Monday: Hili dialogue

December 16, 2024 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the week that runs up to  almost Christmas and Coynezaa: it’s Monday, December 16, 2024, and National Chocolate-Covered Anything Day.  If you wish, you can buy a bag of Thai chocolate-covered crickets for only ten bucks—on Amazon, of course. It would make a great present for your eco-minded friends.  Three different types of crickets, too!

It’s also Boston Tea Party Day (it took place on this day in 1773) and the Day of Reconciliation in South Africa, first held on this day in 1995 and declared by Nelson Mandela. 

Here’s the cell on Robben Island, off Capetown, where Mandela spent 18 years of his 27-year sentence (I photographed it on September 3).  It takes a special kind of person not to harbor resentment towards their country after something like this. (Note that prisoners slept on the floor and there was no heat, though the lights were left on 24 hours a day:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 16 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Trump’s new pick to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) apparently still holds onto the thoroughly discredited theory that vaccines cause autism.

. . . President-elect Donald Trump has tapped the 71-year-old former Army doctor to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC is charged with protecting the United States from health threats at home and abroad. That includes making vaccine recommendations — work that has come under fire from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the longtime vaccine skeptic whom Trump has picked to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, which has oversight over the CDC.

Kennedy proposed Weldon for the job, according to a person involved in the process who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share a private conversation.

Weldon’s past record of promoting the disproven link between vaccines and autism in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence attesting to the safety and efficacy of vaccines raises concerns among some public health experts about his ability to run the CDC. If confirmed, Weldon could undermine confidence in the lifesaving shots at a time when infectious-disease threats such as measles and whooping cough are on the rise, they say.

A Washington Post review of Weldon’s public comments, media appearances and congressional letters along with accounts of those who worked with him reveal a portrait of a politician and physician who emphasized the experiences of individuals while dismissing dozens of studies based on data from hundreds of thousands of patients that showed no link between vaccines and autism.

In Congress, Weldon was “absolutely and completely dismissive” of data showing vaccines were not associated with autism, recalled Josh Sharfstein, a former Democratic staff member on the House Government Reform Committee in the early 2000s when the Republicans who were in charge held regular hearings questioning vaccine safety.

“He appeared to have a closed mind on the issue,” said Sharfstein, now a vice dean for public health practice at Johns Hopkins University and a former top official at the Food and Drug Administration. “He didn’t seem to understand that the core tool of population data analysis is one of the pivotal aspects of the work of CDC.”

The only good news is that Weldon apparently has no opposition to covid and flu shots. But has Trump nominated anyone to head a health-related agency that has a sound, evidence-based view of medicine. We have RFK Jr. and polio vaccines (as well as other vaccines he doubts) and a critic of the FDA to head the FDA.  Are we all gonna get sick? Do we have to deal with polio epidemics and iron lungs all over again? Somehow I have confidence that things will turn out all right, but if the heads of agencies doubt vaccines, so will many Americans, and if polio gets out again, well, it won’t be pretty. . .

*The wokest of the public television channels, CNN and MSNBC, are now suffering losses in ratings after the election. The WSJ reports:

Cable news loyalists have grown a lot less loyal—to MSNBC and CNN, at least.

While viewers are flocking to Fox News in the wake of Donald Trump’s election win last month, ratings for MSNBC and CNN have tumbled. The declines are far worse than what happened the last time Trump won, in 2016.

MSNBC averaged 603,000 prime-time viewers from the day after the election through Dec. 8, down by more than half from the network’s year-to-date average through the election, according to Nielsen data. CNN was down 46%, to 401,000 viewers. Meanwhile, Fox News was up 12%, averaging about 2.7 million viewers.

MSNBC and CNN both reported dips for the month following the 2016 election, but they weren’t nearly as steep. CNN’s drop was off a higher baseline.

Partisan viewers “turn away in disgust when it’s the other side having that postelection euphoria,” said Johanna Dunaway, a political science professor and research director of the Syracuse University Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship.

Have a look at these statistics from the article. Fox News, in contrast, has gone up a tad.

I still don’t understand the psychology of “turning away” from your ideologically favored stations when the other side wins; I would have thought that you’d watch them even more for solace and confirmation that you were right.  I don’t watch any of these, though when I watched MSNBC on a ship, or in the hotel in Katowice when it was the only station available, I found its political bias annoying, even though I’m a liberal. I don’t watch news to see my own views confirmed, but to see what’s going on.

*The NYT analyzes the new Syrian government, wondering whether it will be repressive or even terrorist. The answer to the first bit is “yes” and the second bit “we don’t know yet.”   I’m hoping that the terrorist bit will dampen so they won’t start going after Israel along with Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran (the new Syrian regime hate Hezbollah and Iran).

