Thursday: Hili dialogue

January 23, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to Thursday, January 23, 2025 and National Pie Day, a most excellent day. What should it be: cherry, pecan, lemon meringue, or an old favorite of mine that I haven’t had for years: sour cream/raisin pie? It so happens that I am receiving a shoofly pie, sent from an Amish bakery in Pennsylvania, and it should arrive today. This is what it will look like. If you haven’t had this molasses based pie, you haven’t lived (good with coffee for breakfast!)

Syounan Taji, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also International Sticky Toffee Pudding Day (perhaps Britain’s best dessert), National Rhubarb Pie Day (the world’s WORST dessert), and National Handwriting Day (mine gets worse as I age). 

There’s a Google Doodle today; if you want to play a Moon game, click on the screenshot below:

Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 23 Wikipedia page.

Da Nooz:

*Throughout the U.S., state and city officials are planning to either thwart or refuse to enforce Trump’s proposed plans to deport immigrants who came here illegally. I can even see this in my neighborhood email group.  Anticipating this, Trump is now planning to investigate any official who does this:

The interim leadership of the Justice Department has ordered U.S. attorneys around the country to investigate and prosecute law enforcement officials in states and cities if they refuse to enforce the Trump administration’s new immigration policies, according to an internal department memo.

The three-page memo, intended as guidance to all department employees for carrying out President Trump’s executive orders seeking to limit immigration and foreign gangs, asserts that state and local officials are bound to cooperate with the department under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause and could face criminal prosecution or civil penalties if they fail to comply.

The memo came as the Department of Homeland Security prepared to make targeted raids in cities, including Chicago and San Diego, with high numbers of undocumented immigrants — setting up a possible confrontation with local officials. The document underscored the central role the Justice Department will play in enforcing Mr. Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda.

“Federal law prohibits state and local actors from resisting, obstructing, and otherwise failing to comply with lawful immigration-related commands,” wrote Emil Bove III, the department’s interim deputy attorney general and a former member of the president’s criminal defense team.

U.S. attorneys’ offices and officials from various branches of the department’s Washington headquarters “shall investigate instances involving any such misconduct for potential prosecution,” Mr. Bove wrote, pointing to the same federal obstruction law used in the federal indictment against Mr. Trump that accused him of inciting the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Bove also warned localities against taking action to contradict the new federal policies and instructed the department’s civil lawyers to “identify state and local laws, policies, and activities” that flout Mr. Trump’s executive orders and “where appropriate, to take legal action to challenge such laws.”

I am still dubious whether the loudly announced raids will take place, but believe me, they have scared the bejeezus out of people in my town.  And I suppose the law is the law, and Trump has the right to do this. We’ll see about the optics of these deportations soon—if Trump does indeed carry out his “promises.”

*As Chicago baseball announcer Harry Carey used to say, “HOLY COW!” Yes, the Wall Street Journal editorial board has denounced Trump—for pardoning the January 6 insurrectionists. And rightly so!  An excerpt:

Republicans are busy denouncing President Biden’s pre-emptive pardons for his family and political allies, and deservedly so. But then it’s a shame you don’t hear many, if any, ruing President Trump’s proclamation to pardon unconditionally nearly all of the people who rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. This includes those convicted of bludgeoning, chemical spraying, and electroshocking police to try to keep Mr. Trump in power. Now he’s springing them from prison.

This is a rotten message from a President about political violence done on his behalf, and it’s a bait and switch. Asked about Jan. 6 pardons in late November, Mr. Trump projected caution. “I’m going to do case-by-case, and if they were nonviolent, I think they’ve been greatly punished,” he said. “We’re going to look at each individual case.”

Taking cues from the boss, last week Vice President JD Vance drew a clear line: “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”

So much for that. The President’s clemency proclamation commutes prison sentences to time served for 14 named people, including prominent leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who were organized and ready for violence. Then Mr. Trump tries to wipe Jan. 6 clean, with “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals.” The conceit is that there are hundreds of polite Trump supporters who ended up in the wrong place that day and have since rotted in jail.

