Monday: Hili dialogue

January 6, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the first Monday of 2025, January 6, 2025. For many it is Back to Work Day, but it’s also National Shortbread Day, a great treat (is it counted as a “biscuit” in the UK), and good for dipping in tea or coffee? I have seen them in rectangles (“fingers”) but here is another shape: “petticoat tails”.  They also have holes in them for some reason I can’t fathom.

Peter Craven, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Bean Day, National King Cake Day (a Louisiana tradition; a plastic baby is hidden in one place, and if you get it, you have to buy the next cake. Some prize!), and Epiphany. 

Also, in case you forgot, Congress will certify Trump’s election as President today, so it’s the fourth anniversary of the Great Insurrection.

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 6 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*I remind you all about the upcoming conference at USC: “Censorship in the sciences: Interdisciplinary perspectives” that starts this Friday and runs for three days. The full schedule is here (I’m on a panel on the last day), and though registration for the live event is closed, it will be broadcast in real time on Zoom (go here to sign in).  There will be YouTube videos some time after the conference.  Three days of talks and discussions for free–you can’t beat that with a stick!

*The first “congestion pricing” in the U.S. (they have it in other countries) has begun in New York City, and I don’t know whether the residents will rebel en masse or accept it and the more amendable condition of lower Manhattan that will ensue (article is archived here):

Congestion pricing has finally arrived in New York City after decades of delays and challenges, including a failed, last-ditch effort by the State of New Jersey to end a program that will charge most drivers $9 to cross into the heart of Manhattan.

E-ZPass readers and cameras set up along the new tolling zone from 60th Street to the southern tip of Manhattan — some of the most traffic-saturated roads in the world — are intended to persuade more motorists to take mass transit instead. Officials say the tolls will also raise billions of dollars to finance crucial repairs and improvements to New York City’s aging subway system, buses, and two commuter rail lines.

The toll program, long in the works, was halted by Gov. Kathy Hochul in June before an abrupt reversal cleared the way for it to start just after midnight on Sunday, a time the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said it had chosen to allow it to work out any kinks. The first real test will come Monday, with the start of the workweek.

There were no reports of any major problems as the program got underway, but Janno Lieber, the chief executive of the transportation authority, cautioned at a midday news conference that the toll system was complicated, and only a few hours old.

  • Where will drivers be charged?
    Drivers of most cars entering the designated tolling zone, from 60th Street to the lower tip of Manhattan, will pay a fee. That area includes some of the city’s most famous destinations and neighborhoods, including the theater district, Times Square, Hell’s Kitchen, Chelsea and SoHo.

  • How much will the tolls cost?
    The tolls vary by time of day, with the highest tolls during the peak period from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays, and from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends. Outside those hours, the tolls are 75 percent cheaper, to encourage more travel when the traffic is lighter.

    Drivers of most passenger cars will be charged $9 once per day to enter the congestion zone at peak hours, and $2.25 at other times. Motorcyclists will pay $4.50 during peak hours and $1.05 off-peak.

Trump, of course, says that he’s going to kill the program, Most of the important bridges and tunnels into the city are below 60th street, including the Brooklyn Bridge and the 59th Street Bridge.

*An IDF soldier and his pals took a vacation break to Brazil.  One of them, a survivor of the Nova Festival massacre, was arrested by Brazilian authorities for “war crimes”.

An Israel Defense Forces soldier who survived Hamas’s attack at the Nova music festival on October 7 last year hurriedly ended his vacation in Brazil on Sunday morning after the country’s Federal Court ordered police to open a war crimes investigation on him, according to Brazilian media.

Hours before he left the South American country, the unnamed soldier’s family told the Kan public broadcaster that he had not been arrested and that he was getting the help he needed to leave.

The Foreign Ministry said on Sunday that Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar had ordered the ministry’s Consular Section and the embassy in Brazil to contact the man and his family, who “accompanied him throughout the event until his swift and safe departure from Brazil.”

