Tuesday: Hili dialogue

December 31, 2024 • 7:00 am

Welcome to the Cruelest Day: Tuesday, December 31, 2024. Tomorrow you can start making mistakes by writing “2024” on your checks. (But does anybody write checks any more?) It is also National Champagne Day, though I will no doubt be sound asleep when 2025 rolls around.

Today’s Hili will be short, as I prepared it yesterday on my birthday when I was supposed to be having fun (actually, I was writing).  And posting will be VERY LIGHT today beyond this.  But here is a photo from Andrzej showing both Hili and Szaron getting their favorite treat, a small piece of ham, in honor of my birthday:

It’s also Hogmanay in Scotland, Peace and Meditation Day, and of course New Year’s Eve.  This is from Meow:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 31 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

News is truncated today, so check the legacy media.

*Three sites have now published my piece I wrote for the FFRF, Biology is not Bigotry, so besides being archived here and here, it is also now on Colin Wright’s site, Realitys Last Stand (here), at Atheists for Liberty (here), and on Lawrence Krauss’s site Critical Mass (here).  Since the FFRF took it down, I wanted the piece preserved, and the Internet Is Forever.

*And one more news item about the Big KerFFRFle; it was in the Daily Telegraph today. Click on the screenshot, and if you’re paywalled you can find it archived for free here.

And a few items from the Free Press’s news summary that comes via email, quoted directly:

  • Since around Election Day, Elon Musk has essentially moved to Mar-a-Lago, living in a cottage only a few hundred feet away from the future president, according to The New York Times. To put it another way, he is the president-elect’s tenant. This has allowed him to attend transition meetings, and drop in on dinners, such as when Trump dined with Musk’s arch-rival Jeff Bezos. And Trump only charges $2,000 a day for the cottage. For Musk, that’s not even pocket change.
  • Biden has promised $5.9 billion in fresh aid to Ukraine—$2.5 billion for security and $3 billion to fund Ukraine’s domestic budget. Meanwhile, Putin has rejected incoming president Trump’s peace proposal, citing provisions that include delaying Ukraine’s accession into NATO by 20 years (Putin presumably wants Ukraine permanently barred from joining) as well as the plan to deploy UK and UN peacekeepers in Ukraine.
  • Break out those knitting needles, it’s time to knit some pink pussy hats again! The women’s march is coming back on January 18, only now organizers have taken the women out of it, rebranding as a “People’s March.” The idea is to include blacks, LGBTs, immigrants, and others who were ostensibly excluded the first time. Participants have been instructed not to bring Handmaid’s Tale costumes because such imagery has been proliferated “primarily by white women.” Heaven forbid.
  • President-elect Trump has given embattled House Speaker Mike Johnson his full-throated endorsement. This comes after a chaotic budget battle before Christmas that led some conservatives in the House to warn that they wouldn’t vote to reelect the Louisiana congressman as leader. Still, Trump’s endorsement might not be enough. Assuming the Democrats vote against him (which, of course, they will), Johnson can only afford to lose a single Republican vote if he wants to lead the party in the next Congress.
  • The FBI has issued a formal warning to sports leagues about organized robberies of professional athletes. Since September, nine pro athletes have had their homes broken into, including Kansas City Chiefs stars Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce, Dallas Mavericks guard Luka Dončić, and Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow. According to the FBI, organized crime groups from South America have used high-tech surveillance and hacking methods to spy on athletes and disable their security systems. (It also helps to know when a team is playing an away game.)
  • On Monday, a federal appeals court upheld a jury’s verdict that President-elect Trump sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll in the mid-’90s, and that he owes her $5 million. Lawyers for Trump, who denies he assaulted Carroll, said that it was improper to show jurors the infamous “Access Hollywood tape,” in which Trump discussed how he could get away with groping women because he was a “star.” The judges ruled the tape was admissible as a pattern of behavior.
  • A female former prisoner at a Washington State prison filed a lawsuit against the state department of corrections last week, alleging that her cellmate, Christopher Scott Williams, a 6-foot-4 trans inmate, sexually harassed and assaulted her. The inmate transitioned after being sentenced for domestic abuse and the rape of a young girl, after which the convict was transferred to a women’s prison. Earlier in August, another inmate at the same prison alleged that Williams and other trans inmates frequently exhibited lewd and intimidating behavior and leered at them in the showers. “He also started threatening her with violence if she complained about him again,” the lawsuit said.
  • The German government has accused Elon Musk of trying to meddle in the country’s election after he repeatedly endorsed the right-wing AfD party on X, and called center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz a “fool.” What’s the point in having a democracy if people can’t tweet about it?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili makes plans for 2025 and all the people at Listy wish us a Happy New Year.

