As I’m traveling tomorrow until the 16th, this may be the last full Hili dialogue until the 17th, and posting will be light. Bear with me; I do my best. Matthew will of course post the discourse between Andrzej and Hili (and other cats) in my absence.
I’m going to be on the Piers Morgan show today; stay tuned for when it will be posted.
Welcome to a cold Hump Day (“Гомб куню” in Crimean Cyrillic); it’s Wednesday, January 8, 2025, and National English Toffee Day, a day of cultural appropriation (we stole land from the Brits during the Revolutionary War.) The most familiar form appropriated by Americans is the delicious Heath Bar:
It’s also Bubble Bath Day, War on Poverty Day, World Typing Day and Earth’s Rotation Day. Here’s the explanation for the last holiday:
The fact that the earth rotates on its axis is common knowledge today, but until the mid-nineteenth century, it was merely conjecture. French physicist Jean-Bernard-Léon Foucault, commonly known as Léon Foucault or Jean Foucault, is known for proving through his experiments that the earth rotates on its axis.
On January 8, 1851, Foucault performed an experiment in the cellar of his home, in which he swung a five-kilogram weight attached to a two-meter-long pendulum. He put sand underneath it to mark the pendulum’s path, allowing him to see any changes in it. He observed a slight clockwise movement in the plane—the floor, and thus the earth, were slowly rotating; the pendulum kept its position. His experiment showed that the earth rotated on its axis. No longer was it just a hypothesis.
A relevant video:
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 8 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz (truncated today because of my impending absence)
*Obituaries first: Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul and Mary, has died at 86.
Peter Yarrow, a vocalist with the US folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, has died aged 86. The cause was bladder cancer, which Yarrow had been diagnosed with four years ago.
Yarrow took lead vocals on Puff, the Magic Dragon, The Great Mandella and Day Is Done, songs he either wrote or co-wrote with Noel Paul Stookey. Stookey is the last surviving member of the group, as Mary Travers died in 2009.
Stookey told the New York Times that Yarrow was his “creative, irrepressible, spontaneous and musical younger brother” whom he “grew to be grateful for, and to love, the mature-beyond-his-years wisdom and inspiring guidance he shared with me like an older brother. Perhaps Peter was both of the brothers I never had and I shall deeply miss both of him.”
In their 60s heyday, the group had six US Top 10 singles and one No 1, a cover of John Denver’s Leaving on a Jet Plane, as well as five Top 10 albums.
They were also politically significant. In August 1963, the progressive trio joined the March on Washington and sang a cover of Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which cemented the song’s legacy as an anthem of the civil rights movement.
You may not remember that it was this group, and not the writer Bob Dylan, who made that song a hit. Here it is, and it’s infinitely better than the cloying “Puff the Magic Dragon.” The fact that Dylan could produce such masterpieces defies me; he often seemed almost incoherent.
*Los Angeles is on fire; or rather, three big wildfires are raging in the area, threatening to burn right down to the sea. They’re fueled by winds up to 100 mph. (Article is archived here.)
Ferocious wildfires have worsened in the Los Angeles area, tearing through homes and forcing tens of thousands to evacuate.
Officials warned of devastating losses as the main blaze raced through the affluent Pacific Palisades neighborhood. The fast-moving fire spread across nearly 3,000 acres and was still 0% contained early Wednesday, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.
Powerful Santa Ana winds were expected to continue for much of Los Angeles and Ventura counties through Wednesday and into Thursday, with gusts up to 70 miles an hour in some areas.
“Conditions today look extremely bad, possibly even worse than yesterday,” Frank Pereira, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said.
“We expect very strong sustained winds to continue at least into Thursday, which of course with the very dry conditions means things will remain extremely dangerous. It’s not until later in the week when the winds will slacken and efforts to fight these fires will get a bit easier,” he said.More than 40,000 people were under evacuation orders further north in the San Fernando Valley as a second fire picked up speed and spread to nearly 500 acres, Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement early Wednesday.
Newsom, who declared a state of emergency Tuesday, said many structures had been destroyed, while footage showed thick smoke billowing over Santa Monica, just south of the Pacific Palisades neighborhood.
California has secured federal assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Newsom said.
“Firefighters are working through the night to save lives & battle these aggressive fires,” he added.
I’ll be in L.A. tomorrow, and expect to see the smoke. Because of the fires, Luana has been stuck in Las Vegas on her way to L.A. two days early. Well, there are slots in the airport. . . .
