Sunday: Hili dialogue

February 23, 2025 • 6:45 am

Welcome to the Sabbath for goyische cats: it’s Sunday, February 23, 2025, National Banana Bread Day, a comestible infinitely better than zucchini bread (no dessert save carrot cake is improved by the inclusion of vegetables).  Here’s a tasty Filipino banana bread:

Joost Nusselder, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s also National Dog Biscuit Appreciation Day and World Understanding and Peace Day (sadly, this ain’t being celebrated).

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

Da Nooz:

*Israel is holding back Palestinian prisoners supposed to be exchanged for the six hostages released Saturday by Hamas. Trouble is brewing in Israel’s war cabinet.

Hamas released six Israeli hostages from Gaza on Saturday, delivering the last living captives set to be freed in the first phase of a fragile cease-fire. That truce was already jolted this week when the militant group initially returned remains purportedly of an Israeli hostage that testing revealed to be someone else.

Early Sunday, Israel announced that it would continue to delay the release of 620 Palestinian prisoners whom it had pledged to free on Saturday until the release of further hostages “has been assured,” and Hamas commits to releasing them without “humiliating ceremonies.” Hamas has been releasing hostages in performative ceremonies aimed at showing that it is still in control of Gaza, which many Israeli officials have condemned.

The announcement, delivered in a statement from the prime minister’s office hours after the prisoner release had already been delayed without explanation, added tension to the shaky cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that is set to expire next week.

On Thursday, Hamas had returned four bodies it said were those of hostages who had died in captivity, among them Shiri Bibas, an Israeli women who had been abducted with her two young children during the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7, 2023, that began the war. Forensic testing by Israel determined that the body was not Ms. Bibas, however.

Late Friday, Hamas transferred another set of remains, which Israeli officials confirmed early Saturday as those of Ms. Bibas, whose kidnapping and death with her children have become a symbol of Israeli grief.

The delivery of the wrong remains set off an uproar in Israel. Additionally, Israeli authorities, rejecting Hamas’s assertions that Ms. Bibas’s children were killed in Israeli airstrikes, said that their captors had killed them “with their bare hands.” The episode raised doubts about the next steps of the cease-fire agreement, including whether Saturday’s exchange would proceed as planned.

From what I heard, the Bibas family was strangled by hand, which one can apparently tell because a certain delicate bone is broken in the process. Hamas tried to cover it up by stoning the dead bodies, but the forensics told the tale.  This should enrage anybody who demonstrates for Palestine, which is now pretty much equivalent to demonstrating in favor of Hamas. Israel might return the prisoners today, or they might try to renegotiate the agreement. As I predicted, Israeli sentiment was going to change when they began swapping coffins of dead hostages for living imprisoned Palestinian terrorists.

*Another one of Trump’s executive orders has been put on hold by the judiciary: this time his anti-DEI program.

A federal judge in Maryland has temporarily blocked some enforcement of a series of executive orders by President Trump targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs, halting a widespread crackdown on such initiatives across the federal government.

In his ruling late Friday, Judge Adam B. Abelson of the District of Maryland said that the defendants shall not “pause, freeze, impede, block, cancel, or terminate any awards, contracts or obligations,” or “change the terms of any current obligation” related to equity programs. The executive orders had required a halt to spending on diversity initiatives throughout the federal government.

Judge Abelson wrote in his opinion that the plaintiffs in the case — groups representing college professors and school diversity officers — had established that they would suffer irreparable harm under the order, and had “shown they are likely to prove” that provisions of the orders were “unconstitutionally vague on their face,” and beyond that, provisions of the orders “squarely, unconstitutionally,” violated freedom of speech.

“As plaintiffs put it, ‘efforts to foster inclusion have been widespread and uncontroversially legal for decades,’” Judge Abelson wrote, adding that “plaintiffs’ irreparable harms include widespread chilling of unquestionably protected speech.”