Out of roughly 1,600 cases filed by the feds, more than a third included accusations of “assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement.” The U.S. Attorney’s office said it declined “hundreds” of prosecutions against people whose only offense was entering restricted grounds near the Capitol. Of the 1,100 sentences handed down by this year, more than a third didn’t involve prison time. The rioters who did get jail often were charged with brutal violence  [they then give examples].

. . . There are more like this, which everyone understood on Jan. 6 and shortly afterward. “There is nothing patriotic about what is occurring on Capitol Hill,” one GOP official tweeted. “This is 3rd world style anti-American anarchy.” That was Marco Rubio, now Mr. Trump’s Secretary of State. He was right. What happened that day is a stain on Mr. Trump’s legacy. By setting free the cop beaters, the President adds another.

Them’s rough words for Trump from the WSJ!

*I don’t much care for Prince Harry or Meghan Markle, as I see them as self-aggrandizing publicity hounds, but they’re presumably a lot richer now that Harry has won a lawsuit against the Sun newspaper group for “unlawful intrusion into his private life.”

The publisher of the Sun newspaper has agreed to pay “substantial damages” and apologised to the Duke of Sussex to settle a long-running legal battle over claims of unlawful intrusion into his life.

Prince Harry alleged journalists and private investigators working for News Group Newspapers (NGN) used unlawful techniques to pry on his private life – and executives then allegedly covered it up.

NGN apologised for “serious intrusion” by the Sun between 1996 and 2011, and admitted “incidents of unlawful activity” were carried out by private investigators working for the newspaper, in a statement read out in court.

It also apologised for distress it caused Harry through the “extensive coverage” and “serious intrusion” into the private life of his late mother, Princess Diana.

When he launched his claim, the prince alleged that more than 200 articles published by NGN between 1996 and 2011 contained information gathered by illegal means.

He repeatedly said he wanted the case to go to trial so that he could get “accountability” for other alleged victims of unlawful newsgathering.

NGN was “surprised by the serious approach by Prince Harry for settlement in recent days”, a source told the BBC.

A source close to the Duke of Sussex responded that the apology “provides all the insight you need”.

Speaking outside court on behalf of Prince Harry, his barrister David Sherborne described the settlement as a “monumental victory”, and said NGN had been “finally held to account for its illegal actions and its blatant disregard for the law”.

The BBC understands the settlements to both Prince Harry and former Labour deputy leader Lord Tom Watson have cost NGN more than £10m in pay outs and legal fees.

In total NGN has spent upwards of £1bn in damages and costs to those who claim their phones were hacked and their privacy invaded by the News of the World and the Sun.

. . .  The apology also covers incidents of unlawful activities carried out by private investigators working for the Sun newspaper from 1996-2011, the statement said – but “not by journalists”.

You can find the apology here, though it does not admit the newspaper engaged in any illegal actions.  There is no word what the “substantial damages” will be, but Harry is of course already extremely wealthy.

*Here’s a deceptive article in the NYT, (archived here) called “Even religious people don’t trust religious institutions.” It starts with the story of a Catholic who, for good reasons, no longer goes to church, but then segues into—you got it—the God-shaped hole that supposedly runs through humanity:

Often, church or temple leaders learn about accusations, and instead of dealing with them, they try to make the problem disappear by moving the perpetrator to another location. Upholding the public image of the institution is more important than protecting the vulnerable or seeking justice for them.

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It’s bad enough when secular institutions do this. But religious institutions are supposed to provide a moral example, even when it’s not easy. When spiritual authorities ignore their values and their responsibility to the parents and children who trusted them, it’s crushing.

As a secular, mildly observant Jew, I don’t feel strongly about whether other Americans attend religious services or believe in God. But I do care about the pervasive — and honestly, warranted — cynicism that young people have about religious institutions, because I think it is contributing to a more disconnected, careless and cruel society.