“The Foreign Ministry draws the attention of Israelis to posts on social media about their military service, and to the fact that anti-Israeli elements may exploit these posts to initiate futile legal proceedings against them,” the Foreign Ministry added.

The soldier’s father told Channel 12 news on Sunday that a friend who was traveling with his son had received a message from an Israeli diplomatic office telling him an arrest warrant had been issued for him.

“I asked them to escape immediately and not stay even a moment longer,” the father said, adding that he received a message from his son at 5 a.m. on Sunday saying they had crossed the border but that they hadn’t had cell reception since.

“I believe they’ll find their way home safely, but we need to make sure they know the truth about the soldier. He’s not a suspect; he’s a soldier who’s been through hell,” the father said.

The unnamed soldier was a survivor of the Hamas attack on the Nova festival last year, part of the terror organization’s massive onslaught on the south in which terrorists killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took 251 hostages, starting the ongoing war in Gaza.

. . .The soldier survived the attack by running for many kilometers until he reached safety, narrowly dodging Hamas gunfire multiple times on the way.

He is now being investigated in Brazil under suspicion that he was involved “in the destruction of a residential building in the Gaza Strip while using explosives outside of combat” in November, the Brazilian Metrópoles news outlet reported.

This is reprehensible. Neither the ICC, the ICJ, or the UN (which runs those two organizations) have pronounced IDF soldiers war criminals.  And how on earth would Brazil know that the soldier used “explosives outside of combat? I worry that this is the precursor of a worldwide trend to brand all IDF soldiers (or those who fought in Gaza) as war criminals, so that they could never leave Israel.

*An article about the incursion of ideology in colleges in The Chronicle of Higher Education is called “We asked for it” with the subtitle, “The politicization of research, hiring, and teaching made professors sitting ducks.” (It’s archived here.) Quack!

Over the past 10 years, I have watched in horror as academe set itself up for the existential crisis that has now arrived. Starting around 2014, many disciplines — including my own, English — changed their mission. Professors began to see the traditional values and methods of their fields — such as the careful weighing of evidence and the commitment to shared standards of reasoned argument — as complicit in histories of oppression. As a result, many professors and fields began to reframe their work as a kind of political activism.

In reading articles and book manuscripts for peer review, or in reviewing files when conducting faculty job searches, I found that nearly every scholar now justifies their work in political terms. This interpretation of a novel or poem, that historical intervention, is valuable because it will contribute to the achievement of progressive political goals. Nor was this change limited to the humanities. Venerable scientific journals — such as Nature — now explicitly endorse political candidates; computer-science and math departments present their work as advancing social justice. Claims in academic arguments are routinely judged in terms of their likely political effects.

The costs of explicitly tying the academic enterprise to partisan politics in a democracy were eminently foreseeable and are now coming into sharp focus. Public opinion of higher education is at an all-time low. The incoming Trump administration plans to use the accreditation process to end the politicization of higher education — and to tax and fine institutions up to “100 percent” of their endowment. I believe these threats are serious because of a simple political calculation of my own: If Trump announced that he was taxing wealthy endowments down to zero, the majority of Americans would stand up and cheer.

How did it happen? Here are two reasons and a conclusion:

The first is that, while academics have real expertise in their disciplines, we have no special expertise when it comes to political judgment. I am an English professor. I know about the history of literature, the practice of close reading, and the dynamics of literary judgment. No one should treat my opinion on any political matter as more authoritative than that of any other person. The spectacle of English professors pontificating to their captive classroom audiences on the evils of capitalism, the correct way to deal with climate change, or the fascist tendencies of their political opponents is simply an abuse of power.

The second problem with thinking of a professor’s work in explicitly political terms is that professors are terrible at politics. This is especially true of professors at elite colleges. Professors who — like myself — work in institutions that pride themselves on rejecting 70 to 95 percent of their applicants, and whose students overwhelmingly come from the upper reaches of the income spectrum, are simply not in the best position to serve as spokespeople for left-wing egalitarian values.