The Trump administration has moved to shut down diversity initiatives in government agencies, going so far as to quickly take down government web pages that referred to equal employment opportunity programs and diversity initiatives.

Among the most aggressive orders signed by Mr. Trump were ones that mandated the immediate purge of hiring practices that sought to reverse the effects of systemic discrimination against women, minorities and people with disabilities. Administration officials also threatened federal employees with “adverse consequences” if they failed to report on colleagues who defied the orders.

Judge Abelson made note of the Trump administration’s aggressive moves in his ruling, writing that the orders sought to punish people for constitutionally protected speech.

“The White House and Attorney General have made clear,” Judge Abelson wrote, that “viewpoints and speech considered to be in favor of or supportive of D.E.I.” are “viewpoints the government wishes to punish and, apparently, attempt to extinguish.”

Now I’m not a lawyer (I just play one on television), but what Trump seeks to eliminate seems to be not so much words as action: programs that, he considers, foster discrimination.  It’s not illegal to go around promoting things like “equity,” but I wonder what the “irreparable harm” the plaintiffs will suffer if Trump’s EO is enforced, save their DEI-related jobs. And it’s not true that efforts to foster inclusion have been “uncontroversially legal for decades,” as we can see from the Bakke case. Further, the Supreme Court, not long ago, banned preferential race-based admission to colleges, another effort to “foster inclusion.”

*The right-wing WSJ op-ed column has gone after RFK Jr and his agenda! The topic: the man’s anti-vaccine agenda.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been Health and Human Services secretary for all of a week, but he’s already pressing what looks like an anti-vaccine agenda. Mr. Kennedy never did disavow his vaccine views in the runup to Senate confirmation. He merely said he wouldn’t take away anyone’s vaccines. But the HHS secretary has many tools to undermine vaccines, and his early moves are revealing.

News reports this week say he’s preparing to sack members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. This is the group that decides whether and how to recommend vaccines for the public. Its recommendations help determine which vaccines are covered under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.

That’s the program Congress established to compensate individuals injured by vaccines. Its aim is to limit litigation against vaccine makers so they’ll take the high risk of developing them. Plaintiffs can only sue if they first file claims with the special vaccine courts and are rejected. Trial lawyers hate the system since it makes it harder to round up plaintiffs.

Mr. Kennedy is targeting the committee members for alleged conflicts of interest. But none of the members work for drug companies. They’re medical professors and physicians with careers studying vaccines.

Perhaps Mr. Kennedy doesn’t like that they have done research showing vaccines are beneficial and may have—oh no!—even advocated for them. One member advised a presidential cancer panel during President Trump’s first term on how to boost uptake of the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine to prevent cervical cancer. If the committee withdraws a vaccine recommendation, it could be removed from the vaccine compensation program and open manufacturers to mass tort liability.

I’ve always thought that the man was the worst of Trump’s appointees. And with no vaccine compensation program, new vaccines might not be developed. Sometimes, as in covid, they need to be developed rapidly. And remember, RFK Jr. is going to be in charge of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Whopee; we’re all gonna die!

*From the NYT: “Six things E.R. doctors wish you’d avoid“. Read carefully (article archived here).  A bit of each

Adaira Landry, an E.R. physician at Harvard Medical School-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said knife injuries in the kitchen were among the most frequent injuries she saw.

Avocados are a major culprit, Dr. Landry added. “Sometimes I’ll even ask, ‘Oh, were you cutting avocado?,” she said. “And they’re like: ‘Yes! How did you know?’”

The best way to cut something like an avocado or a bagel is to use a secure, nonskid surface such as a wooden cutting board, and to cut away from your body, said Matt Shannon, the director of community emergency medicine at University of Florida Health.

Several doctors said they avoided trampolines. “They’re a broken-bone factory,” Dr. Sugalski said. “We see fractures, dislocations, spinal injuries, head injuries, all the time.”

Dr. Pratt is a dog lover, but after seeing many canine attack victims in the E.R., he doesn’t pet unfamiliar dogs. “You don’t know what kind of trauma that animal has been put through and what kind of triggers it has,” he said.