In October 2023, Harvard’s Making Caring Common Project published a report about youth mental health problems that found that “nearly three in five young adults (58 percent) reported that they lacked ‘meaning or purpose’ in their lives in the previous month. Half of young adults reported that their mental health was negatively influenced by ‘not knowing what to do with my life.’” However, they found that young adults who belonged to any religion were more likely to report having meaning and purpose.

Religious institutions are certainly not the only potential avenue for meaning, purpose and value in society. But we can’t underestimate the power of their reach, even in an increasingly secular world. When they have epic moral failures, it affects all of us, because it makes everyone more suspicious of potentially welcoming communities. Religious organizations are one of the few kinds of groups left in America that are free to join and have few barriers to entry. Faith groups are among vanishingly few organizations that are meant for people of all ages, where the entire family can ideally feel welcome. I wish there were more secular communities that offered the same kind of support across life spans that religious groups provide, but at least for now, there are few nonreligious alternatives.

As Steven Tipton, a professor emeritus at Emory’s Candler School of Theology, points out in his new book, “In and Out of Church: The Moral Arc of Spiritual Change in America,” millions of Americans who say they have no religion in particular are actually “liminal” in that they may leave religious communities “only for a season.” It would help bring these liminals back if religious communities pursued “a truer, wider path toward the common good.”

Note the statement that we have to bring these people back to religion. But why can’t they join humanistic communities rather than ones that share belief in fictitious supernatural beings? And what accounts for all the recent palaver about this god-shaped hole mishigass?

*Medals from the Paris Olympics are decaying, especially the bronze ones. And it’s not even a year since they were handed out

For any Paris Olympic swimmers who are considering celebrating their bronze medals around a pool, they might want to think twice.

Reports are already rolling in from Paris from athletes claiming their bronze medals have visibly deteriorated before the Olympics have even concluded. American skateboarder Nyjah Huston was the first to publicly criticize the quality of the bronze medals just a week after winning his hardware in the men’s street event, posting a photo on his Instagram story that showed serious discoloration.

“They’re apparently not as high quality as you’d think,” Huston said. “It’s looking rough. I don’t know, Olympic medals, we gotta step up the quality a little bid. The medal looking like it went to war and back.”

British diver Yasmin Harper echoed the sentiment after capturing bronze in the women’s 3m synchronized springboard last week.

“There has been some small bits of tarnishing I will admit, yes,” Harper said. “I don’t know, I think it’s like water or anything that gets on the metal, it’s making it go a little bit discolored.”

The good news is that Paris 2024 Olympic organizers responded to the social media firestorm on Friday, assuring athletes that damaged medals will be “systematically replaced.”

“Paris 2024 is aware of a social media report from an athlete whose medal is showing damage a few days after it was awarded,” a spokesperson told The Daily Mail. “Paris 2024 is working closely with the Monnaie de Paris, the institution tasked with the production and quality control of the medals, and together with the National Olympic Committee of the athlete concerned, in order to appraise the medal to understand the circumstances and cause of the damage. The medals are the most coveted objected of the Games and the most precious for the athletes.”

Bronze medals are not actually made of bronze, but rather “red brass.” Both brass and bronze are copper alloys, but red brass is made of more zinc than bronze is. Bronze is generally harder and more durable than brass, but brass is more malleable and easier to shape.

Each Paris Olympic medal features a small piece of iron from the Eiffel Tower, collected over the last century during renovations. The medals were designed by the Chaumet House of Jewellery, a luxury jewelry and watch brand headquartered in Paris. The backs of both the Olympic and Paralympic designs are the same, including the hexagon-shaped piece of iron.

Here’s Huston’s medal, and it’s in bad shape:

 

Meanwhile, a gold medal from the St. Louis Olympics in 1904 has just been auctioned off for over $545,000.  And back then they were really gold:

This was the first Olympics where gold medals were awarded and the Americans took advantage, winning 78 of 96 events. Unlike Olympic medals these days which are mostly made of silver with gold plating, these were smaller and made entirely of gold.