Since 2017, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its affiliated organizations, driven by a hunger for broader power, created a certain level of stability in Idlib, governing with pragmatism and discipline. While the group retained overall control, it governed through a civilian authority with 11 ministries, which allowed it to concentrate on rebuilding its militia as a more structured force.

In Idlib, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham maintained a robust internal security force to confront other military factions and domestic critics, prompting regular protests against what were seen as authoritarian methods and against harsh jail conditions.

The primary question is whether these rebels, who are now trying to form a national government, can scale up what they achieved in Idlib, a poor, agrarian region with a relatively small population.

. . . With its roots in the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham modified and moderated its own jihadist orientation starting around 2016. While it enforced some conservative Islamic practices, they did not resort to the strictures imposed by the Islamic State terrorist group when it ruled parts of Syria.

Still, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham remains designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, the United Nations, Turkey and others. Because that designation blocked overt outside support, the group found new ways to sustain itself financially and militarily.

. . . . It levied fees on all kinds of goods and enterprises, including crops, border crossings, construction, trade, shopkeeping and craftwork. In addition, companies linked to the group enjoyed a monopoly on providing fuel, electricity, water and garbage collection.

The Islamic State, for example, was intolerant of any deviance from what it considered Islamic law. Some violators were executed, while convicted thieves had a hand amputated.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham does not fit into that box.

Buying and selling alcohol was banned, but residents said the group did not try to root out drinkers, and people were allowed to smoke in public. The group did not field morality police to enforce strict social codes.

The group has, however, jailed its critics.  And although men and women were allowed to mix in public, it remains to be seen whether the group will limit women’s opportunities or even restrict or forbid them from going to school.

*Trump has sued the American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and its reporter George Stephanopoulos for defamation regarding Trump’s sexual assault case, and he won: ABC settled for a substantial amount of money that will go the the Trump Library (do we still need Presidential libraries?):

BC News has agreed to pay $15 million toward Donald Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll.

As part of the settlement made public Saturday, ABC News posted an editor’s note to its website expressing regret over Stephanopoulos’ statements during a March 10 segment on his “This Week” program. The network will also pay $1 million in legal fees to the law firm of Trump’s attorney, Alejandro Brito.

The settlement agreement describes ABC’s presidential library payment as a “charitable contribution,” with the money earmarked for a non-profit organization that is being established in connection with the yet-to-be built library.

“We are pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing,” ABC News spokesperson Jeannie Kedas said.

. . . .ABC News must transfer the $15 million for Trump’s library to an escrow account that’s being managed by Brito’s law firm within 10 days, according to the agreement. The network must also pay Brito’s legal fees within 10 days.

While sizeable, ABC’s contribution to Trump’s presidential library will likely cover just a fraction of the cost. Former President Barack Obama’s library in Chicago, for example, was estimated to cost $830 million as of 2021.

Stephanopoulos was incorrect: Trump was found civilly liable for sexual abuse and defamation, but not the more serious charge of rape. Here’s the editor’s note:

Editor’s Note: ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret statements regarding President Donald J. Trump made during an interview by George Stephanopoulos with Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC’s This Week on March 10, 2024.

*And from the AP’s “Oddities” section, always worth a look, we found that a man had an overdue library book for fifty years. Instead of fining him a gazillion dollars, the nice library let him keep the book. And it’s a book I still have (given to me, not taken out from a library):

Fifty years later, a man who grew up in suburban Detroit tried to return a very overdue baseball book to his boyhood library.

The answer: You can keep it — and no fine.

Chuck Hildebrandt, 63, of Chicago said he visited the public library in Warren while in town for Thanksgiving, carrying a book titled “Baseball’s Zaniest Stars.” He had borrowed it in 1974 as a 13-year-old “baseball nut” but never returned it.

“When you’re moving with a bunch of books, you’re not examining every book. You throw them in a box and go,” said Hildebrandt, who has lived in many cities. “But five or six years ago, I was going through the bookshelf and there was a Dewey decimal library number on the book. What is this?”

Inside the book was a slip of paper indicating that it was due back at the Warren library on Dec. 4, 1974. Hildebrandt told The Associated Press that he decided to keep the book until 2024 — the 50th anniversary — and then try to return it. He figured the library might want to publicize the long overdue exchange.

He said he recently met library director Oksana Urban, who listened to his pitch. Hildebrandt said he hasn’t heard anything since then, though Urban told the Detroit Free Press that all is forgiven.

