Monday: Hili dialogue

Welcome to Monday, December 23, 2024, with only 2 days left until Christmas the the First Day of Coynezaa. It’s also National Pfeffernüße Day, celebrating a German/Dutch spice cookie with a sweet coating. They’re delicious, and, as you see, about 4 cm across (1.6 inches):

It’s also FESTIVUS, and National Bake Day. 

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 23 Wikipedia page. Here’s the story of Festivus, which, like Christmas and Coynezaa, is a “made up holiday”:

Da Nooz:

*Private prisons are gearing up to receive a new wave of inmates, expecting Trump to carry out his campaign pledge to deport a lot of immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally.

Private prisons and other companies that provide detention services are getting ready to cash in on what President-elect Donald Trump has billed as “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” That includes scouring for as many detention beds as possible in their networks of facilities, and scouting sites for new buildings to house migrants.

Some executives are considering whether to take up the controversial work of detaining families or unaccompanied children. Others are preparing to hire new staff and snapping up well-connected lobbyists.

“This is, to us, an unprecedented opportunity,” George Zoley, executive chairman of the GEO Group, a private prison company, told investors on an earnings call days after the election.

Pulling off a deportation on the scale Trump has promised would constitute an unprecedented logistical feat for the U.S. government, involving identifying, locating, arresting, detaining, adjudicating and transporting potentially millions of men, women, and children.

The actual scope of Trump’s plans remains unclear. He repeatedly promised mass deportations during his first term in office. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported about 935,000 people who had been living in the U.S. illegally under his administration, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute—fewer than Obama. The Biden administration, which deported relatively few people in its first year, deported more than 271,000 in fiscal year 2024—a 10-year record—according to newly released figures from ICE. The administration deported some 545,000 over its four years.

Trump and his advisers have said in recent weeks that they intend to focus initially on migrants who crossed the border illegally and have a criminal background, causing some allies to worry that Trump may water down his plans. Tom Homan, who was chosen by Trump to run the deportation effort, told CNN recently that ICE will need enough beds to detain a minimum of 100,000 migrants. The agency currently has funding to maintain 41,500 beds.

The American Immigration Council, an immigrant advocacy group, has estimated that deporting one million people in one year would cost $88 billion, a figure that includes expenses associated with arrest, detention, legal processing and removal. There were an estimated 11 million undocumented migrants in the U.S. as of 2022.

Who knows what will happen? All I can do is guess that the years of free immigration have stopped, at least for the next four years. But surely something has to be done to deal with the millions of immigrants who came here illegally and are evading working within the system. Illegal immigration is, in fact, the one pretty serious violation of the law I know of that a lot of people think should be ignored. (Others may bring up hard drug use. . .)

*Democrats have hit on a new way to win over the masses: emphasize their own faith. Oy! (Article is archived here.)

As the Democratic Party wanders in the post-election wilderness after the bruising defeats of 2024, some of its newer leaders are tapping into an ancient form of connection: religion.

In Texas, a young lawmaker who could run statewide is urging his fellow white progressives to embrace discussions of faith in politics.

In Georgia, a Black pastor and U.S. senator is reclaiming religious language from those on the right who, he suggests, have twisted it to their own ends.

And in Pennsylvania, the Jewish governor’s faith is a central part of his public identity, evident in his campaign advertising and his major speeches — and even at a recent Christmas tree lighting.

“If y’all have not seen ‘National Lampoon Christmas Vacation,’ take it from this Jewish guy,” Gov. Josh Shapiro said as he addressed a holiday celebration in Harrisburg, Pa., this month. “You better go and rent that movie.”

While President Biden is a practicing Catholic who has often carried a rosary and playfully crossed himself, he long stood out in an increasingly secular Democratic Party.

But with his exit from public life nearing, a small but prominent cast of Scripture-quoting, religiously observant Democratic politicians — many of them poised to command national attention over the next four years — is signaling that he is no longer the exception to the rule.

I don’t care if they be Christians, Jews, or Muslims (Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are already pandering to fellow Muslims), this is not right. Yes, the word “pandering” comes to mind, but so does “First Amendment”.  Faithheads doing this include Governor Josh Shapiro of PA (who probably lost the VP nomination because of his faith) and Senator Ralph Warnock of Georgia, a Baptist pastor. It’s fine if they keep their faith to themselves, but if they proselytize, trying to gain votes by finding those with similar delusions, they are not only enabling superstition but dragging religion into politics, which is exactly what the Founders did not want. Can you imagine Thomas Jefferson talking about is faith (or lack thereof) in public.  Of course if you’re a “none” or an atheist, you more or less have to shut up.

Pandering, First Amendment, etc.

*Here’s are some pretty dire allegations of antisemitism at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University, published in Reason. They are the subject of a lawsuit against the school, Yael Canaan v. Carnegie Mellon University. 

