connected with the figure above, it doesn’t concern me as much as the Left’s apparent reluctance to enforce the law. Among other things, this helped cost Democrats the Presidency.  I expect this surge is going to drop significantly when the next administration begins.  The optics of Trump’s promised “mass deportation” would be dire, and I don’t think that will happen, but surely immigrants should be expected to obey the law.

*The BBC (and many other sites) report the best news possible for the holidays:  the Laysan Albatross named “Wisdom”, the world’s oldest known wild bird, has returned to the island of Laysan and, mirabile dictu, has laid another egg. She’s at least 73!

The world’s oldest known wild bird has laid an egg at the approximate age of 74, US biologists say.

Wisdom, a Laysan albatross, was filmed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) at the Midway Atoll national wildlife refuge in the Pacific Ocean with her latest partner looking after the egg.

Members of the species usually only live for 12-40 years, but Wisdom was tagged in 1956 when she was about five.

Her last offspring hatched in 2021. She is thought to have had more than 30 chicks in her lifetime.

The USFWS said on X that Wisdom was with a new partner this year and that her previous partner Akeakamai had not been seen for several years.

The species generally mates for life but she is already thought to have outlived at least three mates.

Jon Plissner, supervisory wildlife biologist at the refuge, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Wisdom was one of two to three million Laysan albatrosses who travel to Midway to breed.

He said biologists were unaware of any other birds even close to her age, the oldest being 45.

“It’s really been remarkable,” he said. “Wisdom seems to pique the interest of people across the world. We wait each year with bated breath for her return.”

He said Wisdom still appeared to have the energy and instincts to raise another chick, and that there was a 70-80% chance of the egg hatching.

Here’s a nine-year old photo of Wisdom (left) and her boo from Wikipedia, along with its caption:

Wisdom (left) with her mate Akeakamai in 2015 USFWS – Pacific Region, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

*The cops have now had a chance to go through the stuff of accused shooter Luigi Mangione, who is charged with killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. In Mangione’s notebook they apparently found detailed plans for the shooting. The guy is toast, and also dumb for not destroying that evidence. (The article is archived here.)

Luigi Mangione, who has been charged with killing the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare at a company investors’ day, was arrested with a notebook that detailed plans for the shooting, according to two law enforcement officials.

The notebook described going to a conference and killing an executive, the officials said.

“What do you do? You wack the C.E.O. at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention. It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents,” was one passage written in the notebook, the officials said.

Mr. Mangione, who faces a murder charge and has been denied bail, is fighting extradition to New York, which starts a process that could take weeks. “He is contesting it,” his lawyer, Thomas Dickey, said on Tuesday.

The suspect was found with a ghost gun, a suppressor and false identification cards similar to those believed to have been used by the killer, officials said. In addition to the false identification cards, he was carrying identification with his real name.

. . .Police officials were able to match Mr. Mangione’s fingerprints to those on a water bottle and a snack bar wrapper recovered near the crime scene, said another senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. Fingerprints were also found on ballistic evidence at the scene.

When Mr. Mangione was arrested, the authorities also found a 262-word handwritten note with him, which begins by appearing to take responsibility for the murder. The note, which officials described as a manifesto, also mentioned the existence of a notebook. The recovery of the notebook was first reported by CNN.

If all this is true, I wouldn’t give a plugged nickel for the guy’s innocence. And he will be extradited and tried. What bothers me are the number of people applauding the shooting, and even those who say, “Well, it’s bad but I can understand why he did it.”  That is a hairsbreadth from excusing it, although some of the original excusers are starting to realize that their initial enthusiasm for targeted killing might have not looked too good.

*Biden issued a record number of pardons yesterday:

President Biden is commuting the sentences of nearly 1,500 people, the largest grant of clemency by an American president in a single day, the White House announced in a statement on Thursday.

A large number of those being pardoned had been placed in home confinement during the coronavirus pandemic, while 39 were serving sentences for nonviolent crimes, including possession of marijuana.

The announcement came two weeks after Mr. Biden issued a pardon for his son, Hunter, who had been convicted of gun possession and income tax evasion. That decision was harshly criticized by both Republicans and Democrats because Mr. Biden had long ruled out clemency for his son.

*And this in from the AP: the gun found in Luigi Mangione’s possession when he was arrested scarfing a burger in McDonald’s has matched shell casings found at the NYC murder scene.

The gun found on the suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson matches shell casings found at the crime scene, New York’s police commissioner said Wednesday.

Commissioner Jessica Tisch also said lab results matched suspect Luigi Mangione’s prints to a water bottle and protein bar wrapper found near the scene of the killing.

Little new information has come out about a possible motive, though writings found in Mangione’s possession hint at a hatred of corporate greed. He remains jailed in Pennsylvania.

