Welcome to a Hump Day (“ཧམ་པ་ཉིན་མོ། ” in Tibetan ): Wednesday, January 29, 2025, and National Corn Chip Day. These are useless unless served with a good salsa before a Mexican meal, or, better yet, as a basis for nachos, which are good:
You need to learn this about nachos, which are a recent culinary innovation:
Nachos originated in the city of Piedras Negras, Coahuila in Mexico, across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas in the United States. Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya created nachos in 1943 at the restaurant the Victory Club when Mamie Finan and a group of U.S. military officers’ wives, whose husbands were stationed at the nearby U.S. Army base Fort Duncan, traveled across the border to eat at the Victory Club. When Anaya was unable to find the cook, he went to the kitchen and spotted freshly fried pieces of corn tortillas. In a moment of culinary inspiration, Anaya cut fried tortillas into triangles, added shredded cheese, sliced pickled jalapeño peppers, quickly heated them, and served them. After tasting the snack, Finan asked what it was called. Anaya responded, “Well, I guess we can just call them Nacho’s Special.” In Spanish, “Nacho” is a common nickname for Ignacio.
Here is Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya, the inventor of nachos. We should be so lucky to leave a legacy like his!:
But. . . . eating nachos means you’re engaging not only in cultural appropriation, but colonialism! Igancio made nachos at the behest of white women.
It is also Chinese New Year, the beginning of The Year of the Snake. There’s a Google Doodle about this; click below to see where it goes (there’s a game).
It’s also National Carnation Day, Curmudgeons Day (perhaps an extension of Coynezaa?), Freethinkers Day (Thomas Paine was born on this day in 1737), National Puzzle Day, and Seeing Eye Dog Day.
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the January 29 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*The Times of Israel reports that some families of hostages have been told that their loved ones may come home in a coffin.
Family members of several hostages who are set to be released from Gaza in the coming weeks expressed dread over their loved ones’ fates on Tuesday after Hamas conveyed information saying that eight of those 33 hostages are dead.
Following the release of the information those families were informed by the military that Hamas’s information aligned with previous military assessments and there were dire concerns about their fates.
Hamas provided a list — reportedly only numbers, without names — reporting how many of the hostages from among the 33 to be released in the first phase of the ongoing ceasefire are alive. Hamas was required to provide information about the hostages’ status as part of its obligations under the deal with Israel signed earlier this month.
The hostages’ family members confirmed that Gal Hirsh, the government point man on hostages, had reached out to them in recent days and said that while the terror group’s information was incomplete, it lined up with the assessment of Israel’s intelligence services.
“It’s not exactly data. It’s Hamas saying [the number of] ‘alive,’ ‘released,’ and ‘dead,’” specified Yizhar Lifshitz, whose father Oded Lifshitz, 84, is on the list of the initial 33 to be released.
. . .So far, seven hostages have been freed as part of the current deal, which mandates the release of 33 so-called “humanitarian hostages” during its first 42-day phase, with fighting stopped in the Strip.
As those hostages — women, children, elderly people, and sick people — are gradually released, Israel is to release some 1,904 Palestinian security prisoners, including more than a hundred serving life sentences for terror attacks
The three-phase deal’s later phases are to see negotiations with the stated goal of reaching a “sustainable calm” in the enclave, alongside the release of the remaining hostages held in Gaza, the release of more Palestinian security prisoners, and an Israeli withdrawal from the Strip.
Here are the 33 hostages supposed to be released in Phase 1 of the ceasefire (their names are at the link above. Hamas says eight of them are dead, which jibes with the IDF’s own information, and I guess IDF just informed some families that they should be prepared to receive a coffin rather than a living being:
This is not good optics, and I suspect that the dead will be returned last, and under cover of night without the disgusting ceremonies attending the return of living hostages, who were given diplomas, certificates, and so on. When the national news starts showing Israeli families weeping over these coffins, I would hope that the world would have some sympathy for what the hostages and their families went through, but as we know, sympathy for Israel lasts as long as a snowflake on a hot sidewalk.
All four of the IDF women released the other day were either injured by bullets or sexually assaulted, but the IDF is properly leaving it up to the hostages whether to divulge what happened to them. And remember, every (living) hostage returned means Israel has to releast 30 Palestinian prisoners, unless the hostage is an IDF member, in which case the number rises to fifty. I haven’t been able to find out if they’ve bargained to releast terrorists in exchange for dead hostages.