But is it okay to pet strange cats? I do that all the time! The last three:

Dr. Landry takes her own unexpected and extreme symptoms seriously. If you experience something like severe chest pain or paralysis of a body part, come to the E.R. immediately, she said.

And if you have heart attack or stroke symptoms, do not drive yourself to the hospital, said Michael E. Silverman, the vice chairman of the department of emergency medicine at Morristown Medical Center in New Jersey.

If you’re not wearing a helmet, whether it’s for sports or e-bikes, “you’re just looking for serious injury,” Dr. Sugalski said. “We see folks come in with helmets and without helmets, and it’s night and day.”

The last one is buried in the story:

Don’t wear Crocs when it’s snowy or icy outside.

Or any other time! (That’s from me.)

*Just for fun, I found a 14-minute video giving the late Roger Ebert’s list of the ten greatest movies of all time. Click on “watch on YouTube” on the video screenshot below.

The list in reverse order of ranking: “Gates of Heaven,” “28Up,” “Floating Weeds,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Notorious,” “Raging Bull,” “The Third Man,” La Dolce Vita,” “Casablanca,” and “Citizen Kane”. I realized to my horror that I’ve seen only “Raging Bull,” “Casablanca,” and “Citizen Kane,” all of them great movies.  I have some movie-watching to do!”

But the first one I’d like to see is “Floating Weeds,” directed by Yasujirō Ozu, who made “Tokyo Story,” which is on my own list of greatest films, and, along with Kurosawa’s “Ikiru,” is one of the two best foreign films.

Click for Ebert’s ten best:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s concerned that Malgorzata is using Andrzej’s mouse pad. (He got a new one and gave the old one to Malgorzata.) But it has upset the order of things:

Hili: This is your old mouse pad.
A: Yes, Małgorzata’s mouse pad was dilapidated and I don’t have time to buy her a new one.
In Polish:
Hili: To twoja stara podkładka pod mysz.
Ja: Tak, Małgorzaty podkładka się zniszczyła, a nie mam teraz czasu, żeby jej kupić nową.
And in Berlin, Stupsi is chewing on grass and notes: “Heute hast Du die Wahl. Ich wünsche uns allen viel Glück.” (Translation: “Today is the election. I wish us all good luck.” (A very far-right party is running.)

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

Barry caught some bad grammar at the Associated Press. Did you know some monkeys can live for two hundred years or more?

From Things With Faces, a tired cappuccino:

From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy:

From Meow:

From Masih, and it’s not just in Europe:

Erin Molan (Aussie, eloquent, not Jewish) on the nature of Hamas. Worth hearing!

From Malsolm, two disparate cats:

DO NOT DO THIS TO CATS!

From my Twitter feed:

From Ricky Gervais:

From the Auschwitz Memorial, one that I posted.

Sixteen-year old French girl, died in Auschwitz.

— Jerry Coyne (@evolutionistrue.bsky.social) 2025-02-23T10:32:59.870Z

Two tweets from Matthew, who’s now in America!  First, a political/religious one:

From FB – “The car in front of me had a bumper sticker on it. It read: "Pray for Trump Psalm 109:8." When I got home l opened my bible to the scripture and read it and started laughing.Psalm 109:8 -"Let his days be few and brief; And let others step forward to replace him."

— (@deezgan.bsky.social) 2025-02-11T04:07:23.103Z

Photos from where Matthew is now:

Heard of Asilomar, the meeting that discussed the dangerous new technology of genetic engineering in February 1975? The world was in black and white back then (or at least the meeting photos were), right? Wrong! Previously unseen colour slides! digital.sciencehistory.org/collections/…

— Matthew Cobb (@matthewcobb.bsky.social) 2025-02-10T08:25:58.157Z

15 thoughts on “Sunday: Hili dialogue”

  1. A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
    The theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience. -W.E.B. Du Bois, educator, civil rights activist, and writer (23 Feb 1868-1963)

    1. Great choice (food for thought)!
      I loved Erin Molan, Ricky Gervais, and the “wtf kitty”.
      I don’t think Israel should release anymore prisoners. I’m not into violence which is why I want the IDF to finish the job and wipe Hamas out.
      Also, Leslie is right (below) Crocs do look cute on little kids.