*Just what we need: Trump, Still nearly two weeks from the Presidency, blustering about Americans taking over other countries’ lands (archived here).
President-elect Donald J. Trump said Tuesday that he would not rule out the use of military or economic coercion to force Panama to give up control of the canal America built more than a century ago and to force Denmark to sell Greenland to the United States.
In a rambling, hourlong news conference, Mr. Trump also reiterated his threat that “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if the hostages being held by Hamas are not released by Inauguration Day, repeating the threat four times.
“If they’re not back by the time I get into office, all hell will break out in the Middle East,” he told reporters. “And it will not be good for Hamas, and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone. All hell will break out. I don’t have to say anymore, but that’s what it is.”
Mr. Trump did not elaborate during the news conference, where he delivered a hodgepodge of grievances, complaints and false claims, from the Afghanistan withdrawal of 2021 to offshore drilling to the criminal cases against him and the size of his electoral victory.
He refused to rule out using military force to retake the Panama Canal, which was given back to Panama by treaty in the late 1990s, and Greenland, which Mr. Trump said was necessary for the national security of the United States.
“It might be that you’ll have to do something,” he said.
Trump’s desire to expand the U.S. footprint is entirely in keeping with his mind-set of making whatever he controls as big as possible, going back to his series of acquisitions in the late 1980s. In recent days, Mr. Trump has talked repeatedly about buying Greenland and taking over the Panama Canal.
It was not clear how serious the president-elect was about some of his comments during the news conference. At one point, he suggested that his administration will rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
This will of course not stand: Panama owns the canal since the U.S. gave it away by treaty, and Denmark is not going to sell Greenland at any price, nor do we need it. As for “all hell breaking out in the Middle East,” I don’t know what he means. I am hoping (and expecting) that this is just bluster, the same kind of bluster he’s emitted many times before. Imagine getting into a war with Denmark or Panama!
*For some reason Meta, which runs Facebook, has decided to stop fact-checking posts that are not palpably illegal (i.e., that do not involve defamation, false advertising, and the like). Article is archived here.
Mark Zuckerberg built up Facebook’s content-policing efforts in the wake of Donald Trump’s first presidential election. Now the Meta Platforms CEO is reversing course as he embraces a second Trump presidency.
Meta is ending fact-checking and removing restrictions on speech across Facebook and Instagram, Zuckerberg said in a video Tuesday, a move he described as an attempt to restore free expression on its platforms.
“We’re going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring free expression on our platforms,” Zuckerberg said in the video. He said Meta is getting rid of fact-checkers and, starting in the U.S., replacing them with a so-called Community Notes system similar to that on Elon Musk’s X platform in which users flag posts they think need more context.
While Meta will continue to target illegal behavior, Zuckerberg wrote in a separate post on Threads, it will stop enforcing content rules about immigration and gender that are “out of touch with mainstream discourse.”
Zuckerberg’s plan is likely to reshape the experience of billions of people who use Meta’s platforms. It steers sharply away from efforts started years ago in response to complaints from users, advertisers and politicians that abusive and deceptive content had run amok on Meta’s suite of apps. The effort to rein in such speech sparked its own backlash from people—especially on the political right—who said it often strayed into censorship.
The pivot comes as Zuckerberg has looked to align himself and his company with the incoming Trump administration. The Meta CEO has had a sometimes strained relationship with Trump in the past, which descended into open acrimony after Meta suspended Trump’s accounts in the wake of Jan. 6, 2021 invasion of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.
This past summer, Trump suggested Zuckerberg might be imprisoned if he perceived Meta to be disrupting the U.S. election.
Why didn’t I think of the attempt to appease trump? On the other hand, I’m a hard-line free-speecher, with bad speech supposed to be countered with better speech. And, truth be told, I’m not aware of what Facebook has published that has raised such a ruckus. Meta of course can remove what it wants, but my view has always been that restrictions on speech permitted by the First Amendment should be as few as possible.
*Speaking of Trump (and we’ll do a lot of that in the next four years), a NY judge has rejected his attempt to be exculpated for his felony convictions in the “hush money case,” involving him falsifying business records when he paid off porn star Stormy Daniels with “hush money.” He can appeal, but that doesn’t look possible, and he will be our first President who is a felon (does that mean he can’t vote?):
A New York appeals court judge on Tuesday denied President-elect Donald Trump ‘s latest bid to delay this week’s sentencing in his hush money case.