*Trump has frozen nearly all government grants and loans, and, as far as I can see, that may include science grants from agencies like the NIH, NSF, or DOE. Our University has already been informed to start cutting back on federal grants already being used, not cutting salaries but curtailing expenditure on materials and procedures. This is not good, and I wonder if Trump knew that this would bring scientific and medical research to a standstill (article archived here). The article is unsure about science funding:
Federal aid pause: The White House budget office ordered a pause in grants, loans and other federal financial assistance, a sweeping move it said was necessary to bring a vast number of programs in line with President Trump’s priorities. Several states are planning a lawsuit to block the order, which is set to go into effect at 5 p.m. Read more ›
Defending the order: In her first news conference as President Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt defended what she described as a review of federal spending and promised that direct aid to individuals would not be affected by the freeze. However, a lot of federal money goes to states and other organizations that provide individuals with aid, and it’s not clear whether that would be suspended.
Of course there will be lawsuits:
The move drew immediate outrage and lawsuits from nonprofit groups. Several states were planning to file suit on Tuesday afternoon to block the order, which is set to take effect at 5 p.m. Democrats assailed it as an unlawful encroach on Congress’s authority over federal spending, while the White House press secretary defended it as following through on the promises that restored Mr. Trump to the presidency.
“The use of federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism and green new deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve,” the Office of Management and Budget said in a two-page memo announcing the temporary halt.
There are exceptions:
The U.S. Department of Education said in a statement on Tuesday morning that the memo sent to government agencies the day before calling for a broad pause on federal spending did not apply to federal student loans or Pell grants. That money will continue to flow, the statement said.
“The temporary pause does not impact assistance received directly by individuals,” said Madison Biedermann, who, according to the department, is currently delegated to perform spokesperson duties. This assistance includes funds like federal direct student loans and Pell grants that the department provides to “individual students,” her statement said.
Part of the confusion, which included many alarmed posts on social media, sprung from the “received directly” portion of the Office of Management and Budget memo. Grants and loans for education can be sent to the school, so students may never receive the money directly.
In a follow-up statement, the department confirmed that no Pell grants or loans would be paused or delayed because of the order. Funding for the federal work-study program, which helps pay for campus jobs, will continue to flow, too.
The federal government, including agencies like the National Institutes of Health, also provides grants to conduct research at universities, and those programs may provide grants and stipends to graduate students who are working for them. It was not immediately clear whether any of that funding would be affected.
We need to get a bunch more judges, because for sure Trump’s spate of EOs will provoke a gazillion lawsuits. The problem is that these are federal issues and ergo need federal judges. And you know who appoints the federal judges. As for science, my own special interest, well, stopping it is arrantly stupid.
*Two from the Free Press today. First, “Christopher Caldwell: The biggest policy change of the century.” I’ll give a long excerpt since this is a very significant change in the law:
So tumultuous was the first week of Donald Trump’s second term that people have barely noticed, a week on, that last Tuesday he repealed affirmative action by executive order. That is astonishing.
For half a century, affirmative action has been the federal government’s principal instrument for carrying out desegregation, the longest and costliest moral crusade in American history. After the 1970s it was adapted to liberation movements, from feminism to gay rights. Supreme Court justices anguished over the way its call for special consideration of minorities might clash with the letter of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which barred racial discrimination. Over the past decade affirmative action became the hammer of the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) movement, which grew so unpopular that it has now brought affirmative action (and much else) down with it.
Trump’s decision to repeal it is the most significant policy change of this century—more significant than the Affordable Care Act of 2010 or anything done about Covid. How can people be talking about anything else? Yet major news outlets treat Trump’s bold move as a detail of personnel management: “Distress and Fury as Trump Upends Federal Jobs,” headlined The New York Times.
Somewhere along the line, the Trump administration came to understand in a sophisticated way how the enforcement of civil rights actually works. Not many Americans do—and it’s worth reviewing.
. . . . [Lyndon] Johnson used it. He basically enlisted the country’s top executives as the commissars of a radical interpretation of civil rights policy. They liked diversity from the moment it was invented until last Tuesday. They had better! Whenever a “global chief diversity officer,” like Ken Barrett of GM, intoned “diversity is our strength,” he was doing more than philosophizing. He was keeping billions of dollars of shareholder value safe from the sanctions and penalties laid out in Chapter 60 of the Code of Federal Regulations.