      1. Not to mention the weird tan lines they both leave behind.
        “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”

        —Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”

        Crocs look cute on little kids, though. Birks? Nope.

  3. I don’t get the big deal about the color slides?? Of course they would’ve been in color in 1975.

  4. I think that the IDF is being a bit vague about how the Bibas family was killed, in order to spare the remaining family from having to see the words describing the atrocities appear in public. I, too, read that they were strangled and that the bodies were then desecrated by stoning (after death, one would hope). What’s left of the Bibas family should not have to read those words (or worse) coming from official sources and appearing in public news outlets. I grieve for the husband and father, Yarden Bibas, who was released from Hamas captivity two weeks ago. His wife, two children, mother-in-law, and father-in-law are all dead.

    Will the Israelis end the cease fire at this point? Hard to say. Ending it might very well mean sacrificing the remaining hostages to outrages like those experienced by the Bibas mother and children. Keeping it going will bring back more hostages, but will release hundreds of terrorists back into the wild. One thing that seems solid (for now) is that the United States wants Hamas annihilated. Marco Rubio has been crystal clear on that. Even if the negotiations enter phase 2, the IDF will have to go back into Gaza unless a plan to govern Gaza without Hamas emerges. Recent noises coming out of Arab leaders regarding the rebuilding of Gaza may portend something positive.

    Israel has shown that it will give up a great deal for the return of its people. At some point, they will either have all the hostages home or they will conclude that they have rescued all they can. My guess is that they still believe that they can get more of the hostages back. So, my prediction is that the Israelis will try to keep the negotiation (extortion) going—at least for now.

    1. I sure hope they can get rid of Hamas. I’m not seeing any clear way to do though.

      And it’s not just Hamas. The whole population is raised to hate Israel and Jews.

  5. It was nice to hear Erin mention Carl Lutz, who I had never heard of until I chanced on a pic of him beside a ’38 Packard at the gates of the Hungarian Embassy to Switzerland (that pic at the end of the link, FWIW), and looked to learn more about him, which I found astonishing.

    Far, far more have heard of Raoul Wallenberg (I have a friend in Sweden whose father worked for him and for whom my friend is named), and he should be widely known, but Carl Lutz should too.

    Otherwise, the psalm bumper sticker and the flouride sticker photo sequence are each keepers.

  6. Here’s what I think Kennedy’s plan is.

    He wants to make it easier to sue vaccine makers. He’s experienced in that area.

    That way he’s not strictly taking vaccines away, thus sort of keeping his word.

  7. “Don’t ignore sudden symptoms….If you experience something like…paralysis of a body part”

    Who ignores sudden paralysis of a body part?!? (I am reminded of an old Dara Ó Briain bit here. “Oh, no, I don’t want to make a fuss.”)

  8. What am i missing? — The Bibas babies, especially Kfir, were a microcosm of the faces of the hostages. Seems therefore that it would have suited Hamas to keep the babies alive, as bargaining chips.
    Turns out the monsters strangled them (and their mother) over a year ago. What was the strategy in that?

  9. I looked thru those Asilomar slides for George Pieczenik, who had been @ Rockefeller and was there and who, with Crick, Aaron Klug and Sydney Brenner had published a speculative paper on early origins of protein synthesis. By 1976 George was @ Rutgers and teaching the nucleic acids section of General Biochem. I’ll always remember him asking if we had seen the piece in Rolling Stone about Asilomar and that he had been standing just out of frame of one of the photos. Looking back, probably the one with Watson & Brenner. Alas, he doesn’t appear on the labels of that set.

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