*As you probably heard, Israel has destroyed about 80% of Bashar al-Assad’s armaments after his regime fell into the hands of other terrorists, mostly from Al-Qaeda and partly from Isis. The Times of Israel thinks the new regime will be worse for Israel than when the gangs of terrorist thugs were fighting each other in Syria.

Israel’s bombing of Syrian military assets and its entry into the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights shows it fears the worst from the end of the Assad clan’s rule, analysts told AFP.

“The Israeli government… is operating on a worst-case scenario with little to no nuance,” said Yossi Mekelberg, a Middle East specialist at Chatham House in London.

Analysts noted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had long appeared to regard ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s continued rule as the least bad option for Syria, despite his alliance with Israel’s arch-foes Iran and Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, for fear his overthrow would lead to chaos.

Israel’s bombing of Syrian military assets and its entry into the UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights shows it fears the worst from the end of the Assad clan’s rule, analysts told AFP.

“The Israeli government… is operating on a worst-case scenario with little to no nuance,” said Yossi Mekelberg, a Middle East specialist at Chatham House in London.

Analysts noted that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had long appeared to regard ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s continued rule as the least bad option for Syria, despite his alliance with Israel’s arch-foes Iran and Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, for fear his overthrow would lead to chaos.

Now, Israeli leaders seem to fear that chaos has already arrived.

. . . Netanyahu declared a 1974 armistice agreement with Syria void over the weekend and ordered troops into the UN-patrolled buffer zone along the armistice line.

The good news for Israel is that Hezbollah in Lebanon is now cut off from getting any arms from Iran, as those arms used to come through Syria, which is now Sunni while Hezbollah is Shia. The new regime in Syria hates Hezbollah, and the other venue for arms shipment, Egypt, has now been closed by Israel. Still, Israel is now surround by terrorist regimes that aren’t experiencing internecine strife, and that’s not so great.

*Finally, a New Zealander who doesn’t speak Spanish won the World Spanish Scrabble contest, simply by memorizing lists of Spanish words.

A New Zealand man playing his first-ever competitive Scrabble game in Spanish, a language he doesn’t speak, has won the board game’s Spanish-language world title — despite the language barrier that stopped him from chatting with his opponents.

Nigel Richards, a professional player who holds five English-language world titles, won the Spanish world Scrabble championships in Granada, Spain, in November, losing only one game out of 24. Richards speaks no Spanish and started memorizing the language’s Scrabble word list a year ago, his friend Liz Fagerlund -– a New Zealand Scrabble official -– told The Associated Press.

“He can’t understand why other people can’t just do the same thing,” she said. “He can look at a block of words together and once they go into his brain as a picture he can just recall that very easily.”

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn,

Hili: I’m looking for a definition of parliamentary disagreement.
A: I do not have time now for such discussions.
In Polish:
Hili: Poszukuję definicji parlamentarnej niezgody.
Ja: Nie mam teraz czasu na takie dyskusje.

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

From Cat Memes:

Two medieval animals today. First, From Archaeology and Civilizations:

Second, from This Fucking Guy via Anna:

From The Dodo Pet:

I saw this interview on CNN when I was in Poland, and was appalled that the reporter wore a hijab in deference to religious sensibilities in Iran. That only encourages them.

Simon asks, “Is he really this stupid, or is this just a wind up?”  I vote for stupid. . . .

How many electoral votes does the "Great State of Canada" have?

— The Lincoln Project (@lincolnproject.us) 2024-12-10T17:10:17.473Z

J. K. Rowling never ceases to make me laugh with her wicked wit. This was sent by Luana:

From Malcolm, who calls this “Hello kitty”:

From my feed. The reason for the threats, of course, was because providing a refuge from Muslim hatred for trans people is a good thing to do. It makes Israel look good and Gaza look bad. The Belgians, having caved, also look bad. Belgium is, I think, the most antisemitic country in Western Europe.

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I posted (and the first prisoner I’ve posted who was born in the UK):

Born a Scot and then became a French citizen, John barely lived three weeks after arriving at the camp.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2024-12-12T11:41:18.715Z

Two posts from Professor Cobb. The first he titles “bonkers”:

Just FYI evidently the vaccine has antennas and is about to be activated.2024 would make the dark ages jealous

— Adam Kinzinger (@adamkinzinger.bsky.social) 2024-12-03T17:41:28.403Z

And some well-fattened squirrels for winter:

Preparing for Winter vs Prepared for Winter

— Stephen Curry (@scurry.bsky.social) 2024-12-02T18:40:24.216Z

31 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Glad PCC(E) is back and at ’em!

    The duck-powered boat “E” image appears to have a music stave – five horizontal, parallel lines – on the right.