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili contemplates Andrzej’s first book, written in the 1970s, about Polish politics and economics.

Hili: What book is this?
A: A very old book about times very long ago.
In Polish:
Hili: Co to za książka?
Ja: Bardzo stara książka o bardzo dawnych czasach.

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

From Merilee:

From Rawan Osman:

And from Cat Memes:

From Andrzej’s Facebook page: he noticed that many of the very people who go after Musk for supposedly making a Hitler salute admire groups that REALLY make Hitler salutes:

Speaking of which, here’s a group of cowards at Columbia doing their usual cowardly protest (h/t Luana), and FIRE calls them out.  This is at Columbia University, of course, which I suspect will soon have to settle a large lawsuit for promoting an antisemitic atmosphere:

Bill Maher has a rather disgusting example of social progress:

From Malcolm: a cat missing its two front legs. But it’s doing fine!

From JKR, pointing out a failure of the American left:

Two tweets from Jez’s “lovely pets” thread:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I reposted:

A Dutch boy was gassed to death upon arriving at Auschwitz. He was seven years old.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-01-23T11:42:16.769Z

Two posts from Dr. Cobb. Did you know that male narwhal tusks are directionally asymmetrical (it’s the left one that’s big), but also there’s a vestigial one? (Only males have the long tusk, which is an enlarged incisor tooth.)

We all know male narwhals have one long tusk. In this cool display, the skull in the middle has been dissected to show that the right tusk is also there, but it's tiny, and embedded within the upper jaw.BTW female #narwhals are almost never displayed in #museums (the other skulls here are belugas)

— Jack Ashby (@jackdashby.bsky.social) 2025-01-22T14:25:11.466Z

Trees that produce baby trees, with the seeds growing before they’ve fallen from the tree. There’s a link:

Animals lay eggs or birth babies. Trees make seeds…except for the ones that have live babies, like we do?! I wrote for @biographic.bsky.social about the genetics of baby-having mangrove trees, and why they might have evolved this way: http://www.biographic.com/how-some-tre… 🧪

— Elizabeth Preston (@inkfish.bsky.social) 2025-01-22T13:58:39.833Z

49 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

    1. Hmmm. Typo? Freudian slip? Jerry testing if we are paying attention? Evil autocorrect algorithm?….yeah, I’m betting on 2.

  2. Re the fabled “god-shaped hole”:

    Gnostic and Hermetic cults have been active from far back – perhaps e.g. even in ancient Rome, with Neoplatonism.

    They arise as heresies in or around the orthodox church, as worldly means to liberate the soul that was imprisoned by the evil demiurge artisan of the universe. The cults posit the demiurge is keeping everyone from becoming as god. “Demiurge”, “god”, “soul”, and so on are old-fashioned words.

    So, modern language and literature can be observed to develop different ideas and thought as stand-ins for the same overt process – the liberation of some repressed, intrinsic essence – independent of a church or orthodox religion. Queer Theory, Carl Jung, Rousseau, Hegel, and so on are a broad range of examples of dialectical (Kant) formulations of such spiritual transformation on Earth, and of Earth (see Robert Muller’s New Genesis) that are active today. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is an example of a jesuit priest with heretical writing. This category of religion is theosophic – “wisdom of God”, as the counterpart of the ordinary theologic kind that most everyone’s ancestors followed. Theologic religions excel at concealment.

    A couple references off the top of my head :

    Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition
    Glenn Alexander Magee
    Cornell University Press

    The Gnostic Bible
    (Lots and lots of gnostic literature)

    Gnosis and Hermeticism From Antiquity to Modern Times
    van den Broek and Hanegraaff

    Gender in Mystical and Occult Thought – Behmenism and its Development in England
    B. J. Gibbons
    Cambridge U. Press
    1996

    And last but not least – anyone recognize this one from Oprah’s show? Guess what – it’s Hermetic alchemy :

    The Secret
    Rhonda Byrne

  3. I’m not entirely happy about the Trump pardons, not because I think they were wrong, but because I think Trump should have spoken more directly about why he was granting clemency and pardons. He spoke about this during the campaign, but, obviously, many people weren’t listening to what he said. Newsweek tries to put the pardons in perspective: “Sorry, Biden’s Pardons Are Much Worse Than Trump’s“.