Hili: What plans do we have?
Andrzej: We have to do some cleaning.
Hili: Think of something more interesting.
We wish all our readers a Happy New Year!
In Polish:
Hili: Jakie mamy plany?
Ja: Musimy posprzątać.
Hili: Wymyśl coś ciekawszego.
Życzymy wszystkim czytelnikom Do siego roku!

From reader Pliny the In Between’s Far Corner Cafe, called “Freedom from religiosity“:

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

From I Love Ducks:

From Cat Memes:

From The Dodo Pet:

From Masih, an Iranian woman paralyzed, perhaps for life, for the heinous crime of not covering her hair:

From Simon; an annoying moggy (it’s a video):

There’s always one very annoying sibling 🥰.The #CatsOfBluesky 😻.

— Protect All Wildlife (@protectallwildlife.bsky.social) 2024-12-28T10:16:56.575Z

From Malgorzata: a Hitler store!

Another one from Simon; a Christmas gift for ducks!

Merry Xmas everyone – I hope you all have a peaceful time. Remember, Xmas is for ducks as well.

— Chris Dwyer (@chrisgdwyer.bsky.social) 2024-12-25T11:51:54.968Z

From Malcolm; cats acting as if they’re not guilty:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

Murdered with cyanide gas upon arrival at Auschwitz, this French girl was only ten.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2024-12-31T15:24:20.955Z

Two birthday posts that Matthew sent me yesterday. First, a video showing 12 of the world’s most beautiful ducks:

A birthday lynx, which Matthew describes as “Big wet feet!”

Here is one of my all-time favorite Canada lynx captures.

— Dannyboy wildlife (@dannyboywesthawk.bsky.social) 2024-11-11T16:54:00.687Z

55 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

  1. As I read it, “The Telegraph” article errs right off the bat in its second paragraph mistakingly says that your piece said that “gender is biological”. As I understand it, you said that “sex” is biological…not gender…and that is a major point. Yes? No?

    2. I immediately noticed this. They’re wrong. Conflating sex and gender—much of it purposeful—is exasperatingly common. Can’t tell if The Telegraph innocently mixed them up or if they are part of the problem.

    5. But if gender is not biological, what is it? Something other than the actions of biochemical reactions in human bodies interacting with the cultural environment?
      Metaphysical?
      Supernatural?
      Divine?
      Imaginary?
      Propaganda?

      I get it that PCC (E) said that sex was biological and binary and that the Telegraph got that wrong. I just don’t see what’s wrong with the claim that gender is biological. That doesn’t mean it has to be binary, as personality isn’t. Men express their sexual personalities in myriad ways. But how exactly could that personality cause a man to be a woman? How many Delco parts do you have to install in a Toyota to turn it into a Chevvie? It might have some Chevrolet quirks but it’s still a Toyota to the DMV.

      The biggest problem I, and perhaps the Telegraph, have with gender is not that gender is on a spectrum but that gender trumps biology in assigning man-ness and woman-ness. If gender is not biological, it’s doing strange things to biology.

      1. Sure, though ‘biological’ casts a very wide net.
        Perhaps a useful distinction can be made that sex is ‘physiological’ and gender (identity) is ‘psychological’.
        Not that psychological phenomena don’t reduce to neural physiology, but they are complex and poorly understood enough to be treated as a separate black box.

  4. Speaking of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” I saw a meme yesterday that had women from THT on one side, and women in burqas on the other, and pointing out that one was fiction and the other wasn’t.

    Also, is Biden going to East Palestine or not? He said he was going to.

  5. Jerry’s article “Biology is Not Bigotry” was also published in realclearscience.com on Dec. 28.

    1. I don’t know what the symbol means there. The swastika has meant very different things over time.

        1. I understand that it’s the name “Hitler” in Arabic. It would be nice to have it confirmed by an Arabic speaker.

          1. That is “Hitler” in Arabic. I have a modest (and failing, due to disuse) understanding of Arabic from time I spent in Tunisia as a young man. There is a store in Cairo with the same name.

      2. The Arabic store name really does mean “Hitler”, per my phone’s translation feature. The swastika right next to it leaves little room for other interpretations, like this being merely an unfortunate transliteration.

        I can’t make out the wares they sell.

      3. It says in white paint “Hitler” in Arabic. Algeria wouldn’t surprise me at all. I read and speak adequate Arabic.

        There (was) a Hitler Store in Gaza and there is one (sells food I think) in Amman, Jordan.