Far from representing a powerful avant-garde leading the way to political change, the politicized class of professors is a serious political liability to any party that it supports. The hierarchical structure of academe, and the role it plays in class stratification, clings to every professor’s political pronouncement like a revolting odor. My guess is that the successful Democrats of the future will seek to distance themselves as far as possible from the bespoke jargon and pedantic tone that has constituted the professoriate’s signal contribution to Democratic politics. Nothing would so efficiently invalidate conservative views with working-class Americans than if every elite college professor was replaced by a double who conceived of their work in terms of activism for right-wing ideas. Professors are bad at politics, and politicized professors are bad for their own politics.

The author, Michael Clune (an English professor at Case Western Reserve University), suggests professors sticking to their expertise, sometimes teaching students to evaluate evidence. And administrators, with their love of DEI, are also to blame, by articulating values that aren’t shared by the faculty.  This mandates that as far as a university can espouse “values,” the faculty must be on board with the administration. And those values should be limited to the classical purpose of a university: to further research, teaching, discourse, and thinking.

*Every Sunday, Douglas Murray has a column called “Things worth remembering” in the Free Press, usually riffing on quotes from the past.  This week’s contribution is especially good; it’s called “Things worth remembering: ‘He died standing up.” (h/t Bat). It’s about the Islamist attack on the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris in 2015 and the magazine’s editor, Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier. An excerpt about Charb:

Many people said many powerful things in those days—things Americans need to hear, and not only because of what happened in New Orleans. But to my mind, the last word should go to a woman who stood out for her exceptional dignity and courage, as well as the resonance of her sentiments: Charb’s partner, Jeannette Bougrab. A few years earlier, she had been a secretary of state under Nicolas Sarkozy, and the chair of French Equal Opportunities and Anti-Discrimination Commission. We had met a couple of times in France, and in the hours and days after the murder of her partner, I watched with awe as she spoke for the man who could no longer speak for himself. When she heard about the attack, she went running to the scene—and in describing, the very next day, what she found, she spoke for France—and for a set of values which we lose at our peril.

I was in awe of her 10 years ago, and am as much in awe today:

When I got there, there were the cordons, and we weren’t allowed to get in. But I learned there that he was dead. . .I didn’t want to leave his body. The bodies were just on the ground. . .I stayed for three or four hours outside. And then afterwards, I was taken to the Hôtel-Dieu [hospital] because I was in such a situation of shock.

Then came Jeannette’s tribute to the man who said he would never live on his knees, who she rightly believed had taken up his place among the heroes of history who had defended the French Republic:

He died standing. He defended secularism. He defended Voltaire’s spirit. He, in fact, was really the fruit of this ideal, the Republic that we’ve almost forgotten. He was—he died standing up. He was executed with his comrades, as he would say. Not companions. Comrades. And we can be very proud of him. All these cartoonists deserve a ceremony just as Malraux organized for Jean Moulin. Because they fought for principles and for freedoms that we’ve forgotten to defend.

So they’re resistance. Yes, they are resistance. And if I were the president of the Republic, that’s what I would do. I would give them this medal of honor, the Panthéon. Often—they died defending freedom of expression, secularism, and they have died so that we can stay free in this country. In France. In France in 2015.

Do remember that when PEN America decided to give Charlie Hebdo their “freedom of expression courage award,” six writers withdrew from the ceremony. apparently objecting to the “offense” that the magazine produced in Muslims and those of other faiths. (Charlie Hebdo was an equal-opportunity offender,) Salman Rushie couldn’t abide that, and tweeted this:

*President Biden has awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom—America’s highest civilian honor—to 19 people. They’re named below, and see if you agree with the choices (article is archived here):

President Biden named 19 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Saturday, awarding the nation’s highest civilian honor to political luminaries such as former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and the late civil-rights pioneer Fannie Lou Hamer.