    Perhaps the “c” means common time (I’d have to look that up), and the other marking appears to be like three natural signs overlain.

    1. Indeed! Gukesh D (which makes him sound like a DJ or hip-hop artist) is now the youngest world chess champion in history. The match was closer than many pundits predicted and, although Ding Liren lost, he put up a good fight overall.

  3. Clearly, Trump is winding Trudeau up. A Canadian colleague tells me, though, that Trump’s message has 56% approval north of the border.

    There will always be countries willing to sell Syria weapons. Turkey right now is probably selling them to Syria to support the Syrians assault on the Kurds.

    1. Turkey finances its own private Islamist Arab militia (SNA) in the part it rules, who are remnants of the militias the rest of the West financed for years, like some of the guys now under the HTS umbrella.
      Both groups of Islamists were attacking Kurdish held territory after Assads fall. The Turkey-paid guys took Manbij (about which the population there probably isn’t happy; these guys are known to be undisciplined thugs), and HTS allies took Deir ez-Zor, the latter being very rich in oil and not ethnically Kurdish. There were defections to HTS there from the US-paid Kurdish led militias, primarily of Arabs who had fought under Kurdish leadership.
      I wonder how long the Turkish-controlled Islamists and the people now under the HTS umbrella will get along. The Turks and the US-paid Kurds seem to have made some deal now. Hope that lasts.

    2. Trump doesn’t like Trudeau. Neither do an increasing number of Canadians. Hence the 56% approval.

    3. Not stupid at all, just winding us up. The author of the tweet must not be sophisticated enough to realize that “just the 51st state” speaks to long-standing deep-seated anxiety in Canadians about our inadequacy and dependence once Britain stopped caring about us back in 1867 and left us to fend for ourselves against a re-United States. We used to buck ourselves up with Mounties, French Quebec, gun control, free health care, and picturesque Indians but none of those images really cuts it anymore.

      Mr. Trump sure knows how to land a dig. The author of the tweet missed it by a country mile asking how many electoral votes Canada has as if that was a “Gotcha!” on Trump.

  4. I would’ve thought that the percentage born in another country would have been highest in the late 1770s.

  5. The difference between extremes

    The far left wants to give Luigi Mangione a ticker tape parade.
    The far right wants to give Daniel Penny a ticker tape parade.

    1. Well, some of the commentators at P********a appear to be discussing whether capital punishment is OK.

  6. Re immigration: The low net in the 2010s is Obama deporting a record number of 3,2 million illegals (mostly criminals, I think). What the graph clearly shows is that the claim that borders can’t be controlled/policies have no influence on immigration is bogus. Both the 1924 immigration act and its reversal with Hart-Cellar had huge effects.

    1. I remember fellow (at that time) lefties saying they didn’t like Obama, called him the deporter in chief. I am no genius but I could see even then that open borders would be a disaster for Dems. And it also put Obamas’ effort to protect the Dreamers at risk. But ideology is more important than people. Which is still the case today. Such as a father of two killed because he was a health care executive.

    2. A baffled commenter on the NYT article:

      “So the Republicans were right? We did have open borders after all?”

      But the majority of the comments were raging against Biden for permitting it and helping hand the election to Trump.

  7. The extent to which Israel is serious about its security is illustrated by their work in Syria over the past few days. As soon as the Assad government collapsed—with the situation dominated by confusion—the IDF eliminated most of Syria’s military assets. I wonder if they would have taken such measures if the October 7 massacre hadn’t happened. In any case, Israel seems to be applying a model of proactive defense (one might call it offensive defense) in a way that I can’t recall them doing in the past. The Israelis have clearly had enough of Iran and all its proxies.

    2. Yes, about being proactive about their security here (and good riddance to all the war machinery in the region that gets destroyed).
      But this isn’t about Iran proxies. They didn’t do it when the Iran-ally Assad was at the helm, they are doing it now that his Sunni enemies have come to power. Assad was a known quantity and he left Israel alone. With Jihadi Islamists, you never know. There is footage from random HTS personnel holding forth about taking Jerusalem now that they’ve got Damascus.

  8. Well, I think that J.K. Rowling will be delighted about the follwing news.

    Existing emergency measures banning the sale and supply of puberty-suppressing hormones [in UK] will be made indefinite, following official advice from medical experts.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ban-on-puberty-blockers-to-be-made-indefinite-on-experts-advice

    Of course, the usual suspects (trans activists, queer lobby organizations) are fuming. In any case, I am happy for the children and young people in the UK about the sensible evidence-based decision. 🙂

  9. Regarding immigration: In the current political climate there is no good solution to the mess. Lefties need to accept that a desire to mostly control one’s borders and to require immigrants to have legal status is not some kind of fascist bigoted concept. It is simply what countries have always tried to do. And righties need to accept some economic and demographic realities.