        IDF says they found quite a bit of Nazi stuff (Mein Kamf, etc) in houses in Gaza.

        No Hinduism there – actual Nazism is big in the Islamosphere.

        D.A.
        NYC

      1. Well, it’s just a historical picture. This shop was totally demolished by the IDF.

      2. I don’t know how else to interpret it, other than as what it seems. The link takes you deeper into pictures of what upper crust Gaza life used to be and it seemed pretty nice. All sadly gone now, and Hamas is to blame.

        1. The link is to my free Flickr account, a very useful place to keep photos, graphs, etc online.

          Many of the photos were upper crust, but many were typical of middle-class life in Gaza. Gaza, despite Hamas, was a functioning society with schools, shops, apartment complexes, gas stations, agriculture, parks, restaurants, hotels, and a tourist industry.

          As to how much of this infrastructure has been destroyed, I don’t know how anyone can make that call. Hamas, of course, says it has all been destroyed. Naturally, the only images the outside world sees are controlled by Hamas, and all they show is death and destruction.

          But the IDF reported about 1-2 (?) months ago, that 16% of Gazan structures have been destroyed. The IDF uses drones on a regular schedule to make their assessment.

        2. Even this nice life, however, was based on UNRWA and other sponsors funding a non-productive population to produce terror, and unsustainable numbers of children.

  7. I’m sorry but this march, like so many before it, has diluted its purpose so much, it lacks any flavor or much ability to consolidate righteous outrage toward galvanizing political power. That happened in November and failed.
    Sorry, but women (over half the human race) don’t vote as a block and 45% of them voted FOR Trump which 4% HIGHER than in the 2016 election! In fact, a majority of white women (53%) voted for Trump over Harris (46%) and presumably against their own self-interest that this march purports to address.

    It’s become Pythonesque at this point.

    “What do we want?”
    “A bunch of stuff, depending on whether your lived experience aligns (either directly or tangentiallly) with the aforementioned Women’s March but ostensibly with myriad additional trans agenda items, promotion of peoples’ bodily autonomy (not men obviously, whatever they are or identify as, maybe) and open expression and solidarity against the Trump administration’s policies generally.”
    “When do we want it?”
    “Now!”

    I have no problem with women marching on behalf of their interests but as a political protest with goals, this march will fail to accomplish anything and is an emotional support group (I’m not calling women emotional). It strikes me as performative, not strategic. Anyone else share this opinion? Did the pussy hats succeed last time?

    1. I don’t know about those hats, but there’s something about this “People’s March” that strikes me as lame (yes, yes, I know, a terrible able-ist expression) — and that was before I read the strictures on “whiteness” that were posted above. In the wake of a catastrophic election, unable to mobilize millions of people who had voted previously to simply — vote — the same sorry bunch are going to proclaim a People’s March? Bah! I don’t know anybody — who had previously been in public demonstrations in 2017 — who will be doing this one.

    2. I never delved into it, but I recall the first march in 2020 was large and energetic, inspired by a united opposition to 4 years of Trump in the White House. Was there infighting for exclusion of certain feminist demographics? I don’t recall.

      1. Right, the first one in 2017 was one of the largest marches in US history and it succeeded in…?

        Madonna showed up and sang a song (presumably to promote an upcoming tour or project)
        and said she “thought a lot about blowing up the White House.” Michael Moore proclaimed (I mean pandered) that the future of our politics is female. Then there was the chair of the movement – the scandalous troll Linda Sarsour who skated with lots of money and splintered the organization into fragments of disorganization and incoherence.

        And in the end, Trump gets MORE votes. An utterly useless attempt at a movement around a massive demographic that all have this important key attribute in common: a vagina and that’s all. Surprise! half of humanity has very diverse views on all kinds of subjects and even the loss of Roe v Wade proved NOT to be a top voting priority among women themselves to defeat Trump or it would’ve been a landslide. Sorry Mikey Moore, if the future is female then they disagree with you.

        I’m so tired of the left’s good intentions, feelings, and inclusion at the expense of being effective. The Women’s March is so accomodating now that it can’t even articulate what it is and what it’s for, nor acknowledge that ANYthing unifies them. It unifies some of them though and I guess that’s good enough because they’ll feel better…until the next political disappointment I guess.

        2. A local march in my city was organized around that time and my wife and a friend of hers participated. They were very gung-ho and wanted to continue similar activism until they were told that by the organizers they were no longer welcome because they were white and “suburban”.