Also on the list were actors, athletes and fashion leaders such as editor Anna Wintour and designer Ralph Lauren.

. . . Former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy—the father of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom President-elect Donald Trump has nominated to be his secretary of Health and Human Services—was posthumously awarded the medal. Philanthropist and Democratic donor George Soros also was among the recipients, as was world-renowned scientist and conservationist Jane Goodall.

Biden also chose U2 frontman Bono, actors Michael J. Fox and Denzel Washington, along with William Nye, better known as “Bill Nye the Science Guy.” Soccer superstar Lionel Messi and retired basketball player Earvin “Magic” Johnson also made the list, as did Spanish chef José Andrés, whose World Central Kitchen travels to conflict zones and areas hit by natural disasters to feed local communities.

Other recipients include former Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, as well as George W. Romney, the former Michigan governor and father of recently retired Utah Sen. Mitt Romney. Both were awarded the medal posthumously, along with Hamer, a co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Hamer, who died in 1977, helped lay the groundwork for the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Tim Gill, an entrepreneur and LGBTQ activist; David Rubenstein, the co-founder and co-chairman of Carlyle Group; and George Stevens Jr., founder of the American Film Institute and co-creator of the Kennedy Center Honors, were also awarded the medal.

There’s one of these awards I object to, though many will disagree. Can you guess which one?

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili is playing Ivy League Professor in Congress:

Hili: I categorically protest.
A: What about?
Hili: It depends on the context.
In Polish:
Hili: Stanowczo protestuję.
Ja: W jakiej sprawie?
Hili: To zależy od kontekstu.

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

From Merilee:

From Cat Memes:

From Stacy:

From Masih; more Iranians defying the regime’s ban on singing, dancing, and music.  These are brave women! And their went without hijab, breaking another law.

I don’t know who Nicole is but I like her pinned tweet (I can’t embed it):

From Malcolm; why cats have staff, not owners:

From my feed. I couldn’t resist a heartwarming cartoon with two d*gs!

Here’s a good riposte:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one I reposted:

Gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz, this girl was only 12.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-01-06T11:48:47.568Z

Two tweets from Dr. Cobb. ‘The first may show one of his ancestors!:

My grandfather, Jack Foster, helped A V Roe take off on his first flight. He may be amongst those on the left.

— (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-01-04T18:06:10.869Z

And he calls the second, “What an intent gaze!”

Scrub Jay eyeing the Peanut Buffet for #ThursJay#FromTheArchives #becurious #birds 🪶

— Cri 🕊🐝🐜📝🎭⚽😷 (@crawlieswithcri.bsky.social) 2025-01-02T17:47:50.086Z

57 thoughts on “Monday: Hili dialogue”

  1. Happy Twelfth Night!

    The thing about “the Great Insurrection” is that clearly over half the country doesn’t agree that January 6 was an insurrection, or coup, or they wouldn’t have voted for Trump.

    1. Yes they would have. They obviously didn’t care about his felony convictions, his multi-million dollar civil judgment for sexual assault, or his indictment on scores of other felonies. Why would they care about an insurrection?

      Trump himself said it and he was 100% correct: “I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and they would still vote for me.”

      1. Perhaps, just perhaps, they believed that the ‘Great Insurrection’ was no such thing and keeping people in prison for years while their cases linger is an instance of political malice?

        Just as Trump supporters have drawn the conclusion that his ‘convictions’ and ‘felonies’ were unsafe and just as much inspired by political malice?

        1. In other words, Trump supporters are happy to dismiss any wrongdoing by their President and any wrongdoing by themselves as well. Trump’s supporters may storm the capitol, and Trump might try interfering in the vote count, but they will just dimiss this as “political malice,” just as Nixon’s supporters thought Watergate was “political malice” on behalf of Nixon’s enemies. And now we have four more years of misrule to look forward to.