And here’s the book, which I got as a kid and still have: Baseball’s Zaniest Stars.   As I recall (I’m writing this at work, and the book is at home), the cover shows Rube Waddell, a crack pitcher for both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, who was indeed famous for his zany antics.  Wikipedia gives a few:

He was notably unpredictable; early in his career, he once left in the middle of a game to go fishing. He also had a longstanding fascination with fire trucks and ran off the field to chase after them during games on multiple occasions. He would disappear for months at a time during the offseason, and it was not known where he went until it was discovered that he was wrestling alligators in a circus. He was easily distracted by opposing fans who held up puppies, which caused him to run over to play with them, and shiny objects, which seemed to put him in a trance. An alcoholic for much of his short life, he reportedly spent his entire first signing bonus on a drinking binge; as a pun of the baseball term “southpaw” denoting a left-handed pitcher, the Sporting News dubbed him a “sousepaw”. His eccentric behavior led to constant battles with his managers and scuffles with bad-tempered teammates.

Waddell died of tuberculosis at 37.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, there’s a Hili dialogue using a photo I took when in Dobrzyn. Hili was getting a special treat of cream (Szaron doesn’t much care for it):

A: Yes, this is the cream that you like.
Hili: Allow me to check.
(Photo: Jerry Coyne)
In Polish:
Ja: Tak, to ta śmietanka, którą lubisz.
Hili: Pozwól, że sprawdzę.
(Zdjęcie: Jerry Coyne)

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

From Things with Faces:

From IT Humor and Memes:

From I Love Cats:

From Masih: Listen to some nice Iranian music and admire these brave sisters without hijabs:

From Luana. This is several months old, but the case is still in the works. The UN claims diplomatic immunity, but some lawyers say, “Not for the butchery of October 7”:

The threats and hatred that writer Jesse Singal is encountering on the supposedly nice “Bluesky” platform are beyond believe. It’s all because he writes (sanely) about trans issues, but people have doxxed him and showered him with death threats.  This is what happens when all the progressives migrate to a new platform. I still like my Twitter.

From Malcolm; guilty as charged!

From my feed; what happened here?

 

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

Gassed immediately upon arrival at Auschwitz, this Dutch boy was nine. You can see the obligatory Jewish star sewn on his coat.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2024-12-16T11:10:27.790Z

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. His cats were 18 yesterday: congratulate him!

Brothers Ollie and Pepper, 18 years old on 31 December, pleading for cheese. They got some.

— (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2024-12-15T13:24:54.000Z

And a mass leap of anchovies:

The past month I've been chasing the sunrise at the same place because there are feeding birds at short distance.Occasionally when cormorants or a large fish are underwater the anchovies all leap at the same time.I've never caught video or stills.Until todayTwice.In the sunrise reflection.

— Brett "Solidarity 2024" Banditelli (@banditelli.org) 2024-12-14T06:56:56.926Z

34 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

  1. The Whedon vaccine thing – if the WaPo is accurate – appears IMHO to be in keeping with the development of the Woke Right – in particular, some threat of medical authoritarianism through Federal power.

    James Lindsay showed that certain conservatives exhibit precise patterns of Woke thought.

    Make of that what one will – but it makes sense to me.

    1. It indicates that Poland has no history of importing slaves from west Africa. This may not be a bad thing.

    4. Back row centre a face with black hair has been added (you can tell the lighting is quite different). I am guessing it’s a comment on race and whiteness.

    6. Also all women with not one tattoo and not a man there who if this was a competition in the West would have won it.

  3. Yes, we still need Presidential libraries. They were only officially formed in 1955. Although Hoover, Rossevelt, and Truman are also covered, none of the previous Presidents have official libraries. The Presidential library is intended to hold the personal papers of a President, in addition to the public papers which may not be housed by the National Archives proper, especially those that cover the period before or after the individual was a Federal office holder. They act as centers for scholarship about the period of a President’s life, not just his term of office.

  4. But has Trump nominated anyone to head a health-related agency that has a sound, evidence-based view of medicine.

    Jay Battacharya?

    1. Bhattacharya? Please be serious, Coel. Experts from Stanford, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Oxford, and many places in between were only properly considered experts before they stood against the mindless—and cowardly—groupthink of the COVID era. Repurposed T-shirt around your face, anyone?

      As upset as so many are about some of Trump’s nominees, rather than lamenting their lack of expertise—or decrying that they are the wrong experts—perhaps we can instead revisit the wisdom of having unelected bureaucrats directing so many facets of American life. Perhaps we should return this power to the federal and state legislatures where it rightly belongs.

      1. I don’t understand comments like this. Leaving aside the many obvious clowns in the US Congress, State legislatures from sea to shining sea are replete with some of the stupidest, greediest, most corrupt and Party/ideology-loyal political hacks imaginable. You really want them deciding important stuff they don’t even pretend to understand? Really?
        One argument on the side of “unelected bureaucrats” is precisely that they can be–can be–appointed on the basis of their, yes, sorry, expertise.

