Thursday: Hili dialogue

January 2, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, January 2, 2025, and National Buffet Day, a presentation of comestibles that I’m quite fond of.  Here’s Mike Chen’s selection of the five best buffets in the world, and Chen knows his food. He also knows that if you really like food, you like a lot of it!

The rates for the top five:

5. Nordic Lodge – $135  (now $140; the buffet is in Rhode Island and opens in April)
4. Hotel Nikko – $68 or VND 1,650,000
3. Navio at Ritz Carlton – $249
2. Crab 52 Seoul – $200
1. Les Grandes Buffet France – $58 or 53€  This is a great bargain but a friend of mine who got reservations had to make them many months in advance.

It’s also 55 MPH Speed Limit Day (remembering the day in 1974 when President Nixon signed the National Speed Limit Law), Swiss Cheese Day, World Introvert Day, Happy Mew Year for Cats Day, and National Cream Puff Day.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the December 19 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Yes, another mass ramming of a crowd with a vehicle, this time a crowd in New Orleans hit by a pickup truck, with 15 people killed (excluding the perp, who was killed by the cops) and 35 injured.

A man “trying to run over as many people as he possibly could” rammed a pickup into celebrating crowds on Bourbon Street in the early hours of New Year’s Day, killing at least 10 people and injuring about 35 others before dying in a shootout with police officers, officials said.

The authorities called it a deliberate attack and said the truck appeared to have been carrying improvised explosives. “He was hellbent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did,” the New Orleans police superintendent, Anne Kirkpatrick, said in a news conference.

Here’s what else to know:

  • The attack: The man drove the truck at high speed into crowds around 3:15 a.m. before crashing and then opening fire, shooting two police officers, Superintendent Kirkpatrick said. A New Orleans councilman who visited the officers in the hospital said they were in stable condition.

  • Motivation: Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said that the F.B.I., the A.T.F. and prosecutors with the National Security Division and the local federal prosecutor’s office were all working on the case, treating the attack as an act of terrorism. Officials said they were trying to determine if the improvised explosives found in the truck were viable.

  • Location: The attack happened in the area of Canal and Bourbon Streets during raucous celebrations in the city’s French Quarter. It came just hours before Notre Dame and the University of Georgia were to face off in college football’s Sugar Bowl at the city’s Superdome.

* Update: This appears to be a terrorist attack, and has been called so by the mayor of New Orleans (more information on the attacker here).

The suspect has been identified as 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, according to multiple officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe details of the investigation. Officials are examining what appears to be a furled Islamic State flag that was found on the truck used in the attack.

The authorities said the pickup also appeared to have been carrying improvised explosives. “He was hellbent on creating the carnage and the damage that he did,” the New Orleans police superintendent, Anne Kirkpatrick, said in a news conference.

*If you want to see the true awesomeness of corvids, read the NYT piece, “If you think you can hold a grudge, consider the crow” (archived here).

Renowned for their intelligence, crows can mimic human speech, use tools and gather for what seem to be funeral rites when a member of their murder, as groups of crows are known, dies or is killed. They can identify and remember faces, even among large crowds.

They also tenaciously hold grudges. When a murder of crows singles out a person as dangerous, its wrath can be alarming, and can be passed along beyond an individual crow’s life span of up to a dozen or so years, creating multigenerational grudges.

Attacks by aggrieved crows can become the stuff of horror films, with lives being seemingly transformed into the Hitchcockian nightmare of “The Birds.”

Gene Carter, a computer specialist in Seattle, was followed by crows that lurked outside his windows for the better part of a year.

“The crows would stare at me in the kitchen,” he said in an interview. “If I got up and moved around the house, they would find any place where they could perch and scream at me. If I walked out to my car they would dive bomb me. They would get within an inch of my head.”

Mr. Carter knows precisely what set off the attacks. One day in his backyard, he saw crows encroaching on a robin’s nest and launched a rake into the air.

But he never imagined that the crows’ revenge would last so long. The mob learned to identify the bus he took on his way home from work, Mr. Carter said. “They were waiting for me at the bus stop every single day,” he said. “My house was three or four blocks away and they would dive bomb me all the way home.”

The harassment stopped only when Mr. Carter moved.

There’s a lot more, but read it for yourself.

*According to the Wall Street Journal, the Hamas/Israel peace talks appear to have reached an impasse. This is exactly what we should expect: Israel is waiting for Trump, hoping he will be more on their side than was Biden.

Cease-fire talks between Palestinian militant group Hamas and the Israeli government have hit an impasse in recent days, Arab mediators said, making any deal unlikely before the end of the Biden administration.

Hamas—whose fighters, along with other Palestinians, kidnapped around 250 people from Israel during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks that also left about 1,200 people dead—renewed its insistence that Israel commit to a permanent truce, something Israel has long ruled out.

The lack of progress is a blow to the president’s team, which has invested substantial amounts of time and political capital pushing fruitlessly for an agreement. It is also a disappointment to Palestinians in Gaza weary of more than a year of fighting and deprivation. They have called on social media for Hamas to accept a deal that would help end the war, even if it doesn’t achieve other goals like freeing thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israel’s jails.