Had Johnson’s affirmative-action scheme been devised for anything but desegregation, it might have been considered sinister and totalitarian. Since Ronald Reagan’s time, conservatives have crowed that they could undo affirmative action “with the stroke of a pen.” Reagan mulled doing so himself in 1985. But he faced opposition from corporate donors and more liberal Republicans led by Kansas senator Bob Dole and opted not to. In 1996, Tennessee Republican senator Lamar Alexander tried to kick-start his presidential candidacy with a promise to zero out affirmative action—but Republicans chose Dole instead.
Now Trump has done what Reagan would not. His repeal came via three executive orders, two issued on Inauguration Day. The first overturned dozens of Biden decrees, including the “Advancing Racial Equity” executive order signed in the first hours of his presidency in 2021. The second ended all initiatives, offices, contracts, and employees connected to DEI, which Trump referred to as “illegal and immoral discrimination programs.”
. . .RIP affirmative action.
But that is only part of the story. A curious element of Trump’s third executive order is its invocation of the president’s “solemn duty” to enforce “longstanding Federal civil-rights laws,” mentioning the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This is not a concession. It’s a threat.
While the Civil Rights Act mentioned “affirmative action” it attached no specific meaning to the term, and the law was resolutely color-blind. Affirmative action programs, with their differing treatment of races, are in tension with it. DEI programs, many of which scapegoat white people, are even more so. It is Trump’s assertion that DEI programs “violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws.” Trump is doing more than reforming the public sector. He is signaling to the private sector that certain kinds of programs are liable to prosecution, even asking each federal agency to name up to nine large private-sector organizations that might be engaged in discrimination.
There can be little doubt of the general effectiveness of such methods. In 2020 and 2021, as civil rights regulators and the Biden administration rallied behind it, DEI went from the hobby of a handful of quirky CEOs to the unanimous policy of corporate America. Today the rush in the opposite direction is just as precipitous. Among the new foes of DEI are some of its erstwhile champions: Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, Walmart, and even Target, home of the “tuck-friendly” bathing suit. More will follow.
This, in turn, will have an effect on the entire ecology of the Democratic Party. DEI and affirmative action are among the last things everyone in this divided party believes in, and the source of a good deal of its organizing muscle. Now, there is no work for affirmative-action lawyers, diversity consultants, and inclusion trainers to do. Whole job categories are being zeroed out.
And this:
In other words, Trump is not simply eliminating the affirmative-action enforcement machinery. He is throwing it into reverse. Companies will be assumed to be violating civil rights laws, we suddenly learn, if they engage in “racial balancing.” What the hell is racial balancing? How do you define DEI, for that matter? A different set of Americans are about to learn how vague mandates like these can lead to a feeling of being tyrannized and toyed with.
Finally, on the unpopularity of “affirmative action,” in particular how it morphed into favoring some minority groups:
This was a course that the public could not tolerate and neither government nor business could avow. A climate of dishonesty was the result. Affirmative action was a big factor—perhaps the biggest—in convincing about half of Americans never to trust anything any person of authority said.
Ten presidents managed to insulate affirmative action from public accountability. Then it became obvious to the public that changing anything would require dismantling everything.
And so it’s been done—or rather, threatened to be done. We’ll see in the next few months what really happens. Universities throughout the country are desperately trying to rename DEI groups or policies so that they can still operate as they did before the executive order. I’m not sure if that will work or not, and it won’t work if Trump has “DEI detectives” who are savvy at sniffing out how DEI keeps on, but under other names.
*Second, “Emilia Peréz and the curse of Oscar bait,” with the subtitle “Why is the Academy obsessed with movies no one wants to see.” GUESS! First, from summary in the FP newsletter:
Emilia Pérez,a 2024 French-produced, Spanish-language musical about a transgender Mexican drug lord, bombed at the box office and was so disliked by Mexican audiences that a government agency is now investigating whether disappointed moviegoers are entitled to a refund. But last week, it was nominated for 13 Oscars, more than any other film.
Then the meat. All I’ve heard about this movie is bad stuff, and I will try to watch it, even though its Rotten Tomatoes critics’ ratings are 74% and the audience ratings a dismal 23%.
And from the article:
Emilia Pérez is what people call Oscar bait: the sort of film that is made, seemingly, for the express purpose of catching the attention of the approximately 10,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Mostly film-industry insiders, their tastes are predictable. They like austere dramas and social commentary—stories that will make you cry while also attempting to say something about politics. Think of 2016’s Moonlight, a tragedy about a poor, gay drug dealer that grossed $65 million worldwide at the box office. It beat La La Land, which grossed $509 million worldwide, to the title of Best Picture. Or think of Nomadland, which won Best Picture in 2020: It follows a homeless widow who travels the country in a van after losing her job in the Great Recession.