In a one-sentence ruling following an emergency hearing, Judge Ellen Gesmer denied Trump’s request for an immediate order that would spare him from being sentenced while he appeals Judge Juan M. Merchan’s decision last week to uphold the historic verdict.
It was the second time in two days that Trump was denied.
Trump went to the Appellate Division of the state’s trial court a day after Merchan rebuffed his initial bid to indefinitely postpone sentencing.
Trump’s sentencing remains on schedule for Friday, though he can still ask other courts to intervene.
At an emergency hearing, Trump lawyer Todd Blanche argued that Trump can’t be sentenced because, as president-elect, he enjoys the same immunity from criminal proceedings as a president.
Merchan had rejected that idea in his ruling last week and Steven Wu, arguing for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, said it flew in the face of the long-held concept of one president at a time.
It’s impossible that they will sentence Trump to jail time; he will most likely be found “guilty” but allowed to walk. Our first Felon President!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili makes self-aggrandizing plans:
Hili: Pet me, cuddle me and then we will eat something.A: Good idea.
Hili: Pogłaszcz mnie, przytul mnie, a potem coś zjemy.Ja: Dobry pomysł.
*******************
From Cat Memes:
From reader Su:
And from heathen Seth Andrews:
This was retweeted by Masih, and here’s the Google translation:
The story goes that a Japanese man who lived in Tehran at the beginning of the Islamic takeover went to a restaurant with his wife one day. His wife was asked to wear a hijab and given a headscarf. The Japanese man then asked for a headscarf to be brought to him so that he could wear it himself. When the restaurant staff explained that only women had to wear a hijab, he replied: “If my wife has to do something against her will, I see it as my duty to support her.” I wonder why the French Foreign Minister @jnbarrot did not show solidarity with Ms. @ABaerbock and refused to shake hands with Al-
Ahmed Al-Sharaa is the head of the new Syrian government, (At least she didn’t have to wear a hijab.)
Man erzählt, dass ein Japaner, der zu Beginn der islamischen Machtergreifung in Teheran lebte, eines Tages mit seiner Frau ein Restaurant besuchte. Dort wurde seine Frau aufgefordert, einen Hijab zu tragen, und man gab ihr ein Kopftuch. Der Japaner bat daraufhin, ihm ebenfalls… pic.twitter.com/GdCPCWIcs2
— Monireh Kazemi (@MonirehKazemi) January 5, 2025
From Luana: FIRE appears to support the Meta decision.
Meta’s announcement today shows the marketplace of ideas in action. Its users want a social media platform that doesn’t suppress political content or use top-down fact-checkers.
The company concedes that its past moderation practices have introduced bias and haven’t worked,… pic.twitter.com/fZc5NJe9IV
— FIRE (@TheFIREorg) January 7, 2025
From Malcolm: cat overreactions:
At least they didn’t overreact..😹 pic.twitter.com/dMufPWUGd5
— Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) December 24, 2024
Two from my feed. Look at this calf! (Sount up.)
Highland cow baby 😍 pic.twitter.com/PHY72N91EE
— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) January 7, 2025
As I commented, at least THOSE days are over:
Ella Fitzgerald arrested after singing to an integrated audience in 1955 pic.twitter.com/vaTBzVgVok
— Historic Vids (@historyinmemes) January 7, 2025
From the Auschwitz Memorial, one I posted:
He volunteered to starve to death to save another prisoner. But then they injected phenol into his heart.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-01-08T12:01:19.130Z
Two tweets from Dr. Cobb: First, a duck thread (there are many more ducks).
hey @bsky.app, give us your best duck#InternationalUnsolicitedDuckPicDay
— The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) (@themerl.bsky.social) 2025-01-06T11:43:21.566Z
LongBoilong may he reignbsky.app/profile/uoyl…
— The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) (@themerl.bsky.social) 2025-01-06T14:37:44.377Z
Yes, Jimmy did this:
When a partial meltdown of Ontario's Chalk River Nuclear Power Plant occurred in 1952, one of the 150 Americans brought in to help dismantle the parts of the reactor was Jimmy Carter.He was lowered into the reactor in 90 second shifts, which was enough time to remove one bolt.