Ms. Canaan was taking one of her required studio classes where students receive hands-on, practical instruction in architectural design, making models and applying lessons learned in their other classes. These studio classes typically involve small groups, open discussions, and one-on-one meetings with professors. Students receive critically important feedback individually as well as in small group and class-wide settings. On May 5, 2022, Ms. Canaan had the final review for her semester-long studio class project, which was a model she designed depicting the conversion of a public space in a New York City neighborhood into a private space through an eruv (i.e., an integral feature of neighborhoods with large devout Jewish populations). {Plaintiff’s Complaint describes an eruv as a “small wire boundary that symbolically extends the private domain of devoutly religious Jewish households into public areas, permitting activities within it that are normally forbidden in public on the Sabbath.”}

In response to questions, Ms. Canaan was explaining the concept of an eruv to Mary-Lou Arscott, Professor and Associate Head for Design Fundamentals at the School of Architecture …, when Professor Arscott cut Ms. Canaan off and told her that “the wall in the model looked like the wall Israelis use to barricade Palestinians out of Israel,” and that the time Ms. Canaan had used to prepare her project “would have been better spent if [Ms. Canaan] had instead explored ‘what Jews do to make themselves such a hated group.'” …

. . .A]pproximately six months after Professor Arscott had directed offensive comments at Ms. Canaan in Ms. Canaan’s studio class[, ]CMU’s administration finally scheduled a meeting with Ms. Canaan and Professor Arscott over Zoom on November 2, 2022. The Complaint describes this Zoom meeting as an unproductive endeavor: the meeting took place, but Vice Provost Heading-Grant said and did nothing as facilitator, Professor Arscott refused to apologize and showed no remorse, and, further, Professor Arscott referenced and subsequently emailed contents of a blog titled “The Funambulist” to Ms. Canaan and Vice Provost Heading-Grant. Professor Arscott urged Ms. Canaan to read the contents of The Funambulist that she linked in the email because it provided her with “insightful … perspective.”

According to the Complaint, The Funambulist contains anti-Jewish and anti-Israel content, including, among other things, the promotion of pictures of terrorist organizations throwing Molotov cocktails at Jewish people and articles with titles such as “Israeli Apartheid” and “Israeli Police: The Daily Practice of Collective Punishment Against Palestinians.” A sample passage from one article, dated April 8, 2022, that could be considered particularly pertinent to Ms. Canaan’s circumstances and Professor Arscott’s refusal to apologize reads: “[Y]ou never make concessions to the oppressor. If you’re going to get punished, and you might, if you piss off Zionists, it’s always a possibility, right, then stare the oppressor in the face, and take whatever punishment is coming. Don’t concede, don’t start apologizing …. The Palestinians aren’t backing down, nor should we … [we] do not make concessions to the oppressor.”

Canaan is suing for on the grounds that the university breached its contract with her, created a hostile environment, discriminated against her, and retaliated against her. The judge has found all these claims worthy of going forward with the lawsuit. Eugene Volokh, who published the details on his website, says this:

I think the First Amendment should generally prevent Title VI liability for professors’ anti-Israel speech said to the public, or to classes generally—and, I think, even outright anti-Jewish speech. But here there are allegations that a professor had singled out a student because she did a Jewish-related project; that the professor’s later sending anti-Israel materials to the student was tied to that; and that another professor had given the student an unfairly low grade in retaliation for the student’s discrimination complaints. Again, recall that these are just allegations; any actual fact-finding would come later in the case.

*What if your mother contracted a fatal brain-degenerative disease, fronto-temporal dementia (FTD), that turned out to be due to a single mutation in a gene that made the mutant gene act in a dominant fashion (you get the disease if you have only one copy of the gene). The mutation, which causes a protein called “tau” to build up in the brain, eventually causing severe dementia and death, is known and you can be diagnosed even in utero.

The NYT has a long but mesmerizing story  (archived here) of what happened when Linde Jacobs of Minneapolis, after having endured years of her mother’s illness before she died, decided to get tested for the dominant gene at 33. Yes, she had it. And that meant that both of her sisters (apparently as yet untested) had a 50% chance of having it, too, as well as Lende’s two daughters, 6 and 9 (they haven’t been told).

There isn’t much hope for Linde, but in the future it may be possible to use stem cells to do genetic engineering to ameliorate or cure the disease, or  test various drugs targeted at the mutation.  But what do you do when, as a young adult, you find out that in two or three decades you’re going to start an inexorable process of brain degeneration that will turn you psychopathic and then kill you? Linde became an ardent advocate for a cure, as you’ll find out when you read the story.   Here’s a short excerpt right after Linde got her genetic diagnosis:

The doctor finally popped up on the computer. Wasting no time on pleasantries, she shared her screen and zoomed in on one line of laboratory paperwork: POSITIVE.

Linde was 33. Within about two decades, in all likelihood, her daughters would watch her become selfish, manipulative, reckless — the opposite of everything she’d taught them to be. Just like Allison, Linde would turn into someone hard to tolerate, let alone love.

And more insidious: Her girls and her two sisters each had a 50-50 chance of carrying the mutation. There was no cure for this disease, called frontotemporal dementia, nor even any treatments.