    1. The op-ed by the notorious John Yoo of water-boarding infamy is hardly persuasive, and ignores and recasts history in bizarre ways.

      Recent reporting suggests that Trump could not speak more directly about his intentions regarding the January 6 insurrectionists because the wholesale pardon to virtually every one of them was a last-minute, impulsive decision: he’s quoted as saying “f**k it, release them all…” since a case-by-case consideration was onerous. And we know how fond of detail Trump is!

      Finally, the point has been made before that his supporters were indeed listening to what he said. Those supporters called the January 6 insurrections “political hostages” unfairly prosecuted for their friendly tourist visit to D.C. that day. They got exactly what they voted for, and a little more.

    2. A big issue is the fact that the authorities were a hundred times more diligent in going after Jan 6th rioters than they were in going after BLM and Antifa rioters, hundreds and hundreds of whom were arrested … and then just let go, all charges dropped.

      Some people, shocked at the idea that a rioter who assaulted police is pardoned, are totally fine if that rioter is doing it under a BLM banner.

      1. Over 300 BLM rioters have been facing federal charges. As I understand it, the cases in which charges have been dropped were local, and local prosecutors felt it was not worth the effort to pursue charges. “The authorities” is an ambiguous category in your statement: federal authorities are certainly interested in pursuing charges against violations of federal law, but I am unaware of any January 6 insurrectionists who have been subject to local arrest and prosecution here in D.C.

        If you check, you will find that BLM rioters who assaulted police did indeed get prosecuted — the latest I know of was Brandon Pickett, who recently pleaded guilty to federal charges that he threw a rock at a police officer. The larger issue, perhaps, was that police in a number of cities were accused of unnecessary violence against BLM protestors who were simply standing on public property. In one case, police threw an elderly gentleman to the ground, causing a brain injury, when he was simply standing on a sidewalk watching the BLM events unfold, and had no part in them.

        1. In NYC BLM rioters were not only not prosecuted but were awarded millions collectively for the inconvenience of being arrested while burning down parts of the city. Opposite my apartment in Manhattan being one such place.

          Occasional and rare prosecution aside – nearly 60 people died and a billion dollars of damage was done as parts of many cities burned. (Wilfred Reilly and others).

          No defense of Jan 6 punks but BLM criminals walking almost totally free is a travesty.

          D.A.
          NYC

          1. I’m not sure that a $13 million settlement for abuse of protestors is so awful. And, as I wrote, over 300 protesters face(d) federal charges. No one is trying to justify the violence of BLM actions, and Democratic leaders condemned the violence then and now. Unlike Republicans, who now consider the January 6 insurrectionists to be simple tourists unfairly prosecuted…. “BLM criminals walking almost totally free” needs to be documented.

      2. I’m not an American but I did read the WSJ article and the reader comments.

        Over and over they mentioned BLM and Antifa.

        Two wrongs don’t make a right but selective justice is deeply resented.

    3. So we have the Laken Riley Act to assure that if an immigrant commits an assault they are detained. Meanwhile if you assault a police officer you are free to go? Great moral clarity. Not that your average Trump supporter is given to moral clarity. Trump’s assertion that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose a vote has never been more true.

      1. I was wondering if the Jan 6 rioters who were convicted of violence against security guards might face civil lawsuits.

  4. Trumpian zeitgeist response to olympic medal quality whining: second and third are losers baby. You’re lucky to get a medal. If you want quality, win the gold. Be first in your event. Be a winner. Be best!

  5. A quick comment on the speculation that “And I suppose the law is the law, and Trump has the right to do this.”

    The “sanctuary” principle, that local law enforcement cannot be dragooned into enforcing federal law, has been upheld by the Supreme Court, so it is not clear that Trump or his DOJ has the right to prosecute local law enforcement officials who decline to obey his illegal order.