In Israel, families of the hostages are putting heavy pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to strike a deal that secures their release, arguing that every day of captivity risks their lives and well-being.

Hopes for a deal in Gaza had risen after Lebanese militia Hezbollah acceded to a cease-fire with Israel on that front in late November. The deal left Hamas’s battered ranks isolated in their fight, and mediators hoped it could create momentum for another agreement.

Hamas at the time told mediators it was willing to defer discussion over a permanent end to the fighting in Gaza until later rounds of negotiations, raising hopes that at least some hostages could be released in exchange for a pause in hostilities.

This is a tough one, but Israel cannot leave Hamas in charge of Gaza, that would guarantee terrorism forever.  And Hamas will not surrender. Further, ALL the hostages should be released, not just a handful.  Just remember what happened on October 7—the killings and the kidnappings. Hamas has vowed to do it again and again, and that is why they have to go.

* The AP tells us what to expect, astronomy-wise, in 2025. There’s a lot on tap:

The new year will bring a pair of lunar eclipses, but don’t expect any sun-disappearing acts like the one that mesmerized North America last spring.

While the world will have to wait until 2026 for the next total solar eclipse, the cosmos promises plenty of other wow moments in 2025. It’s kicking off the year with a six-planet parade in January that will be visible for weeks. Little Mercury will join the crowd for a seven-planet lineup in February.

Five planets already are scattered across the sky — all but Mars and Mercury — though binoculars or telescopes are needed to spot some of them just after sunset.

“People should go out and see them sometime during the next many weeks. I certainly will,” said the Planetary Society’s chief scientist Bruce Betts.

Eclipses

The moon will vanish for more than an hour over North and South America on March 14, followed two weeks later by a partial solar eclipse visible from Maine, eastern Canada, Greenland, Europe, Siberia and northwestern Africa.

The cosmic double-header will repeat in September with an even longer total lunar eclipse over Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, and a partial solar eclipse two weeks later near the bottom of the world.

Supermoons

Three supermoons are on tap this year in October, November and December.

The full moon will look particularly big and bright those three months as it orbits closer to Earth than usual.

November’s supermoon will come closest, passing within 221,817 miles (356,980 kilometers). Last year featured four supermoons, wrapping up in November.

One to look for soon:

Planet parade

Six of our seven neighboring planets will line up in the sky to form a long arc around mid-January. All but Neptune and Uranus should be visible with the naked eye just after sunset, weather permitting.

The parade will continue for weeks, with some of the planets occasionally snuggling up. Mercury will make a cameo appearance by the end of February. The planets will gradually exit, one by one, through spring.

Auroras

The sun burped big time last year, painting the sky with gorgeous auroras in unexpected places.

Space weather forecasters anticipate more geomagnetic storms that could yield even more northern and southern lights.

That’s because the sun has reached its solar maximum during its current 11-year cycle that could continue through this year. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Shawn Dahl urges everyone to stay on top of space weather news, so as not to miss any pop-up, razzle-dazzle shows.

If you have a telescope, the planet parade should be a good show. But you can still see four with your naked eye.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is again upset at winter (look at that expression!):

Hili: It’s the same every night.
A: What do you mean?
Hili: It’s dark and cold.
In Polish:
Hili: Każdej nocy to samo.
Ja: Co masz na myśli?
Hili: Ciemno i zimno.

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

From Jesus of the Day with the caption, “Eeeeeh, close enough.”

From Cat Memes:

From Strange, Silly, or Stupid Signs:

Masih is on break, but here’s a photo that also carries her message, which I post just to remember you how things have changed. Yes, this was a normal photo from Afghanistan back in the day (also from Iran).  It also shows that when women really had a choice in those lands, they usually didn’t cover their hair, much less their whole body.

From Malcolm; a cat who MUST watch!

From my feed (readers are invited to send really good tweets):

Fooling cats:

Would that we had these in America!

LOL:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one I reposted:

Three Italian siblings gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-01-02T11:57:53.018Z

Two tweets from Matthew. First, an awesome Icelandic television bit:

RÚV, the Icelandic National Broadcasting Agency, shows this dance EVERY New Years Day, and has done so as long as there has been television.Please click play and enjoy this magnificent spectacle, without which it could never feel like a new year is truly coming.

— Hildur Knútsdóttir (@hildur.bsky.social) 2024-12-31T11:52:31.529Z

Holiday invertebrates:

Happy New Year from invertebrates that look like fireworks.CreditsJellyfish: OET/Nautilus LiveAnemone: Cathy LewisFeather duster worm: Pauline Walsh JacobsenOctopus: Schmidt Ocean Institute

— Dr Rachel Hale Marine Biologist (@seafloorscience.bsky.social) 2024-12-31T09:04:43.441Z

17 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  1. I always look forward to multiple planets lining up in the night sky every so often. Seeing a necklace of “stars” slowly take shape and then separate over the weeks allows us to get a good sense of the ecliptic and imagine the motions of the moon and sun also. Seeing that the planets do not form a perfect line reminds us that the ecliptic plane is not a perfect tabletop that many of us were taught in school but that planets orbit the sun at angles of a degree or two from a perfect plane with Pluto being the oddest man out at 17degrees if I recall correctly.