The tastes of the academy are so predictable that they’ve been delightfully parodied—most succinctly perhaps in a 2008 episode of American Dad!, in which Roger the Alien takes on a supervillain persona and produces a film called Oscar Gold about an intellectually disabled Jewish alcoholic whose puppy dies of cancer while he’s hiding in an attic during the Holocaust. The movie is intended to make viewers cry themselves to death.
Late Night with Seth Meyers did a similar parody in 2017, producing a trailer for a fictional film simply called Oscar Bait featuring “racial tension,” “latent homosexuality,” the French language, and “dialogue that feels sort of profound.”
A conservative might say the film industry is being used to produce far-left propaganda, but the truth is the politics of Oscar bait typically run a few years behind progressive ideology du jour. Case in point: Emilia Pérez wasn’t good enough trans representation for the professional scolds over at the ultra-leftist GLAAD, the LGBTQ media watchdog, but it was good enough for the liberal boomers running the academy. They also loved 2018’s Green Book, a movie about a black musician and his friendly but slightly racist Italian American driver—even though The New York Times called it a “racial reconciliation fantasy,” and 2013’s 12 Years a Slave, which was deemed a “white savior story” by The Atlantic.
. . . Typically, Oscar bait receives a lot of hype before underperforming at the box office then fading into obscurity. I haven’t thought about Green Book since it stoked a debate about whether or not black and white people are allowed to be friends in movies. Remember The Artist, nominated for 10 Academy Awards in 2012? I doubt it. It was a black-and-white, partially silent French film about an alcoholic actor in Depression-era Hollywood—perhaps the most Oscar-baity film ever made. I’ve never met anyone who has seen 2022’s Best Picture winner, CODA—a coming of age film about the hearing daughter of a deaf fisherman who aspires to become a singer—and I also don’t know anyone who liked Emilia Pérez (which has a 24 percent Popcornmeter approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes). And I hang out with snobs! Not even Mexicans like it. When the film hit theaters south of the border, there were so many refund requests a government consumer-protection agency had to become involved.
Oy! Do I have to watch this movie? I’m pretty sure I won’t like it but I can at least give it a shot (I give up on very few movies that I start watching). Here’s the trailer:
*Finally, the WSJ describes a putative painting by Van Gogh that was bought at a garage sale for less than fifty bucks and may be worth $15 million—if it’s real.
In 1889, Vincent van Gogh committed himself to a psychiatric asylum in Southern France, where he spent a turbulent year creating roughly 150 paintings, including masterpieces such as “Irises,” “Almond Blossom” and “The Starry Night.”
Now, a former curator of ancient art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has teamed up a with a group of conservators, scientists and historians who believe they’ve discovered No. 151—a previously unknown Van Gogh portrait of a fisherman plucked from a Minnesota garage sale a few years ago by an unsuspecting antiques collector for less than $50.
The thickly painted piece depicts a pensive fisherman with a white chin-beard and a round hat who clutches a pipe in his mouth as he repairs his net on an otherwise empty beach. In the lower righthand corner, the name Elimar is scrawled.
The discovery could represent a notable addition to the oeuvre of one of the world’s most famous artists. “Elimar” could also prove to be a lucrative windfall for LMI Group International, the New York-based art-research firm that bought the work from the anonymous antiques collector for an undisclosed sum in 2019 and has investigated it ever since, pouring in well over $30,000 and involving a team of around 20 experts from disparate fields, from chemists to curators to patent lawyers.
Later this month, they will begin unveiling their find in private viewings to major Van Gogh scholars and dealers around the world. They believe it is worth at least $15 million.
But is it really a Van Gogh?
“That’s the big question,” said Richard Polsky, an art authenticator who wasn’t involved in the project. “People love it when things fall through the cracks, and it would be wonderful if they found a Van Gogh—but they’ve got to pin everything down and get a scholar at the Van Gogh Museum to sign off on it.”
Doing so could prove to be a tall order. The discovery, if accepted, comes at a time when artist foundations and estates are increasingly shying away from making ultimate rulings on the authenticity of artworks for fear of being sued by owners who aren’t happy to hear that their works aren’t authentic. Museums touting deep holdings in certain artists like Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum turn down most would-be examples shown to them.
There are lots of things to consider, like the signature “Elimar” (people have that one figured out), but there are characteristics of the pigments and canvas that don’t jibe with Vincent’s other work. How would YOU like to be the person on whose judgment millions of dollars could rest. And what if you’re later proven wrong? You can see the painting by clicking here and looking at the upper left.