          1. OK, but what is your point, other than sour grapes that you lost? The voters (not just “Trump supporters” — you don’t know how many of them would call themselves that) made the wrong choice and somehow the result should be undone by wise Solons so a better candidate can get sworn in? His enemies did their level best to keep him from being put in front of the electorate and they failed. In a democracy — yes I know the U.S. is a republic not, strictly, a democracy — it is simply a contradiction in terms to speak of “misrule.” In a representative republic, The People rule. That’s you.

        2. AC — I think you have trouble getting around Trump’s own admission that his supporters don’t care if he commits heinous crimes and torts, even murder.

          Also, I’m interested in your statement that people are being kept “in prison” for years while their cases linger. Do you have any reliable statistics on that? I’d be surprised if anyone other than those with the most grievous accusations against them (assaulting police officers) have been kept in prison (jail, actually), which is no different than would be the case with anyone else accused of violent crimes. It’s certainly the dawn of a strange new day when the sympathies of conservatives lie with people who assault police officers than with the police officers.

    2. I’m going to add this to JohnE’s observation:

      About 64% of the approximately 245 million voting age Americans voted in this past election, and Trump won 49.9% of that 64%. I can do that arithmetic – about 32% of voting age Americans voted for Trump.

      The only thing that seems clear to me is that we don’t know what over half of Americans think of January 6. Oh, and that about 89 million voting age Americans didn’t find either candidate compelling.

      1. But it doesn’t matter what the eligible voters think about anything, anywhere, if they didn’t vote. The only way they could effectively show their displeasure with Mr. Trump is by getting their butts out to vote (or licking an envelope) against him…and they didn’t bother. This is especially true in the United States where the people vote directly for a powerful chief of executive government. (Well, directly as filtered through the Electoral College but at least his name is on the national ballot, unlike in Parliaments where only the guy or gal running for each local constituency is.)

        Non-voters are ignorable by their silence. They simply don’t count.

        1. They do still ‘count’, as constituents and citizens. Voting is just one way–the most important one, but still– of expressing a political opinion.
          In this country, you vote with your money.

    4. Aaaand? More than half of Americans believe in angels. 40 percent believe in creationism, 33 percent explicitly don’t believe in evolution, 34 percent believe that UFOs are aliens. Fortunately, we don’t have to rely on the consensus of US citizens to judge what’s plain as day.

  2. All are encouraged to read Dominic Green’s sobering piece just posted at TheFreePress (thefp.com) entitled “The Biggest Peacetime Crime and Cover-up in British History” about the truly shocking complicity of all parts of the British establishment in the failure to take any real action against the abuse and torture of thousands of vulnerable young English girls (many as young as eleven and twelve, mostly working-class), over many decades, by rape-gangs composed almost entirely of men of Pakistani Muslim origin.

    1. “rape-gangs composed almost entirely of men of Pakistani Muslim origin”

      There were rape gangs composed of white British men too, but that doesn’t fit nearly so well with the right wing’s anti-Muslim agenda.

      1. Well yes, there were rape gangs composed of white-British men, as you’d expect in a nation that is still 82% white, and where only about 8% of people are of Pakistani origin.

        But credible figures put the rape-gang perpetrators at 80% Pakistani origin, 16% other immigrant populations, and only 4% white British. (link)

        Posts such as yours, that effectively divert attention from the issue, are what the British media have been doing for decades, which has led to a perpetuation of the problem.