  6. With regard to vaccine paranoia, you should see the Free Press article about the polio vaccine today:
    https://www.thefp.com/p/polio-ravaged-my-family-rfk-jr-vaccines?r=7yeou&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

    I commented:

    When the Soviet Union fell apart there were no vaccines given for a couple of years. From 1990-1998 there were 140,000 cases of diphtheria with 4,000 deaths. Who remembers diphtheri?— but it remembers us, and it’s still there waiting for a chance to come back. It’s a nasty way to go, by the way.

    Older physicians will remember, like me, seeing kids die like this. I qualified in 1981, but even so, I have seen a child die of chickenpox, and one of tetanus, both preventable with vaccines. I’ve seen kids die with meningitis caused by hemophilus, pneumococcus and meningococcus, all preventable with vaccines. How many, like me, are left deaf by childhood ear infections from those same three organisms? When I had mumps I had pancreatitis with it, and evidently I survived it, but I was lucky it wasn’t orchitis, or I’d be sterile. We have got so used to vaccines working, and in the case of nearly all of them, doing so safely, that we forget how lucky we are!

    1. Thanks. I’m looking at the article and comments.

      Discouragingly the comments are filled with “they’re lying about RFK Jr” and “they’re only telling one side of the story” and “we need a conversation about the very real risks posed by vaccines.”

      These comments have dozens or hundreds of likes.

    2. I remember reading about the yet another madness in the post USSR Russia with the diseases in the 90s. What a horror show.

      Fortunately I’m hoping we as a society still have SOME collective memory of what a life without vaccines is like. After Oprah W. (who fueled anti-vax with her platform) RFK is possibly the most dangerous American citizen.

      I find the ignorance of the anti-vaxers to be the MOST objectionable cohort of both the mentally ill left and the mentally retarded right.

      D.A.
      NYC

  7. one of the many things I find strange about magas is when they assume that, if I don’t watch Fox 24/7, that I’m watching CNN or MSNBC, as if I’m a slave to ANY 24-hour Opnionwithalittlenewsthrownin channel.

    1. It might also be worth noting that the vast majority of people watch news on the broadcast networks, not on cable. ABC, NBC, and CBS viewership far outstrips Fox News.

    2. My experience is when I criticize something like Biden’s DEI-related executive actions my liberals friends accuse me of watching Fox news. I have to remind them that I don’t watch TV (didn’t own a TV for 20 years).

    3. Maybe they just jump to the conclusion that if you’re not one of us your the enemy. It’s why I don’t comment in the Free Press comments. Though I have started to wonder if these are bots and that’ s the whole idea, to dampen discussion.

  9. The evolution of the Day of Reconciliation as recorded in Encyclopedia Britannica:
    “Day of Reconciliation, public holiday observed in South Africa on December 16. The holiday originally commemorated the victory of the Voortrekkers (southern Africans of Dutch, German, or Huguenot descent who made the Great Trek) over the Zulus at the Battle of Blood River in 1838. Before the battle, the Voortrekkers had taken a vow that, if they succeeded in defeating the Zulus, they would build a church and observe the day as a religious holiday. The observance became known as Dingane’s Day (after the Zulu king Dingane), and in 1910 the day was established as a public holiday. In 1952 the ruling National Party passed the Public Holidays Act, which changed the holiday’s name to Day of the Covenant (later changed in 1980 to Day of the Vow) and formally declared the day a religious holiday. As a result, activities such as sports events and theatre performances were banned.

    The day gained additional significance in 1961, when the military wing of the African National Congress, Umkhonto we Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”), chose the date to begin an armed conflict against the ruling government’s policy of apartheid. After the first democratically elected government was established in South Africa in 1994, the holiday was officially renamed the Day of Reconciliation. The holiday is now meant to foster a sense of national unity and racial harmony.”

    The wisdom of Nelson Mandela

  10. Just because I am not watching MSNBC now as much as I did prior to the election is no reflection on them and certainly no indication that I’ve given up on them, but rather a result of the election. The MSNBC hosts and their guests did their best to warn the public in detail about authoritarianism, but it seems that many people don’t care. I still watch it, but am so disillusioned with the political intelligence of some American people that I just want quiet a lot of the time. To hear summaries of the news in general, however, over the period of a couple of days I listen to NPR and BBC and watch the major three networds for the evening news. That keeps me sufficiently informed.

    I also don’t get what I’m supposed to see in the photo of the Polish contestants.

  11. Dr. Coyne,

    You mentioned when you returned you fell from a stage. I had hoped you might expand on that comment.

    Thanks, Ed Hessler

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