    1. Have to disagree with you Barbara.
      I’m unsure of any precedent that nullifies the supremacy clause. “Sanctuary cities” ideas have held up in small edge cases (refugees in large cities) – or rather been tolerated – but have never felt the full push back from the feds. Yet.

      best regards,

      D.A.
      NYC

    2. “Dragooned into enforcing federal law.” Interesting choice of words.

      Dragoons were mounted infantry — today the armoured regiments in Commonwealth armies. (Unlike cavalry, they would dismount and fight on foot, with muskets instead of sabres.) So if sanctuary cities can “thwart” enforcement of federal law, not merely find themselves suddenly indisposed, can they, say, lawfully sow caltrops on the line of approach to lame the dragoons’ horses, or betray them to the enemy?

      1. “So if sanctuary cities can “thwart” enforcement of federal law…”

        I am not sure where you found the term “thwart” but it was not in anything I wrote, so I would be grateful if you did not surround it by quotation marks that imply that I used it. Thwarting the enforcement of federal law could be obstruction. The issue is that local and state officials cannot be coerced or forced (“dragooned” is from the courts, but that may be to too subtle….) to enforce federal laws that fall under the jurisdiction of federal officials and agencies. This is a long established principle, and has in more recent years been adopted by communities under the awkward “sanctuary” label. Undocumented immigrants are still subject to prosecution for the violation of local and state laws; the issue tends to arise when a undocumented person is released from custody and comes to the attention of federal officials, e.g. ICE.

        Apologies to Prof. Coyne if I am hogging too much space here; this will be my last post.

        1. Just saw this now and eager to clarify.
          My quote marks around “thwart” were to quote the word from Jerry’s original post:
          “Throughout the U.S., state and city officials are planning to either thwart or refuse to enforce Trump’s proposed plans to deport immigrants who came here illegally.”

          No intent to attribute it to you.

    3. Generally correct. The federal government has very limited ability to compel local or state agencies to enforce federal law, as the Supreme Court has said a number of times (using the term ‘dragooned’). However, obstructing federal enforcement by federal authorities is a different matter.

  6. I think one significant benefit church offers to young people is that it forces them to consider what they believe about the nature of reality, the point of existence, and how to live a good life. The answers provided by religion may be facile or even wrong, but the process itself is important, helping them shift their perspective from themselves and, in this era, their “identities,” into a broader framework of meaning.

    Sure, philosophy does it better, but that’s harder work. Humanism is as or more rewarding, but not readily available. So for the most part we’re kind of stuck with what we’ve got – at least for now.

    1. It can also be one of the few ways where they socialize in ‘meat world’, rather than online.

  7. If not identical to Bill Maher’s experience, I am familiar with the dynamics of decades of the dumb drug war.

    We live in enlightened times now thankfully. And it came sooner than expected. I think the decline of drug legal idiocy (at odds with the actual medicine of the issue) AND the decline of religion have much to do with the spread of information online over the last three decades. Nonsense like religion or reefer madness suffers in the face of truth and sharing of opinions at scale.

    D.A.
    NYC

    1. Here’s some information about pot that was NOT spread over the internet before widespread legalization: namely, the info that pot is not as benign as most people – including me – thought. E.g., who knew that pot IS addictive and that 3 in 10 people who smoke will develop a use disorder? Or that pot can trigger schizophrenia in people who would have otherwise escaped this dreadful disease?

      I can’t help but wonder if scientists in the field might have chosen not to deeply pursue research into the potential downsides of pot for fear the public wouldn’t support legalization if they discovered any. If so, that would be troubling. But what’s also troubling – to me, personally – is the fact that I might have agreed with them, since I still believe that the downsides of making pot illegal are worse than the downsides of pot use itself.

      As an aside, is anyone else disappointed with their experiences with legalized pot? I loved pot when I was younger, but all it does for me these days is obliterate my short term memory (even with very small doses).