— Canadian History Ehx (@cdnhistoryehx.bsky.social) 2024-12-29T21:33:30.895Z
I am very sorry to hear of Peter Yarrow’s death. It seems like just yesterday, but was ten years ago that he performed at a local community stage here in Southeast Virginia with the small house packed with appreciative aging boomers. His son accompanied him on a home-built washbasin bass and kept his dad straight from time to time on the playlist. Voice was still familiar and his stories were excellent. A wonderful and nostalgic Sunday afternoon.
I also noticed a Times of Israel article that the Pasadena Synagogue has burned in the CA wildfires. Located near a wild brush area near Altadena, this is a good distance from Pacific Palisades and Malibu. It looks like these fires are pretty widespread.
I’m afraid that Yarrow’s conviction on child molestation charges poisoned my view of him, however excellent his music might have been.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/05/17/peter-yarrow-carter-pardon-assault/
Yikes! Same here.
Agreed. Copied below from Wikipedia
BTW — his claim that these were different times — an era of “real indiscretion” — does not qualify as an effective apology. Even the late 60’s was not a time when it was acceptable for a 31-year-old man to have sex (a hand job) with a 14-year-old girl.
Criminal conviction and pardon
In 1970, Yarrow was convicted and served three months in prison for taking “improper liberties” with 14-year-old Barbara Winter. In August 1969, she had gone with her 17-year-old sister to Yarrow’s hotel room in Washington, DC seeking an autograph. Winter stated that Yarrow answered the door naked and made her masturbate him until he ejaculated. Yarrow served three months of a 1–3 year prison sentence. He apologized for the incident, saying that “it was an era of real indiscretion and mistakes by categorically male performers. I was one of them. I got nailed. I was wrong. I’m sorry for it.”
Yarrow was granted a presidential pardon by Jimmy Carter on January 19, 1981, the day before Carter’s presidency ended. For decades, Yarrow avoided mention of the assault, but by the early 2000s, it became a campaign issue for politicians he supported. In 2004, U.S. Representative Martin Frost of Texas, a Democrat, canceled a fundraising appearance with Yarrow after his opponent ran a radio advertisement about Yarrow’s offense; in 2013, Republican politicians in New York called on Democratic congressional candidate Martha Robertson to cancel a scheduled fundraiser with Yarrow. In 2019, he was disinvited from a folk music festival when the organizers were informed of his conviction.
In May 2021, The Washington Post wrote that his pardon by Carter, “perhaps the only one in U.S. history wiping away a conviction for a sexual offense against a child — escaped scrutiny when it happened. It was granted just hours before the American hostages in Iran were freed, which captured headlines for weeks.” The article detailed other allegations of sexual assault of minors made against Yarrow, including the alleged rape of another teenage girl.[51]
I didn’t know about that. Yuck! What a creep.
Zuckerberg’s annoucement is a welcome sign that the winds are shifting and may start blowing strongly on favour of free(er) speech.
Zuckerberg has now admitted that Facebook was doing a lot of censoring of mainstream opinions (for example, that “trans women” are actually men and should not be in women’s sport; that there may be downsides to bringing in hundreds of thousands of Haitians; etc), and that, under pressure from the Biden administration and “fact checkers” it had censored things that were actually true (the laptop was indeed Hunter Biden’s) or at least arguable (covid might have been a lab leak).
And given the rivalry between Musk and Zuckerberg (I don’t think they ever got round to their cage fight?), it’s notable that Facebook has just adopted X’s “community notes” system, saying: “X has been doing it for a while. We think it’s working really well and are going to adopt that system”.
Also notable is the promise to join with Trump in pushing back on Europe’s drive to censorship, and their “laws institutionalizing censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative there”.
[Of course we all suspect that this is self-interest, sucking up to the Trump regime, whereas, had Kamala Harris won, he’d now be asking her how he could increase censorship to promote her DEI agenda.]
Fact-Checkers have a highly mixed reputation. Let me use two examples. FactCheck.org has condemned Kamala Harris for claiming the Michael Brown was ‘murdered’ (he wasn’t). Conversely, Glenn Kessler (WaPo) has ‘debunked’ claims that Imane Khelif has XY chromosomes (he has XY chromosomes).