    If Trump were able to wave a magic wand to make all illegals vanish, the economic results would be devastating. Immediate extreme inflation would result. Food prices in particular would soar. Most of the vegetables and fruit you eat was picked by illegals who work hard for low pay. Most employees at the meat packing plants are Hispanics, mostly illegal. Do you really see American young people doing such hard work for humble pay? Frankly American youth have a terrible work ethic and many lack the physical fitness for hard active work.

    What we should do is this: All illegals should be required to register their presence and their residence. Those who don’t should be summarily deported. The ones who register and aren’t criminals should have a legal status and an option to be put on a path to citizenship. Since they violated the law by coming here illegally, they should pay a hefty fine, i.e. many tens of thousands. The exact amount of the fine would require some thought. It should be big enough that nobody would sign up for this lightly, but not so draconian that it seems like a bad deal to those who aspire to be citizens. Since so many are poor, they should be offered flexible long term payment plans at very low interest or no interest. Once the fine is paid they become American citizens equal to everyone else and with all the rights and duties of American citizenship.

    1. Mass immigration under Biden has added up to about 10 million. Suppose those 10 million hadn’t come. Would fruit now be un-picked and/or ruinously expensive? Well, was that the case prior to the Biden presidency? Was there, prior to Biden, a big problem over the price of fruit that really needed fixing?

      Also, in many Western countries (Canada, UK, etc) mass immgration is vastly greater than house building. This is causing house prices to go through the roof, meaning that young house buyers need to pay many tens of thousands of dollars/pounds more than if there were no mass migration. Doesn’t this rather negate the advantage of paying 30 cents for an orange rather than 40 cents?

      Also, if there is a labour shortage, what happens? Well, the going rate for low-skill labour rises. The half of society that didn’t go to college and can’t compete for graduate-level jobs then gets a higher standard of living. It is effectively a wealth transfer from the better-off half of society to the less-wealthy half. Why are left-wing governments against this? Shouldn’t it be what they want?

      Lastly, we’re told that AI will lead to many “paperwork” jobs disappearing, and, anyhow, a shortage of labour for agricultural-type jobs is usually sorted by increased mechanisation. I’m far from convinced that there really is a need for immigrant labour.

    2. As far as I know factories can get visa for legal immigrants the moment they make plausible they don’t find anyone locally.
      Regarding vegetables/fruit: A huge supply of cheap labor hinders automation. The Netherlands produce masses of bell peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers with highly efficient agriculture that needs little human labor for the same price that Spain and Italy take for peppers (Spain) and tomatoes (Italy) with illegals from Africa toiling in appalling conditions.

    3. OMG, for the first time ever the NYT is saying the quiet part out loud.

      “The Congressional Budget Office has concluded that wage growth for Americans who did not attend college will be lower than it otherwise would have been for the next few years because of the recent surge. On the flip side, higher immigration can reduce the cost of services and help Americans, many with higher incomes, who do not compete for jobs with immigrants.”

      And…

      “After taking office, his [Biden’s] administration loosened the rules on asylum and other immigration policies…”

  10. Ridiculous. Rabbits never walked upright, carried arms, or commited kidnappings.

    Those are hares.

    1. I wouldn’t be surprised if the weren’t weasels disguised as hares… can’t trust those weasels just ask Toad.

    2. I have actually seen a hare (in Europe). it was big (bigger than a Rabbit), but not that big.

  11. Here is what Senator Warren had to say about the killing of an insurance CEO:

    “The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the healthcare system,” she said, as quoted by HuffPost. “Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far. This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they . . . start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone.”

  12. The Borax “detox” of anti-COVID vaccines was apparently something from 2021, but that on BlueSky shows that it hasn’t gone away. And the general tone & terminology supports the claim I read somewhere, some while back, that much of this has roots in belief in UFO’s.

  13. About the shooting of the United Healthcare CEO: “The guy is toast and also dumb…”
    Oh, Jerry. I do love your plainspoken take here. It gives me a chuckle of relief.

  14. Re toast, it only takes one stubborn juror to block a guilty verdict. Of course the jurors will be thoroughly vetted for such stubbornness, but “thorough” does not always mean “successful”. And money talks, in terms of jury consultants, psychological profiling, legal research (loophole finding), creative special pleading, etc. etc. IMO it ain’t over till it’s over. AINAL, and would very much like to hear from someone who is.

  15. Re the terrorists / freedom fighters now not fighting each other, it’s very early days and the hostile rhetoric has already begun. Stay tuned….

  16. Re Canada’s statehood, it is one — a nation state; not a city state, an Australian state, a failed state (yet), a terrorist state (yet). The USA is also a state; the Palestinian Territories are not.

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