      1. If drugs (including alcohol) don’t control you, they bore you. Be thankful. I think Mr. Maher is just trying to cover up his addiction by joking about progress. But I have alcoholics and addicts in my family, so I am undoubtedly biased.

        Psychosis from the highly potent weed being distributed now seems to pose the greatest danger to adolescents. Whether it “causes” schizophrenia that wouldn’t otherwise have appeared eventually is hard to know. But if your first psychotic break is at 14 instead of 21, that’s a third of your life wrecked. And then there is the intractable vomiting that is poorly understood.

        With pot now legal in Canada so long as it is sold in government-licensed drug shops only to adults, street dealers have an incentive to hang around middle schools to replace their lost market. Nobody is getting busted, for equity reasons.

        The reason Canada legalized cannabis was not so that the wider populace could enjoy the healthful benefits of this magical natural herb through shops on every corner. Rather, it was to prevent the police from having a lawful cause to search and arrest black and indigenous youth when they smelled it in the car at a traffic stop.

        (Visitors to Canada note: it is still illegal to import it, whether behind your testicles or in bales in the trunk of your car.)

        1. After a quick Google and AI engine search, I am unable to verify the claims Brooke has made about marijuana use.

          Most sources report a use disorder in 9% of people (up to 17% in some subgroups), not 30%. The association of marijuana use and schizophrenia is from longitudinal studies, which can not show a cause and effect.

          I don’t think marijuana legalization advocates argued that MJ was completely benign, just less of a health problem than alcohol or tobacco, and, as Brooke points out, “the downsides of making pot illegal are worse than the downsides of pot use itself.”.

          We are still in the early days of MJ legalization. It is not surprising to me that we would see an uptick in the “downsides of pot use” at this stage.

        2. After buying into popular 60s views that drugs (short of heroin) were mostly safe and in any case non-addictive, I was so impressed by Mark Vonnegut’s narrative in his 1975 book “The Eden Express” that I changed my tune.
          Everyone knew that smoking Marijuana could “make you paranoid” but it was always attributed to the social context and risk of legal consequences, denying it could be an actual physiological effect. Vonnegut attributed his actual, diagnosed, schizophrenic breaks to drug use, at least as trigger factor.

  8. A molasses pie sound like a great idea. It’s been ages, but I love the stuff and I used to sneak out tablespoons of it from the pantry while young. A peanut butter and molasses sandwich is to be recommended.

  9. Re. Andrzej’s tweet, I’m not sure what the point is. Is putting Musk into the context of terrorist organizations (at least one of whom got direct inspiration from Hitler) rather than Hitler himself meant to be a defense of the man? That’s roughly as convincing as the “Roman salute”: “no, he’s not doing the salute of the German fascists, he’s doing the almost identical-looking one of the Italian fascists!” Gee, I guess we can breathe a sigh of relief now.

    1. The point is very simple: to show the hypocrisy of people who treat as their heroes real ideological heirs of Hitler interpret with glee an awkward gesture of a man (who definitely is not a Hitler admirer) as a Nazi salute. 

      1. Okay, fair enough, hypocritical idiots exist.
        Their hypocrisy does not erase the existence of bigoted idiots on the other side of the spectrum. Speaking of which: is everyone aware that only a few weeks ago Musk wrote a glowing endorsement of the AfD, a German far-right party whose most influential politician Björn Höcke has stated “The big mistake was to paint Hitler as the ultimate evil”? Musk then went on a stream with the AfD’s leader Alice Weidel, giving her the opportunity to give her take on Hitler.
        Now, I don’t know if Musk was trolling, or trying to gain favors with the far right, or whatever else was on his mind. But the notion that he just exuberantly made a gesture that happens to look like a Nazi salute, twice in a row, on the day of Trump’s inauguration, by chance… seems absurd. Whatever his motivation was, he is normalizing fascism, and people who defend and excuse this are helping him.