I’m puzzled by your comment, so forgive me if I ask for a little clarification. If I understand you, FactCheck.org was right to correct Harris’s claim that Michael Brown was “murdered”:
https://www.factcheck.org/2019/08/harris-warren-wrong-about-brown-shooting/
But your point about Kessler is a bit confusing — as far as I can tell, Kessler never “debunked” any claims about Khelif’s chromosomes. Kessler’s point was that the claims made by the IBA about Khelif were suspect, and he pointed out that the IBA was banished by the IOC in 2023, and there were no test results made available that would support its claims about Khelif. He doesn’t seem to make any specific claim, himself, about Khelif’s chromosomes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/04/trumps-closing-ad-features-debunked-claim-about-olympic-boxer/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2024/08/02/olympic-boxing-culture-war-imane-khelif-lin-yu-ting/
That sounds a bit more nuanced than “Glenn Kessler … has ‘debunked’ claims that Imane Khelif has XY chromosomes.”
Alas, here are Glenn Kessler’s exact words. Quote
“The Facts – During the Olympics, false claims were fanned on right-leaning television and social media that two female Olympic boxers, Khelif and Taiwan’s Lin Yu Ting, were actually male. In Khelif’s case, the rumors spread after she defeated an Italian competitor, Angela Carini, in 46 seconds.”
Of course, none of that is actually true (as it applies to Imane Khelif, I have no information about Lin Yu Ting).
The title reads “Trump’s closing ad features debunked claim about Olympic boxer”
Glenn Kessler’s comments came after George Cazorla (Imane Khelif’s trainer) admitted that Imane Khelif was male and after Djaffer Ait Aoudia published Imane’s medical details in Le Correspondant. The medical details came from the French Bicetre hospital.
I detest “fact checkers” and I don’t even think I’m exaggerating my feelings. BBC Verify is a disgrace. Snopes is ideologically captured and untrustworthy, or at least it was when I last looked at it several years ago.
It’s one thing for an organisation to be biased, left or right, and even for that organisation to not explicitly state so…but it is unacceptable that supposed fact checkers are biased whilst insisting they’re not.
In concept they’re a good idea, in practice they’ve been used as a tool for suppression of speech and for spreading disinformation with an ideological bent, usually left leaning.
I’m not on X, but from the examples I’ve seen (mostly on this website) community notes work far better. It’s a good move by Zuck and Meta, Trump-initiated or not.
So Trump is threatening war with Denmark. Has he stopped to think that Denmark (including Greenland) is a NATO member? So if Trump’s USA attacks Greenland, Denmark would call on all NATO members (including USA) to honour their treaty obligations and help defend Greenland. Does he ever stop to think what he is saying?
He doesn’t need to invade. All he need do is offer each Greenlander a $100,000 “golden hello” if they vote for independence and then ask to be American. Small change in US-budget terms ($6 billion) et voila.
Now, why he wants Canada is more mysterious, since it would vote solidly Democrat and tip the balance. If he had more sense he’d suggest that Washington, Oregon and Maine might like to join Canada.
If it ever came to pass, the deal would surely be as a territory with possible ascension to statehood someday (92 years in the case of Alaska.) As a U.S. territory, Canada would not have votes in American federal elections or voting seats in the House or Senate even if we were made U.S. citizens. Like Puerto Ricans, we could vote federally in a U.S. state by moving there but Canadians in Canada would not influence American politics for many many years until a couple of generations of schoolchildren had grown up knowing themselves to be American.
To avoid messing up the Senate, the large metropolitan areas could simply be absorbed into the Democratic states they are closest to and already highly integrated with commercially and culturally, Vancouver being the most obvious example. No new states created at all. Creative gerrymandering could deal with the House seats. The rest of the country could be left as an essentially uninhabited territory, like Greenland.
Agreed, the whole idea is a far-fetched troll. There is nothing we have that the United States wants that it can’t get just by letting its Chinese-owned businesses buy it from our Chinese-owned businesses. If our dollar tanks, those imports will be much cheaper, even with tariffs, for American buyers than if they were priced in U.S. dollars. Some Canadians think Canada would be better off in the Union. That might be true but the Americans would be looking at what’s in it for them, not us. Annexing Canada would bring a host of our picayune obsessions and intractable problems into American responsibility. It would make the Dept. of the Interior an “interesting” place to work, though.
Leave us to it, and buy what you need, is my advice to President Trump.
This is crazy. I don’t recall this being something he mentioned before the election.
Why is it that none of the articles on Panama and Greenland discuss the motivations for Trump interest, such as the fact that China now owns 40% of the Canal? Chalk up another one for Carter.
The news certainly HAS mentioned that; it was on the NBC evening news last night.