        1. Thanks, Laingholm, that is a thoroughly well-argued article, and I recommend everyone to read it.

    2. A cover-up? Come on.
      This controversy revolves around a scandal in Rotherham. In this British town, over a thousand children were allegedly victimized by predominantly Pakistani taxi drivers.
      The media uproar arose because the police initially failed to intervene, reportedly out of fear of being accused of racism.
      Obviously, this situation is deeply troubling. However, claims of a cover-up or abuse by a so-called “pedophile elite” are complete nonsense.
      Additionally, despite the current uproar, this is an old case: The first reports of abuse surfaced as early as 2001, and the first group of perpetrators was convicted in 2010. At the time, newspapers dedicated extensive coverage to the story, and a parliamentary inquiry was conducted in 2012.
      In fact, a law was even amended to improve the investigation of the abuse and to prioritize the victims.
      In the years that followed, the media extensively reported on the child abuse. Documentaries were released (including Betrayed Girls and Three Girls), and in 2015, the national government decided to replace the Rotherham town council. In 2016 and 2017, another 19 men and two women were convicted for their involvement.
      In total, by the year 2024, more than sixty suspects had stood trial. They were sentenced to prison terms of up to 35 years. In 2024, a special task force was launched nationwide to investigate child abuse.
      Since then, 550 arrests have been made.
      Elon Musk is now reviving this old story because it serves his extreme-right leaning agenda.
      He wants a different government in England. To achieve this, he exploits xenophobia by bringing up an old case involving “Muslims” and attacking a politician who was previously responsible for the Public Prosecution Service and is now a minister.
      Musk blatantly targets the Labour Party, while the Tories rejected multiple proposals to improve efforts to combat the abuse in this scandal.

      1. … he exploits xenophobia by bringing up an old case involving “Muslims”

        It is not one old case, the pattern seen in Rotherham was also seen in 20 other British cities, and has continued to the present day. If you’re not aware of that it’s because the media have continually tried to minimise the issue and divert attention, such as by referring to it as just being one old case. (As you say, a task force set up in 2024 has so far arrested 550 people.) And yes, it was Muslims, not “Muslims”.

        1. The common denominator in all conspiracy theories is: “If you’re not aware of that it’s because the media have continually….”

        2. Actually, even more than twenty other cities, with all the evidence pointing to no diminution of this atrocity against the welfare of the most vulnerable of the citizenry. Complicit in this ghastly state of affairs were Labour MPs counting on votes from the Muslim community, social workers fearful of being called “Islamophobic”, feckless police hostile to disadvantaged working-class young girls often from broken homes, and the media pandering cravenly to the rich and privileged virtue-signaling bien-pensant elites (“Guardianistas” above all) enamored, in their safe homes, of the idea of the new “multicultural” Britain.

      2. I suspect Elon Musk agrees with the liberal left on 90% of issues, but because he disagrees about a couple of things he is coded “far right.”

        Frankly, I think Europe is right to be worried about the spread of Islam within its borders. Can anything good come from Europe becoming more Islamic?

          1. Frits, this is still going on, so do not imply otherwise. Here is what Grok says, but I omit the references for economy of space:

            Yes, there is evidence suggesting that grooming gangs, particularly those involving individuals of Pakistani heritage in the UK, remain active.

            For an explanation of the cultural differences behind this, see this tweet: https://x.com/jonatanpallesen/status/1874783967519326305?t=as4QM6q84_NCVuWR8WYh4w&s=09

            And do not dominate threads, please.

        3. As Frits has pointed out, Musk is explicitly promoting the AfD for the upcoming German election, a party where some of its suborganizations have been judged by courts to be “definitely on the extreme right”, and whose most influential politician Björn Höcke is on record as saying “The problem is that Hitler is painted as the absolute evil.” (And that’s not the worst quote from their members by far.)

          Now, to become popular, an extremist party must be seen as tackling issues that other parties are not willing to talk about, and in this case the primary issue is immigration. Fine. Problem is, not only is the AfD proposing to deport German citizens with foreign roots, part of their package is demolishing the EU, selling Germany out to Russia, and generally being Nazis. If you endorse such a party, you’re either a right-winger, or completely ignorant, or both.