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, a blurry Hili gets pwned by Andrzej, and Malgorzata explains:
I knew that no biologist (and not a Pole) could understand it! There is a joke known to most Polish children:“Daddy, does a snake have a tail?” and the dad answers: “Solely”.Andrzej changed it a bit.
Hili: Does a snake have a tail?A: Yes, and a head.
Hili: Czy wąż ma ogon?Ja: Tak i głowę.
*******************
From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy:
From The Cat Haven:
From Things With Faces, a doglike mushroom!
Some good advice from Michael Shermer (note #3!):
My advice to Democrats:
1. The far left progressive woke movement is over. Even if it seems like a good idea at the time (#metoo, #BLM, #georgefloyd, etc.) it has failed utterly & the vast majority of voters are against it.
2. Course correct to the center & focus on core…
— Michael Shermer (@michaelshermer) January 28, 2025
From Bryan, the famous “Planetary Parde,” with real pictures:
I captured the entire “Planetary Parade” using my 11″ telescope, and combined everything into one composite photo that stayed true to the angular scale of these objects.
Made entirely with real photos, I hope this composite helps illustrate the scale of these things! pic.twitter.com/T2SP4sxaKw
— Andrew McCarthy (@AJamesMcCarthy) January 25, 2025
From Malcolm, a cat having fun. (Sound up.):
This made my day! 😂 pic.twitter.com/5SVFB8BeeL
— Why you should have a cat (@ShouldHaveCat) January 15, 2025
From my feed. But I don’t think this is unique to Asian kids. After all look at the gymnastics teams in the Olympics. Still, these kids are amazing:
Asian kids are incredible. pic.twitter.com/Pgvemla8dr
— The Goddess (@TheGoddessF) January 27, 2025
From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I retweeted:
A Dutch woman, about 28 years old, was one of the three-quarters of Dutch Jews murdered by the Nazis.
— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-01-29T12:06:56.426Z
Two posts from Matthew. First, what he calls “a groaner,” which it is:
Seen on FB (not by me):
A four-post thread (I give just the first) about “lazy corn” and what makes it grow horizontally:
A brief #Cornfax. And since I've been lazy with my #cornfax, let's talk about lazy corn. Lazy corn is, well, a pretty apt description. Unlike the corn on the left which stands tall and proud, the lazy corn just lies on the ground. It doesn't grow straight. So what's up (or not up in this case)? 1/4
— Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra (@jrossibarra.bsky.social) 2025-01-22T14:26:26.511Z
Go pound sand, NYT. I liked Green Book and Viggo Mortensen. SLU! SLU!
I watched the trailer for “Emilia Perez” and it gave me absolutely no clue as to what it’s about. Not even the transgender bit. It’s just a bunch of noisy scenes featuring the three leads. Doesn’t look like an interesting film in the least. And of course the lead “actress” will win Best Actress, proving again that men make better women than women do.
To the homosexual men who dominate the Academy of motion-picture industry insiders, men really do make better women than women do. “Just imagine the delicious body that’s under those clothes! At last! Plastic surgery has a purpose!” Contrary to what we’re trying to teach parents of confused autistic adolescents being manipulated on social media, I’m afraid I have to concede that trans really is the new gay. Trans is a new way for male homosexuality to express itself, getting married and living in the suburbs and adopting children having lost its sexual jolt for the avant-garde. (Unless you can breast-feed them. On Tik-Tok. But to do that you have to be trans. See?)
‘Emilia Perez’ was made by MAGA intellectuals, if there are any such creatures, so that Ben Shapiro could have justification for fulminating against gay/trans. It’s part of a conspiracy of the semi-fascist patriarchy. Lia Thomas works for them, too.
Yes, the bloke playing Emilia Pérez is bound to win the Best “Actress” Oscar because the Academy will want to stick two fingers up at Trump.
Of course, when Linda Hunt played a male in The Year of Living Dangerously she (deservedly) won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. But then that was before the current “gender” idiocy started. (And if she’d been awarded a prize in the male category a man would have lost out. We couldn’t have that! Though the actress that loses out over Emilia Pérez is dispensible, obviously, what with being a woman…)
re: nachos/Mexican food :
I learned recently that you can take plain corn tortillas and fry them. That is actually what a tostada is. Easy to do, tastes wicked good and you can make it how you like, e.g. adjust salt or oil as suited. Needs a good amount of oil, but not as much as deep frying.
My wife and I bailed on Emilia Perez within minutes of having started watching it on Netflix. Perhaps we should have stuck with it a little longer but it really didn’t appear to be our cup of tea.