I don’t see how China owns any of it. From Newsweek: “While Chinese companies manage two of the five ports near the Panama Canal and have invested in related infrastructure, these activities are distinct from the canal’s governance and operations. The Panama Canal Authority has maintained full control of the canal since 1999 (following the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties), when Panama regained sovereignty over the waterway.”
DrB is just parroting Sean Hannity.
Again.
I remember hearing a story, maybe it’s apocryphal, of Jimmy Carter’s tour of the Three Mile Island facility after the accident there. If I remember it correctly, he was told to don protective gear to protect against radiation, but because of his education and experience in nuclear reactors, he knew that the situation at TMI was safe. As a result, he insisted on touring the facility wearing only minimal paper booties rather than a full outfit, and by doing so was able to calm public fear of a dangerous nuclear disaster.
This story always stuck with me as a great example of leadership. Of course, as an engineer, I love it when people are able to apply knowledge of science to guide their actions.
Buying Greenland. Annexing Canada. Taking over the Panama Canal. Renaming the Gulf of Mexico. The scary and sad part is the media treats those insane utterances as serious policy statements. If Trump was anyone else his family would have him in a nursing home. My personal take is that Trump wants to be a tough guy like Putin and start taking over territory. Given that he is Trump, it is all merely bluster.
Yes, I agree.
Also insane how so many people among the general public take his utterances as serious policy statements. Or at least disappointing. Rationalizations for why the US could and should do those things, and how it would be good for Greenland and Panama if the US did so, have filled chat rooms and comments sections all over the internet. As if Trump has given these things serious thought opposed to what the case actually is, that Trump spontaneously pulled these statements out of his nethers to deflect when questioned about why he’s backpedaling on his promise to lower grocery prices.
Marjorie Taylor Greene already said she is having legislation written up to rename the Gulf of Mexico. She compared it to changing Post Office names! While they’re at it, why don’t they rename the United States of America “Trumplandia?” They rename airports!
KTLA was broadcasting live last night from (what looked like) a nursing home that was frantically evacuating residents from the fire. The residents were in wheelchairs, wrapped in blankets mostly, but some were partially exposed to the elements. It was heartbreaking to watch all these helpless people being rescued—loaded into buses and ambulances. I hope they got out safely, but moving frail, elderly people is itself very risky—even if they escape the fire. Many of them looked disoriented.
Regarding the policing of lies, I agree that the best antidote for lies is truth, not censorship. Practically, it’s very difficult to isolate lies from truth algorithmically—which is what FaceBook and X would need to do if they were to keep up at scale. Otherwise, they would have to hire thousands of researchers to deal with the millions of posts and tweets. It just doesn’t seem practicable. Nor is it wise to curtail free speech, as I already mentioned.
The fires in LA are terrifying to read about. So are the pictures.
I can only hope the deaths will be minimal. I read there’s two confirmed so far.
Sorry in advance, if I ramble. Reason: Finishing–i hope–with NYE Covid. Whadda way to ring in the new year. (I had it once before, but mostly slept through it for 48 hours and then was fine. This time has been a nightmare.)
[Clears throat]
No. Stop.
The President-elect holds a press conference in which he threatens, through economic and/or military violence, to retake the Panama canal, take over Greenland and Canada, and change the name of the Gulf of Mexico.
If he’s kidding, it’s a weird and wasteful use of a press conference, and it’s not funny. It’s concerning. It screams of dementia.
If he’s serious, he’s either trying to deflect from his campaign promises, or he’s being about as unconstitutional as any president has EVER been.
If this were Biden, maga, Republicans, and Democrats (rightly so) would be calling for the 25th or an impeachment for going against our constitution.
And yet, the media responds as if it’s just another person on a soapbox or corner barstool in a small town.
This isn’t a crazy uncle. It’s not SOP.
Again, sorry. I think I’ll take a nap.
The German news magazine Spiegel writes:
Foreign Minister Baerbock was not surprised that the de facto ruler Ahmed al-Sharaa did not offer a handshake. Baerbock and French Foreign Minister Barrot had already been informed before the trip from Damascus that Sharaa and the new male rulers do not greet women with a handshake. Even the two men from the Syrian protocol on Friday morning had not shaken Baerbock’s hand when they greeted her after landing.
Baerbock and Barrot had therefore actually agreed that the Frenchman would not shake his hand either. At first, he did not do so during the greeting. However, when Sharaa extended his hand to him, the two men did touch fingertips.