  4. A.V. Roe, the intrepid aviator in Prof Cobb’s photograph, is of course the founder (with his brother Humphrey) of the aircraft manufacturer known as Avro, which developed the iconic Lancaster bomber during WW2, and later the Vulcan, one of Britain’s Cold War jet-powered V-bombers.

    1. Not completely true.

      The UN was involved in negotiating the founding treaty of the ICC
      A specific Relationship Agreement was created to define cooperation between the UN and the ICC
      There is an exchange of representatives between the ICC and UN
      The ICC participates in the UN General Assembly as an observer
      There is a regular exchange of information and documents of mutual interest
      The ICC and the UN have consultation on efficient use of facilities, staff, and services
      There is cooperation between the UN and ICC Prosecutor on investigations and information exchange
      Use of UN laissez-passer as a valid travel document for some ICC officials

  6. For some reason, my first thought when I saw Nicole’s piggy pictures was that I’d caption them: Me when I first started driving in Boston versus Me a year later.

    Bougrab’s words about her partner brought tears to my eyes. Charbonnier was a true moral exemplar.

    3. Agreed. Very disappointing that Nye seems to be one of the “sex is a spectrum” idiots.

  8. Thanks for including Douglas Murray’s Things Worth Remembering TFP article from this past weekend. I love Rushdie’s comment on the six PEN pussies. For readers who found Douglas Murray’s piece on Charlie Hebdo to be of interest, every so often I recommend Murray’s 2022 book, “The War on the West” conveniently available from Amazon (natch!) at
    https://www.amazon.com/War-West-Douglas-Murray/dp/0063162024
    But I wish that you would check with your local brick and mortar bookseller first.

  9. I think you would object to Bill Nye.
    I remember an objection some years ago, but can’t remember why.

    1. Holes allow steam created during the baking to more easily escape, preventing bubbles forming. Same reason as you poke holes in pastry before you “blind bake” a crust.
      And shortbread are not usually “dunked”; or at least they weren’t when I was growing up.

      1. Shortbread baked by my mother was made in a circular baking pan, and the holes were made with a fork. In particular, the pattern was made into the initials of family members. I have asked around amongst my friends, and that seems to have been a common practice.
        I find currently available shortbread in the UK to be too hard, but I have found a cafe where the shortbread is made on site. But without holes.

  12. How can Trump scuttle congestion pricing? This seems a state matter, not a federal one.

    2. The majority of those directly affected are coming in from Jersey or Connecticut.
      So, interstate?

  13. Congestion pricing.
    I live in south Manhattan and my wife drives outside the city often. I’m not wild about the new system – happy it is cheaper than originally advertised – but I remain open and curious about how this experiment will go.

    NYC isn’t London or Stockholm so let’s not compare yet. Context and scale always matter more in most domains.

    A big issue is whether indeed they’ll use the dosh to fix the subway. I hope so as I use it!
    D.A.
    NYC

    1. I guess the MTA needs the money to fill the revenue hole from all the culturally rooted fare cheating it doesn’t seem to be able to do anything about.

  14. I think the award our leader objects to is the chef, Sr Andres for saying Israel is “committing war against humanity itself”.

    2. If Hamas, Hezballah, the Houthis and Iran are “humanity itself”, we’re in even worse shape than I thought.

  16. I’m generally in favor of congestion prices, as it seems to be a demand-based pricing structure, similar to when building supply stores raise prices when demand for plywood and generators is high after a natural disaster.

  17. I have been late to reading this, after the biggest snowstorm (8″ at my home) we have had here in SE Ohio in some time. So, I was careful not to see the answers to our host’s query of who is unworthy of receiving the Presidential Medal. Here is my choice:

    Hillary Clinton – no friend of free expression.

  18. Shortbread baked by my mother was made in a circular baking pan, and the holes were made with a fork. In particular, the pattern was made into the initials of family members. I have asked around amongst my friends, and that seems to have been a common practice.
    I find currently available shortbread in the UK to be too hard, but I have found a cafe where the shortbread is made on site. But without holes.

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