My wife wanted to bail after about ten mins but we gave it another ten and ended up watching the whole thing. It wasn’t terrible, but it also wasn’t (at least IMO) a best picture candidate either. Had it not been listed as a potential Oscar nominee at the time I doubt it would have got the second ten minutes of viewing. At least it’s on Netflix, so it didn’t cost us anything extra.
The question I have about “Rotten Tomatoes” is how they determine what is a positive review. Are these positive (they are to RT):
Shermer’s comments are right on the mark, of course, but in his list of things on which to concentrate (instead of DEI-based bovine excrement), he left out the two most important things, both historical Democrat bailiwicks: environmental protection, and the interests of the working class.
Too many Democrats are freaking out at everything Trump does, and also at absolutely everything that Musk does, including how he deports his arm.
They would be far more persuasive if they welcomed the good things (of which there are plenty already) and reserved their criticism for the bad things (of which there will likely also be plenty). Sensible people are already tuning out the rampant Musk Derangement Syndrome.
It was a tweet. He couldn’t list everything.
But your additions are certainly good.
Unfortunately I don’t see much sign of the Dems (or the left in general as I’m in Canada) taking this advice.
On leftist forums like Heather Cox Richardson the comments reflect a determination to double down.
Several people say they are boycotting Amazon because Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post didn’t endorse Kamala (it didn’t endorse anyone).
There was much agreement that Elon Musk is a Nazi (probably many of these same people are pro Hamas).
Zero questions about what did we get wrong. In Canada, Trudeau’s Liberals are polling at record lows but are clinging to power by proroguing Parliament for several weeks, leaving us leaderless as Trump threatens a 25% tariff.
The left hasn’t learned a thing!
The same leftists who were constantly calling the Democrats “pro-genocide”, but then cry and blamed everybody else when Trump won.
The alphabet likely comes from French, but more info is needed to determine if it’s a bad translation and localization job or the photo is taken out of context.
Arbre, Cheval, Étoile, Gâteau, Maison…
I was thinking Spanish, which works for most of the words, but not for some (O for Bird s/b P for pajaro, etc.). I’m sure this is unthinkingly translated from French.
Thought they might have been going for “A= apple, C=colt, S=spider monkey, but Q=tail, didn’t look like a tail (and they used bigger, more completed illustrations on others), and R-Wheel looked like a photo of an eye harvested from some poor creature.
But then the headers has “A-B” and “N-O”, why? And “A” graphic could have been an anteater, and “N” was a mouse with I don’t know what.
Unless it was just poorly designed, with no clear goal. Then it might make sense.
I think the book was intended for Spanish speaking kids who needed to learn English. They would see a tree, and think Arbol, Spanish for tree. Then the English word “Tree” would be listed below the picture. Same for “C”. Horse is “Caballo” in Spanish
+1
Printed in Asia by someone who doesn’t know English well, and has never heard of French. What the hell is a yote?
Sounds like the judge in My Cousin Vinny asking “what is a yoot?” when Vinny refers to youths in his New York accent.
Re Caldwell essay re DEI: The history of affirmative action and, in particular, the description of the programs under LBJ is inaccurate. From Johnson through to the late 1970’s, affirmative action programs were focused on expanding recruitment and advertising, making clear that non-discrimination applied to, e.g., university admissions, hiring, contracting. Actual racial preferences developed from there.
Regarding the President’s freeze on grants and Federal assistance. There is a lot of false information flying around. It’s worth pointing out that the freeze is NOT across the board, but is for programs specified in other Executive Orders (here is a tweet with the actual order; not sure why this isn’t on the EOs page at the WH). The referenced EOs are:
I have seen statements that this will stop SNAP (specifically mentioned in the letter as NOT being stopped) or closing women’s shelters or stopping funding for firefighters. That all appears to be incorrect, and, knowing the Press, probably purposefully false.
I was listening to this on NPR on my way to work, and it emphasized the freezes were very broad, with few exceptions. CNN was similarly reporting the same thing. But I’d allow its possible that these sources are miming each other so I’m going to wait and see. One is wrong, I don’t know which.
NPR also described that new administrations normally temporarily freeze new awards and contracts that had not been given out yet, just to see how those in particular align with the new administration policies. But existing expenditures must go out. Those are already budgeted by congress, and an important point of law is that a president cannot then go in and freeze expenses that were already committed. So if broad, it’s probably unconstitutional.