It was also reported from delegation circles that Sharaa did extend his hand to Baerbock at the end of the conversation. In the confusion of the departure, however, there was no handshake.
While the “fact checker” portion of Zuckerberg’s speech has drawn much attention, it is the below excerpt that is more important:
“Finally, we’re going to work with President Trump to push back on governments around the world that are going after American companies and pushing to censor more. The U.S. has the strongest constitutional protections for free expression in the world. Europe has an ever-increasing number of laws institutionalizing censorship and making it difficult to build anything innovative there. Latin American countries have secret courts that can order companies to quietly take things down. China has censored our apps from even working in the country. The only way that we can push back on this global trend is with the support of the U.S. government.
And that’s why it’s been so difficult over the past four years — when even the U.S. government has pushed for censorship by going after us and other American companies.”
It is that last sentence that most matters—the content of which a large swath of our voting public is either supportive, ignorant, or in denial. And, given that it is true, it matters regardless of Zuckerberg’s motivation.
Seen this Jerry?
Canada—Laurier’s Administrators Block Debate on Indigenous Ways of Knowing.
Very discouraging. Quote:
IWK is included in the university’s collective agreement, and the new Indigenous Strategic plan calls for “[i]ncreasing the Indigenous content across all disciplines.”
The plan also calls for “decolonization,” defined as the “Overhaul of knowledge production to balance power between Indigenous and Western ways of knowing.”
Coel, the author of that article states that “Falsifiability is the backbone of the scientific method” and says that this is relevant to the panel event regarding Indigenous Ways of Knowing (IWK) and its place in the university.
However, because western science is a colonialist construct, this method is not useful when evaluating IWK. While you or I will understand that woo is woo, those who ascribe validity to IWK have a ready answer: you can’t apply a western colonialist scientific principle to a non-western IWK, so the IWK cannot be invalidated using the scientific method.
If some IWK says that a good sage smudge will cure illness and it doesn’t, then the obvious answer is not that the sage smudge didn’t work but rather that the gods chose not to enact the cure. How can you know it’s due to the whim of the gods? You don’t because you’re not a god, so falsifiability can’t apply.
Note: Laurier’s position is in line with UNESCO’s Agenda 2030, specifically regarding epistemic justice.
… that somewhere on campus a white male had expressed skepticism, thus breaking the spell. So he needs to be silenced.
Wilfred Laurier University is located in Waterloo, Ontario, within the original boundaries of a large tract of land, called the Haldimand Tract, that King George III gave to Chief Joseph Brant’s New York Mohawks in reward for their fighting on the British side in the American Revolution. (The Mohawks couldn’t go home to New York for obvious reasons.) Over the years Brant’s descendants sold back 95% of the tract to British colonists to encourage settlement and trade in what was then wilderness. Much of it is now a rapidly growing densely populated region an hour’s drive from Toronto, including the twin cities of Kitchener-Waterloo with their own suburbs. Many immigrants have settled there seeking lower house prices and jobs in the tech industry. (U of Waterloo was where Blackberry originated and it spawned the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics.)
Recently, agitators on what became the Six Nations Reserve, the residual 5%, have got it in their heads that this land wasn’t sold, only lent or rented to the Europeans, or “stolen”, and they periodically talk about taking it all back. They have occupied (and kept) subdivision land and obstructed highways and public works projects outside the Reserve. During a recent ruction an activist who seems to answer only to himself issued to municipalities a moratorium on development of all the lands within the old Haldimand Tract. He graciously promised not to run existing landowners off their land but said he would if a farmer sold his land to a developer and the municipality approved subdivision for building lots.
I think it is safe to say that both universities in Waterloo are scared to death that if they allow any WrongThink to be given words, their campuses will be occupied by bands of people who are much tougher than the effete women who occupied campuses last year in the name of Hamas. They don’t obey the King’s Court injunctions and the police don’t dare enforce them. The response of the administration to Prof. McNally’s inspired trouble-making is entirely to be expected. They are not woke, just terrified.
….”bad speech supposed to be countered with better speech”. Yes, yes, of course, But I think that’s naive. Brandolini’s Law of Bullshit Asymmetry succinctly describes the intrinsic advantage of “bad speech”. (What about deliberate, systematic lying about well established matters of public health? And why bother with peer review?). We have already the rise of vaccine preventable infectious disease, for example. This may accelerate. I guess it depends on what one finds bothersome — whatever it was, it will get worse. Conspiracy theory, already thriving, will prevail.