          1. So unfortunate! Not even “divide and conquer” tactics from right wing opponents but ‘divide yourselves into groups and be conquered’ submission by the left wing movement itself. So obviously self-defeating is my point and a regretable squandering of good will and actually meaningful social justice supporting just causes.

            This may be provocative but I would submit that the Women’s March trying to curry favor with the trans community (not synonymous with nor necessarily sympatico with the LGB community btw) is unnecessary bc it constitutes such a small demographic that statistically, it cannot help your cause. They have their own plight and their own marches to organize so why let them redefine the mission of the Women’s March, such as it is?

    3. When you call for inclusiveness and explicitly invite everyone except for one large group, your aim is obviously not to unite, but to divide – straight white men on one side, everyone else on the other. I have doubts whether even the organizers think this is going to do anyone any good.

    4. The pussy hats were strongly discouraged at the later women’s marches, and may very well be forbidden at the People’s March. They were deemed offensive to transwomen, and non inclusive. Pussy hats were supposed to have a dual purpose, indicating not just “women” but the infamous “grab em by the pussy” statement from Trump.

      The “my feminism is intersectional or it’s bullsh*t” mantra rapidly escalated from making sure concerns unique to black women were included in feminism to both endorsing political causes which were not specifically related to women (BLM, Gaza, environmentalism, etc) and making sure “was born male” was included in “women.”

      Watered down indeed.

  8. On Facebook yesterday one Matt Dillahunty wrote, on the news that THREE board members at FFRF have now resigned, “I love it when the trash takes itself out”. Followed by many supportive comments.
    Wow, what class. I don’t know him personally but I guess he’s been a pretty popular atheist blogger over the years?

    1. This is the way the American left tend to behave. Then they get puzzled that, come election time, not enough people vote for them.

      1. Interesting comment. I’m guessing this Matt fellow in on the left, and pretty sure the three resigning board members lean that way as well. Circular firing squad? Like that scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian?

        1. The problem is that those arguing that trans women aren’t women, while they may consider themselves on the left, aren’t far enough for the “progressive” crowd.

          “Progressives” consider anyone who isn’t 100% on their side to be “right wing.”

    2. Nobody every accused Dillahunty of having class. And despite that slur, I won’t respond in kind. Yes, he was a popular atheist podcaster, and for all I know he may still be.

      1. “Yes, he was a popular atheist podcaster, and for all I know he may still be.”

        He isn’t.

  9. The Canada Lynx video was wonderful. Thanks for including it. I enjoyed the ducks, the rabbits — and the cats. Otherwise, dreary times. Not good for insomnia. I just want to lie down and snuggle with my cat.

  10. I still use a few checks each month for bills that I like to monitor–and I rail against “convenience” fees for electronic payment!

    Now to go delete some of those subscriptions that once on autopay tend to drain one’s accounts for services unused.

    1. The problem with the streaming video services is that I only sometimes use them! I want to cancel but then find something interesting on them to watch. Point well taken, though!

  11. “The German government has accused Elon Musk of trying to meddle in the country’s election after he repeatedly endorsed the right-wing AfD party on X, and called center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz a “fool.” What’s the point in having a democracy if people can’t tweet about it?”

    You cannot have a democracy if people can’t tweet about it, but you also cannot have a democracy if Putin’s supporters win elections – at least, not for long. And understandably, this is making many Europeans nervous. But the German government has mostly itself to blame, after its half-hearted support for Ukraine.

    Many, many years ago I said that I’d like to visit Turkey but not before they get rid of Erdogan. Erdogan stays indefinitely, and I still haven’t visited Turkey. I am glad that you are enjoying your stay in Europe because there is a danger that the Europe we know and love will soon be gone.

    1. Explain to me the last sentence of your second paragraph. Yes, one could argue that the German government could have supported Ukraine more, but how would half-hearted support cause Putin-supporters to win more elections? While there is disagreement about how and how much to support Ukraine, all the major parties (the three in the—now defunct—coalition government and the biggest opposition party) do support Ukraine. There are three parties that don’t: the far-right AfD, which Musk has been supporting, the Left Party (a descendant of the former ruling party in former East Germany), and the BSW, a new party which arose from the Left party, the main difference is that it is not as woke.

      Musk can tweet about German politics (which he probably doesn’t understand well) and people can criticize him for doing so. Musk is like most people: he’s right about some and wrong about others. But he is rich enough to have influence, and is very public about his positions (which the former largest stakeholder in Twitter was not; most don’t even know who that was). Due to being on the autism spectrum, in addition much of what he says comes across unfiltered. That’s probably better than rich people (e.g. Russian oligarchs) calling the shots behind the scenes.