There is also a freeze on foreign aid which is also described as very broad. The U.S. gives out butt-loads of money in foreign aid for all manner of social programs overseas, for example, there are critical vaccination programs, and these social programs always had strong bipartisan support. NPR was describing how a very successful program to provide AIDS drugs in Africa has been stopped.
What concerns me is that although institutions in the US have leverage to sue and to move to block, administrators of foreign 3rd-world programs may not have that voice.
The freeze on foreign aid is very broad, exempting only Israel and Egypt. The freeze on grants isn’t as broad. It’s hard to tell because, and this is part of the problem, the grants are associated with specific other EOs, and there’s no easy way to see what grants are associated with things like DEI. The freeze on grants, though, does not affect Medicare, SNAP, or student aid.
I approve of the freeze on the $50 million aid to Gaza for condoms. With their skyrocketing birth rate they must have forgot to include an instruction manual.
I wonder how much money is actually wasted. America should not be the Mum and Dad bank for the world.
Perhaps they are using the condoms as water balloons to throw at Israelis, and not for their intended purposes ???
Bombs. (IEDs, improvised explosive devices.) Reportedly, they’re using them for bombs.
If an AIDS drug program in Africa was successful, in that it was cost-saving as mass treatment of HIV is touted to be, then surely it would be worth it for an African country to pay for the program itself. If the country is unable to collect enough taxes from its successful citizens to pay for its own program then there are serious structural problems that eradication of HIV alone won’t fix.
If HIV suppression is not cost-effective, and so affordable only by altruists, then perhaps the country should shift its priorities to programs that are.
According to the New York Times, the Trump administration has rescinded the freeze.
The dead hostages in Israel will have given their lives for a valuable thing: that the Israeli public and many in the west will never, never EVER agree to the suicide of a “Palestinian State” in any form. Ever.
Onwards Israeli heroes.
D.A.
NYC
From a legal perspective Caldwell’s distillation of the changes to DEI is spot on and very useful. Most of it comes from Richard Hanania’s book about woke which is also an excellent history of the problem. In law schools 20 years ago it was only touched in an abstract and distant way I remember.
Public lack of understanding about the problem is very large. The rot is deep within our system and society. The “vibe shift” is as important as the legal details though.
D.A.
NYC
I love Van Gogh, but that purported painting by him is both amateurish and ugly. I would vote against it being genuine. But, even if it is, I’m sorry to say that I wouldn’t want to hang it on my wall.
On a more serious note, I am confused about the fate of the poor Bibas family – mother, father, and two red-headed children. I had thought all along that they were alive and only learned this week that the mother and children were probably – but not certainly – killed months ago. The whole thing is heartbreaking and enraging.
His early paintings of people were a little crude. One called Potato Eaters reminds me of this one of a fisherman.
Am reading, and enjoying, the David Roberts book about Gino Watkins, and wishing DR was still around, although he’d probably have to see DJT wreck The Bears Ears national monument after all.
I am steeling myself for the return of dead hostages. I hope that the world reports on their repatriation with respect. The loss of every person is the loss of a universe. Losing them at the hands of Hamas is a crime against humanity, morally if not legally.
Regarding the Trump freeze. Classic Trump. He paints with a very broad brush and then the rest of the government has to fill in the details. We’ll see how much of his freeze on grants and loans will extend. Government grants and loans—from what I’ve read—are a significant part of the economy, so putting the brakes on them could have serious economic consequences.
And government grants are a significant part of academic institutions’ economy. I retired fifteen years ago and left my organization head position ten years prior to that so do not recall details, but my agency, NASA was a funder of unis through grants and contracts. Grants generally supported basic or fundamental research at the school, led by a PI professor. Because it was basic research, there were no milestones to be met at any certain date, simply a technical report at years end and maybe one at mid-year. Our financial folks explained that a grant was basically a gift: based on the government’s interest in advancing some area of research and the PI’s proposal as to how he planned to do that, the grant money was given to the PI. Generally his proposal showed some of the money supporting his summer research and full year oversight of grad students; it also included stipends to the grad student(s) who worked on the grant research area and often some costs such as visits by the uni research team to a NASA lab, publication costs of reporting in journals, and travel to a relevant conference for the PI. But the impact on the university was much greater than just the science or engineering dept: by law, either 40% or 60%, I cannot recall which, went to the institution as overhead! Thus if I let a $100k grant to a professor, somewhere between 40k and 60k went to the university for unspecified purposes and only the remainder was available to the PI and his students. But this was developed purposefully over the years since WW2 as a way to funnel federal money to the universities to support fundamental research and cover the university’s overhead in handling the exchange.