        1. Whether or not Elon meant his gesture as a Nazi salute is unknowable to anyone other than him. Those who insist it wasn’t and those who insist it was are both making arguments based only on assumptions. As you mentioned, he does fully support the AfD party in Germany and often tweets and amplifies white supremacist posts on his platform. That is knowable and to me, anyway, more indicative of his character (or lack thereof).

        3. To me, Musk is not fighting the war that ended 80 years ago. He is fighting today’s war. He is trying his best to hurt Ukraine, and AfD are Putin’s puppets.

  10. The Olympic committee needs to spray those medals with clear lacquer before handing them out. Problem (probably) solved (or solved for at least for a good long while).

    So sad that the only remaining remnant of young David Vreeland, murdered in the Holocaust, is that blurry, damaged photograph—an entire world lost.

    1. Those medals: copper/zinc plus a bit of iron from the Eiffel Tower. Bimetallic corrosion?

  11. I saw the clip of Musk and didn’t think for a second it was a Nazi salute. He was acting out the phrase “My heart goes out to you.”

    Great posts today as always, thank you!

    1. But it was in fact, a “Roman”/fascist/ Nazi/ Star-Trek-mirror-universe salute. Whatever he may have meant by it, the gesture itself was unmistakable. Watch it with the sound off. Nobody would ever interpret that as “my heart goes out to you.” (Which he said not while performing the gesture, twice, but only afterwards and while making a different gesture.) (Plus, when has anybody ever used “my heart goes out to you” to mean “thank you”? Oh, right he’s awkward, OK.)

      I do NOT think he was swearing literal fealty to Adolph Hitler. I don’t know what he thought he was doing. Owning libs or dogwhistling wingnuts or buzz-lightyearing, I don’t know. But given the actual gesture, I am remain surprised at how sure people seem to evince being about his angelic awkward innocence.

  12. Shouldn’t be long before one of the January 6 ~1100 kills someone or does some other serious damage, and we have a Willie Horton scenario. Chances are at least ~1100x greater, anyway.

    Otherwise, I just finished listening to an interview on NPR with Bloomberg reporter Zeke Faux, who wrote a book in 2023: Number Go Up: “Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall” (and so knows in detail about Crypto) talking about that in re. Orange Julius.
    Among other scary things, this crowd is actually pushing for the US to establish a Strategic Crypto Reserve. What a sweet deal that would be for them. Unfortunately, I missed the middle third of the interview because of a phone call, but I see that it’s already archived here.

    1. How many of the recently released January 6th rioters will be able to fond gainful employment? If you were an employer, would you hire them?

    2. I saw somewhere a couple of weeks back a comment on the Strategic Crypto Reserve that said, in effect, that crypto was based on the greater fool theory, and that those pushing the Strategic Crypto Reserve were pushing to make the United States taxpayer the greatest fool of last resort.

      1. Sounds about right. Far as I can tell, it’s basically a Ponzi scheme. They are running out of fools, and see this as the way out.

  13. Re the mental-health study finding a majority of young adults reporting they lacked ‘meaning or purpose’ in their lives in the previous month, does a follow-up study also show that the majority of Pontiffs had a particular faith and that forests contain ursine excrement? I haven’t read the study, so maybe a majority of it is not itself ursine or bovine excrement, but I well-enough remember myself and my friends at that age often feeling a lack of purpose etc. It comes with the territory of growing up.

    And as for religious organisations being one of the few kinds of groups left in America that are free to join, they are free in the exact same sense as other advertising-supported media. At least non-religious radio, TV, and social media don’t often promote tithing….

    [/rant]

  15. Completely O/T, but I can strongly recommend the BBC1 nature programme Winterwatch, live Tuesday to Friday this week. Today’s episode is (I think) here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p012msk2/winterwatch

    If this doesn’t work, I’m sure someone with better IT skills than me can find a way of accessing it. Today we enjoyed foxes, ducks, otters, and some expert birders ringing Snipe and Jack Snipe. This show is an oasis among all the distressing news elsewhere. Worth the licence fee on its own!

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