    Because of the span of these alignments, a telescope with its limited field of view…even a rich field telescope like the Edmond Astroscan at low 16x is only 3degrees…you lose the sense of this phenomenon. Binoculars at a 7degree field of view might be helpful but are still limited. For reference the width of a full moon is about 0.5 degree. Best to just enjoy the configuration on a crisp, clear, cold winter night with naked eye I think.

    1. Yes. Jupiter is very bright in the early evening sky right now, as is Mars, but Jupiter is more prominent. With my spotting scope, I can almost see the bands of clouds on Jupiter but not quite. I think I can see three of Jupiter’s moons but, again, I’m not certain. Last summer, IIRC, I could convince myself that I saw the cloud bands on Jupiter, but the sky was clearer in summer. Here in the Pacific Northwest, winter is not a good time for sky watching.

      1. Jupiters four largest (Gallileon) moons move pretty fast. Over an hour you might see different numbers as they pass in front of or behind the planet. So you might see three but later in the evening only two or maybe all four. With a large enough amateur telescope you can sometimes see the black shadow of a moon as it moves in front of the planet. Yes, I think the most exciting sights through a small telescope are the colored cloud bands of Jupiter and it four largest moons and the unworldly, stark rings of Saturn.

  2. Rather than a “mass ramming of a crowd by a vehicle,” you really should say “with a vehicle.”

  4. Could it be that the Palestinians in Gaza are at last beginning to resent the aspirations of Hamas?

  5. “This is a tough one, but Israel cannot leave Hamas in charge of Gaza, that would guarantee terrorism forever. ”

    So naive, so trusting, professor. Gaza IS Hamas. All of it and there are no civilians.

    We have trouble getting our heads around medieval, religious fanaticism as a motivating factor for an entire society. The very idea shocks us so we refuse to believe it can exist anywhere.
    The entire moral and intellectual architecture of the strip is 100% entirely with Hamas. They’re not some unrepresentative naughty violent minority there, fighting Israel against the wishes of the peaceful wee victim Palestinian ewoks of Gaza.
    It is terrorism and Jew hatred and murder all the way down.

    Or am I wrong? Anyone here – or anybody – can try and put me (and Netanyahu) in touch with the Palestinian Peace Counsel there, its representatives or assigns. We’ll be glad to talk. NOT liars in the west (CAIR, etc.) but those actually in Palestine who want to “co-exist”. I’ll wait.

    ….still waiting.

    Onwards Israeli heroes.

    D.A.
    NYC

    1. If it’s true that “Gaza IS Hamas,” then you are implying that post-war governance cannot come from within the Gazan population, as no peace-advocates in Gaza exist. Governance must come from outside Gaza, a multinational Arab coalition of some sort. Is that your position or something similar?

    2. I guess you’re probably right, sadly, but there is the example of Mosab Hassan Yousef, whose father apparently co-founded Hamas, to point to. And there was a video that I recall, of a Palestinian shepherd or something like that, denouncing Hamas, to point to, so there are at least a scant few to point to.

      Once could dream, I suppose, that Israel could somehow constitute a government-in-exile of people like this that could take charge with their help. At the very least that would probably need an advance operation of broadcasts into Gaza as happened all thru WWII. Is Israel trying anything like this?

      1. He’s the ONLY one I’ve ever heard of and he lives like Salman Rushdie. I don’t know if there’s actually a legal fatwah against him but the intent is out there.
        I like him. Some individual exceptions can be found – but the “assassin’s veto” works on even a larger number of apostates like him.
        To even suggest coexistence over there is a death wish for Pals.

        D.A.
        NYC

  6. That cork dance video was great! I’ve never seen it before but it appears that it was produced in Sweden. The title & text bits in the credits are all in Swedish, and involved have Swedish or Finnish names.

    But for what they watch at New Year’s in Sweden, Germany, and many other Northern European countries, it’s this English sketch from 1963, Dinner for One. “Same procedure as last year” is part of the Swedish and apparently also German lexicon as a result. It has since been colorized, too.

  7. Forgive me if this comment is off topic from today’s post, but I just called the FFRF at 608-256-8900 and made sure I was immediately no longer a member. I had a polite discussion with them about how I thought they’ve lost their way and acted cowardly. I asked if they would consider putting the post back up and the reply was what you’d expect, Professor Coyne has the rest of the Internet for his post. I think it’s important they hear from their members as humans and not as an anonymous commentor on the web.

  9. Re The Corkscrew Dance, my dad was a fan of Busby Berkeley style dance numbers with kaleidoscopic overhead shots, so I saw a fair few of them on the TV. This stop-motion is IMO a credit to that genre.

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