      Musk’s support of the AfD is probably because they are anti-woke and want to “fight bureaucracy”. Before the last election, Musk had always voted Democratic, so I doubt that he is really right-wing. He might not know that the AfD doesn’t like electric cars.

      1. My understanding of what is going on in Europe is that Europeans are afraid that Russia will dominate large parts of the continent once again, and they are pre-emptively voting for pro-Russian parties and politicians so that, when the time comes, to be subjugated rather than slaughtered by Russia. It is hardly a co-incidence that this reaction is strongest in countries that have already suffered under the Russian boots, such as Hungary, Slovakia and East Germany. As a Ukrainian commenter bluntly put it, turning to Europeans, “If you allow Putin to defeat Ukraine, he will not even need to conquer you – you will yourselves disarm, undress and offer him sexual services.”

        Blaming Germany for its half-hearted support of Ukraine, I meant that if Germany had supported Ukraine with full force in 2022 when Russia was weak, it is very likely that the Russian troops would have been defeated and thrown out, and we in Europe would be enjoying a just peace now, instead of counting casualties and guessing where Putin will attack next after completely destroying Ukraine.

        Scholz, who happened to lead Germany during this critical time, looked like a mediocre leader who wanted to follow the USA in everything. The problem with following the USA is that you and the USA may have different values and interests, so you may not really wish to follow where the USA is leading. In this case, the USA (for a number of reasons) fears the defeat of Russia much more than its genocidal expansion and the complete destruction of Europe as we know it. It is a bipartisan consensus in the USA that Putin must be appeased by giving him European lives and lands, but we Europeans do not want him to take our lives and lands.

        As for Musk, he is playing to the tune of Putin. Putin either has bought him or has some blackmail material. The troubling thing is that Musk enjoys excessive power, although nobody has ever voted for him.

  13. I see in the Telegraph article that Annie Laurie Gaylor said “We do not feel that support for LGBTQ rights against the religious backlash in the United States is mission creep. This growing difference of opinion probably made such a parting inevitable.”

    How utterly disingenuous can you get? As if this were about supporting trans people against religious backlash. If that’s all it were, then no, it would not be mission creep. But that has nothing whatsoever to do with Professor Coyne’s article.

    Once again, it’s the dishonest tactic of redefining the dispute in order to falsely characterize the other side’s argument and thereby conveniently dismiss it. Apparently intentionally, she describes what their organization is doing in an incomplete and misleading way and in the process implies that Professors Coyne, Pinker, and Dawkins are all supporting the oppression of trans people. It just keeps getting worse.

    Finally I’ve had enough. I’ve been very busy the past few days and have not yet settled down to write my own note to the FFRF. I wanted to think about what to say, since I have been a member of that organization for a long time and this whole episode really saddens me. Not that they will care in slightest what I have to say, but I will say it anyway.

    But now it seems that they’ve removed the page with Gaylor’s and Barker’s email addresses (or I’ve forgotten how to access it). Can anyone provide those addresses for me?

    1. Gaylor’s comment is an attempt to cloud the issues:

      Jerry’s piece had nothing to do with religion. The fact that some religions oppose the death penalty does not make all opposition to capital punishment religion-based.
      The piece had nothing to do with lesbians, gays or bisexuals (the LGB of LGBTQ). By constantly lumping these different groups together into a single entity, one can portray any disagreement with any one of them as an attack on them all (“You’re not only anti-trans, you’re anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual and the rest.”)

    2. algaylor@ffrf.org
      dbarker@ffrf.org

      In a comment on another post, I said that FFRF staff said that Annie Laurie does not read any email unless staff forwards it to her. So I would send your email to info@ffrf.org as well.

      When I wrote to them last year cancelling my membership and removing them from my estate plans, Annie Laurie didn’t reply. Dan replied and said “Thank you for your letter and your membership in FFRF.”

      That’s it.

      Good luck!

    3. James Blase

      Posted the following

      Their email addresses are available right on the FFRF website.

      Mr. Coyne

      Posted the following

      Yes, their addresses are public. I didn’t give them, but you can find them by Googling. If they weren’t public I would consider giving them out as unacceptable doxxing.

      I would still like to put a layer of privacy for them simply by asking you not to post them on this site. But anybody can find them, they just have to do so themselves–via Google. I get emails all the time (lately, many of them hateful) from people who Google my email, and I have no qualms about them finding me. My email is public. (I do mind the hate!)

      1. Sorry, I apparently overlooked them. I don’t intend anything disrespectful, and I apologize if asking for the addresses was inappropriate.

Comments are closed.