So stopping a grant kills the faculty summer support, the oversight of grad students, the bread and butter support of grad students, dissemination of research results in journals and at conferences; AND a big chunk of dosh to carpet the deans’ offices and buy the president a new desk.
At my (former) institution, around 50% of any grant went to the institution and the rest to the PI and the research. Universities are hugely dependent.
Thanks Norman. If I had had to pick a ballpark number that conveyed the idea I wanted to get across (that as you state “Universities are hugely dependent”), I would have picked 50. Point is, it’s a much larger proportion than the man on the street might think if queried. I just could not recall exactly after twenty-five or so years.
Given that grants are for a particular purpose, it’s quite surprising to me that half of the money can be siphoned right off the top for unrelated expenditures.
Being rather flippant: 🙂
I hope all you Americans are not talking about a painting possibly by Van Go. I mean, us Brits also do a pretty poor job of pronouncing his name, saying Van Goff, but at least we don’t give up entirely and say “Van Go”. 🙂
When they’ve really souped up their vehicles, they can say “Watch my van go!”
If I recall correctly, Hyacinth Bucket – pronounced Bouquet – had an interesting pronunciation for his name.
As did Woody Allen in I forget which movie…maybe Annie Hall.
Regarding nooz, Erdogan hosted Hms leaders today:
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/turkeys-erdogan-meets-with-hamas-leader-delegation-ankara-2025-01-29/
Turkey is part of NATO, right?
Erdogan is hostile towards Israel:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/20/erdogan-urges-palestinian-unity-after-meeting-hamas-chief
People speak of a “bromance” between Erdogan and Trump. I hope Trump puts Erdogan in his place, as Erdogan’s position is clear: Israel can’t be allowed to gain ground and Palestinians must unite.
I can imagine that Trump is conflicted since the US has bases in Turkey:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/02/nato-second-trump-term-00164517
More and more I favor Trump’s hard-ass policies towards almost everything, as mercurial as they may be. Why are we in NATO again? Let’s get Greenland and get out of Turkey and NATO. Perhaps that is the most foolish thing I’ve penned, but something has got to give. Why do we have warheads in Turkey to protect Turkey as part of NATO when Turkey is hostile to Israel? (And now we know why I don’t work for any three-letter agency!)
The nuclear warheads sited in Turkey aren’t so much to defend Turkey as to use Turkey as a base from which to attack nearby Soviet (and now Russian) territory. During the Cold War, Turkey was closer to the USSR — it bordered one of the soviet republics — than any other NATO country except a few km of Norway. For most of Norway’s length neutral Sweden’s airspace was in the way. Ukrainian SSR was a straight shot across the Black Sea from Turkey. It also controls access to the Black Sea through the Dardanelles, bottling up the Russian Navy’s only ice-free port. Because obviously any attack from Turkey no matter who was flying the planes would lead to Russian retaliation, enrolling Turkey in the mutual defence organization was the necessary quid pro quo, even if we don’t like their politics very much. You kind of need to have him on the side of the good guys, even if he’s not a very good guy himself.
The world is changing.
Interestingly, “nacho” actually has a convoluted etymological relation to “Nazi”. According to Wikipedia, regarding the origins of that term, “The term “nazi” had been in use, before the rise of the NSDAP, as a colloquial and derogatory word for a backwards farmer or peasant. It characterised an awkward and clumsy person, a yokel. In this sense, the word Nazi was a hypocorism of the German male name Igna(t)z (itself a variation of the name Ignatius)—Igna(t)z being a common name at the time in Bavaria, the area from which the NSDAP emerged.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism#Etymology
So both “nacho” and “Nazi” came ultimately from nicknames for names based on Ignatius. (And by the story in this post, it looks like nachos were first created for the spouses of those who were fighting against the Nazis in WWII.)
Thank you for that. Mark Forsyth in The Etymologicon infers that NDASP members would have regarded “Nazi” as a slur, and the world went along, inspired by Austrian escapees from the Anschluss referring bitterly to “those fucking Nazis”.
Mr. Forsyth recommends caution in choosing the name of an association. “Red States for the Next America would not do, nor, citing Mencken, would “Columbia University Netball Team.”
Ah, Karl Marx. His book is a little course as toilet paper, but makes wonderful kindling.
Coarse, of course!
If that’s a Van Gogh, I’ll eat a wooden shoe.
This seems like an Emperor’s New Clothes situation. All the experts think the emperor is gorgeously dressed.