Soon, Linde’s husband, Taylor, pulled into the garage and opened the car door. He could hear her sobbing

It’s a moving story and I highly recommend it.

*If you’re a genuine Christian, then you’re going to want a BIBLICALLY ACCURATE angel atoop your Christmas tree. The thing is, it won’t look like a human with wings, at least if you read your Bible. From the AP:

 It was during the pandemic when the Rev. Kira Austin-Young and her puppet-maker husband, Michael Schupbach, were going a little stir-crazy that they came up with the idea. Instead of a star or some stylized humanoid angel to top their Christmas tree, why not create a biblically accurate angel?

The result was a pink, blue and gold-feathered creature with six wings and dozens of eyes that went a little bit viral.

“I think in, particularly, the times of the world that we’re in, where things seem kind of scary and weird, having a scary and weird angel sort of speaks to people,” she said.

There are a number of different kinds of angels that show up in the Bible, said Austin-Young, associate rector of the Episcopal Church of St. Mary the Virgin in San Francisco. For the most part, we don’t get a lot of description of them, but both Revelations at the end of the Bible and some of the books of the prophets in the Old Testament describe strange creatures around the throne of God.

“Some of them have six wings with eyes covering the wings,” she said. Others have multiple animal heads. “I think one of the delightful things about the Bible and the Scripture is just kind of how bizarre it can be and just how kind of out there it can be.”

But here’s the really scary part (in bold):

About 7 in 10 U.S. adults say they believe in angels, according to a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research conducted last year. Still, there’s no agreement about what they look like or even exactly what they are.

Social media is full of various interpretations of “biblically accurate angels” imagined not just in tree toppers but also drawings, tattoos, even makeup tutorials. The many-eyed creatures reject traditional portrayals of angels in Western art, where they often look like humans with wings, usually white and often blonde or very fair.

Esther Hamori, a professor of Hebrew Bible at Union Theological Seminary, makes a distinction between angels and other “supernatural species” in the Bible like seraphim and cherubim, but she said she loves the biblically accurate angel trend, even if it conflates them.

“It shows that people are thinking about ways in which the Bible contains far stranger things than what’s often taught,” the author of “God’s Monsters: Vengeful Spirits, Deadly Angels, Hybrid Creatures, and Divine Hitmen of the Bible” wrote in an email.

Here’s a quartet of “Biblically accurate angels” from reddit, though there’s an argument about whether these are angels or other “celestial beings”, with true angels being humans with wings. (The AP article has another colorful depiction of an angel, but it’s copyrighted.) I have no dog in this fight since there is no such thing as angels, even if 70% of Americans believe in them:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili and Andrzej muse about cultural evolution:

Hili: Who invented wars between people?

A: Chimpanzees.

Hili: Kto wymyślił wojny między ludźmi?

Ja: Szympansy.

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Yes, this is a real book (h/t Pyers).  See it on Amazon!

From Cat Memes (note the resemblance to the Quantum Mechanics cat!):

From Science Humor. I doubt that this is real, but it looks real:

A great Venn diagram from Jesus of the Day:

From Masih: a grinch-y Iranian cleric tries to shut down fun. I retweeted it:

Rule #1 of the Iranian theocracy: NO FUN ALLOWED! https://t.co/ZHnGo4EdGd

— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) December 22, 2024

Titania tweeted again. Lots of people will think she (aka Andrew Doyle) is serious:

Can you see it yet? 👀 pic.twitter.com/nu8lJPf6l1

— Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) December 12, 2024

From Facts Fusion in Facebook via Malcolm: the world’s first selfie! But how could they hold so still for three minutes?

From Ritchie Torres, whom I see as a good Democratic Presidential candidate. You can see the story here.

The public is entitled to far greater transparency about the health of the elected officials who represent them.

The incapacitation of an elected official is a material fact that should be disclosed to the public, rather than concealed by staff. Transparency, not… pic.twitter.com/3qdvF66qMa

— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) December 22, 2024

From my Twitter feed. If this is true we should all know it (most of us don’t know our rights vis-à-vis the cops):

Never go outside. If it was that serious they would’ve had a warrant pic.twitter.com/84Ipv2g5TS

— Washingtons ghost (@hartgoat) December 21, 2024

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I posted:

A Dutch boy murdered with cyanide gas upon arriving at Auschwitz. He was six years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2024-12-23T11:21:42.897Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, a precious tile:

The tiles used on our veranda were salvaged. These old cat prints are very precious to me. Happy Caturday.

— organicgay.bsky.social (@organicgay.bsky.social) 2024-12-21T20:44:42.002Z

Yet another Icelandic Christmas ghoul!  The kids in Iceland must get quite depressed around Christmas. . .

I feel I should also tell you about Grýla, the mother of the 13 Yule Lads. She is not quite as cute as her sons, as she gathers all the badly behaved children in a bag, takes them up to the mountain and eats them. This is a picture of Grýla by Tryggvi Magnússon from a very popular children's book.

— Hildur Knútsdóttir (@hildur.bsky.social) 2024-12-14T16:21:26.679Z